Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
I am currently reading an interesting book by Yale historian, Timothy Snyder, called 
Bloodlands. This book is about the mass murders that occurred in the Soviet and German empires between WWI and WWII. He defines the bloodlands as encompassing primarily Poland, the Baltic republics, Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of western Russia. Normally, we tend to see the mass murders as separate events that occur in one location, so the Holocaust is treated independently of the other massacres. Snyder ties them all together as part of the historical rivalry between the German and Russian empires. The very start of his expanded view of the Holocaust is the Holodomor (1930-1933), which used food as a weapon to deliberately kill over 3 million Ukrainians, although it also involved other types of executions. Famine was what killed most people. The Holodomor itself was largely ignored by Western countries, who faced their own economic crises.
Ukrainian peasants (kulaks) were the targeted scapegoats, but the reasons for it were not entirely clear. Kulaks were the first "Jews" in that sense, and they were subjected to many of the same techniques used to persecute Jews during the later Nazi regime. Part of it had to do with the fact that Ukraine had declared its independence after the Russian Revolution and was brought under Soviet control through military occupation by the Red Army. Ukraine was also invaded by the White Russian (Belarusan) forces, but they were in turn overwhelmed. The Bolsheviks were actually trying to get to Germany to help the large socialist movement there turn the country into a "workers' paradise". The Russian Empire itself was a largely agrarian society that did not have the class of factory workers that Communists idealized. Lenin had struck a compromise with the peasantry to redistribute land from rich landowners to the peasantry. Hence, the symbolism of the sickle in the "hammer and sickle".
After Lenin, Stalin wanted to turn the large number of peasants into factory workers by driving them into collective farms and also urban areas. So he reneged on Lenin's compromise in a way that triggered the Holodomor--by stealing the wealth of more successful farmers and their food. The Soviet regime confiscated their seed grain, which was largely sold off to foreigners for hard currency. That meant that they had nothing to plant, no food for themselves, and no access to food vouchers from the government. Any attempt to resist or hide food was brutally suppressed. Watchtowers were set up in fields to prevent peasants from stealing or eating anything that was harvested. The result was so grisly that many Ukrainians resorted to cannibalism to survive.
The relevance to our modern situation is that Poland stopped the Bolsheviks from reaching Germany and stymied their dream of fulfilling the vision of Marx and others that the working class revolution would take place in highly industrialized nations. Idealists in the newly formed Polish nation would like to have revived their historical Commonwealth, which was partitioned out of existence by the German and Russian empires surrounding them. So suffering Ukrainians hoped for a Polish invasion to relieve them from the intolerable oppression and devastation brought on them by the Stalin regime. Poland, however, was suffering from its own economic collapse and was in no position to invade Soviet territories, so the Pilsudski government signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin in 1932. This meant that Ukrainian nationalists had to look to Germany for possible relief. And that is why they, along with other eastern European nations that feared Russian domination, were predisposed initially to help and collaborate with the Wehrmacht when they attacked the Soviet Union at the beginning of WWII. For Ukrainians, that historical bond between Ukrainian nationalists and Nazi invaders has come back to haunt them, because Putin's current regime can look back on that collaboration as a pro-Nazi movement rather than an anti-Soviet pro-Ukrainian collaboration. For their part, the Nazis had no interest in Ukrainian nationalism and simply betrayed them as useful tools at the first opportunity. Bandera was never purged, but most of his movement was. It did not matter that they also shared the anti-semitic attitude of the Nazi regime. Hitler imagined that Poland and Ukraine would serve as "Lebensraum" for the "master race".
So, it appears that the Stalin-engineered Holodomor horror played a role in Hitler's rise to power, because he was able to point to the famine in Ukraine and what it portended for Germans, if the Communists and socialists got their way. OTOH, the left in Germany was split between Social Democrats and Communists, leaving ultranationalist right wingers to win victories in democratic elections in the Weimar Republic. Stalin and the Soviet hierarchy did not want German radical leftists joining together with the Social Democrats to keep the Nazis and ultranationalists from power. When Hitler gained power, that spectacular change in European politics was enough to bury the Holodomor in the news media, since it really did not come to light until most of the Ukrainians had already perished under Stalin's brutal policy of forced collectivization. Hitler became the champion of nationalist aspirations in eastern Europe among those who feared a renewed attempt from Soviet Russia to bring back their lands to Russian domination and foment leftist revolutions in western Europe.
Bloodlands. This book is about the mass murders that occurred in the Soviet and German empires between WWI and WWII. He defines the bloodlands as encompassing primarily Poland, the Baltic republics, Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of western Russia. Normally, we tend to see the mass murders as separate events that occur in one location, so the Holocaust is treated independently of the other massacres. Snyder ties them all together as part of the historical rivalry between the German and Russian empires. The very start of his expanded view of the Holocaust is the Holodomor (1930-1933), which used food as a weapon to deliberately kill over 3 million Ukrainians, although it also involved other types of executions. Famine was what killed most people. The Holodomor itself was largely ignored by Western countries, who faced their own economic crises.Ukrainian peasants (kulaks) were the targeted scapegoats, but the reasons for it were not entirely clear. Kulaks were the first "Jews" in that sense, and they were subjected to many of the same techniques used to persecute Jews during the later Nazi regime. Part of it had to do with the fact that Ukraine had declared its independence after the Russian Revolution and was brought under Soviet control through military occupation by the Red Army. Ukraine was also invaded by the White Russian (Belarusan) forces, but they were in turn overwhelmed. The Bolsheviks were actually trying to get to Germany to help the large socialist movement there turn the country into a "workers' paradise". The Russian Empire itself was a largely agrarian society that did not have the class of factory workers that Communists idealized. Lenin had struck a compromise with the peasantry to redistribute land from rich landowners to the peasantry. Hence, the symbolism of the sickle in the "hammer and sickle".
After Lenin, Stalin wanted to turn the large number of peasants into factory workers by driving them into collective farms and also urban areas. So he reneged on Lenin's compromise in a way that triggered the Holodomor--by stealing the wealth of more successful farmers and their food. The Soviet regime confiscated their seed grain, which was largely sold off to foreigners for hard currency. That meant that they had nothing to plant, no food for themselves, and no access to food vouchers from the government. Any attempt to resist or hide food was brutally suppressed. Watchtowers were set up in fields to prevent peasants from stealing or eating anything that was harvested. The result was so grisly that many Ukrainians resorted to cannibalism to survive.
The relevance to our modern situation is that Poland stopped the Bolsheviks from reaching Germany and stymied their dream of fulfilling the vision of Marx and others that the working class revolution would take place in highly industrialized nations. Idealists in the newly formed Polish nation would like to have revived their historical Commonwealth, which was partitioned out of existence by the German and Russian empires surrounding them. So suffering Ukrainians hoped for a Polish invasion to relieve them from the intolerable oppression and devastation brought on them by the Stalin regime. Poland, however, was suffering from its own economic collapse and was in no position to invade Soviet territories, so the Pilsudski government signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin in 1932. This meant that Ukrainian nationalists had to look to Germany for possible relief. And that is why they, along with other eastern European nations that feared Russian domination, were predisposed initially to help and collaborate with the Wehrmacht when they attacked the Soviet Union at the beginning of WWII. For Ukrainians, that historical bond between Ukrainian nationalists and Nazi invaders has come back to haunt them, because Putin's current regime can look back on that collaboration as a pro-Nazi movement rather than an anti-Soviet pro-Ukrainian collaboration. For their part, the Nazis had no interest in Ukrainian nationalism and simply betrayed them as useful tools at the first opportunity. Bandera was never purged, but most of his movement was. It did not matter that they also shared the anti-semitic attitude of the Nazi regime. Hitler imagined that Poland and Ukraine would serve as "Lebensraum" for the "master race".
So, it appears that the Stalin-engineered Holodomor horror played a role in Hitler's rise to power, because he was able to point to the famine in Ukraine and what it portended for Germans, if the Communists and socialists got their way. OTOH, the left in Germany was split between Social Democrats and Communists, leaving ultranationalist right wingers to win victories in democratic elections in the Weimar Republic. Stalin and the Soviet hierarchy did not want German radical leftists joining together with the Social Democrats to keep the Nazis and ultranationalists from power. When Hitler gained power, that spectacular change in European politics was enough to bury the Holodomor in the news media, since it really did not come to light until most of the Ukrainians had already perished under Stalin's brutal policy of forced collectivization. Hitler became the champion of nationalist aspirations in eastern Europe among those who feared a renewed attempt from Soviet Russia to bring back their lands to Russian domination and foment leftist revolutions in western Europe.