Yesterday Poland, today Ukraine: the same story with communists and nazis in the same roles

On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, triggering the outbreak of World War II.

This is how the Communist Party of Spain justified the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland
The extreme left reactivates against Ukraine the strategy it used against Poland in 1939

Adolf Hitler began that invasion after a pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to divide up several countries in Europe: western and central Poland for Germany, and eastern Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and part of Romania for the USSR. Hitler and Stalin's plans were executed as planned, with the exception of Finland, which offered unexpected resistance to the Red Army, thanks to which that Nordic country was not subjected to the Soviet yoke, despite some territorial losses.

Even today, many people remain unaware that the communist parties controlled from Moscow defended and justified the German-Soviet invasion of Poland, and did so by demonizing the United Kingdom and France for supporting the Poles. Stalin's harangue on anti-fascism and Hitler's harangue on anti-communism were not an obstacle to something that surprised many: the alliance of nazis and communists, united by their common hatred of liberal democracy.

For decades, many people have been asking: How could that have happened? How could a country like Germany have allowed itself to be deceived by a charlatan and criminal like Hitler? Today, unfortunately, we have a new example of the consequences of being manipulated by totalitarian charlatans. For four and a half years, Russia has been waging a war of aggression against Ukraine that is very reminiscent of the invasion of Poland, as the Russian invaders are committing horrific crimes against the Ukrainian population that increasingly recall the horrific crimes committed by the German and Soviet invaders against the Polish population in 1939.

Today the world has changed in many ways. Germany is a democratic country that has learned a great deal from the darkest episodes of its own history. Poland and Germany are now allied countries. What hasn't changed so much is Russia, which today is being dragged by Vladimir Putin back to the Soviet era, to a dictatorship that turned that country into a vast prison where anyone who defied the tyrant risked suffering the worst punishments.

Those who also haven't changed are the nazis and the communists, both those who continue to define themselves as such without any shame despite the abominable crimes of both totalitarian movements, and those who hide their hatred of democracy and their antisemitism under new forms and labels. Today, totalitarians of both stripes remain the best propagandists for the new invaders, for those who want to drag all of Europe to kiss the feet of a tyrant.

Sadly, many Europeans still seem to have failed to grasp the threat posed by Russian expansionism, led by the mistaken notion that it is a problem for Ukraine and does not affect the rest of us. This is the same thinking people in other European countries had when Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland. We still have time to learn from the past before it is too late.

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Photo: An image of German and Soviet soldiers together on the day of the joint Nazi-Soviet parade in Brest-Livosk, Poland, September 22, 1939, with which both invaders celebrated the defeat of the Poles.