Soviet Union (HM6)

The Soviet Union under "comrade" Joseph Stalin so far hasn't really joined World War II to its full extent.

Expansion

In the war against Poland, Nazi Germany already had destroyed most Polish armies, so the Red Army was able to occupy Poland east of the Curzon Line since September 17th 1939 without much effort. On October 6th, the last Poles had capitulated, and their country was divided once again, according to the secret agreements of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. The Soviet gains of 200,000 km² with 13.3 million people (5.25 of which were Poles) were divided between Byelorussia and Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands were sent to Siberia. In April/May 1940, the Soviets committed the Template:Wp, in which ten thousands of Polish officers were murdered and thrown into mass graves.

Also according to the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the SU forced the Baltic states to sign "mutual assistance pacts" with them - with Estonia in late September, with Latvia and Lithuania in early October - which allowed the Soviets to create military bases there. This despite the fact that the SU had made non-aggression pacts during the 1930s with the former two, as with Poland and Finland. During June 10th to 12th, the Baltic states were occupied.

From November 1939 to March 1940, the SU fought the Finno-Soviet Winter War, during which the Red Army which still suffered from Stalin's purges since 1937. Finnish cities were bombed, and the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov spread the Lie they had only dropped breadbaskets for hungry Finns. Although the Finns fought like heroes, the SU won at the End. 70,000 Finnish Soldiers had fallen, but hundreds of thousands of Redarmists. The western Allies Britain and France didn't interfere, although they had considered it. The SU only was evicted from the League of Nations on December 14th in 1939, but Stalin barely cared. Before the war, the Soviets already had installed a puppet government called the "Finnish Democratic Republic", planning to take over the whole country. Now, Stalin could be content that Finland had to cede about 35,000 sq km Land with 420,000 inhabitants and the big city of Vyborg/Viipuri (the Finns left this Land and had to be resettled) to the SU in the peace treaty of Moscow. The ceded land became part of the newly formed Karelo-Finnish Soviet republic.

On June 22nd, Redarmists lead by Georgy Zhukov occupied Romanian Bessarabia and northern Bukovina.

Inner affairs

On February 11th in 1940, Nazi Germany and the SU signed the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement, which provided many important ressources - Crude Oil, chrome iron, manganese, nickel - to Germany and gave the SU German arms and machines in return.

Stalin went as far as replacing his foreign minister Litvinov - for being Jewish - by Molotov in 1939, to accomodate the Nazis.

Stalin's purges haven't been finished even now. On February 4th of 1940, the "bloody dwarf" Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, former boss of the secret service, who had sent millions of innocents to the Gulags, was executed himself. Before, there had been a show trial in which he had been accused to be homosexual and having murdered his wife. In his last letter, he wrote that he'd die with Stalin's name on the lips. Afterwards, his name had to be removed from official documents like schoolbooks, and his image from all photographies. The execution stayed a secret, so many people thought for years that he had been sent to an insane asylum. A different rumor claims that his successor Beria had strangled him with his own hands.