Quote Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny
You seem to have read a different version of history than I have. Didnt Russia invade as many if not more countries than Germany at the start of the war?
To understand the logic of the decisions that where made in these times, you must try to imagine what the men that took the decisions knew and what they could predict.

Russia had not known any military victory against a western power since the napoleonic era.

In 1905, they where humiliated by a country that was not even seen as a power, japan.

In 1914, defeats succeded to defeats and the army shatered before the regime.

During the 1920's, civil wars, famins, massacres and dictature still weakened this country.

During the 1930's, the purges, even if they where not known in detail showed a regime that appeared as weak and torn between factions.

The military purges of the late 1930's had weakened an army that was already very poorly estimated.

Moreover, ussr was a very closed country and beeing very under developped at the start of the century, no one could think that it had became a major industial power in the 1930's.

So yes, ussr was an ennemy and it had been such since the october revolution.

The allied planned an operation to help finland, originaly the operation in norway was supposed to reach northern finland to help the fins against the soviets.

This operation did not happened due to the quick defeat of ussr.

But soviet union was not seen as a danger, at most a country that could launch a war and was to be soon beaten, the soviets simply didn't have a chance against european armys.

Now if you look at germany, things where completely different.

It was a major industrial power, it had very firm military traditions, one of the best armys in the word, political power was extremely strong etc ...

Twenty years before a coalition of france, great britain, america, italy was necessary to force germany to surrender after a four years nightmare that costed millions of lives.

Moreover as we have seen it in poland, central and eastern european countrys where not easily within reach of france and great britain, at least without the support of russia or germany.

The only thing the democratic powers could do was to fight a war by helping countrys such as finland with weapons, specialists etc ... but a war against russia while germany was aggresive was simply not possible.