Ask Lemmy

No they didn't. If a non-aggression pact allowing Nazi annexation of territory is equivalent to an alliance, then France and Britain allied with the Nazis multiple times before the Soviets. There is a reason about how the only non-aggression pact that you hear about is Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and not the Munich Agreements or the Franco-German Declaration, etc. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact came out of the Soviets being turned down multiple times by France and Britain to forming an anti-fascist alliance.

This is the selective remembrance of appeasement. It is ignored that that encompassed many non-aggression pacts with the Nazis and is only remembered to selectively invoke for war hawking. If we say a nation is evil, than not being on board with a war of aggression is actually evil (Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, etc.) and you are just like Chamberlain, whose only motivation was being a pussy. You can discuss the morality or effectiveness, but Molotov-Ribbentrop was to try to delay the war for preparation and that the Nazis wouldn't be stupid enough to start a war without their own oil and steel supplies and without preventing a possibility of a two front war with France/Britain, and the Soviets were caught flat-footed because of overestimating the rationality of the Nazis. There was also the worry that France and Britain might eventually join the Nazis since they were pretty vocal about fascism being a possible necessary evil as it is the most extreme form of anti-communism, even though the attempt of appeasement was trying to sit out an eventual war between the Nazis and USSR, since Judeo-Bolshevism was a thing Nazis believed before they even took power.