Page 333 - The Chief Culprit

Conclusion

e Aggressor

We will bury you!
—N K,      
    K, N 

he Soviet Union entered World War II as an aggressor. Poland, Finland, Estonia,
Lithuania, Latvia, Romania—all the western neighbors of the Soviet Union—fell
T victim to the Red Army. During talks in Berlin, Stalin’s envoy Molotov demanded
strongholds in Yugoslavia, in the Adriatic Sea, in Greece, in the Bosporus and Dardanelles,
in the Persian Gulf; he demanded that countries south of the Baku-Batumi line, in the direc-
tion of the Persian Gulf, be given over to Soviet control, including eastern Turkey, northern
Iran, and Iraq. He also declared the Soviet Union’s interest in southern Bukovina. Molotov
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constantly asked Hitler and Ribbentrop whether Germany had reconsidered its position on
the fate of Finland, seeing that the Soviet Union was not going to let that country be indepen-
dent. Finally, Stalin’s major demand at the Berlin talks in November 1940 was for Germany
to acquiesce to a Soviet military presence in Bulgaria. Molotov added, in a conversation with
Hitler, that “the USSR was ready to support Bulgaria in its desire for an outlet to the Aegean
Sea, and considered said desire to be just.” Stalin never specified which countries his pup-
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pet Bulgaria would have to invade to reach this outlet—Greece, Turkey, or both. In reality,
the Germans took Greece and gave the go-ahead for Bulgaria to annex a part of the Greek
territory—western race and eastern Macedonia, thus reaching the Aegean Sea. But it was
Stalin who wanted to give this go-ahead.
e Soviet Union finished World War II as an aggressor as well. It was the only country
that expanded its borders as a result of World War II. Stalin annexed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
northern Bukovina, western Ukraine, and western Byelorussia, as well as parts of eastern
Prussia with Koenigsberg, Trans-Carpathian Ukraine, the Kuril Islands, South Sakhalin, and
Bessarabia. Under the banner of the “great patriotic war,” Stalin punished entire peoples and
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nations. On Stalin’s orders, all the Chechens, Ingushes, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, and

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