Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 7 2024 07:44pm)
I kinda understand why many Ukrainians sided with the Nazis back in the day, considering the Holodomor and the all-around abuse they had suffered at the hands of Stalin. Maybe there's a similar reason for the Lithuanians? Their historic capital Vilnius had been annexed by the Russian Empire during WW1, was then briefly freed by the Germans, then seized by the Poles during the chaotic interwar period, then annexed yet again by the Soviets. They had pretty good reasons to hate both the Poles and the Russians...
Oh big time. The Lithuanians probably hate the Russians more than any other peoples, even more than Ukraine. They were conquered by the Soviet Union and had every reason to dislike them. Now we're getting into "revisionist" WWII history which is considered heresy by the regime. The German-aligned Axis people were largely motivated by anti-communism, figures I read were that about 60% of Germans were motivated by anti-communism and only 20% by antisemitism. Jewish people and communists were seen as the same entity, as they believed that communism was a Jewish-led revolution (were they wrong? We see parallels today). There is also the fact that the Poles were actively engaging in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Germans, Lithuanians and other Germanic non-Poles in the nascent Polish state, which was the
casus belli for the German occupation in 1939.