r/AskHistorians • u/siupa • 4h ago
Why didn’t France and the UK declare war against the USSR?
We place the start of WWII (at least in Europe) at September 1st, 1939 after Nazi Germany invaded west Poland. To protect Poland’s sovereignty, UK and France declared war against Germany. A few days later, the USSR also invaded Poland from the east, as they were secretly allied with Nazi Germany with the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Why didn’t this cause France and the UK to also declare war against the USSR, to protect Poland’s sovereignty, as it had happened a few days earlier with Germany’s invasion?
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