After having taken a minor part in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, the staunchly anti-communist Polish government openly moves to the side of Germany since it considers Adolf Hitler to be a more tolerable neighbor than Joseph Stalin. Consequently, Polish-Soviet tensions grow until they finally erupt into open war, with Stalin accusing Poland of oppressing its Belarusian minority and then launching an invasion with the proclaimed aim of liberating them. The true objective is to regain formerly Russian territory that Soviet Russia had ceded to Poland in 1921 after the Soviet-Polish War. The Poles ask for German aid, become Hitler's formal ally, and receive some military assistance, mainly in the form of Luftwaffe fighters.