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It can simultaneously be true that Germany is stronger than Poland and that the USA is stronger than Germany.
I replied to you prior to your edit - I'm just about as aggressively anti-communist and anti-Soviet as they come.
Well, yes, but if you sympathize with the underdog, the German invasion of multiple other countries is going to matter a lot. I am not convinced such sympathies that would lead someone to sympathize with the Palestinians, would have let to them to sympathize with Germany. Following such logic in a non stupid manner might lead someone to oppose the mass rapes or mass murder of Germans while the winning Soviet army was marching, or oppose the mass murderous Morgenthau Plan. But would that be wrong? No it wouldn't. It was also good that the Japanese after WW2 were not subject to being punished in the same kind they planned to deal with China.
I do think that saying things like "No matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg.”", can lead to stupid conclusions though.
Trembling Mad calls this gerrymandering power. When comparing Germany and Poland, Germany is stronger, ergo Germany's the bad guy - boooo! When comparing Germany and the USA, the USA is stronger, ergo Germany's the good guy - yaaaaay! It entirely depends on how close you zoom in.
I think this illustrates that "sympathising with the underdog" is a fundamentally wrongheaded approach to take in assessing which of two more parties has the moral high ground - once we've established that the weaker party is morally superior, that incentivises bad actors to contrive a narrative in which they're the weak victimised party, Goodhart's law-style. But even in cases where everyone pretty much agrees on which of two parties is strongest and weakest - well, it's still possible to be both strong and morally upstanding, or weak and morally degenerate. Common, even.
A blind approach about anything is bad in general.
Sympathizing with the underdog has its merits, provided you try to think about the circumstances and aren't following a robotic logic and are very willing to update your logic. That right and wrong does matter, but certainly if you want to oppose the greater atrocities being committed, focusing on who is committing them matters. And having some flexibility in seeing what different civilian groups are more targeted, as different sides have the upper hand, is going to be helpful.
But you should have the foresight and know who you are dealing with, and ought not be a permanent ally of anyone.
A more wrongheaded approach is the one where certain groups, especially ethnic groups can do no right, and other groups can do no wrong. Which is ironically promoted by plenty of propaganda that tries to pull heartstrings of our sympathies of the underdog, or promote permanent victims by either distorting history, or cherry picking from issues that fit, but is misleading through the exclusion of other events from the dominant narrative.
So I do think there are limitations, in many approaches, including sympathizing with the underdog. But it does have some merit in a limited sense. For example, I blamed USSR but there are those who see them as the victimized party that can do no wrong, because of nazi attrocities and initial nazi victories. Not only that logic is wrong, but it also forgets the Soviet invasions and occupations of multiple weaker countries.
While that is possible, the discussion is about atrocities, invasions and ethnic cleansing so I don't think this analogy applies with the relevant examples. Israel is of course not morally upstanding and there is a worldwide backlash against them precisely because of their warcrimes against the Palestinians and also the rhetoric in those lines.
And that they are the stronger party is not irrelevant. Even if hypothetically both parties were immoral, the stronger one gets the backlash because they are the ones committing the atrocities. And it is the focus on the later that matters. It does make sense to focus on strong parties committing atrocities, but I certainly don't think we ought to be myopic about the dangers of weak, mistreated immoral parties, getting stronger of course.
It isn't as if much of the world that sees what Israel does far more negatively than you, are applying the robotic fallacious logic of siding with the underdog against morally upstanding stronger party, which is more of a strawman.
Well, if decolonization movement only opposed European colonization of their countries but didn't pretend colonizing European countries was decolonization, then that would make them a more ethical movement than it is. Who is making the aggressive action at others expense matters. And plenty of aggressive action comes from a stronger party towards a weaker one. Even if in some cases the party that is de facto weaker, is due to a lack of will. So, the "who is the aggressor/who is commiting attrocities" complicates things from a more simplistic underdog model, and there as explained previously even more things beside to add to ones model.
It does seem that the hostility towards the underdog model here is not in favor of a more accurate way that is more flexible to changing realities, but more to promote a more simplistic model that declares certain factions as "good guys", and excuse their actions in a manner that isn't really fitting. In fact, even in WW2, atrocities towards civilians committed by the allies, especially the Soviet Union, matter. Especially when one considers the murderous records of the Soviets against non Germans too. Not only is using WW2 as a card to excuse atrocities today, both morally and factually wrong, it usually comes along views that are incorrect about WW2 itself. Indeed, ironically even the non Soviet allies, if they followed even more along this logic of "can do no wrong" their record would be even closer to Nazi Germany and Soviet Union. Because there were people with such logic back then. That there is some difference, also relates to the existence of some backlash within their societies and the existence of people who didn't follow the logic of "can do no wrong". Like for example the backlash against Morgenthau's plan. And those who expressed such backlash sometimes got heat for it.
I find the use of the definite article here fascinating.
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