How do Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland fit in that picture?
WW2 was a complex war. The big picture for the European part was that the two main powers divided Europe in their spheres of influence, fully intending to fight each other for overall supremacy after a while. Some countries joined their designated side voluntarily, some joined under a threat of invasion, and most of the rest were invaded. The ones I listed were the ones where the USSR was the initial aggressor.
Instead of shifting the goalposts, please do yourself a favour and read up on the Untermenschen and the convoluted hierarchy of the sub-humans in the Nazi racial ideology. As an example, since the Nazis harboured particular hatred towards the Poles, the Poles were at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and only complete obliteration of the Polish ethnicity was deemed acceptable.
One joins an alliance of convenience, sometimes in very unfavourable circumstances, to avoid the worst – the demise of one's own people and to guarantee their survival. Making a deal with the devil is a well-known adage that aptly describes such an unfortunate event.
Nazis considered the Finns (and the Estonians by extension) to be racially pure, with Latvians and Lithuanians being somewhere in between either redeemable or tolerable (frankly, I can't recall the exact details).
> WW2 was a complex war.
WWII was no more complex than the WWI, and it had a single, overarching objective – the repartitioning of the world. The main difference between the two was that the WWII was infused with a vile racial ideology, used to justify the pursuit of Lebensraum and the total annihilation of peoples whom the Nazi Party targeted with hatred, based on their crackpot so-called racial studies.
A clear view of WW II in all its complexity is important. The current tense geopolitical context makes that even more so. Have you noticed how the current head war criminal in Moscow is glorifying his WW II predecessor?
WW2 was a complex war. The big picture for the European part was that the two main powers divided Europe in their spheres of influence, fully intending to fight each other for overall supremacy after a while. Some countries joined their designated side voluntarily, some joined under a threat of invasion, and most of the rest were invaded. The ones I listed were the ones where the USSR was the initial aggressor.