Blank spots of black days
These days, residents of the Czech Republic came out to greet the American troops, who arrived in the country to protect the eastern borders of the North Atlantic Alliance. Someone in the colorful and jubilant crowd held a handwritten poster that said “You are 70 years late.” I do not know its author, but it turned out to be the most precise epigraph to the sad anniversary of the end of World War II. For the first time it will be celebrated in a different way than it was during the past 30 years. In Washington, London, and Moscow, May 9 will be the date that symbolizes the breaking of the former alliance into sides that accept and reject the Nazi ideology. This separation should have been carried out immediately after the clarification of the image of victors and the defeated. But it was done too late, as the Czechs pointed out.
Gradually, through the decayed layers of old lies, we can see the outlines of what had happened over seven decades ago. Two world aggressors, the USSR and Nazi Germany, having attacked Poland, unleashed a colossal carnage for the sake of shifting borders. And both paid a horrible price for it: 35 million of their citizens. (The number varies depending on sources of statistical data, but it does not affect its terrible scale.) Having started the war as allies, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union ended it as enemies. It is a rare historical paradox, which we still know little about. Moscow appropriated a lot of German and Soviet archives, made them classified for the infinite period of time, and created the myth about the “Great Patriotic War,” which obscured the truth about the real events of the dramatic decade of 1939-49.
Unfortunately, not only Soviet society, but the political forces of the US and Great Britain are also involved in the distortion of reality. The official historiography of the anti-Hitler coalition countries presented WWII as an epic battle of good versus evil, where black demons in the Schutzstaffel uniform fought on one side, and warriors of light with red and white stars, and lions on cockades fought on the other. Some dubbed that war “the Great Crusade,” like General Dwight Eisenhower; “the US mission on saving the world from tyranny,” like Bill Clinton; “the great victory of the Russian people,” like Joseph Stalin; “the great liberation mission of the USSR,” like the Politburo. Own merit in crushing the enemy was attached a global significance, with various emphases being made on particular fights and battles, and the pompousness of the memories about them being raised to the level of legends and heroic sagas.
“Participation in the war against Hitler remains an inviolable theological fact. The criticism of the American policy of the 20th century and the analysis of its mistakes are completely blocked by the USA’s participation in the WWII. In our national mythology, it remains a symbol of a ‘good war,’ the pros of participation in which obviously outweigh the cons. A lot of questions that were justly asked after the war remained unanswered.” This is an opinion of one of the most reputable scholar, conflict expert Bruce M. Russet, who noticed the danger of glorification of the tragedy, instead of studying it. Let alone the Soviet Union, where the relics of the war securely cover military crimes even a quarter of century after the USSR disappeared.
That is how the international politesse for official conversations about WWII took shape. It was in discord with the novels of writers, opinions of historians, and investigations of journalists who were trying to comprehend the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. When reading novels by John Fowles, Vasil Bykau, Heinrich Boell, Ernest Hemingway, and many other authors, we realized that betrayal, hypocrisy, and meanness were displayed in that war with the same clarity as heroism. And what is more important, the victory over fascism, distributed between the coalition participants in Yalta, is not that much of a victory, because the blow to Europe and the world started with the seizure of Poland by Hitler and Stalin. And it ended with one aggressor taking Hitler’s share, with Poland losing its independence for long decades.
One of the military theoreticians of WWII, British historian Sir Basil Liddell Hart, the one who called the Soviet strategy of frontal attacks the cause of meaningless victims, wrote that the Western allies joined the war with two goals: to fulfill their promise to preserve Poland’s independence and to ensure their own security by eliminating a potential threat. As a result, neither was completed. “After six years of war, the US and Great Britain were forced to agree to Russia’s dominance and forget promises made to the Poles who fought on their side.”
Of course, neither the US nor Great Britain, and of course, nor the USSR would want to go over the shameful pages of the war. It would be much easier to replace them with a chronicle of joint struggle against the Nazi regime. That is why the Munich division of Czechoslovakia was left to be blamed on Hitler and Mussolini only, the joy of the victory overshadowed the betrayal of Poland, the Soviets’ crimes, including the attack on Finland and capturing huge territories of Eastern Europe, all these events were dropped out of context in the Nuremberg process. Just like the occupation of Iran by Soviet and British troops to protect the property of oil companies or Operation Stratford, when France and England attacked neutral Norway. The use of forced labor of hundreds thousands of German prisoners of war by France and the USSR. Deportation of 10 million Germans from Eastern European countries and Crimean Tatars and Chechens in the Soviet Union. The atomic bombardment of peaceful Japanese cities. The blockade of Berlin by Soviet troops in 1948, which started the Cold War – or was it World War II continuing in new shapes?
Looking back at those events from the present heights of knowledge and experience, we see one common pattern. When principles and morality disappear from politics, wars become permanent. The USSR started WWII as an ally of Nazi Germany, then it fought against Germany in a coalition with Great Britain and the US, and finished the hot phase of this war by confronting its new allies. In other words, the Soviet Union has always been consistent and did not change its aggressive expansionist policy, no matter what alliances and conspiracies it joined. And the West maneuvered and sacrificed democracy for the sake of territorial and political acquisitions. However, later it had to pay triple price for these acquisitions. A lot of witnesses and participants of the war are sure of that. Legendary aviator, explorer, hero of novels and detective stories, independent-thinking Charles A. Lindbergh (read the stories about him to see the beauty of his sincerity) wrote incredible lines in the late 1960s: “We have won the war in the military sense, but in a wider one, we have lost the values and prestige of the Western civilization. We are less respected and we are less trusted with maintaining security. In order to defeat Germany and Japan, we supported even larger threats, coming from Russia and China, which are obvious in the era of nuclear weapons. Poland was not saved. The majority of our Western culture was subject to destruction. We lost genetic heredity, which was a result of the loss of connection between generations and many millions of lives.”
For a long time phrases like this sent no emotional ripples through the contemporaries’ minds. Everyone thought that the world was developing and improving, drifting away from the Nazi ideology towards the brave new world, and the seizing of territories, ethnic distinctions, and differences of mentality no longer made any sense in it. However, it proved to be wrong. First in Ukraine, and now all over in Eastern Europe people realize that the war, which formally ended in 1945, is actually going on. One of the culprits of that tragedy has survived and is busy conquering the continent, like he planned in 1939.
Let Russia continue living according to the Bolshevik textbooks, convinced that in 1940 the Soviet state occupied the others’ lands in the name of fighting fascism. Seventy-five years later this old trick is being repeated by the ideological and real descendants of Molotov and Ribbentrop. I wonder if our leaders will say anything about it in May, the season of remembrance of blank spots in history, decorated with Saint George ribbons and fireworks.
