Figure 1.--. |
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Stalin during World War II and Soviet historians after the War have been critical of the Western Allies in not more quickly engaging the Wehrmacht in the West so as to take presure off the hard-pressed Red Army on the Eastern Front. It is indeed quite true that the Soviets suffered emense casualities, much larger than those suffered by the Western Allies. It is also true that the Wehrmacht was broken on the Eastern Front. The vast majority of German casualties were sustained in the fighing in the East. The Westrn Allies would have had great difficulty reentering the Continent had not the Red Army wore the Wehrmacht down in the East. Our Russian contributor expresses some of these opinions in his essay and is especially critical of Britain. A British reader takes issue with some of his comments. HBC tends to view the contribution of the Western Allies as critical in the overall defeat of NAZI Germany and that the issue in the East would have been more indoubt without the Western Allies. By the same token we do not see how the Western Allies could have defeated the NAZIs without their valliant Soviet Allies.
Stalin during World War II and Soviet historians after the War have been critical of the Western Allies in not more quickly engaging the Wehrmacht in the West so as to take presure off the hard-pressed Red Army on the Eastern Front.
Our Russian contributor expresses some of these opinions in his essay and is especially critical of Britain. A British reader takes issue with some of his comments. Our British reader writes:
One thing that I find constantly irritating is the Russian belief that
Britain did nothing or next to nothing in the war. To a certain extent,
every country rewrites history. British education and cinema has tended to
emphasise the British contribution, while acknowledging (frequently not
detailing) those of others. Many Russians believe that the fighting started
in 1941 and was purely a war between them and the NAZIs. It is true that we
cannot equate our casualties with those suffered by the Soviet peoples.
(Unlike the Russian writer, I do not call them the Soviet people.) There is no such people; it is a collection of many peoples. Our land forces were used in
limited operations, precisely because we were not and have never been a
military superpower. We were a trading superpower and a naval superpower,
but as an island our focus was on the fleet, not the army. We might just as
well complain, "where was the Russian fleet, when our supply lines were
being cut to pieces by u-boats" as for them to ask where was the British
army. The British army was skilled enough and well enough equipped to handle
Axis armies where we could face them on even terms (such as the African
desert, where we were able to interdict enough of their shipping from Europe
to restrict the number of troops they could commit.) To have landed any
British army on the European mainland, prior to the arrival of American
forces, would have been to sacrifice them, as the Greek intervention and
Dieppe raid proved. [HBC note: Actually a case can be made that the British role in promting the NAZI excursion into the Balkans delayed the onset of Barbarossa and may have been a major factor in the failure of the NAZI invasion of the Soviet Union.] I do not believe that it would have served Stalin's
interests to send an army to France that would have been defeated by the
local garrison forces and strategic reserves, without even requiring one
unit to be withdrawn from the west. Had we been fighting on our own
territory, perhaps we would have fought harder - but the extra effort would
have come from resistance movements, which would have formed as in other
countries.
I would certainly not claim that Britain never acted selfishly, in its own
interests, possibly at the expense of others. While I do not believe that
Britain or France were hoping for a German invasion of the Soviet Union, I
believe we were content for the armies of two oppressive dictatorships to
destroy each other, despite the human cost involved. And as harsh as that
is, I do not believe that was wrong. I am sorry for the many innocent people
who died, many who were merely serving their countries, rather than a
totalitarian political system, but I am not sorry that we "permitted" that
destruction, using the word permitted very loosely, since we had power to
permit or deny nothing. But in summing up, there is one thing that I have to
say to those who complain about the perceived lack of action from the great
democracies of Europe; Britain and France (including their empires and
commonwealths) went to war on principle, to help countries we had sworn to
help and to prevent dictatorship from taking over the continent. Every other
nation's participation in the destruction of fascist aggression came about
because they were attacked. The USA, when attacked (and even to some extent
beforehand) did more than what was necessary merely to protect itself. When
victory was won, Britain, France and the USA owned no more territory than
they did beforehand, having fought out of principle. The British and French
empires were dismantled, because of the commitment to democracy and the fact
that, at least in Britain's case, we bankrupted ourselves in helping to save
Europe. I do not begrudge the Soviet Union the land it took from Japan and
from Germany, but I do begrudge it the land it stole from the Finns (which
Russia holds to this day) from Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and
Rumania.
I think there is little disagreement among historians that the Soviet role in the War was emmense and probanly decisive. It is indeed quite true that the Soviets suffered emense casualities, much larger than those suffered by the Western Allies. It is also true that the Wehrmacht was broken on the Eastern Front. The vast majority of German casualties were sustained in the fighting in the East. The Western Allies would have had great difficulty reentering the Continent had not the Red Army wore the Wehrmacht down in the East.
HBC tends to view the contribution of the Western Allies as critical in the overall defeat of NAZI Germany and that the issue in the East would have been more indoubt without the Western Allies. By the same token we do not see how the Western Allies could have defeated the NAZIs without their valliant Soviet Allies. A key Allied contribution to the War was the fact that the Soviet Union did not fight a two-front war. Had Japan joined the NAZIs and attacked the Soviet Union in the Far East, the Soviet Winter offensive before Moscow (December 1941) would have been impossible and most military historians believe would have resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why did the Japanese not joint the Germans? The answer here is is complicated and not fully understood. The major reason, however, is American diplomacy and the embargo of stratehic materials, especially oil. America had been Japan's major source of oil and the American oil embargo forced them to strike south to seize the oil wells of the Dutch East Indies rather than north at the Soviet Union. During the War itself, the Allied role while limited in 1941 and 42 canot be dismissed. British maginations in the Balkans and eventual interventio forced the Wehrmacht to invade delaying Barbarossa for weeks. The British threat forced the Wehrmacht gto garison forces in France. The campaign in the Western Desert involved limited forces, but it was a distration and by 1943 involved substantial Axis forces. Notably transports that should have been supplying the Stalingrad pocket were used to fly German troops and supplies into Tunisia. The Allied invasion of Sicily also affected German deployment in the critical Operation Citadel--the Kursk battle. The Western Strategic Air Campaign also disdrupted the Germans in a number of ways. It not only affected arms production, but also not only forced the Luftwaffe to devote substantial forces to protecting German cities. These were Luftwaffe forces that could have been deployed in the East. In addition huge numbers of anti-aitcraft guns were deployed. These were primary 88mm guns, also used by the Germans as anti-tank guns. The Allied ground forces became more substantial in 1943 and especially 1944 after D-Day. While at this stage of the War the defeat of the NAZIs was just a matter of time, the Allied push east hasten the NAZI defeat and as a result saved many Red Army soldiers. Anthoer key contribution of the Western Allies was material support, both American Lend Lease and British aid, some of it delivered throuhthe at gtimes almost suisidal Arctic Convoys.
Western histories class Soviet collusion with the NAZIs in the Non-Agression Pact as one of the most trecherous acts of the 20th century. While we agree that it was an infamous act by Stalin, the Soviet explnation is not without some merit. The British and French by selling out the Czechs at Munich could not but caused to Stalin to ask what the value of such allies were. And the dislutory efforts by the Chamberlain Government to sign a military pact with the Soviet Union was a diplmatic blunder of the greates magnitude by a country which prides itself on the effectiveness of its diplomacy. While we agree, that there is no evidence that the British and French were promoting war between the NAZIs and Soviets, it was not something Stalin could dismiss. In the final analyisis, however, history shows that it was the Soviet Union which signed a pact with NAZI Germany and for nearly 2 years supplied the NAZIs with strategic raw materials.
Although it is the NAZI aggressions that are most commonly addressed in World War II histories, the Soviet Union compiled nearly as long a list of aggressions as the NAZIs. Operating within secret protocols to the Non-agression Pact, Hitler and Stalin were in fact close partners in the waging of aggressive war. The Great Patriotic War fought against the NAZIs after the 1941 German invsion came to be an icon in Soviet history. Left unsaid was the fact that Hitler and Stalin were partners in the virtul partition of Europe.
Stalin railed ahainst the British and Americans demanding a second front in 1942 and 43. At war-times conferences he was especially tough on Churchill. As far as we know, Churchill tempered his responses, he never mentioned that when Britain was alone, Stalin was supplying Hitler with raw materials and carrying out its own agressions. It is important to consider why the Red army was alone on the Continent. The major army facing NAZI Germany in the west was the French Army. Stalin by signing the Nonn-Agression Pact and then supplying the NAZIs stategic mterials was complicit in the destruction of the French Army. Unlike World War I, Hitker was able to throw the greatbulk of the Wehrmacht against France in a great Western Offensive (May 1940). Stalin's cynical calculation was tghat the NAZIS and Allies (Britain and France) would destroy themselves in a replay of World War I and that he could then pick up the pieces afterwards. To his shock and horror the Germans quickly defeated the French with minimal losses. It was only then that he was left alone on the Continent to face Hitler's victorious forces.
Bogdanov. Victor, Email message, October 8, 2005.
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