This is a strange year for me to post this. After all, Russia earlier this year played the role of legitimate bad guys when they went ahead and invaded Ukraine, a sovereign neighboring nation. Since then, Russian military forces have launched attacks on almost every major city in Ukraine, and even leveled most of two of them, Kharkiv and especially Mariupol. This came eight years after Russia had intervened in Ukrainian affairs and taken Crimea before annexing it. Since then, Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine have continued a de facto war. But this latest war is very different. This was an out and out conventional land war on a continent that had seen nothing of this scope and magnitude for the better part of a century.
It still feels to me that a lot of the responsibility for this war rests not just on Russia, but also the West, and especially the United States. After all, Americans were the ones thumping their chests and bragging about having won the Cold War. They delighted in beating the big, bad Russkies, and some seemed to rejoice as that country fell into chaos and corruption. But when countries go through chaotic and/or humiliating experiences like that, they often turn to a strong authority figure that, they believe, will stabilize things, bring order, especially if they also believe that there will be a return to great power. Germany infamously turned to Hitler, who promised a return to greatness for Germany. Afghanistan experienced decades of war, and they now have twice turned to the Taliban to restore order. Even here in the United States, facing a hard to ignore decline in power and prestige, as well as living standards, enough Americans turned to a man who warned that only he could save the country, and promised a return to greatness for the country. He was elected to the highest office in the land, and came as near as anyone has at toppling American democracy.
So perhaps we should not view Putin as such a mystery, or his motives as so perplexing. As we all do, Americans like to believe certain convenient things about themselves. I remember one history teacher of mine in the eighth grade, back during the days of the Cold War and Reagan warning Americans not to overlook the threat of the Soviet bear, claiming that we Americans were the good guys in the white hats. A decade and a half later, much of the world were viewing Americans as a huge threat to world peace just before the invasion of Iraq. We are hardly viewed as good guys in much of the Middle East, and my guess is that the Vietnamese in particular would also have good reason to question our status as "the good guys."
Yet, that is still the perception that many Americans want to believe so much, that they in fact do believe it. But Russia wanted to bounce back from the humiliating fall from one of the world's two superpowers, to an impoverished nation ridden with corruption and chaos. They had a leader in Gorbachev who had wanted to ease tensions with the West, particularly the United States. He seemed to have acted in good faith, but wanted his own country to be treated fairly, as equals. Initially, it seemed that this was a hope that would indeed be granted. Under George HW Bush, there was a promise that NATO would not expand anywhere near Russian borders. But Clinton scrapped that, and a number of former Warsaw Pact/Eastern Bloc countries joined NATO, including several which outright border Russia.
Why wouldn't Russians worry? They were still often demonized as bad guys, and as a threat. NATO always seemed to be, and still remains, particularly focused on keeping the Russian threat in check. And remember, Russians have known invasions by hostile foreign forces. They were invaded twice in the 20th century, and once in the 19th century. So they have legitimate concerns regarding the safety of their own borders. And when the West, and particularly the United States, seemed to court Ukraine and tried to pull them into their sphere of influence, Russia has legitimate reasons to feel concerned.
No, I am not siding with Putin, or saying that he is not such a bad guy. He has acted like a tyrant, effectively ending democracy in Russia in favor of authoritarian rule. And he had some brutal chapters that he was responsible for since coming to power. There was the hostage situation that ended in bloodshed. He has been brutal in Chechnya and Georgia, as well as, obviously, Ukraine. And let us not forget that he has been instrumental in keeping the hugely unpopular and undemocratic Lukashenko in power in Belarus. So no, he is certainly no angel.
However, he is not all-powerful, either. As convenient a scapegoat as Hillary Clinton tried to make him out to be, faulting Russia for deciding the 2016 election in favor of Trump, it always felt to me that this was a preposterous claim. Hillary Clinton lost that election because many, many Americans did not feel that they could trust her, and that the Clintons were too power hungry in general to be trusted. It is unfortunate that Trump was the one who benefited, but I for one remain skeptical that Putin somehow orchestrates entire elections in other countries, let alone one as big and as powerful as the United States. He may have had some influence, but frankly, I long suspected that we were heading towards someone like Trump for a long time.
So now, let me get back to this topic for today, specifically: Russians were the ones who broke the back of the Nazi German war machine, not Americans. That is not to say that Americans did not play an important role, or that the soldiers on the western front were not heroic during the war against Germany. However, the clear momentum of the Nazi war machine was broken forever not long after Operation Barbarossa, when they invaded the Soviet Union/Russia to the east. Their forward progress was stopped dead in it's track, particularly at Stalingrad. Then, the Germans were moving backwards, no longer dictating the tempo of the war, but desperately playing defense and trying to plug up the holes that Russians were punching through the German lines regularly after Stalingrad.
Many Americans traditionally wanted people around the world - particularly Europeans - to thank Americans for their role in Europe during the two world wars, especially the last one. The logic, according to them, is if not for American involvement, they would be speaking German. In fact, closer to the truth is that they might speak Russian, although even then, it should be made clear that they likely would still be speaking their own tongues, but that Russian might have been far more strongly encouraged in their school curriculum. That is what happened in Eastern Bloc nations of the Warsaw Pact, the ones that actually were largely taken over by the Soviets at the end of the war, and where puppet states on the model of the Soviet Union were established and maintained for the better part of half a century.
This is a subject that upsets a lot of people, particularly Americans. It does not fit with the narrative that many Americans believe in, that the United States has played the most heroic role ever since it came into existence, and that the world would be inextricably worse than it is without us. Indeed, many Americans do indeed believe that Europe would probably be speaking German today, if not for them.
Only one problem with that theory and thinking: it is really not accurate.
Indeed, I mentioned this a few times, here and there, to some people who got angry, and even once or twice, almost violently angry, accusing me of being virtually a communist sympathizer. All I generally do in response is simply request that whoever is getting all worked up look at the dates of what happened and when during World War II or, better yet, peruse through a historical atlas of the Second World War. Because any halfway decent and remotely objective review of historical facts will show that, in fact, the Soviet Union was the driving force behind the ultimate defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Most people, including military experts like Norman Schwartzkopf, have been quite clear that the biggest mistake that Hitler and Nazi Germany ever made was invading the Soviet Union, which they did in June of 1941 with Operation Barbarossa. Of course, up to that point, the Nazi war machine had rolled across Europe, winning one battle after another. It seemed that they were in a dominant position to that point, and when they first started quickly going through vast territories that had been part of the Soviet Union, it looked like it was happening again.
But that ended abruptly once the Germans were locked in far inside of Soviet territory. This was particularly months later, once that infamous and brutal Russian winter began to take hold.
There were many reasons for what happened next, and how it all contributed to the eventual German defeat. The Soviet Union did not have the infrastructure that western Europe had, and so many of the roads became virtually impassable when there was rain and the roads became muddy, or in the brutal Russian winters. This was not accommodating for the Germans, who found their modern war vehicles bogged down on muddy tracks. That meant that supplies, including food, was very slow to get there, when the Germans needed them.
Yet, it was more than that. Once again I turn to General Schwarzkopf, who co-hosted a terrific documentary on the Second World War with Charles Kuralt, 'Hitler and Stalin: A Legacy of Hate.' Schwarzkopf suggested that Stalin was notoriously distrustful of almost everyone, but about the only person he seemed to trust was, of all people, Adolf Hitler. He simply refused to believe that Hitler would betray him and break the non-aggression pact that existed between the two nations. So he refused to prepare for the invasion, with disastrous results which, amazingly, could have been even more disastrous if things had worked out a little bit differently.
However, when Stalin finally did realize that Hitler and the Nazis had betrayed the non-aggression pact between the two countries, he became completely committed to defeating the Germans. That does not make him a hero, or any less brutal in history. In fact, though, it was his brutality that perhaps was one of the deciding factors forcing the outcome in favor of the Soviets. How so? Well, he made sure that the Soviet troops fighting the Germans figuratively had guns pointed at their backs, as he made clear that any deserters would be shot on the spot. They could not surrender to the Germans, nor turn their heels and retreat. They really had no choice but to fight the Germans tooth and nail, and indeed, they did.
The war on the eastern front was stunningly brutal, to the point that it was the deadliest war in all of human history. Think about that. All of the ways through thousands of years, and it was the war between Germany and the Soviet Union on the eastern front during World War II which proved to be the deadliest, the most brutal. I have heard repeated figures that 20 million Soviets lost their lives. Yet, in the end, this war was what broke the back of the war hopes of Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Of course, mentioning just how critical the role of the Soviets was in defeating Nazi Germany is often viewed as blasphemous by those who subscribe to American exceptionalism, and who view history through that lens. First of all, it seriously challenges the Americentrist theme during World War II, particularly in Europe, which again, many Americans subscribe to. But going even further, a lot of people simply do not want to give any credit to the big, bad, Soviet Commies for doing anything positive.
Still, John Adams was right when he said that facts are stubborn things. And the facts bear the truth out: the Germans concentrated their main forces in the war on the eastern front, against the Soviets. When it became clear that they were losing, they tried to get the western powers to join them in the fight, to see the Soviet Union as the real threat, although they had no real success in this. It was the Soviet forces who stopped the Nazi war machine in it's track, particularly with the Battle of Stalingrad, which still ranks as the deadliest single battle in all of history. From that point onward, the Soviets pushed the Germans back, closer and closer to the border of the Reich and, eventually, forced Nazi Germany to collapse in on itself. There was the eventual help of the western allies, who by June of 1944 (but not before) had opened up another another front in the west. By then, though, it was clear that the Germans were well on their way to losing the war, and that their defeat was really just a matter of time.
Yes, it was the Soviets who actually broke the back of the Nazis, and it was the Soviets who paid far and away the biggest price and made the most sacrifices to achieve this victory. They paid the heaviest toll by far, but nonetheless managed to beat the Nazis back, mostly out of necessity. Some have speculated that had the Germans treated the Russians well, come in as liberators instead of occupiers who were even worse than the Soviets, that they might have had a real chance. The Soviet regime was indeed brutal, and the people were ready for a change. But the Nazis proved to be even more brutal, and thus, there really was no choice left. They had to fight to get rid of an even worse form of evil.
The war on the Eastern Front was, again, the most brutal war in all of human history. It was very grim, and there are images and stories from those times that will live on. Ultimately, though, it proves that the Soviets who turned the tide of the war, and sent the invading forces of Nazi Germany retreating back to the borders of the Reich, and ultimately, continually retreating, until there was little left of Germany itself. The cities were bombed out shells of what they once had been, reduced to rubble. And when the capital fell, it was the Soviet flag that replaced the Nazi one atop the Reichstag, indicating the de facto end of the European theater of war.
On this day, recognized as V-E Day in Russia, it seemed appropriate to acknowledge that fact, and to give credit where credit is due. The United States and other western Allies helped to uproot and defeat the Nazis in western Europe, but this happened while the Germans were focusing most of their war effort to the East, where the Soviets had already figuratively broken the back of the Nazi war machine.
Yes, it was the Soviets who actually broke the back of the Nazis, and it was the Soviets who paid far and away the biggest price and made the most sacrifices to achieve this victory. They paid the heaviest toll by far, but nonetheless managed to beat the Nazis back, mostly out of necessity. Some have speculated that had the Germans treated the Russians well, come in as liberators instead of occupiers who were even worse than the Soviets, that they might have had a real chance. The Soviet regime was indeed brutal, and the people were ready for a change. But the Nazis proved to be even more brutal, and thus, there really was no choice left. They had to fight to get rid of an even worse form of evil.
The war on the Eastern Front was, again, the most brutal war in all of human history. It was very grim, and there are images and stories from those times that will live on. Ultimately, though, it proves that the Soviets who turned the tide of the war, and sent the invading forces of Nazi Germany retreating back to the borders of the Reich, and ultimately, continually retreating, until there was little left of Germany itself. The cities were bombed out shells of what they once had been, reduced to rubble. And when the capital fell, it was the Soviet flag that replaced the Nazi one atop the Reichstag, indicating the de facto end of the European theater of war.
On this day, recognized as V-E Day in Russia, it seemed appropriate to acknowledge that fact, and to give credit where credit is due. The United States and other western Allies helped to uproot and defeat the Nazis in western Europe, but this happened while the Germans were focusing most of their war effort to the East, where the Soviets had already figuratively broken the back of the Nazi war machine.
Below is the link to an article elaborating on just how critical the role of the Soviets was in defeating, and ultimately destroying, the Nazi German threat during World War II:
75 Years Ago, The Soviet Union Saved the World from Hitler’s Nazi Regime by Caleb G., April 6, 2020:
Here is another link to an interesting article:
We Remember World War II Wrong by Adam Tooze, May 7, 2020:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/07/world-war-2-victory-day-russia-75th-anniversary/
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