Russia: Champion of WWII

[Tenchu]

Wartime Nostalgia Blinds Britain

By Mark Mazower, Guardian News & Media Ltd
Published: September 04, 2009, 22:58

As we mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War, the British obsession with the war runs on and on. There is the endless recycling of the same themes - Dunkirk, the D-day landings and Churchillian greatness - that starts to devalue the heroism of those times as much as to celebrate it. There is the nostalgia, pride and self-congratulation that now do more to block than to illuminate any real appreciation of how the war changed the world and Britain's place in it.

Britain's finest hour? To be sure, it was good that London finally took a stand against fascism. But going to war with Germany in 1939 did not prevent Poland's disappearance. Nor could the combined forces of Britain and France prevent most of Western Europe being overrun the following year. Many had expected a German attack on France to produce a replay of the First World War's Western Front stalemate. Everyone was shocked by the terrifying rapidity of the German advance and the awesome might of the Wehrmacht. Avoiding total defeat - as at Dunkirk - and invasion - thanks to the Battle of Britain - were the closest Britain could come to victory on its own. British strategists were left fearful of the German army and convinced that any attempt in the short term on the Nazi empire would simply lead to another humiliation.

As a result, the British fought off American and Soviet demands to launch a second front as long as they could. Churchill was all too aware of the inadequate military forces at his disposal, their inadequacy masked only by the extraordinary good fortune that came to the British when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and the Japanese declared war on the US. Had neither of these events occurred - and it is revealing that both left Churchill jubilant - it is hard to see how Britain could ever have dislodged the Nazis from Europe.

The British supplied arms to guerrillas and partisans hoping they would rise up and drive the Germans out of their homelands; but militarily most of them had no real impact on the war. Hit and run was the most they could hope for, along with the murderous German attacks on innocent villagers that they brought in their train. Regular armies were the decisive factor throughout, and for much of the war in Europe the Wehrmacht had the edge.

When the tide turned, it turned in the east. D-day, when it finally came, was scarcely the overwhelmingly decisive event one would imagine from the last few years' barrage of publications. How many people have even heard of Operation Bagration, the simultaneous Soviet offensive through Belorussia, that engaged almost 10 times the number of German divisions, and destroyed three Wehrmacht armies? Very few, I suspect - it failed to garner any attention during the D-day celebrations. Yet Bagration, the biggest and most successful surprise attack in history, dwarfed what was happening in Normandy. As the Soviets stormed west of their prewar boundaries for the first time, this was confirmation that it was the Red Army that really won the war against Nazism, and the moment Stalin began to think seriously about how to rule Eastern Europe.

Colonies to the Fore

In hindsight, perhaps what is most revealing is how much Britain depended throughout the war on its colonies. If the Russians came to the rescue in Europe, the empire was indispensable for shoring up British power outside it. Dominion units played a critical role in the Mediterranean, despite fears of the Japanese back home. As for the two-million-strong Indian army, its units operated almost everywhere as well as in defence of India itself. Meanwhile, nationalist dissent was bubbling away inside the Subcontinent. Gandhi himself said there was little to choose between British and German rule; as Nehru put it, inside their empire, the British behaved like fascists.

Thus, viewed from outside Europe, the British war against Nazism looks less like a moral crusade and more like defence of the global status quo. A war for liberty and self-determination? Not in the colonies, if Churchill had any say in the matter. Nor even in the Middle East, where Churchill did make a critical and often overlooked strategic contribution. Had the Germans got sympathetic regimes to stay in place there to secure their oil supply, the war might have gone differently. British intervention in Syria, Egypt and Iraq prevented that and did much more - it laid the foundations for a new, short-lived empire of client states stretching from Libya to Iran. After the war, once India and Pakistan became independent, and the Australians and New Zealanders looked increasingly to Washington for protection from Asia, it was the Middle East where the British made their last imperial stand.

The global perspective is not one we should ignore. Viewed from India or Japan, the war was a matter of rival imperialisms, the culmination of more than a century of Europeans fighting over how to carve up the world. The irony is both Britain and Germany were too weak to defeat the other unaided. If Britain had stronger allies than Germany, this was as much the fault of the Nazis - stabbing Stalin in the back, contemptuous of the Spanish and French, the Hungarians and Italians - as it was a reflection of Whitehall's superior charms. The Germans lost their empire in Europe, the British lost theirs outside it.

The real lessons for both - but learned more readily since 1945 by the Germans - emerge starkly. Europe's internal rivalries cost it the global domination that it had won over the previous century and a half, and its war produced a new world, one Europe is still struggling to find a place in. The courage of those who played their part in Nazism's defeat should not be forgotten. But harping on about Britain's superior statecraft, or German perfidy, does nothing to acknowledge these changed realities. Is it too much to hope that a new perspective, simultaneously more sober and less parochial, may emerge from this latest round of commemorations?

- Guardian News & Media Ltd

Mark Mazower teaches history at Columbia University. His most recent book, Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe won the LA Times Book Prize for History.

________________________________

Russia rules. American history is bogus.

Thread direction should be towards the idea of Russia playing a larger role in the defeat of Germany than the biased American history will teach you.

[Ryzorian]

Germany atacked near winter, a drastic mistake that also doomed Napolean. They also made tactical errors in rounding up "White Russians" from Georgia an Ukrain and sending them to camps. Millions of potential soldiers would have gladly joined the Germans in fighting the Soviets, but no, Hitler was a moron. Even with the mistakes by Hitler and the natural help from Serbian winter, it took millions of dead Russians and plenty of American equipment to drive the Nazi's out.

D Day gets more attention than the Russian operation because it liberated France, all the Russian operation did for the countries involved was swap out one dictator for another. Loose Hitler, who killed millions, get Stalin, who killed tens of millions. Churchill made the moves he did, because he knew Stalin was the real enemy. Sacrificeing the old British Empire to contain the Red Tide through the cold war, was the price he was willing to pay.

What does American History have to do with it? the artical was about Britain.

[Tenchu]

Originally Posted by Ryzorian

D Day gets more attention than the Russian operation because it liberated France, all the Russian operation did for the countries involved was swap out one dictator for another.

Hehehe... that's not true. I see it's deeper than I thought.

Originally Posted by Ryzorian

What does American History have to do with it? the artical was about Britain.

Yeah, but this is a thread about America and Russia.

The article just had an interesting point; American history never tells much about Russia. I think it's because Americans are anti communist, and have the view you expressed above, so all Russian victories somehow seem invalid.

[Ryzorian]

Why should the US celebrate the victories of one tyrant over another tyrant? They aren't going to, so why raise a stink about it? It's not like Pearl Harbor is given high praise in Moscow. Yes I'm anti communist, and I'm not ashamed of being so either.

[seiki]

while russia did "win" many battles it was due to their sheer size they had so many people they could just keep sending them until their enemy was wiped out. The main loss by germany was through operation barbossa when they wanted to enter russia in august when it was more mild weathered but mussolini screwed up so germany had to go help them then they didn't make it back to russia until december.
Russia used a scorched earth policy so they just burnt everything down so the invading armies would run out of food they even went so far as to burn down their capital. So they really only beat tired raggedy soliders. Russia did play a big part in the war but it was not all on them.

Maybe people don't care so much about their contributions to the war effort because of the whole iron curtain thing.

Also what was that about poland still being torn apart? Russia took part in the partitioning of poland and that was nearly 150 years prior to the war.

[trunker]

i'm sorry but thats just a silly title.

you might as well go even further back and say:

Hitler, the champion of WWII for being an ass to russia, cos if they had been all buddy buddy things would be very different.

[Tenchu]

Originally Posted by Ryzorian

Why should the US celebrate the victories of one tyrant over another tyrant? They aren't going to, so why raise a stink about it? It's not like Pearl Harbor is given high praise in Moscow. Yes I'm anti communist, and I'm not ashamed of being so either.

I don't really want to get into a huge "mind-changing" debate about it. I'm just interested in what people already think.

But you're not looking at this from the right angle; a lot of people consider America to be a power mongering dictator bent on controlling others. Try looking at it from that perspective. I don't dislike Stalin, and the fact he killed to get his point accross, well, so does America... so...

Anyway, I think it sucks that the Soviet empire collapsed. It was a force that really bought balance to the world.

Also, the reason I dislike the American view of history is not just because they leave Russia out of it, but it is also very opinionated. The American version has seriously changed the world, even to the point where, I know Nazi controlled Earth would be a disaster, but a Nazi controlled Europe seems to sound better than what there is today; something that is today due a lot to US propaganda.

[Aniki]

Out of curiosity what do they teach kids in America these days about that part of history and the Soviet role in it?

[Tenchu]

Originally Posted by Aniki

Out of curiosity what do they teach kids in America these days about that part of history and the Soviet role in it?

I dount teachers are actually allowed to mention the "S" word or the "C" word anymore, so I'm guessing very little.

[iPhantom]

The Soviet wars in Call of Duty 2 are much better than British or American. Russia FTW.

'Vasili, kill that damn machinegunner' <-- favorite quote