So some present-day historians and political figures are trying to undermine the Red Army’s role in defeating the Nazi and liberating Europe. They believe the Soviet Union survived only thanks to lend-lease supplies and the opening of the second front in Europe by the allies in 1944. This is true. There were supplies across seas and oceans, there were airplanes flown in, there was the second front. But these “historians” prefer not to remember that this front was not opened in 1942-1943, when it was a very hard time for the Soviet Union. Stalin kept asking the allies in the anti-Hitler coalitions, but they always found reasons to delay it. They landed in Normandy only in June 1944. By that time it was already clear that Hitler would be defeated and they could be late for Europe’s liberation. These “historians” do not wish to remember that after a heavy defeat in the Ardennes the allies were retreating fast and that Winston Churchill (!) had to trample on his pride and ask Stalin for help. To help the allies, the Soviet troops launched the offense two weeks earlier than planned, without aircraft support, and distracted the Germans, thus saving the allies from a total defeat.
There are many such “historians.” Many schoolchildren in the West believe even that the Soviet Union sided with Hitler. Remarkably, such “historians” were born in the United States, Britain or another country that did not know a Nazi occupation. Let God be their judge. But there are political figures and some quasi-political ragtag that maintain that their countries were occupied, not liberated, by Soviet soldiers. They are alive now only because the Nazi were defeated, but… I can understand when this comes from survival Hungarian Nazis and their wallydrags. After all, the Nazi Hungary was ally of Hitler’s Germany, many Hungarians died on the Soviet land, it is no coincidence that there is a Soviet medal called “For Taking of Budapest”, and it was there that a rebellion inspired by the U.S. CIA broke out nine years after the war. By the way, it is still uncommon to mention the CIA role in planning that rebellion and supplying the rebels with weapons and means of communications. It is so von Moltke-like, saying “the truth, but not all of it.”
But why did the monuments to Soviet liberator soldiers disturb the leaders of Poland, the Baltic countries and even the city administration of Lviv, Ukraine? “Historians” are now speaking about Polish guerillas’ fight against the Nazi. About guerillas in general. But they do not say that there was Armia Krajowa, led by the Polish government from London, and Armia Ludowa, which cooperated with the Soviet government. They do not say that it was the commanders of Armia Krajowa that independently provoked the Warsaw rebellion, when the Red Army was unable to come to rescue. The Hitler army cruelly crushed the revolt, and the city was ruined. Many Soviet soldiers died from Armia Krajowa’s bullets, although they were fighting the Nazi to liberate Poland, to let it exist as a state, not as a province as it was under Hitler; they were fighting so that Poles were considered human beings, not work stock. First the “democratic” Poland did not like the monument to Marshal Konev, whose troops saved Krakow from destruction; now it does not want any monuments to Soviet soldiers. I wonder if the Kaczynski brothers will dismantle the high-rise building in Warsaw that is a copy of the Moscow ones. See, how convenient it is not to say all the truth about history?
As to the current Baltic rulers, they should remember that their countries exist as sovereign states only thanks to an article in the Soviet Constitution that envisaged the republics’ right to withdraw. All their talk of occupation is a lie! They are following Gebbels’ advice: “The bigger a lie, the sooner it will be believed.” History tells us that by 1939 the totalitarian regimes of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia had to choose whom they would surrender to, Germany or the Soviet Union. Germany gave them up in favor of the Soviet Union, promising that “there will soon be a big war that will put everything in place.” Soviet troops entered the Baltic countries in compliance with agreements on mutual assistance signed with them in the autumn 1939. In the summer 1940, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were not occupied, but admitted in the Soviet Union with active support from their national Communist parties and a significant part of the population. Formally, it happened on request from these countries’ parliaments and not on the Kremlin’s initiative. International law calls this annexation. At the end of the war, after most of the Baltic states had been liberated by the Red Army, this annexation was confirmed by the United States and Britain at the Yalta Conference, with Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt putting their signatures to the document. The inviolability of existing borders in Europe was stipulated by the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe of August 1, 1975. Yet Baltic politicians keep talking of occupation instead of annexation. Why? Because Baltic nationalists have found out that, under the international law, an annexed territory becomes part of the country that has annexed it after 50 years. This means that by 1991, when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania gained independence, they were judicially an inalienable part of the Soviet Union, 51 years having passed since the annexation. This is why their rulers began talking of occupation, which, under the international law, continues until foreign troops leave the country. So the Baltic states believe that the Second World War ended in 1994 after the Soviet troops’ withdrawal. This is more convenient for them. You cannot say all of the truth about history.
But there is even more cynicism in the way these “democratic” countries, members in such democracy protecting organizations as the European Union and NATO, are hailing former servicemen of their national SS and police units. The Baltic states now remember 1941 as the year when they were liberated from the Soviet rule. They do not say that it was their own, homegrown self-defense forces, police, etc. that killed dozens of thousands of Jews, Communists and their supporters, independently or on order from Hitler troops. Their victimes included local guerillas that fought against the Nazi. On January 31, 1942, Franz Walter Stahlecker, Higher SS and Police Leader, proudly reported to Berlin, “Estonia is by now fully freed from Jews.” Later, however, another several thousands of Jews were brought to Estonia from Lithuania, Latvia and Poland; they were killed too. When the British Queen was visiting Riga, she was shown a restored corner of a barrack of the Soviet GULAG, but she was not shown the Nazi camp Salaspils, where the local organization Aizsargi conducted their atrocities. Why bother? The Baltic states were “occupied by the Soviet Union”, after all. All these Nazi accomplices wanted to become the “select race” too. In their dreams! According to documents of the Hitler ministry for the eastern territories, the Baltic states were to become Germany’s interior colony, a territory to be populated, Germanized and finally made part of the Reich. This is history, by the way; it cannot be changed. But it can be hushed up.
Fighters for Ukraine’s independence are also restless. All the more so, as they are supported by President Yushchenko, who now wants to ensure equal rights for former Soviet soldiers and guerillas and former members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The Lviv city administration has decided to destroy all Soviet-era monuments in the city. In the last 15 years, the former executioners of their own fellow citizens have been claiming that they were fighting for Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union with Nazi support. They are trying to prove to the world that they did not know about Hitler’s race theory, in which the only nation below Slavic peoples was Jewish. What talk of independence could there be? The Nazi gave them the right to kill other “submen”, to rob and rape, which they did until their masters understood that the end of the Reich was nearing. But history has kept the record of all the deeds of these Nazi accomplices. No matter how hard the rulers of Poland and the Baltic states together with President Yushchenko and the Lviv administration are trying to undermine the heroic deed of Soviet soldiers and to justify war criminals and to hush up their offenses, they will not succeed. They cannot rewrite history. We know it and we remember it.
