V-E Day - Commemorations & Reflections

I dunno. My friends in Germany certainly treasure that photo. There is a similar one of a partisan in Athens. At last word he is still alive.

I doubt any serious historian nowadays would downplay the crucial importance of Stalingrad and of the horrific price the people of the then Soviet Union paid in resistance. But at the same time, it is normal that various peoples should have their own narratives. I know, or sadly in most cases "knew" several resistance fighters. Those living memories are swiftly fading, as people die or just get too old to want to talk any more. Not all of those are dementia sufferers; some are just on another plane in extreme old age. Even my friend who had to wear the yellow star in Paris as a girl is over 80 now. She has never stopped fighting racism and prejudice, throughout her long life.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Quote:

Who was it who took Berlin

A:  Leonard Cohen, after he took Manhattan.

You have to forgive him after 20 years of boredom.

ikosmos wrote:

Who was it who took Berlin?

Well considering the allies made an agreement at Yalta that the Soviets would have the honours, while the western forces moved in to southern Germany (and Canada north along the coast) to prevent the Nazi government from moving south, I'd say it was a team effort.

What is more important is what happened when they tore up that agreement three years later and REALLY tried to take Berlin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade

lagatta wrote:

I doubt any serious historian nowadays would downplay the crucial importance of Stalingrad and of the horrific price the people of the then Soviet Union paid in resistance. But at the same time, it is normal that various peoples should have their own narratives.

I think you know that there is a real effort to re-write the history of WW2 and, in the context of the Ukrainian civil war, even to trivialize the crimes of the Nazis and/or treat the USSR and the Nazis as "equally responsible," etc. The lying has got to the point that the current Ukrainian PM recently made reference to the Soviet "invasion of Ukraine and Germany" in WW2.

Every single element that does not serve the current Russophobic Western narrative is actively being erased from public memory. But it's also perhaps worthwhile to note, as I did above, that the re-writing of history began even over simple matters like

"Which day should the Allies (ie, including Russia and the former SU that bore the brunt of the struggle, suffered the greatest losses by far, etc.) together, celebrate the military defeat of the Nazis?" in order to literally create divisions between the victors the very next day after the end of the war.

I mean, was it a shared victory or not? I realize that there is some effort to simply erase the Soviet contribution altogether, eg, from the fascist-friendly Ukrainian regime, but, for those whose brains have not completely fallen out of their heads, how the hell do you celebrate a shared victory except on a shared occassion?

No, there was no good intent. 70 years have passed and the erasing continues. Give it 30 years and a Hitler moustache will be painted on Stalin's face and the latter will be blamed for the Holocaust, the supremacist ideology of the Nazis "forgotten", and so on.

Supplemental: one bit of re-writing history that has been remarkably successful already is the transformation of WW2 suffering into a struggle against anti-Semitism in which everything else is trivialized: the supremacist ideology of the Nazis (much like the supremacist ideology of a certain middle eastern country today), the plans to ethnically cleanse the Slavic areas to make space for "the master race", and so on. Those who share similar odious racist and supremacist views to the Nazis, naturally enough, want nothing to do with the denunciation of such views. It is really, really important to insist on the importance of the defeat of the Nazis as a victory over racist, supremacist views generally. The entire history of the world, looking at the immediate post-war period, took inspiration from that most noble victory, in the liberation of dozens of countries across the planet, civil rights movements that marched humanity forward, gloriously, and in the absolutely wonderful destruction of the monstrous apartheid regimes in Southern Africa, etc, etc, etc. Of course, the struggle continues. How could it not?

Current Russian public attitudes are instructive. They look at history and see that Russia had to "save the world" from one would-be World conquerer after another. Bonaparte. Hitler. Always coming from the West. And they are also of a mind that they may have to do it again, given the Xenophobia being actively cultivated against their country, the typical precursor to another effort at "regime change" by the US and its client states.

Has anything been learned by the West from WW2? It doesn't seem so.

The leaders of these NATO regimes should all be arrested as War Criminals. O what a wonderful day when it comes.

montrealer58 wrote:

Most people in the West would think that a war with Russia would be madness. Hardline hawk neocons are falling in the polls.

There is a real divide between the views of the masses and the militaristic views of political leaders. Let us just take Canada, for example. Roger Annis has had a recent article re-published in Russia Insider

Canada's Political Mainstream United in Backing War in Ukraine

... and there are plenty of observers who, based on the deliberate stoking of tensions in Ukraine (by Canada and other countries), express the view that war with Russia is more likely now that at virtually any time in the past ...

Yes, I was rather pissed off at being told what I had to know about the Second World War, having a useless history MA and all.

And certainly not wanting to wage war on Russia or anyone else.

I'm really getting sick of this single-issue Ukraine obsession. I just avoid those endless threads in which one or two people echo each other; does the obsession have to pop up here too?

I'm so terribly sorry that my selfish concerns about a possible WW3 are getting in the way of your fun.

The other one said the same thing in the Russia thread.

I do have a friend who studies and teaches about that part of the world. Unfortunately, I've never been that far east in Europe (I have been to central European countries that were once part of the "Soviet Bloc"), so I haven't had the honour of meeting veterans of Stalingrad and other battles on the Eastern Front that played a decisive role in turning the war around.

Since I studied in Italy, I'd have a disproportionate number of stories about partisans there, and of the Parisian friend mentioned above whose family took refuge there - ironically in Fascist Italy! With a phony "Certificate of Aryanity"!

One of the Italian partisans I knew had fought earlier with the POUM in the Spanish Civil War, and crossed the Pyrénées on foot to reach France - quite a feat. Of course he is dead now, but he lived to a ripe old age.

ikosmos wrote:

I'm so terribly sorry that my selfish concerns about a possible WW3 are getting in the way of your fun.

Don't you have another thread or two open to talk about that crap?

@ lagatta

I have spent some time in eastern europe and seen some evidence of REAL anti-soviet denial of the past (just like the denial of Nazi past before it), not the nonsense that is being slung here. And while I haven't spent much time in the place our friends insist on hammering away at, I was in Kiev during a previous time 20 years ago when Russia demonstrated how good their relationship was by shutting off gas and petrol supplies. 

I also have an old family friend who went back to his childhood home now in Poland, where no one speaks his language any more.

There is very little about that war and its legacy that is as black and white as some want to conveniently portray it. And that goes double for the nonsense being slung here.

Some would take that back to the Thirty Years War and earlier. There is a reason why Guenter Grass set Meeting at Telgte in that period. As for recent events, I'd say all the pieces were laid in place by the end of the first war, and at the 1919 conference.

Excellent article, SJ.

There's no better proof of an impoverished political point of view than exposing its haughty contempt, ridicule and disdain for the struggle for peace.

You know who you are.

Yes, we should remember all Soviet accomplishments in WW2.

1. The joint invasion of Poland in 1939 with the Nazis.

2. The Katyn Massacre of Polish Army Officers. (This occurred on the 3rd of April 1940.)

3. The invasion of Finland in 1939. (The Winter War of 1939/40)

4. The numerous war crimes against the German population in 1944/45.

Of course the remaining allies all committed various war crimes, however to sing the praise of the Red Army as glorious heroes maybe be an unrealistic and unhistorical. 

WW2 could not have been won without the Polish, Canadians, New Zealand, UK, Australia, India, Greeks, Russians, Americans and Norwegians. Simple fact