The 80th Anniversary of the Start of World War II

Sunday, 1 September 2019, marks 80 years since the outbreak of the Second World War. On that day in 1939, Germany invaded Poland, leading Britain and France to declare war on Adolf Hitler’s Nazi state, two days later.

This date bears high historical significance. It was the Victory over Nazism, when the Allies (USSR, US, UK, France) defeated the most inhumane regime and ideology to ever exist. A joint effort of our nations who, when working together, managed to put an end to the ultimate evil. The outcome of World War II shaped the current world order and global political system. Our forefathers established the UN as well as a system of checks and balances in the international arena – all to make sure that a global conflict never occurs and no fascist regimes ever emerge again.

It is to our dismay that against the backdrop of this Anniversary, we are seeing different forces trying to belittle or hush up the key role of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazism; to whitewash villains and criminals – the Nazis and their collaborators. The latter are now officially hailed as heroes in many countries, including the Baltic States and Ukraine. We also see on-going attempts to put executioners and their victims on the same level, equating Nazism to Communism. This misconception is easily refuted by the fact that these ideologies are on the opposite ends of political spectrum and values. Nazism was based on racist ideas that some people are by nature better than others, which would have led to extermination of Jews, Gipsies and communists (regardless of their ethnicity), with others like the Slavs forced to vacate their best lands for the Arians (Germans) and provide cheap labour for them. Communism on the other hand, despite being utopian and occasionally resorting to cruel practices to reach its higher goals, always stood for equality for all people, no matter their skin tone or ear shape, and strived to get rid of any forms of human exploitation. Unfortunately, facts are often disregarded in this campaign to rewrite history. An entire set of pseudo-historical mythology has been carefully created to promote these false notions.

We see the goals of such speculations and efforts as follows – to attack and denigrate Russia as the continuing state of the victorious Soviet Union and also to cover-up the unseemly role of many European states’ complicity with the Hitler regime, justify their Russophobic policies of today as well as legitimize the new wave of nationalistic neo-Nazi movements and desecration of monuments to the Red Army.

Meanwhile, this Anniversary is not simply a matter of the past but a perfect opportunity to learn topical lessons fr om real history. Let us look at the facts. It is easily forgotten that some of the initial causes of World War 2 were laid down after the first Great War, when the Versailles system was created. It was based on the principle of inequality – the then Great Powers (UK, US, France) have put their own interests above everyone else’s. This imbalance prevented the creation of a common European system of collective security.

Policy of appeasement of the Nazis was adopted in many Western capitals – in the hope of staying safe at the expense of others, our partners went down the route of appeasing the Hitler regime and trying to channel its expansion eastward. The Munich Agreement of 1938 (aka the Munich Betrayal) was the apotheosis of this policy, which not only resulted in partition of Czechoslovakia but also manifested itself during the Civil war in Spain, wh ere the USSR turned out to be the only power to support anti-Nazi forces. Others took «neutral» position, which, in fact, emboldened and empowered fascists resulting in the Franko regime taking control of the country for many years.

Strangely omitted in English-speaking historical science, the main drive of Soviet Union’s diplomacy in the latter half of 1930s was to establish a wide anti-Nazi coalition. Moscow started pushing for a collective security system, as it would be called now, from the get-go, starting as early as in 1934 when ironically, far-right Poland under Pilsudskyi signed non-aggression pact with the Nazis. Even the Munich Betrayal and the subsequent Anglo-German and Franco-German neutrality treaties did not dissuade the USSR from attempts to secure its western borders. The last one was made in August 1939, when USSR-UK-France consultations in Moscow failed due to lack of political will. The nature of the farce became evident when it turned out that the British and French delegates had no mandate from London and Paris to come to an agreement with the Soviet Union. At the same time, with the very real prospect of war on the horizon, the Soviets had high hopes for these negotiations, and were represented by both political and military leadership.

Under these dire circumstances, and with full understanding that the Red Army and Soviet economy would not have stood a chance against the Nazi Germany and its satellites, with their most powerful war machine in the world and industrial powerhouse, the USSR was forced to go alone to ensure its national security and sign a Non-Aggression treaty with Germany. Even here, the Soviet Union was the very last European power to do so.

The USSR is nowadays often accused of partitioning Poland (the very same state that itself jointly with Hitler occupied parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938). This statement does not hold water on a closer look though. The Nazis attacked Poland on 1 September, quickly defeating the Polish Army. It was not until 17 September that the Red Army entered Polish territories – in essence Belarus and Ukraine occupied by Warsaw since 1920. At that time western parts of Poland had nearly disintegrated, its government en route fleeing the country with only a few divisions left fighting. Interesting and telling fact: the Red Army advanced unopposed with nearly no combat encounters held, while many regular Polish forces joined the Soviets.

Today, at a time when the international community is faced with dangerous challenges such as terrorism and organized transnational crime, it is absolutely vital to remember lessons of history. Resurgence of extreme ideologies such as Neo-Nazism is also a threat not to be underestimated. History has proven time and again that zero-sum geopolitical games and attempts to establish global hegemony only end up in tragedies.

Together we must go back to the difficult work of creating an architecture of equal and indivisible security and broad cooperation of sovereign states on the basis of the principles of mutual respect and non-interference. The «blame Russia for everything and anything» mantra has gone stale long ago, only serves short-sighted political goals, and nothing else. A different, a reality, a truth-based approach is required.