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UNDER THE SHADOW OF STALIN AND HITLER (WORLD WAR II AND THE FATE OF THE EUROPEAN NATIONS, 1939-1941) Summary INTRODUCTION And further by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. (Eccl. 12: 12) What was exactly the Second World War? When did it start? These questions appear simple at first sight, but they have an astonishingly great variety of answers. Unlike the First World War, the second one has raised much more irreconcilable assessments both among the public and among scholars. Seven decades since the end of the Second World War are obviously not enough for reaching a generally accepted viewpoint. There is no unanimity even about the start of World War II. In Chinese and Japanese eyes it broke out on July 7, 1937, when Japan launched a large-scale invasion of China. For their part, Europeans associate the beginning of the conflict with the German assault on Poland on September 1, 1939. For the Americans the Second World War started with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, perpetrated on December 7, 1941. There is some truth in each of these interpretations, but there is also too much distortion, subjectivity and deliberate concealment of crucial facts. Practically everybody agrees that the First World War started with the war declaration of Austria-Hungary on Serbia on July 28, 1914, and the bombardment of Belgrade by the Austro-Hungarians on the following day and that it ended with the surrender of Germany under the Compiegne Armistice on November 11, 1918. There were continuous battles during the entire period from July 29, 1914 to November 11, 1918, and for this reason the conflict was known also as the All-European War. Even the participation of the United States, which was decisive for the outcome, was predominantly in Europe, on the Franco-German front. The battles in Africa, the Middle and the Far East, as well as all over the oceans played an auxiliary rather than a central role. The most important thing, though, is that the armed clashes had a clear beginning and a not less clear end. Things are far from clear as far as the Second World War is concerned. There was a continuous warfare solely between the Japanese and the Chinese, but China declared war on Japan only on December 9, 1941. Moreover, the war between Japan and China was a regional clash rather than a world conflagration with no direct connection with developments in other parts of the Earth. True enough, Hitler tended to support Japan, whereas Stalin gave assistance to the Chinese, but this continued even after the conclusion of an alliance between Communist Russia and National Socialist Germany. The Russo- Japanese Neutrality and Friendship Treaty was concluded only on April 13, 1941, but two months later the German “Wehrmacht” invaded Russia and that was the end of the Soviet- Nazi Alliance. The two belligerent coalitions were in fact formed only after the Japanese blow to Pearl Harbor. It was only then that the United Nations, headed by the United States, Russia and Britain, faced the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, but Stalin agreed to denounce the Neutrality Pact with Japan and to take part in the operations against the Japanese only after the liquidation of the Third Reich in May 1945. One may talk about a continuous warfare in Europe only after April-May 1940, when Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway, overran Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and France, and made a supreme effort to defeat Britain. The battle became even more “real” and devastating after June 22, 1941, when Hitler and Stalin came to grips with each other for the conquest of the planet. Until that moment there had been relatively short campaigns, often with no serious clashes. From September 1 to September 28, 1939, National Socialist Germany and Communist Russia conquered and partitioned Poland. From November 26, 1939, to March 12, 1940, Stalin made an attempt to conquer Finland. The next campaign was launched by Hitler, who overran Denmark and invaded Norway on April 9. The Norwegians offered a tough and efficient resistance and the Germans completed their conquest only in June 1940, when they had already occupied Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg and eliminated France, but they had to start the battle for England. Battles were waged also in North Africa, while Communist Russia was engulfing Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and annexing Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. However, these two Russian operations had a “peaceful” character, if we do not consider the hundreds of thousands and even millions of victims, thrown by the repressive services of Lavrenti Beria into the Soviet death camps. It may be assumed, with some reservations, that in Europe the Second World War began in September 1939. However, the events from September 1, 1939, to June 22, 1941, are also distinguished by a number of inconvenient truths. For instance, scholars and observers rarely indicate that the Second World War, whatever it means, started not with the German invasion of Poland, but with the joint German-Russian invasion of Poland. True enough, on September 1, 1939, the German “Wehrmacht” invaded Poland from the west, the north and the south, but it is not less important that on September 17 Poland was assaulted from the east by units of the Russian “Red Army”. This fact is often concealed because of guilty conscience, because of the still existing Great Russian jingoism and Communist fanaticism, or simply in exchange for a good amount of money. There are still attempts to underestimate the alliance character of the relationship between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union from August 23, 1939, to June 22, 1941. An increasing number of publications indicate, though, that during this period Hitler and Stalin were allies. Interesting in this regard is the conclusion of the British historian Lawrence Rees about the Soviet-Nazi alliance “all but in name”, while some of his colleagues name it an “Unholy Alliance”, hinting with black humor at the Holy Alliance of Russia, Austria and Prussia in the first half of the 19th century. According to the British scholar Adam Tooze it was precisely the alliance of Berlin with Moscow that gave the Reich a second breath in a suffocating blockade, imposed by Britain and France.1 The prevailing stereotype is still about the primordial and extreme aggressiveness of Germany, whereas Russia’s aggressive ambitions are concealed or underestimated and this applies both to the First and to the Second World War. However, during the last couple of decades there appeared a number of publications that break up this preconceived notion, including works by Russian authors like Viktor Suvorov and Igor Bunich. Indeed, to some 1L.Rees. World War Two. Behind Closed Doors. Stalin, the Nazis and the West. S.l., BBC Books, 2008, pp.7-89; A.Tooze. The Wages of Destruction. The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. London, Penguin Allen Lane, 2006, p.225. extent Bunich and Suvorov make a not quite serious impression, since their books are not entirely in conformity with academic standards, but their arguments are, nonetheless, quite convincing. According to Suvorov, in particular, Stalin followed strictly Lenin’s testament by throwing all his energy to carry out the conquest and Sovietization of the entire world. Stalin was presumably well prepared even for the war against Finland in the winter of 1939 to 1940. As a matter of fact, the “Red Army” succeeded in breaking through the Finnish defense, which amounted to a miracle, bearing in mind the Arctic cold and the famous “Mannerheim Line”. The question remains, nevertheless, for what reasons Stalin did not conquer Finland and did not transform the country into a “Soviet Republic”, although he intended to do that, since he had patched up a “government” under the Comintern apparatchik Kuusinen. Suvorov thinks that after the exhausting campaign Stalin found it more reasonable to avoid being dragged into a guerilla war.2 Indeed the Soviet war machine suffered from setbacks in Finland in 1939-1940 in a way similar to the 1979-1985 developments in Afghanistan. Was Stalin aware of that, though? For the time being we have to limit ourselves to the assumption that from January to June 1940 an important change occurred in the course of the war, because in June 1940 Stalin dealt with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in precisely the same way, by annexing them to the “great” USSR. True enough, the three Baltic countries were an incomparably easier prey, but after the break of the “Red Army” through the Finnish defense line Finland could be also occupied and Sovietized accordingly. Moreover, under the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Finland, Latvia and Estonia had been ceded to the Soviet “zone of influence”, whereas under the Treaty for Friendship and for the Border, concluded at the end of September 1939, Hitler gave over to Stalin Lithuania as well. In April 1940 the fear of a possible British landing on the Norwegian coast made the Third Reich occupy Denmark and Norway, and in June and July of the same year, when the German National Socialists ran over France, the Russian Communists annihilated Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and, by the way, they justified their action also by the “menace” of “British imperialism”. Suvorov’s chief opponent is the Israeli professional historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, but it should be noted that the Russian authorities granted him a special stipend in order to write his book “The Icebreaker Myth”. It should be also mentioned that, in a tested Soviet manner, Gorodetsky often conceals important aspects of a particular fact and even flatly denies the evidence.

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