May 15, 2005
BLAME POLAND (via Tom Corcoran):
Dispelling the Myths of Yalta (John Radzilowski, May 13, 2005, FrontPageMagazine.com)
During World War II, the myth of crusty old “Uncle Joe” Stalin as our trusty ally was born and carefully tended by the American left. It has never really been dispelled. In reality, Stalin was one of the major culprits of the horror of World War II and the Holocaust. Although first place in that category will always go to Hitler and the Third Reich, Stalin and the communist state played a major role in Hitler’s grab for control of Europe.
The Soviets and Germans had been in secret contact since the early 1920s, and Hitler’s rise to power was only a temporary interruption. The Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 gave Hitler the green light to invade Poland and the Soviet attack on that country in 1939 broke Poland’s southeastern redoubt, shortening the war by weeks and saving the lives of many Nazi soldiers. Then, Stalin gave Germany a secure eastern border and provided the Nazi dictator with huge quantities of strategic raw materials, including food and badly needed oil. Without Stalin’s help, the rapid Nazi conquest of Scandinavia and Western Europe would not have been possible. The terrible fate of these countries and of their Jewish communities under Nazi occupation must be laid, in part, at Stalin’s door. The Soviet navy even provided direct help to Nazi commerce raiders preying on British shipping during Britain’s darkest hours. All the while, Stalin was busy enjoying the territory he had gained by allying with Hitler, murdering hundreds of thousands of his new subjects and deporting millions more to the living hell of the gulags.
During this era, compliant communist parties in the west supported Stalin and opposed efforts to stop Hitler as “capitalist warmongering.” While many on the left had misgivings about the Hitler-Stalin pact, most kept silent or rationalized Stalin’s actions as clever political moves designed to fool communism’s enemies. These internal contradictions were only relieved by Hitler’s attack on his erstwhile ally in 1941. [...]By 1943, Roosevelt had come to the view that the independence of small states was an obstruction on the road to peace, and that the Great Powers had the right to impose governments on states without the consent of their populations. Roosevelt was entranced with a vision of a world peacefully directed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. This vision was fueled by pro-Soviet propaganda and hopelessly naïve reports sent from Moscow by American officials such as Ambassador W. Averell Harriman. Harriman’s papers show a man who had little knowledge of the region he was in and whose information frequently came from Soviet agents posing as neutral “progressives.” Thus, both Roosevelt and then Truman were led to believe that, while Stalin was a little rough at times, he was a democrat at heart who simply ran a political machine in mode of Tammany Hall. Truman compared Stalin to Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast. Roosevelt had earlier informed Boston Archbishop Francis Spellman that Russian rule over parts of Europe would eventually help civilize Russia and, in fact, that most people in eastern Europe really wanted to be Russianized.
By feeding the Americans a picture of central and Eastern Europe that was at variance with reality, the Soviets were able to dictate the key terms of the Yalta accord and later agreements—even to the point of determining the future makeup of the Polish government. Ironically, Roosevelt measured this a success: he felt he got Stalin to “compromise.” Only Churchill raised a protest at proceedings. He was roundly ignored. Soviet leaders meanwhile were surprised and pleased with the ease at which they had achieved their goals. They had gotten everything they wanted.
This history notwithstanding, Yalta supporters have long maintained that, had Americans failed to appease Stalin, the Soviets might have concluded a separate peace with the Nazis. This is so far-fetched that it is hard to believe anyone would take it seriously. Stalin’s goal was to control as much of Europe as possible. There was no reason to stop pushing until the Red Army had reached the heart of Germany. This had been a Soviet goal since 1920. Why should Stalin have stopped when this prize was within reach?
Soviet intentions were plainly obvious long before Yalta or Tehran. While Soviet forces played a major role in fighting the Nazi scourge after June 1941—and suffered horrific losses due to German barbarity and the incompetence of their own leaders—Stalin’s behavior until 1941 should have been a clue. As soon as the tide turned against Hitler, Stalin gave orders for Soviet agents to begin a campaign to secretly destroy non-communist, anti-Nazi partisans in eastern Europe that were actively engaged in fighting against Hitler’s forces. In 1944, Stalin’s armies stood aside while the citizens of Warsaw fought Hitler’s armies for two months and were massacred by the SS. The Soviets even refused to allow Allied planes to drop supplies to the resistance and shot at American planes that strayed into Soviet airspace.
Supporters of Yalta are outraged at the notion that Yalta was a “betrayal” of Eastern Europe. Yet consider the fate of Poland. Polish forces had fought the Nazis longer than any country; they fought alongside the U.S. and British in every major campaign in Europe and made up the 4th largest army in the fight against Hitler; the Polish government in London was an official ally of the U.S. and Britain. This did not prevent Roosevelt from acquiescing in the dismantlement of this Allied government and its replacement with a group of Stalin’s henchmen. Even as the men of the Polish 1st Armored division, determined to link up with the American 90th Division under Gen. George S. Patton and to close the trap on Nazi armies in Normandy, were battling the SS, Adolf Hitler and SS Hitlerjugend divisions, Roosevelt was planning to hand them over to another sort of dictator. If that isn’t betrayal, what is?
You can always tell the apparatchiks by the harshness of their rhetoric about Poland and Eastern Europe. The Party line being that they deserved whatever they got because inherently fascist themselves.
Posted by Orrin Judd at May 15, 2005 7:29 AM
No comments yet? What's the matter with you people?
Posted by: Matt Murphy at May 15, 2005 6:06 PMThe USA should have stood up to Hitler and Stalin, and beside us (Britain), in 1939 by declaring war on both Germany and the Soviet Union. The invasion, partition and destruction of Poland was cause enough.
Posted by: Alastair at May 15, 2005 6:45 PMAre we all Yaltaed out? It seems so.
Posted by: Dave W. at May 16, 2005 12:26 AMThis one's Harry bait, and it looks like he ain't biting.
Posted by: joe shropshire at May 16, 2005 12:48 AMI don't know who Alastair is, but he must have a strange view of how militarily powerful the US was in 1939.
At that time, there was no active serving officer in the Army who had commanded a formation as large as a division, even in peacetime maneuvers.
Anyhow, if standing up to Hitler and/or Stalin was so darned important, why were the Republicans so anxious to dismantle our military?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 16, 2005 1:37 AMHarry:
That's why we had the best military in the Civil War, WWI, and WWII, because we started from scratch each time. They're easy enough to build once the war starts.
Posted by: oj at May 16, 2005 7:11 AMI don't get your reference to the Civil War.
We didn't have the best army in World War I, having to depend on the French for our weapons.
We certainly didn't have the best in World War II, since the Germans whipped our asses again and again. Weight of numbers told in the end, but more important was the fact that the Red Army was doing almost all the fighting.
You can design and build a tank in a couple of years (although in WW II our tank was only fourth best), but it takes a long time to develop field commanders.
You need to get over your fantasy that the US did any significant fighting in the Second World War.
In Europe, all the meaningful battles were over before December 1941.
Even once we were in, we weren't really in.
People like jim hamlen keep bringing up the P51, but so far no one here has mentioned one of the really important advantages the US had by 1945, the proximity fuse.
But the story of the fuse reveals something else.
The experiments at Aberdeen to develop it were run by civilians, using a 90 mm gun. During the first year of our 'battle against the Axis,' those guys shot off more shells than the entire US Army.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 16, 2005 1:58 PMah, yes, the mighty socialists/feeble democracies again. It's a wonder Hawaiians don't speak Japanese, New Yorkers German and Alaskans Russian.
Posted by: oj at May 16, 2005 4:25 PM"You need to get over your fantasy that the US did any significant fighting in the Second World War."
Harry, you're a twit.
Posted by: jefferson park at May 16, 2005 5:30 PMIt has nothing to do with socialism vs. democracy.
The Red Army did all the fighting. A.J.P. Taylor says 90%, which might be a little extreme.
But it is true that by the time the US Army inflicted any casualties, the Reds had already taken out about 2 million Gemans. If we had had to do that ourselves, we'd have gotten to use the Abomb against Berlin, because the war in Europe wouldn't have been anyway near over by April 1945.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 16, 2005 8:58 PMHarry:
No, just they dying. They're good at dying. We're good at winning.
Posted by: oj at May 16, 2005 9:11 PMHarry:
No, just the dying. They're good at dying. We're good at winning.
Posted by: oj at May 16, 2005 9:11 PMLet's look at the record.
By Dec. 11, 1941, the Red Army had stopped the German advance everywhere, inflicting about 900,000 casualties. US not in war.
January 1942. Red Army begins local counteroffensives. US not fighting.
November 1942. US goes into action against French. Red Army stops German offensives in North and Central fronts, begins encirclement of Sixth Army.
Late 1942, US finally encounters German army, is defeated. US troops abandon their weapons and run like rabbits.
1943. US Army invades Sicily, engaging about half of a German force of 10 divisions. By this point, the Red Army has engaged over 200 German divisions and is on the verge of winning the biggest tank battle in history, at Kursk.
Chauvinists don't have to like it, but them's facts.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 16, 2005 9:41 PMSo they still haven't even managed to take back their own country yet, despite the ease of logistics? It's rather a pitiful performance, but they were dying good.
Posted by: oj at May 16, 2005 9:47 PMHarry:
For all your tidbits of knowledge on warfare (good tip on the proximity fuze, BTW), you seem to be overly enamored with the meat grinder.
Ask yourself this: if the Red Army was so good, why didn't they fight the 'clean', sweeping victories that the Germans did from June-October of 1941?
Posted by: ratbert at May 17, 2005 8:42 AMHmmm, methinks Harry believes that the turning point of the US war effort occurred at Kasserine Pass in early 1943. Yessiree, those cowardly US soldiers skedaddled and didn't stop until they reached California where they were mopped up piecemeal by the Afrika Korps.
Thereafter, the Germans formed a vichy gov't under FDR which remained in place until the USA was liberated by the victorious Red Army led by Marshal Chuikov.
Thanks for clearing that up for us Harry. You're a treasure.
Posted by: jefferson park at May 17, 2005 10:34 AMratbert, I never said the Red Army was good.
I said it defeated the German army.
It was worse led, in most respects had worse equipment and had terrible strategic direction (probably a wash with its opponent on that one).
But it was really, really big and had the advantages of space, General Mud and General Winter on its side.
What it did not benefit from, in a fundamental way, was the USA, which was a non-participant when the significant battles were fought.
If the British and Greeks had not fought their losing battles in April-May 1941, the German-Russian war might have gone the other way.
jefferson, you're beginning to get it. The USA never engaged more than 20% of the German Wehrmacht. When it did, it's record was spotty.
Orrin, there was the matter of 200 German divisions to grind up first. We could never have done it. We never fielded 200 divisions for the whole war, and a third of them were in the Pacific.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 17, 2005 2:30 PMWe didn't need to. And, given American hostility to the war in Europe, would not have.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 3:00 PMNo doubt about it Harry, I do get it. I just don't find your argument persuasive. Maybe it just loses its force when you (as you typically do) overstate matters.
You seem to think that the US had some sort of moral obligation to join the war against Germany once it invaded Russia. Nonsense. The Soviets didn't deserve to benefit from a US second front. They didn't deserve to benefit from Generals Mud and Winter either but that was inevitable given the appalling Nazi logistics.
You say that weight of numbers told in the end for the USA. Fine, but doesn't the same hold true for the Soviets? The Reds put a lot of men and material up against the Germans. Then again they had to because the Nazis kept wiping them out. Hence the high casualties that the Red Army beats its chest about.
You point out that we never fielded 200 divisions (both in Europe and Pacific)in the whole war. I'll take your word for it. But we never had to. We would have if needed and we'd have still prevailed. Undoubtedly it would have taken longer and we would have suffered more casualties but we would have won.
You know when it comes to warfare the USA usually starts out "spotty" but always get better as we go along. WWII was the closest the USA ever came to complete mobilization on a total war basis and we still fought it with one hand tied behind our back.
As always we would have developed a fairly efficient killing machine in our military and used it ruthlessly. Also we probably wouldn't have had to field as many boots on the ground as the Soviets to get the same results.
As it was the US military marched through North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and into Germany ... while at the same time going from Guadalcanal to Okinawa in the Pacific. That's a spotty record I'll take anytime.
Germany's fate was sealed once the US decided to make war against it.
Posted by: jefferson park at May 17, 2005 4:17 PM
Germany's fate was already sealed before we got in, jefferson.
Manstein says so, and he oughta know.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 17, 2005 7:49 PMIt was settled when they attacked Russia.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 8:05 PMHarry, you're right and my last sentence was imprecise. It should have read:
Even absent hostilities with the USSR, Germany's fate would have been sealed once the US decided to make war against it.
--
BTW, it seems that Manstein was making OJ's point.
It was a close call, jefferson.
If Britain and Greece had not decided to fight, the attack on Russia would have started about 6 weeks earlier, with another thousand planes and a couple of panzer divisions and a parachute division.
The victory of the Red Army was so narrow that that much extra pressure might have reversed the decision.
You cannot, unless you are ready to pitch Orrin over the side, argue that Germany's fate would have been sealed if the US attacked, whether Germany had already turned east or not.
Orrin says we wouldn't have.
Manstein (see 'Lost Victories') realized by late 1942 that Germany had not the manpower to defeat Russia. At that time, the US was only fighting the French, so we were not a factor in his calculation.
He thought, until late in 1943, that Germany could play for a stalement and armistice in the east and put its effort in the west.
I think he misjudged the temper of the Russians, but if there had been 100 German divisions in western Europe, there wouldn't have been any invasion of Normandy with 8 divisions.
(My figures for numbers of divisions mobilized come from the military historian I.B. Dear, by the way.)
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 18, 2005 3:13 PMHarry:
Yet it was obvious they sdidn't have the manpower from the gitgo.
Normandy was unnecessary. It was undertaken because FDR was Stalin's bitch.
Posted by: oj at May 18, 2005 3:49 PMHarry,
I feel no compunction about pitching OJ over the side -- especially since he hasn't sent me a book yet.
JP
Posted by: jefferson park at May 18, 2005 4:41 PMjefferson:
Did you ever email me your address? I don't see it on my list.
Posted by: oj at May 18, 2005 7:05 PMOJ, I was just piling on with all the others giving you grief about missing books. I haven't won a contest yet but I sense my time is coming. Thanks for asking.
JP
Posted by: jefferson park at May 19, 2005 10:39 AM