Yesterday was Victory in Europe, or V-E, Day, across much of the Western world. The norm is to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany on May 8th, because the defeated regime signed the articles of unconditional surrender, thereby marking the official end of the war. Now, because of time differences, that ended up being very early on the morning of May 9th in Moscow.
Now, as it happens, the Soviets, led by the Russians, were deeply annoyed by the fact that the other Allied powers got signatures from the defeated Nazis, led by General Jodl, without them present, originally on May 7th in Rheims, France. The Russians correctly pointed out that the Soviet peoples had suffered far more than any other nation in Europe from the depredations of the Nazis, and Stalin forced the Allies to require a new surrender, signed by the official leader of the Third Reich at that time, Admiral Donitz.
That surrender signing happened in Berlin, on what turned out to be the very early morning of May 9th.
As anyone who studies Russia knows quite well, the Russians regard this day – May 9th – as perhaps their single most important non-religious holiday. Indeed, for the Russians, it practically is a sacred day. There is hardly a single family in modern Russia that remained untouched by the brutality and savagery of the fighting on the Eastern Front. The official death toll of some 27 MILLION Soviet citizens – 20 million of them Russians – is, if anything, very likely a significant underestimate of the true cost.
There is a view among historians and academics – DA KERNEL HIZZSELF!!! has expressed it on the record several times – that the Russian government stopped counting after the MFIC came to power in 1999, largely because the death toll was so terrible that it might have destabilised Russian society at precisely the time when it most needed a new start. Perhaps that is true. I do not know. What I DO know, is that Russians today hold the memory of the Second World War – or, as they call it, the Great Patriotic War – as sacred, and their reverence for those who died in it, is a fundamental part of their national character.
Interestingly, unlike their Western counterparts, the Russians do not attempt to downplay the contributions of other powers in the fight against the Nazis. While the Europeans love to congratulate themselves on how “they” won the war, the truth is far more complicated.
The reality is that Great Britain would have collapsed under the Nazi naval blockade, were it not for the Americans. The Soviets loved the American trucks they received, and were amazed by the idea of “spam” – tinned processed meat – when they saw it. But, unlike the Brits or Americans – or, for that matter, the people of the Baltic Void – the Russians have never said, “WE won the war”.
All you have to do, is to look at The Putin’s speech today – it is about 8 minutes long, and well worth watching – to understand this. He directly references the allies who helped the Soviet Union during the war in it:
The simple point here is that, even as we scramble to rewrite history into hagiography in the West, and look to congratulate ourselves on having defeated Nazi Germany by ourselves, the reality is far more nuanced, complex, and difficult.
The Soviets did liberate eastern and central Europe – whether or not those countries felt themselves liberated, is an entirely different discussion.
The Soviets did absorb by far the most horrendous casualties of the war on the Eastern Front, and they did create the conditions for the collapse and surrender of Imperial Japan after they finished up in the west.
From the Soviet point of view, the invasion of their country was a combined pan-European offensive, coming less than 120 years after Napoleon Bonaparte did the exact same thing. Germans, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, Finns, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, French, and a number of other nationalities, all invaded the Russian heartland, under the Nazi banner. It is also a fact that, initially, quite a large segment of the Soviet population welcomed the invaders, because they were so fed up by the tyranny and folly of Stalin’s “reforms” and Red Terror.
It is because of the Soviet offensive against Japan, that President Truman authorised the dropping of the nuclear bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and, by the way, when the Americans bombed Nagasaki, they bombed one of the very few Christian strongholds in Japan, killing THOUSANDS of Christians.
And it is because of that pan-European offensive against Russia, that Belarus lost something like 25% of its entire population, and Ukraine lost at least 10%, at that time. The levels of depravity, barbarity, and butchery that took place on the Eastern Front, are beyond human understanding – especially when you look at what the Ukrainian allies of the Nazis did. The cruelty of the OUN-B, in particular, is unspeakable.
The war was a multi-party, multi-factorial effort, and ultimately, it shaped our modern world. Today, the Russians look west, and they see exactly the same madness gripping Europe, as the one that their ancestors fought against.
It is sobering indeed to think about these things from a Russian perspective. If we do not want a repeat of the outcome of WWII, but this time even more severe, we should keep those lessons in mind.
Anyway, on to better things, perhaps.
This week’s lovely lady is Anastasiya Venza (Анастасия Венза), age 22 from Reutov, Mordor. She is best known for winning Miss Russia last year, and being Russia’s Miss Universe representative. Like most red-blooded men, I have absolutely no idea what any of that means.
Happy weekend, all.
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