May 9th marks the greatest date in the history of Russia, the Victory Day, which again and again turns the memory of descendants to the heroic struggle of our grandfathers and fathers against Nazism and fascism during the Great Patriotic War, which lasted four years and ended with the complete defeat of Nazi Germany and its satellites in 1945.
However, nowadays we witness attempts, especially from representatives of the collective West to downplay our role in the victory in World War II and therefore building new world order hereinafter. Thus, let me bring attention again to the causes of World War II and reflect on its complicated events, tragedies and victories, as well as its lessons, both for our country and the entire world. Probably if we look back into the past we would also find an answer to the question – what are the true reasons for the hybrid war unleashed by the West against Russia these days and where does the resource for overcoming this lie?
Shortly before the start of World War II, the international surrounding for the USSR in Europe and the Far East was tense. By 1939, Hitler had already remilitarized Germany, occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia, and did not hide further aggressive plans to expand the country’s territory and establish German hegemony in Europe. In the Far East, the USSR had another belligerent neighbour – Japan, an ally of Germany, which occupied the north of China (Manchuria) and thereby came close to the borders of our country. Intense fighting on the Khalkhin Gol River was already underway. Moscow had to search actively for a way out of the dangerous foreign policy situation to avoid a war on two fronts and have time to prepare the army for a future confrontation.
Diplomacy of the USSR after the Munich Agreement of 1938 (which at the instigation of the then British Prime Minister N. Chamberlain finally turned Hitler’s gaze to the East) had to solve a complicated task – while the country was preparing for war, it tried to escape direct involvement in a major conflict. Preventive measures were taken to avoid a clash with Germany, the future aggressor. The USSR tried to establish a system of collective security in Europe, but these efforts were subverted by Britain and France, which wanted to target Hitler’s aggression at the USSR.
On April 17, 1939, the USSR came up with a proposal to conclude a trilateral treaty of mutual assistance, according to which the UK, France and the Soviet Union were to immediately provide each other with military assistance in case of German aggression against them. The negotiation process moved forward very slowly. The Soviet side demanded from its Western partners convincing evidence of their final break with the policy of appeasement and their readiness to fully take into account Soviet interests. However, the negotiations reached a dead end.
Against this backdrop, the USSR intensified parallel negotiations with Germany. On August 23, 1939, the German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop arrived in Moscow and the two sides signed the Soviet-German nonaggression pact. It was concluded for a period of 10 years and came into force immediately upon signing.
Unlike the UK and France, which “appeased” Hitler with measures that destroyed European security architecture after World War I, the USSR entered into a tactical Non-Aggression Pact with Germany in 1939 facing a much higher military threat to its own territory, in a period of better preparedness of Germany to war. In other words, the motivation for Moscow’s actions was different. This was a forced step designed to push back and delay the military threat from Germany against the background of British and French reluctance to establish allied relations with Moscow. The pact was to buy precious time needed to strengthen the country’s defences and prepare the army and society for war. It also prevented a new agreement between the Western powers and Hitler like the Munich one in 1938.
However, even this Pact, with the connivance of the Western capitals, did not stop Hitler. On September 1, 1939, he attacked Poland, with Britain and France declaring war on him in response. However, they did not start real military operations against Germany. The so-called “Phoney War” lasted for 8 months and ended with German invasion of France on May 10, 1940. While the majority of German troops was fighting against Poland in 1939, the Western allies did nothing against the Third Reich from the West.
This allowed Germany to speed up preparations for the war against the USSR, which began on June 22, 1941, when Moscow had not yet completed the modernization and strengthening of its army (scheduled for 1943).
World War II did not happen overnight, nor did it start unexpectedly or all of a sudden. It was the result of a number of tendencies and factors in the world politics of that time. All pre-war events fell into place to form one fatal chain. But, undoubtedly, the main factors that predetermined the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind were state egoism, cowardice, appeasement of the aggressor who was gaining strength, and unwillingness of political elites to search for compromise that led to another world war and the death of 50 million people, among which almost 30 million were Soviet citizens.
Doesn’t this picture remind us of today, when the West flirts with and supports the Nazis in Kiev, and refuses to discuss any formulas for indivisible security in Europe? The West, obsessed with the idea of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, is ready to neglect all categories of reason and moral norms for this purpose. However, the tragic lessons from World War II should not be forgotten in order to ensure that a new global armed conflict never happen again. A solid basis for concerted action for the sake of enhancing the stability and security on the planet is needed.
The conclusion is obvious – to prevent the worst case scenario, specific actions are needed, i.e. refusal of any participation in aggressive preparations and their condemnation…
Think about it.
The author of the article is H.E. Nikolay Kudashev, the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Republic of Singapore.
Photos were presented by State Military History Museum “Prohorovskoe Pole”
