Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The 1941 Project
The true history of WW2 begins in 1941, when the Nazis attacked the blameless and unsuspecting nation of the USSR – the English translation is FBNS, or “Flawed but Noble Socialists.”
No matter how much you squint, you will not find the United States on that pie chart.
It’s a remarkable tweet, no? The first thing that leaps out is the equation of “death” with “contribution to victory,” as if suffering the most casualties is how you beat an enemy. A Patton quote comes to mind.
Then there’s the Chinese flag.
Then there’s the implication that Germany was somehow 19% responsible for defeating fascism because they lost a lot of people as well.
She also retweeted the totally awesome Russian embassy commemorating the victory. Huh: I thought Russia was BAD? Silly Moose. Post-Communist Russia is bad. Soviet Russia was good, because they were so seriously opposed to fascism. Okay . . . so what about the occupation of the nations and peoples after the war?
(rapid blinking)
Russia saved the world from fascism.
Look, I have an admiration for the Russian people’s ability to endure centuries of blows to the head by stupid, mulish leaders, and still have the stones to fight back against invaders, but the USSR was led by an utter sociopath who would have fed 25 million more into the meat grinder if he meant he could live in heated rooms with soft cushions and smooth sheets and roast duckling whenever he wanted, so maybe we ought not to valorize the death count? Anyway. What about the enslavement of half of Europe after the war?
(rapid blinking)
You have to understand how Russia was scarred by the loss of so many, and alarmed by the aggressive posture of the West.
Yes, our aggressive, reckless, provocative policy of building democratic institutions that were not predicated on Marxist-Leninist theories of collectivism that somehow always turned out to be oligarchical, atheistic, and repressive. What of Czechoslovakia in ’68, Poland in the early ’80s?
(rapid blinking)
No it wasn’t. Americans and the UK had nothing to do with the Russia fight. It was poorly planned and bad strategy going into a very bad winter compounded with the USSR’s population and military moving east while burning all resources in their wake.
No invading force has survived besieging Russia in winter. Hitler may have thought he had it in the bag by launching his invasion in June, but Russia burning all the resources drew out what was hoped to be a fast campaign into months that culminated in a winter siege. The USSR suffered mightily for this strategy, but they deserve credit here for still managing to have that much national pride in the midst of communism.
That assumes that the war on the Eastern Front was un-winnable from the get-go. I’m not sure that was the case. If true than a similar argument could be made about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Elaborate cases of suicide by cop.
F that. What about the invasion and/or occupation of nations and peoples before and during the war? Poland. Finland. Etc.
Conveniently skips over the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the fact that many more died than needed to because of the Soviets appalling tactics of sending waves of men to certain death and the use of barrier troops that shot their own men when retreating.
As has been pointed out but bears repeating. The Chinese flag should be replaced with the Taiwanese flag, since the GMD was far more responsible for Japanese losses in China than the CCP ever was. The massive battles on the Eastern front certainly deiminated the Germany army; however, they were always fighting a two front war, and certainly Allied bombing did a lot to cut down on Germany’s ability to produce material to continue the War. If Germany had been able to drive the RAF from the skies and make Operation Sea Lion work. The whole history of WWII would be dramatically different. People often forget what a close run thing WWII was.
Jon Gabriel is currently writing a strongly worded email to James as we speak.
Also we forget about Moldova, Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania because they were part of the Soviet Union until friggin 1990! And East Prussia & eastern Poland are still to this day part of Russia. (At least I don’t feel too bad about that East Prussia part.)
Not always. They chose to tear up the Molotov-Rippentrop pact.
We provided the materials and the Soviets provided the bodies, saving many American lives.
I’m not surprised at all by seeing this interpretation of “history”. If history has some inconvenient facts, then those facts must be modified. As the title of this post alludes to; we saw the first stirrings of this with the 1619 Project (American History) and now we see the same treatment given to World History. How long will it be before this garbage is taught in our nation’s high schools?
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past”.
I noted a couple of references to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. An excellent way to examine the conflicts of the time is to look at the way Hollywood swayed back and forth in its treatment of “fascism”. The “facts” matter even less now than they did back in 1939.
BTW, I noted that Margaret Kimberly is a graduate of Williams College (tuition: 57,280 a year) and that she majored in History. Hmmm.
Fair Point.
Williams College should refund her tuition on the condition she never tells anyone she has a degree from there, after all it appears her history degree didn’t take.
The Russian high command has always been nonchalant about the casualties among the common soldiers.
Given what college history professors teach, I would conclude her history degree is a complete success by the standards of Williams.
Sadly, I believe you are correct.
If Hitler had Twitter back in the day, the American Left would have called it ‘Trumpism’.
I’m going to chime in with my own opinion about the relative contribution of the US, Soviets, and others to the defeat of the Axis powers.
I think that overall, the contribution of the US was slightly greater than that of the Soviets. It’s a close thing. The Soviets certainly had more casualties, and inflicted the most casualties on the German military. They had significant, but limited, help from Lend-Lease. The Soviets actually did an impressive job in producing things like tanks and artillery, and fuel, but weren’t as good with things like trucks, shoes, and uniforms.
The Chinese contribution was quite minimal, in my view. They did hold down a large portion of the Japanese army, but didn’t defeat it.
Overall, I’d apportion credit along these lines:
The Soviets deserve a larger proportion of the credit for the defeat of Nazi Germany specifically. They contributed nothing to the defeat of Italy, and virtually nothing to the defeat of Japan.
In further support of her tweet we should not forget that in another example of the Soviet commitment to social justice and anti-fascism, the Red Army executed 160,000 of its own soldiers for desertion and cowardice during the first 18 months of the war and sentenced many others to Punishment Battalions where 400,000 more died. The U.S. Army executed only one soldier for desertion or cowardice during WW2 and failed to establish Punishment Battalions, a shocking failure demonstrating a lack of commitment by the Capitalist entity to addressing inequities.
I am disagreeing with the bold above. Your response to me is not defending said bold statement.
I am not the one engaged in historical revisionism. the USSR would had less dead if not for Stalin. Using their number of dead is not a measure of their contribution. By that idea, China was somehow more useful than America in stopping Japan.
They lost far more people that needed. They murdered the heroes of Leningrad. The USSR deserve no credit for anything other than endless evil and death. I will honor individual solders and citizens who fought, but the USSR gets nothing. They suffered mightily when they might have actually been ready for Germany to attack them.
Hitler could have taken Moscow. He did not let Guderian fight as he wanted. If they had taken Moscow, they would have taken Stalin and the USSR would have fallen apart.
Britain’s contribution was higher though. They were alone for 2 years while Russia and Germany were aligned and America was not yet in the war. If they had sough a separate peace or had been knocked out it is hard to see how the Russian’s would have survived alone or if America would have realistically joined the war in Europe after Pearl Harbor.
Pug Henry had this pointed out to him in The Winds of War I believe.
As Churchill said, “If Hitler invaded hell, I would find something nice to say about the Devil.”
You forget about all the massive population transfers that happened after the war. East poland is pretty much Ukraine and Byelorussia now. There are no more poles in those places.
Plus sending so much of the professional officer corps to the gulags as part of the purges and Great Terror.
Plus what happened to Soviet POWs. They had a horrible fate after the war in Stalin’s hands.
You forgot the (rapid blinking)
That’s something that I find very common among a certain type of “intellectual.” (To be more specific would probably be a CoC violation.)
Considering the state of American academe, it sounds like she got exactly what she paid for.
Hitler’s decision to attack the Soviets in 1941 was prompted by his analysis that doing so would finally force Britain to make peace. He believed Britain was hanging on in the hope that the Russians would attack Germany and thought by quickly defeating the Russians, Britain would finally come to the negotiating table. It was the same mistake Napoleon made in 1812 when he invaded Russia to force it back into the Continental System because he thought it would force the British to make peace.
American (and British) aid to the Soviets was key in enabling the Red Army to take the offensive and drive into Germany but was not important to the Soviets surviving the initial German assault in 1941. By early 1942, well before the bulk of Allied assistance reached Russia, the Germans had lost their chance to knock the Soviets out. They might have achieved a separate negotiated peace after that but not complete victory.
I would ask you to look at Richard B. Frank’s “Tower of Skulls”. It is a great history of the start of the Japan-China “conflict” war in the era of 1937-early May 1942. Mr. Frank is clear in that the efforts of KMT kept, at a huge cost of lives, many hundreds of thousands of Imperal Japanese Army troops in China, and not in the far east of USSR. The USA support of KMT was tied to keeping KMT in the war, and not allowing Japan to attack a stressed and strained USSR.
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324002109