Institute of Democracy and Cooperation

Who started World War II ?

Publication day: 14/12/2009

“Endgame”

Who started the Second World War?

Publication of “Partitura” in Moscow, September 2009.

"The Battle against the World Enemy - Bolshevism"

Front cover of the Nazi magazine Die Mädelschaft, April 1939.

The Foundation for Historical Perspective in Moscow (the sister foundation of the IDC in Paris) has published a collection of essays and historical documents whose purpose is to set the record straight on certain aspects of the history of the Second World War. Recently the idea has become widespread in Europe that the Second World War was triggered by the signature of the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on 23 August 1939. Hitler invaded Poland the following week.

This theory is bolstered by a second theory, namely that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were equivalent totalitarian regimes, each as bad as the other. It is now common to see references to the Nazi-Soviet “alliance”, even though of course the two countries were enemies during the Spanish civil war (1936 – 1938) and again after 1941 when Germany invaded the USSR. In June 2009, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) voted a resolution calling on Europe to make 23 August a special day for commemorating “totalitarianism” in Europe, as if the Nazi and Soviet regimes were essentially the same. This is in spite of the fact that Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and that 20 million Soviet citizens died liberating Europe and the world from Nazism. The history of the Second World War is mainly a history of war in the East: victory over Nazi Germany would have been impossible without the USSR.

The idea that there is a moral equivalence between the Nazi and Soviet regimes has its origins in the writings of the German historian, Ernst Nolte, who was originally denounced as a Nazi revisionist when he sought to relativise Hitler’s crimes by saying Stalin’s were just as bad. Now his views have become mainstream, especially in Poland and the Baltic States which are now EU and NATO members. Many there, and certainly their governments, argue that their countries were swallowed up by two equally rapacious predators, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Their views have now made it into the European mainstream.

It is indeed true that in 1939 Soviet troops moved into parts of Poland and the Baltic states – which had become dictatorships by then - and that the Baltic States were incorporated into the USSR in 1940 and then again in 1944. But Poland had ceased to exist as a state once Hitler established the General Government there in the autumn of 1939, while Soviet troops were installed in the Baltic states with the agreement of the respective national governments.

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Baltic States have been arguing that they were “occupied” by the USSR.   This implies that the Soviet experience, which many Balts enthusiastically supported, was in fact a purely Russian phenomenon and that the terms “Russian” and “Communist” are equivalent. It is not difficult to think of historical precedents to such an equation between a person’s ethnicity and his politics.

The Balts have used this occupation theory to justify a policy of treating their Russian minorities harshly and encouraging them to leave – a policy which has been allowed to continue with little protest from the usual human rights groups in the West.   On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the war, moreover, the Polish parliament voted a resolution denouncing the simultaneous (and equivalent) invasions it had suffered from both West (Germany) and East (USSR). On the basis of such claims, Poland has had some success in encouraging its new European partners to pursue an anti-Russian foreign policy (even though Europe’s biggest states, especially France and Germany, are keen to conclude agreements with Moscow on a variety of questions especially energy).

This book, “Endgame” (“Partitura” in Russian, which refers to an orchestral score and therefore to the parts all countries had to play in the outbreak of war) is an answer to these claims.   Containing essays by a dozen historians and scores of recently declassified documents, the book seeks to correct the false impression that the war would not have broken out if it had not been for the Nazi-Soviet pact. On the contrary, the authors argue, the Munich agreement of September 1938 was not only a shameful and self-serving act on the part of the Western powers which sponsored it (especially Britain), it was also an act which comprehensively destroyed any chance of a collective security approach between the West and the Soviet Union against the Nazi threat. It had a far greater influence on the eventual outbreak of war than the 1939 Pact.

According to the Munich agreement concluded between the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, the French Prime Minister, Edouard Daladier, the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Italian leader, Benito Mussolini, the two Western powers acquiesced in German demands against Czechoslovakia. Britain and France allowed Germany to seize the Sudetenland, thereby unilaterally violating the settlement reached at the Treaty of Versailles which they had themselves drafted only two decades previously.

Moreover, the authors argue, Poland’s role in the run-up to the war was not as innocent as the subsequent invasion of her by Germany has allowed Poles to suggest. In September 1938, Poland herself profited from the destruction of Czechoslovakia in the same way as Nazi Germany had – by seizing territory. Polish troops moved into Teschen in October 1938. Moreover, argue the authors, Poland had herself signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1934 and was even hoping that Hitler would allow her to help conquer Ukraine and their common ancient enemy, Russia.

More generally, the authors remind us that Hitler’s plans for the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 had been decided as early as March 1939. There is therefore no question of the August Pact having triggered the war. On the contrary, it was a defensive act rendered necessary by the certainty of Hitler’s aggressive intentions and by the deliberate machinations of certain politicians in Britain and France to turn Hitler against the USSR, making him to the “dirty work” of destroying Bolshevism.

The picture which emerges from this collective work is one of a vast game of diplomatic poker in which all sides are manoeuvring, usually unethically, in the face of the rise of German aggression. The authors make it clear that, in any case, the period leading up the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939 was hardly one of peace. Italy annexed Ethiopia in 1936, Germany annexed Austria in the same year – the Western powers looked on without protest – and China and Japan were at war from 1931 and again in 1937.   The Spanish Civil War, in which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany backed opposite sides, raged between 1936 and 1938. Germany annexed the Sudetenland in 1938, occupied the Czech lands in 1939 and installed a puppet regime in Slovakia.

It is often forgotten that the Baltic states had never been independent before 1918. They came into existence as independent entities only after the humiliating peace forced upon Russia at Brest-Litovsk. Their detachment from Russia was viewed by many as an unnatural and vindictive act, forced upon a country weakened by revolution. The Baltic states had been Russian territories since the 1720s (i.e. since shortly after the incorporation of Scotland into the United Kingdom); previously they had been part of Sweden and before that possessions of the Teutonic knights. A German landed elite there ruled over the local peasants. (Many of these German landowners distinguished themselves in the Russian imperial government.) The territories had become a strategic part of Russian territory, as they are of course a path for invaders from the West. It was here, after all, that Alexander Nevsky had repulsed the Teutonic Knights in the 13the century. Russia’s second city, St Petersburg, as well as many of her historic towns, are close to the borders of the Baltic states. It was indeed through these territories that Hitler did eventually attack in 1941, famously besieging Leningrad. In other words, their incorporation was a defensive act which only re-established a recently vanished historical status quo ante.

The authors also argue that Britain acted duplicitously towards its Soviet ally during 1941, i.e. after the German invasion, facts which further explain and justify Moscow’s perception that it needed to protect itself at all costs both from German attack and from betrayal but its Western allies. Churchill speculated in 1941 that, contrary to the terms of the agreement with Russia, Britain might sign a separate peace with Germany if Hitler himself were toppled. By this stage the battle of Moscow was in full swing (the largest battle of the Second World War and in many ways the most decisive). Churchill continued to reflect throughout 1942, including after Stalingrad, on how the “Russian barbarians” needed to be pushed as far East as possible, if necessary with the help of the German army. Churchill even entertained plans for attacking the Soviet Union in July 1945, after the capitulation of the Reich.

By 1943, indeed, both Britain and America were terrified that Germany might collapse too soon, thereby allowing the Red Army to sweep across the continent and perhaps liberate even France. Operation Rankin was conceived to prevent this outcome, deemed a disaster by Roosevelt and Churchill. In other words, even four years into the war, Britain and America continued to entertain the idea of using Germany and turning her against their Soviet ally. Such revelations naturally make the Anglo-American “crusade for democracy” appear rather hypocritical. The Russian resentment is all the greater because it was the USSR which defeated Hitler, inflicting far greater losses (and sustaining greater losses) than the Western allies who fought only a relatively brief campaign between the Normandy landings in June 1944 and final victory in May 1945. Soviet support for the Normandy landings, and Soviet attacks on the Wehrmacht at that time, were all that prevented Operation Overlord from turning into a catastrophe.

The authors then go back in history to the Versailles Peace Conference, at which President Wilson, on the prompting of his influential adviser Colonel House, proposed a massive reduction in the size of Russia, stripping her of the Baltic States, Belaurs, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Siberia. Thus was a true Pax Americana to be established across the Eurasian continent – plans which were more or less realised after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The book therefore gives an excellent overview of widespread thinking among Russian historians and political commentators about how historical memory interacts with politics today. Apart from being a serious contribution to the historical debate (including because of the its publication of recently declassified documents) the book also gives an invaluable insight into the reason why much Western policy continues to rankle in a Russia today, where many people think that their country has been striving for better relations with the West for decades, alas in vain.

Table of contents

Preface by the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov

“The concert of great powers” on the eve of the decisive events, by Natalia Narochnitskaya

On the prehistory of the non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR by V. M. Falin

From Munich to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: some aspects of the situation in Europe on the eve of the Second World War by A. G. Dulyan

On the path to the 1939 Pact: difficulties and opposition to Germano-Soviet rapprochement by A. V. Shubin

The Soviet Union and the political crisis of 1939 by M. E. Meltyoukov

The Wind Blows, the Storm is Brewing by Y. V. Ribtsov

The Events of 1939 in the light of the doctrine of universal law and of the right to self-defence V. S. Makarchuk

The “anti-Soviet Flirtation” of an authoritarian Latvia (1934 – 1940): between London, Paris, Rome and Berlin by V.V. Simindey

Who divided up Czechoslovakia in March 1939, and how? V. V. Marina

A diabolical pact or playing cards with devils? Y. A. Kvitsinski

The non-aggression treaty between the Soviet Union and Germany and public opinion in Germany today S. N. Drojin

Soviet-German Documents from August – September 1939 in the context of contemporary politics M. V. Demurin