Posted on August 22, 2009 - by Venik

Victims with Guns

Tomorrow’s seventy-year anniversary of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact is giving some historians and journalists pretending to be historians an unbearable urge to write nonsense. The Pact and, most importantly, its secret provisions are blamed by the Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians for the years of “Soviet occupation”. This was a difficult period in the history of these countries: for almost half a century they had to go without war, while running their own government, developing their economy using free Soviet resources and generally enjoying higher standards of living than those seen anywhere else in the USSR. For sure, a dark chapter in their history.

At the same time, Polaks blame the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact for allowing Russia to take back the territories Poland grabbed from it after the First World War. Oświęcim was bad, but, apparently, not as bad as having to give up territories grabbed from Ukraine in 1918-1921 wars. I mean, why else would the popular Polish culture today regard the Auschwitz as ancient and long-forgotten history, while pouring barrels of boiling tar on relations with Russia? Truly, what’s three million Jews exterminated by the Nazis in Poland compared to the embarrassment of losing to the Russians? And, in good old Holocaust remembrance traditions, we will not even mention the 1.8 million non-Jewish residents of Poland killed by the Germans or the 2.5 million Polish civilians and POWs taken to Germany as slave laborers. Remembering these victims would just upset Berlin and we certainly don’t want to do that.

Victims of the 1939 German-Soviet Pact: a unit of the 15th Latvian SS Division marching in the city of Riga, summer 1943. Latvia contributed some 150,000 volunteers for the Waffen SS – the most of any other Germany ally.

And some of the same guys again in Riga in 2008 during the “Legionnaire’s Day”

Orlando Figes – apparently, a historian of sorts from the University of London and an author of “many books on Russian history” (one of which is actually not bad) – just couldn’t resist the invitation to write a short piece for BBC to commemorate the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact. Naturally and as usual, he blames the Pact for everything bad that happened in the world since August 23, 1939:

“The European Parliament has called for 23 August to become a day of remembrance for all the victims of the totalitarian regimes – Hitler’s and Stalin’s. It is not a bad idea.”

Here’s an even better idea for the European Parliament and Dr. Figes: why not get together on January 26 to celebrate seventy six years of the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact. This curious little document gave Poland twelve years of peace, all of which Warsaw spent trying to convince France and Britain to declare war on Germany. And when Germany beat Poland to the punch, it was all Stalin’s fault as far as Warsaw was concerned.

Or, perhaps, the European Parliament should have a little get-together in Bavaria next month and raise beer mugs to the 1938 Munich Agreement with which Britain and France helped Germany, Hungary and… Poland carve up Czechoslovakia. As Polish troops were occupying Zaolzie, who in Warsaw would have thought that just a year later Poland itself would be sliced up like a kielbasa in a remarkably similar fashion?

“Grateful” Czech civilians in Zaolzie greet Polish occupiers rolling in style in their British-made Vickers tanks, 1938.

History always appears simple and straight-forward to people who don’t burden themselves with excessive reading, leaving their education in the capable hands of the History Channel. European political landscape of 1930s was like a dark room filled with mousetraps and barefooted League of Nations diplomats in little pink tunics were dancing pas de deux. For Latvia – an important Nazi ally and a major contributor of manpower for the Waffen-SS – to call the fifty years of peace and relative prosperity  a “Soviet occupation” or for Poland to accuse the USSR of collaborating with Germany to grab Bessarabia just a year after Poland itself sided with Hitler to annex a part of Czechoslovakia is as absurd as for the Japanese to accuse the Americans of using excessive force in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the Japanese army spent over a decade killing millions of Chinese civilians in Manchuria, or as ridiculous as for the Germans to call the Allied bombing of Dresden a “Holocaust”.

What goes around, comes around: residents of Warsaw greet their German “liberators” just a year after the Polish army “liberated” Czechoslovakia.

Over one hundred million people died during the Second World War from military action, decease and malnutrition. The vast majority of casualties were suffered by the USSR and China. No amount of cheap propaganda masquerading as historical essays on the pages of BBC News would make the least bit of difference in how the Second World War is perceived in these two countries. Just like it beat the Nazis, Russia will defeat these attempts by the descendants of the Thousand-Year Reich to revise the history of this war.

More photos: Poland’s invasion of Zaolzie, Czechoslovakia, 1938

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