Yesterday is Today: the longue durée of World War II

The world we live in still bears much similarity to that which emerged anew after the Second World War. Take for instance, the United Nations. Its institutions still function in ways envisioned by the Allies on the eve of German defeat. Or you may as well look at the decolonization processes. Inscribed as they were in the Chapter XI of the UN Charter, they are still far from drawing to an end.

One feature of the postwar world order underwent drastic changes recently. This issue can be exemplified by the speech Czech ex-president Miloš Zeman gave on the 24th of February. Notorious for his pro-Russian stance, Zeman condemned the invasion, but said that he “values the Russian victims of World War Two”. What do people who died 80 years have to do in an address about Russian full-scale invasion? The answer is simple. In postwar Europe, the Kremlin held an almost impeccable position of the savior that crushed Nazi Germany. Year after year, Moscow did everything possible to entrench its position as the ultimate anti-Fascist power. Soon after the war subsided, the Soviet Union started to bash Western countries for employing past Nazi activists or collaborators.

I do not aim to deny these allegations. Indeed, the US government utilized Nazis as a quasi-ally against the Soviet Union, CIA historian Kevin Conley Ruffner asserts. British MI6 still did not declassify documents on this matter. 

By now it is an open secret that the West German Ministry of Justice was still flooded with former Nazi party members even 20 years after it had ceased to exist. Even the so-called «neutrals» cooperated with the Nazi Germany: Sweden has been providing it with iron ore, Switzerland received Nazi gold worth of 3.9 billion US dollars, while Liechtenstein produced precision tools for German industry.

After all, the Munich Agreement, which resulted in the occupation of Czechoslovakia, was a collaboration too. In other words, most states which have not been occupied by Germany collaborated with Nazis in one way or another. 

The Soviet Union is no exception to this rule, although the Kremlin had gone to a great length to conceal this fact. And unlike in the Swiss case, the assistance Bolsheviks provided was not auxiliary, but quite decisive.

Since the fallout from World War I and revolutionary wars in the former Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and Weimar Germany identified each other as strategic partners due to their isolated positions in world order. Their relations saw their own highs and lows. Before the Nazis rose to power the two countries had established cooperation in trade and military spheres. Nazi repression of German communist obviously shattered the political relations, but economic relations did not cease.

With Czechoslovakia occupied, European relations were to be rebooted. This made Bolsheviks, French and British to come together, probing the feasibility of alliance to contain Germany. But the former two did not trust the Communist power. 

The Kremlin had little enthusiasm too: in May 1939, Stalin dismissed commissar for foreign affairs, Maxim Litvinov, who was promoting this alliance. Diplomats of the three states spent the next two months «haggling over endless wordings of a political agreement», historian Michael Carley describes. 

In the meantime, the Soviets yielded to Germans who were aggressively seeking an alliance too. Berlin was finishing the preparations for the invasion of Poland and wanted to make sure the Soviet Union was neutralized. German-Soviet exchange gathered steam. 

The diplomatic back-and-forth was quick and secretive. For instance, on the 19th of August German ambassador to the Soviet Union, Friedrich-Werner Schulenburg, proposed that German minister Joachim von Ribbentrop should come to Moscow for treaty negotiations. 

New Soviet minister Vyacheslav Molotov did not yield to pressure and Schulenburg left the ministry without an affirmative answer. Two hours had not yet passed when he was called back to the Soviet MFA once again, where he received a go-ahead to set up the visit. 

It is not exactly clear what happened when Ribbentrop did arrive on the 23rd of August, but the lines on the maps were drawn and a «non-aggression treaty» was completed. The secret protocol, undersigned by two revisionist states, had separated much of Central and Eastern Europe into two spheres of influence. 

Imagine the cumbersome task Soviet propaganda was faced with. For the past five years or so they have been actively criticizing the Nazis and now were supposed to U-turn on that. 

The Soviet population woke up on the 24th of August only to learn that now Nazis were their new buddies. The propagandist presented the deal as a big win for Soviet diplomacy, but average citizens still struggled to make sense of it. 

«I cannot imagine what will anti-Faschist propaganda look like. The Soviet government will now be forced to make big concessions and make peace with fascists. The public opinion now must be reformulated, because every pioneer knows that fascist – is our arch enemy», Ukrainian Soviet writer Anataloy Shyan noted at the time. 

As agreed, the Soviet Union invaded Poland along with the Nazi Germany, even if somewhat belatedly. It did so despite the Soviet-Polish non-aggression treaty of 1932. Under this treaty both sides pledged not to assist any third state in the aggression against one of the parties. 

On the 27th of August, Soviet Defense Commissar Voroshilov even toyed publically with the idea of providing aid to Poland, shall it be invaded. To make the matter even more treacherous, as late as 3rd of September Molotov still had pleasant chats with the Polish ambassador in Moscow. 

On the 17th of September, Soviet forces crossed the border and invaded Poland. Publically, the Soviet Union argued that it was not an invasion (2022, hold my beer). They have invaded to save the brotherly people of «Western Ukraine and Western Belarus» – artificial toponyms, crafted precisely to legitimize the secret protocol. 

The Soviets argued that the Polish state ceased to exist despite the fact that on the morning of September 17th the Polish government still did not leave the country. It was the Soviet invasion which made them ultimately do so.

This invasion was then followed by Soviet occupations of Karelia and other Finish territories, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bukovina, Bessarabia, and Herz region. And then – the Nazi invasion into the Soviet Union came, catching the Kremlin completely unprepared.

Soviet propagandists did their best to completely whiten out this mind-boggling moment of Bolshevik-Nazi cooperation. They have even created a separate concept for the Second World War – the so-called «great patriotic war» which only started in 1941. 

At first, еven the studies of the 1941-1945 events were scant. Soviet Union expert Matthew Gallagher noted that until the death of Stalin almost no books were published on the military history of the war.

After the Soviet dictator died, his cult was challenged by the next Soviet leader Nikita Khrushev. Thus, the communists embarked on a search for the new political myth that could overshadow Stalin. World War II took this place under Brezhnev and never lost it ever since. 

The sole legitimacy of Russia is sourced now from a war that was not fought exclusively by the Russians. Over the past 60 years the celebrations of the victory took massive ceremonial forms, void of original meaning. These rituals overarch every sphere of private and public life in Russia. Hence the «denazification» talk by the Kremlin in regards to the full-scale invasion: they simply know no better. 

But in the very heart of this political myth there is an element of which propagandists are shameful for. The Second World War started when the two totalitarian regimes joined forces to deny the Polish nation its existence. The Soviet contribution had a big symbolical impact – Hitler was not alone in his designs.