MEMO: Victory Day Against Nazi-Fascism – A Less Western Perspective

An assessment of the celebrations of Russia’s victory over Nazism, May 9, and the role of the Soviet army in the defeat of Nazism is necessary.

From the inflection of force carried out by Moscow led by Putin, we can make projections about the current international political conditions and the perspective of the alliance with China and the Eurasian and Intra-Asian economic complementarity.

Perhaps out of sheer stupidity, or pretentiousness, the West continues to downplay the Soviet Union’s role in World War II.

In the 21st century, there is a very intense campaign, led by European governments, to remove all memories of the victory over Nazism.

Victory Day, May 8 & 9

Our country participated in the last two years of the conflict, alongside the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and other allies, who faced Germany, Italy and Japan.

The Asian country remained in the conflict until September 1945, when it surrendered after being targeted by US nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; In Europe, the conflict ends in May.

According to international analyst and Russia expert Valdir da Silva Bezerra:

“Today’s Russia only seeks to defend its national and security interests, while not forgetting the more than 27 million Soviet lives (both civilian and military) that were sacrificed for the Victory in World War II. No other country shed as much blood as the Soviet Union for the defeat of Nazi-fascism.

In the past, the Allies themselves (the United States and the United Kingdom) recognized this fact, when at the Yalta Conference (in Crimea) the parties defined that of the $22 billion (R$ 110 billion) calculated as war reparations to be paid by the Germans, 50% of this amount should be allocated exclusively to the Soviet Union”.

For Russians, the date marks the 79th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

The Soviet Union – which then included not only Russia, but also Ukraine, Belarus, the countries of the North Caucasus and Central Asia – lost 27 million people in what Russians call the “Great Patriotic War”, more than any other country.

Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender went into effect at 11:01 p.m. on May 8, 1945, marked as the “Day of Victory in Europe” by France, Great Britain, and the United States. In Moscow it was already May 9, which became the “Victory Day” of the Soviet Union.

From the following year, and especially in the years of stability promoted by the Nomenklatura, the Soviet Union celebrated the 20th and 40th anniversaries of Victory Day with parades on Red Square in 1965 and 1985.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian President Boris Yeltsin made them an annual event starting in 1995.

In the Putin era, Victory Day has increasingly become a powerful display not only of marching battalions, but also of Russia’s latest weaponry, including nuclear-capable warplanes, tanks, and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The body count, the volume of the sacrifice

It’s worth noting what Washington Post columnist Ishann Tharoor had to say about Victory Day and the Soviet Union’s role in World War II.

The journalist argues that, unfairly or not, the current tensions obscure the scale of what is being celebrated: from 1941 onwards, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the Nazi war machine and played perhaps the most important role in the defeat of Hitler by the Allies.

By one calculation, for every American soldier killed fighting the Germans, 80 Soviet soldiers died doing the same.

According to Tharoor, “It is clear that the beginning of the war was shaped by a Nazi-Soviet pact to divide the land between its borders; Then Hitler turned against the USSR”.

The Red Army was “the prime mover of the destruction of Nazism,” writes British historian and journalist Max Hastings in “Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945”.

The Soviet Union paid the heaviest price: although the figures are not exact, it is estimated that 27 million Soviet citizens died during World War II, including about 11 million soldiers.

At the same time, the Germans suffered three-quarters of their losses during the war fighting the Red Army.

“It was extremely fortunate for the Western Allies that the Russians, and not themselves, paid almost the entire ‘butcher’s bill’ for [defeating Nazi Germany], accepting 95 percent of the military casualties of the three major powers of the Grand Alliance,” Hastings writes.

The price is always higher when the war is on one’s own territory

According to Russia Beyond, Nazi Germany managed to attract human and material resources from almost all of Europe to fight the Soviet Union.

Italian, Romanian, Hungarian and Finnish troops, as well as military contingents from Spain, Slovakia and Croatia and volunteers from occupied France, Benelux and Scandinavian countries, fought alongside the Wehrmacht against the Red Army.

Several times during the war, the USSR was on the brink of military disaster.

By the autumn of 1941, the Germans were at the gates of Moscow, and by the summer of 1942 they were on the verge of almost completely depriving the country of the “lifeblood of war” – oil.

It was only after the triumph of the “Battle of Stalingrad” that the Soviet Union could breathe easier.

However, it still had to endure another two and a half years of bloody war.

Who won the war in Europe?

France 24 reminds us that shortly after the end of the European fighting, in May 1945, a poll carried out by the French research group Ifop concluded that 57% of French people considered that Moscow had contributed more to the war effort, compared to only 20% that the United States pointed out.

In the following decades, the Hollywood propaganda machine took the conflict to US participation, starting with the Pacific campaign and then into Italy and Normandy.

It must be admitted that the Second World War was decided by the Red Army, given the priority of the European campaign.

The retelling of Victory Day reflects Putin’s and modern Russia’s projection of power over post-Soviet spaces.

Even with the correct critique of Stalin’s nefarious legacy and the need to differentiate between Russian domestic policy and its confrontation with NATO, we must ensure intellectual honesty and historical correctness.

Without the efforts of the people of the former Soviet Union, there would have been no defeat of Nazi-fascism.

The original article here.