The Great Patriotic War
When I teach the second semester of world civ, I barely make it to World War II, my father's war. I always make sure I have time to tell the students that it was the Soviet peoples who broke the back of the Nazi war machine. Most are quite surprised. Last time I showed them the first fifteen minutes of "Enemy at the Gates" - it gives them a graphic taste of the fighting and what it would take for the Soviets to defeat this enemy. I particularly like Bob Hoskin's scene as Nikita Khruschev taking command.
Hence, last night when I read this post over on Catanima I felt compelled to try to answer Jack's question about why the Russian losses where so huge - perhaps as many as 20-25 million human beings. I was still sick, and tired, but I think my comment made sense.
Then this morning, when I am doing my morning reading while my coffee brews, almost the first paragraph I read (in Tony Judt's Postwar) is this about 1945:
The Red Army marched on foot and hauled its weapons and supplies on carts powered by draught animals; its soldiers were granted no leave and, if they hesitated, no quarter; 157,593 of them had been executed for 'cowardice' in 1941
and 1942 alone. But after a halting start, the USSR had out-produced and out-fought the Nazi colossus, ripping the heart from the magnificent German military machine .... But the Soviet victory had been bought at a uniquely high price. Of all the victors in World War Two - indeed of all the participant countries, victors and vanquished alike - the USSR was the only one to suffer permanent economic damage.
Russians called the war 'The Great Patriotic War' - 'The Patriotic War' in Russian means the war against Napoleon in 1812. Perhaps the Soviet army and peoples were our Spartans.
Labels: history, Soviet Empire, World War Two
posted by Clemens @ 11:48 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I usually think of the Brits as WWII's Spartans, what with their standing alone against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and militaristic Japan for a year or two while Stalin fancied himself to be on Hitler's side, swallowing first part of Poland, then the Baltic states, then turning on Finland.
It is true that the story of the Eastern front is ignored in the West, and that is a real shame. My Russian family once asked me if we Americans really imagine ourselves to have won the war on our lonesome. Conversely, they're fairly ignorant of what Americans had to deal with. They like to think that we abandoned them to be wiped out by the Germans, and never rockon on the fact that they only had one front to fight on (albeit a long one). We had at least three major theatres (African, Atlantic, Pacific), and at times we fought in all three theatres simultaneously.
Yes, Stalin was convinced that the British and the Americans were willing to wait for the German army to bleed itself white against the Red Army and then step in to pick up the pieces - while the USSR was too weak from its war effort to do anything about it. Stalin was a parnoid lunatic but at the time from where he stood I might have agreed with him. Few historians now though believe that that was the case.
And you are right. The Russians were told nothing about aid from the allies, esp. American lend-lease, mostly food and trucks, sent to the USSR by the US. A great many sailors, mostly British merchant marine, died trying to get this stuff across the Baltic to the Russians. Many Russians must have dined on Allied food delivered in Ford motor trucks without ever realizing the source of it all.
Thanks for your interest in this. I am not an expert and am writing from memory, so I may have the facts a bit wrong, but you and your wife might like to watch the Russian made documentary "Blood on the Snow." Carmen watched it with me and was quite impressed. It was made I believe shortly after the demise of the USSR and made use of previously unseen films and info. The interviews with survirors were very moving and the facts seemed unclouded with obvious propaganda.
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