By Michael
Faulkner – August 30, 2009
The last
Letter from the UK (August 16th) looked back twenty years to 1989,
the year the Berlin Wall fell. Anyone
in Britain minimally informed about the history of the twentieth century knows
that seventy years ago, on September 1st 1939, Nazi Germany invaded
Poland and that Britain’s declaration of War on the 3rd of September
marked the start of the Second World War. That anniversary falls in a few days
time. But considered from a different perspective, or, more precisely, from the
standpoint of other nations involved in the war, September 3rd 1939 does not have the
same significance. For the Russians, what is still referred to as “the Great
Patriotic War” started on June 22nd 1941 when Germany launched
“Operation Barbarossa” against the Soviet Union. For the United States, World
War Two began on the December 7th 1941 – the “date that will
live in infamy” - when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. For the Chinese, September 1939 and June and December 1941
are unimportant. Japanese aggression started with the occupation of Manchuria
in 1931 and proceeded to the full scale invasion of China in 1937. So, marking
the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of war on September 3rd seems rather “Euro-centric”.
Also, if
accuracy is regarded as important to the study of history, it is worth pointing
out that strictly speaking the term “World War Two” is inaccurate. This may be
regarded as hair-splitting, but the war of 1914 – 1918 was not really a
world war at all. It was – apart from some minor side-shows – a
European war. Leaving aside the
still unresolved controversies about its origins and nature, the war was fought
almost entirely between European powers on European soil. The decisive entry of
the United States only occurred in 1918. Before 1939 it was referred to not as
a “world war”, but as the “Great War”. The Treaty of Versailles which was imposed on Germany by the Allies in
1919 (another anniversary this year!) after the war, gave rise to the
grievances exploited by the Nazis that led to war in Europe again twenty years
later.
Historians
have debated “the causes of the first world war” for nearly ninety years.
Unsurprisingly they have not agreed. From the probably mischief-making claims
of A.J.P. Taylor who argued that the war started because it was not possible to
change the railway timetables in Russia and Germany in time to prevent a
mobilization, to Left-leaning historians who have regarded the war as the outcome
of European inter-imperialist rivalries driving to a re-division of the world
amongst the main imperialist powers, the differing interpretations seem
irreconcilable. When all is
considered, the “imperialist war” thesis, which stresses the inexorable pace of
the arms race amongst the “Great Powers” from about 1890 and regards the
European situation immediately before 1914 as a tinder-box waiting for the
match to be thrown, is very persuasive.
But what of
“World War Two”? The war that started in September 1939 with Germany’s invasion
of Poland, remained for about seven months a very limited European war. Until
April 1940 it was referred to as “the phoney war.” Every effort had been made
by the British and French governments in 1938 and 1939 to avoid becoming
embroiled in a war with Hitler’s Germany, despite ample evidence that his
revisionist territorial ambitions far exceeded anything that could be justified
as “righting the wrongs” of the Versailles treaty. The balance of evidence overwhelmingly supports the
conclusion that the Chamberlain government in Britain (1937 – 1940) was
prepared to countenance the violation of treaties and to sacrifice the national
sovereignty of states of Eastern Europe to avoid war with Germany. From 1936
onwards British governments were pusillanimous in the face of increasingly
brazen acts of aggression by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Some critics (In
Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion. Leibovitz and Finkel. N.Y. 1997) have
even concluded that Chamberlain’s appeasement extended to active collusion with
Hitler in the belief that he would drive only eastward against the Soviet
Union.
It is clear
though, that appeasement didn’t really end with the British and French
declaration of war following the invasion of Poland. The British and French did
nothing of real worth to support Poland. It was still hoped that somehow the
war could be prevented from spreading and that some sort of settlement, which
would obviously be at Poland’s expense, could be found. Before the outbreak of
war the British government had made one assumption that was never questioned:
namely that the Soviet Union would remain firmly opposed to Germany. This was
to prove incorrect.
August 23rd 1939 (another anniversary!) took everyone by surprise: the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact was signed between Germany and the Soviet Union. It has been much written
about and is widely condemned as a
cynical act of treachery by Stalin who at one stroke demonstrated the
meaninglessness of Soviet claims to be a bulwark of anti-fascism and
anti-appeasement. The pact (together with its secret clauses carving up Poland
and allowing the Soviets to dominate the Baltic states) enabled Hitler to
launch the war against Poland that he might otherwise have hesitated to do had
he believed that he would face an armed Soviet-British-French alliance, and
thus a war on two fronts, which he - and particularly his generals, feared. Stalin was a hard-headed realist and he had concluded, with
good reason, by early 1939 that his efforts to achieve a firm military alliance
with the western powers which could have check-mated Hitler’s aggressive
intentions towards Eastern Europe, were getting nowhere. He suspected that the
British in particular were anxious to keep him onside without making any firm
commitments to act themselves in case of German aggression against Poland. He foresaw a situation in which the
Wehrmacht rolled eastwards while the British and French sat on their hands. They
wanted him to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. The hostility of the Poles
towards any Soviet presence on their soil convinced him that he had no option
but to conclude a pact with Germany which would enable him, so he believed, to
avoid a war for at least two years. The pact was a totally cynical “marriage of
convenience” on both sides. Whether there was any viable alternative for
Stalin, is another matter.
Stalin
almost certainly hoped that the war that started on September 1st would be a long drawn-out affair in which the Anglo-French would become
embroiled on the Western Front as they had in 1914 – 1918. The last thing
he wanted to see was a swift German victory in the West. But, this is what he
got. He was hoist on his own petard. The terms of the pact required him to become
almost an ally of Nazi Germany – and this is how he was regarded. When
the German blitzkrieg swept through Western Europe in 1940, the Soviet press
was compelled to praise each victory. When, in the Spring of 1941, evidence
accumulated of Hitler’s planned invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin chose to
believe that this was all black propaganda put out by Churchill to goad him
into a breach with Germany. Until the very moment of the German invasion on
June 22nd – and even beyond it – he refused to believe
that it was happening.
Until June
22nd the widening war was still limited largely to Western Europe.
It was not a world war. Even after the launching of Operation Barbarossa, the
war remained territorially a European war. Likewise, the war in Asia between
Japan and China, despite Japan’s formal adherence to the anti-Comintern Pact
and the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis in September 1940, remained a separate war.
The Asian
and European wars became transformed into a world war with the Japanese attack
on Peal harbour on December 7th 1941. Even this event did not
immediately bring about war between the United States and Germany and Italy.
Britain and the USA declared war on Japan, but Germany and the USA were still
not at war. It is likely, but not certain, that Roosevelt would have brought
the USA into the European war sooner or later, but it would have been against
fierce opposition from the Republican isolationists. Hitler and Mussolini (who
had only brought Italy into the European war on Germany’s side in July 1940
when it seemed that Britain was about to fall to the Luftwaffe) solved the
problem for him by declaring war on the United States. The Neutrality Act was
finished. Churchill and Stalin had signed the Anglo-Soviet alliance in July
1941. Now the USA was on board and
the balance was tipped decisively against the Axis powers. “Now, we are not alone” said Churchill,
who, despite the terrible setbacks of 1940 and 1941 had refused to
capitulate. From December 1941 to
1945 the war was global.
On
September 3rd a group of eminent historians will gather at the
Methodist Central Hall in London to debate the motion: “Churchill was more a
liability than an asset to the free world. Do we continue to lionise Churchill in order to overstate
Britain’s contribution to the Second World War?”
In
considering the motion the following thoughts come to mind. (a) It is not
necessary to lionise Churchill to recognise the importance of his leadership,
particularly in mobilising British popular resistance in the dark days of 1940, and (b) it is not necessary to lionise
Stalin or to excuse his tyranny to recognise that the Soviet Union made by far
the greatest contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany, and (c) it is not
necessary to lionise Roosevelt to recognise that without his decisive
leadership the full power of the United States may not have been thrown into
the balance to guarantee final victory over Nazi barbarism.
Oh yes,
finally, there is one anniversary that should not be overlooked.. On December
31st 1979 the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. They withdrew ten years
later – mission unaccomplished. 