When the Western front opened in June of 1944 it led to some
pretty huge battles, massive casualties and incredible stories.
And yet in the United States a narrative is perpetuated that
is simply not true. The Anglo-American forces did not defeat Nazi Germany. They
helped, but in June of 1944 they were already more or less defeated.
After Dunkirk there was little fighting on the continent at
least in terms of Allied offensives. They tried various schemes and invasions
but they all failed. The only real fighting was in the Pacific and in North Africa.
After winning the North African campaign the Allies pushed into Italy in the latter part of 1943.
The so-called Strategic Bombings began in 1942, but did not
really pick up until 1943.
The Allies actually accomplished very little during the
years extending from 1940-42. And things didn’t really pick up until 1943. And
even then it was only when the Nazis were basically defeated and in heavy
retreat that the Allies landed in Normandy and began to push West. The Germans
were out of fuel by the end of 1944 and the war was over.
In the meantime from 1941 on the largest conflict in world
history was taking place in the East. Some of the most titanic battles ever
fought by man occurred as the Soviets stopped the German advance and began driving
them back toward Central Europe. Stalin was right. Hitler had not understood
that Russia was not like other countries.
The Eastern Front was the setting for death on the
superlative scale. This was the place of massive troop movements, vicious
partisan fighting, death camps and executions. It was so bitter that even after
the war, millions more would die during expulsions and reprisals.
Even today Russians resent the Western claim to have
defeated the Nazis and saved Europe. The fighting in the West was but a shadow
compared to what happened in the East. That doesn’t mean that the fighting on
Omaha beach wasn’t intense and it doesn’t mean there weren’t horrible things
happening in the West.
Other than the landings the only real large-scale battle of any
consequence was The Bulge in December of 1944. Remember the Allies eventually crossed the
Rhine more or less unopposed while the fighting in the East raged on. After their failures in the fall, the spring 1945 crossings were (relatively speaking) a cake-walk. Again I don't mean to make light of the battles or the dead, but their scale is literally minuscule compared to what was happening in the East. While the Americans and British were losing hundreds and sometimes a few thousand in their Western Front battles during the spring of 1945, hundreds
of thousands were dying during the Battle of Berlin and it was the Soviets who
finally brought down the Nazi high command.
It is dark viewing but I cannot overstate my recommendation
of the movie Downfall (Der Untergang), which covers this period. It’s a
masterpiece.
Again it is not my intention to criticize American soldiers
who fought in World War II. My issue here is with the historians and the way
myths are created. The Soviets were in a very bad way in late 1941 and were
almost defeated. There can be no doubt that it took a joint effort to stop
Hitler, but in the American mind it was the United States with a little British
help that brought down the Third Reich. It’s simply not true. And this is
perpetuated by history books, movies, television and every year by the news
media.
It is dark reading but I recommend the book ‘Bloodlands: Europe
Between Hitler and Stalin’ by Timothy Snyder. The book begins before World War
II and deals with Stalin’s atrocities as well. It helps in understanding the
grittiness and darkness of the Eastern Front and also helps to understand some
of the issues that continued during The Cold War and continue to this day.
Patriotism in this case once again creates an
epistemological and ethical dilemma. Patriotism creates meta-narratives about
the country in question. For Americans, we’re the good guys, and we won the
war. This granted us the moral legitimacy and mandate to do what we've done
since 1945. And our actions post-1991 are also built on this narrative. To
question this is akin to questioning the Faith itself. It is intellectual and
moral treason.
The world is seen through an American lens. Our ideological
commitments at this point won’t allow us to take in the grander scope and even
for a moment consider that the United States isn’t always the key actor. It
also doesn’t allow for the messiness of the real world that sometimes (in fact
almost always) war is about bad guys fighting bad guys instead of a simple good vs.
evil scenario.
Also, Patriotism clouds judgments and disallows honest
discussion regarding strategic and tactical choices during the war. Patriotism
is self-justifying and seeks moral argument to vindicate actions even if they’re
not true. For example that we fought the war to stop the Holocaust….not true.
Or that we had to drop the Atomic bomb or else a million Americans would die in
the invasion of Japan…not true either. In fact it could be argued an invasion
wouldn’t have been necessary at all. The United States has a record of insisting on
unconditional surrender. This factor places American opponents in an impossible
situation and leaves almost no options. No leader will willingly acquiesce to
such terms and yet the Japanese were very close even before the dropping of the
bomb. Why did Truman do it? Well, we could have that discussion but it delves
into areas a Patriotic epistemology won’t venture.
Fallen man makes idols and worships power. This is nothing
new. But as Christians we should not go along with it or the myths it
consequently must create.