War in our time

Today’s Victory in Europe Day marks the 80^th anniversary of the unconditional surrender of Nazi troops in Europe.

The surrender entered into force at 23:01 on 8 May. Because the time in Moscow was an hour later, the Russians celebrate victory on 9 May.

This also gives them the chance to emphasise the difference between their own war effort and that of the Western Allies. The difference is indeed huge, but not in the way the Russians mean.

Even Stalin himself acknowledged that the Soviet Union would have lost the war but for the Allies’ help. Yet that’s not what the post-war generations were taught in Russia. The Allies were at best assigned a minor role in the hostilities, if any. And Putin still says that the Soviet Union stood alone.

Ask Russians when the Soviet Union entered the war, and most of them – in my day, practically all – will say 22 June, 1941, the day when the Nazis attacked the Soviets. Such people merely regurgitate the line fed to them by cradle-to-grave propaganda.

In the West, the start of the Second World War fell on 1 September, 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland. A day later, England and France honoured their treaty obligations by declaring war on Germany.

Some historians consider that date arbitrary. They nominate other, earlier events to act as catalysts and real starts of the Second World War. The 1938 surrender at Munich gets quite a few votes, as do the Anschluss, the occupation of Czechoslovakia, Italy’s assault on Ethiopia (Abyssinia, as it then was) or Japan’s foray into Manchuria.

Yet 1 September, 1939, still leads by a wide margin in scholarly opinion. My own preference is 24 August, 1939, when the foreign ministers of Germany and the USSR, Ribbentrop and Molotov, signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact, with Stalin flashing an avuncular smile in the background.

The secret protocol of the Pact, the existence of which the Soviets continued to deny for decades, divided Europe between the two totalitarian predators. That was, in my view, when the war really started, not just when it became inevitable.

The Germans moved into Poland a week later, on 1 September, to claim their share of the spoils. A deal is a deal, agreed Stalin, and on 17 September Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east, putting an end to the country’s stubborn resistance.

Stalin started as he meant to go on. The Soviets promptly occupied the three Baltic republics and Bessarabia, which had been mentioned in the secret protocol, and even Bukovina, which hadn’t been. Yet Hitler just shrugged: what’s another province more or less. Let Stalin have his fun.

Finland was also identified in the Pact as Stalin’s rightful possession, and on 30 November, 1939, the Soviets launched a massive assault to claim ownership. The vastly outnumbered Finns, however, presaged today’s Ukrainians by beating the Soviets to a standstill, managing to preserve their independence and 89 per cent of their territory.

Now, the Soviets captured the Baltics, Bessarabia and Bukovina without a shot. But they lost 737 KIA in Poland and some 120,000 in Finland (estimates vary from 53,000 to 200,000, but that kind of arithmetic never bothered Russian or Soviet leaders).

At the same time, 17,269 German soldiers were killed in 1939, when the Second World War started with that assault on Poland. So which war were the Soviet soldiers killed in, before 22 June, 1941? The same one, of course. This means the Soviets entered the war in August, 1939, unofficially, and in September, 1939, officially.

Why are they so coy about that date? Simple. They don’t want to acknowledge the obvious fact that the Soviet Union entered the war as an ally to Hitler and hence enemy to the West, including Britain.

The Soviets kept their end of the bargain by more than just knifing Poland in the back. According to the terms of the Pact, they were shipping trainloads after trainloads of raw materials to Germany, including 16 per cent of her crude oil.

When, due to the heroism of the RAF Fighter Command, the Battle of Britain kept raging on longer than expected and the Luftwaffe was running out of bombs, the Soviets happily made up the deficit. Many Britons were killed by bombs bearing Soviet markings.

Yet the two totalitarian allies both regarded their cooperation as an ad hoc marriage of convenience. Both were planning to strike against their temporary friend, making the conquest of Europe their own undivided achievement.

That Stalin was planning to attack Germany, ideally if the Nazis landed in Britain and got bogged down in a desperate fight, is an historical fact. Historians agree that Hitler beat Stalin to the punch on 22 June, 1941, but they aren’t sure by how much. Some say a month, some a week, and the Russian historian Mark Solonin makes a good argument in favour of just a single day.

One way or another, beat Stalin to the punch Hitler did, which instantly created an unnatural, if necessary, alliance between Stalin and the Western powers he cordially wished to destroy. After VE Day things got back to normal, and a confrontation between Russia and the West returned.

Yet it never came down to a shooting war because for the next several decades international law was more or less respected – not everywhere and not at all times, but at least the two hostile camps never came to nuclear blows. The reason is evident.

Neither individuals nor nations respect the law only out of the goodness of their hearts. They do so because of effective enforcement.

Acting as the enforcer of post-war international law was the USA, the only country that came out of the war stronger than she had been going in. Specifically, the Soviet nuclear gun stayed in its holster because America’s gun was at least as big, and she was as ready to brandish it.

That situation has changed. The US manifestly no longer has either the means to police the world nor indeed the wish to do so. No one else has stepped up to assume that role, and we can confidently assume that no one else will.

That’s why the world is in greater danger of another world war than it has been for 80 years. Any number of conflicts around the globe can potentially turn into a lethal vortex sucking the whole world in.

Russia’s aggression against the Ukraine is continuing, and Putin’s cabal makes no secret that it sees the Ukraine not as the final destination but as a stopover along the way. India and Pakistan, nuclear powers both, are about to start a major war. Iran either already has a nuclear bomb or will acquire one shortly, and you know whom the ayatollahs will drop it on. China may attack Taiwan at any moment, dislodging the US from her perch of Pacific dominance.

The West clings to its customary position of supine appeasement and, in the absence of American support, won’t stop doing so until directly attacked, if then. In our attempt to get fat on the mythical peace dividend, we have stripped our military down to the bone.

Should push come to shove this time, things will be disintegrating much faster than in 1939. What used to take months may now take days, perhaps even hours. And yet Europe again lies bare, open to a possible enemy thrust.

Today we celebrate the heroism of the soldiers who died to create a peace that lasted for so long. Such a prolonged period without a major war was an aberration in European history, for war is a natural state of man, a direct result of original sin.

As victory drums roll and bugles toot, we should all doff our hats in memory of those fallen. But while we commemorate the end of one monstrous war, we should prepare for the next one. Because if we don’t, it’ll be sure to come.

Si vis pacem, para bellum, as the Romans used to say. If you want peace, prepare for war.

Happy VE Day!