Why the west likes neither Molotov, nor Ribbentrop 2 страница
April 7 — Bolivia;
September 9 — Iran;
October 13 — Italy (the government of Marshal Badoglio)
November 29 — Columbia.
Did Hitler really intend to crush and occupy all these countries? Would he have had enough soldiers to station troops in all the occupied countries? On top of that, Germany was not prepared for the war that would last 6 years against these and other states, such as the states that entered the war in 1944: Liberia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and even the little proud state of San-Marino. In 1945 still more countries opposed Germany, including Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Finland. The last state that entered the war on March 27, 1945 was Argentina.
The Western historians do not seem to understand the political frame-work, origin and development of Nazism, as well as the motives of Hitler’s “strange decisions”. The “heretical” idea that Hitler never wanted to rule the world explains everything. The German leader wanted to become an equal partner of the Anglo-Saxon world and did not intend to fight against it. But it is not easy to be admitted to the exclusive club of the world leading powers. “The entrance ticket” was by abolishing the USSR (Russia).
Having started an involuntary war against England and France, Hitler tried to gain that ticket on June 22, 1941…
March 1939 was a hot month for diplomats of all the countries! It saw telephones ringing off the hook, typewriters with jammed keys, packages of pills for insomnia and headache thrown into paper trays. The carefully designed, sophisticated plan of creating the Third Reich to be used as an instrument for crushing the Soviet Russia was going up in smoke. The new
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reality might poison the mind of anyone who knew what it should be like. In the center of Europe was prosperous Germany that had collected all the lands of the German Kaiser’s empire with the best lands of the Habsburgs’ empire. The Western leaders had to solve the problem of Hitler running wild. Now that he had twisted the West round his little finger by “non-annexing” Ukraine, there were only two alternatives: 1) to hold negotiations for changing the old scenario on Hitler’s conditions; 2) to bring pressure on the hard-bitten German fuehrer to make him return to the old scenario. The West chose the second alternative.
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It was not because the West had suddenly regained confidence. The Western diplomats knew well enough something that was a sore point for the German leader: the might of the German Reich was phony. Germany with her inflated military budget could not exist without external resources and financing. For Hitler, war was the only solution of the country’s economic problems. Here was the situation that could let the leaders of the Western democracies take a sunshine view of things.
The dog they have reared is loose and snarling like a hunted beast at bay. It is bad, but one must suffer fools gladly. The dog will get hungry with no one to feed it. What will it do then? It will start looking for food. If the master takes a rifle or a big stick and stands at the doorway to defend his locked house, the hungry beast will not dare to attack him. Not to die of famine the hungry dog will have to tear someone else to pieces…
How should Hitler act, “running wild”? Would he “bite” England and France for having “nourished” him? Not likely! Germany is not prepared for war against England and France, because such war will not be waged only on land, and, as is known, the German naval forces could not be compared in the same breath with either the British Navy or the French Navy, to say nothing of the combined naval units of these countries. How could Hitler resolve to fight the powers that have “made” him? Would it be serious to get to grips with gigantic colonial empires, each enjoying the full support of the “neutral” United States that would never let anyone raise a finger against Britain. The British and French colonies, as well as the Commonwealth countries, such as Canada, South Africa and Australia, were spread about the whole world, and it was clear as daylight that Germany was unable by any stretch of imagination to grasp all the sea routes!
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This fact gives rise to certain conclusions. The scenario of the First World War deeply affected the minds of the then European politicians and generals. The idea up in the air was that in case of warfare the German economy would be ruined by the British naval blockade. Land communica-tion from the East would not save Germany, because its neighbors, Poland and Romania, were the true allies of England and France. These countries had not been ceded to Hitler yet. As Hitler does not control Romania’s oil deposits he has no guaranteed sources of oil supplies! Consequently, Hit-ler cannot go to war, because Germany will soon run out of fuel, without which modern war is impossible. Thus, the leaders of England and France felt optimistic, because there were on firm ground of reality. They only had to make it clear to Hitler, in distinct terms, that he had no other way but follow the old scenario.
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It should be borne in mind that in the period between March and September 1939, when World War II broke out, the diplomatic ma-neuvers of the West were not intended to prevent the war. The Westapplied the carrot and stick approach to make Germany attack the USSR. They had to bring the German fuehrer down to earth, because success had turned his head. It was necessary to tell him firmly that, given the dependent economy of Germany, all of her political initiatives would fail without the approval from London and Paris. That was the end of Hitler’s triumphant march.
“The period of success is over” — that was the key note that the West-ern diplomats tried to bring home to Hitler. They suggested that Germany would be in for it, unless it obeyed the master. If the German dog attacked the master, he would ensure a war against the whole world, like in the First World War — with only a slim chance of winning. The only alternative was to dust off “the old friendship”.
Thus, the West takes a tough new police toward Germany. The leaders of England and France demonstrate their recalcitrance denouncing Hitler’s aggressive nature. The allies of London and Paris assume a proud air and become recalcitrant, too. The proudest of all are the Polish leaders. So far Poland had kept up friendly and cordial relations with Hitler’s Germany, because they had the same collective “creator” — England, France and the USA. Besides, Poland and Germany had the same mode of governance — dictatorship. They had other things in common, as well, for example, anti-Semitism. But this question will be discussed a little further…
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To follow up the “navel cord” of Poland that came into the world1 after the first global war one has to see her date of birth: November 11, 1918. It was then that Poland was declared an independent state.
History is a peculiar discipline in the sense that dates play a major role in it. Teachers cram their heads with dates and make students memorize them. But it so happens that no one ever compares dates, although comparison may reveal the tenor of the current events. For instance, one may read to learn when Poland emerged on the political map, but the average reader never correlates the date with the event of concluding Armistice between Germany and the Allies in the Compiиgne forest. This armistice looked very much like an uncommitted surrender!2
Suffice it only to remember the thumpers that Max von Baden had to tell about the German Kaiser’s abdication for the sake of signing this armistice. One should also recall all that muck of mean treachery associated with the 1918 November Revolution in Germany and think of the Polish “freedom fighters” who declared the independence of Poland on that same day, neither later, nor earlier. Who told them that Germany would be no more, because her leaders had betrayed both their Kaiser and the whole nation? Who could predict the further developments? Wasn’t it more sensible to wait and see what was going to happen next? They might just as well declare the inde-pendence of Poland two days or three days later, on the 14th of November (because 13 is the devil’s dozen). But the Poles were anxious to establish their state on that very day!
It means that they had been warned and waiting for the occasion, because they knew that the armistice was not just a break in the hostilities, but the end of the war. Who knew the nuts and bolts of this policy was busy per-sisting with such policies. The question “who arranged the Russian and the German revolutions” was already answered in the previous chapters of this book. The Polish “patriots” derived their information from the intelligence services of the Allies. As for their politics, one would find the painfully fa-
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1795 saw the so called third division of Poland resulting from an agreement between Prussia, Austro-Hungary and Russia. Thus, Poland was territorially split between the participants to the treaty. The Russian Empire acquired part of the Baltic territories, West Byelorussia and central regions of Poland. It was only after World War I that an independent Polish state appeared on the European map.
The magic of figures: Germany signed a document of her own defeat in the First World War on the 11th day of the 11th month at 11 o’clock. Is this pure coincidence?
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miliar portrait of these patriots: they were all Social Democrats, members of the Party of Polish Socialists (PPS)…
The founder of the modern Polish state was the PPS leader Jуzef Pil-sudski. Another “freedom fighter”, Viktor Chernov, the leader of the Russian Social Revolutionary Party, writes in his memoirs that Pilsudski was a clairvoyant and could foretell the future. It sounds fantastic, but the memoir writer means what he says. He writes that on the eve of the First World War, about half a year before its outbreak, when no one could know about it, Pilsudski gave a talk, making a surprisingly ac-curate prediction. He predicted a military conflict before long, as well as its participants, and described in detail the whole course of events: “Pilsudski put the question squarely about the winners and the losers in the war. He said: “Austria and Germany will beat Russia, but in their turn will be beaten by the English and the French (and, possibly, by the Americans, too). East Europe will suffer defeat from Central Europe that will be defeated by Western Europe. This shows the Poles their line of operations”1. This is no prediction. This is knowledge, the source being the British intelligence service. That is why Pilsudski declares the inde-pendence of Poland on THAT day!”
The next day after Poland was declared an independent state, it was recognized by England, France and the USA. The process of rebuilding the country was pretty heady. Before half a year passed, the Poles began to frame “the Great Poland” of the 16th century. This necessitated cutting off a good piece of the Russian territory, and there were more than enough advisers and sponsors. The Americans undertook providing military supplies. Thus, the Polish army got all the necessary outfit and allowance. Over six months in 1919 the USA provided Poland with 260 thousand tons of provisions worth 51 million dollars, a king’s ransom at the time. The list could go on! Still more imposing were the supplies of ammunition. In the spring of 1920 England, France and the USA provided Poland with 1,494 pieces of ord-nance, 2,800 machine guns, 385.5 thousand rifles, 42 thousand revolvers, about 700 planes, 200 armored vehicles, 800 trucks, 576 million cartridges, 4.5 thousand carts, 3 million uniforms, 4 million pairs of boots, communica-tion equipment and medicines2.
Chernov, V. M. Before the storm. Memoirs. Minsk, 2004. P. 294–295.
The civil war and intervention in the USSR. Encyclopedia. M., 1987. P. 556–557.
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An officer holding a kind of “investigatory experiment” may contrast these figures with the amounts of supplies England, France and the USA delivered to the Russian White Guard. It becomes quite clear that the West can always find resources to munition an army fighting against Russia, apart from an army fighting for Russia. This situation has not changed since…
No wonder, at the outset the Poles pushed back the Red Army, occupying a considerable part of Ukraine and Belorussia. But, being not competent enough, they were unable to take advantage of their modern ammunition. That was why their Kosciuszko squadron that fought Budenny’s army was formed from American pilots commanded by an American, Colonel Fauntle-roy. France made her contribution to building the independent Polish state in July 1919. Her territory was used as a base to form a 70 thousand-strong army that consisted of ethnic Poles from the American army or from war prisoners of the Austrian and German armies1.
On August 1919 the Poles seized the city of Minsk. But this was, so to say, “a frontier incident”. The date of the official outbreak of the Polish-Soviet war was April 25, 1920, marked by an advance of the Polish troops towards Kiev. The aggression was followed by pogroms of Jews and executions. Thousands of Jews were killed in the massacres near Rovno and Tetievo. Mass murders of the civilians took place in a number of villages: Ivanovtsi, Kucha, Sobachi, Yablonuvka, Novaya Grebla, Melnichi, Kirillovka. The Ukrainian papers of the day are full of field reports from where the Polish soldier booted in American boots set foot: “On May 4 they brought to Cherkassi 290 casu-alties from the settlements occupied by the Poles, — one of the reporters writes, — women and children. The children vary from 1 to 2 years old. All the wounds are inflicted by cold steel”.
Nowadays this is called ethnic cleansing. The Poles called it “liberation from bolshevism”…
On May 7, 1921 the capital of Ukraine was “liberated”2. Then the Red Army struck a powerful blow, and the aggressor rolled back. The retreat-ing Polish army passed, like whirlwind, burning and ravaging the Jewish
The commander-in-chief was General Haller, and his soldiers were called “hallerchiks”.
Meltyukhov, M. I. The Soviet-Polish wars. The political and military oppositionin 1918–1939. M., 2001. P. 38.
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settlements: Pinsk, Luninets, Vasilevichi, Gorodeya, Koydanovo, Nesvizh, Pesochnoye, Mir, Uzda, Stolbtsi, Urechye. This is not the whole list of Belo-russian pogroms made by fighters for “Great Poland”. The Jewish Regional Committee reported 350 thousand war-battered Jews (120 thousand chil-dren and 80 thousand grown-ups), at the least, during the Polish retreat from Belorussia in the summer of 19201.
The hostilities in the Soviet-Polish War (more adequately: the Russian-Polish War) gradually moved to the walls of Warsaw that would have been captured by the Red Army but for the Entente and some errors on the part of the Red Army commandment. As a consequence, they concluded the Riga Peace Treaty, according to which Poland came into possession of West Belorussia and West Ukraine. Compared to the wants of Warsaw, the result achieved by the Poles can hardly be called successful. Unlike “Great Poland”, the actually great Soviet Union would appear on the map quite soon. Oddly enough, the Riga Peace Treaty is still considered Russia’s diplomatic failure…
But the Poles kept on their warlike attitude. After their setback in the East they transferred their pirate raids to the West. In October 1920 they outraged the Suvalk Treaty and annexed Vilno (Vilnius) and the Vilno district from the newly-independent (like Poland) Lithuania. Seven months later Poland began an intervention against Germany that was in a state of anar-chy and chaos, the aim being to seize High Silesia abundant in coal mines and industrial enterprises. This aggression has an interesting prehistory. The Versailles Treaty envisaged a peaceful solution to the German-Polish territorial dispute — by referendum. Poland made things hum in the ethnic Polish milieu and even arranged rebellions trying to place Germany and the world community before an accomplished fact — the seizure of this region by Poland. But the putsch was put down by the German police and volunteers, and the referendum did take place on March 20, 1921. The “yes” part that voted for annexation to Germany turned out to be twice as many.
But the results of voting do not signify, when it comes to coal mines and steel works. So, losing the plebiscite, Poland raised a revolt in Silesia, which was supported by an intervention of the Polish Army on May 3, 1921. England, France and the USA took the side of Poland and informed the Weimar government that Germany must not interfere. They announced that in case of the Reichswehr’s interference the Allies would support Poland.
The State Archive of the Russian Federation. F. 1318. Op. 24. D. 4. L. 4.
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That was why the German Army was sitting tight, while German volunteers (“Freikorps”) stood up to the Polish aggression. In the end, the Germans retreated and part of the province was captured. In October 1921 the Allies held a conference, ignoring the results of the referendum, and legalized the aggression by turning over 30 % of High Silesia to Poland. It is no wonder that this 30 % included 95 % of the coal mines of that land…1
There is one chapter in the history of Poland concerning the attitude of the Poles to the prisoners of war. These were soldiers of the Red Army taken captive during the Soviet-Polish war. The exact number is unknown, but according to the Polish sources, about 100 thousand Red Army servicemen were captured, and part of them (16–18 thousand) died in prison. According to the Soviet and Russian sources, these are conservative estimates: out of 157 thousand captive Red Army soldiers 60 thousand died from diseases, starvation and bad conditions2. Some other experts give still higher figures.
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