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By: George Friedman
We are a few
weeks away from the anniversary of Victory Day, which marks the Soviet
Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany. The annual parade in Moscow boasts
pictures of famous Soviet and Russian leaders and heroes standing atop
the Kremlin, watching all the new military weapons roll by. For U.S.
intelligence, it’s like Christmas Day, as analysts are gifted a treasure
trove of new military hardware to parse and analyze. But for anyone old
enough to remember World War II, it’s a recollection of despair. A
Russian associate once told me that those who died early and quickly
were the war’s only victors. He took pleasure in the fact that Russia,
whose chances of survival were dismissed by much of the world, handed to
the Germans everything they had dealt out and more.
My father, who
was born in Hungary, fought in World War II in his own way. Hungary
allied with Germany and sent troops to fight Russia. A forced laborer,
my father was at Voronezh north of Stalingrad, where the Hungarians and
other allies were deployed. From his point of view, the Russians and the
Germans were the same in that they were to be evaded at all costs.
The war began
with a treaty between Germany and Russia. Together they agreed to invade
Poland, which they did comfortably, with Russia taking the eastern
portion. For Germany, the treaty with Russia vastly increased the
chances of defeating Poland. Germany was unsure about it; it would be
their first major campaign, and Berlin didn’t know how well Poland or
its own army, for that matter, would fight. A German attack from the
west and a Russian attack from the east simplified the matter. In any
case, Germany saw Poland as the first step in a far more ambitious
campaign. It wanted Europe, and Europe included Russia. Berlin intended
to turn on Russia in Poland and drive toward Moscow to subdue a country
of vast resources. The ensuing war lasted until 1945. The truth is we
will never know how many died, only that a generation’s representatives
stood in front of the Kremlin when the first parade was held.
To be sure,
Russians regard the war as a brutal obscenity, but they also regard it
as sacred. The dead might not be saints, but, in Russians’ eyes, they
are worthy of the name. The viciousness of the Stalin regime is no
secret, yet many in Russia still regard the war as a moment of test and
triumph, a time that proved its worth on a global stage. Russians
regarded their country as a superpower for a generation – not just
because it had nuclear weapons but because it had the Red Army, which
defeated Hitler and conquered much of Europe. Poles, Czechs, Hungarians,
Romanians and half of all Germans bent their knees to Russia. It was
not conquest by invasion, according to the Russians, but the consequence
of self-defense.
Many Russians saw
the collapse of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to become Western.
To others, it was an embarrassment. Russia was not in their eyes the
land of the heroes of World War II but a land of weakness. It had proved
wanting. The land of Gen. Georgy Zhukov, the great commander of World
War II, was now in the hands of shifty oligarchs.
The idea that the
Russians had done this to themselves through corruption and weakness
was as unbearable as such a fate might be to other countries. It was
even worse since Russia had defeated Hitler and Napoleon. Russians saved
Moscow because of the great distance they put between their capital and
Europe. Now that distance was gone. They saw the United States as the
dominant force in Ukraine, which now bordered Russia. For many Russians,
it was nothing less than a national catastrophe.
There are those
who blame their former ally and fellow superpower in the U.S. for the
fall of the Soviet Union. To them, the idea that the heroes of World War
II lost their country was less palatable than the idea that it had been
torn down by America – an enemy they saw as worthy of the crime. The
presence of the U.S. in Poland, a country they had once conquered and
ruled, is for Russia not just a cruel trick of history but a carefully
laid out American plot.
I think about
cultural traditions like these as the Ukraine war drags on. I will not
lay out the United States' defense, but I invite you to consider the
nightmare Russia went through from 1945 and how many of the places of
battle and war are still spoken of with pride and bitterness by Russians
today. I am an American, and I know where Fulda Gap was, but in facing a
nation that is actually an enemy, it is useful to understand the
nightmares and compare them to ours. |