The truth and falsification of history of World War II

On May 9 we will be remembering those who fell in battles, were tortured to death in captivity and concentration camps, or died of hunger and the toils of war.

The Victory Day in the Great Patriotic war against the Nazis means a lot for the peoples who were on the verge of annihilation. At the cost of terrible sacrifices, the Soviet Union made a decisive contribution to defeating Nazi Germany and, jointly with the Allies, liberated Europe from the fascist plague. The victory laid the foundation for the post-war world order based on collective security and state-to-state cooperation and paved the way to creating the UN.

But there are some who loathe this celebration. There is an unprecedented campaign to politicise and rewrite history for the sake of momentary political benefit. These efforts have a pronounced anti-Russian theme and have become an integral component of the so-called policy of containment of our country. The attempts to distort the events of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War, to revise the outcomes and belittle the role of the vanquishers of fascism are the most disrespectful of all.

Detractors seek to diminish the role of the Soviet Union in World War II and portray it, if not as the main culprit of the war, then at least as an aggressor, along with Nazi Germany, and spread the thesis about “equal responsibility.” They cynically equate Nazi occupation (which claimed millions of lives), and the crimes committed by Germany’s collaborationists with the liberating mission of the Red Army. Monuments are erected in some countries in honour of Nazi henchmen. At the same time, monuments to liberator soldiers and the graves of fallen soldiers are desecrated and destroyed in a number of European states.

As it is well known, the Nuremberg Tribunal, whose rulings became an integral part of international law, clearly identified who was on the side of good and who was on the side of evil. In the first case, it was the Soviet Union, which sacrificed millions of lives for the Victory, as well as other Allied nations. In the second case, it was the Third Reich, the Axis countries and their minions, including in the occupied territories.

However, false interpretations of history are being pushed through by some countries to divide peoples. Young people are being told that the main credit in victory over Nazism and liberation of Europe goes not to the Soviet troops, but to the West due to the landing in Normandy, which took place less than a year before Nazism was defeated.

The contribution of all the Allies to the common Victory in that war is held sacred, but no matter how hard the falsifiers of history try, it was the peoples of the Soviet Union who broke the backbone of the Third Reich.

Today, distorting the past, some politicians and propagandists want to make the public doubt the fair nature of the world order that was approved in the UN Charter following World War II. They adopted a policy seeking to undermine the existing international legal system and to replace it with a certain “rule-based order”, based on the principle of “who is stronger is right”.

May 9 is a good occasion to recall that the Allies referred to themselves as the United Nations in 1945. They stood shoulder to shoulder during the war, conducted Arctic convoys and fraternised on the Elbe. French pilots in the Normandie-Neman fighter regiment fought the enemy on the Soviet-German front. Awareness of the common threat in the face of the inhuman ideology of National Socialism had helped the states with different political and socioeconomic models to overcome differences. The belief that the defeat of Nazi Germany will mark the triumph of justice was the unifying factor.

Editors Note: The opinions expressed in this publication as OpEd's are those of the independent authors, as reputed voices in their fields. However, such writing does not purport to reflect the alignment or views of The Edition's newsroom nor that of it's Editorial Board.