Norman Davies: How we didn't win the war . . . but the Russians did
“History will be kind to me,” predicted Winston Churchill, “because I intend to write it.” And so it proved. Churchill’s The Second World War, which began to appear in 1948, largely set the agenda for all subsequent presentations of the war years, especially in western countries: Britain stands in the centre of the conflict and her survival paves the way for victory.
As Churchill has it, Britain’s enemies, the axis powers, provide the sole authors of aggression, of criminal conduct and of undefined “evil”. The tide turns at El Alamein. Britain’s principal allies, the US and the USSR, which Churchill brought together in the grand coalition, provide the twin sources of military muscle that hunt down the fascist beast.
In Europe the allies of east and west co-operate, overcome their differences and triumph. The spectacular landings of the western armies in Normandy match the huge “Russian” successes on the eastern front. The Reich is crushed. Freedom and democracy prevail and “Europe is liberated”.
Unfortunately, the truth is more complex. The Russians, for example, are clear that the Red Army played the dominant role in the defeat of the Reich, demoting the Anglo-American war effort to secondary or tertiary importance. What is more, like the Americans, they insist that the “real war” began in 1941, relegating the events of 1939-41 to a mere prelude. For their part the Americans are most conscious of the competing demands of the two theatres of action in Europe and in the Pacific. They also emphasise the importance of the US as “the arsenal of democracy”.
Any attempt to revise established views provokes resistance, although I must admit to being surprised at the vehement opposition I encountered when challenging the Churchillian version. Other historians, such as Richard Overy, Robert Conquest and Anne Applebaum, have been peeling away the layers of myth for the past four decades, but still many people are unwilling to judge events on their own merit for fear of being accused of supporting “the forces of evil”.
Others recoil with incredulity from the notion that our patriotic opinions about 1939-45 may constitute something less than the whole truth. Both the British and the American public have long been told that “we won the war” and D-Day, in particular, has been built up as the decisive moment. The American D-Day Museum has been adopted as the national tribute to the war and Steven Spielberg, the director of Saving Private Ryan and co-producer of Flags of Our Fathers, which is just about to open, seems to have made it a mission to perpetuate Churchill’s myth.
After talking at Cambridge recently about the preponderance of the eastern front and the scale of the Red Army’s triumph, I was accosted by an angry young British historian. “Don’t you realise that we were pinning down 56 German divisions in France alone,” he said. “Without that the Red Army would have been heavily defeated.” What is less acknowledged is that without the Red Army pulverising 150 divisions, the allies would never have landed....
Read entire article at Times Online (UK)
As Churchill has it, Britain’s enemies, the axis powers, provide the sole authors of aggression, of criminal conduct and of undefined “evil”. The tide turns at El Alamein. Britain’s principal allies, the US and the USSR, which Churchill brought together in the grand coalition, provide the twin sources of military muscle that hunt down the fascist beast.
In Europe the allies of east and west co-operate, overcome their differences and triumph. The spectacular landings of the western armies in Normandy match the huge “Russian” successes on the eastern front. The Reich is crushed. Freedom and democracy prevail and “Europe is liberated”.
Unfortunately, the truth is more complex. The Russians, for example, are clear that the Red Army played the dominant role in the defeat of the Reich, demoting the Anglo-American war effort to secondary or tertiary importance. What is more, like the Americans, they insist that the “real war” began in 1941, relegating the events of 1939-41 to a mere prelude. For their part the Americans are most conscious of the competing demands of the two theatres of action in Europe and in the Pacific. They also emphasise the importance of the US as “the arsenal of democracy”.
Any attempt to revise established views provokes resistance, although I must admit to being surprised at the vehement opposition I encountered when challenging the Churchillian version. Other historians, such as Richard Overy, Robert Conquest and Anne Applebaum, have been peeling away the layers of myth for the past four decades, but still many people are unwilling to judge events on their own merit for fear of being accused of supporting “the forces of evil”.
Others recoil with incredulity from the notion that our patriotic opinions about 1939-45 may constitute something less than the whole truth. Both the British and the American public have long been told that “we won the war” and D-Day, in particular, has been built up as the decisive moment. The American D-Day Museum has been adopted as the national tribute to the war and Steven Spielberg, the director of Saving Private Ryan and co-producer of Flags of Our Fathers, which is just about to open, seems to have made it a mission to perpetuate Churchill’s myth.
After talking at Cambridge recently about the preponderance of the eastern front and the scale of the Red Army’s triumph, I was accosted by an angry young British historian. “Don’t you realise that we were pinning down 56 German divisions in France alone,” he said. “Without that the Red Army would have been heavily defeated.” What is less acknowledged is that without the Red Army pulverising 150 divisions, the allies would never have landed....