Simferopol – We do not think much about the fact that we are constantly participating in the living process of history. From the societal and intellectual perspective, we are a component and the characters of the historical process. We live in history. The famous song lyrics that “there is only a moment between the past and the future…” are genius, as they fixate the historical process of time going by and events unfolding around us. This is why history is seen as a constantly renewable matter, always new and unique. On the other hand, there is nothing new in this world, history repeats itself, maybe in a spiral, but almost exactly the same way. And we managed to make sure of this again…
“At 4 a.m., without declaring war…” these words said by Levitan on June 22, backed the entire Soviet nation into a dead end, as they wondered why Hitler had attacked the USSR, as they had been friends before: through armies, intelligence services, internal affairs, and not only parades and training, but in action, by dividing Poland, for example. However, this was the essence of the cynical lie told to the nations of the Soviet Union by Stalin’s regime. Everything was different in reality, it wasn’t unexpected, and war was declared, and even explained – but all this was hidden from the people.
In the spring and summer of 1941 Hitler’s hypocrisy was only a discovery for Stalin and Molotov. After the end of World War II the USSR did not issue Winston Churchill’s book on World War II for a long time, even though the author was given the Nobel Prize for Literature for it. Even now we cannot consider it a published book – In 1997, Fenix publishing house in Rostov-on-the-Don published only fragments of the six volumes of the English original, in a single tome, only notes, we can say.
This captivating read, Churchill’s factual diary, can restore the events of the days when Hitler had prepared and had attacked the USSR with documentary validity. Now, what is interesting is not that most wold politicians were aware of the exact day of the attack, and Churchill wrote back on June 15 to Roosevelt that Hitler would attack the USSR in about a week. On the night of June 22 he slept especially soundly, because he knew that in the morning he would be woken up and told that Hitler’s divisions had attacked the USSR, and the German aviation was bombing Soviet towns. This was exactly what he was told by his secretary in the morning, who was on duty that night, and he did not dare wake him up at 4 a.m. because he knew that Churchill had predicted it all.
Churchill had spent the entire Sunday preparing a speech and he spoke on British radio at 9 p.m. the very same day. Meanwhile Stalin said: “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and Sisters! The fighters of our arm and fleet! I address you, my friends!…” – but on July 1 (“Pravda,” July 3, 1941).
The entire official history of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ leads us to believe that Hitler’s attack had been ‘cunning and without explanation.’ However, could this be? Did Hitler did not even try to explain to the entire world the reasons for his decisions which, as everyone knew, influenced the fate of humanity in its entirety? Even in the 1940’s Hitler tried to present himself as a respectable politician to the entire world.
No, of course, Hitler explained his decision, only we were never told. And, as it turns out, Adolf Hitler did it the way Vladimir Putin does it now when he explains the annexation of Crimea and the intervention in Donbas, with the fact that the victim of the aggression is to blame, that they did not behave the way they were supposed to, which is why shelling, intervention and war serve as a lesson.
We know the events of 2014: Vladimir Putin has spoken about them many times – Ukraine is to blame for its wrongful policies in regard to Crimea, which is why the citizens decided to ‘reunite’ with Russia, and civil war is ongoing in Donbas because, again, Ukraine conducted wrongful internal policies in regard to Russian speakers.
The events of 1941, which clearly remind one of Putin’s justifications, we discover only now from Churchill’s book. The latter offers a letter German Minister of Foreign Affairs Ribbentrop sent to his ambassador in Moscow Schulenberg on June 21, which contained instructions on how to explain Hitler’s decision to start the war to Molotov after the attack.
Churchill writes:
This is how Hitler explained the start of the war: the USSR “has adopted a more and more anti-German foreign policy.” This is just like Putin accused of adopting anti-Russia policy. Crimean pro-Putin ‘expert’ Alexandr Formanchuk spoke about the existence of a special ‘anti-Russian project’ in Ukraine. This clears up another excuse: Russia’s policy is anti-fascist, meanwhile Ukrainian policies are allegedly “fascist.”
As we know, the USSR government in June 1941 ordered the Soviet army not to “provoke” Hitler in any way not to evoke aggression. This did not help. What is more, the entire appeasement policy fell through because the aggressor never wants peace, as they are the aggressor. About the same way in march of 2014, the temporary government in Ukraine tried not to provoke Putin in Crimea. This did not help either.
Deputy head of the President’s Administration Valery Chaly recently said something similar: “Our goal is to avoid full-scale war in central Europe. Landing a blow (to the Russian military equipment in Donbas – ed.) is starting a war with the involvement of aviation, you know that if escalation continues, it will be a totally different story.”
Crimean journalist Ruslan Uhosh writes: “It turns out that rebuking an aggressor who invaded your territory is ‘starting a war’! The fact that armed invasion happened is not considered war? Only the counteraction? Which is why we should allow the enemy to take all the territory, not to ‘start a war,’ right? It seems the President’s Administration lives in a distorted dimension. And they have no idea that war has already started and is going on full-force. So far they pretend nothing is happening…”
However, in March Ukraine and Europe tried to placate Putin. Now, eight months after he started war, they are trying to appease the aggressor, not seeing that what they failed to do in March, will fail again. In any case, Putin will blame Ukraine and Europe for his invasion if it happens. We cannot learn these two truths: the aggressor never wants peace, ‘appeasement’ only helps them in advancing successfully, the aggressor always blames the victim for starting the war. This will happen regardless of the victim’s behavior, therefore the victims needs completely different policies, a different quality of measures should be taken to successfully counter aggression.