People's Democracy

PAGE FROM HISTORY  

Who Liberated Europe?  

BY the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War on June 22, 1941, twelve European countries – Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Yugoslavia – had been overrun by the fascist aggressors, their independence trampled and their people subjected to persecution and terror, while in some countries they were threatened with annihilation. The danger of a fascist invasion loomed over Britain.Aboard special “Asia” and “Africa” trains fascist staff officers charted strike arrows encircling the globe. In the autumn of 1941 the aggressors were ready to conquer Afghanistan, Iran Iraq, Egypt and later India where the German and Japanese troops were to join. Directive 32 and other German military documents show that having solved the British problem, the invaders intended to rid North America of the Anglo-Saxon influence, they were sure that a Blitzkrieg against the USSR would give them key positions to enslave the world. 
 
Wehrmacht General Kurt von Tippelskirch wrote: “The smashing military success in the West has convinced Hitler that similar success awaits him in his war against the Soviet Union.”  
On June 22, 1941, Hitler hurled his hordes and allied armies against the USSR. That is how the Soviet factor began to operate which was to become decisive in the Second World War and in liberating the nations of the world from the fascist yoke.  

Fernad Grenier of France recalled: “Prior to that Sunday even those Frenchmen who had not lost all faith in the future saw no force capable of licking Hitler. Now everything had changed…. On that Sunday a great hope filled the hearts of millions of Frenchmen.”It is a historical fact that from the first days of war – in the fierce border clashes of that tragic 1941 summer and in the Battle of Moscow where the fascist Blitskrieg plan was shattered – the Soviet Armed Forces engaged in deadly battles against fascism not only for the Homeland’s freedom but also for the salvation of the enslaved nations of Europe and of all mankind. 
 
It was on the Soviet-German Front that the main forces of fascist Germany, its allies and satellites were ground to mincemeat. Its land forces alone lost more than one-and-a-half million men killed, wounded or missing during the first ten months of the Great Patriotic War, almost five times what the Wehrmacht lost in its previous campaigns in Poland, South-Western Europe and in the Balkans.  

The Stalingrad and Kursk battles were of special significance for the course and outcome of the Second World War. Millions of men were engaged there and enemy losses topped two million. The Soviet armed forces broke the back of the Wehrmacht and turned the tide in the Great Patriotic War and Second World War. The underground Greek Press wrote at that time: “Salamis and Marathon which saved human civilisation in the past, today are called Moscow Vyazma, Leningrad, Sevastopol and Stalingrad.”   

INSPIRING EXAMPLE  
  
The Soviet Union’s heroic struggle urged and encouraged the enslaved nations to fight the occupationists. In the summer of 1944, over 2.2 million people were involved in the liberation war which began in Yugoslavia after Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, and in the Resistance in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Greece, France, Bulgaria and Italy. Armed combat was becoming the chief form of resisting fascism, as seen from the popular uprisings in Slovakia and Rumania.   

Soviet aid to other peoples in their anti-fascist struggle was rendered variously. National units of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Rumania were formed on the territory and with the assistance of the USSR. The French “Normandie-Niemen” flying regiment began its remarkable exploits in Soviet skies. The national formations received armaments, means of control, transport, ammunition, fuel and equipment, and by the end of the war they numbered 555,000. Soviet aircraft made thousands of sorties to Yugoslavia carrying a great amount of cargo to the people’s liberation army. Soviet military hardware and materials were sent to the fighters against fascism in Albania, Greece, Hungary, and other countries. The Soviet partisan raids to Poland and Czechoslovakia were important in unfolding liberation struggle there. On their hardest days, Soviet people shared all they had with other peoples in a fraternal way.   

MARCH OF LIBERATION  
  
When in 1944, the Soviet armed force, having driven the fascists from the Soviet land, began their march of liberation in Europe, shoulder to shoulder with them fought soldiers of the Polish Army, the Czechoslovak Corps and of the armies of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania as well as individual units of some other countries.   

The Soviet policy in respect to the countries being liberated was clear and unambiguous. A statement issued by the Soviet government in connection with the Red Army’s entering the territory of Poland said that the Soviet troops were full of determination to smash the German armies and help the Polish people in their liberation from the yoke of German invaders and in the restoration of the independent, strong and democratic republic of Poland.   

The same goals underlay the liberating mission of the Soviet Union in each of the countries.   
The Red Army’s entering the territories of other countries was welcomed by millions of people. Workers and peasants, people of different nationalities and social status happily greeted their liberators. A telegram of the central committee of the Bulgarian Workers’ (Communist) party said: “The Bulgarian people will never forget this liberatory role of the USSR for Bulgaria as they have not forgotten and will never forget the fact that they were liberated from the five-ages-long foreign slavery by the great Russian people.”   

The “Free Yugoslavia” radio station said: “Letters come from Serbia and Voivodina every day telling of the unprecedented fervour of our people who are enthusiastically welcoming the Red Army.” Prime minister Johan Nygaardsvold of Norway cabled to Moscow: “The role the Soviet Union is playing in the defeat of Nazism will never be forgotten in Norway. “Emphasising that the victories of the Red Army opened the way to freedom before all enslaved peoples of Europe, president Charles de Gaulle of France said: “Frenchmen know what Russia has done, and they know that it was Russia who played the main role in their liberation.”   

OPERATION OVERLORD  
  
On June 6, 1944, the Western Allied landed in Normandy, Northern France. It was the Second World War’s greatest landing operation. Known as Operation Overlord.   

As the main fascist forces were engaged at the Soviet-German Front, the allies had a 3:1 superiority in men and tanks and more than a 60:1 superiority in aircraft. In the seas they also prevailed. After the Allied troops landed in Normandy, fascist Germany found itself squeezed between two fronts. And though the Second Front was opened two years later than it was envisaged by the Allied obligations, it made the war somewhat shorter and the number of its victims smaller. The historic fact should be taken into consideration however that the success of Operation Overlord was ensured by all the previous operations of the Soviet armed forces.   

In the winter and spring of 1944 the Leningrad-Novergorod, Korun-Shechenkovsky and other Soviet operations made it impossible for Hitler to send any forces from the East to rebuff the long-expected Allied landing. More than that the German Command had to send more than 40 extras divisions to the Soviet-German Front. By the time Operation Overlord was launched, 75 per cent of all divisions of the Wehrmacht and of the fascist bloc countries were engaged at the Soviet-German Front. The joint misinformation campaign launched by the Supreme Commands of the USSR, USA and Great Britain also contributed greatly to the success of Operation Overlord.   
The Red Army’s offensive of the summer and autumn of 1944 has special significance to both Operation Overlord and the Allied actions that followed it. In the course of the Byelorussian Operation alone the German Command had to send 18 divisions and four brigades from the West to the Soviet-German Front. The Soviet offensive determined the general strategic situation in Europe and offered considerable freedom of action to the Western Allied armies. Addressing the Parliament on September 28, 1944, Sir Winston Chruchill had to admit that Russia contained and beaten much greater forces than those opposing the Allies in the West. 
  
DISTORTIONS NAILED   

One can only regret and wonder when today some American historian allege that indirectly Russians helped Hitler when they in no way demonstrated their intensions to facilitate the Allied landing.   

The Soviet Union discharged its commitments strictly and consistently. When in December 1944 the Anglo-American troops found themselves in a difficult position after a sudden counter-attack by German divisions in the Arcennes, the Soviet Supreme Command, at the request of Britain and the USA, began a major offensive eight days before the planned time, on January 12, 1945, which helped the Western Allies to overcome the crisis.   

That was how the Soviet Union acted. The Anglo-American allies, however, pursued quite a different policy.   

The National Archives of the United States have minutes of a session of the Joint Anglo-American Staff held on August 20, 1943, to discuss the prospects of the policy pursued by the USA and Britain towards the USSR. Paragraph 9 of the minutes shows that the question was discussed whether Germans could help the Anglo-American troops to land in Europe to repulse Russians. So US and British military leaders discussed such a question in 1943 when the Soviet Union alone was fighting against the Third Reich thus paving the way to the liberation of peoples from the fascist yoke.   

SOVIET SACRIFICES  
  
The great liberating mission which the Red Army gloriously carried out at the last stage of the Great Patriotic War and of the Second World War is of intransient significance.   

Eight-and-a-half million Soviet soldiers fought against fascist Germany and imperialist Japan outside Soviet frontiers and fully and partially liberated 13 European and Asian counties with a total population of nearly 150 million people.   

More than a million courageous Soviet soldiers perished during this march of liberation. During the Second World War, the Soviet Union lost 20 million men and women.   

The Soviet Union defeated the striking aggressive force of imperialism at that time and thereby made the decisive contribution to the consolidation of peace on earth and ensured the right of peoples to decide their own fate.