In June, Western democratic leaders invited Vladimir Putin to the 70th anniversary of D-Day memorial in France, but there’s no good reason he should have been be there. Putin is an autocrat, not a democrat. He laments the demise of the Soviet Union, a dictatorship that played no role in the D-Day operation. And since Putin is now conducting an incremental invasion of Ukraine, a different memorial would be more suitable. As it happens, this one is long overdue and remains shrouded in ignorance. Seventy-five years ago, on August 23, 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany became allies through the Stalin-Hitler Pact. Joachim von Ribbentrop signed for Hitler and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov signed on behalf of Stalin. Molotov said that Hitlerism was “a matter of taste,” and that it was “not only senseless, but criminal” to wage war on Hitler “camouflaged as a fight for democracy.” Though often described as a “non-aggression pact,” the reverse was true. The month after the Pact, Stalin and Hitler both invaded Poland, starting World War II. The Pact also gave Stalin control of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which he retained after the war, along with other conquests such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary and what became the German Democrat Republic, the regime that made emigration an exciting experience. While the pact was in effect, Soviet and Nazi intelligence agencies worked together and American Communists did everything in their power to keep the United States from coming to Britain’s aid. During the Pact, the Soviets murdered 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest. That came at the direct order of Stalin, as Russia now acknowledges. Less well known is the reality that Stalin also handed over German Jewish Communists to Hitler’s Gestapo. At the Nuremberg trials after the war, Joachim von Ribbentrop was convicted for signing the Pact while Molotov, who signed for Stalin, sat in the accuser’s chair. So Stalin and his gang got away with it.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 13:40:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015