To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 12:25 PM
Subject: Re: OT: Take a course in philosophy, will ya.
<SNIP>
You're looking at this from the US viewpoint, Paul (and I can't blame you for that). From the Soviet viewpoint, however, things look a bit different. They just fought a war almost singe-handedly against the war machine of Nazi Germany, with more casualties than any other country. For years Stalin had been begging for some help, for a Western Front, while Churchill and FDR sat on their hands. The Allies did nothing to help the USSR during much of WWII. Then, here come those same armies, marching across Europe. All Stalin wanted was "buffer states" between Western Europe and the USSR. He (rightly or wrongly) considered Western Europe to be buffer states for the US, and part of the US sphere of influence. He also wanted a share of defeated Germany, which isn't so unfair, is it?
<SNIP>
Frank, I have to take some issue with you on this paragraph. The USSR was certainly not fighting the Nazis single-handed. You may recall that Britain fought from September of 1939 until the German invasion of Russia in 1941 with no manpower assistance from either of the two major powers, the USSR or the USA. Prior to 1941, Germany and Russia had a non-aggression treaty in place, which was breached by Hitler unilaterally with the invasion. Once the Russians were involved, much materiel and many lives were lost in convoy operations to ports such as Murmansk in attempts to supply Russia with the modern arms and supplies it did not have (read about PQ17 for the full horror of those voyages), and the lack of which led in some ways to the high casualties the Red Army suffered in the early stages of the war.
Whatever the motivation of the Russians post-1945, even a cursory reading of Eastern European history of that period will show that, had Russia wanted only friendly states in Europe to act as a buffer, she did not need to militarily occupy nations which were supposed to have been liberated by the Allies, to overthrow or refuse to allow their legitimate governments to reform, and to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people for decades simply because they had been in those formations, such as the Free Polish Air Force, who fought with the Allies against Germany. Russia even incarcerated her own freed POW's because of Stalin's paranoia that they were corrupted by the West, after being held in POW camps in Europe.
IMV, the Russian occupation of Europe was simply a device to steal the resources of the occupied countries of Eastern Europe (oil from Rumania, machine tools and expertise from Czecho-Slovakia and East Germany, for example).
Growing up in Europe in the 1950's to 1960's, the threat from Russia seemed real enough: we had no way of knowing whether her territorial ambitions were satisfied or not, as the Iron Curtain which descended on Europe in 1945-6 was not relaxed until the 1990's. Look at Prague 1968, Gdansk 1980, Berlin 1949 for examples of Russia's inflexibility.
Nothing personal - just record-straightening!
John Coyle
Brisbane, Australia
