Invite Trump however not Putin? WWII anniversary with out Russia is simply rewriting historical past

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Having US and former Axis leaders attend the 80th anniversary of WWII, however not inviting Russia, exhibits the occasion in Poland has nothing to do with paying respects to historical past, and every part to do with present-day politics.

The German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 is universally thought-about as the beginning of the Second World Warfare. To mark 80 years since that fateful date, the Polish authorities have chosen to ask “current allies and companions in NATO and the EU” to a commemoration that has been moved to Warsaw for the event.

This implies US Vice President Mike Pence will probably be on the ceremony, alongside the leaders of many nations that had been members of the Axis through the battle – from Germany and Italy to Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and Romania. But Russia is not going to be welcome.

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For the previous week the media in each Poland and the West have harped on in regards to the non-aggression pact signed by the united states and Germany on August 23, 1939 and referred to as Molotov-Ribbentrop, after their respective overseas ministers. 

The pact “doomed half of Europe to many years of distress,” argued the governments of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania this week, declaring that its anniversary has since been declared the “European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes,” by which they imply “Nazism and Stalinism.”

It’s a bit baffling the Latvians are complaining about Nazism, really, since they preserve celebrating their participation within the Waffen-SS. As for the Romanians, would these “victims” embrace their third and 4th Armies that acquired crushed at Stalingrad? Which, for the geographically challenged, is about 1,500 kilometers east of the Romanian border… 

At this time, a lot of the West believes that Nazism and Communism had been “two sides of the identical poisonous coin,” as one Federalist contributor put it. No matter occurred to “This man is your good friend, he fights for freedom” posters of Russian troopers the US printed through the precise battle? 

The top of the Chilly Warfare occurred, with NATO giving into temptation to march eastward. Justifying that transfer required establishing a retroactive continuity of kinds, recasting WWII as a battle of “democracies” towards “totalitarianism.” The notion that Germany, Italy and Japan noticed the error of their methods in 1945 and joined the victorious and virtuous West to change into its pillars solely provides to the narrative, naturally.

Conveniently forgotten among the many speak of Molotov-Ribbentrop are all of the offers European powers made with Hitler, from the 4 Powers Pact of 1933 and the Polish-German Pact of 1934, to the 1938 Munich settlement partitioning Czechoslovakia and the non-aggression treaties the Baltic States made with Berlin in the summertime of 1939. 

Czechoslovakia map after the Munich Settlement, 1938. (CTK Picture) © World Look Press

Poland additionally appears to have forgotten how its “allies” Britain and France did completely nothing to assist it face the Blitzkrieg, or that its authorities by no means declared battle on the united states, regardless of all of the speak of “invasion and occupation.” 

Particularly forgotten is how, as soon as Hitler broke his phrase but once more and attacked the united states in June 1941, it was the Soviet troopers who would do the lion’s share of preventing and dying to defeat the Nazis – about 80 p.c of it, to be actual. Or how anyplace as much as 27 million Soviet residents perished within the battle the united states didn’t begin, however definitely did end.

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As an alternative, the West and its latest allies harp on Molotov-Ribbentrop, tear down monuments to the Pink Military, or have fun the SS – solely to behave bewildered when Russia tries to appropriate the report. Moscow’s exhibition of the pact paperwork and statements about its historic context have been described within the Western press as a “marketing campaign to justify” the treaty.

Word that it’s the UK – the identical nation that led the best way in making a gift of Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich – that now clamors the loudest towards (nonexistent) Russian “revisionism”! Let’s be frank, there’s a huge ethical chasm between nations that fought that battle to outlive – like the united states – and people who entered it to save lots of their empire, or carve out a brand new one. 

Personally, I sympathize with the frustrations of Poles and Czechs to some extent. Yugoslavia, too, had ensures from Britain – and France, earlier than it was crushed in 1940 – that turned out to be nugatory. Its authorities additionally sought refuge in London, solely to be betrayed by the British in 1944, in Churchill’s notorious partition of Jap Europe with Stalin. 

The truth that Warsaw selected to not invite Serbia – Yugoslavia’s foremost successor – to the commemoration on September 1 means that the occasion has little to do with lofty ethical rules and bonafide historic grievances, and every part to do with present-day political opportunism.

So be it. However the East remembers.

By Nebojsa Malic

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist and political commentator for RT America, based mostly in Washington, DC.