22 June 1941...

 ... today is the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. 22 June 1941--Axis forces invaded Soviet Union. As Churchill said that day in his broadcast to British peoples:

At 4 o'clock this morning Hitler attacked and invaded Russia. All his usual formalities of perfidy were observed with scrupulous technique. A non-aggression treaty had been solemnly signed and was in force between the two countries. No complaint had been made by Germany of its non-fulfillment. Under its cloak of false confidence the German armies drew up in immense strength along a line which stretched from the White Sea to the Black Sea and their air fleets and armoured divisions slowly and methodically took up their stations. Then, suddenly, without declaration of war, without even an ultimatum, the German bombs rained down from the sky upon the Russian cities; the German troops violated the Russian frontiers and an hour later the German Ambassador, who till the night before was lavishing his assurances of friendship, almost of alliance, upon the Russians, called upon the Russian Foreign Minister to tell him that a state of war existed between Germany and Russia.    ...

All we know at present is that the Russian people are defending their native soil and that their leaders have called upon them to resist to the utmost. Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing-this machine cannot stand idle, lest it rust or fall to pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights of hundreds of millions of men. ...

The Nazi regime is indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. It is devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination. It excels in all forms of human wickedness, in the efficiency of its cruelty and ferocious aggression. No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no words that I've spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies and its tragedies, flashes away. I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. I see them guarding their homes; their mothers and wives pray, ah yes, for there are times when all pray for the safety of their loved ones, for the return of the breadwinner, of the champion, of their protectors. ... Let us learn the lessons already taught by such cruel experience. The Russian danger is therefore our danger and the danger of the United States just as the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe.

Sadly,  this was fast forgotten in 1945... This is the announcement of Levitan to Soviet people.

What happened after that... Churchill was right: But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding(c) The greatest war in human history unfolded and what happened on the Eastern Front resonates even today both in crushing globalist world order and denazifying the combined West.

Ike, Strategy Rant #2

You can read the start on Eisenhower's strategic mind here and here. Sadly, international events unfold with such speed that I sometimes can not ignore (as much as I want to) them and have to react in some form or fashion, instead of concentrating on a host of subjects which give me a degree of comfort and even joy while discussing them. Eisenhower, certainly, is part of it. So, I am ranting again:

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As was stated in the previous rant, Marshall and Ike were not alone in understanding a decisive importance of European Theater. As early as ABC-1 conference--American, British and Canadian strategy consultations early 1941--even before United States were officially involved in WW II, it was clear that British intent was to guard the Empire, not to face Nazi Germany on Continent. The issue of Singapore and Ducth Indies was extremely important for London, it surely was not for the US. As Marshall noted in his rather abrupt rejection of British plan during consultations at Singapore :

While the two summaries were under study by Staff officers, who saw in this final paragraph the extent to which ABD had soared beyond American desires, further pressure for American aid to Singapore was being applied. A paper prepared by Stanley K. Hornbeck of the State Department and forwarded to the War Department suggested that the United States further Singapore's security by keeping three-quarters of the fleet based in Hawaii, sending more planes and submarines to the Philippines, and equipment to China, the Netherlands East Indies, and Singapore. To these suggestions General Marshall announced his opposition. He found nothing new in the facts cited, and no satisfaction in the conclusions. His own view was that "Collapse in the Atlantic would be fatal; collapse in the Far East would be serious but not fatal." 

It is easy today, having a luxury of a hindsight, to review those documents and decisions--it was not easy to make them then. It is to the highest credit of American officers from Marshall, Eisenhower to Embick and Gerow that they recognized real strategic importance of European theater even before Operation Barbarossa unfolded. With Germany's invasion of USSR it became crystal clear what theater has become decisive and by far. It would take Cold War, of course, to completely obfuscate or, when impossible to obfuscate--dull, a massive scale of the events and the nature of that war which had nothing to do with "survival of democracy" and was the war of annihilation. In 1989 late Paul Fussell, himself a  veteran of WW II and literary critic of some standing, in his Wartime: Understanding And Behavior In The Second World War, paraded pervasive general Western ignorance and kindergarten self-righteousness when stated:

Even the relative impurity of the Allied ethical cause once Joseph Stalin joined in seemed easily accommodated to the general high-mindedness. 

This certainly was not the attitude of Ike, especially when the first reports of staggering losses and atrocities committed by Nazis in USSR started to pour in Allied Camp. But how truly "allied" was this camp is a matter for serious debate. As ABC and ABD conferences have initially shown abundantly--Churchill's objectives were not to fight Wehrmacht on Continent. Hence, while debatable from the point of view of practical realization, a vigorous Sledgehammer was buried at the  Second Washington Conference in 1942 and was replaced with Operation Torch whose dubious strategic worth was debated ever since and played not a small part in developing later serious Cold War suspicions. What preceded this decision, however was completely devoid of any finesse and actual allied spirit. 

As many American officers noted, British behavior at the conference was arrogant, officers of British General Staff looked down at their American counterparts, and their opinions, with contempt. After all, what could those Americans suggest to people who at that time fought Nazis for two years. Americans complained but to no avail. Churchill persevered and ensured a dispersal of Allied resources to the strategically secondary theaters of operations. Secondary to the main political objective of defeating Axis forces, which could have been done only in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular. Especially when agreement on unconditional surrender of Germany was worked out between Russians and Allies--due to mostly FDR's fear of USSR cutting a separate deal with Hitler, a possibility which was debunked by Allied intelligence in 1942 against the background of appalling losses on both sides and of German atrocities on occupied territories. But Churchill needed Allied forces to guard Imperial possessions, up to the point of discussing a possibility, a rather dubious one, of Germans making it to India from their bases in North Africa. As I already pointed out in previous rant--with the burial of Sledgehammer, and, by implication, of the  Roundup, another Ike's plan, Ike's reaction to it, his passionate thrust in trying to realize war plans which could have eased substantially immense pressures under which Red Army was fighting in 1942, had an enormous human dimension, which in Russia's/Soviet case could not have been ignored. It was, and still is, impossible not to sympathize with Eisenhower and his both human and professional position, especially when one considers a strategic situation in Soviet Union with Battle Of Stalingrad approaching and a rather vigorous reporting on the events on the Eastern Front and Soviet people waiting for the real Second Front by nationally syndicated Leland Stowe. Obviously, today Stowe's first rate war reporting would be construed a "collusion" with Stalin, NKVD and devil himself. Yet, this was not a rarity in US then:
 

Soviet Union fought for more than just freedom--for survival.

Allied general staffs were aware of the situation on the Eastern Front. In layman's lingo Allied strategic discussion looked like this:

1. FDR was ambiguous, his officers, apart from naturally Pacific firsters, wanted to go in (Europe) decisively ASAP;
2. Churchill's calculus was drastically different and was revolving around impossibility of landing in Europe in 1942 and in 1943. 

In what would become one of the most controversial (a euphemism for military crime) attempts to discredit the very idea of viability of European landing, a sacrifice of 5000 Canadians was made at Dieppe in August of 1942. In early 1990s, the CBC made a hour long documentary in which placed the blame for failure squarely on Churchill and Dudley Pound (not the first time Pound's name will appear in connection to "controversy"), Russians, understandably, were livid but so were many in American camp. As was reported by National Post at 70th anniversary of Dieppe Raid:

What remains to be answered is if there was another element at play shaping events. The late Brigadier General Forbes West of Toronto thought so, identifying a political reason for the raid’s launch. “I feel that from the day planning began, it was intended to be a failure,” he revealed to me in his home 23 years ago. “Perhaps not as costly a failure, but a failure nevertheless. The British were being pressed by the Russians and Americans to open a second front, so we were put in with the firm intention of being destroyed. Men at the Chiefs of Staff level would consider 4,000 casualties a small price to pay for convincing the Russians and Americans an invasion would be a disaster.”

Dieppe debacle took place when the Battle of Stalingrad began, Casablanca Conference was held in January 1943, when the fate of the Stalingrad was decided, with it the fate of Wehrmacht at the Eastern front was sealed and with it--the outcome of war in Europe. And it will be there, at Casablanca, where the "primrose path" memorandum by US General Stanley Embick of Marshall's OPD would openly accuse Churchill of sabotaging any real attempts at fighting Germany where it mattered most. Italian Campaign would prove this point unequivocally when all facts would be collected properly after Battle of Kursk, they would show Ike's foresight and will explain why Stalin wanted American general officer leading Overlord...  

To be continued.... 

Fulton Speech

Yesterday it was 70 years since Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech, also known as Fulton Speech. It was the first salvo in what later became known as Cold War. It was also the start of what can only be described as a massive propaganda campaign in convincing Western public opinion in hostile intentions of Soviet Union and imminent attack of those nasty Russkies, who just lost 27 million of own people and had their country destroyed, on everything Sir Winston held so dear--the myth of Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism. 

Today, when archives are opened and the truth of the Cold War is finally emerging, position of Sir Winston, a man of many talents, becomes as clear as never before. Speaking in plain language--the guy was a sore, in fact, bitter frustrated loser. It would be later that both Churchill's daughter and his personal dentist Lord Moran would describe a heavy feeling of jealousy Churchill experienced towards relations FDR and Stalin had. Churchill might have been a crafty politician but great military strategist he was not. He presided over, in fact precipitated, Great Britain's departure from the status of global power precisely for the reasons that great strategist he was not.  As Correlli Barnett succinctly observed:

        

Barnett, The Collapse Of The British Power, page 593

It is unenviable fate for a statesman to preside over the collapse of own state, for Churchill it was also unbearable to lose elections in 1945 and be left without "job". All that happened to Churchill in the most dramatic fashion and it left a scar. By the mid-WW II his strategy was heavily criticized by Britain's main ally, the United States, as was stated in General Stanley Embick's memorandum on "primrose path", which was circulated at Casablanca.    

  

David Eisenhower, Eisenhower At war, 1943-1945, page 21.

  

Later, Churchill would recite his experiences of WW II in what can only be described as the most self-serving memoirs of them all The Second World War, with volume The Grand Alliance being especially the case in point--an unbelievable combination of false narrative and self-aggrandizing. Yet, the results were clear by 1946--two superpowers emerged, the USA and USSR, and it was up to them to form a new world in which Great Britain would remain important but secondary player. And so "The Iron Curtain" descended. The greatest historical secret of Anglo-Saxon world that USSR did not have any plans for attacking and conquering Europe was locked into the vault of bodyguards of lies of none other than Churchill's creation:

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/winstonchu111291.html

"In wartime truth is so precious that she should be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

And Churchill followed his own dictum to the last letter--he lied. Today, 70 years later we still live in the world of Sir Winston, in the world which Stanley Embick's memorandum is as relevant as it was in 1942. We see it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine. We see it in unrelenting propaganda and lies of the Western media, we see and hear it in words and actions of West's political class. This time, however, The Iron Curtain, the real one, is descending. Rephrasing Sir Winston: "From Riga in the Baltic to Varna in the Black Sea, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."  But one can lie only for so long.......