Was World War II won in the East?

Jean Lopez is a journalist and historian. A recognized specialist in the Second World War, he notably co-wrote Barbarossa 1941. The absolute war (Composed pasts, 2019).

FIGAROVOX.- On this day of celebration of the armistice, in what proportions do you think that the war between Germany and the Soviet Union still structures today the relationship that European countries maintain with Russia of Vladimir Putin ?

Jean LOPEZ.- Rather, they are strategic, diplomatic and energy issues that structure them. The Second World War is an important element in the political discourse of Vladimir Putin, especially in the direction of the small and medium-sized States which border his western border. In France, this discourse serves to feed the anti-American and anti-liberal background and an old tenderness for the Russians. This sometimes prevents us from fully understanding that in Warsaw, Riga, Tallinn or Kiev we cannot have the same approach to relations with Russia. For all these peoples, whether we like it or not, whether we like it or not, Vladimir Putin, the arrival of the Red Army in 1944-45 was both liberation and occupation.

Let's go back to WWII history. A few weeks ago, Vladimir Putin challenged a generally accepted version of the Second World War. According to him, Stalin never had contact with Hitler, unlike other European leaders. Which, according to the Russian president, would tend to make the responsibility for declaring war on Hitler much more than on Stalin. Do you confirm this version of the facts?

Vladimir Putin manipulates history without the slightest scruples. And he plays on the words concerning the years 1933-39. First remark, the rupture between Moscow and Berlin, which intervenes in 1933, is the fact of Hitler, not of Stalin, who had only one desire, to prolong the partnership engaged with Germany since the beginning of the Twenties. Second, Stalin attempted, in 1936, to speak with the Nazi leaders through a discreet envoy, Kandelaki. Furthermore, if it is true that Chamberlain and Daladier went to bed in Munich, it was Stalin who signed a pact on August 23, 1939 with Hitler, and not Daladier or Chamberlain who declared war on them ten days later. .

The worst manipulation is to present the Pact with the Reich as a defensive pact, when it is a real license to attack. Permit to attack Finland, Romania and Poland for the USSR. Permit to attack Poland for the Reich. The USSR is not that virtuous anti-fascist being portrayed by Vladimir Putin. Between 1939 and 1941, it delivered more anti-fascists to the Gestapo than any other country at the time.

In your latest work on Operation Barbarossa, you also show that, contrary to what is said, most German generals, not just Hitler, were convinced of the advisability of an attack against "Judeo-Bolshevism" . Does this mean that the Wehrmacht was generally convinced by Hitler's ideology?

It is not really what I wrote. On the strategic level, the German generals are not convinced of the need to attack in the East. Hitler's demonstration that taking Moscow is forcing London to peace leaves them skeptical. The ideological aspect was hardly put forward by Hitler before June 22, 1941; for a number of German generals, if it does not pose a problem in itself, there is also no reason to be enthusiastic about the campaign in the east. It is PROFESSIONALLY that the attack on the USSR poses no problem for the leaders of the Wehrmacht: they are certain to be, by command and organization, a hundred cubits above the Red Army.

As for the National Socialist convictions of the Wehrmacht , they are no longer to be demonstrated. The generals agree, in principle, on the militarization of society, the external recovery, the crushing of the left, the marginalization of German Jews. In the USSR, they will have no moral scruples to shoot down the political commissars and to massively help the Einsatzgruppen to massacre Jews, Communists, sick and disabled, and supposed partisans on a scale never seen before. More than once, Wehrmacht soldiers will lend a hand to mass crimes. If it is laughable to speak of an "except honor" of the Wehrmacht, we will not forget that it was from its ranks that came the most determined opposition to Hitler, even if it did not concerns only a few hundred officers out of tens of thousands.

We tend to refer back to back all forms of totalitarianism, and therefore to consider that the monstrosity of Hitler was worth that of Stalin. What do you think?

The deportees from Vorkouta and those from Buchenwald should have been asked this question ... If we count the weight of the dead and the suffering, the two regimes are equal. If we compare the values ​​they defend and in the name of which they commit their mass crimes, it is up to everyone to see: racism against dictatorship of the proletariat / of the Party.

A big difference nonetheless (among many others, minor): the Nazi regime would have remained eliminationist with or without Hitler, under penalty of denying itself: killing the "inferiors" is in its DNA. On the other hand, the Soviet system without Stalin was much less lethal; he knew how to rediscover a form of "socialist legality", even relative ... One can therefore think - which does not close the discussion - that Stalinism was a temporary aberration, which cannot be said of Nazism. If, by uchrony, Nazism had won the war, it would have continued to hunt down Jews everywhere for a thousand years, it would not cease to murder tirelessly physically and mentally handicapped.

You have considered for years that the Second World War was first won in the East before being won in the West. Can you remind us of the reasons that lead you to this conclusion?

World War II was won in the east AND in the west. On this point too, Vladimir Putin should correct himself. The Red Army received massive aid from the Anglo-Saxons, thanks to which it was able to make up for its very serious deficiencies in communications, transport and special fuels, for example; it never had the entire Luftwaffe on its back, due to the allies' continuing air offensive; it would never have advanced so far west if its adversaries had not seen their industrial apparatus and its sources of energy demolished by the Allied bombers. Even the argument still advanced by the Soviets and today the Russians that "the Soviets arrested the Reich with their blood, when the Anglo-Saxons paid in dollars" is debatable. Part of the 10 or 12 million Soviet military deaths is in fact due to primitive methods of command and the abysmal contempt of Stalin and the party for casualties.

The fact remains that two-thirds of the German army were indeed trapped in the east because of the (unexpected) resilience of the Stalinist system and the ability to die of its soldiers. No serious historian and no honest man can forget this. On the other hand, Russian historians could remind their president that in 1940, it was Churchill who decided to continue the war alone against Nazism after the fall of France when Stalin sent telegrams of congratulations to the Führer for the victory at the west.