Posted: Jun 01, 2016 2:31 am
The narrative that the western allies were spineless and also calculating in their strategy is a well worn trope and was even voiced more or less overtly by Stalin during the war.
I encountered it when I was visiting Volgograd (Former Stalingrad) and I fell into a conversation with a couple of Russian at the 'Mother Russia' monument. (It's pretty impressive). After discussing the horror of Stalingrad and the huge losses incurred by the Soviet Union, my interlocutor brought up the delay by the Western Allies in invading fortress Europe from the west. After all, he reasoned, the English channel is only 20 some miles wide....but the calculating and spineless allies decided to sit it out while the Nazis butchered heroic soviet citizens.
It seemed churlish to point out that no matter how narrow the English Channel is, it is still a lot wider than the river Vistula, where the Soviet army bided its time from August 1944 to January 1945 while such lovelies as the Dirlewagner brigade went on a rampage of bloodshed and destruction that has few parallels in history and hundreds of thousands of Varsovians were killed.
(Also I didn't want to get punched..the burly Russian fellow I was speaking to warmed to his task and became quite agitated!! It's possible he had been drinking.)
Regarding the pre-war accommodations made by both the west and the Soviets, I remember Madelene Albright quoting her father, a Czechoslovak diplomat at the time. Regarding the disgraceful sell out at Munich he prayed that the British would 'have the strength to withstand the thrashing they so thoroughly deserved.'
I encountered it when I was visiting Volgograd (Former Stalingrad) and I fell into a conversation with a couple of Russian at the 'Mother Russia' monument. (It's pretty impressive). After discussing the horror of Stalingrad and the huge losses incurred by the Soviet Union, my interlocutor brought up the delay by the Western Allies in invading fortress Europe from the west. After all, he reasoned, the English channel is only 20 some miles wide....but the calculating and spineless allies decided to sit it out while the Nazis butchered heroic soviet citizens.
It seemed churlish to point out that no matter how narrow the English Channel is, it is still a lot wider than the river Vistula, where the Soviet army bided its time from August 1944 to January 1945 while such lovelies as the Dirlewagner brigade went on a rampage of bloodshed and destruction that has few parallels in history and hundreds of thousands of Varsovians were killed.
(Also I didn't want to get punched..the burly Russian fellow I was speaking to warmed to his task and became quite agitated!! It's possible he had been drinking.)
Regarding the pre-war accommodations made by both the west and the Soviets, I remember Madelene Albright quoting her father, a Czechoslovak diplomat at the time. Regarding the disgraceful sell out at Munich he prayed that the British would 'have the strength to withstand the thrashing they so thoroughly deserved.'