Exhibition of 2nd World War

Sitaram Yechury

The recent exhibition of second world war time photographs organised jointly by the Russian and other embassies of the former USSR drove home more eloquently than any literary effort, the greatest saga of courage and sacrifice of the 20th century. The photographs at the same time both revealed the decisive role played by the Soviet Red Army and revived the inspiring heroism of the Soviet people.

They proved once again that the people charged with motivation can overcome the strongest of forces considered by the rest of the world as omnipotent. Between 1939 and 1941 Germany had occupied 12 European countries. Paris had meekly surrendered and Britain stood pulverised. And then when he turned his attention on to the Soviet Union, Hitler described his operation as a “kick on the door which will bring the whole structure collapsing”. Thus began a heroic saga of four years when finally on the 30th of April 1945 the Red flat with the hammer and sickle was hoisted over Hitler’s Reichstag in Berlin. On the 8th of May the unconditional surrender was to have been signed but the German high command managed to delay the capitulation in order to finally sign the document at 00.16 hours on 9th May.

But elsewhere in Europe the mood of the people is a admixture of both a celebration of liberation and a feeling of subjugation and defeat. Nowhere else has this been so clearly demonstrated as in Germany when rightwing neo-fascist rallies protesting against the functions marking the 50th anniversary were held. The German attitude to the unconditional surrender continues to vacillate between redemption or defeat. The first German President had described the end of the war as a paradox, “we are redeemed and destroyed at one go”. The vacillation exhibited by German Chancellor Helmut Khol in attending the May 9 celebrations in Moscow, which he finally did reflects this conflict of opinion and post-war German psyche. Rightwing veterans from Kohl’s own party have openly formed a constellation of political elements who regard May 8 as a day of forced subjugation of Germany. However, the bulk of the present day Germans approach the Nazi period of the Third Reich with a mixture of a distanced curiosity as well as pledging never to repeat such a horrendous past. Rallies and exhibitions have been held in major German cities to which flocked unprecedented numbers of the young generation. However, it is this German perception that has led both Britain and France to assure the Germans that they would not commemorate the day with military parades and rather highlight the role played by Germany in the post-war peace.

Notwithstanding these however the entire allied forces which defeated fascism as well as most of the world who in one way or the other participated in the war including the heroic Indian soldiers who played a vital role in Burma facing the Japanese fascists are participating in this historic celebrations.

Despite all efforts being made by interested forces to deliberately underplay the Soviet contribution and role in this war, this photo exhibition brought home certain bare facts. While the allied forces of France lost 600,000 people, UK 370,000 people and the USA 300,000 people, the Soviet Union lost a staggering 27 million people or more than all the lives lost in the war including those of the Germans. After the watershed battle of Stalingrad the Red Army’s march to Berlin set in motion the liberation of 10 European and two Asian countries from the fascist yoke. More important has been the contribution to the post-war evolution of human civilisation. It was the defeat of fascism that set in motion the process of decolonisation and the triumph of all the values of present day civilisation such as democracy, liberty, human rights and social security. And this contribution cannot be aired more eloquently that the letters sent by US President Truman to Stalin on the victory day, May 8, 1945 where he hails the “magnificent contribution of the mighty Soviet Union to the cause of civilisation and liberty…..” A few days after the war had broken out in 1941, Charles De Gaulle, the French President unable to hide his admiration for the Soviet resistance wrote to Stalin that the “USSR has given oppressed people confidence in their liberation” ! On the first anniversary of the war Churchill wrote expressing the admiration of the entire British people, while in 1943 Roosevelt wrote that the world is “forever honoured” for the turn of the war’s tide after the Stalingrad victory.

It is for this very reason that this might and admiration of the socialist USSR had to be confronted in post-war world which led the USA to initiate a cold-war with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thus began yet another period of confrontation in human history. But this is another story which contemporary history is yet to evaluate in all its complexities. The contribution of the Soviet people for humanity’s civilised march forward can neither be denied or forgotten.