Things That Weren't Department: the Stalinist Take on WWII and How Nobody but the Soviets Mattered

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 494

Sometimes things that people deem to be necessary to be just aren't, no matter how much they are needed:  WMD, attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin, the Lone Sniper, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Heaven, racially-based inequalities, Virgin births, free will, intelligent design, and so on. 

This is part of a recently declassified CIA briefing on a 1959 Soviet history of World War II, told in only the way that a ruthlessly dogmatic entity could tell it, all found on the CIA site, with the full 61-page text Current Intelligence Staff Study; the Soviet History of World War II, (Reference Title: Caesar X-59),   here.

There is a lot in this thinking that is entirely new to me, stuff that I've never thought of before, all brought about by a structured and corrupted historiographic establishment bent on controlling the past.  The CIA report discusses the ways in which the Soviet history excised the importance of all non-Soviet intervention of any kind; and, basically, that the actions of the non-Soviet Allied forces throughout the course of the war merely served to forestall the inevitable, single-handed dominance of the Soviet Union in winning World War II.  The breadth and depth of this incoherent and savagely twisted history is staggering.  For example, D-Day, the Normandy Invasion, the Invasion of Europe, did absolutely nothing, had no significant effect whatsoever on the outcome of the war--it, again, served only to lengthen the time of the war so that the Soviet Army could eventually finish it.  The Battle of the Bulge meant nothing.  The dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan meant nothing.  The two years' worth of supplies sent by the United States to the struggling soviet Union in 1941 and 1942 meant nothing.  Early Soviet defeats in '41-'42 meant nothing.  The inability of the Soviet Union to determine the coming attacks from Germany in Operation Barbarossa meant nothing.  If the effect was extra-Soviet, then there was no cause--in this line of reasoning, the storytelling was so devastated that in the end, not even nothing was nothing. 

Yes it is true that the Soviet end of the war is undertold and that the Soviet Union suffered tens of millions of soldiers and civilians killed, but their response to telling the story of the war is so far beyond wrong that it isn't even that.  It is nothing, except of course that there are millions of people who believe it.  And in the wars of propaganda, that is a victory, and that is when nothing becomes something.

• (Excerpt from page 11 of the CIA report)

Comments

[Randy]

Interesting piece. I especially liked your first paragraph!

I guess it is easy enough to see the propoganda in the soviet history, but to be honest, misleading WW2 histories (for political ends) are still being produced. For instance, Stephen Ambrose's The Good Fight: How World War II Was Won (2001) which is geared towards teen readers, begins with Pearl Harbour and ends with Hiroshima, has *no* mention of the soviet role (as far as I can recall), and just one page on Britain's role.

[John PTak]

I agree Randy--telling a story that is "correct" is a hard thing to do, even if you wanted to. I'm not familiar with the Ambrose book, but it sounds a little typical--people seem to almost realize that the U.S. didn't start physically fighting in WWII until 650-odd days had passed from the war's outset. I don't know what to say, exactly, about Ambrose and the Soviet extinction--maybe he just got tired and forgot. Sounds pretty 1955 to me.

[Jim]

You say "they" as if there is a monolithic "they". Might it not be more accurate to speak of the soviet government? Or Khrushchev?

And how many Americans could say how many Soviets died in WW II? (20 million, I think).
This isn't to defend Stalin or Russian Communism.

[John Ptak]

Well, I think it is implied who "they" were, as being the Soviet government. I've written earlier about the Soviet contribution to the WWII effort, especially about the enormous human cost (and the 20 mil estimate is probably correct). The Soviets were deeply f'ed up, from the murderous purges to the induced famous and the Insane State of Stalin and on and on. (Stalin killed more of his own people than Hitler ever did.) I don't know how many Americans know about the Soviet contribution to the war; I do know that something like 35% of Americans thought that the Civil War was fought "sometime in the 1920's". My guess is that the Soviet data wouldn't fare as well.

[Jeff]

Wait, Jim. Say that again ... I may have missed something. The only "they" I could find is in the first paragraph, not referring to Soviet anything. I didn't recall a careless use of "they" and still don't see it. Either way, you're still right ... "they" can be a conveniently mushy attribution.