VE Day: When America Cheered Russia
Studying the history of international relations is in some respects a study of forgetfulness. One generation is swept into the maelstrom of a great struggle against an evil adversary. After that generation dies, the next generation retains only a dim memory of what the old men of the previous generation were carrying on about. New resentments and antipathies form. The evil adversary of the past turns out to be not so bad after all, and former allies are subsequently regarded with contempt.
A couple of days ago, Germany’s weird new Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, announced that Germany would invest hundreds of billions of Euros to rearm Germany. To my (semi) surprise, it seems that other EU countries think this is a swell idea. How quickly we forget the concerns of the recent past.
Observing this irony is especially strange for me, because I have long been of the unorthodox opinion that Roosevelt and Churchill made a huge mistake when they announced the policy of “unconditional surrender” at the Casablanca Conference of 1943.
They did this because they understood that the Russians were doing pretty much all of the fighting against Germany, which resulted in the Russian army and civilian population taking enormous losses—the kind of losses that Americans cannot even begin to fathom.
Stalin was worried the Anglo-Saxons might be tempted to negotiate a separate peace with German officers who didn’t like Hitler, and could be tempted to get rid of him if they were given assurances of being able to surrender on relatively favorable terms.
By announcing their “unconditional surrender” demand, Roosevelt and Churchill were trying to assuage Stalin’s fears. I have long perceived this to be a terrible mistake because it enabled the most fanatical elements of Nazi Germany to insist that there was no choice but to fight bis zur letzten Patrone—until the last cartridge.
It seems to me that the Americans and British should have supported and encouraged the German officers who attempted the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. After all, the war’s most destructive period—and the worst phase of the Jewish Holocaust—occurred between July 1944 and May 8, 1945.
Claus von Stauffenberg was a reasonable man. I knew his first cousin and childhood friend, Alexander von Uexküll, during the last years of his life in Vienna. He was a perfect gentleman, as moderate and sensible as they come.
Likewise, I always thought it strange that—after going to war with
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