Near misses
Jock Webb writes: Re. “On Assange and Russia” (yesterday). In regard to Mr L’Estrange, I too am in my 60s and no great fan of US foreign policy. However, I think this underestimates the power of the 1945 Soviet forces. There is abundant evidence that Stalin was interested in moving further. There was nothing good about him. Many analysts consider that the Nagasaki bomb was dropped as much to warn Stalin that Berlin was as far as it went. Stalin after all was responsible for the USSR’s initial calamities through his purges of any competent general staff. However, the armies of Zhukov and his rivals were a fearsome force and by no means exhausted. There is no doubt that many in the west feared Soviet expansion and given the annexation of Poland, Hungary and the Eastern bloc nations, it is not wander. Stalin was a paranoid and power hungry man who probably killed even more of his own citizens than Hitler. What NATO has become is another matter. An exercise in stupidity and US overreach that is a threat to stability for sure. To anyone who has not read Antony Beevor’s The Second World War, I recommend it as a chilling education on the global politics of the time.
On our foreign policy
James O’Neill writes: Re. “Defence Department’s link to extreme Israeli lobby group” (yesterday). You surely have not only just discovered the pernicious influence of the Israel lobby in Australian foreign policy. Look at our voting record in the UN. Look at the almost complete silence from DFAT at Israel’s persistent violations of international law. When did you last see on Australian tv pictures of the wall they have built and compare that with the blanket coverage of the Berlin Wall. When did Bishop last condemn (if ever) the continued illegal occupation of the Golan Heights. Ditto the fact that Israel is a nuclear armed power.
The ASPI also published earlier this year an appalling paper by Paul Dibb on the “Russian threat”. It is not only the DOD that funds ASPI. Look at their reports and see that US right wing bodies are also major sources. It is little wonder that our foreign policy is such a disgrace when the topics and the tone are set in the way they are.
Jock,
I read Anthony Beevor’s ‘the Second World War’ too. On page 744, the Politburo had planned to continue the war after the defeat of Germany with an invasion of Italy, France and Norway. And it was expected to take no longer than a month to succeed, with 400+ battle hardened divisions available.
Soviet spies in the Manhattan project put paid to this idea, when Beria had reported to Stalin that America had an active production line of atomic weapons.
It’s just as well that the Soviets knew in great detail what the Americans were doing. The successful Trinity test in July, 1945 came as no surprise to Stalin, and he had considerable fun with Truman when he attempted to explain what the Americans had in the meeting in Potsdam – by pretending not to understand when Truman attempted to inform him of the new American weapon.
There would have been plenty of time for the Soviets to have taken over Western Europe in the months between the surrender of Germany in May and the availability of atomic weapons in August, so as a demonstration of American power the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – in retrospect – was unnecessary. And I would put more money on the Soviets preventing an American bomber through their defences than the Japanese.
Agreed – Stalin was a very nasty piece of work. He was also the cause of the Korean War lasting the final 2 years of bloody stalemate. When Stalin died in 1953, the Americans and Chinese rapidly came to an agreement regarding an armistice and a return to the status quo.
@Jock Webb and Wayne Robinson
I’m afraid that if you read Anthony Beevor as history then you are deluding yourselves. Beevor is a prolific wordsmith no doubt but his writings are best regarded as ripping yarns based on historical events, not true history. He is a propagandist more than historian who spins together stories from unreliable sources and unverifiable anecdotes with enough real history to give his yarns credibility. His narratives run thick with anti-Russian/anti-communist bias. Not surprisingly as he springs from the British officer class whose identification with the aristocratic establishment (and for that matter the Prussian officer class) from the beginning put them in direct opposition to those stroppy workers who demanded a bigger share of the economic pie. As Russia was the first country to seriously experiment with a worker-led state it is no wonder that it became a permanent target for demonisation by what today we call the “1%”. Beevor just carries on the tradition with his tsunami of books. It takes a dedicated historian to deconstruct his claims but here is at least one who has tried: http://www.lalkar.org/article/1145/book-review-by-mario-sousa-stalingrad-by-antony-beevor-a-piece-of-nazi-war-propaganda
Beevor no doubt has profited handsomely from his labours but anyone claiming him as a historical authority is just plain deluded.
Iskandar,
You’re deluded in claiming a Swedish communist as having the last word on Beevor’s books.
I’ve read extensively histories of the Second World War – more than just Beevor’s books. I read them for the historical stories, not for the politics – and really, I didn’t find anything pro-Nazi or anti-Soviet in any of Beevor’s books.
I don’t think anyone would disagree that Stalin’s Soviet Union was appalling, but compared to Hitler’s Germany it was very much the lesser of two evils. I sort of agree with Churchill when he said that if Hitler had invaded Hades, he would have said some nice words about Satan.
Helen Razer’s sad, brilliant article is an invitation to define being Australian. I have been trying to do so ever since migrating here in 1973 when Whitlam was in power. Those few years gave me the utterly false idea that this was a kind, progressive-thinking country whose focus was entirely on supporting the whole community in striving for high social goals. It is an idea that keeps hovering weakly at the edges of the general mishmash of greed and fear.
V.W. Rivett