by EZEQUIEL ADAMOVSKY
People celebrate as fireworks explode over the Kremlin to mark the 60th anniversary of the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany near the Red Square in Moscow, May 9, 2005 PHOTO/Associated Press/Salon
The Soviet Union resisted, fought back and eventually won the war, at a gigantic human and material cost with up to 27 million deaths.
The Soviet Union resisted, fought back and eventually won the war, at a gigantic human and material cost with up to 27 million deaths.
As a child growing up in the periphery of the “Free world”, I learned to imagine World War II as a clash between the evil forces of Nazi Germany and the Americans, the liberators of old Europe.
Like many young folks, I grew up watching Combat!, the American TV series. I can still hear in my head the German soldiers crying “Amerikaner!” in desperation every time they bumped into the heroic troops of Sergeant “Chip” Saunders, who would invariably annihilate them.
Later on I suffered together with Private Ryan while he was being rescued in Steven Spielberg’s extraordinary film. As I learned by watching American TV, Americans also tend to imagine that they saved the world from the Nazi menace. As Moe proudly tells a Briton in a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, “You know, we saved your ass in World War II!”.
As far as I know, that is not an uncommon phrase in the US. According to this imagination, in World War II the Americans rescued not only poor Ryan, but also European (and probably world) freedom.
The missing part in all these recollections is of course the Russians. I have no childhood images of their role in WWII, but I later learned that they also played a part and that they actually claim that it was them who saved Europe from the Nazis.
When I visited Berlin two years ago I went to the magnificent Soviet War Memorial on Treptower Park. A gigantic statue there shows a Soviet soldier rescuing a child while destroying a swastika. Smaller monuments also celebrate the role of communist partisans who resisted the German invasion in other countries. While I was observing the statue, a group of American tourists was being briefed by a local guide, who emphasized the propaganda function of the memorial, aimed at exalting communism and the historical role of Stalin and the Soviet Union.
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