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D-Day Propaganda Misses The Soviet Contributions
While it is given much emphasis in the “western” view of the second world war Operation Overlord, the invasion on D-Day and the following month of fighting at the Western front, were strategically less important than the Soviet operations on the Eastern front. Without the parallel Soviet Operation Bagration the invasion of fortress Europe in the west would likely have failed. Looking at the numbers of forces involved and German forces destroyed one might even argue that Overlord was just a diversion to keep a few German divisions busy while the Soviet attack in the East destroyed whole German armies.
At the Tehran conference in winter of 1943 Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin aligned their strategies:
The declaration issued by the three leaders on conclusion of the conference on 1 December 1943, recorded the following military conclusions:
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The cross-channel invasion of France (Operation Overlord) would be launched during May 1944, in conjunction with an operation against southern France. The latter operation would be undertaken in as great a strength as availability of landing-craft permitted. The Conference further took note of Joseph Stalin’s statement that the Soviet forces would launch an offensive at about the same time with the object of preventing the German forces from transferring from the Eastern to the Western Front;
Stalin more than kept his promise:
The partisan brigades, including many Jewish fighters and concentration-camp escapees, planted 40,000 demolition charges. They devastated the vital rail lines linking German Army Group Centre to its bases in Poland and Eastern Prussia.
Three days later, on June 22 1944, the third anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Marshal Zhukov gave the order for the main assault on German front lines. Twenty-six thousand heavy guns pulverised German forward positions. The screams of the Katyusha rockets were followed by the roar of 4,000 tanks and the battle cries (in more than 40 languages) of 1.6 million Soviet soldiers. Thus began Operation Bagration, an assault over a 500-mile-long front.
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[T]he Soviet summer offensive was several times larger than Operation Overlord (the invasion of Normandy), both in the scale of forces engaged and the direct cost to the Germans.
By the end of summer, the Red army had reached the gates of Warsaw as well as the Carpathian passes commanding the entrance to central Europe. Soviet tanks had caught Army Group Centre in steel pincers and destroyed it. The Germans would lose more than 300,000 men in Belorussia alone. Another huge German army had been encircled and would be annihilated along the Baltic coast. The road to Berlin had been opened.
In total some 70-80% of German losses occurred in the East. In 1944 there were 228 German divisions in the East compared to a total of 58 divisions in the West (and South). In June, July and August 1944 alone the Soviets completely destroyed some 28 German divisions. A bigger German force than the 15 divisions that existed on the Western front in France on D-Day and the weeks thereafter.
It is embarrassing to see how many propaganda lines are spend on D-Day compared to the few acknowledgments of the much huger Soviet efforts and casualties on the Eastern front.
Diane Johnstone has a good piece on Ukraine today at Counterpunch
Comments on D Day don’t really appeal to me. The basic problem is that history, which is useful, has been overwhelmed by competing schemes of propaganda.
To try and straighten the record, the British contribution to D Day was of overwhelming importance. This is obvious enough if only on geographical grounds. I have great sympathy with opponents of the Empire but facts are facts. And, if you examine them, they often turn out to be anti-imperial.
Of the five beaches in Normandy only two were for US troops. Of the remaining three, British, Canadian, Polish and other exiled troops constituted the invading forces. I mention this because the great tragedy of post war politics was that the enormous importance of the non-American contribution was blotted out in order to justify the submission of their ruling classes to US imperialism. And the subsequent partnerships they made, which have now matured in the new fascism of “democracies” without sovereignty.
This submission was by no means necessary, any more than was US “Aid” in the post war period. A very influential minority in the Labour Party, including GDH Cole, RH Tawney and Harold Laski, warned of the importance of Britain maintaining its independence from the US. On the other side were “deep state” elements in the British establishment who preferred submission to the US to socialist rule.
It is important, when throwing around words like British and American, to bear in mind how little they mean: for example it was US secret service people who supplied and sponsored anti-Franco guerrilla forces in Catalonia in 1946, it was MI6 which betrayed them to the Spanish who wiped them out.
Similarly in the winter of 1944 it was the British Supreme Commander in Italy, the aristocratic Alexander, who informed the world, including the Wehrmacht, that the Italian partisans in northern Italy, who were holding down 14 German divisions, would not be supplied further during the winter. By the spring, that Resistance Army had been systematically decimated by the fascist forces. As a result the left, in the post war period, was deprived of many of its best leaders.
Alexander, who as a Lt Colonel had commanded the Latvian Landswehr in its resistance to the Bolsheviks, was as anti-Communist as any Texan. So, was Churchill who, by the way, was far from being the popular figure in Britain that mythology suggests: check out the 1945 election results to see what the electorate thought of the man.
Britain (and thanks to De Valera’s austerity programmes Ireland) was the most mobilised of any countries during the war: very few, men or women, were not conscripted into the war effort, taxation was steeply progressive, ‘confiscatory’ as the rich called it.
The ruling class hated the war. Every other ruling class in Europe had made its arrangement with the fascists, intending to profit from doing so and preserving its wealth. Only in Britain were the anti-fascist forces, in the context of a barrier of angry ocean, sufficient to prevent the Tories from compromising with Hitler and engaging in a partnership, guaranteeing the preservation of the Empire, much more equal than that the US later offered.
Far from being marginal Britain was critical in the war. Had it surrendered in 1940 does anyone imagine that the US would have joined in except to annex Canada, scoop up the Caribbean islands, and acquire slices of Siberia?
As to the Soviet Union, there was enormous popular support for and understanding of its contribution among the masses not only in Europe but in North America too. It took a propaganda campaign of unprecedented complexity to erase popular pro-Russian opinion in Britain and even the United States. And nowhere was pro-Russian opinion stronger than among the ranks of the Army and war veterans: nobody understood better than Tommy Atkins the debt owed to Ivan Ivanovich.
The real significance of D Day is that it represented the culmination of the mobilised energies of a population that was predominantly proletarian. The same might be said of the Eastern Front where the Red Army represented not just the energies of the Soviet people but their hopes and dreams of social justice too.
If it is a lie that the US won the war, another lie is that the impulse behind the mobilisation of the Soviet Union was simple “patriotism” or even “orthodoxy.” There, as in Britain or the US, promises of reform, social justice, economic equality-after the war- were made. For a variety of reasons they were not kept. And one consequence of that breaking of faith can be seen in the Ukraine where ordinary people are very reluctant to become involved again in a war in which only the bosses, the oligarchs and the bankers can win
Posted by: bevin | Jun 6 2014 20:57 utc | 44
Apologies for off-topic:
@Seiji, Somebody
The ‘Genocide Fax’ is a very interesting document. It was sent from a British base to UN headquarters, in 1995 (sic), when Madeleine Albright’s son-in-law, Gourevitch, needed it for pro-Kagame propaganda. It was used in subsequent Rwandan trials, without annotation as to source. Its ultimate source is a fellow by the name of Abu Bakar Turatsinze, who was hired as a chauffeur by Habyarimana, as the latter expected him to be a good driver, as he was expected not to drink, being a Muslim. The document alleged to concern the murder of opposition political leaders.
Romeo Dallaire denied (in 1994) to CBC that there was an ethnic component to the conflict. In 1995, he admitted to CBC French radio that he had sought the withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers (as per his and Kagame’s wishes, against the wishes of Hutu president Habyarimana). He had also seen to the closing of one of the two functioning runways, so as to ease Kagame’s assassination of Habyarimana. The US shut down Hourigan’s investigation.
The Rwandan government lacked the heavy weaponry to conduct the genocide (see Hilberg’s Destruction on what happens when people have to conduct a genocide up front and personal), going so far as to return an Egyptian shipment of ammunition ordered before Kagame’s invasion, per implementation of article II of the Arusha accords (although the US and Canada continued to flout this, by arming Kagame during the subsequent 3 and a half years). Kagame was ethnically cleansing entire regions (Rwanda’s breadbasket went from about 800 thousand people to 2700 people under his tutelage, before 1994). As Rwanda had only 600 thousand Tutsi citizens in 1990, and as half were killed (Ibuka numbers—Ibuka was a Tutsi human rights organization, and one of the few more or less legit organizations operating in Rwanda, as most were formed after Kagame’s invasion, and one formed the day before Kagame’s invasion, in likely anticipation, as none of the human rights organizations reported on Kagame’s crimes), it is obvious that the majority of the dead were Hutu. None of the opposition parties (legalized in 1991, on a promise of Habyarimana in 1990 prior to the invasion) commanded much support, so the ‘moderate vs extremist’ line is so much nonsense.
Much is made of the term ‘Inyenzi’ (cockroaches) to hint at genocidal intent. This is a bit problematic, as the term refers to aristocratic refugee Tutsis who fled Rwanda in 1959, during the anti-feudal revolution, during which 20 thousand Tutsis were murdered, and 120 thousand Tutsis fled abroad, mainly to Congo-Kinshasa, Tanzania and Uganda (Kagame was of the last group—he fled to Uganda at age seven). Many of these Tutsis would form terrorist organizations, that would infiltrate back into Rwanda periodically and murder Hutu peasants. They would come in teams of six or twelve, thus the name Inyenzi, by analogy to the number of legs of an insect. See Lemarchand’s Rwanda and Burundi.
The ‘Inyenzi’ business is usually cited in the context of governmental and pro-government radio broadcasts; the transcripts of these are available online. Note that there is massive outrage against Kagame’s crimes, and likening of his forces with the Inyenzi (well, gee, could we call them Inyenzi II, given Kagame’s class background and land of refuge?), yet sympathy is expressed for Tutsi civilians. Note that the Interahamwe is seen as a defensive force, protecting against Kagame’s violence; the head of the Interahamwe, Robert Kajuga, is a Tutsi.
For a detailed account, see Robin Philpot’s Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa.
Kagame was one of Museveni’s fighters, and ran a massive child-soldier operation (Kony is small fry); this continued in Rwanda, when he invaded and took power, and he used child soldiers to get rid of Mobutu—the left was very naive in this regard. When Kabila senior took power, he eventually turned against Kagame, thus the continuing Rwandan (RPF/Kagame) genocide there.
Posted by: Johan Meyer | Jun 8 2014 16:42 utc | 86
Jesus, it amazes me how many biased fools write on this blog!!
Firstly, WWII “history” is bunk, a pile of lies, half truths and distortions put up by, obviously, allied propagandists and since then carried on by court historians. Be it Zanglo-Zamerican or Soviet. Most WWII historians, past and present, are court historians,i.e, dirty propagandists.
Both the West and the Soviets( now Russia as the main heir of SU) continue to abuse the facts for self serving motives.
The war was NOT a just war, pitting good vs evil. The main allied powers, ZUSA, the British, France and the SU all had a lot of responsability for the outbreak of the war and for it becoming a global conflict and committed huge war crimes. It was not just the Axis’ fault, or even just Germanys fault as nearly 70 years of propaganda would have us believe.
In fact, to understand WWII one needs to go back to the unification of Germany in 1871 and all that happened since.
As for the alleged reason for its start, to protect Poland, the whole thing is a joke. The whole pact with Poland was designed to get a war with Poland going. Funny that Britain and France then declared war on Germany but of course did not do the same when the soviets invaded from the east taking 60% of the country. No, they and later ZUSA, would in fact fight on the side of the stalinist regime, certainly a much more brutal regime than the hitlerian one. Plus, in going to war against Germany, the British and French leaders transformed what was then a geographically limited clash between Germany and Poland into a continental, European-wide conflict. And when the guns finally went silent Poland was firmy… NOT FREE, but instead was entirely under the brutal rule of the Stalinists. Oh, er, my mistake, it was indeed ‘free’ as it was ‘liberated’ by Stalin, who, according to the many fools here, was a nice chap and the SU a peace loving country…NOT.
ZAmerica’s two most important military allies in the war were Great Britain and the Soviet Union – that is, the world’s foremost imperialist power, and the world’s cruelest tyranny.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Britain ruled over the largest colonial empire in history. This vast empire included what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and South Africa.
ZAmerica’s other great wartime ally, the Soviet Union, was, by any objective measure, one of the most tyrannical or oppressive regime of its time, and a vastly more cruel despotism than Hitler’s Germany. One should not forget about the French empire either, or ZUSA’s, for that matter(Philippines, Pacific possessions, Central America).
The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were cangaroo courts, show trials.
B has made the correct point that Bagration was more important than Normandy. Its actually bigger than that. the war did not begin in the summer of 44. By then, the Germans had been decimated on the Eastern front. Large numbers of the best, most experienced german forces had already been killed or captured. The totalitarian stalinist regime was the main force behind the axis defeat, given that Germany was by far the most formidable axis opponent, military-wise.
Also, take a look at the wiki articles linked by b. It helps one understand the way propaganda plays out. The wiki articles are based on ‘historians’ work of these campaigns. Troop strenghts and casualties are generally wrong. German troop strenght in Normandy was NEVER up to 1 million men. While the allied casualty figures stem from allied military archives, the German figures are stupid and bloated allied ‘estimates’.
Why don’t these mostly anglo-american ‘historians’, people like ‘Aple-pie Ambrose’ and sir j.Keegan, work from German archival materials? Because they are lazy but also bc they wish to present the allied victory as more convincing, thus they generally inflate german troop strenght and german losses.
No more than 640,000 Germans fought or supported the operations in Normandy, so the western allies had ample numeric superiority, better than the Soviets in the summer of 44. When the allies finally succeeded to break out, launching Cobra, the germans had about 380,000 men in Normandy vs nearly 1.5 million anglo-american-canatdians,etc.
A manpower advantage 3.8 : 1. Soviet advantage was 2.7 : 1.
German casualties for all of the Western front, NOT JUST Normandy for the summer 44, June,July,Aug were as follows(from german military archives):
some 90,000 killed or wounded(23,000 KIA). About 200 thousand were captured. Normandy casualties were smaller.
The allies suffered badly to achieve this; over 190,000 were killed or wounded in the same period. As they won, not so many were captured.
The battle in White Russia cost the Germans worse losses. 136,000 kia or mia plus some 263,000 pows.
Whats more, the average quality of the german divisions lost in the east was quite higher than in the west where there were many static, green infantry formations.
As for Toivos 4.5 million german killed in wwII.
Well bud, on the eastern front, from june 41 to 31 dec 44 – close to the end of the war – the germans suffered 885,802 kia, 3,448.000, and over 1.1 million captured. So, even when we factor in that a percentage of the wounded died later, we cannot reach anywhere close to more the 4 million military deaths. Which, indirectly, shines some light on one of the many taboos of the war, the huge number of german pows who died in captivity. Not only in the hands of the soviets but also the french and zamericans.
If ‘historians’ make gross ‘mistakes’ re troop strengths and losses in order to make their side look better(there is incompetence too, a norm in the field), to what lenghts would they be willing to go in order to distort the stuff that really matters?
It’s funny how people who come to this blog mostly only recognize propaganda when it suits their prejudices and pre-conceived notions while ignoring all the propaganda carried out by the allies against the axis countries, notably against Germany, possibly the most maligned nation ever. The propaganda has been non-stopping for more than 7 decades, with cinema and tv playing a particularly pernicious role.
Lastly, let me recommend Alison Weirs great new book, “Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel’, can be found at Amazon.
Posted by: Luca K | Jun 8 2014 22:48 utc | 95
@96
I’m saying Kagame killed the majority of the Hutu dead in the three months, and of course, as is now public record (irrespective of how much genocide whine his apologetists put up), he was on a mass ethnic cleansing/mass killing spree from much earlier.
As to Dallaire, he is so full of shit, one wonders where to begin. I’ve already put up two of his early statements that contradict his current line. And I’ve already put up the fact that he was an instigator, by enabling Kagame’s assassination of Habyarimana. I’ll add in this post that he was running a de facto taxi service for the RPF.
The ‘wandering around the countryside’ bit is rich, considering that he took over the entire country in the three months, and even ethnically cleansed (for a second time) the population of the breadbasket, the second time from refugee camps north of Kigali into Congo-Kinshasa, where he proceded to shell their refugee camps, ‘to find genocidaires’ (sic—his justification, with US and Canadian support). This was of course not his Congo genocide—that would start about 5 years later. Then he (with US and Canadian support) forcibly repatriated them into Rwanda, without allowing them to go back to their lands. Tutsi Feudalism, part II.
As to the minority of deaths over which you obsess, namely the Tutsi deaths (the 1991 census stands, and it was conducted by a unity government that included Kagame partisans; even HRW in their screed on the matter had to acknowledge that the 1991 census had, within variance, the expected Tutsi population considering the previous census and Tutsi birth rates, though they declined to apply the modus tollens and conclude that therefor the census was legitimate), they were mainly killed by Hutu groups (although the Tutsi deaths in the breadbasket region of course predate 1994, and were thus perpetrated by Kagame, but facts are so irrelevant when they contradict the western party line). But then again, tongues have become looser in the subsequent years, and we now know that Kagame had more than 150 Tutsi terrorist cells in Kigali alone. That of course does not justify the destruction of half the Tutsi population (300 thousand, the rest being Hutus murdered mainly by Kagame), but it does put to rest the whole ‘long premeditated’ psychobabble. We are of course talking about terrorist strikes against civilian infrastructure, including the natural gas state enterprise, the electricity and water state enterprises, etc.
I should repeat that Kagame’s ethnic cleansing and murder campaign in the three months was merely a stepping up (by a factor of 100) of his conduct the previous three and a half years. And this of course he could readily do, because propaganda aside, the majority of the dead were not hacked, not least of all (falling back on Dallaire’s propaganda in ‘They fight like soldiers, they die like children,’ here) because malnourished refugee children in clown suits simply don’t have the physical strength to hack up other children with machetes, let alone adults. Depersonalised killing, as exercised by Kagame, i.e. using his long range weapons, like your nazi friends in Ukraine, just works much better at killing or otherwise causing the death (infrastructure disruption) of large groups of people.
And again, all of this is irrelevant to the O/P, so again, I suggest we switch to a different blog.
Posted by: Johan Meyer | Jun 9 2014 14:41 utc | 97
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