The Great Patriotic War

Red Flag over the Reichstag, 1945

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The Red Army and the Russian people have surely started the Hitler forces on the road to ultimate defeat and have earned the lasting admiration of the people of the United States.”

President Franklin Deleno Roosevelt to Joseph Stalin, 1943.

 “(I)n 1945, Zhukov would be placed at the head of the Soviet assault on Berlin itself. It was Georgy Zhukov who would personally accept Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945.”

"We have liberated them (from fascism), and they will never forgive us for that." Attributed to Marshall Zhukov to Konstantin Rokossovsky in Berlin in 1945 after the surrender of the Wehrmacht to the Red Army.

May 9 is celebrated in Russia as the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II in what they call today, The Great Patriotic War. This year is special in that it marks the eightieth anniversary of that event and Russia is once again fighting fascist forces at its borders.

General Eisenhower had advanced to the Elbe River and halted there, the approach to Berlin considered too costly and the Soviet Union was already agreed to occupy Berlin after the war in an agreement made in Yalta the year before and besides, Marshal Zhukov had two million soldiers poised to besiege Berlin. Forces of Field Marshall Zhukov met the American forces at Elbe and a picture was taken of the historic meeting.

The US, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union were allies during the war in Europe and fought together for the demise of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union, starting in 1943, had driven the German army from Stalingrad on the Caspian Sea in the Urals all the way to Berlin, liberating Moscow and Leningrad, Ukraine, Poland, and finally Germany as well as concentration camps such as Auschwitz along the way. 

The war effort had cost them 27 million casualties, most of them civilian such as one million who died of starvation in the siege of Leningrad. More Russian civilians died than all of those murdered in Nazi death camps. This event means something very powerful to the Russian people today.

Supreme Soviet Commander Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov awarded Supreme Allied Commander Dwight David Eisenhower the highest honor of the Soviet Union, the Order of Victory. Eisenhower’s name can be seen on a plaque in the Kremlin commemorating this honor to this day. There is a similar plaque in Arlington Cemetery in Washington where ceremonies take place every April 25^th commemorating the historic meeting at the Elbe between American and Soviet soldiers, brothers in war.

In 1988, a book called “Yankees Meet the Reds” came out in both English and Russian, commemorating that meeting on the Elbe River near a besieged Berlin. In it American Lieutenant Colonel Buck Kotzebue made an interesting observation: “I think that all soldiers definitely have something in common. They understand the meaning of war. And if we could let them choose, there would be no war. Yes, you can doubt the spirit of Elbe. You can say that these are just dreams about the impossible. But I think that it is necessary to dream about the impossible. Only then will it become possible.”

         Elbe Day: A handshake that made history.

I have often heard it said that the State Department of the United States government sees war as a tool of statecraft whereas the Department of Defense (previously ‘Department of War’) always seeks diplomacy. The diplomats want war and the warriors want diplomacy. That seems fitting if supremely contradictory. Though I suspect that most people will see war for what it is if it ever comes to their homes and breaks through their civilized walls. Wars bring a reality that is impossible to negotiate with.

It seems appropriate to me that the people dedicated to war, who have seen war up close and personal, and who have suffered the worst consequences of war, are the ones most adamant for peace.

May we remember. And may we join their passion for peace.