# Posted 8:10 AM by Patrick Porter  

TIME, BLOOD AND MONEY: Should Stalin and the Soviet people get most of the laurels for victory in World War Two? Benjamin Schwarz thinks so, in a review article in this month's Atlantic.

Not only were the Soviets instrumental in defeating Hitler. Also, he argues, collective memory in the Anglo-American world should turn its gaze from D Day and the Blitz and towards what was truly decisive, the German-Soviet struggle.

Not only will this challenge our heroic narrative of liberal democracies overthrowing fascism, but it introduces an irony which Schwarz accuses Americans of lacking. Quoting Geoffrey Roberts,

to win the greatest military victory in history was a triumph beyond compare...Stalin saved the world for democracy.

Schwarz has a point about the sheer scale of human sacrifice suffered by the Soviets, as well as the scale of casualties it inflicted on Nazi Germany. Schwarz points to a figure, a whopping 88% of the Nazi dead were killed in the lethal eastern front.

But much more needs to be said.

In the backlash against the narrative of America's moral triumph in the war, its a little glib to talk about the marginality of America's involvement.

The war wasn't just determined in combat, despite the extremes it reached.

Practically speaking, the Soviet war effort simply could not have functioned as it did without massive financial and material aid from the US. American industrial power, funding and resources underpinned the extraordinary efforts of Soviet population.

If its irony that Schwarz wants more of in the writing of history, then the irony of the powerful alliance between totalitarian Stalinism and American capitalism might deserve more attention.

It was an industrial war and a war in which the theatres of operation were strongly linked.

Consider the strategic bombing of Germany which America took part in. The benefits and value continues to be debated, but it certainly worked to fix the Luftwaffe over Germany, drawing German anti-aircraft guns, artillery pieces and aircraft from other fronts, which helped to give Soviets air supremacy in their theatre.

Also, it can be a 'straw man' argument. Many American commentators don't claim simply that the US defeated Nazi Germany. Instead, it is argued that America was instrumental in defeating the Axis powers as a whole.

It was also a war against Japan and Italy. Which also reached terrifying climaxes of violence. (I gather that some Germans fighting in Italy even applied to be deployed back to the eastern front, although I need to confirm this). The expansionism of Imperial Japan led to such atrocities and crimes against humanity that it has been termed the 'Asian holocaust.'

I'm also not sure how accurate it is that Americans routinely claim to have won the war single-handedly. At least at a high official level, speeches of American Presidents at D-Day ceremonies consisently credit the Soviet Union's sacrifices. To be sure, popular culture and cinema in Holywood probably privilege American agency in the victory. But historians and Presidents have not always followed this temptation.

And the struggle against Japan also aided Stalin's struggle against Hitler. Without the US in the war, Japanese divisions could have have returned to the Soviet East and threatened Stalin with a two-front war. Without a submarine conflict between German U-boats and American merchant ships, the Soviet Union might have been cut off from the world.

When it comes to the political meaning of the war, isn't it 'too neat' to commemorate Stalin, without qualification, as a liberator and saviour of modern democracy?

Stalin collaborated with Nazi Germany and was a virtual ally for the first two years of the war. He invaded Poland and attempted to conquer Finland, while Hitler rampaged over western Europe. Also, I would be reluctant to tell eastern Europeans that Stalin made their world safe for democracy.

The onslaught of Stalinist domination which followed his successes after 1941 is one reason the Allied offensive at Normandy became so important. Not only did its value lie in liberating countries from Nazism, but it prevented the possible creation of more brutal Soviet satellites in France, Low Countries, Italy, western Germany.

So if its a little too 'neat' to credit the USA for being the central hero in defeating Hitler, its equally misleading to represent the whole affair mainly as Uncle Joe's triumph.

The whole debate is indeed soured and distorted by the attempt to isolate one actor above all the others as the hero. It was more of a complex interaction of different fronts, different political systems and different military, political, economic and industrial efforts.

Stalin himself recognised this, when he summarised what the Allies contributed:
Britain the time, America the money, and Russia the blood. (15) opinions -- Add your opinion