85th anniversary of the beginning of World War II

85 years ago, on September 1, 1939, the Second World War – the bloodiest conflict in the history of mankind – began. By various estimates, it claimed lives of up to 80 million people, including over 27 million citizens of the Soviet Union.

61 states, with over 80 percent of the world’s population, were drawn into the bloody ordeal unleashed by the Axis powers; hostilities spread to 40 countries.

The background of the greatest tragedy of the 20th century still remains in the focus of historians’ attention. The entire range of contradictions that provoked the war stemmed from World War I and can be traced back to the Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919.

It was the Versailles system of international relations, drafted by the UK and France, that made the basis for the rise of revanchist sentiments in Europe. The League of Nations, the organization established to settle international disputes within the legal framework, technically became a tool for the Western powers to achieve their political goals.

Not surprising that in Europe, torn by contradictions, fascism rapidly gained popularity. The politicians who were convinced of the superiority of their nation came to power first in Italy (1922) and then in Germany which was humiliated by Versailles (1933). The political establishment of the Western countries was unaware of the new ideology’s danger for the world, with their cynical belief that Nazi aggression could be, in a typical Anglo-Saxon style, redirected to the east where the young Soviet state was rapidly developing.

The infamous Munich Betrayal of 1938 was the apotheosis of the self-serving “appeasement” policy that the Western countries had preferred to building a collective security system suggested by the Soviet Union. With the tacit consent by the UK and France, Hitler ruthlessly annexed the sovereign state of Czechoslovakia. It was only Moscow that was willing to provide military assistance to the Czechoslovakians, but was unable to do so due to Poland that was playing along with Hitler and taking advantage of Czechoslovakia’s annexation by occupying the Cieszyn region.

A year later, a similar drama played out in the Far East: the Anglo-Japanese treaty was signed in June 1939, untying Tokyo’s hands in China. The Soviet Union could have become the next victim of militarist Japan. According to recently declassified documents, the Japanese command had been planning a possible attack against the Soviet Union since 1938, with nearly a million-strong Kwantung Army troops deployed along the border and ready to invade of our country at any moment, with its soldiers and officers known to show no aversion to human experiments to develop biological weapons. The Soviet Union had to contain Japan’s potential invasion by keeping substantial army forces on its eastern borders until the end of the war.

Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 was a direct consequence of the policy of intrigues and manuevers pursued by the West, which did not allow to create an anti-Hitler coalition to jointly resist the Third Reich. 

When it became obvious that Germany was capable of occupying all of Poland and reaching Minsk, the Soviet command sent forces into the “Eastern Kresy,” the territory of present-day Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania, which were seized by Poland in 1920. Otherwise, the war would have started from a very unfavourable strategic position for the Soviet Union. In Poland, the Red army stopped approximately at the Curzon Line, which was recommended by the Entente as Poland’s eastern border in 1919. When the Red army entered these territories in September 1939, the locals greeted Soviet soldiers with jubilation, which is proved by historical evidence. 

In this context, the assertions of an alleged ‘equivalence’ between Nazism and Communism are unacceptable and blasphemous, as are the attempts to place equal blame for the start of the war on Germany and the Soviet Union in order to downplay the decisive contribution of the Soviet Union on the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War, which crushed Hitler’s war machine, and to diminish the heroism of our soldiers-liberators.

Defeating the most aggressive reactionary forces was the most important outcome of the Great Victory of May 9, 1945. Our country saved many “non-Aryan” peoples from physical eradication, which Nazis planned to kill in concentration camps or to turn into slaves.

An excerpt from the briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova (August 28, 2024):

“Today, more than 80 years later, our country is once again fighting for free and independent global development. We are fighting for the right of nations to decide on their own future and their path of development.

As we know from the Second World War, claims to global domination have been repeatedly shattered by the courage and fortitude of our people.”