The Day the West Likes to Forget

Michael Jabara CARLEY | 22.09.2015 | 00:02

How often have you heard about the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact,
concluded on 23 August 1939? On that day Adolf Hitler and Iosif Stalin,
those two peas in a pod, according to the western Mainstream Media,
carved up eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Black Seas. The gates
were opened to World War II. Stalin stabbed Britain and France in the
back, the so-called western democracies, actually the two largest colonial
empires in the world.
To make sure you dont forget that date, apart from the frequent references to it in the
Mainstream Media, August 23rd is now designated the European Day of Remembrance for
Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. In 2008 the European Parliament came up with the brilliant
idea to have a Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and
authoritarian regimes, to be commemorated with dignity and impartiality. It has been observed
annually since 2009. Various centre-right political groupings inside the European Parliament,
along with the NATO (read US) Parliamentary Assembly initiated or backed the idea. It was not
a coincidence that in 2009, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),
meeting in Lithuania, also passed a resolutionequating the roles of the USSR and Nazi Germany
in starting World War II. The OSCE resolution bears no relation whatsoever to what actually
happened during the 1930s. It is an attempt to rewrite history. Naturally, all this anti-Stalinist
and anti-Soviet grandstanding has another purpose: to attack the Russian Federation and
Vladimir Putin, the bulls eye of western Russophobes.
There is another date which might have been a better choice for commemoration, if Europe
really wanted to remember how World War II began. I would propose 30 September 1938. On
that day British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Premier douard Daladier met
with Hitler and his amanuensis, Italian fascist Benito Mussolini, in Munich to carve up
Czechoslovakia. Neither Czechoslovak nor Soviet diplomats participated in the meetings; Hitler
did not want them there. The fhrer demanded the Sudeten territories with their majority German
populations. Self-determination was the pretext, but the real purpose was to destroy
Czechoslovakia, an obstacle to German domination in Europe, and to isolate the USSR, a
Czechoslovak ally.
In point of fact the USSR did everything it reasonably could do to support European collective
security and Czechoslovak resistance against Nazi aggression. It was the French and British,
especially the latter, who shirked the fight. The French were craven. The French foreign minister,
Georges Bonnet, reckoned France could not fight and that if it did, it would face defeat and
communist revolution. Stalins great Nemesis, L. D. Trotskii, liked to say that war was often the
mother of revolution, and Bonnet and many of his French colleagues agreed.
Chamberlain was less craven and more determined not to be dragged into a war for a doomed,
unviable state. According to Bonnet, Czechoslovakia was nothing for the British but rags and
patches stitched together by the Versailles Treaty No one should die to protect [it].

Chamberlain thought he could come to terms with Herr Hitler, and Czechoslovakia was a small
price to pay to get an agreement. Chamberlain told Opposition leaders in the House of Commons
that Hitler was an honourable man, who would keep the peace after having obtained the
Sudeten territories. When the leaders of the Opposition expressed their doubts, Chamberlain
reacted irritably. I have met Hitler, he said, and I believe him. Fatuous words, as it turned
out, because rump Czechoslovakia disappeared a few months later in March 1939.
For Chamberlain, an alliance with the USSR against Nazi Germany was the last resort, or even
no resort at all. Agreement with Hitler was more attractive. An alliance with the USSR against
Nazi Germany meant war. Preventative war, said Bonnet, a cowardly man, who lost his
composure during the Munich crisis.
You want war! was the chief accusation of Tories and the European right hurled against those
who sought to organise resistance against Nazi aggression. Stalin understood. When in 1939 the
British and French still hesitated to organise a common defence against Nazi Germany, Stalin
concluded with Hitler. For the Soviet government Munich was the camel breaking straw which
led directly to the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. The Munich accords and the non-aggression
pact were also two peas in a pod. People at the time were furious because Stalin had succeeded
where they had failed the previous year at Munich. It was sauve qui peut, never a good long-term
security strategy. It only encourages the aggressor, as Stalin would find out in June 1941.
Many historians have tried to defend Chamberlains selling out of Czechoslovakia. Britain was
not ready for war and had to bide its time. Lets give credit where credit is due. Chamberlains
historian-defenders have done a lot of research and spilled a lot of ink to restore his reputation. I
do not think they have succeeded however. Critics at the time had it right. According to
the Manchester Guardian in early 1939, British appeasement was a clever plan of selling off
your friends in order to buy off your enemies.
If any state deserves condemnation for sabotaging collective security during the 1930s, it is
Britain, not the USSR. The British repeatedly rejected Soviet proposals for an anti-Nazi alliance,
or blocked the French from improving relations with Moscow. And you know France, always
acting like an Anglo-Saxon satellite, then it was Britain, now its the United States.
Today everything has changed, but nothing has changed. During the Interwar Years, fascism was
attractive to capitalist elites afraid of socialism and the USSR. After World War II fascism again
became attractive to western liberal elites, clandestinely at first, more openly now. The EU in
its Russophobic posturing, condemned the holding of public demonstrations glorifying the Nazi
or Stalinist past, but somehow the Nazi pea fell out of the pod. There are demonstrations in the
Baltic states remembering SS soldiers who fought with Nazi Germany against the Red Army.
And what can one say about the Ukraine? StepanBandera, the Nazi collaborator, and Hitler are
celebrated without any embarrassment. Right Sector brownshirts represent the vanguard of the
Kiev junta, which overthrew the elected Ukrainian government in a western backed coup dtat.
For all intents and purposes the Ukraine is a fascist state. The EU and the United States deny it.
Its only a few bad apples in Kiev, but of course there are none so blind as those who will not

see.

If I were a MEP, I would propose that the European Parliament remember 30 September 1938,
the day the west sold out Czechoslovakia and put paid to collective security against Nazi
Germany. For that misdeed Britain, not the USSR, was the main guilty party. Its a hard thing to
live down even now, which is why you wont hear anything about it in the Mainstream Media.
At least the Czechoslovaks had a functioning democracy, the only one in central or eastern
Europe at the time. The Baltic states and Poland were full of fascist sympathizers or fascists and
anti-semites. What ever happened to western values? The values of course are bogus, unless
you mean hypocrisy, double standards, and Russophobia. Naturally, if I were a MEP, I would be
treated as a kook or a Putin agent. As a historian, I could get the same reaction, but thats a risk I
am willing to take.
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Michael J. Carley, Professeur titulaire, Dpartement d'histoire, Universit de Montral