About the Anglo-American historiography of World War II
In the United States, the Pentagon publishes separate stories of each type of armed force in a war: the army - 96 volumes, the air force - 20 volumes, fleet - 12 volumes.
There are several episodes in England: 10 volumes of the popular history of actions of the British armed forces in the war, 30 volumes devoted to the study of certain aspects of the British “Big Strategy” and analysis of various operations, 30 civilian history of England in the Second World War and 92 volume of the so-called “blue books” »About individual transactions. Thus, upon the completion of this work, which has already advanced far, a total of about 30 volumes will be released, in which the participation of the USA and England in the Second World War is outlined. Each volume, as a rule, is a voluminous book, an average of about 500 pages. (In recent years, the Foreign Literature Publishers and the Military Literature Publishers have translated into Russian some works from these series. These are the three volumes of the Big Strategy, by D. Butler and D. Erman, M., 1958 — 1959, included in the 30-volume English series. Of the American works were translated: F. Pogue “High Command”, M, 1959; M Mat-Loff and E. Snell “Strategic Planning in the coalition war 1941 — 1943 yy, M, 1955 (from the 96-volume history of the army and the United States in the war); S. Morison “The Battle for the Atlantic.” M, 1956, his own “The Battle for the Atlantic won,” M., 1959 (included in the 12-volume history of the US Navy).)
Diplomatic departments — in the United States, the State Department, in England, the Forenshire Offices — issue multivolume collections of documents to highlight the foreign policy of these countries, primarily on the eve of the war. In the United States, the issuance of a special multi-volume publication has not been undertaken, except for in general the few collections on this or that issue related to the Second World War. Such are, for example, “Peace and War” (released in 1943 and covers US foreign policy in 1931 - 1941); two volumes of the 1931-1941 American-Japanese Relations were published the same year; “Conferences in Malta and Yalta” were published in 1955. American diplomatic documents are published in the famous “US Foreign Relations” meeting, which is published from 1861. Currently, it is brought to 1942. Annually from 1918, it is published average 2 — 6 volumes. In England, during the Second World War, the government decided to issue three series of diplomatic documents on British foreign policy in 1919 — 1939. The total volume of publication, almost complete, will be up to 40 volumes. In addition, the joint Anglo-French-American edition publishes diplomatic documents of the German Foreign Ministry for the period 1933 — 1941, divided into two series, which will be about two dozen volumes. Thus, we are faced with a stream of official papers and collections of documents, and here only the most important ones are mentioned that are in the efforts of the “government agencies in the USA and England to fill the book market.
In a brief essay, naturally, it is beyond the power of telling about all this literature, therefore one should turn to the main point: the assessment of the lessons of the Second World War prevailing in the USA and England and the conclusions that the ruling classes try to extract from it. And for this, first of all, it is necessary to distinguish between the official histories of the participation of the USA and England in the war and the many thousands of books about the war, written by American and British historians. Working with books by American and English authors does not always reward the researcher. Most of the literature about the Second World War, which is mass-circulated in the United States and England, is full of speculation: the role of the USSR in the war is underestimated, the contribution of the Western allies to the defeat of Germany and Japan is magnified, etc. History falsification in such publications is so widespread it is standardized and stupid that there is hardly any need in this case to waste time on its refutation. For a number of reasons: the falsifiers were repeatedly caught red-handed, showing that the distortion of the events of the Second World War was done intentionally. On this occasion, Soviet and progressive foreign historians have said and written much correct.
For weighty reasons, the leading political and military circles of the United States need historical research where real-life events would be adequately displayed correctly, including those crucially important for the destinies of humanity — 1939 — 1945. The main result of the Second World War is a change in the balance of power between socialism and capitalism in favor of the first. As DF Dulles noted, "there was a certain shift in the balance of forces in the world, and this shift is in favor of Soviet communism." Frank recognition of this is in itself an attempt to give an objective assessment of the position of the United States in the world.
When in 1953, on the initiative of the notorious D. McCarth, a movement to burn “communist” literature was widely spread in the USA, Dwight Eisenhower speaking 14 in June 1953 in Dartmouth College, told students: “Do not join those who burn books. Do not think that you will be able to hide the flaws, if you conceal evidence suggesting the existence of these flaws. Do not be afraid to go to your library and read any book there ... How can we conquer communism if we don’t know what it is? What does he teach? Why does he have such attractive force? Why are so many people loyal to him? ”
A few days later, at a specially assembled press conference, the president explained: “I am the most implacable enemy of communist theory in the world, but I am convinced that it is stupid to pretend that communism does not exist, or to pretend that it does not have much attractive force for people ... Us you need to understand communism, we must study what its attracting force is. It’s absolutely useless to just shout about your enmity towards communism. ” From this point of view, the interest in objective coverage of the events of the past acquires a purely official character. Be that as it may, military historians and the United States are trying to provide an objective assessment and analysis of warfare in the official history of the army, air force and navy. The reasons for this in general are derived from the above general installation. As K. Greenfield, editor-in-chief of the 96-heavy history of the US Army, noted: “In the history of the second world war, the army wants to get a summary of its experience for the leadership in the future, and this requires a complete and frank history.” Their conclusions, due to the limited circulation of official publications, are inaccessible to the general reader in the United States, which is usually offered illustrated illiteracy in the history of the Second World War, but serves as a guide for the officer corps of the United States armed forces and relevant historians, economists, etc. ( degree is instructive to understand what was said, refer to the book of the American expert on intelligence, Brigadier General V. Platt "Information work of strategic intelligence." “The intelligence information,” he writes, “undoubtedly represents one of the elements of history — past, present, and future, if you can talk about future history. Exaggerating a little, you can say that if the intelligence officer has solved all the mysteries of history, he doesn’t need to know much more than the facts of current events in order to understand the situation in this or that country. ” And in another place: “Specific methods of intelligence intelligence research work can be understood .. if the word“ history ”is replaced with the word“ intelligence ”(V. Platt, Information work of strategic intelligence, M., 1958, p. 171, 179, 44 ). )
It is appropriate, however, to ask the question: to what extent is written for this purpose in the United States really an objective coverage of the Second World War in the sense that it reveals with sufficient completeness the causes of world-wide historical changes as a result of the war? There can be only one answer: the picture created by American historians with the intention to be truthful for performing special tasks does not give a correct idea of the history of the war and for reasons beyond their control - the limited knowledge of the process and the ideology of the ideologists of the bourgeoisie.
The subjectivism of bourgeois researchers, by the way, is that, while rejecting the laws of social development, they believe that the restoration of the old situation is possible. As applied to the problem we are examining - the history of the Second World War, they believe that world-wide historical changes brought about by the war are random and can be returned in the broad sense to status quo ante bellum.
This subjectism permeates the entire philosophy of the history of Anglo-Saxon bourgeois historians who are trying to understand the events of 1939 — 1945. and understand their implications.
In 1958, in the USA and England, lectures by the American prof. S. Morison, read in Oxford, and the name of the English edition emphasizes their importance: "The American contribution to the strategy of the Second World War." S. Morison believes that the results of the war were prepared by the mistakes of the Western allies, the main ones of which are: a policy towards the Soviet Union, and “in the second world war, the Western allies lost sight of the old principle that our present-day enemies might need us tomorrow as allies. We defeated Japan and Germany so much that we had to pay dearly for the restoration of their military might as our allies in the so-called Cold War. ” Although the wording of S. Morison is only negative and he (unlike many of his colleagues) does not set forth an alternative course, the essence of his reproach to Anglo-American politicians is obvious - they allegedly did not properly take into account the balance of power policy considerations in a large strategy.
Hence the increased interest in the United States and England to the works of the outstanding German thinker and military theorist Karl von Clausewitz. The particular indignation of modern American historians is caused by the fact that the responsible leaders of the Western powers during the Second World War allegedly did not take the trouble to consider the classic work of K. Clausewitz “On War” when developing a strategy. The head of the school of "real politics" in the USA prof. G. Morgentau directly states: "The main mistake that determined all the individual mistakes made by the end of the Second World War and immediately after it was that the position of Karl von Clausewitz was ignored - war is the continuation of politics by other means."
Many reactionaries in the United States have spared no effort to hinder the Soviet Union with hindsight by speculative conclusions. One of the prominent representatives of the American military, retired General A. Wedemeyer, in his book, published in 1958, writes: “If we followed the policy recommended by former President Hoover, Senator Taft and other patriotic (!?) Americans, we would Apparently, they should have been left aside until our intervention was able to ensure a just and, therefore, lasting peace (read on American terms. - I. Ya.) instead of providing unconditional assistance to communist Russia. And if, after our entry into the war, Roosevelt and Churchill did not seek to destroy Germany, which was equivalent to eliminating the balance of forces on the continent, we probably would not have fought in vain ... Instead of seeking to restore the balance of forces in Europe, which was constant The goal of British politics for more than 300 years, Churchill sought the destruction of Germany and thus gave Russia the opportunity to dominate Europe. The stupidity of Churchill, who ignored the covenants of his ancestors and gave his passions an opportunity to repress his mind, can only be compared with the behavior of Roosevelt, who betrayed George Washington’s recommendations to his descendants in the conduct of foreign affairs. ” It is known that it was precisely these calculations that lay at the heart of the policies of the United States and Britain during the war years, but they could not be carried out, because the Second World War was anti-fascist, liberating in nature, and the USSR’s participation in it to a decisive degree formed the entire Allied strategy.
A. Wedemeyer accuses the powers of the “axis” of insufficient hostility to the Soviet Union! He says seriously: “Japan made the greatest blunder, drawing the United States into war in the Pacific, instead of attacking the coastal provinces of the Soviet Union. Japan should have attacked Vladivostok, the key in Eastern Siberia. Thereby, many goals would be achieved. The Japanese fleet would not give Russians the opportunity to receive lend-lease supplies from the United States through Vladivostok. The attack would have bound a huge number of Russian soldiers. The most important thing is that the Soviet Union would be forced to wage war on two fronts, and that would be an aid to Japan’s ally, Germany at the most critical moment. Stalin would not have been able to transfer the legions of Siberians to the Moscow front. Without reinforcements from Siberia, Moscow, in all likelihood, would have fallen. I am convinced that the Russians would never have been able to defeat the Germans at Stalingrad if Japan attacked the Soviet maritime provinces. And if the Germans managed to seize Stalingrad and the Caucasus, they would be able to lead the war for a very long time. As a result, the pace of US involvement in the war has slowed. ” The meaning of this thesis is obvious - A. Wedemeyer regrets that the peoples of the world were not energetically enough, in his opinion, exhausted each other to the ultimate benefit of the United States.
Similar concepts are fully shared in England, with the only difference that the British assert: the strengthening of the Soviet Union could have been avoided if the American military command had listened to their opinion at the final stage of the war. This thought permeates the final chapters of W. Churchill’s six-volume memoirs “The Second World War”. They very actively support in this respect their premier in 1940 — 1945. former British military leaders of the war period. Field Marshal Montgomery writes in his memoirs: “War is an instrument of politics, as soon as it becomes clear that you are winning, political considerations should determine its future course. In the autumn of 1944, it became clear to me that the methods by which we conducted it would have far-reaching consequences after the end of the war. ” 28 April 1959, while in the US, Montgomery directly accused the US military command of losing political perspectives: “My strategy in the war, as you know, was completely different from that of Ike (Eisenhower) ... Your commanders proceeded from that point of view that all military actions should be determined by purely military considerations and that political consequences should not be taken into account at all. ” Reviewers of London's "Time", examining the diaries of England's former chief of field imperial general staff field marshal Alan Brooke, published in the autumn of 1959 in England, also state: "The main idea of the book is ... the harsh criticism of the conduct of the war in Normandy and Germany by the US High Command." According to Alan Brooke, Eisenhower "possessed extremely limited thinking as a strategist."
However, other extreme supporters of the "balance of power" policy in England reproach Churchill himself for not having been zealously carrying it out. The well-known British military historian R. Grenfell believes that when Germany attacked the USSR, “Churchill had a great opportunity if he treated the problems of war in a state way: to step back and conduct affairs so that Germany and Russia would tear each other apart that would not do any harm to Britain. ” He blames Churchill for the fact that the British Prime Minister insisted on defeating Nazi Germany, and did not go to a separate peace with her. According to R. Grenfell: “Churchill had a decisive argument if he had bothered to use it. It was precisely (England) that could threaten the transfer to the German side as a means to force its allies (the USSR and the USA) to "agree not to weaken Germany." The Germans, in the opinion of R. Grenfell, "would immediately seize the proposal to reach an agreement with England ... And if it were destined to make a hint of the need to reach an agreement with Germany, Churchill could most effectively make them of all three allies. It was in his hands there were all the trump cards in the Anglo-American-Russian triumvirate, using which he could force the other two partners to obey his will. Why did he not let them go? ” Since this was not done, "in 1945, they resorted to a policy of eliminating the" balance of power "in the most extreme form, which had the most disastrous consequences."
The “balance of power” policy is now declared in Anglo-Saxon countries as a saving panacea for all ills. Its meaning is reduced, as is known, to the fact that the height of state wisdom in international affairs allegedly was, is and will be the pursuit of politics in such a way that rivals and potential opponents weaken each other with their own hands, playing on the contradictions between other powers to their advantage. The theoretical foundation of this policy - “two are fighting - the third is happy” - is the recognition of bare force as the only and final criterion in interstate relations. Any factors limiting the laws of the jungle in the world are international law, and morality is decisively swept away. The “father of all of us” working in the field of international relations, George George Kennan likes to say, is Reinold Niebuhr, whose main conclusion of the political theory is as follows: “Society ... simply unites the egoism of individuals, turning the individual altruism of each of them into a collective selfishness. Hence it is clear that in the actions of the group, egoism manifests itself with a vengeance. As a result, no group acts out of purely disinterested motives, moreover, the interests of the other side are never taken into account, and politics is destined to be resolved by force.
Commenting on these words, prof. K. Thompson (Deputy Director of the Rockefeller Foundation's Social Sciences Study Group) notes: “The warm feelings that bind families together sometimes find expression in indifference to the welfare of other families. Similarly, in an international family of nations, a nation consisting of people with the most profound religious beliefs, because its virtues are concentrated in loyalty to itself, is very selfish. Consequently, such a nation is far from showing love to other nations. ”
The canonization of power is one of the main reasons for the emergence of that ghostly world in which America lives, at least spiritually. Considering from “positions of strength” not only contemporary events, but also past ones, Anglo-Saxon historians inevitably become intellectually blind, for the idealistic concept of the “balance of power” policy does not explain much in the past how it cannot lead to constructive results politics of today. If the results of the Second World War are anathematized by supporters of this concept, it is not this fact that is striking, but that they are cursed only because they do not correspond to their constructions. The principle is simple and clear: when facts do not fit the theory, so much the worse for them. This subjectivism is a manifestation of the deep flaws in the process of cognition of the bourgeois social scientist, who does not want to understand that the world is developing according to objective laws determining the most important events in the history of mankind, including war. These laws, discovered by the classics of Marxism-Leninism, can be learned, but they cannot be created at will. They are afraid to touch the American and British historians who have received a task from above - to seek the truth, for objectively existing laws indicate that capitalism has become obsolete. It is also clear that the subjective theory of the “balance of power” policy cannot belong to such laws, and the fact that it is raised on a shield in the USA and England once again speaks of the spiritual poverty of modern bourgeois ideologists.
- N.N. Yakovlev, chapter from the book "USA and England in the Second World War"
- http://historic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000025/st060.shtml
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