One
of the most common criticisms concerning the use of the atomic bombs is that
it was "only" used to intimidate Stalin (suggesting that the head of the USSR was a trustworthy ally of the West who should have been allowed to join the war in the Pacific theater instead of being treated in such a cruel fashion).
What is not addressed is that the atomic
bomb did indeed sabotage the Kremlin's (secret) plans — not with regards, or not only with regards, to Japan or
to the Asian continent, but with regards to… Western Europe.
For two decades before being abruptly and brutally canceled, No Pasarán regularly brought stories about little-known
facts and quotes regarding the atomic bombings over Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in the summer of 1945 (the full list of articles on the Wayback Machine can be found at the bottom of this post). The present post is certainly one of the most important of them all.
For once, indeed, the crux will not be on the Americans and the Japanese — whose country was far more brutal and bloodthirsty than that of their Nazi allies. Indeed, the Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal, as evidenced by the horrific treatment of civilians during Japan's "Reign of Terror".
No, the crux will be on the Soviets and the Europeans.
As you learn how the "trustworthy" Vojd was planning on betraying his allies and letting the Red Army's divisions run roughshod through and conquer all of Europe (the Western part as well as the Eastern part) — that is, until Beria shot the plans down when he informed Stalin of America's terrifying new weapon — all I can say is how grateful I am, and how grateful we should all be, for Harry Truman dropping A-bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bombs which indeed
saved countless lives (aligato,
Glenn Reynolds-san and
Ed Driscoll-san).
The main gist of this story picks up below photos taken by my father at the tender age of 12 of the British forces build-up during the Summer of 1945 after the Nazi surrender on V-E Day.
Montgomery's British forces rushed to the North of Germany, beating the
Red Army in forcing the surrender of the German forces in Northern
Germany and occupied Denmark (that will be the content of a future post), and thus avoiding the fate of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and all the other Eastern countries — for 40-something years.
Many praise the Russians for winning World War II. If it hadn't been for the
Anglo-Americans, wouldn't the Russians, wouldn't Stalin, have continued
all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, taking all of Western Europe (or at least the mainland) as
well?
Following
the Nazi surrender, Marshall Montgomery paid a visit to Copenhagen and
drove through its streets. From May to July 1945, British ships accosted
and RAF planes landed in droves. Normally,
with a disciplined army having surrendered (one which moreover hadn't engaged in much fighting whatsoever), such a show of force would
be
unnecessary. But they weren't there for the surrendering German
prisoners; they
were there to guard against the Red Army
Accompanied
by his uncle, my father went to Copenhagen and visited the city's
harbor and airfields to see the British armada at the harbor and the
planes landing in the airfields. He was all of 12 years old.
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Montgomery driving through Copenhagen on May 12, 1945 (my father's photo at age 12)HMS Birmingham docks on May 10, 1945 (photo by Eskil Svane, 12)HMS Birmingham in København Harbor on May 10
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HMS Birmingham was quite popular with the Danish people
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Mosquitoes at Kastrup airfield, July 1, 1945
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A Spitfire on Kastrup airfield as the RAF holds on airshow (and
probably not just for the Danes, but for any Soviet diplomat present)
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Douglas Dakota DC3s on show at Denmark's largest airfield
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The Soviet Union's (secret) intentions and plans were confirmed after
Antony Beevor
spent time in Moscow, unearthing many a previously top secret document
in the archives, and leading to his writing in his history of
The Second World War about "the two pitiless totalitarian systems which fed off each other."
In the penultimate chapter, Cities of the Dead, Beevor writes that after the German capital fell in May 1945, the American ambassador to Moscow paid a visit to the Kremlin:
'It
must be very pleasant for you', [Averell] Harriman said, making
conversation, … 'to be in Berlin after all your country has suffered.'
The Soviet leader eyed him. … 'Tsar Alexander went all the way to
Paris,' he replied.
That was not entirely a joke. Well before
Churchill's [notion of a war erupting between the Western allies and
their USSR ally], a meeting of the Politburo in 1944 had decided to order the Stavka to plan for the invasion of France and Italy, a General Shtemenko later told Beria's son. The Red Army offensive was to be combined with a seizure of power by the local Communist Parties. In addition, Shtemenko explained, 'a landing in Norway was provided for, as well as the seizure of the straits [with Denmark]. A substantial budget was allocated for the realization of these plans. It was expected that the Americans would abandon a Europe fallen into chaos, while Britain and France would be paralysed by their colonial problems. The Soviet Union possessed 400 experienced divisions, ready to bound forward like tigers. It was calculated that the whole operation would take no more than a month
… All these plans were aborted when Stalin learned from [Beria] that the Americans had the atom bomb
and were putting it into mass production.' Stalin apparently told
Beria 'that if Roosevelt had still been alive, we would have
succeeded'. This, it seems, was the main reason why Stalin suspected
that Roosevelt had been secretly assassinated
… Stalin had achieved
everything he wanted at Potsdam, even though he had been forced to
cancel the invasion of western Europe out of fear of the atom bomb
"The
western Allies were finding that they could liberate half of Europe
only at the cost of enslaving the other half." As it happened, explains Antony Beevor in the final pages of his 900-page book, "one half of Europe had to be sacrificed to the Stalinist maw to save the other half."
(Indeed,
in "Northern Germany the British 7th Armored Division was approaching
Hamburg, while the 11th Armoured Division advanced rapidly ahead towards
Lübeck on the Baltic. This followed Churchill's secret instruction to
Field Marshall Montgomery … to prevent the Red Army from seizing
Denmark".)
Astounding News
This
is astounding news. Nothing less. What does it say about the use of the
atomic bombs — not to mention, for that matter, McCarthyism along with
the alleged paranoia regarding the later Red "Scare" as well as the
alleged daftness of the American people?
When unhappy Western elites — quite a number of them from Europe, especially Western Europe — criticize Uncle Sam's atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as evil and useless war crimes
and no more than a(n outright hateful?) warning to the USSR, they
usually mean it to mean that tens of thousands of Japanese citizens were
sacrificed simply to prevent nothing more harmless than a few handfuls
of (gallant soldiers in) Koba's Red Army joining in some little way in the victory over the Japanese Empire.
But as we can see, the revisionists and Post-facto critics not to mention communism admirers — quite a number of them, again, from Western Europe — who claim that Hiroshima had little military value but instead was a strategic ploy to impress Stalin do not realize that the Manhattan Project's atomic bomb did more, far more, and not in Asia and on the Pacific front but on the European front half a world away.
It was indeed a sign to the Red Army, and it did prevent Stalin from prolonging the war mercilessly after the Nazis' defeat and achieving his project to take over all of European continent.
Incidentally, while Western governments are routinely taken to task for expecting selfishly that the Germans and the Russians bleed each other dry on the Eastern Front (or expecting the same, 40 years later, during the Iraq-Iran war), there is a theory that it was in fact Stalin who expected his Western allies and the Germans to bleed each other dry on the Western Front; and that, in that perspective, the defeat during Operation Market Garden and the near-defeat during the Battle of the Bulge (America's most bloody battle during World War II) were due to Moscow sharing, however directly or indirectly, intelligence with Berlin — their assumed mortal enemy. (What wonderful allies, those Russians.)
To recap:
In Modern Times (The World From the Twenties to the Nineties), Paul Johnson writes that
There was scarcely a
crime the Nazis or the knights of Bushido had committed, or even
imagined, which the Soviet regime hand not also perpetrated, usually on
an even larger scale. It ran precisely the type of system which had
produced the war and its horrors. More specifically, the Nazi-Soviet
Pact of September 1939 and the Japanese-Soviet Pact of April 1941 had
made the Axis aggressions possible.
Indeed, Hitler and Stalin started the WWII together. As Jeff Jacoby points out, For the first two years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies, with the Führer and the Vozhd secretly planning and jointly beginning the war that inflicted such horror and destruction
There is no denying that a vast number of
Soviet citizens lost their lives in World War II. Without the Russian
people’s appalling suffering and sacrifice, the Allies might not have
triumphed in the end.
But there is also no denying that Moscow
was Nazi Germany’s partner in unleashing the war, the deadliest in human
history, in the first place. Victory Day is a good opportunity to
review the record of Russian culpability in plunging the world into war —
a record the Kremlin’s propagandists have been trying to obscure for
decades.
… for the first two
years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies. They
secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror
and destruction.
In the months that
followed the Nazi-Soviet takeover of Poland, as Hitler’s troops
conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and France and bombed much
of London into rubble, Stalin’s forces continued their illegal war of aggression and conquest. [the three
Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the formerly Romanian territories of
Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, Finland…]
… In short, for the first two
years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies. They
secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror
and destruction.
As Timothy Snyder’s book “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” points out, the dictators vied with each other in the bloodbaths and the destruction of the conquered territories.
Moreover, a Lithuanian testified that his father had said if he had the choice, he
would rather live under 10 years of Nazi occupation than under one single year of
communist occupation.
Certainly after Hitler's betrayal and his
invasion of the USSR, but possibly even before, Stalin's goal was to
defeat the Axis powers but his ultimate goal was to turn thereafter
against his allies and sic his divisions against those who had supported
him all these years and take over the entire continent, and this he
ordered the Politburo and the NKVD to plan.
The only thing that
aborted the plan of 400 Soviet divisions launching a brutal, a
traitorous, and a bloody attack on Stalin's erstwhile allies was the news of
the atomic bombs and the realization that they could be used on Russian armies as well as on Japanese cities.
Post-War History
Is
there ever anyone who jokes or sighs or rolls his eyes about paranoia
or witch hunts regarding Nazism or fascism? No, and with good reason.
(Indeed, after ranting and giggling for years and years about Godwin's Law, the left has dropped all pretenses and shows its usual double standards
as it has been using the fascism/Nazism/Hitler charge ceaselessly
against conservatives and members of the — anti-government (!) —
Republican Party.)
Why, then, should anyone (Joseph McCarthy
first among them) be described as paranoid about a régime that, on the
internal front, murders millions of its citizens and, on the external
front, was indeed planning an invasion of Europe and the West (with the
aid of those countries' domestic — i.e., traitorous — communist parties)
— submitting all conquered territories and countries to the same bloody
internal policies as had occurred in Eastern Europe's Bloodlands?
This brings up the so-called "paranoid" "witch hunts" against communists
in post-war America. Here is a question that is seldom brought up: Who
was head of the Kremlin when the term "McCarthyism" was coined? A fellow
by the name of Stalin. As for the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), another question is, how many people are aware that
the maligned council was not solely involved with communists? Indeed, wasn't it formed the year prior to the Nazi/Soviet non-aggression treaty, in 1938, to investigate disloyalty by subversive organizations tied to either pro-Soviet communists or — yes — pro-German fascists?
It
is certainly time for two things: for Hiroshima to cease being an
excuse for anti-Americanism and for "McCarthyism" to cease to be used as
an allegedly neutral and objective expression.
This post could end here.
But as a sort of addendum to this post, let me briefly refer to my revelation regarding the movie Oppenheimer, where, in their unanimous praise, members of the MSM have carefully glossed over the fact that The 2 Authors of the Book Behind the Movie Were Both Editors and Writers at "The Nation".
Over 13 years after Antony Beevor came out with astonishing revelations from the Kremlin's archives mentioned above (The Second World War
was published in 2012), the historian's conclusions are still not
accepted by the élites (they are not challenged — with arguments good or
otherwise — they are simply ignored), leading them to call opposition
to communism and to the USSR "a political movement
characterized by rank know-nothing, anti-intellectual, xenophobic
demagogues."
Let this sink in: Both of the authors of the book behind what the
New York Times calls "Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb'” — "a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms"
— worked at The Nation and were therefore, in some capacity or other,
close to communism and invariably doubling as experts in spewing
anti-Americanism.
Full details here: Hollywood Shocker — The Authors of the Book Behind Nolan's "Oppenheimer" Were Both Editors and Writers at "The Nation"
Related:
• For the first two years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies; Hitler and Stalin secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror and destruction
• Stalin's Death at 70: Some Mind-Boggling Revelations About Stalin, World War II, and a Century of Russian History
Also related:
• Hiroshima 15: Examining the Issues Surrounding the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Japan (Erik Svane)
• Hiroshima 21: Didn't the Atomic Bombs Prevent the Red Army from Sweeping Through Western Europe and the Entire Continent from Falling Under Stalin's Iron Fist?
• Hiroshima 17: During WWII, Japan Killed 7 Times More People (Most of Them Civilians) than They Lost (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Hiroshima 18: The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal (Trent Telenko)
• "An unfathomably brutal place": Much like Nazi Germany, the Japanese Empire was one of the most genocidal in world history
• Hiroshima 19: The Horrific Treatment of Civilians During Japan's "Reign of Terror"
• Hiroshima 14: "I regard Hiroshima revisionism as the greatest hoax in American history" (Robert Maddox)
• Hiroshima 13: Although It Is Not Said Openly, Hiroshima Also Played a Purifying Role, IE the Baptism of a New Japan, the Event that Put an End to 50 Years of Crimes (Le Monde)
• Hiroshima 20: The Day the Pilot Who Led the Attack on Pearl Harbour Met the Pilot of the Enola Gay
• Hiroshima 12: Political Correctness in Japan: The comment "tramples on the feelings of victims", so… Shut the F**k Up and Lose Your Job! (re the forced resignation of Japan's defense (!) minister)
• Hiroshima 11: If Western elites cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all; most never learned the narrative of WWII, only what was wrong about it (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Hiroshima 10: If Not for the Atom Bombs, Japan, as we know it today, would not exist (S L Sanger, author of “Working on the Bomb”)
• Hiroshima 9: Over
one million warning leaflets were dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and
33 other Japanese cities 5 days before the Hiroshima bombing (Bill Whittle)
• Hiroshima 8: Was It Wrong to Use the Atom Bomb on Japan? (Father Wilson Miscamble)
• Hiroshima 7: Some Facts About Hiroshima and World War II That You Hear Neither From America's MSM, University Élites, and History Books, Nor From Japan's (New York Times)
• Hiroshima 16:
Did Japan's top officers know a bomber was approaching Nagasaki, 5 hours beforehand, and do nothing?
• Hiroshima 6:
"Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing" (a Japanese American)
• Hiroshima 5:
Japan's
plans for defense involved mobilizing the civilian population,
including women and children, for the customary suicidal battle tactics (Thomas Sowell)
• Hiroshima 4:
"Les 300 000 morts d'Hiroshima ont épargné bien davantage de Japonais, qui auraient été écrasés sous des bombes ordinaires" (Charles de Gaulle)
• Hiroshima 3:
A mainland invasion could have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths—and that's not counting civilians (Wall Street Journal)
• Hiroshima 2:
Hand-wringing over Hiroshima is just virtue-signaling by people who never said a bad word about Stalin or Mao’s mass murders (Glenn Reynolds)
• Hiroshima 1:
Unlike
the ends of the majority of conflicts, World War II in the Pacific grew
increasingly bloody as U.S. forces approached the Japanese homeland (Erik Svane)
