The beginning and end of World War II brought about political collusions
that greatly discredited the leaders of Western democracies
The Munich Agreement of 1938 that sacrificed the Czechoslovak state to
Hitler is often called a conspiracy because the Western democratic leaders,
Chamberlain and Daladier (from Britain and France, respectively), gave parts of
Europe to the totalitarian leaders of Germany and Italy in order to avoid
confrontation with these criminal regimes. Some analysts are still trying to excuse
the Western leaders, saying that they had no other choice but to pursue
realpolitik. Yet by choosing not to fight with them, they found themselves in
far worse conditions when the war began. The Munich Agreement became a symbol
of the great powers’ immoral consensus at the expense of the weak.
However, in this context little mention is made of the Yalta conspiracy
of 1945 (it would later be solidified at Potsdam), where Roosevelt (USA),
Churchill (Britain), and Stalin (USSR) agreed to give half of Europe to the
Führer of Moscow for the next 45 years, divided spheres of influence, and laid
the weak foundation for the United Nations (still no more effective than the
League of Nations, which at least managed to expel the Soviet Union for its
aggression against Finland).
Churchill visited Moscow in October 1944, even before the Yalta
Conference. He made proposals to Stalin that made the division of Europe, as
well as decision of the fate of many peoples without their involvement, quite
possible. As he admitted in his memoirs, the British Prime Minister told the
Soviet dictator, “Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies
are in Rumania and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions and agents there.
Don't let us get at cross-purposes in small ways. So far as Britain and Russia
are concerned, how would it do for you to have ninety per cent predominance in
Rumania, for us to have ninety per cent of the say in Greece, and go
fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia?” Churchill went on to propose that Britain and
the USSR should split their influence in Hungary fifty-fifty, while giving the
Soviets a 75% stake in Bulgaria. Stalin was generally amenable to this, though
he did haggle a bit more, to which Churchill yielded. The poor Greek
Communists, who would continue to fight for many years in the ranks of the
Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), had no idea that the “great leader” had sold
them out to the cursed bourgeoisie.
Equally frustrated were millions of citizens of Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, who believed that the Western
democracies would not betray them and free them from the Nazi yoke only to hand
them over to the Soviets. Polish Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk in his
memoirs described how Churchill twisted his arm, forcing him to agree to
Stalin’s plan for the post-war resettlement of Poland. And Roosevelt did not
object. Mikołajczyk was so outraged that he asked Churchill to have him
parachuted into Poland so that he could join the anti-German resistance. When Churchill
asked why, Mikolajczyk replied, “I prefer to die fighting for the independence
of my country than to be hanged later by the Russians in full view of your
British ambassador!”. Churchill later admitted to his physician, “It's very
one-sided. They achieve their demands through deceit, flattery and strength”.
Thus, Soviet-Russian diplomacy remains loyal to its traditions...
Churchill and Roosevelt became the architects of the UN in its current
form, trying to maintain a controlling stake for their ‘club of privileged
states’, reminiscent of the classic dystopian text: “All creatures are equal,
but some are more equal than others.” Of the UN, historian Jonathan Fenby
wrote, “Churchill reassured Stalin that, while the behaviour of the great
powers could be criticised verbally, the veto system would make it virtually
powerless for the organisation to act against the US, the USSR, Britain, or
China.
Stalin asked if it would be unable to move against Britain over Hong
Kong or British interests in Egypt. Churchill told him this was so. Still
suspicious, Stalin recalled how the League of Nations had expelled the USSR
after its attack on Finland in 1939. That would now be impossible, [British
Foreign Secretary] Eden said”.
It is unlikely that Churchill and Roosevelt had illusions about Stalin
and his regime, especially since he did not try to make a “democratic”
impression on them. When, at Yalta, Roosevelt pointed toward Lavrentiy Beria
and asked, “Who is that man wearing glasses?” Stalin quite seriously replied, “That
man is our Himmler”. Thus, in the fight against Satan, Roosevelt and Churchill
entered into an alliance with Lucifer. And they were certainly well aware of
it. For this very reason, today’s Western Europe does not sympathize with the
desire of the East to prosecute communism on the same basis as Nazism.
Having agreed once to a division of Europe, the US and Britain were
forced to continue to bend to the demands of the communist dictator. These
concessions clearly affected the reality of the Nuremberg trials that occurred
shortly after the Yalta Conference. At that time, Stalin created a top-secret
agency that is named differently in various documents: “Government Commission
for the Nuremberg Trials”, “Government Commission on the Organization of the Court
at Nuremberg”, or “Commission for the Management of the Nuremberg Trials”.
Stalin appointed Andrey Vyshinsky, the famous “conductor” of the Moscow
political trials of the 1930s, to head the commission. The committee included
Procurator General Gorshenin, Supreme Court Chairman Golyakov, People’s
Commissar of Justice Rychkov, and Beria’s deputies Abakumov, Kobulov, and
Merkulov. The commission’s primary task was to prevent any discussion at the
Nuremberg trials pertaining to Soviet-German relations in 1939-1941, the secret
protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the joint Soviet-German attack on
Poland, and Moscow’s occupation of the Baltic states.
Beria sent a special investigative team led by Colonel Likhachev to
supervise the Soviet judges, prosecutors and investigators. Russian historian
Irina Pavlova, who now lives in Boston, writes: “Stalin feared public opinion
in Europe and America, and worried that he would find himself in Nuremberg
sharing a bench with Nazi war criminals. But he had serious grounds for such
fears”. That is why the Soviets took such extraordinary measures. Though it is
unlikely that the Western allies would have insisted on condemning the
Stalinist regime as equally culpable in kindling Second World War. They
preferred to turn a blind eye to even the most incriminating statements, such
as that of former German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, who after the
announcement of his death sentence made the final statement: “When I went to
Marshal Stalin in Moscow in 1939, he did not discuss the possibility of a
peaceful settlement of the Polish problem against the background of the
Briand-Kellog Pact. Rather he let me understand that if in addition to half
Poland and the Baltic States he did not receive the harbour of Lithuania I
might as well pack my bags and go home. War in 1939 was not considered an
international crime against peace”.
Due to the compromising position of the USA and Britain at Yalta, Stalin
took control of seven Eastern European states and East Germany, pressured
Finland, and threatened Turkey. Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech at
Fulton was an attempt to protect at least Western Europe from forced
communization. Though this attempt was somewhat belated because Moscow had
already launched a furious political and propaganda war there, now popularly
known as a “hybrid” war.
Meanwhile, the countries of Eastern Europe found a strictly conditional
sovereignty under the heel of the Kremlin. Their leaders were appointed and
removed from office with the approval of the Soviet Union, but they were
formally sovereign states, members of the UN and so on. Moscow’s approval was
needed even to repress someone in the capitals of the “socialist camp”.
Representatives of the Soviet KGB sat as “advisers” (and secret bosses) to the
special services of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. These
countries all suffered under the Red Terror—though not on as large a scale as
the USSR—and their peoples were excluded from history for nearly fifty years.
According to Jonathan Fenby, “The Yalta Conference was later demonized
for excluding the French at the moment when the Big Three were cynically
defining the contours of Europe and laying the foundation for the Cold War. The
Yalta Conference became the main item on McCarthy’s list of accusations against
Roosevelt, for which the former urged Republicans to accuse him of betraying
state secrets. Half a century later in Warsaw, George W. Bush declared: “There
will be no more Munichs, no more Yaltas”.
Really? There is a widespread idea in the West today—especially in the
European Union—that spheres of influence still exist and that Ukraine belongs
to the Russian sphere. Consequently, there is always the danger of a new
Munich-Yalta conspiracy. However, it is possible that its effects will be even
worse; Yalta left us balancing on the edge of nuclear war for 45 years, and
this time we might actually fall. This is not only a result of the further
expansion of Russian nuclear blackmail, but also the realization by the entire
“non-elite” world (i.e. countries that are not nuclear giants) that, following
the West’s betrayal of Ukraine, it is not the worthless promises of big states
that can guarantee a state’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, but one’s
own nuclear weapons.
Russian political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky argues that Putin is
opposed to the Western world in the name of a new division of the world,
Yalta-2. But such a division does not give the West any guarantees; on the
contrary, the more concessions the “Western enemies” (as seen in the Kremlin)
make, the more emboldened Moscow will feel.
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