WWII History: Remembering the True Liberators, the Soviet Union, and Operation Bagration


The Soviet Operation Bagration which began on June 22, 1944 was one of the largest offenses in scale and one of the most decisive operations in all of World War II. It dwarfed the D-Day landings in terms of scale and the significant amount of damage it inflicted upon the Wehrmacht, which helped pave the way for the Red Army’s victory in the Battle of Berlin a year later. World War II historical revisionism by the imperialist nations, but especially by the United States, has long been a staple since the Cold War era. It always manifests itself in diminishing the major contributions, achievements, and immense sacrifices of the Soviet Union — while attempting to portray the U.S. as the “heroes” who carried the full weight of the war, often exaggerating its role despite being the latecomers and having made business deals with the Nazis prior to joining the Allies in battle. Efforts to erase the leading role that the Soviet Union played still continue today. Whether it be the Queen of England presenting Germany as an “Allied” nation that took part in D-Day (which is absurd, considering that the then-Nazi Germany was a belligerent), or the U.S. issuing coins that ‘salute’ WWII Allies but omit the Soviet Union. Sometimes, these erasure efforts come in the form of a passive aggressive gesture if not outright insult, such as a recent NATO-approved monument in Chicago that celebrates the Lithuanian Nazi collaborator, Adolfas Ramanauskas, and honours him as an anti-Soviet “hero”. If anything, the U.S. simply cannot stand that it was the Soviet Union that defeated the Nazis. Thus, it is important that we remember and honour the sacrifices that the Soviet Union made in order to counter the long-standing narrative that lionizes the U.S.’s role in WWII, because the America-as-“the liberator”-myth only serves to justify U.S. imperialism. 

 Read more about Operation Bagration in this article by Dr. Leon Tressell on SouthFront by clicking here.

 My above brief commentary originally appeared on New Power and can be found here, along with a clipping of the article published by SouthFront. 

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