70 YEARS PLUS

This year (2015) is one for significant anniversaries, the 27^th October 2014, will be the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Dutch city of 'S-Hertogenbosch. As part of the commemorations, 146 children were invited to attend the pre-World Cup Netherlands v Wales football friendly – a figure matching the number of Welsh solders (146) who died liberating the city. 

Later this month the Welsh contribution to the war effort and the liberation of Europe will be recognised in Cardiff, on Armed Forces Day. The Welsh soldiers who died in the battle were part of the 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division which spent four days in October 1944 struggling to free the city in southern Netherlands. Amongst them were members of three battalions of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, soldiers from the Welch Regiment, and the Monmouthshire Regiment. 

The Dutch city and surrounding area (known locally as Den Bosch) saw allied forces free the city on 27 October, 1944 after fierce fighting. Ever since then, the link between Wales and the city has been marked annually by the October 1944 Foundation. Ahead of this year's anniversary, the Royal Netherlands Football Association and the Football Association of Wales (FAW), invited local youngsters from the city to Amsterdam to mark the occasion.

DID HE REALLY SAY THAT?

When someone you have convinced yourself is your best friend (and you believe has your best interests at heart) says something truthful but hurtful about you that can be upsetting. However, when they say it publically for all to hear then it’s twice as hurtful and if you had any sense you might be well advised to question the value of your so called friendship. The former US defence secretary, Robert Gates has said that cuts to the UK's armed forces will limit the country's ability to be a major player on the world stage. And that the spending cuts would mean the UK could no longer be a full [useful] military partner of the US.

Under the current Con Dem Coalition government’s plans, by 2020 the Army will have lost some 20,000 personnel, with the Royal Navy losing 6,000 and the RAF some 5,000. Despite the cuts the MOD was quick to point out that the UK still has the fourth largest defence budget in the world. However, when interviewed by BBC Radio 4's Today programme (16.01.2014) Robert Gates noted that - for the first time since World War One - Britain did not have an operational aircraft carrier.

Mr Gates, who served under presidents Obama and Bush, singled out cuts to the navy as particularly damaging. He said; "With the fairly substantial reductions in defence spending in Great Britain, what we're finding is that it won't have full spectrum capabilities and the ability to be a full partner as they have been in the past." Incidentally, last month the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, warned that the UK could be left with the "spectre" of a hollowed-out force. While this latest American  intervention probably won’t reverse Cameron’s defence cuts it will wound the UK's pride and may shatter a few still held illusions or possibly delusions.

The not so big secret to the UK’s so called ‘special relationship’ with the USA dates back to the dark days of the Second World War is that the relationship is not that special. The UK was dependent on aid from the USA well before Pearl Harbour brought the Americans into the war. Our history (or more like our spun history) tells us that ‘lend lease’ saved us, what’s not said is that ‘lend lease’ was more like ‘cash and carry’ i.e. they take our cash and we do the carrying across the broad U Boat filled Atlantic even after America came into the war.

By the war’s end Britain was pretty much broke (or at least financially challenged) and stretched pretty thin militarily (in terms of manpower UK and Commonwealth forces peaked out in the autumn of 1944|). The Empire and with it ‘imperial responsibility’ unravelled surprisingly rapidly in the post war years. Britain walked from Palestine and Greece, and India, Pakistan, Burma and Sri Lanka gained their independence, despite this the delusionary myth of Imperial greatness and the ‘special relationship with the USA remained.

The reality was that the USA since the early part of the twentieth century had been one way or another pretty much determined to break up the British Empire. Any delusions that the ‘Brits’ had about their position in the world, should have evaporated during and after the Suez crisis when an irate President Eisenhower, told Britain’s Prime Minister Anthony Eden bluntly to halt the military invasion of Egypt or face up to the economic and political consequences. Britain and France found themselves up against it in the face of US economic and political power and interests in 1956 and both lost.

The French decided to maintain an independent foreign policy, which if it coincided with US interests was all well and good, but if not then no matter. The Brits made a different choice, they decided never to oppose US interests again, at least not publically, from 1956 onwards US interests would be British interests requardless. Under continual pressure from the US the remainder of the Empire vanished far more rapidly than it was acquired, being mostly gone by 1964.

The Brits pretty much never stepped out of line again, unlike the French, who retained control of their own foreign policy. Now all this may be slightly delayed fallout from the so called Westminster elite’s failure to secure a majority in the House of Commons for military action over Syria. With the ‘Brits’ making the awkward transition from useful ally and friend  to potential liability people may well be forgiven for wondering where does that leave the so called ‘special relationship’?  

THE CONSEQUENCES OF ANNIVERSARIES...

Quietly and almost unnoticed a grim anniversary (the 23rd August) was commemorated last week in some parts of Europe. Some 73 years ago on the 23rd August 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed between Nazi Germany (under Hitler) and the Soviet Union (under Stalin) something that changed Europe forever. The pact concluded between these brutal totalitarian regimes was a key trigger moment for the European part of the most brutal war yet known. Millions were killed during World War II and many more suffered under totalitarian regimes for decades after the war ended and our continent was brutal divvied between the West and the East.

The 23rd August is now a Europe wide day of remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. Back in 2009 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a fifty-six-nation body, which includes the United States and Russia, passed a resolution naming the 23rd August as commemoration day. This date was not chosen by chance: it just happened to be the seventieth anniversary (in 2009) of a Non-Aggression Treaty signed between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. Stalin and Hitler divided Poland and carved Europe into spheres of influence, the Second World War (in Europe) began a few days later.

At the time the Russian representatives went predictably ballistic, their delegation called the resolution "a public insult against all Russians." It was insensitively placed Nazism and Stalinism on a par and “forgot that it was the Stalin-era Soviet Union that made the biggest sacrifices and the biggest contribution to liberating Europe from fascism." Back home in Moscow the rhetoric was even hotter as the Russian Duma's international affairs committee in Moscow, stated that the OSCE motion was little more than an attempt to “rewrite the history of World War II by placing responsibility for its causes, course and results equally on Hitler's Germany and the former Soviet Union."

Raoul Wallenberg

Prior to the establishment of the commemoration day all the sins of the Soviet Union and its many victims have been largely and effectively attributed to Stalin. The fascist atrocities were partially judged at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, but, in the East, after the demise of the Soviet Union there was no Soviet Nuremberg and many of those who committed atrocities entirely escaped punishment.

At some point there is a need to face up to the grim truth about Communist rule in Russia? And neither should we forget that post 1945 Communists Satellite regimes in Eastern Europe regularly trampled civil and human rights under foot.

Back in 2009 the Russians rapidly objected to the OSCE's resolution, as the Russian Government was not ready to mention the Kremlin's crimes committed over generations against their own people. There were plenty of Soviet victims of the "Stalinist terror" - between 1930 and 1941 some 20 million Soviets were "convicted" and suffered arrest, execution, or detention. The old USSR census for 1939 counted 37,500,000 families, and four million single adults. In the 1930s the terror affected around one or more members of every other family. The terror killed more than two million Soviet citizens in that decade, above and beyond the several millions who died in the man-made famine in Ukraine. Pre 1941 something like between 90 and 95 percent of all Stalin's victims lived in the former Soviet Union and post 1945 the terror was exported to Eastern Europe.

As yet there has still been no official Russian State commemoration of Stalin’s victims and no single trial of any of the perpetrators has ever been held. The only significant museum of the vast Gulag concentration camp system is Perm-31 which is located in the distant Urals (out of sight and out of mind). The Russian government plays down Stalin's crimes and talks up his "positive accomplishments." Yet The Russian state may well be a long way away from recognising the victims of official state policy between 1917 and 1991, but it continues to find that it is not be so easy to bury the past.

Russia, regularly notes that we in the West, tend not to recognise the important if not crucial role the Soviet Union played in stopping Hitler. Some 25.5 million Soviet citizens, over ten percent of the population in 1939, died in the Second World War. Over half of those were civilians. While Stalin signed the pact that began the Second World War in Europe, the peoples of the Soviet Union had no part in the decision. The peoples of the Soviet Union, faced by a murderous Nazi onslaught in 1941 had little choice but to rally around the Soviet State to survive regardless of Stalin and his murderous minions.

Without Soviet resistance to the Nazi’s as Winston Churchill recognised then Hitler could have won the war. We should remember the Red Army and the peoples of the Soviet Union’s sacrifices, as they saved all of us from a particularly grim fate. Russia should be proud of what was done in the Second World War and we should heap praise upon them for it. Yet the Russian Government is entirely wrong to defend Stalin and ignore his crimes inside (and outside) the old Soviet Union. It’s time to face up to the past and not wish for it to go away, and part of that process is a recognition of the Nazi-Soviet pact, its grim consequences and the harsh realities of Stalin’s rule.