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Did We Lose the Cold War?
by Fjordman
Diana West’s latest title, Diana West’s book American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, challenges conventional wisdom about the Second World War and the Cold War. It has caused quite a stir in certain circles.
Old Town, WarsawAs it happens, I started reading it while visiting Warsaw, Poland for the first time. This is fitting in many ways. Historian Timothy Snyder in his excellent work Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin demonstrates how East-Central Europe was crushed between the totalitarian regimes of two infamous dictators, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. One of their victims was Poland. Roughly 85% of Warsaw was destroyed during the Second World War. Its pretty Old Town is actually fairly new; it was reconstructed after WW2.
Today, the city is riddled with monuments and memorials to those who struggled and were wiped out during those fateful years, both from the Jewish minority population and the Slavic Christian majority population. One of the monuments of Warsaw’s Old Town is dedicated to the victims of the Katyn massacre, mass execution of 22,000 Polish officers in the spring of 1940. This evil deed was originally blamed on the Nazis, but it was in fact carried out by the Soviet secret police. Evidence of this surfaced rather early.
Katyn massacre memorial at Old Town, WarsawYet this fact was deliberately buried by the Roosevelt Administration in order not to offend their new Soviet “allies,” after Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union. This shameful policy continued for years even after the war ended, when it should have been clear to all sensible people that Stalin and the Communists could never really be anybody’s “allies.” Diana West argues that by actively covering up such atrocities, the Western world in some ways became complicit in Soviet crimes.
Towering over the city center of Warsaw even today is the Palace of Culture and Science. It was a “gift” from Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in 1952. How nice of Uncle Joe, especially since he and Hitler had secretly carved up Poland and several other countries between them in the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact. The International Socialists of the Soviet Union were every bit as much expansionist totalitarian predators as were the National Socialists in Germany. Diana West reminds us that this isn’t always emphasized today, and asks: Why is this so?
A timely question.
Stalin’s gift: The Palace of Culture and Science, WarsawIt wasn’t the first time the Communists attempted to expand into Central Europe via Poland, either. As Adam Zamoyski details in his book Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe, already after the First World War, the Bolsheviks under the direction of Vladimir Lenin tried to use military force to invade Poland and export the world revolution to Germany. This early attempt was successfully beaten back by Polish resistance. But the Soviets returned with a vengeance a generation later, under the leadership of Lenin’s ruthless apprentice Stalin. This time they succeeded in establishing Communist dominion over the eastern half of Europe as far as Berlin.
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The federal government shut down today after the House and the Senate failed to reach agreement on a funding bill. National parks and monuments were shut down, but World War Two veterans stormed the barricades around the memorial on the Mall in Washington D.C., allowing them to visit the monument dedicated to their sacrifices.
