Rethinking the Unthinkable

Ask any russian, "When did the War begin?" — just "the War," not the Civil, First World, Chechen, or Afghan War — and the answer will be automatic: June 22, 1941. It goes without saying that the War is the one known here as the Great Patriotic War, the one that people cannot get used to calling "the Second World War," especially since the Second World War actually began two years earlier and, strictly speaking, the Soviet Union was already participating in it, taking eastern Poland, fighting with Finland.

But these events, however much they might have been written about in recent decades, reside in a different part of the public consciousness. These were individual military operations. The War began on the morning Fascist troops invaded the Soviet Union without any declaration of war.

On June 22, at exactly four o’clock
Kiev was bombed
And we were told
That war had broken out!

The whole country sang this song, by the poet Boris Kovynev, even though it was only published in a small front-line newspaper ("serious" poetry anthologies refused to print it). No wonder these unpretentious lines, sung to the tune of "The Simple Little Blue Scarf" spread so quickly. June 22 became the most important day in popular memory. And ever since, any attempt to stake some kind of proprietary claim on interpretations of this date’s significance by official propaganda, veterans, and various nationalistic organizations, did nothing to devalue the awe it inspired in the Russian psyche.

But it is worth pondering that things might have turned out very differently. For nearly two years previous — between August 23, 1939, and the invasion — the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had been allies. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact enabled Stalin to effortlessly grab Western Ukraine, Belarus, Bessarabia, and the Baltic states. And it untied Hitler’s hands in his war against Poland and Western Europe.

As sad as it is to admit, this alignment of power was, alas, logical. When you got right down to it, the USSR (which, as leader of the Comintern — the body that supposedly represented the worldwide proletariat, had for many years been seen as the main force opposing the rise of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco) was not so different from Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union also had a one-party system, also oppressed freedoms, and also herded people into camps, which may have lacked a German order and efficiency, but took no fewer lives.

Twenty years after the war began, when Vasily Grossman drew parallels between the fascist and communist regimes in his novel Life and Fate, the very notion cost him not only his novel (the manuscript was confiscated by the KGB), but, it could be argued, his life: after his precious child was taken from him, the writer fell ill and soon died.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact shocked the world and was regarded with outrage by the great powers, but one has to assume that no one but communist true believers could have been genuinely surprised. Stalin and Hitler were so much alike it was much easier for them to come to terms with one another than with Churchill or Roosevelt. My father the historian used to recall how, in June 1941 (when he was just eleven years old), everyone breathed a sigh of relief once they heard that the United States and England were throwing their support behind the USSR. They might very well not have.

Scenario 1

What if Hitler had not invaded the USSR?

According to some sources, Operation Barbarossa was seriously contemplated only after Soviet troops failed in 1939 to defeat Finland — not exactly a military powerhouse. As Churchill put it, Finland "exposed, for all the world to see, the military incapacity of the Red Army." It is entirely possible that Hitler — having made up his mind that he no longer needed the Soviet Union and, unable to take out the air defenses that kept him from landing in England — decided to make a go for Caucasian oil and Ukrainian wheat and nonferrous metals.

And what if Stalin had not attacked Finland? What if the USSR and Germany had remained allies? What if Stalin had supported Hitler in his invasion of England? It is frightening to consider that, in that case, all of Europe would likely have been dragged into the dark well of totalitarianism and only America would have escaped. The communist and Nazi regimes would have grown closer. Really, their only area of difference had to do with "the nationalities question," since the communists considered themselves internationalists. Yet this, of course, did not stop Stalin from deporting countless nations from their homelands after the Nazis were finally defeated, or from aggressively promoting the Russian national idea and launching a campaign of anti-Semitism. For this reason, it should not surprise anyone that, in today’s Russia, the reds and the brown-shirts find plenty of common ground.

Thus could history have taken a different turn: Stalin might have avoided fighting Hitler. And it is frightening to consider that the outcome might have been a fascist Europe, albeit painted in different shades of red or black.

Scenario 2

What if Roosevelt and Churchill had not come to the USSR’s aid in June 1941?

The decision to support the Soviets was probably easier for Roosevelt than it was for Churchill, whose attitude toward communism was well known. Several years earlier he had made the cynical remark that it would be a good thing if the communists and fascists clashing in Spain "transfixed" one another, leaving behind only glorious accounts of their fight. What would have happened if, in 1941, Churchill had decided to stay on the sidelines, rejoicing in the fact that Germany’s invasion of Russia greatly relieved pressure on the British Isles? Would the Soviet Union have been able to withstand Hitler’s attack without American help, without the Allies?

To again quote my father, on the subject of what would have happened had the Germans occupied Moscow, he once said to me, "You would never have been born, and on top of that, I would not have been around — and that would have been even worse." How many more millions would have been killed if the Soviet Union had been alone in its fight against Germany? How many more civilians would have been wiped out? We can only say a silent word of thanks to Sir Winston who, in justifying his alliance with Stalin, famously joked, "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."

And what would Hitler have done in the event that he managed to defeat Soviet troops? He would probably have refocused his attention on Britain, taking us back to Scenario 1. And what would Stalin have done in the event that he managed to defeat German forces without the help of England and America? He probably also would have focused on Britain and France and Italy. The assertion by Viktor Suvorov, a Soviet defector turned British writer and historian, that Stalin was planning on attacking Hitler, but was beaten to the punch, has been harshly criticized by historians, but surely Stalin was just as eager as Hitler to achieve world domination.

In any event, one thing is certain — the unthinkably horrible and bloody war that began "June 22, at exactly four o’clock" could have been far worse.