In 1919, when a peace treaty was signed in Versailles, summing up the results of the First World War, the French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch predicted: “This is not peace yet. This is a 20-year respite. That's right - September 1, 1939 is considered the start date of World War II. But is it true? In this article, we will prove that World War II actually began in 1938.
Jungle Law in Europe
Since the late 1930s, in Europe, relations between countries have been built according to the laws of the jungle: the strong devoured the weak, tearing them to pieces. Until September 17, 1939, the USSR remained aloof from this carve-up, and Hitler's Third Reich was not the only aggressor and invader among the countries of Europe. Hitler neglected education and did not even graduate from high school. Stalin graduated from the Gori Theological School, and then for about five years studied at the Theological Seminary, from where he was eventually expelled. Of course, education in those years was not like the present one, but it would be too daring to call these two cultured and educated people. Perhaps this explains their irrepressible thirst for world domination. But heads of state with higher university education, teachers of philosophy and theology also became aggressors …
Polish aggressors
Since September 1, 1939, Poland has been considered a victim of the aggression of Nazi Germany, and since September 17, 1939, also the Soviet Union. And although the Soviet troops crossed the border 10 days after the Polish government fled the country, in Warsaw to this day they reproach the Russian Federation, as the legal successor of the USSR, of treacherous aggression. But they do not explain why it is unacceptable for the Russians to do the same thing that the Poles did in relation to their neighbor in 1938.
That year, France and England actually surrendered Czechoslovakia to Hitler, forbidding the Czechs to fight for the sovereignty of their country (however, the Czechs themselves did not really want this). But what does Poland have to do with it, you ask?
And under the guise of the disintegration of the Czechoslovak Republic (the sovereign Slovak Republic was proclaimed), Warsaw politicians bit off (there is no other word for it) from its territory the so-called Cieszyn region. With the tacit consent of Berlin. Moreover, Polish troops crossed the Polish-Czech border in the early morning of October 10, 1938.
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The invasion army was small: the 3rd Infantry Division, cavalry and motorized brigades, united in the army group of General Anton Pulanich. The Czechs did not offer them serious resistance. Moreover, the Polish and German commanders were in contact with each other as "brothers in arms."
And how, in principle, do the actions of Warsaw and its army differ from the actions of Moscow and the Red Army a year later? And if, as some historians now claim, there was a secret agreement between Germany and the USSR on the division of Poland, then nothing is known about any agreements on the division of the territory of Czechoslovakia between the Germans and Poles. Warsaw statesmen simply quietly stole the Cieszyn region. And what is interesting: the Czechs have no claims to the Poles for complicity in the division of their country 80 years ago. Although from the point of view of international law and historical facts, in 1938 Poland was the same aggressor as Germany.
Hungary is an accomplice in the partition of Czechoslovakia
The Hungarians in 1938 received part of the southern and southwestern former Slovakia (as a former part of the Czech Republic) and the southern part of the so-called Subcarpathian Rus from Berlin only on the grounds that until 1918 this territory was the land of the Hungarian crown. Without the slightest stress. And in 1940, the Hungarians also received a piece of the Romanian state - Transylvania. For such a generous gift, the Fuhrer of the Hungarian fascists, Admiral Miklos Horthy, fought with the USSR as an ally of Hitler. But for some reason this admiral does not bear the historical responsibility for complicity in the partition of Czechoslovakia.
No claims
In October 1938, Slovakia was declared a sovereign republic. The head of the ruling Slovak People's Party - professor of the Theological Academy, priest Josef Tiso, since October 26, 1938, the head of the Slovak government, entered into an alliance with Hitler. On June 23, 1941, Slovakia declared war on the USSR, and subsequently the Slovak military units fought on the territory of the Soviet Union on the side of the Wehrmacht. But that will be later.
And on September 5, 1939, being loyal to allied obligations to Nazi Germany, Slovak troops crossed the Polish border at the Dukel Pass. And after the division of the territories of Poland, they received their piece of its lands. The question is - why do historians and politicians believe that only Hitler and Stalin are to blame for the division of Poland's "first victim of fascism"? Have you completely forgotten about two accomplices of this robbery - the head of the Slovak government Josef Tiso and the President of Lithuania Antanas Smetana? And in modern Warsaw, no, even moral claims are made to Bratislava and Vilnius.
Lithuania is small but proud
You will laugh, but small but proud Lithuania until 1940 managed to distinguish itself as an aggressor country. In October 1939, not a single Soviet soldier had yet been on its territory. But until that autumn, the capital of Lithuania was the city of Kaunas (formerly Kovno). Why? Because Vilnius - the modern capital of the Republic of Lithuania and in the recent past the capital of the Lithuanian SSR - ceded to the territory of Lithuania only on October 10, 1939. Until that time, it was the Polish city of Vilno.
But the Polish Republic was torn apart by Germany, Slovakia and the USSR. And Antanas Smetana, the President of Lithuania, a graduate of the law faculty of St. Petersburg University (from which, by the way, he was expelled twice), a former journalist and teacher of philosophy at Kaunas University, may have wondered: how is he worse than these two half-educated people - Hitler and Stalin? And in early October 1939, when the Polish army virtually ceased to exist, the only Lithuanian division entered the city of Vilna with a victorious march.
In 1945, the USSR returned to the Polish Republic all the territories that had been occupied by Soviet troops in September 1939. Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania today. And Warsaw does not demand the return of the city seized 80 years ago and does not even remember the complicity of the Lithuanians in the division of their country. And this is not only a banal seizure of cities and lands. Having entered Vilna (or Vilnius), the Lithuanian military staged a real Jewish pogrom. About Kristallnacht, arranged by the Nazis in Germany itself from November 9 to 10, 1938, they shout to the whole world. About a similar night arranged by Lithuanian nationalists in October 1939, they are silent, as if it never happened. And international Jewish organizations looking for anti-Semitic executioners all over the world do not make claims to Lithuania for compensation for material damage, in contrast to the Germans who are still paying for their great-grandfathers.
It must be admitted that Lithuania among all the Baltic republics in the 1920s-1930s, in the era of the heyday of its sovereignty, behaved in Europe like a courtyard hooligan, knowing that there was a "big brother" behind him. Back in January 1923, the Lithuanian division occupied the primordially German port in the Baltic - Memel. Quickly renaming it Klaipeda, the Lithuanian government committed an act of open seizure of German lands. Lithuania, the newborn state - the fruit of Versailles diplomacy, Germany, even defeated, did not owe anything. It's just that the exsanguinated former Kaiser empire did not have the strength and resources to defend its territory. And the "big brother" from London only slightly chided the "hooligans" from Kaunas (the Lithuanians did not dare to attack Vilnius then). But in 1940, the USSR brought its troops into the territory of Lithuania (in fact, as a strong man),and the indignant roar does not subside to this day. The fact that the Lithuanian aggressors on the same terms previously seized the ancient German city, for some reason, are silent today. And after 1945, the Lithuanians never returned their trophy to Germany.
Field Marshal Foch was not mistaken in his prediction. World War II began 20 years after the end of the first. Soviet Russia had nothing to do with fights for territory among European states in the period from March 1938 to August 1939. But Russia and Germany are still considered the initiators of all troubles. This is really a mystery of the 20th century.
Alexander SMIRNOV