The mistake of treating all the victors of World War II as equals

This Thursday, May 8, marks the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazism and the end of World War II in Europe.

Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia recall two facts that many forget about World War II
United by hatred of democracy: a revealing telegram about the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939

Certainly, the defeat of a criminal regime like Adolf Hitler's dictatorship is something worth celebrating, considering that this regime unleashed the deadliest war in history and one of the greatest genocides that humanity has suffered: the Holocaust, which had the Jewish people as its main victim, with 6 million people murdered in the name of diabolical Nazi anti-Semitism.

There is one fact that makes me cringe every anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe: the insistence of some on treating all the victors of the World War II equally, victors among whom were two very different types of countries: the USSR and all the others. The United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, France, Canada, Australia and other Allied countries fought for freedom against nazi tyranny. All these countries were democratic before the war and dreamed of the occupied peoples recovering their lost freedom, within the framework of a democratic society.

On the contrary, the USSR was a dictatorship allied with Nazi Germany at the beginning of the war: together they invaded Poland, after signing a pact to divide that country, a pact that granted Russia the eastern strip of Poland, as well as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and the Romanian regions of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Stalin's dictatorship invaded all these countries and territories and annexed them, with the sole exception of Finland, which managed to resist, but was forced to give up part of its territory.

It is worth remembering that if the USSR ended up on the Allied side it was not Stalin's decision, but Hitler's, who in June 1941 decided to invade what was then his Soviet ally. If Germany had not invaded the Soviet Union, the alliance between Hitler and Stalin would surely not have been broken. Let us remember that in September 1939, at the joint parade that Germans and Soviets held in Brześć Litewski to celebrate their victory over Poland, the Russian general Semyon Krivoshein invited his German allies to visit Moscow after wishing them a swift victory over the British.

Certainly, the citizens of the USSR suffered all kinds of hardships and many casualties in the war and many of its soldiers fought admirably, but that cannot serve as an excuse to whitewash a monstrous regime, that of Stalin, which replaced the German military occupation in Eastern Europe with a Soviet military occupation, committing all kinds of atrocities against Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians, carrying out deportations and subjecting Poles, Czechoslovakians, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and East Germans to communist dictatorships, annexing the Baltic states, driving many into exile and plunging millions of people into oppression for more than 40 years.

We must remember that in the years following the war, Stalin used the defeat of Nazism to legitimize his dictatorship, which continued to commit crimes like those his former ally Adolf Hitler had committed during the war. Today, the far left and Vladimir Putin's dictatorship (a legitimate successor to Stalin, judging by the atrocities he is committing against the Ukrainian people) continue to legitimize the Soviet dictatorship using the same excuse. Just look at the communist paraphernalia displayed year after year at the so-called "Victory Parade" every May 9 in Moscow.

On this 80th anniversary, my special respect goes to those who fought for Freedom, starting with the Poles, who were the first to fight against the invasion of their country by Germany and the USSR and the first to suffer the atrocities of those two dictatorships. It goes without saying that the Red Army was not fighting for Freedom, but to replace one totalitarian occupation with another, and I cannot feel respect for that. I cannot feel respect for a dictatorship that committed a genocide against the Ukrainian people before Hitler perpetrated the Holocaust. I refuse to whitewash a criminal regime that allied itself with another criminal regime to divide up a part of Europe, and that ended up fighting against its nazi allies only because they betrayed it.

Finally, on this 80th anniversary, I want to remember all the innocent victims of a horrendous war waged by two tyrants, Hitler and Stalin. Tens of millions of people died in that war. Many were civilians; many had done no harm. This colossal tragedy should always encourage us to be on guard against those who support totalitarian ideologies and admire criminal tyrants, tyrants like those who govern today in Russia, Belarus, communist China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Iran, dictatorships that—incredibly—have many admirers in the West.

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Photo: A picture of German and Soviet soldiers together on the day of the joint Nazi-Soviet parade in Brest-Livosk, Poland, September 22, 1939, with which both invaders celebrated the defeat of the Poles.