Russia has not always been the aggressor of the war it has gotten involved in. On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. This military offensive was code-named “Operation Barbarossa” and was executed with the typical blitzkrieg fashion by the German military forces. And this offensive was launched despite the existence of a nonaggression treaty entered into by the two countries shortly before the outbreak of the global hostilities.
On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union concluded the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact to prevent war between the two countries. Germany’s ambition to expand their turf to the other Eastern European countries had caused grave security concerns to Russia. With Germany’s growing military might, Russia’s failure to reach a security agreement with the other leading powers of Europe, Great Britain and France, left it with no alternative but to enter into an agreement with Germany to avoid war. The aborted Tripartite Agreement among the three countries could have deterred Germany from pursuing its military expansion in Europe. Joseph Stalin, head of the USSR, ordered his new Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, to meet and negotiate for peace with his German counterpart, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, in mid 1939. Molotov was the guy who produced the bottles of inflammable and explosive liquid now known as “molotov cocktails.’’ Ribbentrop was responsible for the “Pact of Steel ‘’ between Germany and Italy, which united the two fascist countries during the war. At the end of the war, Ribbentrop was convicted at the Nuremberg trial, and hanged. Western Europe’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler and a peace pact with the Soviet Union virtually left Germany to invade Poland without any major resistance. The US government was still neutral and had no intention yet to meddle in the brewing war across the Atlantic. Moreover, Hitler’s proposed military expansion on the west that would bring the country to war with France, Belgium, Britain and other allied countries in Europe would be undistracted by avoiding a two-front war against the Soviet Union on the east. Engaging in simultaneous battles on both its western and eastern fronts proved disastrous to Germany during WWI and Hitler did not want to repeat the same mistake. The German-Soviet Union agreement had divided Eastern Europe into two spheres of influence between Germany and the Soviet Union. The eastern part of Poland, the Baltic countries such as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, including Finland, belonged to the Soviet sphere of influence. The rest of Eastern Europe such as Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, etc. formed part of Germany’s sphere of influence. Barely nine days after the military alliance and cooperation was signed by Hitler and Stalin, Germany invaded Poland from the west on September 1, 1939. This officially started the Second World War. The Soviet Union followed it up when it invaded and occupied Eastern Poland on September 21. With the benefit of hindsight, the Soviet Union committed a colossal mistake in cutting a deal with Germany. It emboldened Germany to attack Poland and then Belgium and France. Casting its lot with Germany and its dreaded Wehrmacht was a costly move that resulted in the tragic loss of millions of Russian lives and the destruction of its cities and industries although in the end Russia emerged victorious. In World War I, Russia’s allies, among others, were France and Britain and they faced Germany as their common enemy. Strange that Russia trusted her enemy more than her friends. For less than two years after the conclusion of the nonaggression pact, the Soviet Union had peace with Germany and enjoyed an illusion of security. But this would not last.
After invading most of Central and Western Europe, Germany, without any provocation or justification and in breach of its nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, attacked the latter. The Soviet Union was completely caught by surprise that it was still delivering raw materials and food products to Germany as agreed upon hours after the invasion. This dastardly act ranks as one of the most traitorous events in the history of warfare. It was a stab by the Fuhrer on the back of Stalin who had preferred a fascist country over his former democratic allies. The Soviet Union faced the full military might of Germany and some of its Axis allies, isolated from the rest of Europe. Operation Barbarossa aimed to conquer the skilled Russians and deploy them as forced labor. The Germans were also lusting for the massive oil reserves, industrial and agricultural resources of the Soviets. The vast territory of the Soviet Union would provide more Lebensraum (living area) for growing Germany. USSR’s geography was its best defense and the long and harsh winter proved too much for the invaders. Like what we are seeing now in the ongoing war in Ukraine, the target territories were subjected to heavy bombardments and artillery attacks. Its civilian population suffered the most severe atrocities. Their dwellings were hit, water and power services were cut and the people were starved due to acute food shortage. Millions fled to safer grounds leaving behind their homes, business, husbands and sons who opted to stay and fight. Ukraine, which lies on the pathway of the rampaging massive German forces to the capital of Moscow, was the hardest hit, which the conquering Germans almost captured. The site of fiercest fighting occurred around Kiev (now Kyiv), Ukraine’s capital, where the Soviet forces were pummeled by overwhelming tanks, artillery and aerial assaults where over a million casualties from both sides were recorded. The invading German army channeled its attention to the capture of Moscow, just as the Russian troops now concentrated on occupying Kyiv. Germany then believed, as Russia upholds now, that the surrender of the country’s capital would mean victory in the war. But Stalin’s Red Army had driven back the Germans after its winter counter offensive, which signaled the failure of Operation Barbarossa.
Now, the aggressor’s shoe is in the Russian foot. It had ruthlessly and shamelessly invaded its former fellow member of the Soviet Republic without warning, without provocation and without justification. Its indomitable courage in the face of the formidable and superior German Wehrmacht gained the plaudits of the freedom-loving people of the world during WWII. Russia is now the villain by adopting entirely Nazi Germany’s playbook on stealthily attacking and annihilating a neighboring country by means of superior force. It may yet succeed in its devious design since NATO does not want to be drawn into a head-to-head military conflict with its ideological foe. Russia had its own harrowed experience at the hands of Nazi Germany. A member of the civilized world should not visit upon Ukraine, its former republic with many ethnic Russians among its 44 million population, the same horrors and atrocities it suffered at the hands of sinister invaders. Russia must stop the war!