After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians began taking down their statues of Josef Stalin, the mass murderer who killed millions of people. Astonishingly, in America, the National D-Day Memorial is honoring Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at its museum in Bedford, Virginia.
This misguided move will haunt millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Jews, etc. whose families were massacred by this Soviet tyrant. Stalin's killing machine slaughtered more people than Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did.
Hitler and Stalin were allies and started World War II in 1939 by both attacking Poland at the same time. But William McIntosh, the D-Day Memorial's president says that because Stalin became a U.S. ally after Germany invaded Russia, he deserves to be acknowledged along with Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
McIntosh is wrong. Stalin only gave lip service to the allies so that they would attack Nazi Germany on the Western front. Stalin did not liberate Eastern Europe from the Nazis in 1945; he sent in Soviet troops that occupied half of Europe until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Stalin the communist barely hid his disdain for capitalist America during WWII, and once the war ended, he began the Cold War and ordered his scientists to work on missiles and nuclear weapons that could destroy the United States.
Given McIntosh's logic, should America put up a statue of Saddam Hussein because he was an ally of the U.S. in the 1980s when we supported Iraq in a war against Iran?
Congress authorized the D-Day Memorial and private donors raised $19 million to honor soldiers that fought in the invasion of Normandy. Now McIntosh is lobbying Congress to make his museum part of the National Park Service so that it can receive federal tax dollars.
By placing a bust of Stalin on hallowed ground, McIntosh disrespects veterans, including my father who took part in the Normandy invasion. When the war began, Dionysius Storozynski was 17 and living in Lvov, Poland. He fought in the underground against Stalin's army that invaded Poland and later joined the Polish troops in France that fought the Germans in the West. When France surrendered, he was evacuated to England and trained for the allied invasion of Normandy.
In 1944, when the beachhead was taken, Corporal Storozynski rode a motorcycle off a transport from England as part of the 24th Lancers Regiment of the 1st Polish Armored Division. It was lead by Major Jan Kanski with 47 officers, 634 men, 52 Sherman tanks, 11 Stuart tanks and six anti-aircraft tanks. My father sped ahead of these troops, and scoured the French countryside with his binoculars. He radioed the coordinates of the Germans to Polish tank commanders. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower inspected my father's regiment, which saw heavy action in Caen, Falaise and Aberville in France. They helped liberate Belgium and Holland.
During the campaign, my father lost part of his hearing when he drove over a land mine. Major Kanski lost his life.
My maternal grandfather, Sgt. Wladslaw Krzyzanowski, also fought in the Polish Army against Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. In 1939 he was tortured and sentenced to death by Stalin's NKVD, forerunner of the KGB. His crime? He fought against Stalin's ally at the time, Hitler. My grandfather's sentence was commuted to life, and he was one of 1.5 million Poles sent to Stalin's forced labor gulags in Siberia in the years 1939-1941. He escaped and joined the army of Polish Gen. Wladyslaw Anders that fought alongside British General Bernard Montgomery. The Brits and the Poles pushed the Germans across North Africa and together with the American military liberated Italy. My grandfather won medals at the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Other Polish soldiers were not as lucky. The NKVD took 22,000 Polish officers into the Katyn Forest, tied their hands behind their backs, and one by one shot them in the back of their heads. The bodies were dumped into mass graves. Many have yet to be recovered for proper burial.
That's how Stalin treated prisoners of war. He wasn't much better to his own people. Before World War II began, the NKVD killed millions of Russians during the "great purge" of Stalin's political enemies. Stalin forced collectivization, stole farmland from peasants, and starved to death 10 million Ukrainians in a vengeful act of genocide. And it was Stalin's 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Hitler that split Poland in half, allowing the Germans to carry out the Holocaust that murdered six million Jews.
Stalin enslaved the Russian people. That's why Russia has taken down most of the statues of Stalin and Russian President Dimitri Medvedev is critical of those who gloss over Stalin's image. "From the point of view of the law, killing of a huge number of compatriots for political or unsubstantiated economic motives is a crime," Medvedev recently told Der Spiegel magazine. "The rehabilitation of those involved in these crimes is impossible."
In addition to the civilians that Stalin murdered, he sent Russian soldiers to their death by using them as cannon fodder, marching them directly into the line of German gunfire without a cohesive battle plan. Medvedev said recently on his web site, "Stalin's crimes cannot diminish the heroic deeds of the people who triumphed in the Great Patriotic war."
If McIntosh wants to honor Russia's contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany, he should put up a statue of the Unknown Russian Soldier. That would make more sense than a bust of Stalin.
It took the people of the former Soviet Empire five decades to right the wrongs of Stalin's "evil empire," as Ronald Reagan called it. These days, the Poles are planning to put up a statue of Reagan in Warsaw to acknowledge his role in ending Soviet Communism. How ironic that in Virginia, America is putting up a bust of Stalin.
Here is a little lesson in history for you.
Joseph Stalin ordered his henchman, on 5 March 1940, to kill 15,546 Polish officers, prisoners of World War II, detained by Soviets in concentration camps in Kozielsk, Ostaszkow and Starobielsk. They all were shot in the back of their heads and buried in a make shift mass graves in Katyn, Miednoje and Charkow. Stalin also ordered his NKWD to execute 7,305 polish women and men arrested in eastern counties of Poland overtaken by Soviet Army in 1939.
What about millions of Russians, enemies of communism, killed on his order?
I am appalled that such a thought would cross your mind.....
Lt Col Krzysztof Kras, MSC, USAF (Ret).
.
Any other suggestions? Please poster here for membership in the bust removal committee and your recommended removee.
A slippery slope revising history. Not that neo-liberals or neo-conservatives have any problem with doing it. Victims, with All due respect, cannot write the history books or the laws for that matter, if "justice for all" is to prevail in this great land of ours.
To those who suggest an alternative monument I say, if you want to see monuments to the Red Army go to Latvia or some of the other "Liberated" countries of the former Soviet Socialist Republics.
[snark!]
Memorial. Do not honor this terrorist.
Stalin had Vladimir Lenin's personal letter to Leon Trotsky (which was composed on his death bed) intercepted and it never was seen by its intended recipient. Then he had Leon Trotsky assassinated. Stalin was no chump, but he is not someone who deserves a lot of praise either, because his policy of maintaining and expanding his power was based on killing as a first resort, not a last resort.
If we want to acknowledge the cost paid by "Russians," let's have something honoring "Russians," not Stalin. (I use "Russians" in quotes because you are somewhat inaccurately referring to the people of the then-Soviet Union as Russians). Their sacrifice was great -- not Stalin's. Stalin acted for himself and himself alone. He benefited from the war:
- Stalin made a pact with Hitler to invade Poland.
- Stalin engineered forced starvations in Ukraine, which among other things helped the German propaganda machine.
- Stalin removed almost all defenses from Soviet Western frontiers before the invasion.
- Stalin decapitated the Soviet army by imprisoning most marshals (5-star generals) at the start of WWII in order to consolidate personal power.
Stalin's ambitions helped Hitler. Yet, Stalin greatly benefited from WWII personally. First, it kept him in power. Second, Stalin was rewarded for his "mistakes" by being handed half of Europe.
His hubris and despotism helped Hitler advance through Europe. He should be seen as a criminal of WWII, not its hero.
A bust to Stalin is offensive to the basic American values of freedom and human rights. We would also be ignorant to think that this will please Russia. To the contrary, it will be offensive and will invite Putin's propaganda to point out "the America's hypocrisy."
There is nothing politically, morally or historically justifiable about honoring Stalin.
My name is Jaroslaw Rottermund, I was born in Poland several years after WW2.
There are no worse memories in our consciousness then these of Stalin or Hitler.
My families were shipped out of Poland in two directions, Soviet Gulag, from which many did not return or Germany where they worked as slaves throughout the war.
At least in Germany my grandparents were able to secure some basic food, where in stalinist Russia, kids and adults were simply starved to death.
Stalin's monuments are removed in Russia, and you want him back here in the US?
If he was an ally it was only due to his cruel and cunning nature, if anyone still has misgivings about most evil nature of communism and especially stalinist times, I would suggest brief study of monumental work by recently deceased prof. Leszek Kolakowski "Main currents of Marxism".
It was unfortunate that Stalin never stood in front of the court of law.
He made sure that law did not exist in Russia for many years.
Dear Sir, installing Stalin's image would be a mockery of our laws and rights, it would be a mockery over graves of innocent millions.
Please reconsider,
Sincerely , Jaroslaw Rottermund
Fact: Stalin was not a member of the British-American coalition of Canadian, Polish and French soldiers who invaded Normandy. Stalin had no role in major events that helped D-Day success:
1) The fall of the Gustav Line and Rome - caused by Polish 2nd Corps finally taking Monte Cassino - resulting in tying down German divisions badly needed in Normandy.
2) The early erosion of the Luftwaffe - begun by Battle of Britain’s top fighter squadron, the Polish 303rd - a critical factor in D-Day success.
Stalin could have helped Normandy just 2 months after D-Day by a powerful blow to German strategy and pride - by freeing Poland and road to Berlin. Instead, Stalin stopped his offensive and air operations 12 miles from Warsaw, leaving the Germans free to pulverize the Poles for 63 heart-breaking days (1 Aug - 2 Oct 44) during the heroic Warsaw Uprising.
Stalin prevented supplies to Poles fighting under horrific conditions. Polish AF and RAF pilots had to fly harrowing flights from Italy. One token Soviet-Polish unit was permitted a hapless river crossing to Warsaw. After total Nazi victory, Stalin’s offensive resumed.
So much for Stalin’s D-Day cooperation.
The Russian soldier is the appropriate statue.
Lt. Col. P. R. Stankiewicz, USAF (Ret)
it would be Infiltrated.
and by reading some of these 'justifications'
he was correct
inevitably down when weighing the pros and cons of such display. The immorality of glorifying Stalin would adversely affect the image of the United States in the world and among its own citizens.
In times when Russian President Dmitri Medvedev regards Joseph Stalin as an
abomination, honoring Stalin by raising his bust on a pedestal at WWII
museum in Bedford, Virginia, is an abomination.
Has the National Park Service or the museum at Bedford of which you are the
president any respect for the millions murdered by Stalin? You might as well
honor Adolf Hitler while you're at it, or their current admirers like
Ahmadinejad.
Even Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, has just
announced his intentions to participate at next year's Katyn massacre
observances. Katyn was Stalin's killing field, the site of one of his most
heinous war crimes.
I am the son of both Stalin's and Hitler's slaves, my mother a camp
survivor. My father was in the "trud army" at the Battle of Stalingrad, and
is counted among the city of Volgagrad's 19,000 surviving defenders against
the Nazis. He ended the war at the rank of an artillery lieutenant, one of
few Polish officers since most were murdered on Stalin's orders.
I assure you, my father would be appalled had he lived to see the day that
in the land of the free where he [in his words] "retired from history"
Stalin would be memorialized.
Shame on you! Millions of WWII veteran and victim families in America and
all over the world, including Russia, deserve your immediate apology for
this disgraceful act.
Sincerely,
Michael Szporer, PhD
Professor of Communications, Arts, and Humanities
But to say simply "Stalin started the Cold War" and move on, as though this were a universally held truth, is a bit much. There was skullduggery, backstabbing, distrust, and geopolitical selfishness among all the Allies leading up to the partition of Europe; FDR, Truman, Churchill, deGaulle all had a hand in starting the Cold War. "Stalin started the Cold War" is the kind of simplistic half-truth my rabidly anticommunist teachers at Catholic school used to feed us. They never understood that there was no need to manipulate the truth in order to make Stalin's regime look bad. The real truth, un-manipulated, and in all of its sloppy complexity, would've been enough.
All the time. ;)
Photoshopping him out of Yalta, or whatever you call the equivalent when Yalta is rendered in bronze, is still dishonest. Stalin was the ruler of a major power that was on our side in WWII; any commemoration of WWII that tries to brush that fact under the rug is revisionist history. Of course he should be identified as a mass-murdering megalomaniac, but that's who we allied with. Pretending we didn't ally with him is just as false as pretending he wasn't evil.
Are they crazy?
To reiterate what was said before, trying to erase him and his role during WW2 is dishonest.