Mar 09 2010
GI Joe: Triumphant Liberator of Berlin
Lennart Samuelson was kind enough to pass this Newsweek illustration along and let me post it. You’ll need to click the image to get the bad history in all its glory.
Clearly I’ve somehow missed the Western Allies’ triumphant liberation of Berlin in my previous studies of World War II.
So the US is certainly not immune to messing up the history of World War II. This particular instance, though, seems to me to represent the American problem of general ignorance about the war, and not the contemporary Russian problem of attempting to politicize knowledge of the war.
Most of us Americans are not well versed in history in general. WWII is ancient history to most citizens, but those alive back then know that it was The Red Army which liberated Berlin. Newseek should know better. The Western Allies were holding their positions to the west of Berlin and this was critized by then Soviet dictator Josef Stalin; saying that the allies were letting the USSR do the heavy lifting and bleeding. Which was true also.
Thanks for the comment, Tony.
The boundaries between Western and Soviet troops were worked out well ahead of time–the Red Army was given the honor of taking Berlin, and Stalin knew that. Indeed, at the end of the war US troops had to withdraw from parts of Czechoslovakia and what became East Germany because those areas had been allocated for Soviet occupation.
Funny illustration, but what triggered this post? Is this Lennart suggesting Newsweek is falsifying history?
The numbers here are the interesting part for me and something Americans seem to ignore or perhaps can’t quite comprehend. Roughly 150,000 American casualties between 6 June 44 and April of 45 (10 months) and the Russians lost over 300,000 caualties in the two weeks of fighting around Berlin. One might consider that perhaps the Russians felt they had earned the right to dictate terms at the end of the war. The scale of both the size of the armies on the eastern front as well the casualty rates completely escapes many Americans and their understanding of the European Theater.
Carl–I won’t speak for Lennart, but I read it not as deliberate falsification but as ignorance.
Regarding my earlier post, DStone is correct in that the whole thing was arranged prior to the liberation of Berlin; however, Stalin and the soviets in general were critical about the absence of the Allies after the dust had settled and the cold war had started. It was just propaganda on their part. And no. I did not accuse Newsweek of re-writing history; just an ignorant mistake.
Hello! First off i would like to say, Nice website. Secondly, i certainly am not an intellectual but i have always been fascinated by the history of world war 2 since a young kid. Not that that is any sort of qualification, but i do feel reasonably well informed enough in saying that even as a young kid, i always well understood the Russian contribution in the East was always critical in the defeat of Hitler’s Germany. I also realized at a later age that one side claiming the ultimate victory in that war is usually ideologically driven. So i had always viewed the victory as a shared one between the allies and not with one nations having the sole right in claiming all the glory. The latter view, i think, does a great disservice to all allied soldiers that fought and sacrificed their lives in bringing down Hitler.
Thirdly, without really knowing what is said in the article, or even what year it was printed, i can only conclude that this was probably taken out of context. If i understood the picture correctly, underneath the German capital of Berlin it is pointed out the number of Russian casualties in taking the capitol with no mention of American casualty figures underneath it.
So what about the arrow pointing the US forces to Berlin? I don’t know? Sure, it can be subjective, but i don’t think it really means anything more then that the western allies did finally get to the western part of Berlin, well after it’s fall to the Russians, to take up their part of the occupational duties? Still if i was the artist that made the map, i would have stopped the tip of the arrow at the Elbe for the sake of accuracy? Then again, maybe the artist was over zealous at finally getting paid for his work and could have cared less for the accuracy of it?
Anyways, i would like to say again that this website looks well done and very interesting. I can’t wait to start browsing around here!
Thanks for stopping by, Jason. In brief, my response would be that in this case as in many others, it doesn’t take too much longer to get things right. In this case, two arrows, one from the east and one from the west, meeting west of Berlin.