THE RUSSIAN FRONT

Noted political commentator and past Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan has weighed in on the origins of the Second World War, both at his own site and at townhall.com.

What’s striking to me is that Buchanan’s argument–that war could have been avoided had only Poland been more reasonable in dealing with Nazi Germany’s legitimate demands–is in its essentials identical to the case made by Russian Colonel S. N. Kovalyov a couple of months ago.

In Buchanan’s formulation,

The German-Polish war had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.
Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland’s rescue.
But why would Britain hand an unsolicited war guarantee to a junta of Polish colonels, giving them the power to drag Britain into a second war with the most powerful nation in Europe?
Was Danzig worth a war? Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn’t want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany.

In short, the Poles should have surrendered Danzig, an ethnically German city, to the Germans rather than fight.

I’ve outlined the argument (as formulated by Kovalyov) and my objections to it before.  What Buchanan (and Kovalyov earlier) are omitting is the context of the guarantee to Poland against German aggression at the end of March 1939.  On 13 March 1939, Hitler had invaded and annexed the rump Czechoslovakia, rendering meaningless his claims to be reuniting German territories to the Reich.  Why trust him after that?

I think we may have a candidate for the Truth Commission’s first target: a Russian military officer who argues that Poland’s responsible for World War II.

I’m headed to the MoD website to see if I can find it for myself. My thanks to the person who brought this to my attention.

UPDATE: here’s the Russian-language text of the Defense Ministry’s statement disavowing the official status of the argument.

UPDATE: the article in question by S. N. Kovalyov seems to have been taken down from its original page (subtly titled “History: Against Lies and Falsification), but I was able to grab a copy of the text and will post it soon.

Once more on the recognition of Kosovar independence and its ramifications . . .

Today’s Johnson’s Russia List#74 includes an enlightening interview with Sergei Shamba, Foreign Minister of Abkhazia. He hails Kosovar independence as something that makes Abkhazia’s break-away from Georgia more likely than ever before. To quote him at length,

After February 17, after Kosovo’s recognition, the second wave of recognition of the former Soviet and Yugoslavian autonomous states begins.

Certainly, we hope to be in this second wave. We can now discern a direct analogy between Kosovo and Abkhazia, even though Abkhazia has much greater legal, historical, and moral reasons for having its independence recognized than Kosovo does.

We live on our native land. We ourselves obtained our independence without any foreign military aid, in contrast to Kosovo. The Abkhazians ourselves drove out the Georgian aggressors from our territory.

In contrast to Kosovo we have developed all structures of state and government authority, developed civil society, a multiparty political system, an independent mass media, and non-governmental funds and organizations. During the last twenty years we have had presidential and parliamentary elections.

But Kosovo’s precedent gives us hope that the process of recognition can develop more quickly. In global affairs things develop unexpectedly and quickly. Almost anything can happen as a result of present events.

I do not happen to support the break-up of Georgia, and I am certain that the current administration in Washington feels the same way.  My point is that the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state, and the precedent it sets for national self-determination trumping the sovereignty and integrity of states, has pernicious consequences for precisely those governments that pushed Kosovo independence.

One hears a lot about frozen conflicts around the former Soviet Union.  While frozen conflicts are bad things, they sure beat the thawed ones, much like the Cold War was a heck of a lot better than its Hot equivalent would have been.  By thawing Kosovo, the US and EU have made life much more difficult for putative Western allies in the former Soviet block.

From today’s RFE/RL Newsline:

NATO CHIEF CALLS ON MACEDONIA TO COMPROMISE ON NAME ISSUE. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in Athens on March 3 that the Macedonian authorities should take the first step in resolving the long-standing dispute with Greece over Macedonia’s official name, news agencies reported. He stressed that “we have to realize that Greece is a staunch member of NATO. Aspiring nations are not members of NATO, and that is the basic difference.” Macedonia hopes to receive an invitation to join NATO at the alliance’s Bucharest summit in April. The name issue has bedeviled relations between the two countries ever since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. It was admitted to the UN in 1993 under the name Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Greece maintains that the name “Macedonia” alone implies a claim on the northern Greek province of the same name. PM

The merits of this particular case aside, I have to admire de Hoop Scheffer’s frankness. It makes me think of a great Greek authority on matters military and political. In the Melian dialogue, Thucydides writes

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Which is more or less de Hoop Scheffer’s point. Of course, Thucydides puts this argument in the mouth of those who massacre the men of Melos and sell the women and children into slavery.

Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe. Eds. Nancy M. Wingfield and Maria Bucur. Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies, eds. Alexander Rabinowitch and William G. Rosenberg. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. vii, 251 pp. Select Bibliography. Contributors. Index. Paper.

This collection of articles examines the variety of gendered experiences during the first and second world wars in Eastern Europe. The essays cover a wide spectrum of experiences and effects of war, exploring both military and civilian aspects (with emphasis on the latter). They seek to reevaluate traditional war narratives that focus heavily on men, particularly combatant men, and thus, “gender the front” (1). The book is divided into thematic sections: “challenging gender/resorting order,” “gendered collaborating and resisting,” and “remembering war: gendered bodies, gendered stories.”

Alon Rachamimov’s “’Female Generals’ and ‘Siberian Angels’: Aristocratic Nurses and the Austro-Hungarian POW Relief” demonstrates that women administrative nurses did not enjoy the positive reception of nurses who served in purely medical capacities. These women were not in auxiliary medical positions subordinate to male personnel, but rather in positions of authority assigned with the task of reporting on the conditions of the POWs within the camps and ensuring their loyalty to the Austro-Hungarian government. Rachamimov reveals the considerable gendered tension between male POWs and female administrative nurses. The men often found it difficult to accept women in positions of power over them and reacted to their presence with indifference, sullenness, and even hostility. This stands in stark contrast to the views male POWs had of women serving in purely nursing capacities, who were seen as a source of solace and comfort in their more traditional roles of caregivers and nurturers, and who held little to no authority over male personnel.
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