What do official history books teach our children?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Europe and Asia were liberated by Russian "outright bandits, drunkards and rapists"?

One of my friends accompanied his congratulations on Victory Day with a sign, which contained the answers of modern residents of Western European countries to the question of who played a decisive role in the victory over Nazi Germany and its allies.

To see the blasphemous figures given in the table published here, I would say, was not only unpleasant, but also offensive. It is insulting to the 27 million of our compatriots who gave their lives, including for those Western Europeans who forgot or who were initially raised by propaganda did not know their saviors.

However, there are honest, objectively thinking people in the West, including the United States. I remember my acquaintance two years ago on Sakhalin during the International Scientific Conference "Lessons from World War II and the Present" with the director of the Institute of Atomic Research at the American University, Professor Peter Kuznik, who devotes a significant part of his activities to defending the truth about the global tragedy of the 20th century. He is known to the Russian audience as a co-producer of the 12-episode documentary The Untold History of the United States. The first three hour episodes of the film are dedicated to the Second World War. In addition, the professor, in collaboration with Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, who directed the film, wrote an 800-page book of the same title.

“In The Untold Story,” said Peter Kuznick, “Oliver Stone and I challenge three fundamental myths about war that Americans are taught in schools, books, television, and films: 1) The United States won the war in Europe; 2) atomic bombs ended the Pacific War; 3) the Cold War began during World War II due to Soviet aggression and territorial expansion.

It's amazing how far apart American and Russian military historians and writers are. For the Americans, the war began on December 7, 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Then there was a short period of struggle in North Africa and Italy, and the real war began on June 6, 1944 on the so-called D-Day - the landing in Normandy. Then, it is argued in the West, American troops, crushing the Germans, reached Berlin, forcing them to surrender.

In fact, the truth is that it was the Red Army, with the support of the entire population of the country, that won the war in Europe, not without the help, of course, of the United States and other allies. For this, the Soviet people went to great suffering. The Red Army was opposed during the war by 200 German divisions. Before the invasion of Normandy, American and British forces fought with only ten German divisions. Even the desperate anti-communist Winston Churchill admitted that it was the Red Army that ripped the guts of the German war machine. Germany lost over 6 million soldiers on the Eastern Front and approximately one million on the Western Front and the Mediterranean. The Americans were discouraged by the loss of 400,000 of their soldiers in the war. The British lost even less. But few people realize what the loss of 27 million Soviet people means.

US President John F. Kennedy said in 1963: "What the Soviets endured is tantamount to the destruction of the entire vast portion of the United States east of Chicago to the ocean … No country in the history of battle has ever tolerated what the Soviet Union endured during World War II." …

“But the vast majority of Americans,” continues Peter Kuznik, “don't know anything about this story. I conducted an anonymous survey of a group of college students in which I asked how many Americans and how many Soviet people died in World War II. The average responses I received were 90,000 Americans and 100,000 Russians. This means that about 300 thousand Americans and 27 million Soviet people were missing students. And I am afraid that a similar view exists among most Americans in general. Most Americans know almost nothing about World War II, they cannot understand why the Cold War originated and what it was, they have little understanding of what is happening now in Ukraine.

In the Hollywood-shaped minds of most Americans, World War II in Europe, which began on D-Day, ended with American troops marching triumphantly through Berlin. Well, the Russians were just extras in American military history."

In the film and book by Peter Kuznik and Oliver Stone, the myth about the allegedly "unnecessary" participation of the USSR in the defeat of militarist Japan is also exposed, and the role of the Red Army in the destruction of this ally of Hitlerite Germany is shown. Referring to the war in the East, Peter Kuznik said at the conference: “Unfortunately, the Americans are unaware of the price the Chinese paid in fighting the war of resistance to the Japanese aggressors; they have no idea how important their struggle was for the victory over Germany and Japan. Like the Russians, the Chinese suffered huge losses. Chinese leaders argue that Chinese casualties even exceed the Soviet Union's casualties. And although most Western scientists give not so large numbers, they also estimate the death toll of soldiers and civilians in the war in a terrifying range from 10 to 20 million people …

American myths about World War II are consonant with propaganda about the exclusiveness of America and the Americans, their fragile self-love. American complacency justifies 70 years of American militarism and interventionism … And this must be recognized now, when new cooperation between the United States, Russia and China is needed in order to re-enter the fight against the creeping quasi-fascist forces that threaten our planet from religious extremism, environmental degradation, unbridled militarism and greed."

What do we have? With pain in my soul I watched the TV show on the eve of Victory Day, sacred for our people, in which, no, not teenagers, but quite adult young people - the heirs of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War who gave their lives for them, were asked about the exploits of Alexander Matrosov, Valentin Kotik, Nikolai Gastello and other selfless Soviet soldiers. Their miserable awkward answers jarred the soul, aroused an angry protest against those who gloss over the heroic deeds of the war heroes with black paint, and with hatred of the Soviet past, tear out pages from textbooks that mention the best people of our country who gave their lives in the name of its freedom and independence.

In connection with the above, I cannot but cite widely the one that appeared on the eve of the holiday in Life. ru article “Textbooks that lie. Why can't children learn about our Great Victory? Moreover, some authors of libels on our history are named in it.

"The writer Evgeny Novichikhin nervously leafs through the school textbook" General History "for the 9th grade of a comprehensive school:

- This is not just a blackening of our history, this is already a total debilitization of our children, excuse the expression … And the uniform sabotage of the presidential decrees!

The writer's indignation is easy to understand: in the history textbook, written by a certain Evgeny Sergeev, in the description of the events of the twentieth century there is not a word about the Great Patriotic War. That is, literally not a single word, not even such a concept.

The historian Sergeev, talking about the events of World War II, mentions only individual battles on the Eastern Front: for example, the Battle of Stalingrad in the textbook contained as many as three sentences! But describing the events of the Battle of Kursk, the author of the textbook cost only one sentence.

But the battles of the British in North Africa were described in the most detailed way: they say, it was near the city of Tobruk that the soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition broke the back of the fascist beast.

- And you know what is most outrageous ?! - sighs Evgeny Novichikhin.“I talked with a number of school principals and made sure that this is not the only textbook in which our story is presented in an ugly light, with only its negative sides protruding …”

In the textbook "Recent history of the twentieth century" published under the editorship of Doctor of Historical Sciences A. A. Kreder, information about the Stalingrad and Kursk battles is completely absent. The author writes in black and white that the defeat of Hitler's troops by the Red Army was "harmful to Europe" as it led to the spread of Soviet influence in its eastern and southern parts. But the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it turns out, were useful and necessary

And one more testimony: “In the textbook“Russian civilization and the origins of its crisis”Igor Ionov, an employee of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, described Soviet soldiers going to storm Berlin:“The long columns of Soviet troops were an unusual mixture of modernity and the Middle Ages: tankers in black leather helmets, Cossacks on shaggy horses with loot tied to their saddles, lend-lease doji and Studebaker, followed by a second echelon of carts. The variety of weapons was consistent with the variety of characters of the soldiers themselves, among whom there were many outright bandits, drunkards and rapists …"

I wonder if the Russian military-historical society reacts to such publications, not to mention the ministries of education and culture? Otherwise, as a result of this "education" of our children, the facts about the historical illiteracy of Americans cited by Peter Kuznik will not seem so egregious.