Print the Legend

In reading an article at Atlantic outlining the complicated role of Poles in the murders of 90% of its Jewish population during World War II in reaction to the recent law banning mention of “Polish camps” during the period, I was struck by the degree to which mythology has overtaken reality regarding World War II.

The mythology is that we were fighting the Nazis. The reality is more that we were fighting the Germans. Were all Germans Nazis? Of course not. But many were and Hitler was popular.

The mythology is that the French bravely resisted the Germans. The reality is more that the French mostly just tried to get along during World War II. The fabled French Resistance consisted of a few hundred French Communists. They were far outnumbered by the French who collaborated actively with the Germans.

The mythology (here, at least) is that the United States won World War II. The reality is that the U. S., Britain, and the Soviet Union won World War II and the Soviet Union may have done more to accomplish the victory, at least in Europe, than either the British, the Yanks, or both. That’s certainly the Russian mythology.

It is true that the Danish resistance was heroic and typically stubbornly Danish in rescuing Danish Jews from Germans. It is not true that when the Germans ordered Danish Jews to wear yellow stars King Christian X wore a yellow star himself in solidarity with Danish Jews. That is a myth.

They mythology about the Dutch conveniently omits that there were more Dutch members of the SS than from any other country.

I could go on almost endlessly. As the line in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance says this is the West. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

4 comments… add one
  • CStanley Link

    I think Russia definitely is not given enough credit for their heavy contribution to winning WWII, but in the other hand they aren’t condemned enough for the atrocities that they committed on the Poles (how many Americans are even aware that the Red Army sat across the Vistula and watched the Poles being slaughtered and captured by the Germans instead of giving the promised reinforcement of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising?)

  • Gray Shambler Link

    I imagine that the Russians would tell that story a different way. There is no justice, only controlling the message.

  • The Soviet Union were not good guys. Stalin’s body count was significantly higher than Hitler’s.

  • PD Shaw Link

    I think a number of the complications are the result of direct NAZI efforts to antagonize some conquered peoples to kill Jews. I think this was an Eastward strategy to show not only that the Jews were a despised people, but that the Slavs, being natural slaves, need to be restrained.

    My wife went to the Holocaust museum in Skokie a few years ago on a class trip and a man spoke who had been in a concentration camp in Budapest. He would have been like 5 years old or something at the time. He described the German NAZIs as protecting the Jews from violent Hungarians in the countryside (presumably the Arrow Cross). She was surprised at his speech, but my understanding was this kind of thing was all show. In that particular case, it was to put pressure on the government to deport the Jews to the killing camps in Poland. I wasn’t there and don’t want to pick a fight with a concentration camp survivor on something of very personal importance; he was likely trying to convey the complexities of the situation.

    My impression though is that more detailed scholarship is emerging with access to new documents following the end of the Cold War. I don’t disagree at all with what Dave says about Western Europe; the NAZIs found much to admire there and found useful allies. The Poles on the other hand were being placed on a slow train to oblivion.

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