Memorial Ought To Be True To WWII History

Josef Stalin was not a nice man. And that’s putting it mildly.

In fact, the dictator who ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist for three decades until his death in 1953 is rightly regarded as one of the three most evil, bloody-handed dictators in world history. Standing beside Mao Zedong of Communist China and Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, it would be difficult to rank one more evil than the other.

All three have the blood of millions upon millions of innocent lives on their hands, all in pursuit of their own narcissistic goals of power.

But there’s one thing that can’t be ignored, and that’s the fact that, were it not for Stalin and the punishing attacks the Red Army inflicted on Nazi Germany during World War II, Hitler may very well have conquered the world.

Stalin’s back in the news after last week’s dedication of a statue of the dictator at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford. Lynchburg College art professor and sculptor Richard Pumphrey created a bust of the dictator for the memorial. It’s part of an installation of busts of the Allied leaders: Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman.

In the first two years of WWII, Stalin and Hitler eyed each other warily as erstwhile allies, having signed a non-aggression treaty in August 1939. Hitler trashed the pact less than two years later in June 1941 when he launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.

After early successes, the Nazis bogged down deep in Russia, cut off from supplies and on the losing end of a punishing attack on the eastern front.

By some estimates, 26 million Russians died in the fighting with the Germans.

It was this brutal war with Stalin on Germany’s eastern front that exposed Hitler’s soft underbelly. Stalin pushed Roosevelt and Churchill to open a second front in the west. The plan was then for the three Allied armies to slowly tighten the noose on Hitler as they all moved in for the kill.

That second front came 66 years ago — June 6, 1944, ... D-Day — when the largest amphibious assault in history took place on the beaches of Normandy. Less than a year later, Hitler was dead, Berlin lay in ruins and the 1,000-year Third Reich was consigned the ash heap of history.

And it could not have happened when it did — if ever — without Josef Stalin fighting with FDR and America and Churchill and Great Britain.

The bust of Stalin that’s now on display at the D-Day memorial is not in any way whatsoever honoring the man. It is, rather, recognizing the historical fact that he played a pivotal role in one of history’s most important events, events that shaped the world we live in today.

Without Stalin’s throwing millions of his nation’s soldiers at Hitler from east, the troops of D-Day would likely have faced the full force of a still mighty Nazi Germany. And their chances for success would have been between slim and none.

And our lives today would likely be very different, almost unrecognizable.