“Falsifiers Of History”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26776, 20 May 1948, Page 5

“Falsifiers Of History”

Rebuke to Mr Churchill

“In connection with Mr W. Churchill’s * The Memoirs of World War II ’ published in your newspaper,” writes the secretary of the Soviet Legation in Wellington, to the Daily Times, “ it would be very useful to let your readers know real facts about the beginning of World War II from the historical survey enclosed.”

• The Daily Times submitted this survey, which is too long for publication, and difficult of condensation, to a student of international affairs for analysis. He writes: “This pamphlet is published by the newspaper Trud. of Moscow, and its production has been undertaken as a reply to the recent publication in the United States of official records concerning Nazi-Soviet relations in 1939-41. According to the claim of t.he Soviet Information Bureau the true purpose of the publication of these documents was to ‘present a distorted picture of events, to heap lies and slanders on the Soviet Union and to undermine the international in; fluence it enjoys in a . staunch and genuinely democratic fight against aggressive and anti-democratic forces.’ ( The Western democracies, it is claimed, in the years before the war sought not so much to oppose German aggression as to isolate the U.S.S.R.. and to provoke, if possible, conflict between the Nazis and the Soviet. This political manoeuvering is cited as being responsible for Russia's concluding a non-aggression pact with Germany. “ Whatever the value this ingenuous document might have as an historical argument is marred by its entire disregard of the positive actions by Western diplomacy, both to maintain the preoarious peace and, later, in recognising the sovereign integrity of the nations which were temporarily over-run. The suggestion that Britain was prepared to surrender Poland to Hitler, for instance, falls lamentably flat, since it -was the German invasion of Poland that brought about Great Britain’s declaration of war. The allegation that the United Kingdom was prepared to adopt this course of surrendering Poland is made on no more authority than a deduction by a German diplomat in a report to his Government. Similarly, the naive claim that Finland’s ‘ hostile and provocative actions unleashed the war with the Soviet Union ’ is hardly convincing. Finland is a small country; Russia a big one. “Possibly the most illuminating example of the difference in the philosophy of the nation which issued the original documents, and that which has printed an answer in ‘Falsifiers of History ’ is contained in the section which defends infringements of the rights of other nations in the general effort to build a united front against Germany. On the ground of military expediency the authors plead justification for the Riftsian invasions of Lithuania. Latvia, Estonia and Poland, quoting the parallel of Britain's stationing of troops in Egypt and the United States’ invasioa of the French territory of Casablanca. They omit to meniion that Egypt and Casablanca are now free.”