A couple of days ago I read a rather distressing discussion on X about US lend-lease to the USSR. Distressing because of the combination of impenetrable ignorance and unshakeable conviction. One side yelling that US lend-lease made no difference at all and you’re an idiot; the other yelling that it made all the difference and you’re the idiot. Like a bunch of drunks arguing about something in the Star Wars movies.

More ignorance on the Western side than on the Russian? Not sure actually in what I read although we have to agree that Trump just set the American bar pretty high. And it soon degenerated into who Hitler’s best friends were. Each was certain that he had all the facts and the other side had none.

Would the Soviets have beaten the nazis without US (and British and Canadian) aid? I’m inclined to think so although certainly at a greater cost and more years of struggle. Did the aid make a difference? Of course it did; in food and trucks especially. But you can make the argument that the Germans had lost their best chance after the Battle of Moscow in 1941 and after Stalingrad there was no chance. David Glantz has put it quite neatly I think: the Germans won the summers of 1941 and 1942 but the Soviets won the other summers and all the winters. Lend-lease took some time to build up and didn’t really peak until 1943 so less of an effect in those vital years of 1941 and 1942. (Years ago I was surprised to see a Canadian-made Valentine tank in a Berlin battle film. Apparently the Soviets liked the tank because it was well-armoured and easy to maintain, but I can’t think the 2-pounder gun was much use in 1945.)

Who won the war? The Allies did. But you can’t forget the 80/20 division. Who suffered the most? The Soviets undeniably. Where were the most important Axis defeats? On the Eastern Front, no question. (Except for the Battle of Britain.)

Who started the war? Well we all had a responsibility: Stalin spent six years trying to organise an anti-Hitler coalition but failed for various reasons and then became the last man to do a deal with Hitler. (It was infuriating in those X rants and counter-rants when some ignoramus threw out the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement as if that were the final word. The certainty of facts without context.)

Probably the most noticeable thing on the Western side was the incomprehension of the gigantic scale of the fighting on the Eastern Front. I remember remarking when I first read Liddell-Hart’s history 40-50 years ago on the disproportionate space given to the North African fighting versus the Eastern Front. I have some sympathy for him because the Soviets weren’t telling us much then but still. And that disproportion persists in the West although there’s no excuse any more. And so does the view that the Soviets had no skill: on the contrary, once they got going, they beat the Germans strategically and operationally and surprised them almost every time. These people should be required to read at least one book by Glantz before they’re allowed to open their months again. And listen to the lecture by Jonathan House about the three German alibis.

And from the Russian side the tiresome conviction that D-Day only happened because the Western allies saw that the Soviets were winning and felt they’d better jump in. No, D-Day happened as soon as it could. I don’t think the Soviets had any idea of how difficult a seaborne invasion is against a defended coast. And how would they? Have the Russians or Soviets ever done one?

The Europeans secretly supported Hitler. Yes, many did, but they lost that argument in 1939.

Or Allen Dulles fooling around in Switzerland. He did but it was a personal initiative by a guy whose whole career was based on the assumption that the rules were whatever he said they were. Unconditional surrender was primarily Roosevelt’s initiative and he and Churchill agreed to it in January 1943. That, not Dulles’ fantasies, was and remained official policy.

Operation Unthinkable. Well, maybe the name gives you a clue.

But over the years much has been forgotten. The clearest example is that opinion poll record that shows the French in 1945 knowing the Soviets had played the biggest part (80/20) but these days believing the USA had.

As for Trump’s recent assertion, I have a horrible feeling that most of my neighbours, few of whom have ever heard of Canada’s Hundred Days, would agree with him.

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I was there for the 50^th. A different time. The Western Allies showed up to do honour. In those far-off days we knew the difference between Stepan Bandera and Lyudmilla Pavlichenko and which side which was on. Today the Canadian Parliament and British VE-Day ceremony organisers have forgotten.

Which, of course, feeds into the conviction many Russians already have that Marshal Zhukov got it right when he (reportedly) said “We have saved Europe from fascism and they will never forgive us for it”. (Did he actually say that? Certainly lots of Russians seem to think he did.)