Soviet role in ending World War II ignored

THE coverage by the Irish Independent of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II is, to put it mildly, questionable.

In its editorial ‘History highlights errors that must not be repeated’, as well as in the article by Michael Drummond from London, ‘Two-minute silence as UK remembers wartime sacrifices amid lockdown’ (Irish Independent, May 8), the paper fails to mention even once the country which really did the job and made possible the defeat of Nazism – the Soviet Union.

In reality it was the Red Army and the Soviet people who broke the spine of the Third Reich, demolishing four-fifths of the Nazi armed forces. It was the Red Army which liberated Europe, ending the war in Berlin.

That was recognised at the moment by the Allied leaders. British prime minister Winston Churchill wrote to Stalin on September 27, 1944: “It is the Russian Army that tore the guts out of the German military machine and is at the present moment holding by far the larger portion of the enemy on its front.”

US president Franklin Roosevelt echoed the idea in his message to General MacArthur, saying that “from the strategic point of view… it is hard to avoid an obvious fact, that Russian armies destroy more personnel and armaments of the enemy than all other 25 states of the United Nations taken together”.

The photo of General Alfred Jodl signing the surrender was made in the city of Rheims in France on May 7, 1945, far away from Berlin.

That was a hastily organised event without due representation from the

Soviet and other Allied command. To ignore the decisive role of the Soviet Union in the defeat of fascism and the sacrifice of 26 million of its people in the war against Hitler is a shameful act in itself.

Yuriy Filatov Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Ireland