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RIA Novosti
March 5, 2005
FILIPP BOBKOV: OUR VICTORY SAVED EUROPEANS FROM DEATH

The winter and spring of 1945 went down in the history of the Great Patriotic War as a triumphant period for the Soviet Army as it liberated the people of Europe from the Nazis. In January-February, the 2nd Belarussian Front conducted the Vistula-Oder offensive liberating Warsaw and the whole of Poland. On February 13, the 3rd Ukrainian Front completed the Budapest strategic operation and liberated the Hungarian capital from the Nazis. By then, the Soviet Army had already liberated Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, and was approaching Vienna.

Viktor Litovkin, RIA Novosti's military commentator, interviews Gen. Filipp Bobkov, who fought in the Great Patriotic War, about the role the Soviet Army played in liberating the people of Europe from the Nazis.

- General, I'd like to start our conversation with something that impressed me immensely. As it happens, some leaders of government delegations and Western journalists covering the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz were surprised to learn that it happened thanks to the Soviet soldiers. Why was it so surprising? Does it mean that even well-educated people do not know who liberated eastern Europe?

A: There is nothing surprising in this. The role the Soviet Army played in liberating Europe from the Nazis was deliberately played down in the postwar years as well as during WWII. This could be seen in the delayed opening of the second front, in inconsistent and often superficial coverage of the events on the Eastern, or Soviet front. Our allies, particularly, Great Britain and Churchill personally, sought to show that the main role in the victory belonged to them alone, and Britain in particular.

Back in April 1942, for one, Roosevelt wrote to Churchill: your and my people are demanding the opening of the second front to ease the burden for the Russians, but our people have no idea that the Russians are killing more Germans and eliminating more weapons of the enemy than the US and GreatBritain put together.

Roosevelt was ready to open the second front, but Churchill had a different opinion. He opened the so-called "second front" either in Greece or in Italy or elsewhere, thereby avoiding direct attacks on the core Nazi divisions and waiting for the Soviet Union and the Soviet Army to be worn out completely. The real second front was not opened until after the Tehran Conference. Then the Anglo-American troops landed in Normandy in 1944. It was at the time when the Allies realized that we could liberate Europe without them.

- Do you mean that our liberation of Europe was unwelcome?

- Yes. We showed the world that we could liberate half of Europe without any assistance from the Allies. And this is when they suddenly realized that unless they joined us in Europe, they would find themselves owing their liberation to us. In other words, they had to hurry to be able to call themselves liberators of Europe. By the way, the same approach was manifest when Nazi Germany signed the unconditional surrender. The Allies, for some reason, decided to accept the surrender themselves. We were invited, but at a lower level. Later, Stalin demanded their arrival in Berlin, but they sent merely comparatively junior people rather than their supreme commanders.

This was another way of playing down the contribution of the Soviet Army in defeating the Nazis. Today, people tend to forget, for example, that Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz. There is another detail worth mentioning in relation to this terrible death camp. Do you remember how the Allies bombed the Third Reich territories? They virtually razed Dresden to the ground. Why didn't they drop bombs on the railway leading to Auschwitz, knowing that people were being sent to Auschwitz along that particular railway to be killed? The Allies did nothing to stop it, though they knew only too well what was happening there, and not only there.

Incidentally, talking about Auschwitz, it is the onlyplace that retains all the memories of the Nazi atrocities. There you can see crutches, children's clothes, boots, various objects that were taken away from prisoners - all of these are there to remind people what really happened. However, in Buchenwald, as far as I remember, the entire evidence of the Nazis' crimes is confined to a lamp with a lampshade made of human skin. The rest of the exhibits are pictures, photos and so on.

The Poles have preserved Auschwitz to remind themselves of the destiny they thankfully escaped.

- Poland was the second country in Europe after the Soviet Union that sustained huge losses under the Nazi occupation. Nearly six million Poles died, and about six million Jews were murdered.

- True, Hitler put it straight: after we kill the Jews, we will get down to the Ukrainians, Lemki, Goraks and the Poles. The Poles were to be exterminated, and the Nazis were clear about this. This is laid down in Mein Kampf and was stated in the prewar speeches of Third Reich leaders. However, this detail, too, is hushed up nowadays for no clear reason.

Do you remember how the 60th anniversary of the Allies' landing in Normandy was celebrated? Had it not been for our president, nobody would have possibly remembered about Russia's contribution to WWII. This is exactly what happened on the 50th anniversary of this operation. Nobody invited us then. However, when the Allies were fighting the Nazis in Ardennes, the Western Front, their army narrowly escaped defeat. The situation was so critical that Churchill asked Stalin to help them in the east by distracting part of the Nazi troops and stopping Nazi reinforcements.

Stalin and the General HQ decided to launch the offensive on the Eastern Front, on the Vistula, two weeks ahead of schedule. At the time, an Allied military delegation headed by Air Chief Marshall Tedder was on a visit to Moscow. Stalin put it straight to Mr. Tedder: even if we realize that our offensive is not proceedingas actively as we would like it to be, we will not stop. All for the sake of preventing the Nazis from lifting their troops from the Eastern to the Western Front and mounting their pressure in Ardennes.

Indeed, no Nazis troops were moved from the Eastern to the Western Front. Conversely, the Nazi lifted the 6th SS Tank Division followed by 16 infantry divisions to the East. Once again, we had to face those who had been moved from the Western Front, while the Allies were planning their further actions. The British were impatiently waiting to launch an offensive in the north but Eisenhower was more inclined to advance in southern Europe and was negotiating the Nazis' surrender wherever possible. The Nazis had already begun surrendering to the Allies.

These were all elements of combat strategy, which did not cancel the ideological principle of playing down the fundamental role of the Soviet Army in defeating the Nazis. Do you remember a film that Roman Karmen shot in Russia for the 50th anniversary of the victory in WWII? This film, Unknown War, was made for Westerners. Thanks to this film, the majority of Americans discovered that a war had taken place in eastern Europe and that the Soviet Union had played a crucial role in it.

The same can be said about Auschwitz. I might be confusing some details, because a lot of time has passed since then, but when I first visited Auschwitz, the guide spoke at length about what had been happening there. He told us that 1.2 million people had died in the death camp. I remembered this figure because I visited Albania before then and learnt that the population of Albania was 1 million people in all. I was then struck dumb by the fact that the Nazis had killed more people in Auschwitz than there were in the whole of Albania. According to the guide, half of the vicims were Jews, and the others belonged to 27 ethnicities.

I am not saying this to play down the pain of Holocaust. No, it should stay in our memories forever. It is true that the Nazis killed six million Jews. It is a huge amount. Yet, apart from the Jews, other people like the Slavs, gypsies, the French, Serbs and Croatians were murdered. I have consulted some archives and found out that four million rather than 1.2 million people died in Auschwitz. On January 27, 1945 when our troops entered the death camp, only 2,819 people, including 96 Soviets, were alive.

In 1999, I read an article by Dr. Wolfram Verte from Germany in magazine called Modern and Recent History. He wrote that the Third Reich's war against the Soviet Union was originally aimed at seizing the territory up to the Urals, exploiting Soviet natural resources and submitting Russia to Germany's domination. Jews were not alone in facing the threat of well-planned physical extermination, but also the Slavs living in Soviet territories the Nazis occupied in 1941-1944. Only recently, German historians began to study "another Holocaust" targeted at the Slav residents of the USSR, who, like the Jews, were proclaimed "an inferior race" and were also doomed to extermination.

This is what a German researcher writes. Therefore, when speaking about Auschwitz, it is important to remember that it was one of the many death camps where people of many ethnicities were murdered. Our Victory did not only bring liberation to Europe but also saved its people from death. Some people say today that we if had surrendered to the Nazis straight away instead of fighting, and then we would be living the same wealthy life as Germans today. These people forget that they would not have been born if the Nazis had won the war. Entire generations would have been killed.

Such an approach brings to mind the words of Smerdyakov from The Brothers Karamazov: if Napoleon had conquered us, the clever nation would have conquered the stupid one and annexed it. Life would have been completely different, he said. The same Smerdyakov logic stands behind the ideas expressed by some young but not very intelligent and educated people.

- Are there any precise statistics about how many people we liberated from death camps?

- Yes, of course. These figures can be found in some reference materials on WWII. Yet, even without the statistics, we all know that we liberated Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Yugoslavia (most of it), some territory in Greece, Poland, Germany, a piece of Denmark, the Bornholm island, and northern Norway. Moreover, we saved Finland in a way. It withdrew from the war under our pressure, which is why its cities and towns remained untouched by Nazi bombs and artillery.

It is important to remember that when fulfilling its sacred liberating mission, the Soviet Army lost about 69,000 people in Romania, 600,000 in Poland, 8,000 in Yugoslavia, over 140,000 in Hungary, about 26,000 in Austria, 102,000 in Germany. Requiem Aeternum, and Glory To Our Heroes.

Besides, I'd like to remind you which death camps we liberated and how many people fell victim to Nazi barbarians there. It should never be forgotten. The Nazis had 20 major camps with about a thousand branches. They operated like a death conveyor belt. There were 180 camps in Ukraine alone, and 260 in Belarus. That is where 11 million Soviet people were tortured, including four million servicemen.

The major death camps included: the Trostyanets camp outside Minsk (200,000 died), the Janovsk camp on the outskirts of Lvov (200,000 died), the Salaspils camp outside Riga - the one that the Latvian president called "a labor correction camp" where 100,000 people died after "failing to be corrected." In Daugavpils 160,000 people were killed; 100,000 in the Panerai camp outside Vilnius, 80,000 in the Ninth Fort in Kaunas, and 30,000 in the camp outside Narva (Estonia).

On top of that, the Nazis set up death camps in Austria and Germany: Dachau, Saxenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Ravensbruck, Treblinka and Majdanek. A total of 18 million people went through them, and 11 million of them died, in addition to those who were killed in the Soviet Union.

The extermination of "inferior races" underlay the Nazi plans. As you know, they moved towards their targets with German punctuality. Back in 1924, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: we see the solution to our problems in conquering new lands that could be inhabited by the Germans. In Europe, the lands at stake are Russia and the countries it has annexed.

However, this idea did not belong to Hitler perse. It was laid down in a 1914 memorandum of the Kaiser's Germany. The document laid out plans to conclude a separate peace treaty with Belgium and France, thereby securing a safe area behind the front lines, and to send German troops to Russia. This was the main point of the document. Further on, it says: This war may cost us a million people. But what is this figure in comparison with the eviction of 20 million people, including such scoundrels as Jews, Poles, Mazurs, Lithuanians, Estonians, and others. We have the potential to do that. Russia will have to put up with the loss of its lands during our further expansion. Thus, if all the excessive energy of three generations of Germans is put into colonizing the East, peace with England will be possible on a status-quo basis. But if England chooses to wage war to the end and if we need any colonies, we will conquer them, but in 2000 the dispute will hardly concern Germany and England [they wrote this in 1914 - F. B.] but rather Europe, Asia and America.

Certainly, Europe for the Kaiser meant Germany without England which was to become a nonentity by then under their plan. At present, as you know, Old Europe is not very much favored by the Americans, and the European-American confrontation continues to exist.

Incidentally, here are the straightforward instructions that Himmler gave at a meeting with senior SS officers: the military campaign in the east is designed to exterminate 30 million Slavs.The May 2, 1941 decree of Hepner, the commander of the 4th Tank Army, openly stated that the upcoming war would be the follow-up of the Germans' war against the Slavs. So the task of exterminating other races was clearly defined and formulated.

I believe that this is something we should remind people about during the 60th anniversary of the Victory. Not only is it important for the Russians but also for the Poles and other Europeans. We should remember that the Nazis posed a serious threat to humanity. And this is something our children should remember.

- Do you know that today, unfortunately, the memory of the Nazis' terrible crimes, their misanthropist ideology and practice are fading away for some reason. It sometimes gets to the point when people begin to play the Nazis. For example, Britain's Prince Harry recently attended a party wearing a tropical Nazi uniform, with a swastika on his arm. Fascist youngsters take to the streets in Germany, Poland and even here, in Russia, which lost 27 million people in the war against the Nazis. What needs to be done to eradicate this evil? What is the problem here?

- You should first of all make some distinctions. I believe the fascism we can see now reviving should be divided into several categories, I believe. Fascism in Germany is nothing but an attempt to take revenge. I have the impression, though I would like to be mistaken, that some people who have been actively moving to Germany of late, will not feel very comfortable there soon. As for Western nations, Britain and the US, we are witnessing the remains of the sentiments that existed there during the war as well. These are the attempts to sublimate the elements that were not uprooted in the postwar years.

In Russia, however, some people opt for anti-Semitism and anti-Caucasus sentiments, and this is where fascist trends are the most conspicuous. It is a matter of upbringing on the one hand. On the other, people do not always understand that they are simply being provoked to prevent stability and calm in the country.

Our main problem is that we cannot draw a line between the fight against Chechen terrorists and the relationship with ordinary Chechen people. Some of our politicians and some printed media permanently speak about "these Chechens". Nobody, except the leadership of the country, has put it articulately that we are not fighting Chechens in general but Chechen mercenaries.

In reality, far from all Chechen militants, so often mentioned today, are ethnic Chechens - only 30% of them. The others are Arabs, Turks, and even Slavs. They are all mercenaries. The terrorism they commit is the terrorism of international bandits. They conduct military operations in the territory of their enemy, which Russia is for mercenary armies.

Why am I talking about this? Because we cannot avoid discussing ethnic splits when discussing this topic. Let's take Beslan, for example. It was a horrifying tragedy. But how was it covered in the press? The first series of publications were crying out that the Ossetians would start their vendetta on the fortieth day mourning had finished. But who would be the target of their vengeance? The Ingushs, because the terrorists had come from Ingush territory. Let us ask ourselves: Why would the Ossetians be set against the Ingushs? Who stands to win from it? Who is interested in exacerbating the still unstable situation in the North Caucasus? I think it is the people who fund the mercenary army, who equipped and sent the terrorists to Beslan.

We can see such sentiments spreading further. A horrible, immoral and absurd letter sent by State Duma deputies to the Prosecutor General's Office demanding a ban on all Jewish religious organizations is a graphic example. I think people have yielded to obvious provocations seeking to demonstrate that fascist sentiments are developing in Russia, like in other countries.

Let's remember the days when we were marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Our president was there and talked about his pain for the events there and in our country. If anything similar to this letter happens in Germany or any other country, they will be able to say that they are following the example of Russia's fascists. Perhaps, this was the original aim.

I recently gave an interview to journalists. They asked me how I felt about such letters. I answered: you are writing about the first blast in the underground organized by Armenian nationalists thirty years ago. It has been forgotten but you are reminding us about it. You do not realize it that this can become a prompt for some fanatics who can repeat it. This is why it is important for the coverage of an event to be cautious and reasonable to avoid breeding new crimes.

As for the Nazi plans to fully exterminate the peoples of Europe and the USSR, we should remember that Russia is a multi-ethnic country, and this is where her strength lies. If we are to survive, we need to form a powerful multi-ethnic union, develop sincere friendship and trust between our peoples. We owe our victory in the war to this brotherly friendship above all. Ethnic conflicts were never mentioned in those years.

- How about the deportation of Tatars from the Crimea, Chechens, Ingushs and Karachais from the North Caucasus, Turk-Meskhetians from Georgia and Germans from the Volga area?

- It was a different matter. War is war. Nobody recalls now that the Americans interned the Japanese. During WWI, the tsar deported the Germans too. It was a precaution for a country at war. As for the Crimean Tatars, the North Caucasus ethnic groups and the Meskhetians, I believe it was not a good idea. But it was brought about by the Supreme Commander's emotions and the policy of some of these ethnic groups during the occupation period. But an entire nation cannot be held responsible for their morally handicapped representatives. The latter can be found in any nation orethnic group.

- True, there were Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians who sided with the Nazis. And remember the Vlasov army? Nobody blamed the entire people for these scoundrels...

- Absolutely. It goes without saying. I do not only rule out some inadequate emotional decisions or the possibility that some national leaders of the time were solving some other secret problems under the disguise of the fight against conspirators. Why were the Turk-Meskhetians deported? Their territory was not occupied by the Nazis. Nor did they collaborate with them. Moreover, all male Meskhetians were fighting on the front. Can you imagine how they must have felt after conquering Berlin, when they could not return home but discovered they had been deported with their wives, children, and parents abandoned to an inhospitable land?!

Now about the Vlasov army. We have a fairly distorted picture of Gen. Vlasov's army. There was a time when we associated too many people with the Vlasov army. I once talked to an officer who was the commander of a unit during the war. He told me how he had fought the Vlasov army. I was surprised: wait, I said, you returned from the front in 1942 after losing your leg there. There was no Vlasov army at the time.

Strictly speaking, the Vlasov army consisted of two divisions. They did not fight in battles on the Soviet front. The only time when they did was to fight Belarussian partisans following Hitler's instructions. Even then, the bulk of the regiment joined the guerrillas. After that, they were never allowed to fight on the front. The first battles they took part in were in Prague. Vlasov was instructed to delay our units until the Americans arrived and, as the Nazis planned, seize Prague.

But, as you know, it never happened. We liberated Prague and arrested Vlasov, and that was the end. The Nazi army did not include the Vlasov army alone. There were subdivisions of pure traitors, and I had to fight in such battles when both Germans and Russians wearing Soviet army uniforms were sent behind our lines to destroy us there. This took place outside Spas-Demensk in the Kaluga region.

Other citizens of our country served for the Nazis too, but they mostly occupied civil positions and had no access to ammunition. Afterwards, they were all branded as members of the Vlasov army. I remember a conversation I had with writer Anatoly Kalinin. We were discussing his novel The Echo of War where he calls all traitors members of the Vlasov army. I asked him: why do you write like that? You make it sound as if the Vlasov army was far more numerous than in reality. This is how these legends and myths are spread.

Incidentally, the Bendery, when accused of collaborating with the Nazis, answer: hold on, you had the entire Vlasov army. But how many Soviet people joined the Nazis? In essence, the Soviet people who fought for the Nazis, including in "national" subdivisions - the Turkestan, Kalmyk corps, the large SS unit of Ukrainian nationalists, the Estonian and Latvian SS divisions - all numbered 200,000 people maximum. The Nazis also formed a small Georgian battalion of POWs who fought on the Western Front. That's it. As compared to the 11-million Soviet army, this is an insignificant group of traitors. Besides, these people were for the most part victims of the horrifying circumstances of the war rather than ideological enemies of the Soviet regime.

I urge everyone to say nothing but truth about the war, no matter how unflattering or painful it might be. Without this truth, despite the tragic pages of history, we would not have won our glorious Victory.