Russia at war 1941-1945

The newly-opened "commercial" restaurants were packed that night with people celebrating—not only British and Americans, but many Russians, too. (A party of Jap

diplomats and journalists also came to one, and behaved and danced provocatively and ostentatiously and were nearly beaten-up by some Americans.)

The news of the Normandy landing had missed the morning papers, but Moscow radio

had been giving news of it in successive bulletins. On the night of the 6t.h General Deane and General Burrows, heads of the American and British military missions, spoke on

Moscow radio, the latter in Russian (of sorts). On the 5th, there had been enthusiastic articles in the Russian press on the capture of Rome, and now, on the 7th, the great news of the Normandy landing was splashed over four columns, with a large picture of

Eisenhower. But there was no comment yet. The Russians wanted to be absolutely sure

that the landing was a success. A curious feature of this Russian reporting on the Second Front was that, although facilities had been given to Russian correspondents to be on the spot, no news from any Russian correspondent was published.

The articles were mostly by military and naval experts, and dealt with the technicalities of the landing operations, the part played by the allied air-forces, etc., and for some days rosy forecasts were avoided. Almost the only non-technical article was written by

Ehrenburg, and, in the circumstances, it was particularly inept. It was a sloppy, emotional piece on France, which would have been all right, if only there had been something on the same lines about Britain and America; but, as it was, it lacked all sense of proportion.

It was all about the French people, the French Resistance, French paratroops that had landed in Normandy, the tradition of Verdun, the Unknown Soldier who had now risen

from his tomb to fight le Boche, etc. Those really responsible for the operation he swept aside in a polite sentence: "We admire the valour of our Allies— the British, Canadians, Americans." And then he immediately proceeded to wallow in his Francophilia.

Was this a purely personal reaction of Ehrenburg's, the old habitué of the Rotonde?

Perhaps, and yet in a film produced some time later on the liberation of France, the British and Americans were also made to play a sort of incidental role—or something that could be taken for granted—while the men who played the most prominent part in saving France were—the French, assisted by the Red Army, the heroes of Stalingrad, etc.

Rather more legitimate were the frequent suggestions in the Soviet press that the

Russians had, in fact, enormously facilitated the task of the Allies, and had already done the greater part of the work in smashing the Germans. Patrick Lacey, of the BBC, was quoted with pleasure as saying that "but for the Russians, D-Day would have been impossible." A Kukryniksy cartoon, on June 11, showed Hitler as a rat, with its head already caught in the Russian trap and the British-American sword then descending upon its hind quarters.

A week passed before Stalin indicated the official line. This was wholly unlike

Ehrenburg's.

In a statement to Pravda, Stalin said:

After seven days' fighting in Northern France one may say without hesitation that the forcing of the Channel along a wide front and the mass-landings of the Allies in Northern France have completely succeeded. This is unquestionably a brilliant

success for our Allies. One must admit that the history of wars does not know of an undertaking comparable to it for breadth of conception, grandeur of scale, and

mastery of execution.

Invincible Napoleon shamefully failed in his plan to force the Channel and to

conquer the British Isles. Hitler the hysteric, who, for two years, boasted that he would force the Channel did not even venture to carry out his threat. Only the

British and American troops succeeded with flying colours in carrying out the

gigantic plan of forcing the Channel and of landing in force on the other side.

History will record this action as an achievement of the highest order.