- Jan 8, 2011
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Ever heard of it? Yeah me either until recently. Had they attacked Stalin, who knows how the war would have gone. Certainly Uncle Joe’s good buddy in Washington would have had a terrible conflict of interest within his Soviet compromised administration.
How Hitler Saved the Allies
Given that the USSR played the leading role in Germany’s eventual defeat, an early Allied attack upon the Soviet homeland would surely have changed the outcome of the war. Although Huddleston’s bizarre fantasies had somehow gotten the best of him, he was hardly incorrect in exclaiming “What a narrow escape!”
The notion that the Allies were preparing to launch a major bombing offensive against the Soviet Union just a few months after the outbreak of World War II was obviously absurd, so ridiculous a notion that not a hint of that long-debunked rumor had ever gotten into the standard history texts I had read on the European conflict. But for Huddleston to have still clung to such nonsensical beliefs even several years after the end of the war raised large questions about his gullibility or even his sanity. I wondered whether I could trust even a single word he said about anything else.
This anti-Soviet planning rapidly accelerated after Stalin’s brutal attack upon tiny Finland in late 1939. The unexpectedly fierce Finnish resistance led the Western powers to expel the USSR from the League of Nations as a blatant aggressor, and inspired widespread demands for military intervention among both the political elites and the general public, with serious proposals being considered to send several Allied divisions to Scandinavia to fight the Russians on behalf of the Finns. Indeed, during much of this period Allied hostility seems to have been far greater towards the Soviets than towards Germany, despite the nominal state of war against the latter, with French sentiments being particularly strong. As one British elected official remarked, “One has the impression that France is at war with Russia and merely on very unfriendly terms with Germany.”
The Allies intended to use Polish exile forces in their ground combat against the Soviets, perhaps even sparking a Polish uprising against the hated Communist occupiers of their homeland. Osborn notes that if word of this plan had leaked to Stalin, that might explain why it was at this time that he signed the official orders directing the NKVD to immediately execute the 15,000 Polish officers and police whom he already held as POWs, an incident eventually known as the Katyn Forest Massacre, which ranks as one of the world’s worst wartime atrocities.
All of these military plans and internal discussions by the British and French were kept entirely secret at the time, and their archives remained sealed to historians for many decades. But in the opening of his fascinating account, Osborn explains that after the victorious German armies moved towards Paris in 1940, the French government attempted to destroy or evacuate all its secret diplomatic files, and a trainload of this very sensitive material was captured by German forces 100 miles from Paris, including the complete record of the plans to attack the USSR.
Also, some of the most far-reaching political consequences of an Allied attack upon the Soviet Union would have been totally unknown to the French and British leaders then considering it. Although they were certainly aware of the powerful Communist movements in their own countries, all closely aligned with the USSR, only many years later did it become clear that the top leadership of the Roosevelt Administration was honeycombed by numerous agents fully loyal to Stalin, with the final proof awaiting the release of the Venona Decrypts in the 1990s. So if the Allied forces had suddenly gone to war against the Soviets, the total hostility of those influential individuals would have greatly reduced any future prospects of substantial American military assistance, let alone eventual intervention in the European conflict.
American Pravda: How Hitler Saved the Allies
How Hitler Saved the Allies
Given that the USSR played the leading role in Germany’s eventual defeat, an early Allied attack upon the Soviet homeland would surely have changed the outcome of the war. Although Huddleston’s bizarre fantasies had somehow gotten the best of him, he was hardly incorrect in exclaiming “What a narrow escape!”
The notion that the Allies were preparing to launch a major bombing offensive against the Soviet Union just a few months after the outbreak of World War II was obviously absurd, so ridiculous a notion that not a hint of that long-debunked rumor had ever gotten into the standard history texts I had read on the European conflict. But for Huddleston to have still clung to such nonsensical beliefs even several years after the end of the war raised large questions about his gullibility or even his sanity. I wondered whether I could trust even a single word he said about anything else.
This anti-Soviet planning rapidly accelerated after Stalin’s brutal attack upon tiny Finland in late 1939. The unexpectedly fierce Finnish resistance led the Western powers to expel the USSR from the League of Nations as a blatant aggressor, and inspired widespread demands for military intervention among both the political elites and the general public, with serious proposals being considered to send several Allied divisions to Scandinavia to fight the Russians on behalf of the Finns. Indeed, during much of this period Allied hostility seems to have been far greater towards the Soviets than towards Germany, despite the nominal state of war against the latter, with French sentiments being particularly strong. As one British elected official remarked, “One has the impression that France is at war with Russia and merely on very unfriendly terms with Germany.”
The Allies intended to use Polish exile forces in their ground combat against the Soviets, perhaps even sparking a Polish uprising against the hated Communist occupiers of their homeland. Osborn notes that if word of this plan had leaked to Stalin, that might explain why it was at this time that he signed the official orders directing the NKVD to immediately execute the 15,000 Polish officers and police whom he already held as POWs, an incident eventually known as the Katyn Forest Massacre, which ranks as one of the world’s worst wartime atrocities.
All of these military plans and internal discussions by the British and French were kept entirely secret at the time, and their archives remained sealed to historians for many decades. But in the opening of his fascinating account, Osborn explains that after the victorious German armies moved towards Paris in 1940, the French government attempted to destroy or evacuate all its secret diplomatic files, and a trainload of this very sensitive material was captured by German forces 100 miles from Paris, including the complete record of the plans to attack the USSR.
Also, some of the most far-reaching political consequences of an Allied attack upon the Soviet Union would have been totally unknown to the French and British leaders then considering it. Although they were certainly aware of the powerful Communist movements in their own countries, all closely aligned with the USSR, only many years later did it become clear that the top leadership of the Roosevelt Administration was honeycombed by numerous agents fully loyal to Stalin, with the final proof awaiting the release of the Venona Decrypts in the 1990s. So if the Allied forces had suddenly gone to war against the Soviets, the total hostility of those influential individuals would have greatly reduced any future prospects of substantial American military assistance, let alone eventual intervention in the European conflict.
American Pravda: How Hitler Saved the Allies
