A Short Note Regarding Allied and Axis Crimes during World War II
The victors of course always write the official and orthodox histories. But, under certain circumstances eventually reasonable revisions can be made regarding these former interpretations. Unfortunately, such reexaminations of history usually take several centuries. Thus the 20th Century still remains largely unrevised regarding many important political events especially those involving military conflicts. The greatest and most off limits to serious reconsideration of these military conflicts is the Second World War in Europe. Here I am referring primarily to the current popular interpretation of the war as one between evil “fascists” and good “antifascists” fought solely for moral reasons. I am not referring to any set of particular facts such as the National Socialist mass extermination of Jews. Rather I am referring to the idea that the war was fought to save Jews from these killings, secure rights for racial and sexual minorities, and permanently end things like racial discrimination, concentration camps, and genocide. This popular and sometimes even academic interpretation of the war and the motives of the Allied Powers is patently ludicrous.
The fact is that World War II like all other wars was fought primarily as a geopolitical conflict and not a moral crusade. Like other modern conflicts it also contained ideological elements. But, these ideological oppositions were not some simplistic “fascists” evil and all “anti-fascists” morally good. Rather from 1941 to 1945 there was an alliance of convenience between the imperialist and capitalist powers of the US and UK with the state socialist regime in the USSR against the National Socialist regime in Germany and its allies. This followed an earlier alliance of convenience between the USSR and National Socialist Germany from 1939 to 1941 to partition and annex Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Romania. Here already we see that the “anti-fascist” USSR had no trouble in forging a military alliance with National Socialist Germany against these smaller states. Geopolitical considerations clearly trumped ideology.
The fact that the US, British Commonwealth, and USSR found themselves in geopolitical conflict with National Socialist Germany from 1941-1945 did not stem from any principled opposition to racial discrimination, concentration camps, or mass killings by these regimes. Despite the current rewriting of history to link White supremacy to National Socialism the regimes marked by Whites practicing segregation and discrimination against Blacks and Asians were all Allied Powers. It was the US that had Jim Crow laws against a substantial number of people of African heritage in the 1930s and 1940s not Germany. The US also interned civilians in camps, mostly some 120,000 people of Japanese descent. The British Empire included the segregationist Union of South Africa which was crucial in liberating Ethiopia from fascist rule and also fought against Germany. After the defeat of Germany British colonial rule in Africa included settler colonies like Kenya and Rhodesia. The former becoming the site of the British use of concentration camps and executions to suppress the Mau Mau Rebellion. After their restoration to power the French and Dutch also resorted to the mass killings of civilians in Algeria and Indonesia respectively. Finally, in the USSR already in 1937 and 1938 there was the mass shooting of almost 700,000 people, the forced relocation of over 172,000 ethnic Koreans to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the mass expulsion of Chinese, and a system of labor camps and labor colonies with over 1.8 million inmates. Later during the war itself there is the deportation of the Asian Kalmyks to Siberia and over a million recorded deaths in GULag camps and colonies. There were no equivalent German acts of mass persecution against Africans and Asians during the reign of the National Socialists comparable to those engaged in before, during, and after the war by the Allied Powers including the US and USSR as well as the European colonial regimes.
Pointing out the crimes of the Allied Powers during World War II of course does not absolve the National Socialist regime of its own crimes. But, it does show that not only were the Allied Powers not unsullied by wrong doing they also targeted the exact same groups the Leftist mainstream today falsely claims that “antifascists” sought to liberate and protect from “White Supremacy.” National Socialist racial persecution was aimed first and foremost against Jews, followed by Roma, and then Slavs. The NSDAP regime in Berlin unlike the US, British Empire, and USSR did not engage in the mass repression and discrimination against people of African and Asian heritage. It also shows that the use of concentration camps and executions against civilians and partisans was also used by the Allied Powers on a mass scale and continued without comment after the conviction of Germans for these crimes at Nuremberg.
Quantitatively the civilian victims of Nazi and Soviet repression in the 1930s and 1940s are roughly equal. The consensus figure of Jews killed directly and indirectly by the National Socialist regime is around 5.3 million. The number of non-Jewish civilian victims is considerably less. The old figure of five million non-Jewish civilian victims of deliberate extermination by shootings and in camps is now admitted by Yad Vashem and other institutions to have no basis in fact and to be too high of an estimate. The actual number was probably less than 4 million since the number of Christian Poles killed by the Nazis has been revised down from three million to just under two million. Out of these 4 million less than a quarter, a bit over 800,000 perished in concentration camps along with 300,000 Jews. To these civilian 9.3 million losses are often included some 3.3 million Soviet POWs to die in German captivity or 12.6 million. Finally, some 4.2 million deaths from hunger in German occupied areas are often included to reach a total of 16.8 million. In contrast the number of recorded deaths in GULag camps, colonies, and prisons in the USSR exceeded 1.7 million from 1931-1953. To this must be added unrecorded deaths especially those released as invalids whom died shortly after being freed. This number is estimated to number 800,000 for a total of 2.5 million camp, colony, and prison deaths in the USSR during Stalin’s reign. In addition to these losses are nearly 1,000,000 executions and 1.2 million deaths of internal deportees, 7.2 million famine deaths in the 1930s of which 3.9 million were in Ukraine for a total civilian death toll of 11.9 million. Not including the Holodomor, Kazakh Famine, and other famine deaths outside of Soviet penal institutions gives a total of 4.7 million deaths. Axis POWs recorded to perish in Soviet GUPVI camps was over 500,000. It is, however, estimated that the actual number of POWs to die in Soviet captivity was closer to 1.5 million. This gives a figure of 13.4 million. It should be noted that these figures do not include other states. Doing so would greatly increase the numbers on both sides particularly in Asia. On the Axis side a considerable number of deaths can be attributed to the Japanese. On the Allied side there was the famine in Bengal. One can of course still note that 16.8 million is greater than 13.4 million. But, as the figures above should make clear the claim of Allied moral purity versus the Axis is a complete myth. The “antifascist” USSR managed to kill millions of its own citizens in camps and execution sites.
Unfortunately, the popular perception of World War II is not as a geopolitical conflict between self interested states but rather a moral crusade to permanently end a complex of evils believed to have been largely unique to fascism and national socialism at the time. These evils first and foremost include racism and White Supremacy despite the fact that National Socialist racial persecution affected very few people of African and Asian ancestry compared to the Allies. The myth of a morally pure “antifascist” alliance including the USSR liberating Europe from evil Nazis to end the use of concentration camps, death squads, and achieve equality for racial and sexual minorities does not stand up to empirical analysis.