World War II

The letter of Winston S. Churchill (“British War Effort,” Sept. 14) does not clarify the situation as it existed on the eve of and during the first phase of World War II. Rather, it makes it more confused. Especially Churchill’s statement about Britain’s “glorious record of fighting alone against Nazi Germany for nearly 18 long and bitter months of all-out war, until the United States was torpedoed into the conflict by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941,” does not correspond to the historical facts.

First, Britain was not “alone,” but with France, at least for 11 months until France collapsed. Second, it was Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, that saved Britain from Nazi invasion. Third, until that moment it was not a “glorious record of fighting” against Nazi Germany but a “phony war” and almost total inaction by Britain and France from Sept. 1, 1939, when Hitler attacked Poland until the defeat of France in the summer of 1940.

Except for the sporadic bombing of Germany by British aircraft, the only really important military action was the retreat of British troops from Dunkirk. Even the Nazi invasion of Norway and Denmark in April, 1940, and the invasion of Holland and Belgium in May, 1940, were not countered by British forces.

It is also strange to read in the letter of a British member of Parliament that the “Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact was signed on May 22, 1939.” Had the grandson of the great British war leader read his grandfather’s “War Memories” more attentively, he would have known that the nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany was signed on Aug. 23, 1939.

While the British showed great stamina in withstanding the Nazi bombardment, the reluctance of Great Britain to engage actively against the Nazi Wehrmacht in the early years of the war cannot be gainsaid. The result was that the brunt of the battle against the German army was born by the Soviet Union, at least until 1944.

VALENTIN M. BEREZHKOV, Visiting Professor, History Department, Pitzer College, Claremont. On the eve of and during World War II, Berezhkov was chief interpreter for Stalin.