One's view of historical reality is inevitably flawed. While most historians strive to preserve or recreate an objective picture of historical forces and events, a variety of factors affect their work all of which tend to warp objective reality and produce a subjective view of history. This process is inevitable, and it poses to the historian the principal challenge of his profession, a challenge which he seldom totally overcomes. #1

     One of the most potent factors affecting objectivity is that of parochialism – in its milder form simply limited perspective – a narrowness of view produced by a natural concern for one's own history and reinforced by the remoteness of events occurring in distant lands. Parochialism on the part of historians also responds, in part, to demand – the demand of their reading public who are parochial in their own right and who seek information concerning their own past. Cultural and ideological differences that exist between governments and peoples exacerbate this tendency. These differences color the interpretation of events and tend to stifle understanding between peoples already separated by space and time.

     The availability of sources upon which to base historical accounts contributes to the emergence of a parochial view. A historian must use what sources are available to him, and if those sources are limited, so also will his perspective be limited. Good historians will acknowledge those limitations as they reconstruct the events of the past.

     A more extreme form of parochialism or limited perspective is bias, which can be either unintentional or intentional. Unintentional bias is a result of the same forces that produce a parochial view. Intentional bias can be a manifestation of the historian's own internal beliefs or the product of ideological or political influence on the historian from external institutions, such as governments, religious bodies, or economic entities. Bias, especially in the deliberate form, creates a more twisted, and hence more harmful, view of historical events than simple parochialism. While parochialism implies that a historian was unable to tap a wide variety of sources, bias indicates that a historian selected the sources he would use and ignored those which did not fit into his preconceived notion of past events. In the former case, distortion of history, although regrettable, is natural and often hard to detect. In the latter case such distortion is unnatural, reprehensible, and usually obvious to the discerning reader.

     Few twentieth century events have escaped the effects of parochialism and bias. Among the more important periods most severely affected by these phenomena is that of the Second World War, in particular the war on the Eastern Front – the Russo-German War. Diverging perspectives, parochialism, and outright bias from all quarters have obscured or distorted the history of the war and helped to produce long-standing misunderstandings and animosities. In fact, it is safe to say that we are still far from achieving an objective picture of the war, if in fact such a picture is achievable. The lack of objectivity has left a legacy of misunderstanding concerning the political and military events of the war. More important, since perceptions and policies of the present are based, in part, upon a correct understanding of the past, many of those perceptions and policies are founded on less than solid ground.

     This paper focuses on only a narrow segment of World War II experiences – experiences on the Eastern Front – within the context of the war in general. In particular, it describes the U.S. perspective on the war and how events on the Eastern Front fit into that overall view of war. Further it surveys the forces (sources) that have shaped the current American perspective on that important segment of World War II combat, specifically what Americans have been taught or have read about the war. Finally the paper investigates the accuracy of that perspective in light of existing source materials. Thus, in essence, this is a critique of Eastern Front war historiography, a critique which will hopefully broaden the perspective and understanding of American and foreign readers and historians alike.

    

     The American view of the war reflected the circumstances surrounding U.S. involvement in the war as well as long term historical attitudes toward European politics in general. Despite strong public sentiment for assisting beleaguered Western democracies, after war broke out in 1939 equally strong neutralist sentiments blocked active U.S. participation in the war. As the American public noted with growing concern the fall of France in 1940, the expulsion of British forces from the continent at Dunkirk, and the struggle for supremacy in the air over Great Britain, the U.S. government was able to lend assistance to England short of actually joining the war. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, while lamented as an extension of the war, in some quarters was also viewed positively as it clearly diverted German interest from Britain toward what most assumed would be a more formidable opponent for the hitherto undefeated German war machine to deal with. Additionally, Germany now faced a two-front war, and Anglo-Soviet war cooperation against Germany was bound to ensue. In a sense, the German decision to attack the Soviet Union strengthened the hand of American neutralists who could point to the reduced need for U.S. intervention, an argument quickly silenced by the extensive German advance in the East, which for a time seemed to threaten the viability of the Soviet Union. The war itself in the East was a shadowy affair signified by maps of the Soviet Union overlaid by large arrows and clouds of black representing advancing Nazi forces. Little detail of the conflict was available, setting a pattern which would endure during the future years of war.

     Only the brash Japanese surprise attack on U.S. facilities at Pearl Harbor overcame this initial American reluctance to become actively involved in war. This act unleashed American's emotions to an extent that earlier American lukewarm commitment to the survival of the western democracies was converted almost overnight into a broad American commitment to rid the world of the menace posed by the Berlin-Tokyo axis. While early in the war the U.S. government's principal concern was for assisting in the defeat of Nazi Germany, the very fact that the Japanese surprise attack had catalyzed American war sentiments led to ever increasing U.S. attention to the war in the Pacific, a war which soon dominated U.S. newspaper headlines.

     The combination of the U.S. government's focus on defeating Germany "first" and the reality of fending off Japanese advances in the Pacific set the tone for the U.S. perspective on the war and focused as well the attention of the U.S. press and public on those two themes. Hence U.S. military strategy involved the attaining of footholds on the European continent as a means for achieving the ultimate destruction of Germany while the realities of war in the Pacific and the overwhelming public sentiment to crush the nation which had provoked the hostilities in the first place drew American forces inexorably across the Pacific. The competing aims of America's two-front war, in the end, diluted the government's efforts to first deal with Nazi Germany and perhaps attenuated the achievement of victory in Europe. At a minimum, it made the establishment of a "second front" in Europe a more formidable task and led to the series of Allied operations in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, preceded by a sobering test of Allied capabilities to land directly in France, conducted at Dieppe in August 1942. Military planners and the general public alike were transfixed by foreign locales such as Tobruk, El Alamein, Oran, Kasserine, Palermo, Salerno, and Anzio where America's military strategy unfolded.

     Driven by popular demand and the inertia of ongoing operations, America's war in the Pacific in the summer of 1942 changed in nature from a defensive one to an offensive one complete with alternative strategies for the defeat of Japan. The names Guadalcanal, Midway, New Guinea, and a host of hitherto obscure islands dominated U.S. awareness – governmental and public alike.

     It is axiomatic that where one's forces operate, one's attention follows; and where one's father, husband, or son fights and possibly dies, dominates a families thoughts. Human ties usually dwarf geopolitical considerations, and the piece of the mosaic of war with which a government or a public is involved naturally becomes the dominant piece. The remainder of that mosaic, for most remains a shadowy context of one's own struggle recognized as important only by the most perceptive of observers.

     Thus, America's perspective on war remained riveted to the path undertaken by American forces in Europe and across the Pacific. To the earlier place names of combat were added the names Normandy, Falaise, Metz, and Aachen in Europe and Iwo Jima, the Philippines, and Okinawa in the Pacific. As U.S. military efforts increased in scope, and as Axis power diminished, the impact of those operations on the American public's memory increased. Throughout this process the war elsewhere, the real global context for American military operations, remained cloudy and obscure, the obscurity reinforced by a lack of specific information as to what was occurring, in particular at the public level.

     The war on the Eastern Front, however unfairly, was a part of this shadowy context. It is clear Americans knew in general about the war in the East. They knew it was a massive struggle with vast implications for the success of Allied strategy in the West. The names Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk were familiar ones, and Americans could appreciate the impact of Soviet victories at each location. But that was perhaps of the sum of American understanding. Certainly, there was little in the American military experience to condition Americans to conceive of operations as large as those occurring in the East, and what is not experienced cannot be fully appreciated. Hence, the tendency of Americans (and others) to equate Stalingrad with El Alamein and Kursk with Anzio. The comparison in terms of result (victory) masked the issue of the contrasting scale and scope of these operations. As the issue of the second front became a focal point of dispute among the wartime allies, this context plus the real allied difficulties in effecting such a landing made the Allied decision to open such a front in France in 1944 reasonable and understandable to the American public.

     During the last year of war the American public's (and government's) attention was captured by the successful Normandy operation and the ensuing breathtaking advance across France. Likewise, the German counterstroke in the Bulge and the 1945 Allied advance into Germany dominated American public awareness. Concurrent and massively successful Soviet operations in Belorussia, Rumania, East Prussia, Poland, and Hungary were noted as part of a continuous, slow, but inexorable Soviet advance toward Germany. As before, details of the Soviet operations were lacking, hence they tended to recede into the background as an adjunct to successful Allied operations in the West and in the Pacific as well. In a sense, America's attentions were focused on the two great oceans and operations adjacent to them. The struggle in continental Europe remained remote, geographically and psychologically. The same tendency helped to relegate to obscurity Soviet participation in the final stages of the war with Japan (the Manchurian operation).

     Thus the war on the Eastern Front was acknowledged but never fully appreciated in wartime by the bulk of Allied public opinion. Initially the war served the function of distracting German military attentions from England eastward. Later the Red Army locked the German Army in a struggle which enabled the other Allies to reestablish themselves on continental Europe. Ultimately, the Red Army joined in the final victory assault on the German Reich. The American public appreciated the role played by the Soviet people; and, in fact, genuine feelings of warmth resulted. Americans, likewise, seemed to understand the suffering involved in such a struggle. Yet, despite these feelings, the details of those operations in the East remained obscure; and, hence, a full realization of their importance was lacking. This tendency persisted into the postwar years when it combined with other factors to create a sort of mythology surrounding the events of the war in the East.

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LEST WE FORGET
THE IMMORTAL FEATS OF OUR FOREBEARS

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FOOTNOTES and SOURCES

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#1 Colonel David M. Glantz, Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the United States of America.
This paper was prepared for delivery at the first Soviet-American collegium on the problems of World War II history, held in Moscow on 21-23 October 1986. Thereafter the article was published in the August 1987 issue of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Journal Voprosy Istorii [Questions of History].
Original source: http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/e-front.htm

#2 45 footnotes made by Col. Glantz are being omitted here. They are available on the original website publication at the URL given above. The Army's Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) is a research and analysis center under the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (TRADOC DCSINT). FMSO manages and operates the Ft. Leavenworth Joint Reserve Intelligence Center (JRIC).

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