Who Really Won World War 2 in Europe?

The Awkward Allies

World War 2 is often remembered in simple terms, as the struggle and ultimate victory against the fascist nations of Europe, especially Nazi Germany. The conflict is frequently painted in terms of good vs. evil – the war being dubbed the ‘Good War’ – because at its heart there was a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship bent on conquest and extermination, and on the other side an alliance of non-fascist nations. However, this alliance also included its own brutal dictatorship in the form of the Soviet Union.

Considering the ‘Eastern Front’ - the area of Europe where the back of the German army was broken in conflict with a Russian army supplied with democratic aid - invites some unsettling conclusions about the war. It forces you to reconsider who actually ‘won’ the war, and how far it was ultimately successful. It was, as Eastern European historian Norman Stone subtitled his account of the war, “No Simple Victory.”

The Destruction of the Fascist States

Of course, this article isn’t suggesting that Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy in any way escaped defeat. They were decisively and wholly defeated, the dictators overthrown, their militaries routed, their ideas made anathema. Instead democracy was returned to Italy, West Germany and other western nations, and Nazi plans for mass exterminations, of the mentally ill, the Gypsies, the Slavs, the Jews, were halted.

The Soviet Success

Just as Hitler was clearly defeated, Stalin’s Soviet Union was clearly victorious. Stalin had been suspicious of Hitler since before the war – although, given that he was paranoid about non-communist Europe, this perhaps isn’t as prescient as it seems – and the early days of the war in 1939 saw Russia invade Poland and Baltic states in order to establish a pro-Soviet cushion between Germany and Russia. This cushion failed in 1941 when the Nazi’s launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. However, after being forced back to the outskirts of Moscow and inside Stalingrad, Soviet forces pushed Germany and its allies all the way back to Berlin; Germany was defeated.

However, World War 2 didn’t just see Russia defeat Germany. It also saw their armies range over a vast area of Eastern Europe in an attempt to defeat the fascists, and when the war ended the Soviet system was still in control of these countries, in which it moved to establish friendly, pro-soviet governments, which in practice meant communist dictatorships subservient to Russia. The conclusion of World War 2 saw the Soviets not only defeat Germany, but create an occupied cushion against the rest of Europe on a much grander scale than in 1939. The Cold War with the West resulted.

Democratic Success / Democratic Failure

In the Western world, World War 2 is portrayed as an unequivocal success, and it’s easy to see why. Nazi Germany was defeated utterly, while France, Italy, the Low Countries, West Germany and other nations were returned to a democratic state. But when Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939, it was because the Germans had invaded Poland, which was soon beaten and under the rule of a murderous dictatorship. But by the war’s end in 1945, Poland was still under the rule of a murderous dictatorship, only this time it was Stalin’s Russia. While countries like Britain were free from the danger of Nazi attack, the war had directly led to vast areas of Eastern Europe swapping one totalitarian dictatorship for another, the man who filled death camps for the man who filled the gulags. For the Soviet Union this was success, but can the same really be said for Britain, America and the other democracies involved?

This situation had led people to argue that the Second World War didn’t fully end until the end of the Cold War in the late 80s and the return to Eastern Europe of democracy. It’s important to remember that the conclusion of World War 2, while celebrated at the time, was different for east and west Europe. Could the west have done anything to change this? No, not without much more war. But, bearing this in mind, it might not be accurate to simply say the west won.