The 80th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa brings with it a new cycle of books, articles and films about Hitler’s epic invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. After being consigned to the shadows in the West for much of the Cold War, the Eastern Front has attracted much more attention since the Gorbachev era – becoming, for some, the decisive theatre of the Second World War. This is certainly how it is now presented in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Yet national memories of this conflict, like any other, are highly selective. In Britain the Second World War has become fixated on “Our Finest Hour” in 1940. For Americans, victory in 1941-45 centres on the D-Day landings in June 1944 and the blood-soaked island-hopping battles across the Pacific such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In China, the Greater East Asian War starts in 1937 or even 1931, and is part of a longer struggle to resist Japanese imperialism and regain national unity after centuries of subservience to the West.
Content from our partners
