Russia's victory in World War II-80th anniversary

When the First World War ended, there was no animosity between Germany and Russia.

- ACHALA MOULIK

When the First World War ended, there was no animosity between Germany and Russia. Germany had not been part of the Army of Intervention (1918) that tried to defeat the new Soviet state and Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was not a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. The vindictive Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which imposed punitive war reparations against Germany and which was economically ruinous for Germany, guaranteed a guerre de revanche - war of revenge - against Britain and France. Indeed, the defeated and humiliated Germans looked to the people of Russia for support.

But the thousand-year-old history of Western European invasion of Russia was to be repeated again. The invasions were prompted by Europe's avarice for Russia's immense natural resources. Germany survived economically by exporting manufactured goods and industrial equipment to the Soviet Union in exchange for raw materials from there. It seemed as if cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union would be mutually beneficial.

Uneasy about the growing amity between Stalin and Hitler, Britain and France invited the Soviet Union to form a defensive pact to protect Poland from Germany. Stalin made terms unacceptable to Poland. The proposed treaty fell through.

German invasion of Czechoslovakia left Stalin no illusions about any enduring friendship with Hitler. The day of reckoning was a matter of time.

As early as 1931, Rabindranath Tagore - aristocrat, educationist and metaphysical poet - prophesied in his Letters from Russia: "Russian people must build their strength swiftly. They have many adversaries."

After rising to power in 1933, Hitler began repudiating terms of the Versailles Treaty. The formidable Rome-Berlin Axis was formed. The shadow of a global war fell upon the world when Italian forces invaded Ethiopia with the support of Nazi Germany.