What Is Bush Celebrating in Moscow?

"To Americans, World War II ended with the Japanese surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, following detonation of atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9.

But for Russians, who did not enter the war on Japan until Aug. 8, 1945, "The Great Patriotic War" ended on May 9, with the surrender of Nazi Germany. Which raises a question: What exactly is President Bush celebrating in Moscow?

The destruction of Bolshevism was always the great goal of Hitler. And the Red Army eventually bore the brunt of battle, losing 10 times as many soldiers as America and Britain together. But were we and the Soviets ever fighting for the same things, as FDR believed? Or was Stalin's war against Hitler but another phase of Bolshevism's war to eradicate Christianity and the West? (...)

Hitler was on the path to war. The war he wanted was one with the Soviet Union: to kill it, carve it up, and put every Bolshevik to the sword. His war was also to be a racist war. Hitler wanted to impose Germanic rule over Slavic peoples. (...)

Stalin, with his pact, redirected Hitler's Panzers to the west and bought the Red Army two more precious years to prepare for Hitler's onslaught – years Stalin used well. How did Stalin succeed?

On March 31, 1939, the British and French – in panic after Hitler drove into Prague without resistance – handed Poland an unsolicited war guarantee they could not honor and did not intend to honor. It was a bluff. But believing in that guarantee, the brave Poles defied Hitler over Danzig, stood and fought, and were crushed, as the British and French hid inside the Maginot Line.

But because they had declared war on him, though they had no plan to attack him, Hitler, in April 1940, invaded Denmark and Norway, and in May, the Low Countries and France. In three weeks, he threw the British army off the continent at Dunkirk, and, in six weeks, crushed France.

Meanwhile, Stalin provided Hitler all the food and fuel he had requested and declared Britain and France to be the aggressors against his Nazi partner.

When Stalin's turn came and Hitler invaded on June 22, 1941, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, who had negotiated the Hitler-Stalin – or Molotov-Ribbentrop – pact, said plaintively to the German ambassador, "What have we done to deserve this?"

Churchill and FDR rushed to embrace Stalin, gave him everything he demanded and more, and at Tehran and Yalta, ceded to him custody of all the peoples of Eastern Europe and of Poland, for which Britain had gone to war.

What Putin is celebrating is easy to see. But, tell me again: What exactly is our president celebrating in Moscow? " Patrick J. Buchanan