A wise (and divorced) friend once told me that remembering the ending is a way to forget the beginning. In war so as in love: When we commemorate the end of a war, we neglect the way that it began. Every war ends, after all; but not every war had to begin. When earlier this year Russia commemorated the 75th anniversary of the conclusion of World War II with a parade on Red Square, we were supposed to recall Berlin in 1945, and the final defeat of Germany. We are supposed to forget Brest in 1939, where the Red Army, having defeated Poland together with the Wehrmacht, organized a joint victory parade with its German brothers in arms. It was a German-Soviet attack on Poland that began World War II in Europe.
OP-ED
Timothy Snyder: Remembering Poland’s doomed fight against the Nazis
Germans tanks cross 06 September 1939 a river into Polish territory.
