Vladimir Putin’s essay on World War II
Putin probably didn’t write this, but he did put his name on it. It’s surely published for self-serving reasons, but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. In particular, he directly contradicts the history I learned in school about the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact. In Putin’s telling, the Western states had appeased the Nazis and stalled in the hopes that they’d become an exclusively Soviet problem to deal with (“The Munich Betrayal”). That drove the Soviets to step out of the way in 1939. Worth reading as a reminder that we never learn the full story when our learning is driven by political forces. | learn more