Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

labelled and taught as an anti-Fascist war; its racist dimension was ignored.

World War Two was a ‘Great Patriotic War’; Soviet soldiers and civilians were, in absolute numbers, its greatest victims; the Red Army did liberate vast swathes of eastern Europe from the horrors of German rule; and the defeat of Hitler was a source of unalloyed satisfaction and relief for most Soviet citizens

There was a shared resentment at the international community’s under-appreciation for their past sufferings and losses.

The not particularly subliminal message here is that Communism and Fascism are equivalent. Except that they are not:

Edelman’s reaction is a timely reminder of the risks we run by indulging to excess the cult of commemoration

Memory is inherently contentious and partisan: one man’s acknowledgement is another’s omission.

is not always politically prudent to wield the past as a moral cudgel with which to beat and berate a people for its past sins.