Lessons from World War II to avoid World War III

Jan Lipavský, Margus Tsahkna, Baiba Braže, Kęstutis Budrys, Mihai Popşoi, Radosław Sikorski & Andrii Sybiha

Thursday is the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. As leaders of countries that suffered greatly during and after the war, we attach great importance to this date. We remember our fallen parents, grandparents and other relatives who defended our freedom from two tyrannies of the last century. We remember all those who were killed, including at least six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust by Nazis and their collaborators. We remember the millions of victims of Soviet repression that continued unabated on the other side of the Iron Curtain at a time when Europe was reuniting and rebuilding itself after the war.

The meaning of commemoration is to draw necessary lessons and to prevent mistakes from happening again. The lessons from World War II are critical for understanding how to restore and maintain long-lasting and just peace and security in Europe today, when they are again at risk.

Just like the great wars in the past, Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine starting on Feb 24, 2022, divided the 21st century into before and after. Despite overwhelming odds, Ukraine has managed to repel the attack and liberate more than half of the newly occupied territory. But even after more than 9,50,000 Russian soldiers were killed and wounded in action, Russia has not abandoned its aggressive plans.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia hopes to use the current geopolitical moment to his advantage and extract concessions from Ukraine and its partners. Moscow increasingly engages other rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea in the war, threatening the security of not only the European continent but also the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East.

Learning from the past is critical today, as Ukraine, the EU and the US work to achieve peace. Russia’s war of aggression has shattered the post-World War II security architecture and the international system based on the United Nations Charter and the Helsinki Accords. Its conclusion will form the foundation for a new architecture. We offer the lessons from World War II that must be taken into account if we want to create an enduring peace in Ukraine, rather than a pause before the next potentially disastrous global conflict.

Appeasing the aggressor leads to more aggression, not peace. Concessions on unlawful territorial claims are a disastrous mistake. The partition of Czechoslovakia in 1938 only fueled Nazi Germany’s appetite and resulted in a global war. Learning from this lesson, Ukraine will never accept the legitimisation of Russia’s occupation and annexation of any part of Ukraine’s territory. Respect for territorial integrity is a fundamental principle of international law. There will be no sustainable peace and security at the cost of Ukraine’s people, independence, sovereignty or territorial integrity.

Spheres of influence never bring peace and stability. They bring oppression. World War II began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and secret protocols to it between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, agreeing to partition Poland, the Baltic States and the rest of Europe. Similarly, the victors sought to establish and consolidate their spheres of influence at a meeting in the Crimean city of Yalta in 1945. The cessation of fire in Europe on May 8, 1945, did not bring freedom to many European nations. They remained under Soviet occupation and control and suffered decades of international crimes, oppression and lack of freedom. For many of our states and our people, this nightmare ended only five decades later, with the re-establishment of our sovereignty and independence from 1989 to 1991.

Today Putin fantasises about another Yalta, where he can draw borders on Europe’s map, once again undermining international law and the right of nations in Russia’s neighbourhood to make their own choices and decisions. We must never allow this. Our principled position is that no third country has veto power over the choice of unions and alliances of Ukraine or any other nation. Ukraine has already made its choice — the choice of the European Union and NATO — and it is not for the Kremlin to scrutinise this.

A lack of accountability breeds future atrocities. Nazi crimes were widely exposed, condemned, investigated and prosecuted, unlike Soviet ones. It’s very important that both totalitarian ideologies — Nazism and Soviet — receive proper evaluation in Europe. More light must be shed on crimes by the Soviet regime, including the deportations and executions of political prisoners in our countries, the destruction of Kyiv’s city centre and the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station dam during the Soviet retreat in 1941, the mass-scale deportations of our people to Siberia, the violent repression of the members of anti-Soviet movements and the genocide of Crimean Tatars through deportation from their native land in 1944, to name a few. Hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly removed from their homes, many packed into cattle cars, and sent to remote regions of Siberia from the Baltics states alone. The crime of the Holodomor genocide, in particular, in which millions of Ukrainians starved to death, should have a more prominent place in the European historical understanding.

Russia has no right to monopolize the victory over Nazism, which was accomplished by multiple nations and peoples. Even the Red Army was multinational, with at least six million Ukrainians fighting in its ranks. Instead of commemorating World War II victims, Putin’s regime has crafted an ugly cult of victory, utilizing the collective victory over the Nazis to justify its current aggression and atrocities against Ukrainians. The upcoming May 9 parade, in which Russia annually marks the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, is designed as the glorification of this cult. Putin will use it to rally more Russians to the front lines, solidify his regime and create an impression that his international isolation is fading. These plans must fail. As President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said, ‘Freedom must be armed better than tyranny.’ In the current severe security deficit, sufficient defence capabilities are a must. If you want peace, prepare for war.

Learning these simple but important lessons of World War II is critical both to prevent the outbreak of World War III and to reinvent a fair international system with real security guarantees for peaceful democratic states that offer accountability for aggressors and deterrence against them. We must avoid repeating the mistakes that led to World War II and the subsequent Yalta system.

Lipavsky, Tsahkna, Braze, Budrys, Popşoi, Sikorski & Sybiha are the foreign ministers of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, and Ukraine, respectively

©️The New York Times Company