When Governments Attack History

Alex Adrianson / July 06, 2009

According to Sergei Kovalev, World War II started “because of Poland’s refusal to meet Germany’s requests.” Kovalev writes: “The German demands were very modest. You could hardly call them unfounded.” Hitler, in Kovalev’s view, didn’t really want Lebensraum, but merely transport links across the Polish corridor to East Prussia and to the free city of Gdansk.

The views of a crank? Actually, Kovalev is a colonel and a researcher in the Russian Ministry of Defense. Earlier this month, the ministry posted Kovalev’s lengthy essay laying out his views in a section of its Web site with the heading: “History: Lies and Falsifications.” The (more…)