10.
“It was two or three days after the Soviets launched their Operation Thunderstorm, and from the start a lot of people knew we were as close to a wonder weapon as the Allies were going to get right now. The Soviets had no jet fighters of their own, but the Germans had and they’d surely capture blueprints sooner or later – as it happens, they captured more than blueprints, and it led to my place in a little moment of history. I was about fifteen thousand feet up, over Saxony, part of a patrol of Gloster Meteors heading north in search of Soviet bombers. Pe-2s were menacing our airfields and trying it on with our ports and we had to cut down as many as we could – Meteors were proving very good at the job but we just didn’t have enough of them yet. We were drowning in Ivan fighters. Well, the patrol was quiet, then suddenly these black dots start to appear in the sky, straight ahead and just a little higher. Generally our tactic was to attack from above, and they must have cottoned on, because they were flying higher than I thought their engines could even manage. I call it in and we move to intercept, when suddenly there comes a stream of tracer and another jet screams by not a few metres from my cockpit. Its wing could’ve taken my head off! I banked hard and gave chase, and suddenly realised what it was – an Me262! German! But this one was different – they’d repainted it, brushed away the swastika, and given it the red star instead. Turned out the Soviets had captured some on the ground and thrust them into combat, and now they were looking for Meteors to test themselves against. I managed to empty some 20mm into him and watched one of his engines erupt, but it wasn’t over – at least twelve of the little buggers had set upon us! It’s funny to say but during the tussle it never occurred to me that we’d be part of history – I took on and sliced one more 262 from the sky, and most of them turned for home. We took five for two of our own – and just like that, June 13, 1945 saw the first dogfight between jet fighters. Quite a moment.”
- Lieutenant Barry McDonnell, No. 616 Squadron RAF
“With the Red Army fulfilling its objectives by August 1, settling on the boundaries of the Alps and Rhine River despite every sinew of their war machine beginning to creak, only handfuls of Allied resistance remained, such as the famed and doomed last stand of the U.S. 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Heidelberg Castle. The rest, glaring from across the Rhine, readied for the next wave. Instead, Stalin issued his Moscow Declaration.
The Allies, he demanded, must accept Soviet dominion in all German territories east of the Rhine. The Rhineland would be split off into a demilitarised and independent International Zone policed by a Soviet-American coalition; a theoretical neutral boundary between France and Germany. Denmark, entirely occupied, and the Netherlands, its eastern half occupied, would hold plebiscites on their future, which was taken to mean they would soon find themselves with entrenched pro-Moscow rulers. Iran and Afghanistan, too, would remain in the Soviet sphere, with the latter expected to be entirely incorporated into the USSR as a republic. These demands having been met, the two sides would sign a peace treaty and the war would end with a steel curtain dividing the continent.
In effect, Stalin was asking that the Allies – having poured years of blood and treasure into the liberation of Europe – now accepted the dominion of much of it by another tyranny and the eternal threat of another war in Europe, not to mention the constant threat of Soviet control over the vital Persian Gulf. To anyone who looked at a map, it was obvious that the state of affairs which Stalin wanted could not last for long. A Europe divided in two between equally powerful ideological opponents could not possibly stay at peace – a Third World War would, inevitably, follow, and it could be more destructive than anything which had yet been seen. Given the war which it was following, that was quite the compliment as far as wars go.
It took little time for the leaders of the United States, Britain, and France to come to an agreement - the Moscow Declaration was rejected in full. Only the unconditional surrender of the Soviet Union, as had been demanded of Germany and Japan, would be accepted. With this rejection broadcast by Churchill to the Commons and by Roosevelt to the Congress, now the United Nations rushed to be ready for Stalin’s next strike. France, surely, was next. Nobody knew how far he wanted to go. While Churchill spoke, not far away at RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire, a 4,400 kilogram object was being loaded into a bomb pit.”
- Brighton, M. (1978) ‘To Hell And Back: The Second World War,’ pp.450.
“For the second time in twenty years, a nuclear crisis between the United States and China has come to a close with an apparent American victory. President Cunningham last night addressed the nation from the White House and made clear that the Yang Guo government had agreed to permit United Nations inspectors access to all fifteen of the so-called Special Interest Sites whose secrecy began what we must now call the Second Atomic Crisis. Asia, and the world at large, are breathing a sigh of relief after the prospect of devastation reigning over a nation of a billion people and the world’s second largest economy seemed to fade, but analysts warn that these next few days will be critical. If China does not live up to what President Cunningham called “our best chance for lasting peace and understanding in Asia,” then a false dawn could be revealed and the crisis only prolong itself. Professor Noel Tomkins of Harvard University told the Satellite News Network that regardless of whether peace is maintained in East Asia, the relationship between these two fierce economic rivals has only become colder. American global hegemony, enforced at the end of an atomic sword, has defined geopolitics since the Second World War – China’s alleged efforts to develop its own atomic weapons and place itself on an even keel with the U.S. represented a clear attack on the principles of the Truman Doctrine. It is a principle which the Chinese government has publicly rejected since 1966 but not one they have been keen to overtly challenge given the potential risks involved. That came to a close two months ago with the American accusations of secret Chinese nuclear developments. It became increasingly clear, despite widespread global protests, that President Cunningham was prepared to unleash America’s atomic arsenal on China if Washington’s demands of openness and dismantlement were not met. The question on many people’s lips now is how much longer this way of policing the world can go on. A severe dilemma arises which is that, once another nation does possess atomic weapons, American hegemony will forever be lost for at that point, atomic retaliation becomes possible – and so too, at least according to many American strategists, does the end of human civilisation on this planet.”
- Lawson, A. The New York Times: ‘China backs down in atomic crisis’, 14 June 1987
Thoughts?
