The politics and the glory

Behind the 70th anniversary of Russia's Victory Day parade

On May 7, 1945, just over 70 years ago, in the town of Reims in France, Hitler's "thousand-year" Third Reich surrendered. It had survived its Fuhrer by just over a week. Winston Churchill declared to the world on the BBC that the war in Europe was over; he appeared with the English king and queen and waved to cheering thousands on the Mall - among whom was the young princess and future queen Elizabeth, incognito. But, in a strange foreshadowing of the decades of division to come, the Soviet Union did not celebrate alongside its allies. For Joseph Stalin had declared that his representative in General Eisenhower's camp at Reims was not senior enough to accept a surrender. So, late the next evening, the supreme leader of the German army, Wilhelm Keitel, surrendered in Berlin to his Soviet counterpart, Marshal Georgy Zhukov. It was already May 9 in Moscow when they heard the news; and only then were celebrations permitted.

In an eerie reminder of the embryonic Cold War, the 70th anniversary of what the Soviets call Victory Day, this May 9, saw no real representation from the West. The triumphal parade that Stalin ordered in 1945 of 40,000 veterans, 2,000 military vehicles and dozens of captured Nazi flags has been repeated every year since the end of the war; and this year was, rightly, special. For one, it featured troops from many of the countries that contributed to the fighting but which have not been considered by Anglo-American historians to have been at the centre of the war story. China sent a detachment from all three services, and President Xi Jinping came himself. It is forgotten that, after the Soviet Union and Germany, China lost the most militarymen - between three and four million. Overall, 15-20 million Chinese died in the Second World War and associated conflicts, less only than the stunning 25-30 million Soviets. And India, which lost 90,000 men, sent 70 men from The Grenadiers, which distinguished itself against the Axis at Kohima, one of the pivotal battles of the Second World War, the point at which the British and Indian armies turned back the all-conquering Japanese. President Pranab Mukherjee attended and will have noted that the rest of the parade, including the Chinese, will have been goose-stepping, without moving their arms. An odd reminder, perhaps, of India's status, ever between East and West, being the sole army marching in the English style at a Russian celebration.

It is unfortunate that India has done too little to own its history in the two world wars. Mistaken shame about fighting for the Empire is perhaps responsible - as is the tragedy that in the trenches opposite the victorious Indians at Kohima was the Azad Hind Fauj. But in a welcome change, in Germany earlier this year Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the Indians dead in the First World War. And on Sunday, India celebrated its part in the Second. As its role in the world grows, India will look to the past for examples and patterns - and the truth is that the British Indian Army was, in the wars and between them, a major stabilising force globally. Independent India would do well to follow its regiments - which have never forgotten their honours from those years -and reopen, and accept, that history.

The West's boycott of the Russian parade can hardly be overlooked. True, as with other trappings of the Soviet Union initially discarded after 1991, Vladimir Putin revived the Victory Day parade as a way to showcase Russian might. This year was supposed to be the first display of Russia's new-generation T-17 Armata tanks - a bit of showmanship somewhat undermined by the fact that one of the tanks broke down in rehearsal, and the footage got on YouTube. But, regardless of Mr Putin's pretensions, the West would do well to remember that it was the Soviets, under Stalin and Zhukov, who marched into Berlin, at the cost of 13 million men in uniform. At Stalingrad they turned Hitler back, and on May 9 they celebrated being the biggest factor in his defeat. The West, and the world, would have been different without the sacrifice of that 13 million.