Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: American Airmen behind the Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance by Serhii Plokhy

Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: American Airmen behind the Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance Reviews

• 
  Olesya Tkachuk

  книжка, про яку довелось почути усім моїм близьким, бо аж так я нею захопилась.
  у 1944 році у полтаві, миргороді, пирятині було облаштовано американські бази для “човникових” бомбардувань німеччини. тобто срср допустив сша на свою територію, відтак тисячі американців жили тут і спілкувались із радянцями – як на той час надзвичайне явище. плохій детально описує операцію, побут, любов і ворожнечу американців і місцевих. багато геополітики й звичайних життєвих історій – кайф
• 
  Віта

  Сподобалися спогади американських пілотів, яких збивали час від часу німці над Західною Україною і підбирали упівці. А потім в дрімучих українських лісах наші підпільники люб'язно спілкувалися з іноземцями... англійською. В кожного западенця в Гамериці був чи-то вуйко, чи стрийко, до якого раз поїхав - і повернувся поліглотом. Зворушливо до сліз
• 
  James Crabtree

  It was a good plan: use United States Air Force bombers to attack targets in occupied Europe but instead of returning to bases in Italy and England and dealing with the Luftwaffe’s frontier defenses the aircraft would continue onward, through Eastern Europe, where the German air defenses were much lighter. The bombers would land at airbases in Soviet territory, where they would rearm and refuel in preparation for flying over Nazi Europe and delivering another blow against Hitler. The Americans would be able to reach targets previously out of range of its B-17s and B-24s and the Soviets would have a strategic bombing capability “by proxy” via nomination of targets. It would be a sterling example of the Grand Alliance between East and West.
  
  Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way.
  
  With access to Soviet-era secret police records author Serhii Plotkhy looks not just at the diplomatic wrangling and the military work that made the Frantic missions possible, but also the clash of cultures which would put the two Allies on a collision course. Indeed, his thesis is that the Cold War did not start in the aftermath of World War II and the establishment of the Iron Curtain but at the Poltava airfields and the eye-opening treatment that American airmen experienced in the USSR. His book makes excellent use of both first-hand accounts and documentation to make his case.
  
  During World War II the democracies of the United States and Britain were, out of necessity, aligned with the communist dictatorship of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Ironically so, since the USSR had in 1939 aligned itself with the Axis powers and had been feeding the German war machine raw materials right up until Hitler’s all-out attack on the Soviet Union. In any case, the United States provided lend-lease assistance, giving the Soviets tanks, aircraft and trucks in order to keep them in the fight. On the homefront, Stalin became “Uncle Joe” and the “Russians” honorable allies. Hollywood movies were produced about life in Soviet Russia which can only be described as wartime propaganda.
  
  As a result, most Americans who flew the B-17s to the USSR were at the very least open-minded towards the Soviets. This did not last long. First of all, the Soviets failed to impress the Americans who arrived at Poltava. The hygiene standards were not what G.I.s were used to, with poorly located and maintained latrines and disgraceful handling of food. The Russians did not live up to their fearsome reputation as soldiers either, with airfield sentries found asleep and a disastrous Luftwaffe night-time bombing raid on the airfields which was not met with effective antiaircraft fire or fighter interception.
  
  Second of all, the Soviets treated Americans with suspicion, in the case of airmen, and with contempt, in the case of liberated POWs. Paranoia was an integral part so-called Soviet culture, since its basis was the theory that countries which practiced capitalism were exploitive and the masses were downtrodden. Yet the Americans, made up of different ethnic groups and religious backgrounds, did not seem downtrodden. In fact, they seemed far better off than their Soviet allies. In addition to this, many of the Americans who had Ukrainian and Russian language skills belonged to families which had backed the Whites during the Russian Civil War. The Reds naturally thought that the airmen sent to their country were actually there to undermine it, especially when the need for the shuttle raids became less obvious. This bit of transference gives us a good idea of how the communists did business with erstwhile allies.
  
  The Soviets alienated the Americans in almost every way imaginable. Onerous restrictions were put on Americans trying to leave the bases and people (usually women) who had unsupervised contact with Americans were harassed. Flights from the bases were grounded for hours and sometime days while waiting for “permission from Moscow.” American Airmen were not permitted to provide transportation and medical assistance to G.I.s liberated by the Red Army from Nazi POW camps. The last outrage was due to the way the Soviets viewed their own prisoners of war: nothing less than traitors. As a result, the Red Army felt no obligation to feed, house or transport American POWs since, as far as they were concerned, they had failed to do their duty.
  
  But Plokhy’s most stunning revelation was one that could not have been known at the time: the secret police organization known as SMERSH was deployed to put the Americans under surveillance while in the USSR. SMERSH, whose name was derived from the Russian phrase “death to spies,” was a counterintelligence arm of the NKVD. The only other enemy it had been used against had apparently been the Nazis.
  
  The Soviets treated all Americans as dangerous provocateurs. Those Americans who were former POWs were traitors. Those Americans who could speak Russian were spies. It did not take the Iron Curtain to open many American’s eyes to the threat the Soviets posed, it took Poltova.
  
• 
  Олег Проданчук

  Книга-переможець у номінації "Історія" Book Forum Best Book Award 2020.
  
  Це легко та надзвичайно цікаво написана праця історика Сергія Плохія, в основі якої лежить історія про союзницькі авіаційні бази американців на землях Полтавщини, яка тоді була окупована СРСР. Крім маловідомих загалу, зокрема й мені, фактів про даний унікальний аспект Другої світової війни у книзі Ви знайдете й історії життя, кохання простих людей, солдатів та цивільних, у житті яких залишив свій слід червоний режим. 
  
  
  У даній книзі розглянуто справді багато історичних епізодів. Є як комічні, так і жахаючі історії. Відверто шокує ницість радянського командування, яке притримувало наступ на Варшаву, аби німці винищили як умога більше польських повстанців. Крім того, вони не давали можливості союзникам здійснити гуманітарні місії для доставки медикаментів та припасів полякам, забороняючи дозвіл на преземлення літаків на авіабазах України.
  
  
  На виїзді американських військових з Полтавщини книга не закінчується. Гарним доповненням слугує розкриття долі причетних до функціонування авіабаз постатей. Нагадуванням про своє перебування в Україні для них стали не тільки спогади чи збережені сувеніри, а й перевірки спецслужбами та підозри у шпигунстві, як з одного, так і з іншого боку кордону.
  
  
  Гарним доповненням до цікавенного тексту є добірка фотографій з описаних авіабаз.
• 
  Kostiantyn Shcherbachenko

  Книгу Плохія читав одразу після книги Марка Конверсіно "Спільна війна. Провал операції "Френтік" 1944-1945".
  Якщо Конверсіно використовував переважно тільки американські джерела, то Сергій Плохій також використав матеріал з відкритих архівів СБУ, в яких сьогодні зберігаються документи НКВД/МДБ/КДБ. Це дає можливість подивитися на події 1944-1945 років в українських містах Полтаві, Пирятину, Миргороді не тільки з погляду американців, але й контррозвідки СРСР.
  І завдяки цьому стає більш зрозуміло, як спільна операція союзників проти одного ворога, могла стати провісником холодної війни між колишніми союзниками.
  Важко залишатися союзником того, хто з усіх навколо тебе намагається зробити шпигунів, готує плани захвату твоєї бази, перешкоджає поверненню з полону твоїх співвітчизників, бо для тебе полонені це люди, яких треба повернути за будь-яку ціну, а для твого тимчасового союзника - зрадники, які в кращому випадку заслуговують на переміщення з таборів нацистів до таборів гулагу.
  Тому, не зважаючи на в цілому нормальні контакти та людські відносини на рівні рядових та офіцерів, дві системи з різними цінностями могли співробітничати тільки поки "ворог мого ворога - мій друг".
  А ще цікаво спостерігати як мінялося відношення до СРСР у громадян США, які на початку Френтіка відносилися до його симпатиків. Від рядових - яких відбирали для місії в тому числі і за їх відношенням до СРСР, до посла США в СРСР Аверелла Гаррімана, який з прихильника співпраці з СРСР, надання радянцям допомоги за програмою Ленд-лізу та влаштування американських баз на Полтавщині, перетворився на людину, яка за словами Сталіна, "несе свою частку відповідальності за погіршення наших відносин після смерті Рузвельта".
  Я б порадив прочитати книгу всім симпатикам СРСР на Заході та сектантам "смачного пломбіру", які народилися після розпаду СРСР, тут. Але боюся, що все одно до них не дійде.
  
• 
  Emmanuel Gustin

  This is a history of operation Frantic in 1944-1945, the basing of American aircraft in Soviet territory, at and near Poltava in the Ukraine. Plokhy's account is focused on the signs of the emerging Cold War, driven as it is by study of the archives both Soviet and American intelligence and counter-intelligence services, as well as personal recollections. Through the archives of the SMERSH and MGB, a harsh light is cast on the attitudes of Stalin's regime.
  
  Frantic is usually treated as a footnote in the history of WWII. Accounts of USAAF operations will briefly mention that with some difficulty the services obtained rights to base aircraft in the USSR, that on 22 June 1944 German bombers successfully attacked and destroyed many American aircraft on the ground, and that the operation was ended soon afterwards. From a purely operational and military perspective, that may not be a bad summary, but this book digs deeper and shows that there was a lot more to it.
  
  Plokhy does not mention it, but this was not the USSR's first encounter with foreign soldiers operating from its bases. Secret clauses attached to the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 provided training opportunities for German soldiers at bases in the USSR, as the terms of the Treaty of Versailles did not allow this to happen in Germany itself. German officers ordered fifty Fokker D.XIII fighters in the Netherlands (officially for export to Brazil) to establish a secret flying school at Lipetsk, in western Russia. It remained operational until Hitler came to power, and you could say that for the USSR, this story did not play out well.
  
  Thus there were at least some plausible reasons for suspicion when the Americans sought, and finally obtained, bases for their aircraft in the USSR. Soon, the repression and paranoia of Stalin's regime bred some more. While reading this detailed study, one gets to pity the Red Army officers at Poltava: If they were too friendly to the Americans, they became suspect as potential American spies in the eyes of the SMERSH; if they were too unfriendly, the counter-espionage service would entertain the idea that they were German spies or contra-revolutionaries trying to undermine the war effort. There was no way out and they naturally fell back on seeking approval for everything from Moscow, an attitude which infuriated the Americans. Plokhy's detailed accounting of the many twists and turns, suspicions and obstacles, shows how a relationship that at least locally started out with good will on both sides, comradeship and growing mutual respect, quickly sourced.
  
  Plokhy sees the seeds of conflict in an incompatibility of political and cultural traditions. This seems a bit too generous. As he highlights in ample detail, an important reason for the failure of the personalities at Poltava to maintain good relations, was that the regime regarded such good relations as fundamentally undesirable. Any close contact with these foreigners, regardless of whether it was professional, social or sexual, made Soviet citizens and soldiers automatically suspect. These were not conditions that allowed the Russians, Ukrainians and Americans much leeway to resolve whatever differences they had about food, flying, sanitary conditions, or girls. I'd like to be a bit more optimistic than the author and surmise that in a friendlier environment, cultural bridges could have been built. While Plokhy suggests that the experience of Poltava seeded the Cold War in the minds of many of the people who participated in it, he is wise enough to mention that there were also other, bigger factors in the background, such as the fate of Poland.
  
  Of course the Americans were in a privileged position, by and large - they could leave, and indeed the worst the SMERSH could do to them was to have them sent home. Plokhy extends his study to the post-war fate of some of the people who appear in his story. For the Soviet citizens and soldiers, there was no escape, and it makes for grim reading. One can see the twisted logic behind the secret service monitoring of women whose parents had been killed in Stalin's purges, who had dated German and American soldiers, and obviously had little reason to be loyal to the regime. But it was also relentlessly petty, the obsessive intrusiveness of a police state, designed more to intimidate than to prevent real espionage.
  
  There are some downsides the focus of this book. I read this book in a translation to Dutch by Fred Reurs, which is good overall (there are some mangled sentences) and this may have introduced some errors that are not the original author's. Still, the books seems confused about the roles and responsibilities of the various USAAF officers, has some weird designation errors such as the "C-17" Skymaster (the C-47), and in general gives only the briefest possible account of the operations conducted as part of the project. But those are nitpicks.
  
  This is a very readable and very human account of a forgotten corner of the war.
  
  
  
• 
  Christopher

  I must have heard of the shuttle-bombing missions somewhere, but it didn't really register with me how much American infrastructure would need to be moved into the Soviet Union for those missions to work.
  
  The main focus of the book is not on the bombing missions, but instead on the interactions between the Soviets and the Americans. The Soviets come off as being paranoid, yes, but not unduly do considering the enormity of the evils that had happened in Ukraine in the previous 3 decades and the track record of Western (including American) forces during the Russian Revolution. In contrast, the Americans come off as astoundingly naive.
  
  The conclusion that the Grand Alliance was doomed due to fundamental differences in values seems like a bit of a stretch. To Stalin's Soviet Union, the trust that would be needed for a long-term alliance was never available in the first place.
• 
  Michael

  Dr. Plokhy writes about historical events related to Ukraine. The Poltova and two other American air bases established during WWII to support shuttle bombing (in which bombers flew from the west, dropped bombs, then flew on to land in the USSR, later flying separate missions in the opposite direction).
  
  I read a book written almost fifty years ago about this, "The Poltava Affair: The Secret World War II Operation That Foreshadowed The Cold War" which covered much the same events up through the point where the Americans withdrew from these air bases. This newer books includes information found in Ukrainian archives about how the Soviets viewed and tracked the Americans as potential spies as well as continuing the story well after the Americans departure and on into the post-war period.
  
  I liked the book overall but several times summary information was repeated that seemed puzzling, possible done in error. And there were at least a half dozen words spelled incorrectly, presumably typos, but not something one expects from Oxford University Press.
  
  Dr. Plokhy suggests that his view that the failures of these air bases foretold the post-Grand Alliance animosity between the US and the USSR is not, I think, all that original - after all the sub-title of the book published in 1973 was, "The Secret World War II Operation That Foreshadowed The Cold War." It is quite interesting how the author documents how difficulties in getting along at the local level of the air bases managed to work its way in some cases to Stalin and Roosevelt for resolution
  
  
• 
  Dr.Husaim

  "Народ побєдітель", "можем повторіть" і тому подібні вигуки, вже за місяць будуть звучати з кожної праски на пост-радянському просторі. Та зазвичай ці всі вигуки звучать на фоні пів-правди... А правда в тому, що ніхто не міг перемогти в тій війні самотужки.
  
  Не міг це зробити і радянський союз при всіх своїх потугах. Саме тому для радянців, як раніше для британців, штати розгорнули масштабний ленд-ліз постачаючи до союзу продовольство, техніку, зброю і навіть літаки.
  
  Цікавим епізодом є те, що Сталін вимагав від союзників відкриття другого фронту у Франції, бо чітко розумів, що червона армія не встоїть, коли німці не відтягнуть війська на захід.
  
  Ну і самим цікавим епізодом, є існування на території України, трьох американських воєнно-повітряних баз, для "літучих фортець" В-17. Де радянські солдати пліч о пліч співпрацювали з американцями.
  
  P.S. книга вельми інформативна, часом навіть занудна, але варта прочитання.
  
  Автор: Сергій Плохій
  Видавництво: @ksd
  Сторінок: 200/320
  Оцінка: 7/12
• 
  Peter Fox

  This is a comprehensive history of the short lived 3 American aerodromes based in the USSR during World War 2. Unfortunately the desire to cover everything robs the story of any kind of pace or urgency. It feels more like a 300 page encyclopaedia entry than a work of historical prose.
  
  
  Plokhy details incident after incident of Soviet intransigence and very quickly they all begin to merge. If you can picture a huge dossier of complaints, all very similar in nature, being recounted one after the other, then you get the idea.
  
  
  There are lots of people mentioned, but you get no real feeling of investment in any of them, as no one feels that much of an individual. A memoir from one of the people posted there would have had this personal touch. Surprisingly the most interesting section of the book is the post war years, when McCarthyism meant that a few people were probed.
  
  
  This isn't a bad book, but it could have been better. If it had been edited down and more personality injected, then it would make for a happier reading experience.
• 
  Michael Samerdyke

  I had known a little about the American "shuttle-bombing" base in the USSR before reading this book, but I learned much more about it thanks to Serhii Plokhy.
  
  This book is a micro-history of the origins of the Cold War. Instead of looking at the top people and their exchanges of position papers, Plokhy looks at how an American airbase in the USSR that was built to speed the defeat of Nazi Germany ended up becoming an irritant in American-Soviet relations, showing how the two political cultures came into conflict.
  
  The book shows how issues of dating and treatment of POWs ate away at the initial "fraternal feeling" between the two militaries. Most books don't go into this or dispose of the matter in a paragraph. Plokhy uncovers the people who experienced the history.
  
  I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the early Cold War.
• 
  Richard Hakes

  For a subject that is probably from a historical point quite important it is an event in history that is little know. American Airplane bases in the Russian Ukraine. Despite the locals liking the Americans the (popularist) government (Stalin) did not like the idea of USA airmen coming in contact with the locals as it would undermine what they were telling the locals about how bad it is outside. This is the trouble about populist governments, sooner or later they find their ideas are not popular anymore (Boris and Cummings) after that no matter how they hide the facts it is just a power struggle. History suggests it is a matter of time before they fail. The Russians hung on 40 years I wonder how long Boris will?
• 
  Shrike58

  I'd been aware of this whole episode of the war going back into the 1970s and, even then, it seemed like an exercise in operational and diplomatic overreach. In this day and age the author has enjoyed access to Soviet documentation of the time, and Plokhy's findings do nothing to undermine my long-time understanding. Call this a reinforcement of the tenets of hardcore realism and that merely enjoying a common enemy is not enough to sustain actual comity amongst polities that are naturally antagonistic.
• 
  I Read, Therefore I Blog

  Serhii Plokhy is Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, director of its Ukrainian Research Institute and a leading authority on Eastern Europe. This absorbing, very readable book looks at a forgotten period in World War II when Stalin permitted the USA to operate 3 airbases in the Ukraine between April 1944 and June 1945 and makes a convincing case for how the US/Soviet experience there fuelled the start of the Cold War.
• 
  Matt Kelly

  The hook for this book is American bombers and fighter pilots having a landing base behind Soviet lines. The real story of the book is American and Soviet relations throughout WWII and in the years directly after during the Cold War. Serhii knows how to capture the human element to these big events so well, and like all his books it is very well written.
• 
  Oleg Duma

  Цікаве дослідження маловідомої (власне, для мене) сторінки Другої світової війни. Співробітництво радянців та американців, що було приречене на регрес та занепад. Вражаючі долі американських військових (особливо, нащадків емігрантів), що змінюють свої погляди, опинившись у радянській дійсності.
• 
  Ted

  Great account of some more obscure parts of WWII.
• 
  Greg

  Fascinating account of an obscure part of history where US Air Force bombed Germany from a Russian airfield during WW2.