ABSTRACT
The sequence of events triggered off by Hitler’s invasion of Poland led directly to the advance of the Soviet Union into central Europe and the communization of the ‘lands between’. Not surprisingly, the future-pointing confrontation between communist and noncommunist, between Russia and the smaller powers has dominated ever since the investigations of historians and political scientists alike. But as so often in history, contemporaries had different perceptions. For them the war brought to a climax the conflicts of the past; it was the culminating point in the great struggle of Slav and Teuton, in whose eddies swirled the minor currents of a century of auxiliary nationalisms fair and foul. Ultimately, communism was installed in Eastern Europe by Soviet power. But the ability of East European communists to fit themselves into the anti-German scenario, to present their movement as the fulfilment of everything that was decent in the national tradition and the antithesis of everything that was not, greatly facilitated their dramatic success.
