ABSTRACT
Some American historians, especially those of the New Deal school, tend to see events very much in this light; and despite the label of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ applied by Soviet historians to the war on the eastern front,3 as soon as they move into the European aspects of the Second World War, Soviet historians begin to employ the same approach and to use the same rhetoric. In fact, in so far as authors are discussing the perceptions of events which were entertained by observers of those events contemporary with or immediately following their occurrence, in so far as these three interpretations differ from one another, they were entertained by differing sets of observers at differing times. The ‘European civil war’ group of perceptions is to be distinguished from the ‘clash of rival ideologies’ group by one simple test.
