Has the Third World War already started?

Most historians agree that the Second World War started on 1 September, 1939.

Some will argue that the real date was 23 August, when Molotov and Ribbentrop signed the pact whose secret protocol divided Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union.

Some others will pick an even earlier date, such as the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss of Austria or the occupation of Czechoslovakia.

All sides will present their arguments, and they will all make sense. Most people, however, will miss one important feature the arguments have in common: they are all retrospective.

Today, with the acuity of hindsight, we know that the Second World War started on one of those dates, 1 September, 1939, being the one most widely accepted.

But no one knew that on 2 September. In fact, the papers were running dispatches about the beginning of the Germany-Poland conflict. The words ‘world war’ never came up.

Moreover, even though Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September, no fighting was done for the next seven months. That period is known as the Phoney War, not yet a world one.

For 17 days Polish and German soldiers were dying in what was universally treated as a local conflict. And even when Stalin got in the act on 17 September, and Russian soldiers began to die too, the newspaper-reading public didn’t realise that a global cataclysm was under way.

I wonder if 75 years from now our great-grandchildren will look back at our own time, wondering how on earth we failed to realise that the Third World War had already started.

How could we be so blind as not to see that Russia’s attack on the Ukraine was but a first act of the tragedy, Putin putting his toe in the water to test the West’s response? Didn’t we realise that a combination of appeasement and derisory sanctions would only whet his appetite?

Didn’t we see the signs, plain to any reasonably alert individual?

If any of us miraculously live that long, we’ll have to admit self-deprecatingly that we indeed suffered the onset of temporary blindness. Because the signs are there, for all to see.

Quite apart from the relatively low-scale action being fought by the Russian army in Donetsk and Luhansk (which neither side regrettably calls by its real name: Russia’s war against the Ukraine), Putin is clearly priming the country for a big war.

This is obvious in the nauseatingly bellicose propaganda campaign being waged in the Russian state press, which is to say the Russian press. Reading their papers and watching their TV channels, I can vouch that I saw nothing like it even in Soviet times.

All my Russian friends, including those few who are more ambivalent on Putin than I am, confirm this impression. Then of course none of us lived in the ‘30s, when drums rattled and bugles roared off every official word.

And it’s not just words. Large-scale military exercises are being conducted in every border area from the Far East to Kaliningrad, from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

Bilateral military treaties are being annulled unilaterally, a worrying development drowned by the shooting in the East Ukraine. These include the 2001 treaty with Lithuania, according to which Lithuania was to be informed of, and allowed to inspect, any military build-up in the Kaliningrad region, the westernmost part of Russia.

“This measure by Russia,” declared the Lithuanian Defence Ministry, “… may be regarded as yet another step towards the destruction of mutual trust and security in Europe.” Indeed it is – have you seen this mentioned in our papers? I haven’t.

Putin is clearly creating two powerful beachheads, the southern one in the Crimea and the northern one in Kaliningrad, where short-range missiles are being deployed. Is anyone worried? I am.

And that’s not all. Russia is deploying more troops on the Ukrainian border than is necessary merely to support the Donetsk ‘rebels’ and ‘separatists’ (actually Russian troops).

At the same time the Russians are conducting joint exercises with their puppet Byelorussian army. They are also calling up the reservists, constantly increasing both the duration and frequency of such call-ups.

For the first time since Brezhnev, Russian strategic bombers are regularly violating the borders of Nato members, while Russian fighters are tracking Nato planes. Such developments used to worry people – why are we so complacent now?

Russia’s military expenditure is rising steeply, with a particular accent, according to Putin’s pronouncement, being placed on strategic arms. New weapon systems are being brought on stream at a rate far exceeding Nato’s. This is being widely ignored, in spite of the obvious fact that Russia doesn’t need ICBMs to fight the Ukraine.

Yet modern war isn’t all about troops and weapons – it puts a strain on the whole economy and the entire population. Since Russia lacks any obvious allies, apart from the likes of Gambia and Sudan, she has to prepare herself for going it alone, in conditions of total isolation.

Such preparations are going on at full speed. Putin has blocked the supplies of foreign foods, instead setting the goal of making Russia self-sufficient enough to prevent, this time around, widespread starvation in war time.

Less and less gas is being supplied on credit, with Russia demanding cash payments. At the same time Putin’s cronies, be it companies or individuals, are dumping their foreign assets with alacrity.

The most glaring example is Gennady Timchenko, affectionately nicknamed ‘Gangrene’ in some circles. Gangrene, who used to operate in Switzerland, is widely known to be Putin’s personal banker, the guardian of the colonel’s reputed $40-billion wealth. Well, Gangrene presciently sold all his, and presumably Putin’s, Swiss assets the day before the first batch of sanctions went into effect.

Russia’s central bank is also busily buying up gold, building up the reserves. Since time immemorial this has been considered a sure telltale sign of a country preparing for war – have you seen any comments on this in our press? Probably not.

Does this all mean that Putin wants a Third World War? Not necessarily.

Megalomaniac tyrants want power, as much of it as possible, both in their own country and other people’s. That’s a given. But they’d rather achieve their goal without the devastation of major war.

Hitler had no intention of fighting the whole world. His aim was to scare the West into peaceful capitulation, and the West gave him every encouragement. Austria and Czechoslovakia were taken without a shot fired, and the Führer’s head swelled.

Yet at some point Hitler overstepped a line. Neither he nor the West knew exactly where it had been drawn, but evidently it had been drawn somewhere. Suddenly appeasement ended, and the war wasn’t phoney any longer.

For Hitler, read Putin; for Chamberlain and Daladier, read the EU; for Austria, read the Crimea; for Poland, read the Ukraine.

Putin is clearly gambling on the West’s capitulation, just as Hitler did in 1939. Hitler didn’t get it in the end; instead he got what not only he but every German schoolboy knew would be fatal: a two-front war.

Will Putin get his bloodless victory? I don’t know, and neither does he. That’s why he’s preparing for a global war, which he knows would be hard to avoid if he does to a Nato member, say Lithuania, what he’s doing to the Ukraine.

A resolute response from Nato and the EU could stop him in his tracks, avoiding a catastrophe – just like some fortitude on the part of Britain and France in, say, 1938 could have prevented the Second World War.

So far no such response is in evidence. Is it forthcoming? I’m not holding my breath.