This day. Anniversary of Dresden fire bombing – Allied war crime prelude to the Cold War

Dresden had little or nothing to do with the war against the Nazis. But it had much, if not everything, to do with a new conflict in which the Nazis and the Japanese imperialists would be Anglo-American allies and the enemy would be the Soviet Union | DOUGAL MACDONALD

Aftermath of the 1945 bombing of Dresden, Germany by Allied forces – at the Old Market, following bombings on 13 February 1945 | WALTER HAHN/AFP/Getty Images

77th Anniversary of the Start of the Warsaw Uprising August 1, 1944

The Treachery of Historical Falsifications | Dougal MacDonald

Monument in Warsaw, inaugurated in 1989, to those who fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising

Much has been written by historians about the Warsaw Uprising in Poland which took place from August 1 to October 2, 1944, during the Second World War.[1] Much of it is false. The main aims of the past and modern falsifiers of the history of the Warsaw Uprising have been to attack the Soviet Union and its great leader, Joseph Stalin, to whitewash the Polish reactionaries and their modern-day descendants, and to try to pretend that the innumerable Nazi war crimes which were committed against the Polish people were a mere historical footnote. But the facts of history are stubborn things and they do not change just because of the scribblings of reactionary historians.

D-Day June 6, 1944. Normandy Landing and the re-writing of history

The decisive role of the Soviet Union in the military defeat of fascist Germany was accepted by everyone at the time, and admitted before Hitler’s suicide and the end of the war | François Lazure

Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet at the Tehran Conference, November 28 to December 1, 1943.

In an article published on the 70th anniversary of D-Day, military historian Benoît Lemay, of the Royal Military College of Kingston, Ontario pointed out, “There are many misconceptions about the Normandy landing. It is believed to have enabled the Allies to win the Second World War. A more nuanced view is required. In fact, in June 1944, Germany had already lost. The landing only served to accelerate the end of the war. It was the Russians on the Eastern Front who did most of the work. For propaganda reasons, during the Cold War years that followed, the West would try to minimize the Soviet effort. It would be conveyed that it was the Allies who did most of the work.”[1]

Origins of NATO. Geopolitics of Atlanticism – Winston Churchill’s 1946 ‘Iron Curtain’ speech

Events related to the establishment of NATO. March 5 is the 75th anniversary of the infamous speech by the former British prime minister | TONY SEED

Winston Churchill and U.S. President Truman arrive at Fulton College in Westminster, Missouri, March 5, 1946, where Churchill would deliver his “Iron Curtain” speech.

(April 6, 2019, Updated March 24, 2021) – Recent U.S. presidents, as past ones, demand that their leadership be accepted on the basis that they alone can establish an international order that will bring about peace and stability. Prior to the advent of the doctrine which claims that the U.S. is the one indispensable nation to which all must submit, that order has traditionally been equated with the interests and demands of an “international community.” In this vein, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently issued a thinly-veiled call for a coup d’état against the constitutional government of Venezuela by demanding that “the international community” must immediately unite behind the illegitimate Venezuelan opposition as they chart their path forward because “the moment for a democratic transition is now.”

Falsifications about the origins of the Second World War

Information picket against the glorification of Nazism, Ottawa, August 21, 2020.

By Dougal MacDonald 

The government of Canada declared August 23 Black Ribbon Day to spread lies which blame the former Soviet Union for starting the Second World War. The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler Germany on August 23, 1939 which the government of Canada claims was a “military alliance” to take joint military action against some third country. But the pact contained no such agreement. The agreement was only that the two countries would not attack each other.

Behold Operation Bagration, D-Day of the Eastern Front

By JOHN WIGHT*

Map of Operation Bagration, showing the massive westward thrust of the Red Army.

Operation Bagration was the D-Day of the Eastern Front. In scope, size, scale and impact, it was a remarkable feat of arms unmatched in WWII.[1]

D-Day: The road to Berlin

 

British commandos land at Gold Beach on D-Day.

By STAN WINER*

WITH THE INVASION of Normandy on D-Day on June 6, 1944 the terms of warfare in occupied France ceased to be ostensibly those of Hitler and became clearly those of the Allied Expeditionary Force. The cross-channel build-up provided it with at least twice the number of men, four times the number of tanks, and six times the number of aircraft available to the enemy.

This Day. The Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, 1939

Official use of disinformation to falsify history and create a climate which will assist the same kind of Hitlerite and fascist forces to rise once again

Great Soviet victory against the Nazis at Stalingrad

On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union signed what is now known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact with Germany which stipulated that Germany would not attack the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union would not attack Germany. The formal name for this agreement is the Nonaggression Pact between the USSR and Germany. It is often called the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” or “Treaty” after the two foreign ministers who signed it. Ideological anti-communists call it the “Hitler-Stalin Pact”, in furtherance of the goal of associating the USSR to Nazi Germany and Stalin to Hitler.

The deep history of US and Britain’s never-ending Cold War on Russia

The UN War Crimes Commission has finally released files that show the Allies knew – and did – much more about the Holocaust during WWII than previously thought. Cold War politics kept the files locked away | FINIAN CUNNINGHAM*

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Birkenau gate at Auschwitz

Winston Churchill sent the infamous Black and Tans from Ireland to Palestine

The Balfour Declaration’s purpose was to form a “little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism”, according to Ronald Storrs, “the first military governor of Palestine since Pontius Pilate” (his words). Not everything went to plan… | DAVID CRONIN*

“The Birth of the Irish Republic” by Walter Paget

Demolition of anti-fascist memorials in Poland: Falsifications about country’s liberation from Nazi rule

Monument in Rzeszow celebrating the liberation of the city from the Nazis. In 2016 the city rejected calls from Poland’s historical legacy institute to remove such memorials.

By DOUGAL MACDONALD

On June 22, 2017, the Polish government’s lower house voted to amend the “decommunization laws” to demolish all monuments and memorials honouring the Soviet Union’s liberation of Poland from the Nazis. The fact that the amendments were passed on the 76th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union would appear to be no accident.

‘Operation Unthinkable’ (1945) and US-NATO’s threats to wage war on Russia

Oriental Review May 9, 2016

Five days before the celebration of the 71th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s capitulation to the Soviet and allied troops in the WWII, the new NATO Supreme Commander in Europe Curtis Scaparrotti announced that he came to beat the drums of war again. Ignoring the historic facts and legitimate Russian interests in its around, in his first speech after assuming office he condemned alleged “Russian aggressive behaviour that challenges international norms” and called the bloc members to “fight tonight if deterrence fails.”

This commonplace declaration fairly correlates with the military and media strategy the Western ruling class adopted decades ago. Even putting aside the well-grounded argument that the very appearance of Hitler as the Fuhrer of the Third Reich in humiliated post-WWI Germany was a carefully planned and carried out operation of the US military intelligence to set it against Soviet Union, the full collection of the available facts evidences that the nucleus of Nazism was thoroughly fostered deep inside the Western ideological centres all time long since its formal defeat in May 1945.

Dresden and Poznan: Two different ways to wage war

The Liberation of Poznan by the Soviet Red Army

By YURIY RUBTSOV

The Red Army and British-American forces had one enemy – the German Wehrmacht – but quite often they waged different wars. The liberation of the Polish city Poznan by the Red Army and the bombing of Dresden by [other Allied countries] – one event following one week after the other – 70 years ago in February 1945. These two examples provide a good illustration of this.

‘Operation Unthinkable’: Churchill’s planned invasion of the Soviet Union, July 1945

By YURI RUBTSOV*

In late May 1945, Josef Stalin ordered Marshall Georgy Zhukov to leave Germany and come to Moscow. He was concerned over the actions of British allies. Stalin said the Soviet forces disarmed Germans and sent them to prisoners’ camps while the British did not. Instead they cooperated with German troops and let them maintain combat capability. Stalin believed that there were plans to use them later. He emphasized that it was an outright violation of the inter-governmental agreements that said the forces surrendered were to be immediately disbanded. The Soviet intelligence got the text of a secret telegram sent by Winston Churchill to Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, the commander of British forces. It instructed to collect the weapons and keep them in readiness to give back to Germans in case the Soviet offensive continued.

TML publishes special online supplement ‘The 70th Anniversary of the Defeat of Fascism in Europe’

8 May marked the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich in Berlin in 1945 and the defeat of Nazi Germany in Europe – a date recognized throughout the world with the photograph of the flag of the Soviet Red Army flying over the Reichstag, the German Parliament. To this day, that flag is recognized as the Victory Banner.  It is called Victory in Europe Day and other countries of the former Soviet Union where it marks the victory of the Great Patriotic War. It marked the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, as well as the founding of the United Nations.

More than 80 countries and regions and about two billion people in Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania were engulfed in the flames of war and suffered grave disasters. The defeat of fascism in Europe was a historic event with a permanent significance not only for the Soviet Union and Europe but for all peoples, who made the greatest contribution to its defeat. Imperialists and fascists can be stopped; their weapons can be silenced; freedom, liberation and the very right-to-be can be won.

Activities to commemorate the occasion were held in major Canadian cities including parades of World War II veterans from the former USSR together with the veterans from Allied countries, meetings, banquets, and presentations. As part of the international commemorations, the editors of TML Weekly published an informative special online supplement on the significance of the victory of the peoples of the world and related events. As one commentary underlines gravely: “To forget the past means to betray; to tamper with history means the start of following the same disastrous road.”

From our archives: Dossier on the 60th anniversary of the victory over fascism

Shunpiking Magazine’s Online Dossier, May-June 2005

INTRODUCTION

May 8, 2005 marked the 60th anniversary of the surrender of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich in 1945 and the defeat of Nazi Germany in Europe. Called Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) in the English-speaking countries, it is celebrated on May 9 in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union where it marks the victory of the Great Patriotic War. The defeat of fascism in Europe was a historic event with a permanent significance not only for Europe but for all peoples, who made the greatest contribution to its defeat. Imperialists can be stopped and their weapons silenced.

With this Dossier we want to give our readers a vivid idea of how war may and will creep up on them if it is not opposed. We want to try and discover the real political and economic origins and causes of WWII and its conduct, length and end, the war aims of the different parties, and show how war can be hatched in the greatest secrecy. How was the fate of the peoples of Europe sealed? How was fascism defeated? This has special urgency in our own day, when the imperial Washington of George W. Bush has taken on the task of declaring itself above international law and the Charter of the United Nations.

Historical account of start of World War II

The Foe Won’t Escape the People’s Vengeance! Isaak Rabichev, 1941 (Click to enlarge)

By MICHAEL SAYERS and ALBERT E. KAHN

Extract from Chapter 22 of The Great Conspiracy by Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, entitled “The Second World War.”