Eighty-five years ago, on 22 June 1941, the fascist Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union.

What followed were the most unimaginable crimes committed against the peoples of the Soviet Union, including the murder of more than 27 million Soviet citizens and the destruction of entire areas of land on behalf of German monopoly capital. But thanks to their overwhelming bravery and sacrifice, the soldiers of the Red Army accomplished the liberation of Europe and the world from fascism.

Especially at a time when the ruling circles in politics, business, and the media in the West are once again calling for war, when Russophobia and militarism are being promoted again, and when history is being distorted in order to prepare a new major war against Russia, the historical truth must be defended against the warmongers and falsifiers.

The falsification of history that conceals, denies or presents the dead on the territory of the USSR as ordinary victims of war must be opposed. The vast majority of the 27 million victims were civilians, shot, beaten, burned, starved, and tortured to death. They were to be exterminated so that their land would then be freed up for colonial settlement by supposedly more “valuable” people who called themselves Aryan. The war against the Soviet Union was undoubtedly eliminatory in nature and must be described as genocide.

The driving force behind all this was the enormous hunger of German monopoly capital for raw materials, agricultural land, and slave labour. The USSR’s natural resources were to be used primarily for German armaments production, and agricultural goods were to be stolen to such an extent that the local population had to starve. The people in the occupied territories were primarily assigned the role of slave workers, whose imminent death as a result of inhumane working conditions was deliberately planned beforehand. The fascist advance against the Soviet Union also offered capitalism an opportunity to try destroying its main ideological enemy on the international level.

When the question is asked how the peoples of the Soviet Union were able to withstand this onslaught of barbarism and annihilation, it should be noted that the CPSU and its leadership managed to unite almost the entire Soviet population, over 100 peoples, across classes and strata, into a bloc of resistance. The Red Army was a political army, in individual units of which political commissars provided ideological leadership and often earned the respect of soldiers during combat operations. Thus, the Red Army soldiers clearly had in mind the goal of their struggle, that is, the salvation of their homeland from annihilation and the liberation of the European peoples from fascism. Similarly, the civilian population was also fighting, for example, when it dismantled arms factories at the cost of its last forces and rebuilt them in other places outside the enemy’s reach.

Anyone who reads reports about the horror of the siege of Leningrad will understand that the will to live and fight to the extent shown there can be not only the result of “command and obedience.” After the October Revolution, the people of the Soviet Union had accomplished tremendous economic, social and cultural achievements. So there was a lot of self-created to defend. Also, one must not forget about the partisan units that operated in the rear of the enemy with the support of the civilian population. The Wehrmacht and the SS repeatedly committed brutal massacres of civilians under the guise of “combatting partisans.” In this regard, it is also worth highlighting the role of numerous women who fought heroically in the regular army or in the partisans.

However, there is no culture of remembrance that takes these facts into account in capitalist Germany and its collaborator countries today. There is no central memorial for the millions of murdered Soviet citizens. At many memorial events, there is no longer even a formulaic thank you to the liberators of the Red Army. On the contrary: their symbols, songs, and flags are banned! Their monuments are to be changed, “contextualised,” or completely removed. With the help of the doctrine of combatting “totalitarianism,” the Soviet Union is not only equated with Nazi Germany but is even accused of “complicity” in the Second World War!

It is not a new insight that politics is often made in the present by remembering (or not remembering!) certain chapters of history. Commemoration will be adapted to the needs of those in power today. This is now happening with remarkable openness, for example when German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul openly said that: “Russia will always remain an enemy for us.”

The Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS committed their crimes for the benefit of a few capitalist war-profiteers and ultimately turned all of Europe into a field of rubble and a mass grave. The hatred against Russia, the demonisation and degradation of the people living there, is a tradition in the West that is as long-lasting as it is extremely dangerous.