Many ordinary citizens around the world, including in the United States and across Europe, are united with Russia in properly honoring Victory Day.
Russian historian Roman Shumov aptly captured the sublime significance of Victory Day. He wrote this week, “For Russians, May 9 isn’t just a celebration of military triumph – it is a celebration of victory over death.”
This week Russia and allied nations celebrated Victory Day with the customary splendor and respect on display in Moscow’s Red Square. All across Russia, and on a smaller scale in other European countries too, there were commemorations in honor of the soldiers and civilians who gave their lives to defeat Nazi Germany in May 1945.
When Nazi Germany officially surrendered on May 9, the people of the Soviet Union had made the most excruciating and crucial sacrifice to gain victory. There is still no exact figure, but it is estimated that 27 to 30 million Soviet citizens died in the Great Patriotic War (1941-45). About 10 million of that total were Red Army soldiers, the rest civilians who died through unimaginable suffering of violence and deprivation. It was their collective sacrifice and heroism in the face of barbarism that finally wielded defeat on the Nazi Third Reich. It is only fitting that the Battle of Berlin was the last stand for Hitler’s regime and that the hoisting of the Soviet flag over the Reichstag was the iconic moment of triumph.
The contribution to defeat Nazi Germany by American, British and other volunteer soldiers from Western nations was not insignificant. But the “second front” that opened with the Normandy Landings in June 1944 is ridiculously overblown by Hollywood and self-serving Western narcissistic propaganda. The long-delayed D-Day landings were a relatively supplemental part to the massive damage that the Soviet people had already inflicted on the Eastern Front beginning in June 1941. Between 80 and 90 percent of German military casualties were incurred from numerous phenomenal battles, from Stalingrad to Kursk, Odessa to Kiev, and many more.
The defeat of Nazi Germany was not just an incredible military triumph, it was a victory over death, and not just for Russians, but for humanity as a whole. World War Two was the greatest, most heinous event in recent centuries, if not the last two millennia. The industrialized genocide of millions of civilians, the carpet bombing of cities, and the dropping of atomic bombs on innocents, all produced up to 70 to 100 million deaths. The destruction of life was unprecedented.
Arguably, World War Two can be said to be the most catastrophic, evil event in human history. Thus, by the same token, the victory over the perpetrators should also be elevated to the honor of the most important liberating event. And never should it be forgotten that the Soviet people hold the honor of largely securing that victory for humanity.
It needs also to be remembered that World War Two and the Nazi regime did not happen out of mysterious random happenstance. It was the culmination of imperialist politics, economics and rivalry. Nazi Germany was built up by Western capital in the 1930s during a collapse in Western capitalism to serve imperial interests of destroying the Soviet Union and any emerging socialist alternative.
Admittedly, eventually the Western powers sided with the Soviet Union (late in the war, it should be noted) but that wartime alliance was merely cobbled together to eliminate a perceived Nazi rogue regime that had grown to endanger Western interests. That is, the involvement of Western elites in WWII was one of expedience, not an imperative necessity based on principle. The proof of that is the subsequent and sudden treachery of the Western powers who turned hostile towards their Soviet wartime ally as soon as WWII was over and the beginning of the Cold War during which the Western powers recruited Nazi remnants to fight covertly against the Soviet Union. Some of the earliest recruits for the CIA and Britain’s MI6 were Ukrainian and Baltic fascists who had collaborated with the Nazi regime.
Today, Russia pays heartfelt respect to the countless heroes who defeated Nazi Germany and liberated Europe from fascism. Tellingly, as time passes, there is only shameful official silence in the United States and across Europe on the historic event. Conspicuously, there are hardly any May Day victory celebrations officially convened in the West. The reasons for Western silence are becoming clear, if nefarious.
Speaking at the Victory Day event in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin was right to rebuke Western powers for “distorting the truth” about the most consequential conflict in history.
Western elites and their controlled media will not acknowledge the Soviet Union’s inimitable role in defeating Nazi Germany. They are blinded by Russophobia and their propaganda objectives of trying to demonize Russia.
The Western elites by necessity must also bury the historical truth that the Second World War was borne out of imperialist conflict. Nazi Germany was driven not just by its fanatical hatred of Jews, Slavs and Communism, but also by colonial conquest of others’ resources.
It was a land grab just like the Western powers exploit Africa and the Global South for resources to this day. One instance is U.S. troops illegally occupying Syria while driving truckloads of oil out of the Arab country to enrich American oil companies and Wall Street.
The same colonial objectives that underpinned the Nazi Reich continue to drive the wars engendered by the United States and its Western allies. Every war that these powers have engaged in over the past eight decades since the end of WWII is propelled by imperialist calculations and lust, albeit covered up by outrageous lies such as defending democracy or human rights. In his Victory Day speech, Putin hit the nail on the head when he said the Western hegemonic world order is one of elitist colonial privilege which is concealed by inciting conflicts and internecine tensions.
The United States and its cabal of Western partners must distort not just the origins of World War Two but every war thereafter. For at the heart of every war in modern times is the evil of colonial-style conquest.
To this end, it is entirely appropriate if not deplorable that the official Western powers have no time or inclination to celebrate Victory Day. Of course, they can’t bear to. For to do so in any genuine way would be to expose their own culpability not just in the most heinous war in history but the many others that have followed. That is why they must falsify the Second World War, the Soviet victory and indeed the present NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
One had to have a good belly laugh at Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s pompous hack fraudulently called the BBC’s Russia Editor, who wrote with disparaging conceit about the Victory Day event in Moscow: “In Russia today the authorities are not just remembering the past. They are weaponizing it, to try to justify the present.”
The most telling circumstances of today is that the United States and its imperial lackeys in NATO are fully weaponizing a neoNazi regime in Ukraine that venerates the Third Reich and its genocidal crimes. Another consistent circumstance is that the same Western powers (who fancifully call themselves democracies) are fully weaponizing a genocide against the Palestinian people by a fascist Zionist regime conceived in 1948 as a bastard of Western colonialism pimping off the Jewish Holocaust.
And then this week, we have Britain’s Foreign Minister, Lord [sic] David Cameron trying to sound all Churchillian and portentous by warning in a speech that, “From Tallinn to Warsaw, Prague to Bucharest, a chill has once more descended across the European continent.”
Somebody should tell Cameron, who is the wealthy descendant of British slave traders, that the chill he imagines might have something to do with Britain supplying Ukrainian NeoNazis with long-range missiles that Cameron says should be aimed at Russia.
Today, Western states are steadily taking on the fascist form that they always were as they repress peaceful protesters against genocide in Gaza and arming a Nazi regime in Ukraine.
Russia’s celebration of Victory Day is incomparable in its significance with any other historical date of modern history. As Western states devolve into fascism, it is more important than ever to celebrate and fully understand the event for its contemporary meaning. Many ordinary citizens around the world, including in the United States and across Europe, are united with Russia in properly honoring Victory Day.
That’s why Western elites and rulers would prefer to forget history. It’s catching up with them and exposing their criminality.