Release from the PCP Press Office

In the name of peace and truth - against fascism and war - 79 years ago, Nazi Germany launched the war against the USSR

79 years ago, in the early hours of June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany was attacking, without a declaration of war, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The main Front of the Second World War was thus opened, one in which the fate of the bloodiest war in history and the defeat of fascist Germany would be decided, sealed four years later, with the fall of Berlin and the raising of the Soviet flag on the ruins of the Reichstag, in early May 1945.

The attack against the Soviet Union by Hitler's hordes confirmed the strategic aims of Nazi expansionism, in search of a "vital space" to the East, an inseparable feature of the militant anti-communism of the Axis powers - Germany, Italy and Japan - gathered in the fascist anti-Komintern alliance. With the launch of operation "Barbarrossa" by the Wehrmacht against the USSR, the policy of connivance with the advance of fascism by the ruling classes of the great capitalist powers (France, the United Kingdom and the United States of America) was also fulfilled, aimed at throwing Nazi militarism and expansionism against the USSR. This is how one can understand the rejection by London and Paris to Moscow's continuous proposals for the creation of an anti-Nazi "coalition", in the light of a historic path of veiled support and active complicity with Nazi Germany’s militarism, together with the infamous partition of Czechoslovakia in the Munich Pact - which opened the door to German expansionism and the beginning of the War - and, previously, by the hypocrisy of the “policy of neutrality” in the Spanish civil war or the shameful capitulation before Austria's annexation by fascist Germany.

Since the early days of the attack against the USSR, Nazi troops faced a fierce resistance. Right on the Soviet border, the epic resistance of Red Army soldiers in the Brest Fortress lasted longer than the military opposition carried out in other European states against the Nazi war beast. The German strategy of a lightning war was definitively defeated at the gates of Moscow, in late autumn 1941, whose battle marked the first strategic defeat suffered by Germany in World War II.

For the peoples of the USSR, the 1418 days of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) constituted an immortal saga, proving the superiority of the young socialist system that emerged from the triumph of the October 1917 Revolution, both on the military front and on the rearguard, ensuring the organisation and functioning of the economy, of industrial production and productive tasks as a whole. The memory of those who fell and gave their best for the Victory is heroic, contributing to the defeat of barbarism, in defence of freedom and democracy in the world. The Victory over Nazi-fascism achieved on May 9, 1945 with the signing in Berlin of the unconditional surrender of fascist Germany meant for the Soviet people a very high cost of more than 20 million lives.

Contrary to persistent campaigns of falsification and rewriting of history, it is worth recalling, 79 years after the June 22, 1941, that the backbone of the Nazi war machine was broken and destroyed by Soviet troops. Recalling that when the Western allies finally opened the Western Front in 1944, in Normandy, 92 percent of Germany's ground troops fought on the Eastern Front. It was on the Eastern Front that 75 percent of the tanks, artillery pieces and fighter planes of Nazi troops were destroyed in the course of the War.

However much the dominant system tries today to promote dangerous campaigns to whitewash fascism, the truth is that on all the main battle fronts of World War II, from Europe to Asia, the communists were at the forefront of anti-fascist resistance and made their decisive contribution for the Victory. The 1945 Victory over Nazi-fascism, achieved at the cost of immeasurable sacrifices, demonstrated that, even in the face of adversity and powerful enemies, it is possible to resist and win.

In this year that celebrates the 75th. anniversary of Victory Day, in a time of uncertainty, marked by the consequences of the deepening of the contradictions and structural crisis of capitalism - whose impact the current epidemic outbreak has worsened -, in which the resurgence of the threat of fascism and war is dangerously looming, the defence of the truth and the clear rejection of its adulteration is more necessary.

It is necessary to learn the lessons of history in the present struggle against imperialism and war, unmasking the obscure agenda of reactionary and neo-fascist forces stimulated by big capital - in a context of widespread exacerbation of contradictions and a gradual relative decline of the USA and the main capitalist powers - and affirming the struggle for freedom, democracy, sovereignty and peace.

In particular, it is necessary to firmly reject the attempts to grossly falsify the history of World War II and its objectives, which serve to endorse the action of the most aggressive sectors of imperialism and to whitewash the atrocious crimes of fascism - going so far as to blame the USSR for the start of the war, as done by a deplorable European Parliament resolution, adopted in September 2019.

By signalling the 79th anniversary of fascist Germany's attack on the USSR, the PCP reaffirms its commitment to the Portuguese workers and people, to the ideals of freedom, democracy, social progress, socialism, peace, to which it dedicated almost a hundred years of life. As well as reaffirming its confidence that the unity and struggle of the world's anti-fascist and anti-imperialist forces will defeat the disturbing threats to freedom, social progress and peace that hang over humanity.