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60th Anniversary of the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union
June 22 marked the 60th anniversary of the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union, a turning point in the events of World War II. Although the causes, events and consequences of that war have never strayed far from the minds of the world's people, there has recently been a barrage of attention paid to it from the opinion and image makers of the U.S. culture capital, Hollywood, with the back-to-back release of two movies, Enemy at the Gate and Pearl Harbor. In response, this anniversary seems an appropriate occasion to review and clarify the origins of World War II.
Britain declared war on Germany two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. By this time, Germany had already seized Austria and Czechoslovakia, Italy had occupied Abyssinia and Albania, Germany and Italy together had intervened in Spain, and the Japanese had invaded and occupied China. But until September 1939 Britain chose to follow a policy of appeasement. The British goal in the 1930s, while Hitler was gaining strength, was to get Germany to move east and attack the Soviet Union. France also adopted this policy. It was a self-serving, short-sighted policy, which led to the disaster of a second inter-imperialist world war. When Britain and its allies finally declared war, they were doing so as rivals in an inter-imperialist war for the re-division of the world. For its part, the United States waited and watched to see what would serve its interests. The U.S. was extremely antagonistic towards the Soviet Union and, under the guise of "containing the USSR", it had helped to set up a cordon sanitaire of hostile, reactionary countries around the Soviet state. Once war broke out, the U.S. played politics in Europe in such a manner as to stay out of the war, waiting for the Europeans to kill one another and be weakened, thus creating opportunities for the U.S. to seize their markets.
Even after declaring war on Germany, the British and French did little fighting, still hoping to turn Hitler eastward against the Soviet Union. Negotiations between Britain, France and the Soviet Union for a treaty of mutual assistance were systematically stalled by the British, while British envoys feverishly attempted to convince Sweden to allow Nazi troops free passage through Swedish territory to attack the Soviet Union from the north. The press of the day dubbed this period the "phoney war".
When it became clear that Britain and France were more concerned with destroying the Soviet Union than defending the peoples of Europe, the Soviet Union decided to sign a non-aggression pact with Germany to buy the Soviet state some much-needed time to prepare for the inevitable Nazi assault. History has confirmed the wisdom of that decision, although the British imperialists have never forgiven J. V. Stalin for defeating their strategy, and to this day attribute to the Soviet Union their own motive of carving up Europe.
The nature of the war was one of inter-imperialist rivalry until the Soviet Union was attacked. Only then did it assume the character of an anti-fascist national war of liberation. By the time of the attack, the Soviet Union was well prepared for the inevitable. With all its might and the tremendous, sacrifice of millions upon millions of lives, the Red Army and the entire Soviet people, under the leadership of J. V. Stalin, fought to defeat the Nazi aggressors and end their hegemony. They were fighting not only to save themselves but to defend socialism and the interests of the people of the entire world and their efforts inspired millions. The popularity of the movie Enemy at the Gate, which depicts an episode in the epic battle of Stalingrad, shows that this inspiration still exists to this day, despite five decades of Cold War propaganda and falsification of history by those whose motives have much in common with the Nazis.