"Canada mourns the passing of the generation that asserted our independence on the world stage and established our international reputation as an unwavering champion of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law," he stated. On Canada Day this year Harper
praised the Canadian
military for
representing Canadian values, which he describes as "working hard,
doing
what's right, and determination to be our best." He added: "The members
of
our military have always been willing to give their lives to protect
our
freedom, promote our values and pursue peace." He also mentioned three
"milestones" occurring this year: the 100th anniversary of the start of
the First
World War, the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World
War,
and the end of Canada's "military mission" in Afghanistan. Depriving
them of
all context, he seeks to create a link among these three events --
Canada's defence of the British Empire, the fight against fascism in
the
Second
World War, and Canada's participation in the U.S-led war of aggression
in
Afghanistan.
These comments lay bare for all to see the imperialist outlook in which the ruling circles are hopelessly mired to this day. For them, nationhood is not an inherent quality based on a common language, shared territory, history and psychology but a privilege to be bestowed as the imperial power sees fit on those it deems worthy. Sovereignty, similarly, is not the inherent right to self-determination, but instead a privilege which is earned. In this sense, they have not settled scores with the
thinking of their
predecessors from the time of the Boer War through to the First World
War,
who thought that Canada, as well as the "civilized" dominions of
Australia,
New Zealand and South Africa, should become junior partners with
Britain
in
administering the Empire and paying for its defence. In no sense can the First World War be seen as a battle for democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law. The inhabitants of Britain's vast empire were for the most part subjects of the Crown sent to war to slaughter their fellow workers from the "other wise." In Canada at that time, even the right to vote did not extend to the majority of the population. Although women would be successful in affirming their right to vote soon after the war, people of indigenous origin could only achieve citizenship if they agreed to renounce their inherent and treaty rights -- a policy which was not reversed for another almost fifty years.
At the time of World War One, the people of Ireland were waging a determined fight for an independent republic. India, the jewel in the Empire's crown, would see massacre after massacre as the people fought for the right to determine their own future. The War was a terrible slaughter of the working peoples of the combatant countries which wrought asunder the Czarist Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and, in Canada, ended the euphoria of belonging to the British Empire as well. The end of the war saw Canadian forces along with troops from ten other countries, instigated by Britain and France, invade Soviet Russia in a vain attempt to maintain the privileges of the Czarist establishment negated by the establishment of the world's first anti-war government. Moreover, the war was used as a pretext in Canada to suppress organized labour and revolutionary politics. The War Measures Act remained in effect for over a year after the end of the war and was used against organizers of the Winnipeg General Strike.
Canada's young men were sent to their slaughter in the service of the British Empire while the Canadian ruling circles clamoured for recognition so they too could share in the spoils of war. So too today, Harper, on behalf of the monopoly capitalists who have established an imperialist United States of North American monopolies, seeks to position Canada within the new arrangements to benefit from the spoils of war. This is compounded by Harper's own anti-communist Christian Zionist fundamentalist religious beliefs, leading to not only unprincipled but also extremist support for Israel and zealous service to U.S. interests in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Libya and all over the world, from Europe, to Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The vision of sovereignty espoused by Harper and company comes out of a thoroughly morbid world view in which it is through blood sacrifice in the service of an imperial power that Canada proves its worthiness as a nation which is both capable and trustworthy when it comes to exercising what it calls sovereignty. What kind of sovereignty is it? The nation is sovereign so long as it accepts the imperial mission and its 19th century "white man's burden:" expanding the empire, sending scores of young men to die in the trenches, subjugating "less civilized" nations striving for their independence, and using violence at home to maintain the privilege of capital over the working class and to deny First Nations their rights! Today's neo-liberal ruling class is bent on annexing Canada to U.S. imperialism's war machine as it tramples on the sovereignty of nations and peoples around the world. It has established a war government to achieve these ends and puts all the resources of Canada at the disposal of this war aim. Canada needs an anti-war government which renounces the use of force to settle conflicts, upholds the international rule of law and the sacred cause of peaceful coexistence and equality amongst nations big and small. It is urgent that on the occasion of the commemorations of World War One Canadians speak up against the falsifiers of history and all disinformation which portrays the murderous cause of the U.S, imperialists and Israeli Zionists in peaceful garb so as to embroil Canada's soldiers in committing crimes against humanity. Those who do such things in the name of peace, democracy and human rights are scum of the earth which deserve our utter contempt.
Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad A Crucial Turning Point in HistoryThe turning point of the Second World War was the
historic Soviet victory
at the Battle of Stalingrad, which ended on February 2, 1943. The
Germans
treacherously invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The Soviet
Union
faced 257 enemy divisions of 10,000-15,000 troops each, of which 207
were German, the
largest army ever
assembled in one place. By October 1942, the Nazi armies stood barely
120
km from Moscow, had broken into Stalingrad, and had entered the
foothills of
the Caucasus, trying to capture the valuable oilfields. But even in
those dire
days, the Soviet army and people, led by Joseph Stalin, found the
strength to
check
the enemy and deal an answering blow. Soon they turned the tide. The
Soviet
troops eventually went over to the offensive and inflicted new,
powerful blows
on the Germans, first at Stalingrad, then at Kursk. One of monuments in the memorial complex in Volgagrad honouring those who fought in the battle of Stalingrad. As the invaders were massing over one million soldiers and thousands of tanks, artillery pieces and planes on the Russian steppe west of Stalingrad, Stalin, the leader of the socialist Motherland, vowed that this was as far east as the criminals would go. "Not one step back!" became the battle cry of Stalingrad. The prelude to the Battle of Stalingrad began on July 27, 1942. The advancing German Fourth Panzer Army crossed the Don River north of Stalingrad and attacked eastward, cutting the Stalingrad-Salsk railway. Stalingrad sat in the big bend of the Volga river and the Germans wanted to direct their main attack towards the Volga River, trying to outflank the Soviet 64th Army and the whole Stalingrad front. The Germans had planned a two-pronged ground attack on Stalingrad, with the German Sixth Army advancing from the north and the Fourth Panzer Army coming up from the south. After a month of very hard fighting against the stalwart Soviet defences, the German Sixth Army finally managed to cross the Don on August 23, reaching Stalingrad's northern suburbs later that day. The Hungarian, Italian, Croatian, and Romanian armies allied with the Germans were about 60 kilometres from Stalingrad, which was also within reach of Germany's air bases on occupied Soviet territory. Consequently, aircraft of Luftflotte 4, one of the primary divisions of the German Luftwaffe, were able to attack the city with bombers, dive bombers, and fighter planes, both night and day, vainly attempting to terrorize the city into surrendering. Meanwhile, the German 14th Panzer Corps opened a narrow breach between the German Sixth Army's main body and the northern Stalingrad suburbs at the Volga River, while in the south, heavy Soviet resistance stopped the Fourth Panzer Army from making any headway. On August 29, the Fourth Panzer Army finally broke through into the rear areas of both the 62nd and 64th Soviet Armies. The Germans attempted to cut off the 62nd Army, but a strong Soviet counterattack enabled Soviet forces to fall back towards Stalingrad. The German Sixth Army resumed its offensive on September 2, linking up with the Fourth Panzer Army the following day. The nearer the Germans got to Stalingrad, the more intense the fighting became and the Germans suffered huge losses. On September 12, the Germans entered Stalingrad itself and fighting within the city began the next day. In the forefront of the organized resistance were the units of the Red Army and Workers' Militia. The Workers' Militia fortified every factory and workplace so that even after being bombed, any attempt of the invading force to occupy the facility would be repulsed. Students and community members young and old were organized and armed to fight to defend their city and the rights of all. The Urban Committee of Defense, headed by the Secretary of the Stalingrad Communist Party Regional Office declared, "Dear comrades! Stalingrad citizens! Bloody Hitlerites have torn their way to sunny Stalingrad and to the great river Volga. Stalingrad citizens! Let us not allow the Germans to desecrate our native city. Let us rise as one to protect our beloved city, homes, and families. Please leave your homes and build impregnable barricades on every street. Let us make each quarter, each house, each street an unassailable fortress.... Everyone to the barricades! All those who can carry a rifle must protect their native city and homes!" Soldiers of the Red Army during Battle of Stalingrad. Once the Germans entered Stalingrad, bitter fighting raged for every inch of every street, factory, house, basement, and staircase. The Soviets had converted apartment blocks, factories, warehouses, homes, and office buildings into strongholds bristling with machine guns, anti-tank rifles, mortars, mines, barbed wire, snipers, and small units of submachine gunners and grenadiers prepared for house-to-house combat. Control of spaces changed hands many times in a day. The battles for the Red October Steel Factory, the Dzerzhinsky tractor factory and the Barrikady gun factory became world-famous. As the Soviet defenders said, "The land of the Volga has become slippery with blood and the Germans have found it a slippery slope to death." On November 19, after two months of heroic fighting within the city, the Soviets launched Operation Uranus, a massive two-pronged counteroffensive against the flanks of the German Sixth Army. These flanks were mainly guarded by Romanian, Hungarian, Croatian and Italian soldiers. The counteroffensive began with an 80-minute artillery bombardment directed almost entirely against the non-German Axis units. The Germans attempted to bolster the Axis units with the 48th Panzer Corps but they were soon swept aside. The Soviet forces routed the Romanians, who were in the direct path of the Soviet offensive, encircling the German forces by November 23. Operation Uranus trapped 250,000-300,000 enemy soldiers within an area stretching 50 kilometres from east to west and 40 kilometres north to south The German Sixth Army and parts of the Fourth Panzer Army were now trapped inside Stalingrad. Hitler ordered the Sixth Army to remain on the defensive rather than try to break out and the Soviet forces soon gained the upper hand inside the city. On December 12, the Germans began Operation Winter Storm to try to rescue their trapped Sixth Army. The attempt failed and this led to a siege that lasted almost three additional months, during which the Soviet forces launched pincer movements from north and south to tighten the unbreakable ring of steel around the German Sixth Army. The Soviet Union issued an ultimatum of surrender to the Sixth Army on January 8, 1943, pointing out its dire situation, but the Germans struggled on haplessly, suffering many more losses, until finally surrendering on February 2, 1943. Soviet soldier in Stalingrad celebrates victory in the Battle of Stalingrad, February 2, 1943. (TML Archives and The Battle for Stalingrad by Marshal Vasili Chuikov)
Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising The Treachery of Historical FalsificationsMuch 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. Monument in Warsaw, inaugurated in 1989, to those who fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. In 1944, the Soviet armed forces were steadily advancing after the great victories at Stalingrad and Kursk, marching toward Berlin, forcing the Nazis back on all fronts. On July 21, during the successful drive toward the borders of Poland, at a session of the National Council of Poland in Chelm (the first piece of Polish territory liberated from the Nazi occupiers) the Polish Committee of National Liberation was created as a provisional government for a democratic Poland. On the second day, the committee called for the Polish people to struggle for complete liberation from the Nazi occupiers. One of the first and most urgent tasks of the revolutionary regime was to create the Voiske Polskoye, an anti-fascist army loyal to the people.
When the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, the so-called leaders of Poland put up no resistance but fled to Romania and left the Polish people to fend for themselves. Against Poland, the Nazis perpetrated one of the worst crimes history has ever known. Poland suffered the largest number of casualties per population of any European country. Direct extermination by mass murder, death camps, slave labour, starvation and other means took some 6 million people's lives, including 2,700,000 Polish Jews, 2,000,000 children and youth, more than 50,000 Roma, some 12,000 people deemed mentally handicapped and thousands of Polish prisoners of war, soldiers and officers, as well as national minorities who were systematically eliminated. Some 40,000 Polish intellectuals, political personalities and other leaders were shot by the SS within the first six weeks of the Nazi occupation. Beginning in May 1939, Operation Tannenberg, which was part of Hitler's Generalplan Ost (Masterplan East), had already identified more than 61,000 Polish activists, intelligentsia, scholars, former officers and others who were to be interned or shot. The bodies of the 4,143 Polish officers who were found buried in Katyn Forest is just one example of the many executions the SS and the Wehrmacht carried out. Even in the face of complete desertion by their so-called leaders, the Polish people kept their spirit of resistance strong. Many Poles fought courageously in the communist-led underground Resistance against the Nazis. They formed their own patriotic Polish military divisions and fought against the Nazis alongside the Soviet Red Army all the way to Berlin. Eventually the Polish leaders who had run away and who represented only the Polish landowners and industrialists, established a phony "government-in-exile," first in Paris, then in Angers and finally in London. From London, they schemed and plotted to regain power over the Polish people, in collusion with the British imperialists.
As early as July 24, 1944, with the Soviet forces steadily pushing back the Nazis, the reactionary government-in-exile and its subservient Polish Home Army had decided to order an uprising in Warsaw to take place before the Soviet Forces reached the city. The aim was to establish their own organs of power, to restore the old regime which had fled the Nazis in 1939 and abandoned the Polish people to the criminal occupation, and to oppose and destroy the newly-formed democratic provisional government of Poland. The London-based reactionaries had discussed the idea of the Warsaw Uprising a long time previously and the commander-in-chief of the Polish Home Army, General Count Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, had reported to London that the uprising could not possibly succeed. But when the organs of the people's democratic regime appeared on liberated Polish territory and were enthusiastically greeted by the Polish people, the government-in-exile and the Polish Home Army changed their minds. On July 25, Bor-Komorowski reported to London: "Ready at any minute for the battle for Warsaw." Neither the Soviet government nor the command of the Red Army nor the organs of the newly formed people's democratic regime in Poland nor the nascent Voiske Polskoye, which had already taken part in the liberation of Lublin, Poland on July 24, 1944, were informed of the planned uprising. Even the allied military command, SHAEF, declared they knew nothing about it, although this may have been a cover-up. The commanders of the Polish Home Army, subordinate to the London government-in-exile, tried in every way to conceal the planned uprising from the Soviet forces and command. At the same time, representatives of the London government-in-exile and their collaborators kept a close watch on the fighting on the Soviet-German front, especially near Warsaw. The London plotters did not intend to start the uprising until the Soviet forces came close to Warsaw. They hoped that if those engaged in the uprising got into a critical position, the Soviet forces would rescue them. At the last moment, Bor-Komorowski moved the date of the uprising ahead to August 1, making it impossible to carry out any plans which had been previously worked out. At the outset of the uprising, there was not even elementary communication among the different insurgent forces. Many soldiers did not know where to find their commanding officers and many officers did not know where weapons were stored. The element of surprise was lost and the Nazi occupiers seized all the key points for communication, transport and electrical power. At the same time, the hatred of the Warsaw inhabitants for the Nazis gave the uprising a popular scope and character which the reactionary planners had not expected. Many people joined in, beginning to build barricades and joining the military detachments even though they had no weapons. Some thought the uprising had been planned in collaboration with the advancing Soviet forces. Due to the high fighting morale of the insurgents and their hatred of the fascist occupiers, true miracles of heroism were performed. The mass support resulted in some degree of success but soon the Nazis struck back viciously with their superior numbers and weaponry. Polish partisan brigades participating in the Warsaw Uprising. Meanwhile, the situation worsened on the main Soviet-German front when the Nazis launched a strong counter-attack, forcing the Soviet forces to fight a hard defensive battle. Meanwhile, Warsaw was burning. The smoke was seen by the Soviet commanders who had gone to the area of the counter-attack to direct operations. A few days later, the Soviet forces smashed the Nazi counter-attack, but were unable to overcome the Nazi defences and break through into Warsaw. On August 4, British Prime Minister Churchill sent a message to Stalin mentioning the Warsaw uprising for the first time and implying that it was succeeding. He claimed that the British were supplying arms, that the insurgents had asked for Soviet help, and that the aim of the uprising was to help the Soviet forces. Stalin was skeptical and stated so in his reply the next day: "The Polish Home Army consists of a few detachments which are incorrectly called divisions. They have neither artillery nor air support nor tanks. I cannot imagine how such detachments can take Warsaw, into whose defense the Germans have put four panzer (tank) divisions." Stalin then ordered his generals to report their ideas concerning the capture of Warsaw. The August 6th generals' report stated that the Soviet forces were not strong enough at the time to break through the German military grouping between them and Warsaw. "We cannot go over to the offensive until August 10 because prior to that time we will not have been able to bring up the requisite ammunition." The Soviet leadership agreed. Despite the exhaustion of the Soviet forces and the need to improve the security in the rear, the Soviet Supreme Command began to organize a new offensive with the aim of liberating Warsaw. Even under the most favorable conditions, however, the offensive could not have been launched before August 25. Meanwhile, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, "Prime Minister" of the Polish government-in-exile, was holding talks with Stalin and Molotov about the situation in Poland. Later, he returned to London and falsified the nature of the talks to Churchill, slandering the Soviet Union and blaming the Soviets for the difficult situation of the Warsaw insurgents. When contacted by Churchill and asked about this, Stalin replied immediately by issuing a public statement that the Polish government-in-exile was responsible for the events in Warsaw and had given no warning to the Soviet command or attempted to coordinate operations. Therefore all responsibility for what had happened lay with the exiles in London. Stalin also wrote directly to Churchill, stating in his letter that the uprising was a senseless adventure for which the inhabitants had paid with countless victims. "This would not have happened if the Soviet command had been informed before the beginning of the Warsaw action and if the Poles had maintained contact with them." Stalin then advanced an alternative plan which differed radically from that of the London Poles, a front-line assault operation to crush the enemy. The new plan was put into effect immediately. Fierce fighting took place especially on the approaches to the Warsaw suburb of Praga. Once again the Nazi defences proved too strong, especially since the Soviet forces were short of ammunition. The Soviet troops were also tired after long months of continuous fighting and, in addition, supplies needed to be brought up if further fighting was to be successful. The Soviet forces had to go temporarily over to the defensive. Playing his duplicitous role, Churchill then sent a letter to Stalin, co-signed by Roosevelt, that world public opinion would be unfavorable "if the anti-Nazis in Warsaw were abandoned." Stalin's reply was immediate and direct: "Sooner or later everyone will learn the truth about the handful of criminals who, for the sake of seizing power, organized the Warsaw adventure. These people abused the trust of the Warsovians, throwing many virtually unarmed people under the German guns, tanks, and airplanes. The result was a situation such that each new day was used not by the Poles to liberate Warsaw but by the Hitlerites to ruthlessly annihilate the inhabitants of Warsaw." Early in September, Soviet reconnaissance discovered that one German Panzer division and several other forces had moved from Praga to a Soviet bridgehead on the Vistula River. The Soviet forces took advantage of this transfer of enemy troops to strike a blow toward Praga, beginning on September 10. On the night of September 13 they broke into Praga, where they were greeted as liberators by the inhabitants. That was when the Warsaw Uprising should have started so as to stop the Nazis from blowing up the bridges across the Vistula, allowing the Soviet soldiers to cross into the heart of Warsaw. Continuing their criminal activity, the leaders of the uprising from the London camp still refused to make contact. However, leaders of the local anti-fascist Armia Ludowa or People's Army, who had joined the uprising, sent two brave messengers to the Soviet lines who did provide details of the uprising, the situation in the city, and the deployment of the insurgent forces. Soviet forces then dropped a large supply of weapons, ammunition, and other materials into Warsaw, which reached the hands of the insurgents, the beginning of regular supplies. At the same time, the Soviet command concluded that their forces were still not strong enough to liberate Warsaw. On September 16, forces of the anti-fascist Polish First Army crossed the Vistula. Under the pressure of events, Bor-Komorowski, the commander of the Polish Home Army finally made contact with the Soviet command. Home Army detachments in Warsaw were told to get in touch with the Polish First Army, then establish communication with the Red Army forces. On September 18, the Allies sent eight groups of Flying Fortresses over Warsaw at 4,000 metres to drop weapons, ammunition and foodstuffs. Some reached the insurgents but due to the height from which the planes made the drops, some fell inaccurately into the hands of the Germans. Meanwhile Soviet pilots continued regular and very accurate night drops from a height of 150-200 metres.
The battle to enter Warsaw raged for days. The Germans had superiority in both troops and weaponry but the Soviet forces and their Polish allies fought on. Then on September 20, news was received that Bor-Komorowski had issued secret orders to undermine the insurgent forces from within. He had commanded that any armed insurgents oriented toward the new democratic Polish government in Lublin were to be forced to take orders only from him and that those who did not comply were to be severely punished. The concentration of new and very substantial German forces, including tanks, in the centre of Warsaw decided the outcome of the battle for the city. In the last days of September, insurgent activity had dropped, even as the Germans stepped up their attacks. Finally the Soviet generals, in consultation with the General Staff, decided they had to discontinue military operations in Warsaw. On September 28, the Nazis launched a general offensive and fierce battles raged for three days. Again, the remaining insurgent forces were sabotaged by the command of the Home Army, who ordered their immediate surrender. Only a small group emerged from the battle to be brought back across the Vistula to the Soviet side. On October 2, resistance within Warsaw ceased. The leadership of the Polish Home Army capitulated to the Germans. Strangely, Bor-Komorowski was allowed to live and was put into an internment camp in Germany. Liberated at the end of the war, he spent the rest of his life in London. From 1947 to 1949 he served as Prime Minister of the decrepit Polish government-in-exile, which no longer had any diplomatic recognition from most Western European countries. The Warsaw Uprising cost the lives of over 200,000
inhabitants of
Warsaw. Countless numbers were wounded. Hundreds of thousands of
residents were sent to the concentration camps or expelled from the
city. The
city was almost completely destroyed. Although the insurgents were
unable to
achieve final victory, the struggle cast a glow of unfading glory on
them and
covered with eternal shame those members of the so-called Polish
government-in-exile whose treacherous plans had undermined the struggle
from
beginning to end. Only in the course of the offensive of the winter of
1944-45
could all of Poland and so also Warsaw be liberated. The Warsaw Uprising has become a symbol of the bankruptcy of the Polish reactionaries whose descendants still try to spread their lies about what happened. At the same time, the barricades of Warsaw bore witness at the time to the whole world of the courage of the Polish people and the people's forces, and the unswerving commitment of the Soviet Union to the complete defeat of Nazism. In all, 600,000 Soviet soldiers gave their lives for the liberation of Poland. An eternal flame was lit on the Czerniakow Bank of the Vistula River as a reminder of the blood shed by the Polish and Soviet soldiers in the joint battles against Nazism for the liberation and bright future of the Polish people. Note
1. The Warsaw Uprising is not to be
confused with
the earlier event
known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which took place from April 19 to
May 16, 1943. This article draws mainly on The Last Six Months by General
Sergei M. Shtemenko, published in 1977 by Doubleday. Shtemenko was
Deputy Chief of General Headquarters. He worked directly under Stalin,
and helped coordinate Soviet activities across the whole Soviet-German
front, including during the Warsaw Uprising.
69th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Never Again! No to Nuclear Blackmail
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