August 2, 2014 - No. 26

On the Important Questions of War and Peace

Oppose the Genocidal Onslaught of
the Zionist Occupiers!

A group of Palestinian artists have turned the current fighting in Gaza into a symbol of hope and resistance by transforming photographs of rocket explosions. Artists Tawfik Gebreel, Bushra Shanan and Belal Khaled have drawn images of peace signs, clenched fists and parents playing with their children onto photographs of the smoke-filled region. Gebreel, a Palestinian architect based in Gaza, said he began drawing images in the smoke from Israeli rocket strikes as a way
of reconciling
his work with the reality he saw." Click here for more images.

Actions Across Canada and Around the World
Demand End to Israeli Crimes


Hundredth Anniversary of the First World War
and Canada's "Coming of Age"

A Sovereignty Based on Empire Building
- Kevan Hunter -


Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad
A Crucial Turning Point in History
- George Allen -


Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising
The Treachery of Historical Falsifications
- Dougal MacDonald -


69th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Never Again! No to Nuclear Blackmail by U.S. and Big Powers!
- Peggy Morton -




On the Important Questions of War and Peace

Oppose the Genocidal Onslaught of
the Zionist Occupiers!


Demonstration in Ottawa at the Canadian parliament, July 26, 2014

The genocidal onslaught of the Zionist Occupiers against the Palestinian people has entered its fourth week. Their war crimes and crimes against humanity are mounting day by day. So too is the massive disinformation of the American, Canadian and European official circles and monopoly owned media. This disinformation would have us believe that the genocidal onslaught of the Israeli Zionists against the Palestinian people is not a war crime committed by the occupiers of Palestinian lands who are engaged in state terrorism. On the contrary, they would have us believe that Israel is a modern democratic state exercising its right to self-defence against terrorist attackers.

These official circles and media shamelessly blame the Resistance for the violence of the Zionists. They call the wholesale killing of civilians, which are crimes of genocide, "unfortunate accidents" in an otherwise just cause to wipe out "terrorists." Time and again, the media blame the Resistance for destroying any chance of a "peaceful final solution." In fact, the very thought that the genocidal crimes of the Zionist Occupiers "protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian attacks" is irrational.

Instead of applauding the Resistance and denouncing the brutal onslaught of the Zionist Occupiers, the official circles in the Anglo-American world and Europe condemn the victims and give voice to the criminals. Not only the Government of Canada but also the NDP Official Opposition and the Liberal Party of Canada, both of which hope to form the next government, consider the state-organized terrorist assaults of the Zionist Occupiers as appropriate and those of the Resistance to be terrorism.

To excuse the crimes of the Zionist Occupiers and condemn the resistance of the Palestinians to the occupation and for their right to be is unacceptable. It is a travesty to cover up the economic and political interrelations which inform the entire policy of the system of imperialist states, of which the state of Israel is an integral part. These interrelations ascertain beyond the shadow of any doubt that the Zionist state of Israel is committing genocide.

The specialty of those engaged in spreading this disinformation is to take the Zionist onslaught out of context of social phenomena so as to spread utter confusion about the cause of the war and the nature of the Resistance. According to the disinformation, the denial of the Palestinians' right to be is a legitimate cause of self-defence for the Israelis. It is irrational and utterly devoid of principle but, without this cover-up, how is it possible to blame the Resistance fighters for the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, caught without any avenue of escape on a small sliver of land, deprived of everything they require to sustain life itself since 2006, when they elected Hamas to represent them and before that, when they were dispossessed in 1948 and then had more of their land stolen from them in 1967? Who is denying the right of the Palestinian people to be? That is the issue.

Today's newspaper headlines in Canada scream that certain Palestinian leaders are wallowing in luxury hotels in Doha while their people are slaughtered in Gaza. Such gutter-politics show how pathetic they have become in their desperation to discredit the Palestinian leadership. It shows that the aim of the disinformation which denies the Palestinians' right to be is to destroy the organized opposition to what is not acceptable to the human conscience and the human race. It also seeks to deprive the Palestinians of the worldwide condemnation of the Zionist slaughter. This will not succeed. The Palestinian Resistance will prevail! The worldwide condemnation will prevail!

All of it underscores the necessity to take a firm stand on why this war is being waged so as to sharpen the condemnation of the Zionist genocide and join the Resistance to end the blockade of Gaza and end the Occupation. The disinformation which covers up the genocidal aim of the onslaught must be condemned by adopting a clear position towards the war which explains why this war is being waged.

Condemn all attempts on the part of the U.S., Canada, Britain, France and other countries to give the Zionist genocidal onslaught legitimacy and justice. These too are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Long Live the Palestinian Resistance!
End the Siege of Gaza Now! End the Occupation Now!

Demonstration in Tel Aviv, July 27, 2014

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Actions Across Canada and Around the World
Demand End to Israeli Crimes

Canada

Halifax



July 29

Montreal




July 25

Ottawa



August 2


July 26

Toronto



July 30



July 26

London

July 28


July 25

Edmonton



July 30

Calgary



August 1


Around the World

United States

Washington, DC, July 30


New York, July 27



Detroit, July 26


Chicago, July 26


Chicago, July 25


Ashville, July 25

Puerto Rico

July 26

Mexico

July 29

England



London, July 26

Scotland

Edinborough, July 26

Ireland

Dublin, July 26

Sweden

July 27

France

Paris, July 27

Greece

July 31

Bosnia



July 25


Iran

July 25

Pakistan

Karachi, July 25

Australia

Sydney, July 27

(TML, Xinhua, O Alhattab, E Bartlett, Les Indignants, R S Khan, Al Quds Committee, ANSWER, Code Pink, D Torres, U E Rebelda, M Sinnot, Stop the War (Britain), K Lafi, A Muntaser, I Basic, Rajesh)

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Hundredth Anniversary of the First World War and
Canada's "Coming of Age"

A Sovereignty Based on Empire Building

In Europe's reeking slaughter-pen
They mince the flesh of murdered men,
While swinish merchants, snout in trough,
Drink all the bloody profits off!
-
In Wartime, Stephan G. Stephansson, 1916

                   
July 28 marks the centenary of the start of the First World War. One hundred years ago, on this day, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia followed in declaring war on Austria-Hungary, and within six days, Britain, France and Germany were officially at war. Canada as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire was automatically at war when Britain declared it.

World War One was a slaughter of unprecedented proportions which took place from 1914 to 1918. As Lenin pointed out, it was fought between two coalitions of the imperialist bourgeoisie for the partition of the world, for the division of the booty, and for the strangulation of small and weak nations. He called it an enormous crime by an imperialist, violent, predatory, reactionary bourgeoisie. Such a war, for the partition of the colonies and the division of the spoils of the capitalists, "would involve a complete rupture with the latest achievements of civilization and culture," he said. He pointed out that "it might, and  inevitably would, undermine the very foundations of human society because, for the first time in history, the most powerful achievements of technology were applied on such a scale, so destructively and with such energy, for the extirpation of millions of human lives. When all productive forces are being thus devoted to the service of war, we see that the most gloomy prophecies are being fulfilled and that more and more countries are falling prey to retrogression, starvation and a complete decline of productive forces."  The war, he said, would result in the domination of the working class or in the creation of the conditions which would render its domination indispensable. He himself led the Russian masses, starving and oppressed, to overthrow the Czar and his empire and establish the world's first socialist state. This worker's state put an end to all imperialist arrangements and interrelations in which Russia was embroiled and took Russia out of the war.

Despite this character of World War One, official Canadian historiography cites it, and the Battle of Vimy Ridge in particular, as the defining moment when Canada "came of age." By this it is meant that as a result of its sacrifice, Canada gained the right to become an independent state. Bourgeois historians point to the Statute of Westminster that in 1931 granted Canada sovereignty over external affairs, such that when the Second World War broke out, it was by decision of the Canadian Parliament that Canada declared war on the Axis powers and sent troops overseas.

Today, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is on a mission to distort Canada's history. His rendering covers up that World War One was not a war for freedom, democracy or rights and that Canadians do not want Canada to be a militarist nation. Harper also presents the sacrifice of Canada's soldiers as made for causes which they did not in fact espouse.

When the last known Canadian First World War veteran, John Babcock, died in 2010, Harper took the opportunity to promote this version of history, stating that the First World War "marked our coming of age as a nation" and that veterans "paid dearly for the freedom that we and our children enjoy every day."


Transporting the wounded from the battlefield at Vimy Ridge

"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.


Some 4,000 First nations youth enlisted in World War I . To do so they were forced to renounce their treaty rights.

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.


Photo from one of internment camps set up during WWI for  "enemy aliens." The camps and the War Measures Act were used to suppress organized labour and revolutionary politics.

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.


  Montreal rally May 17, 1917 was one of many opposing conscription of Canadian youth into imperialist WWI.

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.


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Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad

A Crucial Turning Point in History

The 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)

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Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising

The Treachery of Historical Falsifications

Much 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.


Nazi invasion of Poland, September 1939

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.


Residents in Warsaw make sandbags in preparation for uprising.

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.


German soldiers captured by Polish partisans during Warsaw Uprising.

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.

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69th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Never Again! No to Nuclear Blackmail
by U.S. and Big Powers!

This year marks the 69th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, horrendous war crimes committed by the U.S. imperialists. On the morning of August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atom bomb that exploded above the Japanese city of Hiroshima killing about 140,000 people in the initial blast, with total deaths estimated at more than 237,000. Three days later, the United States dropped another atomic bomb on the southern Japanese city of Nagasaki, immediately killing an estimated 70,000 people, with more than 140,000 people dying in total from the initial blast, burns, injuries and radiation sickness.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not chosen because of any military significance. Hiroshima had not been previously bombed and thus was considered a good target to demonstrate the devastating power of the atomic bomb which had never been used before. The original target for the second bomb was Kokura, but it was clouded over so the secondary target, Nagasaki, was bombed instead. The bombing of Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima was also intended to test the effects of a plutonium bomb as compared to the uranium bomb used at Hiroshima. This partly explains why the U.S. rushed to execute the second horrific war crime only three days after the first -- it wanted to test both types of bomb before a Japanese surrender and establish its military hegemony in the region.

The criminal bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was carried out not to end the war as the U.S. claims, as if this would justify such an act of mass terror, but to threaten the people of the world with nuclear annihilation if they did not accept U.S. imperialist dictate and hegemony. In particular it was aimed at the people of the Soviet Union and to serve the U.S.' plans to establish permanent military bases in Japan and military dominance over Asia. The people of the Soviet Union had played the leading role in the defeat of Nazi fascism, at the cost of over 20 million lives. In opposition to a world united against fascism and war, the heinous crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left no doubt that U.S. imperialism had taken up the Nazi aim to defeat communism and establish its domination over the whole world.

August 6 and 9 are now days when people worldwide commemorate those who were killed in these horrendous acts of terrorism by the U.S. On these days people express the determination of the peoples of the world and say Never Again! to such crimes against humanity and reaffirm the demand for complete and total nuclear disarmament.

Nuclear disarmament has long been a goal of all peace-loving Canadians, who have fought every attempt of the U.S. to impose nuclear weapons on Canada. According to U.S. imperialism, the goal of stopping nuclear proliferation involves the U.S. arming itself to the teeth with offensive nuclear weapons while demanding that the peoples it threatens with nuclear annihilation are not permitted even to develop nuclear power for peaceful energy purposes. The U.S. gives itself the right to launch "pre-emptive nuclear strikes" against any nation or people as it has threatened to do against Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), countries who are waging a determined struggle for their right to be.

The United States maintains the largest nuclear arsenal in the world with 4,804 nuclear warheads as of September 2013. It is known that the U.S. military made plans for a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union as early as the 1960s. George Bush openly declared that the doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear strike was official U.S. policy and it remains so today.

Pre-emptive nuclear strike is part of the outlook that might makes right, and that there is no greater might than their vast arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Far from working to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the U.S. and other big powers are carrying out nuclear weapon modernization programs that clearly show they have no intention of disarming, in violation of the commitments of the five nuclear-weapon states signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that they would pursue a halt to the nuclear arms race and seek nuclear disarmament. The Obama administration is pursuing an upgrade to the B61 nuclear bomb that is in reality a new weapon at a cost of $352 billion, again in violation of its own commitments and declarations. This 300-to-500 kiloton "variable yield" thermonuclear device has 24 to 40 times the destructive power of the bomb which devastated Hiroshima, and is clearly intended for aggressive use consistent with preemptive nuclear strike.

The imperialist countries have armed Israel with the most lethal weapons of mass destruction in aid of the Zionist entity's continued occupation of Palestine and negation of the right to be of the Palestinian people. Not only the U.S. but France, Germany, Britain and even Norway, all secretly sold Israel the material and expertise to make nuclear warheads, or turned a blind eye to its theft. Both Israel and the U.S. and other imperialist powers continue to deny that they have armed the Zionists with nuclear weapons, while they threaten Iran and declare it does not even have the right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

Similarly, the U.S. has permanently stationed its troops in south Korea in violation of the armistice agreement reached at the end of the Korean War, and has installed nuclear warheads on the Korean peninsula aimed at the DPRK (north Korea). It carries out annual nuclear war games to threaten the DPRK, including computer-simulated exercises for the invasion of the DPRK. When the DPRK was forced to take measures to deter the U.S. by itself acquiring nuclear weapons, the U.S. engineered further threats and sanctions against the DRPK, unjustly accusing the DPRK of being responsible for the tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Humanity's fight to rid the world of nuclear weapons and defeat the U.S. imperialist dictate requires stepping up the struggle to uphold the sovereignty and independence of all nations, and the elimination of the threat or use of force to settle conflicts. It also necessitates that the Canadian working class and people organize for an anti-war government that rejects the use of force as a means of settling conflicts between nations and peoples, and withdraws from all aggressive military blocs and treaties such as NATO and NORAD.

On the occasion of the 69th anniversary of the nuclear bombings, all peace- and justice-loving Canadians pay their deepest respects to the Japanese victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the Palestinian people and all peoples the world over who have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of imperialist dictate. The criminal Anglo-American imperialist system can and will be ended by the political unity of all the fighting peoples of the world to establish a new world based on peace, justice, and dignity for all nations and peoples.

(With files from TML archives, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Guardian)

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