No. 4
May 8, 2022
Anniversary of the Defeat of Nazi Fascism in World War II
We Salute All Those Who Fought in the Anti-Fascist War to Secure Peace, Freedom and Democracy
Intrigues and Conniving of Anglo-Americans During World War II
• Operation Sunrise -- Anglo-American Plot Against the Peace
• Spurious Act of Surrender Signed in Reims, France
Videos
• Immortal Regiment -- Origins and Significance
Anniversary of the Defeat of Nazi Fascism in World War II
We Salute All Those Who Fought in the Anti-Fascist War to Secure Peace, Freedom and Democracy
On May 9, 1945, Nazi Germany
surrendered to the Soviet Red Army in Berlin. This historic
event is recognized throughout the world with the photograph of
the flag of the Soviet Red Army flying over the Reichstag, the
German Parliament. To this day, that flag is recognized as the
Victory Banner, celebrated in Russia and the former Soviet
Republics and many countries in the world in recognition of the
great sacrifices made by the anti-fascist forces, and the Red
Army in particular which went all the way to Berlin to make sure
the Nazis were unconditionally defeated.
Nevertheless, the end of the war is celebrated on May 8 in Canada, the U.S. and Western Europe, with claims the Nazis had already surrendered to them prior to May 9, although the fighting was not yet over. On the basis of the intrigues they organized at that time, the ruling elites in those countries choose not to recall the massive sacrifice of the peoples of the world, led by the then Soviet Union, to defeat Nazi fascism in World War II. They go so far as to cut out the Soviet Union altogether and declare that they won the war. Today, they spew venom at the very mention of the name Russia to the extent that the parades of the Immortal Regiment organized by the descendants of those who gave their lives during World War II have been made illegal in some countries and cannot take place in others because the security of the Russians resident in those countries is not protected.
March of the Immortal Regiment, Montreal, May 9, 2019.
Despite this and the attempts of the U.S./NATO countries to isolate Russia, more than 120 countries have approved the organizers' applications to hold the event, Co-Chairman of the Central Headquarters of Russia's Immortal Regiment Public Movement Sergey Makarov informed. Some others, like Toronto Canada, will not be holding an Immortal Regiment Day as has been the past practice, out of concern for the safety of participants, Makarov said. The United States prohibited an Immortal Regiment march and a flower-laying ceremony at the Spirit of the Elbe memorial, while the Irish authorities also revoked permission to hold the march this year.
The Immortal Regiment march is a citizen-inspired annual public event that has been held in Russia on Victory Day on May 9 since 2012, when the first event took place in the city of Tomsk. The 2019 march, the last before the COVID-19 pandemic -- the event went online in 2020 and 2021 -- involved over ten million people in 3,700 cities and towns across Russia and thousands in many other countries. The idea to hold parades in recognition of the sacrifice of the anti-fascist fighters was born in the Russian Siberian city of Tyumen in 2007 when the march was called the Victors' Parade. In 2012, another Siberian city, Tomsk, took up the torch renaming the rally 'Immortal Regiment.' The next year, about 120 cities joined in. A year later, in 500 cities in seven countries, people carried portraits of their relatives who had fought during World War II, Since 2015, the 'Immortal Regiment' march has officially become a nationwide and international event.
Moscow, May 9, 2019.
On this occasion, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) salutes all Canadians who contributed to the victory against fascism. It salutes the peoples of Europe, Asia, Africa and the entire world who contributed to this historic victory. CPC(M-L) pays deepest respects to the memory of all those from the occupied countries who fought and died as a result of the Nazi onslaught and thanks the resistance fighters who worked as one to defeat the fascist occupier. Most importantly, CPC(M-L) recognizes and salutes the courage and sacrifice of the peoples of the Soviet Union under the leadership of J.V. Stalin. The peoples that made up Soviet Russia and the Soviet Republics rose as one and broke the back of the Nazi war machine at tremendous cost. All of them fought for peace, freedom and democracy so that humanity would never again know the scourge of fascism and war.
Canada, joined by then-British colony Newfoundland, played its part by sending 1.1 million troops to fight in the war, including more than 130,000 Quebeckers. They distinguished themselves in many battles and campaigns, particularly in the Normandy landings, the Italian campaign and the liberation of the Netherlands.
Today, this anniversary is held under conditions of the U.S./NATO eastward expansion as they attempt to isolate and crush Russia and turn the tables on the verdicts written in the blood of the peoples during World War II. The campaign of lies, disinformation and warmongering about the causes and solutions to the crisis in Ukraine seeks to demonize anything Russian. The U.S. and NATO countries -- including Canada which plays a dirty role in resuscitating World War II Nazi-collaborators -- think that by making false parallels comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, they will get the peoples to forget the sacrifices the peoples of the former Soviet Union made to defeat the Nazis. Endless U.S. propaganda mocks the victory parades of the Immortal Regiment organized every May 9 throughout Russia and the world saying that Putin hopes to celebrate a victory in Ukraine on that occasion and that he is staging the parades accordingly. In fact, the parades to salute the Immortal Regiment -- all those who gave their lives to defeat the Nazis -- are organized by ordinary people in different cities where Russians reside, not the Russian state. They include participation by veterans from all the Allied countries and their descendants.
March of the Immortal Regiment, Odessa, Ukraine, May 9, 2019.
All over Europe, the U.S., Canada and other countries, the voice of the peoples has been silenced by the U.S./NATO propaganda machine but the peoples are nonetheless striving for peace, freedom and democracy. Even as humankind unites to defend itself in the face of the threats issued every day by the U.S./NATO leaders, it also faces heinous attempts to arouse animosity towards Russia, as well as China, that go so far as to deny the Soviet Union's role in the anti-fascist war.
This is a continuation of Britain's "Operation Unthinkable" by which the British ruling class tried to get the Germans to surrender to U.S. General Eisenhower in a deal that violated the "Terms of Surrender of Germany" drawn up by the three Allied powers -- Britain, the U.S. and the Soviet Union -- on July 25, 1944. The U.S. imperialists and their unscrupulous adjuncts have now launched new rounds of sanctions against Russia while they continue sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and others, and the occupation of Palestine and deprivation and imprisonment of its people. They are actively engaging in provocations and outright acts of war. Their rendering of what was at stake in World War II is an Anglo-American chauvinist and anti-communist attempt to promote the anachronistic liberal democratic institutions as the pinnacle of human freedom, even as they show their utter contempt for the well-being of the people and their mission to use the state to silence them and take them to war.
The 77th anniversary of the magnificent victory over the Nazis is an occasion to relaunch an impassioned defence of the cause of peace, freedom and democracy in today's conditions by opposing U.S./NATO expansion to Russia's borders and into the sea routes which threatens the security of the countries of the Asia-Pacific and in other parts of the world.
Paris, France, May 8, 2019.
Today more than ever, it is necessary to oppose wars of aggression and occupation and the use of force to resolve conflicts between nations, so that the dangers of another world war and other calamities that threaten humanity in the most profound ways can be stemmed and prevented. The role Canada is playing internationally as a henchman for U.S. imperialist interests and its active participation in the U.S./NATO war machine is unacceptable.
Let us dismantle the U.S.-led warmongering alliances NATO and NORAD, demand that all troops on foreign soil return home, and end the wars of aggression and occupation, coups d'état to achieve regime change, provocations and imperialist sanctions, which are criminal acts of war and violations of human rights.
On May 8, which is May 9 in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union, we pay homage to the memory of all those who fought to defeat fascism by working to make Canada a zone for peace, opposing Canada's political and economic integration into the U.S. war machine, and opposing the use of force to resolve conflicts between nations and within nations.
All Out to Humanize the Natural and Social Environment!
March of Immortal Regiment, Nova Scotia, May
9, 2019.
Intrigues and Conniving of Anglo-Americans During World War II
Operation Sunrise --
Anglo-American Plot
Against the Peace
According to the renderings of history put forward in many Anglo-American accounts of World War II, the war against Germany did not end on May 9 with the German surrender in Berlin, but on May 4 or May 7 or 8.
On May 4, 1945, a German surrender took place in a ceremony at the headquarters of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, on the Lüneburg Heath in northern Germany. The British marked this as the end of the war even though fighting persisted in Europe as the Nazis continued to throw themselves against the Red Army in a desperate attempt to avert their fate in Berlin. In fact, the German capitulation on the Luneburg Heath applied only to German troops that had been battling Montgomery's British-Canadian 21st Army Group in the Netherlands and Northwest Germany. It is reported that, just to be on the safe side, the Canadian Command actually accepted the capitulation of all German troops in Holland the next day, May 5, at a ceremony in Wageningen, a town in the eastern Dutch province of Gelderland. In some accounts this is spoken of as the prelude to the definitive German capitulation which they claim took place at the headquarters of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of all Allied forces on the Western Front, in a school building in the city of Reims, France, in the early morning of May 7, 1945. However, because this armistice was to go into effect only at 11:01 pm the next day, commemoration ceremonies in the United States and in Western Europe take place on May 8.
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Soviet
Red Army at Battle of Berlin, May 1945.All of this is to deny the fact that the definitive capitulation of Germany took place in Berlin on May 9 when the highest representative of the Red Army was also present. This definitive capitulation is recognized throughout the world with the photograph of the flag of the Soviet Red Army flying over the Reichstag, the German Parliament. To this day, that flag is recognized as the Victory Banner.
But the story of the date of the capitulation of the German fascists is not merely a matter of a date and time and place. On March 3, 1945, while World War II still raged, the U.S., UK, and Nazi Germany opened a series of secret negotiations in Switzerland to arrange a local surrender of German forces in northern Italy. This was known as "Operation Sunrise" or "Operation Crossbow." The main U.S. negotiator was Allen Dulles, later head of the U.S. CIA, while the main Nazi negotiator was Waffen SS General Karl Wolff, Supreme Commander of all SS forces in Italy, who went to work for the CIA after the war along with many other former Nazis, continuing to promote the "communist threat."[1] The Operation Sunrise go-between was Italian industrialist and fascist sympathizer, Baron Luigi Parilli.[2] Subsequently, on March 15 and 19, Wolff conducted further secret negotiations on the surrender with U.S. General Lyman Lemnitzer and British General Terence Airey. The German forces in northern Italy and western Austria eventually surrendered unconditionally on May 2, 1945, only six days before Nazi Germany surrendered in Berlin.
The Soviet Union, which had borne the brunt of the fighting against the Nazi occupiers since June 22, 1941, and which had resoundingly defeated the Nazi forces at the heroic battle of Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, the turning point of the war, was informed of the Operation Sunrise negotiations but was excluded from actual participation. On March 22, 1945, Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov wrote to U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman: "For two weeks, in Bern, behind the back of the Soviet Union, negotiations between representatives of the German Military Command on one side and representatives of American and British Command on the other side are conducted. The Soviet government considers this absolutely inadmissible."
On March 29, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt clearly exposing the real purpose of the Operation Sunrise negotiations. He rightly accused the U.S. and UK of having concluded an agreement with German General Albert Kesselring, the overall German commander in the Mediterranean theatre, in order to open the front to allow full concentration of German forces against the Red Army. He noted that in fact the Germans had stopped fighting the Anglo-American forces and that three divisions of German troops had already shifted from Northern Italy to the Soviet front. On April 3 and April 7, Stalin again pointed out in blunt letters to Roosevelt (who died April 10) that negotiations with the Nazis in Switzerland were related to German non-resistance in the west and ferocious resistance against the Red Army in the east.
In his own book on Operation Sunrise, The Secret Surrender (1966), Dulles states that he also pushed for a negotiated surrender with the Nazis in northern Italy because he was worried that if a quick surrender was not negotiated, and the Germans, still fighting, fell back west of Venice, then Soviet troops and their partisan allies would reach Trieste, an important Italian industrial centre and deepwater port, before the Anglo-American troops arrived. This could have led to greater Soviet post-war influence in France and Italy, which Dulles wanted to prevent at all costs. Dulles makes it clear that post-war arrangements of advantage to the U.S. and UK were the dominant factor in Operation Sunrise, not assisting the Soviet Union. In the end, U.S. troops did arrive in Trieste before the Soviet troops, resulting in acrimonious post-war border disputes between Italy and Yugoslavia.
The Operation Sunrise machinations also fitted completely with the Anglo-American refusal throughout most of the war to open a second front in Europe, which Stalin repeatedly requested. An Anglo-American landing in Europe would have forced Hitler to remove some of his forces from the Eastern Front, affording the Soviet Union some relief and speeding the Nazi defeat. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill openly opposed a second front. He was pleased that Hitler and Stalin were battling to the death on the Eastern Front with huge casualties, and he believed that the Anglo-American imperialists would benefit from allowing that fight to continue. U.S. Senator and future president Harry S. Truman also opposed a second front. On June 24, 1941, Truman stated: "If we see that Germany is winning, we should help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we should help Germany, so that as many as possible perish on both sides."
The Soviets would eventually get a Second Front, but only much later, with the Normandy landing on June 6, 1944, almost a year and a half after the decisive battles of Stalingrad and Kursk had turned the tide against the Nazis and begun Germany's forced retreat back to Berlin. Also, by June 1944, the Anglo-Americans had urgent reasons of their own for landing on the coast of France. Soviet troops were relentlessly marching towards Berlin with the Nazis in full flight. It became imperative for the Anglo-Americans to land their own troops in France and to drive into Germany to keep most of that country out of what they saw as Soviet hands.
Monument to historic Battle of Stalingrad, won February 2, 1943,
turning the course of World War II in favour of the Soviet
peoples and the peoples of the world.
Once the defeat of Nazi Germany became a foregone conclusion, Nazi propaganda in the U.S. and UK also ramped up attacking the Soviet Union and promoting the notion that the Anglo-Americans had much more in common with the faltering Nazis and a post-war Germany than with their erstwhile ally. For example, on January 22, 1944, following the historic Tehran Agreement, the Neue Volkszietung, the main pro-Nazi, German-American newspaper based in New York, which incessantly published propaganda playing the other allies against the Soviet Union, stated: "The whole of Europe west of the Russian border will have a common interest after this war. That is, to preserve their independence in the face of their powerful Russian neighbour. This cannot be achieved without the help of England and America."
Throughout World War II, the overall Anglo-American strategic plan was to try to minimize their own military losses, then intervene when both Germany and the Soviet Union were exhausted. The U.S., with its British ally, could then create a post-war Europe that was to its own economic and political advantage. When Operation Sunrise was implemented in March-April 1945, and when a second front was finally opened in Normandy in June 1944, the main aim of both was not to help bring about a just peace. Instead, both operations were first and foremost aimed at trying to prevent the Soviets from playing the decisive role in winning the war against the Hitlerites, even though the Soviet Union had already played that role and had already won the everlasting acclaim of the world's people for its great accomplishments.
Notes
1. Wolff saved his own skin due to his Anglo-American links. He served less than two years in prison after the Nuremberg trials, then served another short sentence after conviction by the post-war German government in 1948. Due to revelations during the Eichmann trial, Wolff was convicted in 1964 of deporting 300,000 Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp, the deportation of Italian Jews to Auschwitz and the massacre of Italian Partisans in Belarus. For these heinous war crimes he served a mere five years of a 15-year prison sentence.
2. Parilli would surface again after the war working with the OSS/CIA to prevent a communist-led government in Italy.
Spurious Act of Surrender Signed in Reims, France
Attempts by the Anglo-Americans to diminish the Soviet Union's role in achieving the victory over fascism began as the war in Europe was drawing to a close. The aim was to deprive the Soviet Union of the great prestige in which it was held by the world's peoples because of its leadership and the great sacrifices of its peoples during the war, and to reduce its role in forming the post-war order.
On this basis, the U.S. created an intrigue in Reims, France, to accept an "unconditional surrender on all fronts" on May 6, aimed at sidelining the Soviet Union and buying time for Nazi troops to escape from Soviet troops on the Eastern Front.
On May 6, Generaloberst (Colonel General) Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, arrived at the temporary headquarters of General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, in Reims to sign the document of surrender according to the authority given to him by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who was acting President and Supreme Commander of the German Armed Forces. Writing for the Strategic Culture Foundation in 2015, historian Yuriy Rubstov, Professor at the Military University of the Russian Ministry of Defense, explained:
"Eisenhower insisted the act of capitulation was to be signed to stop hostilities on all fronts, including the Eastern Front where the Wehrmacht continued to offer fierce resistance to the Red Army. On May 4, Eisenhower informed the Soviet command about the upcoming visit of Jodl. In a letter addressed to Army General A. Antonov, Head of the Operations Directorate in Stavka, Eisenhower wrote that he would recommend Admiral Dönitz establish contacts with the Russian high command and discuss the capitulation of all forces confronting the Red Army. One must give the devil his due -- the American General behaved like a real ally. He stressed that the capitulation was a purely military term, it had no relation to political or economic conditions imposed by the governments of allied states. He found it important to match the time of ending the hostilities on all fronts.
"Late on May 6, Jodl reported the conditions for surrender to Admiral Dönitz whose staff was located in Flensburg at the time. On May 7, the radio message from Dönitz instructed him to sign an act of unconditional surrender on all fronts."
General Ivan Susloparov, the chief of the Soviet liaison mission with the French government and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, was in Paris at that time. He was visited by Eisenhower's adjutant who asked him to come to Reims without delay. Eisenhower informed him that Jodl was ready to sign the surrender instruments and that a presence of a Soviet representative at the ceremony was a must. The Allied Supreme Commander asked Susloparov to send the protocol text to Moscow and represent his country at the signing ceremony which was scheduled for 02:30 Central European Time on May 7, 1945. The protocol said all forces under the control of the German government were to comply with unconditional surrender and remain at their positions. All orders of the Allied Supreme Commander and Soviet Command were to be carried out.
By the time of the ceremony, Susloparov had not received his instructions. So he took the decision to sign the document with the provision that another document on capitulation could be signed if one of the Allied governments found it expedient. The representatives of other Allied nations agreed.
On this basis, on May 7, the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces was signed by Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, on behalf of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces and as the representative for the new Reich President, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz; Walter Bedell Smith signed on behalf of the Western Allies; and Ivan Susloparov on behalf of the Soviet Union. French Major-General Francois Sevez signed as the official witness. German Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg also witnessed the signing. The document was to come into force at 23:00 May 8 Central European Time (two hours later according to Moscow time).
The message from Moscow to Susloparov came after the ceremony was over. It said no documents were to be signed. It is said that the delay was due to the time it took to report Susloparov's message to Stalin and then draft the reply. Rubstov suggests, "Perhaps the real cause was different. Stalin had all the reasons to believe the protocol to be signed in Reims would not be complied with at the Eastern Front. He knew something Susloparov was not informed about. Dönitz gave an order to leave the positions at the Eastern Front and move to the west using arms if need be. Besides, Jodl used poor communications as a pretext to give a 45-hour delay to the forces (from the moment of signing [May 7 at 2:30] until coming into force on May 8, 23:00, Central European Time)."
Rubtsov goes on to explain that a recent biography of Jodl, called A Soldier Without Fear or Reproach, says many soldiers and refugees used this delay to escape from the Soviet forces. He also points out that Stalin had big policy considerations. Whereas the Allies emphasized their role in defeating Germany by organizing the ceremony on the territory they controlled, it is a matter of record that the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war effort: the enemy lost 73 per cent of its personnel and 75 per cent of its weapons systems at the Soviet-German front.
Regarding the considerations that the Soviets had to take into account, Rubstov informs that "Stalin declined the proposals of Churchill and Truman to declare May 8 Victory Day. He sent personal letters to each of the Western leaders saying the resistance of German forces at the Eastern Front was as strong as before. He offered to wait till the capitulation of German forces at 23:00, May 8, Central European Time or 01:00, May 9, Moscow time. The Western leaders declined the proposal to declare victory on another day, but they agreed to consider the Reims document as preliminary formalization of surrender.
Stalin wrote that the surrender instrument signed in Reims could be neither cancelled, nor recognized. The signing of capitulation had to be an important historic act. The documents had to be signed where the aggression came from -- in Berlin. It could not be done unilaterally. The document had to be signed at the level of the top commanders of the alliance. That is what happened late at night on May 9, 1945, in Berlin's suburb of Karlshorst."
Bern Incident
The USSR achieved victory over Nazi Germany together with coalition allies [despite the intrigues of the latter]. This fact is irrefutable.
By the end of 1942, when the Stalingrad battle was in full swing, the London station of Soviet Foreign Intelligence reported about a conversation that took place between British Ambassador to the United States Edward Wood, Lord Halifax, and Under Secretary of State Benjamin Sumner Welles. The latter said that if Germany fell in 1943 or 1944, then the Red Army would advance far to the west and this would negatively influence American public opinion and change the plans for European reconstruction.
To slow down the Red Army's advance to Europe, Anglo-American allies were constantly involved in unseemly actions like trying to hold separate talks with the Nazis. Allen Dulles was recruited to work at the Office of Strategic Services. He held secret negotiations in Bern, Switzerland, with SS General Karl Wolff to have all German and fascist armies surrender in northern Italy, or, even in the West in general. The talks were codenamed Operation Sunrise. The General did not act on his own, as many believed. He represented the Reich leadership. On February 6, [1945] he was told by Hitler personally to establish contacts with Western nations to talk about prospects for an armistice on the Western front. The operation was under the control of Heinrich Himmler. By holding these talks Germany wanted to kill three birds with one stone. It wanted to split the anti-Hitler coalition, and even join the West in a would-be war against the USSR. It also had the goals of putting an end to the advance of the Allied nations at the Western Front and to use this opportunity to relocate forces from the West to the East to strengthen its defenses against the USSR.
Holding separate talks was forbidden by accords concluded between the USSR, the United States and Great Britain. For instance, the Twenty-Year Mutual Assistance Agreement Between the United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was signed on May 26, 1942. Article II said, "The high contracting parties undertake not to enter into any negotiations with the Hitlerite Government or any other government in Germany that does not clearly renounce all aggression intentions, and not to negotiate or conclude, except by mutual consent, any armistice or peace treaty with Germany or any other State associated with her in acts of aggression in Europe."
It was not only a matter of tearing up agreements. The Anglo-American allies did not exclude the possibility of using German prisoners of war against the Soviet Union. In this case the military potential of forces opposing the USSR would have substantially increased.
On March 8,[1945] Dulles and Wolff met at a secret place in Zurich. The high-positioned SS General offered the following conditions: the Anglo-American command stops the advance in Italy, a cease-fire follows, and then German forces evacuate the front. Dulles agreed that the conditions were right to initiate contact. Subsequently, on 15 and 19 March, Wolff conducted further secret negotiations on the surrender with American general Lyman Lemnitzer and British general Terence Airey.
Wolff reported to Berlin on the possibility of a split in the ranks of the allies. He was told to make the talks drag on as long as possible. Thus Germany managed to delay the start of Allied advance in Italy and bring reinforcements (the 6th SS Tank Army) to the Eastern Front and launch a counteroffensive near Lake Balaton in Hungary in March 1945.
The talks were top secret. Nonetheless the Anglo-Americans allowed for a leak, informing the USSR about the contact with the representative of Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, the commander of German forces in Italy, to discuss the conditions of capitulation. Vyacheslav Molotov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, asked for Soviet participation in the talks. The request was refused. The contacts with Wolff continued. The Soviet leadership was informed about the process from reliable sources, for instance, Kim Philby, part of Cambridge Five and head of MI6 at the time. Moscow undertook a demarche.
On March 22, Molotov said that he did not think the whole incident was a mere misunderstanding. The Soviet government believed it was something worse. On April 3, Josef Stalin received a message from Franklin Roosevelt who denied the very fact of any contacts. Stalin's telegram was terse and straightforward. He wrote that, "You assure that no contacts are taking place. Perhaps, you were not fully informed. My military colleagues have no doubt the talks did take place. An agreement is reached. German commander Field Marshall Kesselring agreed to open the front and let Anglo-American forces pass. In return, Anglo-Americans promised to ease the conditions of armistice. I believe my colleagues are nearer to the truth. Otherwise, it's impossible to explain why a representative of Soviet command was not allowed to take part in the talks in Bern. I understand the separate talks in Switzerland may bring some positive results because Anglo-American forces have an opportunity to advance deep into Germany without meeting any resistance from Germans. Then why hide this fact from Russians? Now Germans stop combat actions on the Western front but continue to fight Russia -- an ally of Great Britain and the United States. This situation cannot serve the interests of strengthening confidence between our countries."
In reply, Roosevelt tried to convince Stalin that no talks took place in Switzerland. He even made a supposition that Stalin used "German sources" that tried to make the allies split and thus evade the responsibility for the crimes committed. According to him, if that was the goal of Wolff, then he accomplished the mission. Winston Churchill also denied the fact of holding talks in Switzerland on the capitulation of German forces led by Kesselring.
The head of the Soviet government sent to Roosevelt another message where he expressed in straightforward and simple terms his views on what the relationship between the allies should be like. "We, Russians, believe that the enemy faces the inevitable capitulation and any meeting on discussing the terms of surrender must include the representatives of other allies. I believe this point of view is right. It excludes any mutual suspicions and prevents the enemy from giving rise to the feeling of mistrust."
On April 12, 1945 just a few hours before his death, Roosevelt wrote a last message to Stalin expressing gratitude for making precise the Soviet point of view in relation to the incident in Bern that became a thing of the past without doing any good.
But there was some good. As a result of the Soviet demarche, the Allied forces renewed their attacks in Italy on April 9. The talks with Wolff terminated. Dulles was informed that as a result of Soviet objections, the proposal on capitulation could not be discussed unilaterally by the Anglo-Americans.
The Bern incident greatly damaged the relations between the allies, creating the possibility of a serious split between the Soviet Union on the one side and Great Britain and the United States of America on the other side. Some historians call Operation Sunrise the first episode of the Cold War.
(Strategic Culture Foundation, April 29, 2015. Slightly edited for grammar by TML.)
Videos
Victory Day 1945
On the occasion of the anniversary of the historic victory over Nazi fascism by the Allied forces in World War II, Youth for Democratic has produced this video, which portrays the celebrations in Moscow following the defeat of the Nazis in May 1945.
Immortal Regiment -- Origins and Significance
The documentary, Immortal Regiment -- World Movement, directed by Alexei Egorychev in 2020, explains the origins and significance of the Immortal Regiment organized by the Russian people at home and abroad. The film, in Russian with French subtitles, recounts the movement which went worldwide in 2012 to realize the people's desire to preserve the historical facts of the Soviet Union's role in the Second World War. This was known in the former Soviet countries as the Great Patriotic War and. On the peoples' initiative, marches are held every May 9 to honour all those who took part in this historic victory. Today, the movement holds events in more than 120 countries.
The Maison russe des sciences et de la culture in Paris, which has posted the documentary on YouTube, explains that the Immortal Regiment is comprised of all those who gave their lives for the Motherland, both those who fought on the front lines and those who worked in the rear, as well as their descendants. Taking part in the Immortal Regiment unites people, regardless of faith, nationality or political views, the Maison russe points out.
The Maison russe also points out that the expansion of the
Immortal Regiment comes at a time when former allies of the
Soviet Union are "increasingly trying to rewrite the history of
the Great Patriotic War, by adopting laws allowing the
destruction of monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators;
disseminating publications that contradict reality; reporting
false information in the media and social networks. Thus, they
mislead today's youth, to accustom them to non-existent
realities."
The documentary speaks for itself.
(To access articles individually click on the black headline.)
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