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August 30, 2014 - No. 30 75th
Anniversary of the Nazi Invasion of Poland NATO Out of
Poland!
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We pay homage to all those
who died at the hands of the
Nazis, fascists
and militarists in the Second World War and all the resistance fighters
and
communists who sacrificed their lives to defend freedom, democracy and
peace. As we do so, most worrisome of all is the fact that today, once
again,
Poland is being filled with military bases and war materiel and rapid
deployment bases, this time by the U.S. imperialists and their partners
in crime
who comprise the aggressive NATO military alliance. Kiev, Ukraine, June, 17, 2008: Anti-NATO protest against then-NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's visit and Ukraine's efforts to join NATO. |
As was done by the Hitlerites and their appeasers at the time they mired the world in World War II, so too today, the imperialist striving for world domination is covered up with pretexts, false flag operations, lies and disinformation to deprive the peoples of the world of their cohesion and capacity to organize effectively to make sure the crimes of the past stop being repeated in the present.
Today, the most important aim the peoples of the world can set about fulfilling is putting in place the arrangements they require so that they can mount an organized resistance to the crimes the Hitlerites of today are committing. TML Weekly hails the peoples everywhere who are persisting in their resistance struggle against the most murderous assaults, such as those of the Israeli Zionists against the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere. As the NATO Summit gets underway in Newport, Wales from September 4-5, we salute the peoples of Wales and England, Ireland, Scotland and other countries who are protesting this Summit and its nefarious warmongering to justify attacks on Russia and increase NATO's rapid deployment capabilities to attack wherever the U.S. and its allies see fit at a moment's notice.
Our deepest respects go to the people of Poland on this 75th anniversary of invasion by the Nazis and our desire that together the peoples of the world make sure it cannot happen again. NATO out of Poland and all other countries! Dismantle NATO!
Notes
1. RT, July 24, 2014.
2. Times of London, August 22, 2014.
3. Global Research, August 29, 2014.
Canada Needs an Anti-War Government
Defeat Harper! Canada Out of NATO! Dismantle NATO!
As the NATO Summit takes
place behind a "Ring of Steel" in Newport,
Wales and the peoples of Poland and all of Europe and the world mark
the
horrendous anniversary of Hitler's invasion of Poland, the awareness
increases
that the world faces terrible dangers all over again.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently concluded a trip to the Arctic to witness Canada's war exercises, codenamed Nanook, and engage in other activities which are preparing Canada's Arctic for military occupation. Harper used the occasion to step up his warmongering diatribe against Russia.
On August 21, Harper was in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, where he is said to have announced initiatives to promote fresh food production in the region. In one breath he went from admitting that Russia is doing everything to sort out border disputes with Canada and other countries in the Arctic through international mechanisms and the rule of law, to ratcheting up his warmongering. "...we haven't seen, obviously, the kind of aggressive moves in the Arctic that we have seen in eastern Europe by the Russians," Harper said. "In fact, we have actually seen the Russian government ... actually operating within international rules.
"However, I don't think -- because of what's happening elsewhere and because of what's happened for many years now -- we should be complacent about this."
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"I just think we should not be complacent, because we have seen over the period that President Putin has been in power just a gradual growing in aggressiveness of his government toward neighbours and the gradual military assertiveness of that country, and I just think it's something we should never be too at ease about," he said. In fact, since Harper has been in power, we have witnessed increased spending on the military integration with the U.S. armed forces, increased presence of U.S. armed forces within Canada and the militarization of culture and civilian life. But none of this is mentioned and it is all about Russia.
"In Europe, we see the imperial ambitions of Vladimir Putin, who seems determined that, for Russia's neighbours, there shall be no peace...," Harper said.
"And because Russia is also Canada's neighbour, we must not be complacent here at home."
It shows that the need to oppose the U.S. imperialist disinformation of today is as great as it was to oppose the Nazi disinformation of yesteryear. It is part of opposing the reactionary thesis that humanity has reached the end of history. This end of history outlook deprives the peoples of the world of the consciousness they need to open society's path to progress today.
The warmongering is accompanied by the attacks of the ruling circles in Canada and elsewhere on the workers and peoples fighting for their rights against the neoliberal anti-social offensive. It must not pass!
These crimes include the genocide against the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza. They include the actions of the U.S. and its allies and NATO forces to commit invasions, proxy wars and mass killings in sovereign countries to bring about regime change and to consolidate their domination of vast regions of the world. They resort to torture, blatant violation of rights and drone flights over civilian areas and through commercial airspace to terrorize and spy on the people, firing their deadly rockets in targeted assassinations and mass killings, interference in their internal affairs and armed invasions. Their special ops and mercenaries use chemical weapons, other banned weapons and commit criminal acts indiscriminately, and then blame their enemies targeted for regime change for the crimes and chaos for which the big imperialist powers are responsible. The anarchy, violence and crimes become pretexts to justify invasions and yet more atrocities. This is what the U.S. imperialists and their partners such as Canada, Britain and other NATO members are doing at the NATO Summit. The peoples of the world are sure to reject this.
If left unopposed, the lies and current warmongering spread deep anxiety as a result of feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and humiliation because the ruling circles are getting away with such terrible crimes that the peoples are left feeling powerless. To avert this they must step up their resistance struggle and defeat the ability of the rulers to do as they wish.
Our Future Lies in the
Fight for the Rights of All! Let us take the
necessary measures to defeat the activities of the anti-people forces
on all
fronts. Let us start by saying No! to the falsification of past history
and
today's unfolding events, which aims to render us passive today, just
as was
attempted when the invasion of Poland took place 75 years ago. Never
Again!
means to take a stand against imperialism and its war crimes now, to
defeat
the falsification of the crimes of the Nazi aggressors of yesterday,
and to
honour the heroism and resistance of the peoples of the world. In World
War
Two the resistance struggle was waged under communist leadership and so
too
today Communist Parties are required which are capable of providing the
strategy and tactics which defeat the U.S. imperialist striving for
world
domination which is plunging Canada to commit war crimes and
threatening
to plunge the world into another cataclysmic war for the redivision of
territories and strategic areas of influence, raw materials and cheap
labour and
zones for the export of capital.
All
Out to Defeat Harper and Establish an Anti-War Government!
Canada Out of NATO! Dismantle NATO!
Canadian Military Exercises in the Arctic
From August 20 to 25, prior to departing for the NATO Summit to be held in Wales on September 4-5, Prime Minister Harper went on his extensive annual Arctic tour. Amongst other things, he participated in the military exercises codenamed Nanook. These exercises started on August 20 and ran until August 29.
Mixed messages came from the military and the Harper government regarding the purpose of the military exercises. According to the military, they are practising various scenarios to develop an ability to respond to emergency situations like the grounding of a cruise ship in Arctic waters. The Harper Conservatives on the other hand have declared that a Canadian military presence in the Arctic is important to assert "Canadian sovereignty" against what they call "Russia's military expansion in the Arctic."
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told the Berlingske newspaper. "Obviously -- obviously, we're deeply concerned. We obviously want to see -- you know, we want to protect and promote Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. It's a strategic priority for us. With respect to the militarization, we'd prefer to de-escalate it, but Canadian sovereignty, it's very important that -- that we protect and promote it."
Meanwhile, Harper made threatening remarks against Russia which further contribute to destabilizing the region and raising the possibility of the use of force. He said:
"Peace and stability in Europe are being threatened in a way the world has not seen since the Cold War. Canada remains united with our NATO Allies and close international partners in calling on Russia to immediately cease its military aggression and provocative action, stop the flow of weapons and militants into Ukraine, and persuade insurgents to lay down their weapons and renounce violence. Inaction on the part of President Putin will only result in further political and economic isolation."
Documents recently obtained by the Ottawa Citizen
reveal the
extent of the expansion of the Canadian Forces in the Arctic. The
Harper
government is developing a network of sites to stockpile equipment and
move
troops and gear quickly into the region. It puts everything in place to
meet the
needs of the "emergency preparedness" program being discussed at the
NATO
Summit in Wales. The military hopes to have the sites in place by 2018.
The
locations of the main hubs are to be Iqaluit, Yellowknife, Resolute Bay
and
Inuvik.
"The planned Northern Operations Hubs are, by design, pre-negotiated arrangements to facilitate the movement of people, materiel, equipment and supplies into areas of operations for the Canadian Armed Forces," military spokesperson Capt. Melina Archambault said. She noted that the concept would be tested in a table-top exercise during Operation Nanook.
NATO plays a big role in making the Arctic territory the subject of a military dispute. In 2009 at a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, NATO declared the Arctic a "strategically important region." The U.S., Canada and NATO make no secret about why they need a military group deployed in the Arctic region. U.S. and some Canadian icebreakers are deploying to defend what are called the national interests of those members of the alliance who claim their right to the natural wealth of this part of the planet despite what studies show regarding ownership of the sea bed. The Arctic contains about 90 billion barrels of unexplored crude and enormous reserves of natural gas, which could be comparable to those of Russia making up about 30 per cent of global gas reserves. Experts say that by 2030 Russia will be using many of its Arctic gas deposits to extract about 50 per cent of its natural gas. For example, the Shtokman deposit in the Barents Sea contains 4 trillion cubic metres of gas.
Russia's marine doctrine, which was signed during Vladimir Putin's presidency, singles out the Arctic territory as one of the major directions of the country's naval policy. Russia's Security Council is to unveil a new strategy of Arctic development at the end of January. Moscow also wants to considerably intensify the freight traffic activity along the Northern Seaway during the upcoming years and plans to build for this purpose six new powerful nuclear icebreakers before 2020.[1]
It is more important now than ever to reaffirm what the whole world has learned at great cost... that border disputes and other differences must be settled through peaceful discussion and not through military aggression.
Note
1. "The Arctic in NATO's Cross-Hairs," David Brian, Voice of Russia, January 26, 2009.
NATO Summit in Wales
NATO Establishes Infrastructure to
Enhance
Aggressive
Capability
Mass anti-war actions begin in Newport, Wales, August 30, 2014, ahead of the NATO Summit.
The NATO Summit to be held in Newport, Wales on September 4-5 is the first the aggressive alliance has held since its 2012 summit in Chicago and the first in the UK since 1990 when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. News report indicate that some 150 heads of state and ministers will attend, who along with their delegations and support staff will comprise some 10,000 people.
To
suppress the opposition of the world's peoples to the Anglo-American
and
NATO dictate of might makes right and NATO's war crimes, a security
fence 2.7 metres (9 feet) tall and 20 kilometres long called the "Ring
of
Steel" has been built and 10,000
police are mobilized from 43 UK police forces. British authorities say
the
Summit is a target of "terror threats."
British Prime Minister David Cameron, in a letter to leaders of NATO countries, outlined the priorities for the summit, including aggression against Russia, all of which he mendaciously couched in terms of "collective defence." In fact, it is an aggressive plan to contain and attack Russia if the Alliance sees fit. All of it is warmongering to justify putting the NATO countries more and more on a war footing. It must not pass!
Cameron said:
"In 2014, the world is more unpredictable than ever and we meet at another pivotal moment in the history of the alliance. In Afghanistan, our combat mission is coming to an end. To the East, Russia has ripped up the rulebook with its illegal annexation of Crimea and aggressive destabilisation of Ukraine. To the South, an arc of instability spreads from North Africa and the Sahel, to Syria, Iraq and the wider Middle East. So we must use the summit to agree how NATO should adapt to respond to and deter such threats; and to ensure the continued collective defence of all its members. We should have 5 goals.
"First, 6 months into the Russia-Ukraine crisis we must agree on long-term measures to strengthen our ability to respond quickly to any threat, to reassure those allies who fear for their own country's security and to deter any Russian aggression. All NATO allies have already contributed to the alliance's response to this crisis and we should agree how we can sustain a robust presence in Eastern Europe, consistent with the NATO Russia Founding Act, to make clear to Russia that neither NATO nor its members will be intimidated. We should agree specific actions including: a new exercise schedule adapted to the new security environment; the necessary infrastructure; pre-positioning of equipment and supplies; and an enhanced NATO Response Force. This should be part of a broader action plan that enables us to respond more quickly to any threat against any member of the alliance, including when we have little warning.
"We must also review our long term relationship with Russia. While NATO has only ever sought to be a partner to Russia, not a threat, it is clear that Russia views NATO as an adversary. We must accept that the co-operation of recent years is not currently possible because of Russia's own illegal actions in NATO's neighbourhood and revisit the principles that guide our relationship with Russia.
"Second, as the ISAF mission in Afghanistan draws to an end, we must consider how to support the Afghan government in the years ahead, ensuring they maintain the progress we have made together and stop the country from once again becoming a safe haven for terrorists. We should review plans for NATO's new mission to train, advise and assist the Afghan security forces from the start of next year. And we should discuss the future financial sustainment of the Afghan troops as we work towards the long-term goal of Afghanistan being able to sustain its own forces.
"Third, we must agree how NATO will address the risks and challenges from an unstable world of failed states, regional conflicts, terrorism and cyber-attacks. We must ensure that NATO has the capabilities it needs to respond to changing threats. That requires investment. The UK is already one of 4 members of the alliance to meet the target of spending 2% of our GDP on defence and I would urge other allies to make the strongest possible commitment to increase their defence spending, and to devote at least one fifth of it to equipment and research. As our economies start to recover, reversing the decline in defence spending and investing in our defence capabilities would strengthen alliance cohesion and signal that NATO means business.
"While we invest in our forces at home, we should also do more to provide practical support to other countries that need to strengthen their own security. [...] In Wales, I would like us to agree on new defence capacity building missions to other parts of the world, for example Georgia or the Middle East.
"Fourth, as the world's broadest security network with partnerships with over 40 countries and organisations on 5 continents, we should demonstrate a clear commitment to working with others who share our values and to maintaining an international rules-based order that promotes freedom, democracy and the rule of law. I support the proposed interoperability initiative with 24 of our partners to sustain these skills and relationships and I would like our defence ministers to meet with a smaller group to discuss enhanced opportunities for working together.
"Fifth, and finally, we should recognise the sacrifices
made by our armed
forces. In the UK, we have enshrined an Armed Forces Covenant in law to
ensure that our armed forces get the respect and support they deserve.
[...] a
'North Atlantic Armed Forces Charter,' signed by us all, would
underline our
commitment to treating our armed forces and their families fairly and
providing them with the necessary support and care when they retire or
are
wounded or killed. [...]"
(Photos: J. Proctor, S. Boughton, Yasin)
Condemn the Warmongering NATO Summit!
Britain out of NATO!
Newport, Wales, August 30, 2014 (CND)
Opposition is mounting to the warmongering North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit being held at Celtic Manor in Newport, Wales from 4-5 September. The government has been forced to erect a 12-mile "ring of steel" around the summit, and garrison 10,000 police in Wales in order to secure the warmongers' protection from the justifiable anger of the people and to attempt to prevent the people's opposition and create a climate of fear and intimidation.
The government must be condemned for its continued membership of such a criminal organisation and for hosting its summit, the first in two years, which is expected to attract over 150 heads of state and ministers from some 60 countries, including US President Barack Obama. The summit, said to be the largest ever gathering of political leaders in Britain's history, is being held at a time when the criminal military intervention carried out by NATO in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere has plunged the world into a state of unprecedented instability and turmoil. NATO's criminal activity, in contention with its rivals, has caused the loss of millions of lives, and created levels of devastation, violence and anarchy in some regions that seem likely to engulf the world in new wars, a situation used as the pretext for further NATO military intervention.
The example of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia 15 years ago, of which Tony Blair was an enthusiastic champion, demonstrates the aggressive character of NATO and its use as tool of domination. It is a huge irony that Blair himself described this aggression as necessary to avert what would otherwise have been "a humanitarian disaster". The warning of the nature of NATO plans for Ukraine is very clear.
As if to highlight the warmongering aims of the aggressive US-led NATO alliance, ahead of the summit the organisation has held emergency meetings to discuss what further pressure it can bring to bear on Russia, following tendentious allegations that Russian armed forces have "invaded" the east of Ukraine and are responsible for the current conflict there. President Obama has threateningly reiterated that NATO will provide "unwavering" support for all its members, that the summit will discuss how it can prepare itself for any challenge from Russia, and that NATO will strengthen its so-called "co-operation" and "working together" with the Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen went even further claiming that NATO's "response force" was in readiness, that NATO was assisting with the modernisation of Ukraine's army and that is was seeking additional bases in Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Prime Minister has provocatively announced that his government will seek to end the country's "non-bloc" status and seek membership of NATO.
NATO expansion in Eastern Europe, which is already being championed by the government of Poland, is in direct contravention of the 1997 NATO- Russia Act. Prime Minister Cameron has already called for a "review" of NATO's relationship with Russia and it appears that this NATO summit, using the pretext of the Ukraine crisis, may well be used to overcome opposition within NATO, particularly from Germany, and alter the facts on the ground.
Successive British governments have demonstrated their slavish support for the US-dominated NATO and in this regard Cameron's government is no different. The current government should be condemned for its sabre-rattling in regard to Russia and warmongering demands for NATO expansion in Eastern Europe. The government is also intending to use the summit to demand increased funding for NATO, for a commitment to maintain NATO intervention in Afghanistan so as to consolidate the creation of a proxy state there, as well as in Georgia and elsewhere. Indeed Cameron is urging a strengthening of NATO's global partnerships in order to further the interventionist aims of Britain, the US and their allies.
Far from being a factor for global peace and stability or a basis for economic growth, NATO remains an alliance for war and instability, an unnecessary drain on the economies of Britain and other countries in which the majority of people have no decision-making powers.
The aim of the United States in consolidating NATO is clearly to secure its domination, not only through Eastern Europe to Asia, but also to Africa and not least in the whole of North America itself. The big powers of Europe, for their part, have been themselves concentrating power in the Europe of the monopolies, and see their participation in NATO also from this perspective. Altogether, the aim of the participants in NATO is to build that force which is moulded to carry out aggression as required on a co-ordinated and swift basis anywhere in the world. However, the incoherence of the plans and the contention between Europe and the US present problems. As the briefing of the British government says, it is an "unpredictable world". When the talk is of "building stability" in this world, then the issue for NATO is to impose neo-liberalism and fascism through force of arms. This scenario does not come cheap, and it is evident that one of the main emphases in the summit is going to be that the US is urging the European participants to shoulder more of the bill. As the US National Security Advisor Susan Rice is quoted as saying, "Europe needs to take defence spending seriously and meet NATO's benchmark."
The times cry out for mounting opposition to the warmongering NATO. Britain's membership must be ended. The working class and people should also be vigilant about what the British state is planning at home as a corollary to the summit, bearing in mind that in 2005 when the G8 leaders met in Gleneagles, Scotland, the 7/7 bombings were carried out in London, with all the hallmarks of a state-organised outrage to deflect attention from the people's opposition to these leaders of the capitalist world.
All peace-loving people must step up their efforts to stay the hands of the warmongers in Ukraine, to end Britain's intervention throughout the world and create the conditions for establishing an anti-war government.
Down with the warmongering NATO alliance! Britain Out of
NATO!
Fight for an Anti-War Government!
Peace Camp, Newport, Wales
Important Questions of War and Peace
Nazi Germany's Invasion of Poland
Pictured here in 1944 are Polish partisans, members of the Polish People's Army (Armia Ludowa), who bravely and with great sacrifice fought together with the Soviet Army to liberate their country and defeat Nazi fascism in Europe. (Polish Army Museum in Warsaw)
At 4:15 am on September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland in a massive assault. Hitler's Wehrmacht of 1,850,000 troops, 3,200 tanks, 2,000 combat aircraft and 11 warships -- over two-thirds of Germany's entire combat force -- destroyed the Polish state and massacred the Polish people.[1]
Behind the Wehrmacht followed Himmler's SS Einsatzgruppen, killing squads specializing in mass murder.
 Nazis parade through Warsaw following the invasion of Poland, September 28-30, 1939. |
The Polish people were greatly outnumbered but fought back bravely. The state leaders of Poland fled to Romania on September 17, but the Polish people's spirit of resistance remained strong. Many Poles fought courageously in the communist-led underground Resistance. Poles formed their own patriotic divisions and fought alongside the Red Army against the Nazis all the way to Berlin.
 Nazis carry out expulsions in the Zamosc region of Poland, December 1942. (Wikipedia) |
"As a result of the Soviet Union's timely entry into what had been territories of the Polish state, Hitler was forced to accept a line of demarcation between his troops and the Red Army, a long way west of the then Polish-Russian frontier."[3] The Red Army saved millions of people including Poles inhabiting the Ukraine and Byelorussia from a similar fate that Hitler was at that time wreaking upon the Polish people. Even the virulently anti- communist Winston Churchill publicly justified the Soviet march into eastern Poland.
Today, the modern-day Hitlerites, masquerading as democrats, continue to spread the vicious lies that "Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union secretly conspired to divide Poland between them." Those lies, meant to equate the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany and discredit and split the anti-fascist front led by the communists, were first put forth by Hitler himself in a speech declaring war on the Soviet Union, when he referred to "secret protocols" to divide Poland. Then after their defeat, some Nazi war criminals being tried at Nuremberg resurrected the"secret protocols" in a bid to escape punishment but the Presidium threw them out as a forgery. It was only when the U.S. took up the mantle of Hitlerism during the Cold War and became the modern day master of Goebbels' big lie technique that Hitler's concoction about "secret protocols" became a so-called historical fact.[4] This has now become official Canadian propaganda as well.
 Collective punishment for opposing the Nazi occupation took the form of public hangings, mass executions and other crimes against the Polish people. (Wikipedia) |
As inter-imperialist war clouds loomed over Europe, the Polish ruling circles refused to see the world as it presented itself, especially the German Nazi imperialists who made no secret of their desire to conquer Europe so as to conquer the world, and their racist contempt of the Polish people. The Polish elite considered Britain and France to be their allies and the Soviet Union their avowed enemy. The Anglo-American and French imperialists wanted to ensure their own leading roles in world domination. They followed a policy of appeasing Hitler and egging him eastward to attack the Soviet Union, rather than organizing collective security with the Soviet Union against the avowed eastward expansionism of Nazi Germany into industrial, oil bearing and rich agricultural regions, hoping that it would become bogged down in a protracted war rather than grow fat from robbing the Soviet Union of its wealth.
For its part, Poland hoped that Hitler would somehow go East and attack the Soviet Union without seizing Poland first, and that from the spoils of war Poland could also capture Soviet territory. Poland refused to settle outstanding border questions thus keeping the Soviet defence line against the Nazis as far east as possible. The Polish state refused the Soviets permission to enter Poland to stop the impending Nazi advance and make it more difficult. Instead of taking all measures necessary to defend the people against the disasters of an obvious Nazi invasion, the Polish rulers, harbouring deep illusions about Hitler's intentions and blinded by anti-communism, preferred instead to engage in fanciful manoeuvres for advantages favouring their private interests.
In attacking Poland, Hitler was both taking up the
Anglo-American policy
of going East and implementing his own plan outlined in Mein Kampf , to
increase Germany's "living space" ( lebensraum ) by taking over the
Ukraine
as part of his plan to enslave the entire world. Hitler made his
barbaric
intentions toward Poland very clear. Only ten days before the attack,
Hitler in
his Obersalzburg speech instructed his generals to "send to death
mercilessly
and without compassion men, women, and children of Polish derivation
and
language. Only thus shall we gain the living space[l ebensraum ]which
we
need."[7] Tragically, in the end,
Poland paid very dearly for its
ruling class
leaders' imperialist ambitions, anti-communism and rejection of Soviet
assistance.
The Nazis had a longstanding plan to annihilate Warsaw as part of destroying and remaking the entirety of Poland. This photo from January 1945 shows that 85 per cent of the city was destroyed. This campaign of destruction was also meant to "teach a lesson" to the partisans of Warsaw who fought so valiantly to the end, so that their example would not be followed by others. (Wikipedia)
Today, the Harper government and reactionary Polish ruling circles continue to spread the same lies that the Nazis did, and try to throw mud on the wartime exploits of the Soviet Union so as to accuse the communists of crimes against humanity. On September 1, 2009, Polish President Lech Kaczynski called for "glory to all the soldiers who fought in World War Two against German Nazism and Bolshevik totalitarianism." Soon after the April 10, 2010 crash of a Polish airliner near Smolensk, in which Kaczynski and 95 others died, the Polish rulers and others around the world used the tragedy to resurrect the old lie that the Soviet Union and not the Nazis committed the wartime Katyn Forest Massacre. Such deliberate disinformation ignores the fact that it was the Nazis who killed six million Poles and that it was the Red Army together with an allied Polish Army that finally liberated Poland from the Nazi occupiers.
Monument to Polish partisans and German anti-fascist fighters in Berlin. The relief at right depicts a Soviet soldier, a soldier of the Armia Ludowa (Polish People's Army) and a German anti-Fascist. (Wikipedia; Colin Smith)
Notes
1. Much of the German military equipment used in the invasion was built by U.S.-owned companies such as Ford, General Motors and Focke Wulfe (ITT).
2. An estimated seven million Russian men, women and children were killed during the 1918 invasion.
3. Hardial Bains, Causes and Lessons of the Second World War (Toronto: MELS Institute, 1990).
4. Poland had concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany in January 1934, the first state to form such an alliance with the Nazi administration.
6. These included oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, the Metro-Vickers arms trust, and the big banking houses such as Baring, Hambros and Credit Lyonnais. Soon-to-be U.S. President Herbert Hoover also had large investments in Czarist Russia.
7. E.L. Woodward & Rohan Riftlep (eds.), Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919-1939, 3rd series (London: HMSO, 7:258- 260, 1954).
Historical Account of Start of World War II
TML Weekly is posting below an extract from Chapter 22 of the book The Great Conspiracy by Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, entitled "The Second World War."
The Second World War
[...]
On September 1, 1939, Nazi mechanized divisions invaded Poland at seven points. Two days later, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. Within two weeks, the Polish regime, which under the influence of the anti-Soviet "Colonels' clique" had allied itself with Nazism, refused Soviet aid and opposed collective security, fell to pieces, and the Nazis were mopping up the scattered remnants of their former ally.
On September 17, as the Nazi columns raced across Poland and the Polish Government fled in panic, the Red Army crossed the prewar Polish eastern border and occupied Byelorussia, the western Ukraine and Galicia before the Nazi Panzers could get there. Moving swiftly westward, the Red Army occupied all the territory which Poland had annexed from Soviet Russia in 1920.
"That the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace," declared Winston Churchill in a radio broadcast on October 1. "An Eastern Front has been created which Nazi Germany does not dare assail. When Herr von Ribbentrop was summoned to Moscow last week it was to learn the fact, and accept the fact, that the Nazi designs upon the Baltic states and upon the Ukraine must come to a dead stop."
The advance of the Red Army to the west was the first of a series of moves by the Soviet Union counterbalancing the spread of Nazism and designed to strengthen Soviet defenses in preparation for the inevitable showdown with the Third Reich....
During the last week in September and the first days in October, the Soviet Government signed mutual assistance pacts with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. These agreements specified that Red Army garrisons and Soviet airports and naval bases were to be established in the Baltic States.
There began immediately a wholesale deportation of the Nazi Fifth Column in the Baltic area. Within a few days 50,000 Germans had been deported from Lithuania, 53,000 from Latvia and 12,000 from Estonia. Overnight, the Baltic Fifth Columns so laboriously built up by Alfred Rosenberg suffered a devastating blow, and the German High Command lost some of its most strategic bases for the contemplated attack on the Soviet Union.
But to the north, Finland remained as a potential military ally of the Third Reich.
The most intimate working relationship existed between the German and the Finnish High Commands. The Finnish military leader, Baron Karl Gustav von Mannerheim, was in close and constant communication with the German High Command. There were frequent joint staff talks, and German officers periodically supervised Finnish army maneuvers. The Finnish Chief of Staff, General Karl Oesch, had received his military training in Germany, as had his chief aide, General Hugo Ostermann, who served in the German Army during the First World War. In 1939, the Government of the Third Reich conferred upon General Oesch one of its highest military decorations ....
Political relations between Finland and Nazi Germany were also close. The Socialist Premier Risto Ryti regarded Hitler as a "genius"; Per Svinhufrud, the wealthy Germanophile who had been awarded the German Iron Cross, was the most powerful behind-the-scenes figure in Finnish politics.
With the aid of German officers and engineers, Finland had been converted into a powerful fortress to serve as a base for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Twenty-three military airports had been constructed on Finnish soil, capable of accommodating ten times as many airplanes as there were in the Finnish Air Force. Nazi technicians had supervised the construction of the Mannerheim Line, a series of intricate, splendidly equipped fortifications running several miles deep along the Soviet border and having heavy guns at one point only twenty-one miles from Leningrad. Unlike the Maginot Line, the Mannerheim Line had been designed not only for defensive purposes but also for garrisoning a major offensive force. As the Mannerheim Line neared completion in the summer of 1939, Hitler's Chief of Staff, General Halder, arrived from Germany and gave the massive fortifications a final inspection ....
During the first week of October, 1939, while still negotiating its new treaties with the Baltic States, the Soviet Government proposed a mutual assistance pact with Finland. Moscow offered to cede several thousand square miles of Soviet territory on central Karelia in exchange for some strategic Finnish islands near Leningrad, a portion of the Karelian Isthmus and a thirty-year lease on the port of Hango for the construction of a Soviet naval base. The Soviet leaders regarded these latter territories as essential to the defense of the Red naval base at Kronstadt and the city of Leningrad.
The Mannerheim line (front line December 1939) is shown by the purple dotted line, with Finland to the north. The red bars show Finnish fortifications. The Soviet-Finnish border of 1918-1939 is shown by the green dotted line. (www.northfort.ru)
The negotiations between the Soviet Union and Finland dragged on into the middle of November without results. In order to reach some agreement, the Soviet Government made a number of compromises. "Stalin tried to teach me the wisdom of Finnish as well as Soviet interest in compromise," declared the Finnish negotiator, Juho Passikivi, upon his return to Helsinki. But the pro-Nazi clique dominating the Finnish Government refused to make any concessions and broke off the negotiations.
By the end of November, the Soviet Union and Finland were at war. "The Finnish nation," declared the Finnish Government, "is fighting for independence, liberty and honor.... As the outpost of Western civilization, our nation has the right to expect help from other civilized nations."
The anti-Soviet elements in England and France believed that the long-awaited holy war was at hand. The strangely inactive war in the west against Nazi Germany was the "wrong war." The real war lay to the east. In England, France and the United States, an intense anti-Soviet campaign began under the slogan of "Aid to Finland."
Prime Minister Chamberlain, who only a short time before had asserted his country lacked adequate arms for fighting the Nazis, quickly arranged to send to Finland 144 British airplanes, 114 heavy guns, 185,000 shells, 50,000 grenades, 15,700 aerial bombs, 100,000 greatcoats and 48 ambulances. At a time when the French Army was in desperate need of every piece of military equipment to hold the inevitable Nazi offensive, the French Government turned over to the Finnish Army 179 airplanes, 472 guns, 795,000 shells, 5100 machine guns and 200,000 hand grenades.
While the lull continued on the Western Front, the British High Command, still dominated by anti-Soviet militarists like General Ironside, drew up plans for sending 100,000 troops across Scandinavia into Finland, and the French High Command made preparations for a simultaneous attack on the Caucasus, under the leadership of General Weygand, who openly stated that French bombers in the Near East were ready to strike at the Baku oil fields.
Day after day the British, French and American newspapers headlined sweeping Finnish victories and catastrophic Soviet defeats. But after three months of fighting in extraordinarily difficult terrain and under incredibly severe weather conditions, with the temperature frequently falling to sixty and seventy degrees below zero, the Red Army had smashed the "impregnable" Mannerheim Line and routed the Finnish Army.[3]
Hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union ended on March 13, 1940. According to the peace terms, Finland ceded to Russia the Karelian Isthmus, the western and northern shores of Lake Lagoda, a number of strategic islands in the Gulf of Finland essential to the defense of Leningrad. The Soviet Government restored to Finland the port of Petsamo, which had been occupied by the Red Army, and took a thirty-year lease on the Hango peninsula for an annual rental of 8,000,000 Finnish marks.
Addressing the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. on March 29, Molotov declared:
The Soviet Union, having smashed the Finnish Army and having every opportunity of occupying the whole of Finland, did not do so and did not demand any indemnities for its expenditures in the war as any other Power would have done, but confined its desires to a minimum ... We pursued no other objects in the peace treaty than that of safeguarding Murmansk and the Murmansk railroad ....
The undeclared war of Nazi Germany against Soviet Russia went on ....
On the day that Finnish-Soviet hostilities ceased, General Mannerheim declared in a proclamation to the Finnish Army that "the sacred mission of the army is to be an outpost of Western civilization in the east." Shortly afterwards, the Finnish Government began to construct new fortifications along the revised frontier. Nazi technicians came from Germany to supervise the work. Large armament orders were placed with Sweden and Germany. German troops began arriving in considerable numbers in Finland. The Finnish and the German commands set LP joint headquarters and held joint army maneuvers. Scores of Nazi agents swelled the staffs of the German Embassy at Helsinki and the eleven consulates around the country....
 The Nazi warship Admiral Hipper lands troops in Norway in 1940. (Wikipedia) |
On May 10, Chamberlain tendered his resignation as Prime Minister, having brought his country to possibly the most desperate situation in its long history. That same day, as the King asked Winston Churchill to form a new cabinet, the German Army invaded Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. By May 21, the Germans had smashed their way through crumbling opposition, reached the Channel and cut off the Allies in Flanders.
Panic swept through France. Everywhere, the Fifth Column was at work. French troops were deserted by their officers. Whole divisions found themselves without military supplies. Paul Reymud told the Senate that French Army chiefs had committed "unbelievable errors." He denounced "traitors, defeatists and cowards." Dozens of top-ranking French officers were suddenly arrested. But the arrests came too late. The Fifth Column was already in control of France.
The former French Minister of Aviation, Pierre Cot, later wrote in Triumph of Treason:
... the Fascists had their own way in the country at large and in the Army. The anti-Communist agitation was a smoke screen behind which was being prepared the great political conspiracy that was to paralyze France and facilitate Hitler's work .... The most efficient instruments of the Fifth Column .... were Weygand, Pétain and Laval. At the Council of Ministers which was held at Cangé, near Tours, on June 12, 1940, General Weygand urged the government to end the war. His principal argument was that a Communist revolution had broken out in Paris. He stated that Maurice Thorez, General Secretary of the Communist Party, was already installed in the Presidential Palace. Georges Mandel, Minister of the Interior, immediately telephoned to the Prefect of Police in Paris, who denied Weygand's statements; there was no disturbance in the city, the population was quiet .... As soon as they had seized power amid the confusion of the collapse, Pétain and Weygand, with the help of Laval and Darlan, hastened to suppress all political liberties, gag the people, and set up a Fascist regime.
With every hour, confusion mounted and the debacle grew,
as the French
soldiers fought on desperately, hopelessly, and the world watched the
betrayal
of a nation on a scale never witnessed before ....
Mass evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, France as the country fell to the Nazis. (Wikipedia)
From May 29 through June 4, the British Army evacuated its troops from Dunkirk, heroically rescuing 335,000 men.
On June 10, Fascist Italy declared war on France and England.
On June 14, Paris fell, and Pétain, Weygand, Laval and the Trotskyite Doriot became the Nazi puppet rulers of France.
On June 22, an armistice between Germany and France was signed in the Compiègne Forest in the very same railroad car in which Marshal Foch had dictated the terms of surrender to the defeated Germans twenty-two years before.
As France crumbled, the Red Army again moved swiftly to strengthen the defenses of the Soviet Union.
In the middle of June, forestalling an imminent Nazi Putsch in the Baltic States, Soviet armored divisions occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
On June 27, the Red Army moved into Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, which Rumania had snatched from the Russians after the Revolution.
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany now faced one another on their future battle lines.
Toward the end of July, the Nazis launched mass air raids over London and other English cities, pouring down tons of explosives upon the civilian population. The raids, which increased in ferocity throughout the next month, were intended to terrify and paralyze the whole nation, and swiftly bring an already gravely weakened England to her knees.
But with Churchill as Prime Minister profound changes were taking place within Great Britain. The confusion and division which had resulted from Chamberlain's leadership had given way to determination and growing national unity. Across the narrow Channel the British people saw the workings of the Fifth Column. Churchill's Government acted swiftly and with resolution. Scotland Yard and British Intelligence swooped down on Nazi agents, British Fascists and leaders of secret Fifth Column intrigues. In a sudden raid on the London headquarters of the British Union of Fascists, the authorities seized important documents and arrested many Fifth Columnists. The leader of the British Fascist Party, Sir Oswald Mosley, was arrested in his own apartment. Sensational arrests followed. John Beckett, a former Member of Parliament and founder of the anti-Soviet and pro-Nazi People's Party; Captain A. H. Ramsay, Tory Member of Parliament for Peebles; Edward Dudley Elan, an official in the Ministry of Health, his wife Mrs. Dacre Fox, and other prominent Pro-Nazis and Fascists were arrested. A Treachery Bill was passed, providing the death penalty for traitors.
Showing that it had learned well the lesson of France and of the Moscow Trials, the British Government in July 1940 announced the arrest of Admiral Sir Barry Domvile, former Director of Naval intelligence. Domvile, a friend of Alfred Rosenberg and of the late General Max Hoffmann, had been involved in most of the anti- Soviet conspiracies since 1918. At the time of his arrest, Domvile was the head of a secret pro-Nazi society in England called The Link which was organized with the aid of Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the Gestapo ....
Assured against treachery from within, the British people faced the ordeal of the Nazi air blitz without flinching, and defended themselves. On the single day of September 17, 1940, the RAF downed no less than 185 German planes over England.
The Nazis' Blitz of London, September 7, 1940. (Wikipedia)
Meeting such fierce and unexpected resistance, and mindful of the Red Army on his eastern borders, Hitler paused at the Channel. He did not invade the British Isles ....
The year was 1941. An air of tense expectancy hung over the whole of Europe as Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, the two greatest military powers in the world, prepared to lock in battle.
On March 1, the Germans entered Sofia, and Bulgaria became a Nazi base.
On April 6, after a popular revolt had overthrown Regent Prince Paul's Yugoslavian regime and Nazi agents were forced to flee the country, the Soviet Government signed a non-aggression pact with the new Yugoslavian Government. That same day, Nazi Germany declared war on Yugoslavia and invaded it.
On May 5, Stalin became Premier of the U.S.S.R.[4]
At four o'clock on the morning of June 22, 1941, without any declaration of war, Hitler's tanks, air force, mobile artillery, motorized units and infantry were hurled across the borders of the Soviet Union on a stupendous front stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Later that morning Goebbels broadcast Hitler's war proclamation. It read in part:
German people! At this moment a march is taking place that, as regards extent, compares with the greatest the world has hitherto seen. United with their Finnish comrades, the fighters of the victory of Narvik are standing in the Northern Arctic. German divisions commanded by the conqueror of Norway, in co-operation with the heroes of Finnish freedom, under their marshal, are protecting Finnish soil. Formations of the German eastern front extend from East Prussia to the Carpathians. German and Rumanian soldiers are united under Chief of State Antonescu from the banks of the Pruth along the lower reaches of the Danube to the shores of the Black Sea. The task of this front, therefore, no longer is the protection of single countries, but the safeguarding of Europe and thereby the salvation of all.
Italy, Rumania, Hungary and Finland joined the Nazi war on Soviet Russia. Special Fascist contingents were raised in France and Spain. The united armies of a counterrevolutionary Europe had launched a Holy War against the Soviets. The Plan of General Max Hoffmann was being tested in action ....
On November 11, 1941, the American Undersecretary of State, Sumner Welles, said in a speech at Washington:
Twenty-three years ago today, Woodrow Wilson addressed the Congress of the United States in order to inform the representatives of the American people of the terms of the Armistice which signalized the victorious conclusion of the First World War .... Less than five years later, shrouded in the cerements of apparent defeat, his shattered body was placed in the grave beside which we are now gathered ....
The heart-searching question which every American citizen must ask himself on this day of commemoration is whether the world in which we have to live would have come to this desperate pass had the United States been willing in those years which followed 1919 to play its full part in striving to bring about a new world order based on justice and on "a steadfast concert for peace." ... A cycle in human events is about to come to an end .... The American people ... have entered the Valley of Decision.
On December 7, 1941, without warning, Japanese bombing planes and battleships attacked the United States of America. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States ....
On December 9, in an address to the American people, President Roosevelt said:
The course that Japan has followed for the past ten years in Asia has paralleled the course of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and Africa. Today, it has become far more than a parallel. It is collaboration so well calculated that all the continents of the world, and all the oceans, are now considered by the Axis strategists as one gigantic battlefield.
In 1931, Japan invaded Manchukuo -- without warning. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia -- without warning.
In 1938, Hitler occupied Austria -- without warning.
In 1939, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia -- without warning. Later in 1939, Hitler invaded Poland -- without warning. In 1940, Hitler invaded Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg - - without warning.
In 1940, Italy attacked France and later Greece -- without warning.
In 1941, Hitler invaded Russia -- without warning.
And now Japan has attacked Malaya and Thailand -- and the United States -- without warning.
It is all of one pattern.
The masks were off. The secret war of the Axis Anti-Comintern against Soviet Russia had merged with the world war against all free peoples.
On December 15, 1941, in a Message to Congress, President Roosevelt declared:
In 1936 the Government of Japan openly associated itself with Germany by entering the anti-Comintern Pact. This pact, as we all know, was nominally directed against the Soviet Union; but its real purpose was to form a league of fascism against the free world, particularly against Great Britain, France and the United States.
The Second World War had entered its final decisive
phase as a global
conflict between the forces of international Fascism and the united
armies of
progressive mankind.
Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference, a strategy meeting held by the Allied powers. The main outcome of the conference was the agreement to open a second front against Nazi Germany. (U.S. Army)
Notes
3. In June 1940 the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in New York City reported: "The American press told less truth and retailed more fancy lies about the Finnish war than about any recent conflict."
4. At 10:30 P.M. on the night of Saturday, May 10, 1941, a German Messerschmitt plane plummeted earthward over Lanarkshire, Scotland, and buried its nose in a field near Dungavel Castle, property of the young Duke of Hamilton. A former employee on the Duke's estate saw the flare of the fallen plane and then the slow, white plume of a descending parachute. Armed with a pitchfork he ran out to find a man lying on the ground with a broken ankle. The man was Rudolph Hess, Adolf Hitler's Deputy.
"Take me to the Duke of Hamilton," said Hess, speaking in English."l have come to save humanity!"
Hess hoped through Hamilton and his friends to gain British Tory backing for the Nazi attack on Soviet Russia.
Sir Patrick Dollan, Lord Provost of Glasgow, Scotland, said on June 11, 1941: "Hess came here ... in the belief that he could remain in Scotland two days, discuss his peace proposals with a certain group and be given a supply of petrol and maps to enable him to return to Germany and tell them the results of his conversation."
Referring to the Hess Mission in his speech of November
6, 1941, Stalin
declared: "The Germans knew that their policy of playing upon the
contradictions between the classes in separate states, and the
contradictions
between these states and the Soviet Union, had already produced results
in
France, the rulers of which had allowed themselves to be intimidated by
the
spectre of revolution, had refused to resist, and terror-stricken had
placed
native land under the heel of Hitler. The German-fascist strategists
thought the
same thing would occur with Great Britain and the United States of
America.
The notorious Hess was sent to Britain by the German fascists for this
very
purpose, in order to persuade the British politicians to join the
general
campaign against the U.S.S.R. But the Germans gravely miscalculated.
Rudolph Hess became a prisoner of the British Government."(The
Great
Conspiracy, Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn,Chapter 22: The
Second
World War, 1946)
Coming Event
No to the Merchants of Death!
No to War Preparations!
All Out to Oppose DEFSEC 2014
Halifax Arms Trade Show!
HalifaxThursday, September 4 -- 4:00 pm
Cunard Centre, 961 Marginal Road - near Pier 23
behind the Westin Hotel, past the Seaport Farmers’ Market
For further information, contact noharbourforwar@hotmail.com
The picket takes place during the Canadian Defence Security and Aerospace Exhibition Atlantic (DEFSEC 2014) where the biggest weapons dealers and military aircraft manufacturers in the world, such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics, will be exhibiting their war-fighting systems.
Canada is the fifth-largest defsec supplier in the world and DEFSEC Atlantic is Canada’s second largest exhibition for the defence, security and aerospace sector. This annual exhibition attracts the who’s who in defence, security and aerospace to Halifax.
At the Cunard Centre on Thursday, September 4 at 4:30 pm, Lockheed Martin Canada will be sponsoring a reception for these weapons manufacturers entitled “Hour of Good Cheer.”
Bring banners and placards to express your opposition to these merchants of death conducting their business in our city.
Get Canada Out of NATO!
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