Celebrate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of fascism

Written by: Nick G. on 9 May 2025

Eighty years ago, victory was achieved in the War Against Fascism.

The day is celebrated on either May 8 or 9 depending on which side of the international date line a country was situated at the time of signing.

The most significant contributor to the defeat of Nazi Germany was the Soviet Union led by Stalin.

The Battle for Stalingrad was the war’s turning point. Soviet losses were enormous. Twenty million Soviet people were killed by the invading Nazis, villages burnt to the ground and infrastructure destroyed.

Australia stood proudly by the side of the Soviet Union and its Allies. The prestige of Stalin and the Red Army was high. Lady Jessie Street was president (from 1939) of the Sydney branch of the Society for Cultural Relations with the U.S.S.R. Following Germany's attack on the Soviet Union, she mobilized and chaired the high-powered Russian Medical Aid and Comforts Committee; when war with Japan shifted priorities for medicines, she organized the 'Sheepskins for Russia' Appeal. 

Despite an initial ban on its existence, the Communist Party of Australia saw an unprecedented expansion. 

With the war’s end, imperialism regrouped and began the Cold War. It was assisted after Stalin’s death in 1953 by his revisionist successor Khrushchev who perfected the art of disinformation in his secret speech to the 20th Congress which was full of lies about Stalin. Khrushchev’s authority as head of the CPSU allowed these lies, leaked to the capitalist press, to be passed off as truths which led to a demonising of Stalin and a loss of members in Communist Parties around the globe, including here in Australia.

Today, the danger of a Third World War has intensified. There are increasing threats to use nuclear weapons, and the arms race is even reaching into Outer Space.

Accompanying the threat of war is a resurgence of fascism. It takes two forms: parliamentary legislation depriving unions and progressive peoples of their rights to take action in their workplaces and communities, and the growth of fascist street thugs who foment national and racial tensions through actions designed to intimidate and threaten opponents.

The April 25 Incident when Nazis booed the First Peoples Welcome to Country at an ANZAC Day ceremony was bad enough, but for the then Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, to effectively second their motion by adding to calls to get rid of the First People’s Welcomes, was a sign of just how closely both forms of fascism can feed off each other.

Zionism has besmirched the ancient religion of Judaism. In 1931, Stalin, alone among world leaders at that time, had denounced anti-Semitism as “the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism”, and had made its expression illegal in the USSR. The Hitlerites carried out the Holocaust, killing 6 million Jews. Now Israel, as a Zionist-created state on the occupied lands of the Palestinians, is imposing its own genocidal war on the people of Gaza and the West Bank.

The causes of the genocide in Gaza, Sudan, and Congo, and the destruction in Ukraine, no matter what are the particulars of each of these conflicts, all have the same root: intensified competition between imperialist powers for market shares and raw materials. 

If we are to remember and celebrate the victory of the War Against Fascism, we must dedicate ourselves to the contemporary fight against war and fascism.
In Italy, dockworkers supporting the Palestinians, blocked the ports under the slogan: “Let's lower the weapons, let's raise the wages! Let's block the logistics of war!”

Here we must defend our rights, not let the parliamentary fascists or the street thugs pass, and break the US stranglehold on our country.

No to AUKUS, no to the US war preparations!
For the rights of all peoples to self-determination!
For an anti-imperialist independent, peaceful and socialist Australia! 

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