History is our Battleground

Slovenian partisans during a liberation celebration in Železna Kapla / Bad Eisenkappel, Austria, 1945.
Image credit: © delavnicaMUZEJ v Domu Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky

Walter Baier writes: This year marks a crucial moment in the struggle over historical memory. We commemorate the liberation of the concentration camps, the capitulation of the German Wehrmacht, and the end of Nazi barbarism on May 8/9, 1945. But what lessons have truly been learned?

Fifty-five million people perished in the Second World War. Six million Jews were murdered in concentration and extermination camps, victims of the Nazis’ murderous and racist ideology. On the territory of the former Soviet Union—today’s Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus—27 million people fell to Nazi genocidal aggression.

However, the pledge made in 1945 to never again allow fascism and war was broken within just a few years by political leaders.

Humanity’s entry into the era of potential collective suicide began with the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—events that took place 80 years ago this August. Hundreds of thousands of people were burned alive or suffocated within seconds, and countless survivors have suffered the lasting effects of nuclear fallout to this day.

Some describe the 20th century, with its wars, war crimes, and genocides, as a century of collective trauma. But two opposing historical forces have always been at play. The 20th century was also a century of national and anti-colonial liberation.

In April, we marked the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, where leaders from 29 newly decolonised African and Asian nations laid the foundation for the Non-Aligned Movement, heralding an era of national liberation.

Twenty years after Bandung, in May 1975, the United States was forced to acknowledge defeat in the Vietnam War. The German Swedish writer Peter Weiss summarised the lesson of that war, which claimed over two million lives, with these words: “The mightiest robber can no longer carry home his prey.”

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev once warned that in the next war, the living would envy the dead. The growing realisation among elites—both East and West—that a nuclear war would mean the end of humanity opened new pathways for peace in the last quarter of the 20th century. Out of this understanding came the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), whose Final Act was signed 50 years ago, on August 1. Thirty-five states from Europe and North America sought to establish lasting and peaceful coexistence on our continent.

«But today, Europe is preparing for a new Cold War that could easily usher in a hot war. In January, a majority in the European Parliament reduced the “liberation of Europe from National Socialism” to a mere Russian narrative, dismissing its commemoration as an idea used by Russia to justify its invasion of Ukraine.»

Eighty years after the defeat of fascism, authoritarian leaders such as Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, and Erdogan are proving—through rhetoric and action—that the far right is not a relic of the past but a present and pressing danger. As if the horrors of war and fascism had been wiped out, war is once again being legitimized as “a continuation of politics by other means”. Societies are being militarised, populations are being divided along racial, religious, and cultural lines. The global public are watching live reports of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

We socialists have not forgotten that this year also marks the 110th anniversary of the Zimmerwald Conference, where a small group of determined anti-war social democrats met in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, to embed the struggle for peace into the very DNA of the radical left.

«Today, fascism and war are not phantoms of the past; they are real and present dangers. It is up to the people—peace movements, trade unions, civil society, and the political left—to ensure that Europe does not once again slide into catastrophe.»

Walter Baier is President of the European Left Party. This article was originally published on the transform!europe website.