Release from the PCP Press Office

75th Anniversary of the Victory over Naz-Fascism. In the name of peace and truth - against fascism and war

For what they represent in the struggle of workers and peoples for their emancipation, there are events in the History of Mankind that can never be forgotten and whose memory has to be defended against all attempts at erasure and falsification.

May 9, 1945, which marks the defeat of Nazi-fascism and the end of World War II in Europe, is one of those events.

In this year that celebrates the 75th. anniversary of Victory Day, in a time marked by uncertainties in which, fuelled by the very nature of capitalism and the deepening of a crisis that the epidemic outbreak makes even more clear, and the threat of fascism and war reappears, the more necessary it is to defend the historical truth and learn lessons for the current struggle against imperialism, fascism and war and for freedom, sovereignty and peace.

World War II was the result of the worsening of the contradictions among the great capitalist powers, of the struggle to divide the world into spheres of influence and domination and of their common aim to destroy the first socialist state, the USSR. All efforts by the Soviet government to isolate Nazi Germany and its allies from the "Axis" and to create a collective security system were rejected by the governments of the United Kingdom and France, while at the same time colluding with successive expansionist aggressions by German Nazism, as well as by Italian fascism and Japanese militarism. The Munich Pact, agreed between the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy in 1938, which paved the way for the dismemberment and occupation of Czechoslovakia and with which the governments of the United Kingdom and France intended to push the Nazi hordes against Soviet Union, will go down in history as one of the darkest proofs of the responsibilities of the so-called “western democracies” in the outbreak of the war. The fact that they were later forced to ally with the Soviet Union does not erase this reality.

Nazi-fascism was the most terrorist expression of big capital. Fuelled and supported by great German monopolies - such as Krupp, IG-Farben, Siemens and others - and placed at their service, Nazism committed the greatest crimes against the German people and against the peoples victims of the invasion and occupation by their military hordes. Millions of human beings, prisoners of war and civilians, were coldly massacred, shot or exterminated in concentration camps, of which Auschwitz is a particularly sinister example. Not to let this barbarism and those responsible for it fall into oblivion and to celebrate the 75th. anniversary of a date that symbolizes the liberation of Humanity from the Nazi nightmare is a duty of all those who love freedom and peace.

Attempts to falsify the history of World War II have recently assumed particularly serious expressions, all the more so when they are inserted in the justification of militarism and wars of aggression and aim to endorse the most reactionary and aggressive sectors of imperialism that increasingly bet on fascism and war as a “way out” of the deepening of the structural crisis of the system. Such attempts not only whitewash fascism and conceal the role of communists in anti-fascist resistance, but even go so far as to completely distort reality, try to hold the Soviet Union responsible for the outbreak of war, as does a resolution adopted in the European Parliament, last September.

The PCP considers it necessary to denounce and firmly combat such perverse attempts at falsification, reminding that anti-communism and the advance of fascism go hand in hand. The historical truth is that the communists, who were the first target and the first victims of Nazi-fascism, represented the great force of the anti-fascist resistance against Nazi occupation, and in many countries came to form powerful guerrilla forces. And it was the USSR, the Soviet people, their communist party and the Red Army that made the greatest and most decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi-fascism, paying their patriotism and internationalism with the loss of more than 20 million lives. The heroic battles of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, made possible only by the superiority of socialism, will never be forgotten.

When celebrating the 75th. anniversary of May 9, the PCP recalls the active collaboration, under the cover of a false “neutrality”, provided by the Salazar government to Hitler and the demagogic operation to which the then fascist regime was forced in the face of the great demonstrations of joy with which the Portuguese people celebrated Victory and for the development of the democratic and anti-fascist struggle that the defeat of Nazi-fascism helped. It also recalls how the fascist regime quickly heightened repression, thanks to the support of the US, which in April 1949 made Portugal a founding member of NATO. When the extreme right-wing and fascism seek to advance around the world, when the attempt to whitewash almost half a century of fascism in Portugal reaches the point of trying to rehabilitate Salazar, while attacking the celebrations of April 25, it is fitting to remember the complicities and responsibilities of the dictator and of the fascist dictatorship in the greatest tragedy of the 20th. Century.

On the 75th anniversary of the Victory, the PCP reaffirms its commitment to the Portuguese workers and people, to the ideals of freedom, democracy, social progress, socialism, peace, to which it dedicated its nearly one hundred years of existence. And it also reaffirms its confidence that the unity and struggle of the world's anti-fascist and anti-imperialist forces will defeat the disturbing threats to freedom, social progress and peace that hover over mankind. Victory over Nazi-fascism was achieved at the cost of great sacrifices, but it showed that, however powerful the enemy may be, it is possible to resist and win.