FOR quite some time, it has been attempted to rewrite the history of May 8-9 1945 under the slogan “the dual end of the war.”

That means that only part of Europe was freed, the other part only exchanged one form of totalitarian rule for another.

The communist dictatorship came after the fascist dictatorship. This part of Europe joined the free world after 1990.

This version of history states that millions were disciplined and formed by political leaders. This is certainly not true, however it requires quite a lot of intellectual effort to rebut this.

For this purpose, two questions that are widely seen as settled need to be asked: What happened in 1933 and what happened in 1945?

The correct answers are: the victory of fascism in Germany and the destruction of fascist power, which caused and carried out the most horrendous war that the world had seen.

But that does not describe everything that happened in 1933. A further perspective describes the constitution of the regime led by Hitler as the event that brought confusion to the main front, which existed until then.

This main front existed between the bigger capitalist world and the state that had come about because of a revolution: the Soviet Union.

The socialist-communist programme of the latter was a challenge for everyone that had thought until then that the world belonged to them and to no-one else.

They didn’t let much time pass after 1917 and got together with counter-revolutionary powers inside the Soviet Union, in order to to strangle the Bolshevik baby in its cradle.

However, the war of intervention failed.

The danger was not seen as urgent, as the former tsarist empire, now a beacon of hope for communists around the world, had been weakened by a world war and a civil war and would need years before it could take up a position on the world stage.

Its political isolation and economic exclusion were supposed to change that. However, 10 years after the end of the civil war, the giant empire had been able to find its feet on an economic level, to such an extent that two books had to be written by the US journalist Hubert R Knickerbocker entitled Fighting the Red Trade Menace and Soviet Trade and World Depression. 

At the same time, the population of large regions of the Soviet Union was suffering from famine. It was estimated that the number of victims was somewhere in the millions.

Well into the beginning of the 1930s, in the middle of the largest global economic crisis, it was unclear how the large capitalist powers would cope with the unwanted Soviet Union.

At this point in time, the fascists gained power in Germany and therefore a group of politicians were in power who were not experienced in dealing with the ruling circles in Paris, London and Washington.

What one was able to read from the swastika flags was, on the one hand, a front against the winning powers of the first world war and, on the other hand, a plan to create a colonial empire in eastern Europe.

It was not possible to make out the sequence in which these aims were to be realised. Could it be hoped for that the fascist empire would carry out what the counterrevolution and the civil war had not been able to achieve?

The reactions of France and Britain, on which the path of the rest of Europe depended, had an alternative.

They could embark on an arms race with Germany, so that Hitler and his army would not risk a war with the “West.” That way, the regime would be likely to shift its efforts eastward.

But was that what they wanted? What would follow upon the imperialist expansion?

The surest way to tame the German fascists’ lust for expansion was by joining together with all threatened nations and creating a defensive coalition.

For Paris and London this meant responding to the Soviet politics of collective security and placing greater value in a state which they had originally hoped would not exist for long.

In France, politicians were found who started establishing ties with Moscow. The British Conservatives decided on a different course of action.

The first alarming step was taken in 1935 in a treaty which exempted Germany from the restrictive provisions of the Versailles Treaty regarding sea armament and thereby sanctioned some of Hitler’s rearmament.

The foreign policies of France and Britain seemed to be drifting apart, but in the end Paris followed suit.

Even though there were treaties signed in May 1935 between Paris, Prague and Moscow, a military treaty, which the German fascists would have had to fear, did not follow.

In Munich in 1938 the politics of appeasement culminated in an agreement that, one year later, led to the destruction of Czechoslovakia.

For the Western powers it was too much that Poland should become an object and a victim. With some hesitation, they created a front line against the German Reich — a front line that they could have created in 1935 together with the Soviet Union.

The making of Moscow into a pariah made it impossible to resuscitate the politics of collective security.

Hitler did not leave them time for a necessary process of creating trust. Everything else is well known.

An anti-Hitler coalition did come about. However, it was not created because of decisions made in Paris, London or Moscow.

It came about because of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union without having achieved a final victory over Great Britain.

That campaign could only be seen as a gift by the ruling circles in London. It had to led to part of the fascist military being withdrawn, in order to be relocated in the east.

That, in turn, would lead to a weakening of the western front and thereby relieve the strain on Britain. On the evening of June 22 1941, Churchill voiced his willingness to co-operate with the USSR.

On its territory the main front was being formed, and Britain had a vital interest in the Soviet Union standing firm. The coalition which had been refused before the war was created and existed beyond the days of victory in Europe.

From the perspective of the ruling circles of the large capitalist powers, the end of World War II resulted in two main outcomes.

Fascist Germany, their aggressor and rival, which wanted to take over their dominant position in the world, was militarily defeated and liquidated.

And during the war the older rival, the Soviet Union, came out of the war economically and militarily stronger than before, despite losing millions of citizens, despite the destruction of the western part of the county and despite the humongous cost of the war, which deformed the country’s economy.

Just as the Western powers had occupied large parts of the west of Europe during the war, the USSR had expanded its sphere throughout eastern Europe.

And immediately different paths were embarked on. In the west and in the south of the continent, old state apparatuses were reconstituted, monarchies were even re-established.

In the east, on the other hand, bourgeois politicians, communists, socialists, social democrats — many who had been at the forefront of the struggle to liberate their countries — took up important political positions.

What the social and political change would look like — which would come out on top — was yet to be decided.

In contrast to these developments, the main battle line was determined. No-one called for it earlier than Churchill.

In his speech in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, he claimed that the Soviet Union was splitting up the world by creating an “iron curtain” through Europe.

He proclaimed the Soviet Union to be the “main enemy of the West.”

In his opinion, the Soviet Union, along with all the communist organisations throughout the world, were a threat to the “Christian world.”

His conclusion was that the Soviet Union needed to be met with a significantly superior military power, and the leadership should be taken on by a “brotherhood of English-speaking peoples.”

And that is how the process which culminated in the founding of the anti-Soviet military coalition Nato began.

If seen like that, the coming about of a fascist state power in Germany and its role is something like an intermezzo in the history of the 20th century.

During most of the decades of the 20th century, the attempt to create a socialist society was the predominant goal of the Soviet Union, and after 1945 this was attempted throughout Europe, Asia and all the way to the coast of the US.

The main effort of the capitalist powers all the while — with the exception of the period during which they were engaged in World War II — was to find a way to make sure that the Soviet Union would fail.

The 20th century was a notable start — irrespective of its miserable end — on building a new world.

This thesis of “the dual end of the war” is part of the deception which is supposed to conceal this fact.