WHEN World War II ended, the world’s people were in no doubt of the vital importance the Soviet Union had in crushing European fascism. Nor about the leading role the communists had played in the national resistance movements. This led to a historically strong support among the working class for the struggle for socialism.

Thus, in the coming decades the imperialists used significant resources to portray the Soviet Union and communism as the new enemy. Nato and the EU were built to shield the privileges of capital.

It is said that history is written by the victors. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 became the start of a new ideological offensive to rewrite history.

In today’s Europe, communist parties and symbols are banned and history books rewritten to promote the story of communism and nazism as equivalent, totalitarian counterparts of the victorious capitalist democracies.

These days the media is once again filled with the legends of how Churchill and Roosevelt liberated Europe, as the EU leaders take part in the official celebrations.

At the same time imperialism is once again on the offensive. In recent years, several countries have been devastated in aggressive wars.

The Western world is again plunged into a crisis with the consequence of millions of unemployed and poor as well as an emerging fascism in several places in Europe.

Seen in this perspective, it is more important than ever that someone remembers the story as it really was. Remembers the 26 million Soviets who sacrificed their lives in the struggle against fascism, and the communists who led the resistance movement in Germany and in the occupied countries, in many of which the rulers submitted to fascism.

Remembers that it was big capital that fostered the hatred, fascism and the drive to rearmament and started two devastating world wars.

With this joint supplement, we wish to tell our part of the story of how fascism in Europe was crushed.

We build on the best traditions from the resistance movements during the war and from international solidarity.

The supplement is made as a part of the international co-operation between the four sister newspapers Morning Star from Britain, Junge Welt from Germany, Zeitung vum Letzebuerger Vollek from Luxembourg and Arbejderen from Denmark.

The rulers in those four countries were confronting each other in the war, but our four working-class newspapers with this supplement create new ties across borders for peace and solidarity and with our faces turned towards the system which was the cause of the disaster.

We are far from telling the whole story in this supplement. But it is an important counterpart to the official history of how Europe was liberated from fascism. We hope it will inspire you to read on.

Freja Wedenborg,
News editor
Arbejderen