D-Day Celebrations. The Eastern Front Paved the Way For an Allied Victory.

 

Richard Mellor
6-6-24

Today is the 80^th anniversary of D-Day in WW2 when 150,000 men stormed five beaches in Normandy to, “….launch the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis.”. World leaders are on the beaches today to pay tribute to the veterans and those that died. Of the 4400 that died on Normandy’s beaches some 2500 were Americans. It’s also rarely mentioned, but the British contingent would include, Indians including Muslims as well as soldiers from the African colonies like Nigeria.

It is always important in these wars that are not of our own making, to separate those that are sent to kill or be killed in them, from those that send us. Working people die in wars on both sides of any conflict as soldiers and as civilians. And in any military, the officers, generals and strategists are from of the ruling class and upper class communities and their families. Working class people cannot be trusted in such positions except on very rare occasions.

One of the most nauseating aspects of these celebrations is the presence of the world leaders. The British monarch, that pompous twit King Charles is there with one of his offspring by his side. He’s all decked out in the uniform of a Field Marshall medals and all.  It’s amazing how quickly they rise through the ranks.

Biden is over there taking the opportunity to link D-Day to Ukraine, in order to justify western support and billions of dollars in military hardware for Zelensky;  all of Europe is at stake and surely that’s worth it. This is despite admitting publicly that the U.S. goal in Ukraine was to weaken Russia in order to move more deeply in to the Asia Pacific region to counter China which is “peer” competitor.

We have to be convinced that wars are fought in our interests and all the flag waving, patriotic speeches and fanfares, are aimed at maintaining this myth and it is this jingoism that I find so nauseating. It makes me angry to be honest, because when it comes to caring for those returning from these conflicts there is much lacking, this is, after all, money out. At one time, a third of the homeless in the US were veterans, many from the debacle in Vietnam.

The article I read this morning described D-Day as the day that the allied forces began the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazi’s. But there’s something missing here and it makes me angry, and that is representatives that fought on the Eastern Front.  Growing up in the UK or the US, we are well aware of the costs of the war. But I knew nothing whatsoever about the Eastern Front that many argue was the straw that broke the Nazi’s back. 

Look at the body counts.

The Soviets/Russians, lost 27 million people in WW2, some 8 million military and 19 million civilians. In the 6-month battle of Stalingrad, over one million Soviet troops were killed along with 40,000 civilians, most likely Russians. This battle is widely accepted as “…turning of the tide of war in favour of the Allies.”

Almost one million Russians died as the Germans laid siege to Lenningrad, most from famine which is what we are witnessing in Gaza at the moment. And in the battle for Berlin as the Russian Red Army advanced, 80,000 Soviet troops died along with 80,000 Germans.

The Eastern Front.

The Eastern Front went from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The total length of the front was around 3000 kilometers.

4 of 5 German deaths during the war happened on the Eastern Front. At the end of the war, the Soviet Union had lost 27 million people. The Western allies lost less than 2 million.

Germany lost around 4 million troops in the Eastern Front. On the Western Front it lost 1 million.

I think the German officials are invited to the D-Day celebrations but Russia is kept out. Where is the outcry about this?

The little fella Macron said that the reason the Russians are not invited, is, Russia’s "war of aggression against Ukraine that has intensified in recent weeks".

These wars are results of competition between the ruling classes of nations states, capitalist nations states. And the impetus for the conflicts is the plunder of and control of the resources of the world. In that film Joyeus Noel, it recreates those Christmas events in WW1 when British and German troops instituted a truce, left their trenches, walked in to no man’s land and fraternized with each other. They sang Christmas carols and played football. The officers that allowed that on the German side were sent to the Eastern Front.

Now here is the issue of class again. There should be a movement to not celebrate these events but to disassociate ourselves from them. Veterans of any nation are similar not simply in their class backgrounds but their experiences. Their experiences in conflict are identical other than the so-called nationality of the victims. The mental or physical damage is the same no matter which side of the battle line you are on.

The presence of the Biden’s, Macron’s and all the nationalist jargon at these celebrations are well thought out. They are designed to obscure and eradicate that kinship, that similarity, that class solidarity that is present beneath the surface.  My dad used to go to a once a year with French resistance veterans and others in Holland; there should be unions of all veterans no matter which side they were on.  National barriers are there for a purpose and they need to be crossed.

At the very least as things are, it disgusts me that Russia, a country that lost more workers than any other nation during two world wars is not represented even in this bourgeois fanfare. The Russian working class and people have earned a right to be there.

I grew up in a family where WW2 and its consequences were always present. My mother talked of the Blitz, the bombing of London, Coventry and other cities by the Nazi’s. and showed me the ration book that was only a few years gone. I knew of the Doodlebugs and the V2 rockets. My dad was captured by the Japanese in 1939, spent about a year in prison in Hong Kong and the rest of the time working for Mitsubishi on the docks in Tokyo. My dad never taught me to hate the Japanese, he actually respected the “grunts” that get dragged in to these squabbles that are not of our own making and are not in our interests.

Loss of life in these wars is a tragedy and a waste. I respect workers of all countries who are veterans of these wars but that doesn’t mean I have to support the war in question, the politicians that glorify it or the capitalist system that produces it.