D-Day anniversary: Commemorating the Second World War and preparing the Third
Bill Van Auken, Senior Analyst, wsws.org
The Russian people have not lost their respect for the ideas of socialism, and never fail to commemorate WW2—”The Great War”—in which they lost 26 million lives, but eventually broke the back of Nazism.
Few will remain unmoved by the appearance Friday on the beaches of Normandy of 90-year-old veterans marking—in many cases for the last time—the slaughter of D-Day in which nearly 20,000 troops—both Allied and German—lost their lives. Those present for the 70th anniversary commemoration were among the lucky who survived that day in 1944, but surely they have remained haunted by the memory of those who did not and marked for their entire lives by this terrible experience of their youth.
(Full text of this speech in the Appendix)
The presence of this dwindling band of survivors of World War II—the greatest exercise in mass killing in the history of the planet—only underscored the boundless hypocrisy of the official ceremonies in which President Barack Obama played the leading role.
Historic ironies abounded at Normandy’s 70th anniversary. In the run-up to a ceremony ostensibly marking a decisive defeat for fascism, the US president toured Europe to drum up support for a Ukrainian regime that came to power in a US-backed coup spearheaded by neo-Nazis. These same ultra-right forces are now being employed with Washington’s support to carry out war crimes against the people of eastern Ukraine.
The principal foes of the US and its allies in World War II—Germany and Japan—are today being prodded by Washington to re-militarize for the purpose of assisting US imperialism in the encirclement of Russia and China. In both Germany and Japan, historians are reworking the portrayal of World War II to justify the crimes carried out by German and Japanese imperialism.
Obama’s speech at Omaha beach was typical for the US president, filled with empty rhetoric, historical references stripped of any real content, and personal anecdotes that managed to be both exploitative and insincere.
Obama had next to nothing to say about the cause for which the sacrifices of 70 years ago were made, outside of a brief reference to “Nazi guns” and “Hitler’s wall.” He demonstratively excluded from his potted history any reference to the Soviet Union, which by the time of the Normandy invasion had already inflicted a strategic defeat on the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad. The Red Army was responsible for 80 percent of the casualties inflicted on German forces, and the Soviet people suffered 26 million dead in the war.
Perhaps the most bizarre part of Obama’s speech was his attempt to equate the war fought by the aged veterans brought together in Normandy with the “post-9/11” US military and its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He predicted that someday “future generations… will gather at places like this to honor them—and to say that these were generations of men and women who proved once again that the United States of America is and will remain the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known.”
What “freedom” did the US bring in wars that killed over a million Iraqis and Afghans? And at what places will future generations gather to mark these wars—Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Bagram prison or the scenes of countless drone strikes, bombings and night raids against civilian populations?
Even as Obama was speaking, his European tour was overshadowed by a right-wing furor in the US media over the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who apparently walked away from the war in Afghanistan after writing that he was “sorry for everything here” and describing the US military as “an army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies.”
In World War II, the American ruling class was largely able to conceal its own militarism and global appetites behind a broader democratic appeal, thanks to the intense hostility of working people in the US and internationally to Hitlerite fascism. Today, it cannot credibly make any such appeal. The American establishment confronts a population that is largely in sync with the sentiments of Sergeant Bergdahl and hostile to foreign military interventions.
World War II, nonetheless, was no more a war for democracy or crusade against fascism than World War I was the “war to end all wars,” or, for that matter, the invasion of Iraq was a struggle against terrorism. In the period leading up to the war, major capitalist interests in Western Europe and the US lauded both Hitler and Mussolini, seeing their fascist dictatorships as bulwarks against socialist revolution.
In the end, it was an imperialist war waged by the rival capitalist great powers for the re-division of the world’s markets and resources in the profit interests of financial and manufacturing conglomerates.
In 1934, analyzing the emerging contradictions that, without the spread of socialist revolution, would inevitably give rise to another World War, Leon Trotsky wrote: “US capitalism is up against the same problems that pushed Germany in 1914 on the path of war. The world is divided? It must be redivided. For Germany it was a question of ‘organizing Europe.’ The United States must ‘organize’ the world. History is bringing humanity face to face with the volcanic eruption of American imperialism.”
The prescience of these words is becoming clearer with every passing day. While US imperialism succeeded in reorganizing the capitalist world in the aftermath of World War II based on its economic strength, today it is driven by its crisis to resort to military means in an attempt to overcome its loss of economic power.
In his speech, Obama praised the assembled veterans for having “waged war so that we might know peace,” and called for God’s blessing upon today’s US military “who serve today for the peace and security of our world.”
For all the talk of “peace” at this commemoration of the Second World War, it is evident that US imperialism and the Obama administration are furiously preparing a third one.
With its Asia-Pacific “pivot,” it is deliberately provoking China, while egging on Japan, the Philippines and other countries in the region to create the conditions for a military confrontation.
In its campaign for regime-change in Ukraine, it is confronting Russia with the existential threat of NATO advancing to its very border.
Ultimately, its aim is to break the power of Russia and China to check US hegemony both regionally and internationally and reduce both countries to the status of semi-colonies. In recklessly pursuing this strategic aim, it risks igniting a nuclear Third World War.
Obama’s four-day tour of Europe, however, has turned into something of a debacle, exposing the increasingly open reluctance of the European powers—particularly France and Germany—to toe Washington’s line in escalating the confrontation with Russia.
This found explicit expression Friday in a column published in the influential German newspaper Die Zeit entitled “Europe needs to readjust its relations with the US.” The article warns that, “neither the US policy towards Ukraine and Russia nor America’s grand strategy as such is in Europe’s interest.”
It goes on to argue that Washington’s aggression is laying the foundations for a Chinese-Russian-Iranian axis that “would force the West to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy [i.e., war] to secure its access to important but dwindling raw materials such as oil.” In opposition to this, the commentary insists that Germany’s independent interests lie “with preserving and deepening Europe’s relations with Russia,” while pursuing similar ties with Iran.
The threat of a new world war lies not only in the confrontations being stoked up by US imperialism with Russia and China, but also in the conflicting imperialist interests of Europe and America which, under the lash of the continuing economic and financial crisis, threaten to be transformed into a ferocious conflict of each against all.
Once again, for the third time in 100 years, mankind is confronted with the threat of a global imperialist conflict—one far more terrible than those that began in 1914 and 1939—and the choice of socialism or barbarism.
There is no means of stopping a new imperialist war outside of the international socialist revolution. The decisive question is that of establishing a new revolutionary leadership in the working class through the building of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
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APPENDIX
Only for those with strong stomachs for hypocrisy
Obama D-Day Speech: FULL TEXT
Obama’s remarks at the D-Day 65th anniversary ceremony, as prepared for delivery.
Good afternoon. Thank you President Sarkozy, Prime Minister Brown, Prime Minister Harper, and Prince Charles for being here today. Thank you to our Secretary of Veterans Affairs, General Eric Shinseki for making the trip out here to join us. Thanks also to Susan Eisenhower, whose grandfather began this mission sixty-five years ago with a simple charge: “Ok, let’s go.” And to a World War II veteran who returned home from this war to serve a proud and distinguished career as a United States Senator and national leader: Bob Dole.
I am not the first American president to come and mark this anniversary, and I likely will not be the last. It is an event that has long brought to this coast both heads of state and grateful citizens; veterans and their loved ones; the liberated and their liberators. It has been written about and spoken of and depicted in countless books and films and speeches. And long after our time on this Earth has passed, one word will still bring forth the pride and awe of men and women who will never meet the heroes who sit before us: D-Day.Why is this? Of all the battles in all the wars across the span of human history, why does this day hold such a revered place in our memory? What is it about the struggle that took place on these sands behind me that brings us back here to remember year after year after year?
Part of it, I think, is the size of the odds that weighed against success. For three centuries, no invader had ever been able to cross the English Channel into Normandy. And it had never been more difficult than in 1944.
That was the year that Hitler ordered his top field marshal to fortify the Atlantic Wall against a seaborne invasion. From the tip of Norway to southern France, the Nazis lined steep cliffs with machine guns and artillery. Low-lying areas were flooded to block passage. Sharpened poles awaited paratroopers. Mines were laid on the beaches and beneath the water. And by the time of the invasion, half a million Germans waited for the Allies along the coast between Holland and Northern France.
At dawn on June 6th, the Allies came. The best chance for victory had been for the British Royal Air Corps to take out the guns on the cliffs while airborne divisions parachuted behind enemy lines. But all did not go according to plan. Paratroopers landed miles from their mark, while the fog and the clouds prevented Allied planes from destroying the guns on the cliffs. So when the ships landed here at Omaha, an unimaginable hell rained down on the men inside. Many never made it out of the boats.
And yet, despite all of this, one by one, the Allied forces made their way to shore – here, and at Utah and Juno; Gold and Sword. They were American, British, and Canadian. Soon, the paratroopers found each other and fought their way back. The Rangers scaled the cliffs. And by the end of the day, against all odds, the ground on which we stand was free once more.
The sheer improbability of this victory is part of what makes D-Day so memorable. It also arises from the clarity of purpose with which this war was waged.
We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true. It is a world of varied religions and cultures and forms of government. In such a world, it is rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity.
The Second World War did that. No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good. But all know that this war was essential. For what we faced in Nazi totalitarianism was not just a battle of competing interests. It was a competing vision of humanity. Nazi ideology sought to subjugate, humiliate, and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale, fueled by a hatred of those who were deemed different and therefore inferior. It was evil.
The nations and leaders that joined together to defeat Hitler’s Reich were not perfect. We had made our share of mistakes, and had not always agreed with one another on every issue. But whatever God we prayed to, whatever our differences, we knew that the evil we faced had to be stopped. Citizens of all faiths and no faith came to believe that we could not remain as bystanders to the savage perpetration of death and destruction. And so we joined and sent our sons to fight and often die so that men and women they never met might know what it is to be free.
In America, it was an endeavor that inspired a nation to action. A President who asked his country to pray on D-Day also asked its citizens to serve and sacrifice to make the invasion possible. On farms and in factories, millions of men and women worked three shifts a day, month after month, year after year. Trucks and tanks came from plants in Michigan and Indiana; New York and Illinois. Bombers and fighter planes rolled off assembly lines in Ohio and Kansas, where my grandmother did her part as an inspector. Shipyards on both coasts produced the largest fleet in history, including the landing craft from New Orleans that eventually made it here to Omaha.
But despite all the years of planning and preparation; despite the inspiration of our leaders, the skill of our generals, the strength of our firepower and the unyielding support from our home front, the outcome of the entire struggle would ultimately rest on the success of one day in June.
Lyndon Johnson once said that there are certain moments when “…history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom.”
D-Day was such a moment. One newspaper noted that “we have come to the hour for which we were born.” Had the Allies failed here, Hitler’s occupation of this continent might have continued indefinitely. Instead, victory here secured a foothold in France. It opened a path to Berlin. And it made possible the achievements that followed the liberation of Europe: the Marshall Plan, the NATO alliance, and the shared prosperity and security that flowed from each.
It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the twentieth century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide.More particularly, it came down to the men who landed here – those who now rest in this place for eternity, and those who are with us today. Perhaps more than any other reason, you, the veterans of that landing, are why we still remember what happened on D-Day. You are why we come back.
For you remind us that in the end, human destiny is not determined by forces beyond our control. You remind us that our future is not shaped by mere chance or circumstance. Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man or woman. It has always been up to us.
You could have done what Hitler believed you would do when you arrived here. In the face of a merciless assault from these cliffs, you could have idled the boats offshore. Amid a barrage of tracer bullets that lit the night sky, you could have stayed in those planes. You could have hid in the hedgerows or waited behind the sea wall. You could have done only what was necessary to ensure your own survival.
But that’s not what you did. That’s not the story you told on D-Day. Your story was written by men like Zane Schlemmer [SHLEM er] of the 82nd Airborne, who parachuted into a dark marsh, far from his objective and his men. Lost and alone, he still managed to fight his way through the gunfire and help liberate the town in which he landed – a town where a street now bears his name.
It’s a story written by men like Anthony Ruggiero [Ru gee AIR o], an Army Ranger who saw half the men on his landing craft drown when it was hit by shellfire just a thousand yards off this beach. He spent three hours in freezing water, and was one of only 90 Rangers to survive out of the 225 who were sent to scale the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc [Pwante-doo-ock]
And it’s a story written by so many who are no longer with us, like Carlton Barrett. Private Barrett was only supposed to serve as a guide for the 1st Infantry Division, but he instead became one of its heroes. After wading ashore in neck-deep water, he returned to the water again and again to save his wounded and drowning comrades. And under the heaviest possible enemy fire, he actually carried them to safety. He carried them in his own arms.
This is the story of the Allied victory. It is the legend of units like Easy Company and the All-American 82nd. It is the tale of the British people, whose courage during the Blitz forced Hitler to call off the invasion of England; the Canadians, who came even though they were never attacked; the Russians, who sustained some of the war’s heaviest casualties on the Eastern front; and all those French men and women who would rather have died resisting tyranny than lived within its grasp.
It is the memories that have been passed on to so many of us about the service or sacrifice of a friend or relative. For me, it is my grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived on this beach six weeks after D-Day and marched across Europe in Patton’s Army. And it is my great uncle who was part of the first American division to reach and liberate a Nazi concentration camp. His name is Charles Payne, and I am so proud that he is here with us today.
I know this trip doesn’t get any easier as the years pass, but for those of you who make it, there’s nothing that could keep you away. One such veteran, a man named Jim Norene [Nor EEN], was a member of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne. Last night, after visiting this cemetery for one last time, he passed away in his sleep. Jim was gravely ill when he left his home, and he knew that he might not return. But just as he did sixty-five years ago, he came anyway. May he now rest in peace with the boys he once bled with, and may his family always find solace in the heroism he showed here.
In the end, Jim Norene came back to Normandy for the same reason we all come back. He came for the reason articulated by Howard Huebner [HUBE ner], another former paratrooper who’s here with us today. When asked why he made the trip, Howard said, “It’s important that we tell our stories. It doesn’t have to be something big…just a little story about what happened – so people don’t forget.”
So people don’t forget.
Friends and veterans, what we cannot forget – what we must not forget – is that D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century. At an hour of maximum danger, amid the bleakest of circumstances, men who thought themselves ordinary found it within themselves to do the extraordinary. They fought for their moms and sweethearts back home, for the fellow warriors they came to know as brothers. And they fought out of a simple sense of duty – a duty sustained by the same ideals for which their countrymen had fought and bled for over two centuries.
That is the story of Normandy – but also the story of America. Of the minutemen who gathered on a green in Lexington; of the Union boys from Maine who repelled a charge at Gettysburg; of the men who gave their last full measure at Inchon and Khe San; of all the young men and women whose valor and goodness still carry forward this legacy of service and sacrifice. It is a story that has never come easy, but one that always gives us hope. For as we face down the hardships and struggles of our time, and arrive at that hour for which we were born, we cannot help but draw strength from those moments in history when the best among us were somehow able to swallow their fears and secure a beachhead on an unforgiving shore. To those men who achieved that victory sixty-five years ago, I thank you for your service. May God Bless you, and may God Bless the memory of all those who rest here.