【Written by Marco Fernandez, Translated by Whale Life】
The embers here are still hot,
Burning to the bone—breath, touch, remember...
There’s no need to shed tears or hide
Your tears, do not tremble before the ashes of the future...
—Olga Berggolts, "In Stalingrad"
In February 1943, on the Volga River, after three years of Hitler's successive victories in Europe, humanity finally reignited hope. It was at the Battle of Stalingrad that Nazi ideology first suffered defeat. Today, atop a twenty-meter flagpole in the city center of Volgograd, the flag of the Russian Federation waves. However, every May前夕, the national flag is lowered and replaced with the Soviet flag featuring the sickle, hammer, and red star.
More precisely, what is raised is the legendary "Victory Flag"—a banner adorned with the emblem of the 79th Guards Rifle Division of the Soviet Red Army under Marshal Zhukov, which historically witnessed the fall of Berlin, the suicide of Hitler, and the unconditional surrender of Nazi forces. Additionally, thousands of miniature Victory Flags and Russian tricolor flags hang from city lamp posts.
Each year, including Victory Day, this city officially reverts to its old name, "Stalingrad." Relevant signs are erected throughout the streets, and municipal documents and official records are formally renamed. On April 15, 2025, President Putin signed a decree renaming the city's international airport as "Stalingrad Airport."
On May 9, 2025, Moscow, the capital of Russia, held a military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War on Red Square. Visual China
Like Stalingrad, in the weeks leading up to Victory Day, Moscow is also immersed in holiday decorations: squares, metro stations, bus stops, and other public places, as well as shops, restaurants, bars, banks, and other private venues, are all adorned with Victory Flags, posters, and electronic screens. All decorations feature an 80th anniversary commemorative logo—the word "Victory" ("Победа") and the statue shape of "Motherland Calls." This 85-meter-tall statue, one of the largest in the world, stands on Mamayev Hill in Stalingrad, depicting a female warrior in flowing battle robes: she holds a sword aloft, her facial expression blending the terror endured and the courage displayed by the Soviet people during this war, which claimed 27 million lives.
One in seven Soviet citizens perished in this conflict, and almost every family lost someone close. Therefore, when the country again fights to defend its sovereignty, Victory Day becomes a bond uniting all Russians. On this day, the "Immortal Regiment" marches: millions of people carry portraits of fallen ancestors through the streets to ensure the memory of those who sacrificed their lives for the nation and humanity against Nazi threats endures forever. In recent years, out of security considerations during wartime conditions, the Immortal Regiment march has disappeared from the streets of Moscow. The night before this year's celebration, Ukrainian drones attacked Moscow for two consecutive nights, forcing airports to temporarily close, disrupting foreign delegations' itineraries, and maintaining full security with thousands of military police; a tense atmosphere permeated everywhere.
The Motherland Calls sculpture
Two contemporary campaigns against the Western bloc
After the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Second World War, which the Russians call the "Great Patriotic War," this country is engaged in at least two interconnected fronts. One is the memory defense campaign—a never-ending battle because the Western bloc has been attempting to rewrite the history of the most devastating war in human history for decades. Unfortunately, some distortions and erasure of memory have achieved relative success (which will be detailed later). The second front is the military confrontation on Ukrainian territory: both to prevent the massacre of thousands of civilians in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and to resist NATO's attempt to deploy American nuclear warheads within 500 kilometers of Moscow, according to Brzezinski's blueprint in "The Grand Chessboard."
In his 1997 book, this strategist who dominated U.S. foreign policy for decades emphasized that to weaken Russia, it must first keep it politically and economically isolated from Ukraine. Twenty-eight years later, this goal has been achieved. He predicted that Ukraine's integration into NATO should begin between 2005 and 2015. Looking back to the 2008 Bucharest Summit, Bush tried to push for Ukraine's entry into NATO, but was blocked by Merkel and Sarkozy—then leaders of the EU still retained certain political realism.
In 2014, following the coup d'état in the Maidan and the ousting of President Yanukovych, the Western camp led by Washington launched an offensive to "divide Russia and Ukraine," intending to bring Ukraine into NATO. It was this process that triggered the current war. Now, Russia has clearly defeated NATO (the profound significance of this victory has yet to be widely understood), and Ukraine is unlikely to join NATO in the short term. However, Brzezinski's timeline was precise, and at least half of his strategic goals have been achieved.
The three-year-long war has caused tens of thousands of deaths on both sides (it is obvious that Ukrainian military casualties are disproportionately higher), devastated Ukraine's economy and livelihoods, and severed the blood ties between the former "brotherly nations"—a rift that may last for generations. Countless families have been forced to separate across the battle lines.
Recently, a 25-year-old girl from Moscow told me about her experience: she and her parents are all Russian citizens, but four of her grandparents moved to Moscow from Ukraine many years ago; her best friend, although her parents are Ukrainian, has four grandparents from Russia. After the outbreak of war, their relationship became increasingly tense until her best friend joined the neo-Nazi armed organization "Azov Battalion." "At that moment," she said tearfully, "we completely cut off contact, and we may never see each other again."
Inside Kiev Station in the Moscow Metro, beneath Lenin's portrait, a gilded plaque surrounded by a mosaic depicting the life of Ukrainian workers and peasants bears the inscription "Unbreakable fraternal bonds between Russian and Ukrainian peoples." However, this largest-scale military conflict in post-war Europe not only shattered these fraternal bonds but also became a new focal point in the memory struggle: it is reflected in the West's attempts to erase the Soviet Union's contribution to defeating Nazi Germany and also manifests in the resurgence of neo-Nazism in many countries (even in the Global South).
In August 2023, the Soviet coat of arms on the statue of "Motherland" in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, was replaced with the trident emblem of the Ukrainian coat of arms. Photo source: Foreign media
Post-truth: Erasing the Soviet victory and the resurgence of Nazism
Shortly after the end of WWII and the onset of the Cold War, Hollywood, the strongest narrative machine in the West, began systematically distorting the history of WWII through hundreds of films to portray America as the "main character." The 1946 film "The Best Years of Our Lives," which depicted the struggles of veterans returning home, won seven Academy Awards; the 1970 biographical film "Patton," which chronicled Patton's experiences in North Africa and Europe, swept seven awards again; "Saving Private Ryan," directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1998, is perhaps the most famous of these films, breaking global box office records with over 100 million viewers for its portrayal of the Normandy landing. For decades, from TV shows, newspapers, magazines, books, and countless other cultural products, under the promotion of schools, universities, and other government institutions, a "post-truth" system regarding the victory over WWII and the defeat of Nazi ideology has taken shape.
A well-known poll conducted by the French public opinion institute (IFOP) in 1945 showed that 57% of the French population recognized the Soviet Union as the main force in defeating the Nazis, while only 12% chose the United States; in a YouGov survey in 2025, only 22% of French people believed the Soviet Union was the main force in WWII, and 44% of respondents instead believed in the "America First" myth. In the same survey, 34% of Germans chose the United States, and 31% chose the Soviet Union (compared to 37% to 27% nine years earlier); in the United States, 59% of the public attributed the victory to their own country, while only 12% acknowledged the Soviet Union's contributions (in 2015, it was 47% to 12%).
While Western countries are erasing the Soviet Union's achievements, a more dangerous trend has emerged in recent years—the resurgence of neo-Nazism. The news website "Forward," whose origins can be traced back to a media founded by New York Jewish communities in 1897, found in a previous investigation that there are nearly 1,500 streets and monuments named after Nazi figures in 25 countries: Germany and Austria (where people might assume that the country's policies have already eliminated such traces) discovered more than 110 instances, and even the United States, self-proclaimed as the "great victor" and "free land," has 36 instances. Among these, Ukraine tops the list with 420 instances. The research indicates that many of these naming events occurred after the 2014 Maidan coup; the author stated: "During peak times, an average of one new naming occurred each week."
The core figure of these memorials is Stepan Bandera, leader of a faction within the Ukrainian nationalist movement that collaborated with the Nazis. Bandera has become the spiritual totem of Ukrainian neo-Nazism, deeply influencing many key figures in Zelenskyy's government. This also confirms that Russia's claim that "one of the objectives of the special military operation is the 'denazification' of Ukraine" is not merely rhetoric or wartime propaganda, but a sad reality. This is not just about Zelenskyy's government or defeating the "Azov Battalion" and other related armed groups, but about combating a political culture that seems to have taken root in Ukraine since 2014.
Under the leadership of the United States, NATO has poured billions of dollars worth of weapons and direct military aid into this regime filled with sympathizers of neo-Nazis. On the other hand, according to the logic of "the end justifies the means," as some Western leaders admit, the purpose is to "weaken Russia," so utilizing neo-Nazis to achieve this goal poses no problem. Despite countless Hollywood movies condemning the horrors of the Nazi regime, the truth is that the West has always maintained a murky relationship with Nazism since the end of the war.
In September 2023, during Ukrainian President Zelenskyy's visit to the Canadian Parliament, controversy erupted when an invited "Ukrainian WWII veteran," Jaroslav Hunka, a former officer of the Galician Waffen SS division, received a standing ovation and was praised as a "Ukrainian hero fighting for independence against Russia." However, this "hero" once fought alongside Nazi collaborators, eventually turning into a scandal—Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau publicly apologized, and House Speaker Anthony Rota resigned for recommending Hunka. If we look back at the fate of numerous high-ranking Nazi officials in the Western world after 1945, such diplomatic mishaps are not surprising.
It is well known that many senior officers of the Hitler regime were absorbed into the West German Federal Defense Forces and NATO institutions. For example:
Adolf Heusinger: Former Chief of Staff of the Hitler regime, later served as Chairman of NATO's Permanent Military Committee (1961-1964);
Hans Speidel: Former Chief of Staff to Rommel, later commanded NATO Allied Ground Forces Central Europe (1957-1963);
Johannes Steinhoff, Johann von Kielmansegg, Ernst Freiberger, Karl Schnell, Franz Josef Schöll, Friedrich Guggenberger, Wolfgang Altenburg, etc.: All served as high-ranking NATO commanders in the 1960s-1980s.
The most shocking case is that of Ferdinand von Senger und Etterlin. This Nazi German Wehrmacht officer participated in Operation Barbarossa's invasion of the Soviet Union, withdrew wounded during the Battle of Stalingrad, then fought against the Soviets in Romania, returned to Berlin, and was captured by the Americans. From 1979 to 1983, this man actually rose to become Commander-in-Chief of NATO Allied Forces Central Europe.
What has been deliberately obscured in Western collective memory is the notorious "Operation Paperclip"—the secret import of approximately 1,600 Nazi scientists, engineers, and technicians by the United States, arranging them to continue researching and applying their expertise in rocket technology, aerospace, medicine, and physics in American military, academic, and industrial institutions. The most famous figure among them is Werner von Braun, the scientist who led the Nazi V-2 rocket program, who later became the core designer of NASA's Saturn V rocket, helping with the Apollo moon landing mission. Von Braun received numerous honors at NASA and is also listed among the Nazi figures memorialized by the "Forward" news website.
Werner von Braun, the chief designer of the famous V-2 rocket of Nazi Germany
A similar but less documented case involves the extremely cruel Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army, which conducted experiments involving chemical and biological weapons on prisoners of war—mostly Chinese, but also Koreans, Mongolians, and Russians. This unit was stationed in Harbin, a northern Chinese city, and had over 3,600 members controlling more than 150 buildings. Before surrendering, the Japanese attempted to destroy evidence of these war crimes, but the Chinese managed to reconstruct many atrocities from surviving physical evidence and testimonies from related members. Despite this, many key members of Unit 731—such as founder Shiro Ishii and second-generation commander Masaji Kitano—were granted amnesty by American authorities, likely in exchange for their extensive research data. These individuals spent their remaining years peacefully in post-war Japan.
If the Soviet Union's achievements in WWII are being erased by the West, then the sacrifices made by the Chinese people in WWII are being erased even more severely. Many foreigners still know that nearly 30 million Soviet citizens died in WWII, but fewer people realize that from 1937 onwards, about 20 million Chinese people died due to Japan's aggression. Without such heroic resistance by the Chinese people, the Japanese might have opened a second front against the Soviet Union in East Asia—this could have jeopardized their victories on the western front against the Nazis. According to official Chinese records, approximately 35 million people were casualties during the war. The fact is that the "world war" began in Western Europe in 1939, but it started much earlier in Asia—in 1937—long before Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.
On May 20, 1939, troops from the First Division of the Jinchaji Military Region of the Eighth Route Army returning victorious from the Da Longhua Battle were warmly welcomed by the masses.
At that time, the peoples of China and other Asian countries were already bearing the consequences of Japanese militarism's expansion. The end of WWII in Asia came later than in Europe—until September 1945. That is why it is of such symbolic significance for Chinese state leaders to attend the celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi fascism together with Russian state leaders, once again highlighting the indispensable role of the Chinese people—officially led by the anti-Japanese united front formed by the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party, but effectively led by the Red Army commanded by Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Zhu De.
As the Chinese state leader said in the signed article published during the Victory Day anniversary celebrations in the Russian newspaper "Rossiyskaya Gazeta":
"In the world anti-fascist war, the peoples of China and Russia fought side by side and supported each other... The deep friendship forged with blood and lives between the two peoples flows ceaselessly like the Yellow River, as broad and profound as the Volga River, becoming an inexhaustible source of enduring friendship between China and Russia."
Today, this friendship is embodied in countless shared strategic interests and actions, as reminded by the statement of the state leaders of the two countries, who emphasize that China and Russia stand united, always striving to uphold the historical truth of the victory in the Great Patriotic War as a common value for humanity, and jointly resisting attempts to distort history, revive Nazism, and militarism.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet Red Army and the Red Army led by the Chinese Communist Party were the main forces fighting against Nazi fascism and Japanese militarism. Eighty years later, Moscow and Beijing are once again leading the fight against Western unilateralism and coercive policies. In short, facing the "ultra-imperialism" that threatens humanity with endless wars, China and Russia are committed to building new alternatives. The essence of today's and future struggles is closely linked to how history is interpreted—while the Western narrative machine is distorting this history into a "post-truth" narrative.
At this moment, it is necessary to revisit one of the most profound evaluations of WWII by American writer Ernest Hemingway:
"Every free person in the world owes a debt to the Red Army in this life that they will never fully repay."
Perhaps understanding "Red Army" as the red armed forces of China and the Soviet Union would better reflect fairness in history.
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