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The war over the meaning of victory

The obfuscation of Nazism’s capitalist roots has seen imperialism redeploy fascism again and again — from the killing fields of Guatemala to the war in Ukraine, writes PAWEL WARGAN

Nazi soldiers separate Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz-II-Birkenau in German-occupied Poland, May/June 1944, during the final phase of the Holocaust

ON a rainy day in June 1945 — just over a month after the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender in the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst — 45,000 Red Army troops marched across the Red Square, Moscow, in the Parade of Victors.

Towards the end of the two-hour procession, a contingent of the Separate Operational Purpose Division of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs entered the square. They carried 200 German battalion and regimental flags and standards captured during the war, hurling them before the entrance to Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum.

Hitler, who had hungered for control over Soviet lands, was deposited at Lenin’s feet.  

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