By Earl Bousquet

   During the so-called Cold War, a blitzkrieg of Western anti-communist propaganda against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) included minimizing reference to the fact that it committed the most fighters to the war -and suffered the most military deaths: over 27 million (or 65% of the total).

   Eight decades later, too-many worldwide don’t know it was a Red Army soldier who raised the Soviet flag atop the Reichstag in Berlin, to signal Hitler’s defeat; and as-many are still unaware that China lost the second-most lives during World War II -over 10 million (23%).

   Together, the USSR and China lost 37 million soldiers (88%) in the war, while Germany lost (approximately) 5.5 million, Yugoslavia 3%, Japan 2.5 million, USA and UK 2% each, France and Poland 1% each -and ‘all others’ together lost the remaining 3%.

   Yet, 80 years later, these figures are unknown to many worldwide and will be initially disbelieved by many across Europe and the USA. Not much is known either, about France and Italy supporting Germany and Japan, or that the USA only fully entered the war in 1941 -two years after it started- when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.

   The false narratives still prevail in global public opinion, with those spinning those endless yarns hell-bent on keeping the world giddy from eternal bouts of propaganda spin. For example: Between May 6 and 9, the UK and other member-states of the European Union (EU) and the NATO military alliance -including Germany- are paying tribute to their soldiers who served and died in WWII. But none invited Russia to the celebrations, as, for some time now, they’ve been excluding Moscow -by design.

   The former USSR’s allies are today ganging-up to erase and rewrite history by refusing to acknowledge Russia and China’s roles in the global war against Nazism and Fascism.

   Similar observances are taking place in Moscow this week, with 27 world leaders, including China’s President Xi Jinping, already gathering to attend the major May 9 parade.

   The UK blanked Moscow and invited a group of Ukrainian soldiers to participate in its London parades -and Ukraine has openly discouraged leaders from attending the Moscow celebration, while dispatching drones targeting Russian airports.

   Earlier this week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected Moscow’s offer of a three-day ceasefire during the 80th anniversary celebrations, instead demanding a 30-day truce.

   Zelensky also this week publicly issued a hardly-veiled threat to leaders planning to fly to Russia for May 9, saying (words to the effect that) ‘anything can happen…’

   It was also publicly revealed by Serbia’s president this week, that there were plans by some EU nations to ban access to their airspace by airlines flying leaders to Moscow. But there’s fightback from other parts of Europe too, with protesting East Germans reminding today’s warmongers in Berlin -80 years later: ‘There Can Be No Peace in Ukraine Without Russia.’

   The blanketing anti-communist propaganda has been globally effective since the end of WWII. Hitler exported fascism to various states in Latin America during the war, but little is known about that by the average citizen in the neighboring Caribbean archipelago.

   The Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) region’s understanding of the historical facts about Nazi presence and fascist collaborators in their part of the world is only now being enhanced by the recent creation, in Venezuela, of an International Anti-Fascist Alliance.

   In the Eastern Caribbean region (comprising mainly former European island colonies in the West Indies), generations have also grown-up following Memorial Day commemorations of the signing of the armistice on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month -November 11, 1945.

   However, May 9, 1945 is also the earlier date when the Soviet Red Army’s troops led the defeat of the Nazi army -in Germany- which ended the war. The Soviet navy also patrolled Caribbean and Atlantic waters to defend Europe and the US’ West Indian colonies against marauding German U-Boats based in Martinique -a French-run island neighboring British-ruled Saint Lucia, from where the U-Boats operated. The U-Boats indeed torpedoed two ships in Castries Harbour during the war.

   WWII naval veterans like this writer’s father, Charles V.E. Bousquet, sailed on merchant ships and said openly after every annual November Memorial Day parade: “If not for the Russians, we would have been speaking German.”

   Today, the world is learning much-more about the volumes of lies being revealed in hidden documents treated as ‘Official Secrets’ now being released in unsealed or redacted papers, in different countries. 

   They’ve shown the world was misled about the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the US invasion of Grenada, Britain’s war with Argentina for The Malvinas, Washington’s narco-financed war against Nicaragua, NATO’s war in Yugoslavia and the campaign of lies that surrounded the Western alliance’s wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

   Ditto the Ukraine War and Israel’s 70-year-old genocidal war against Palestine, now including attacks on Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. 

   Today, with Information Technology (IT) more sophisticated than ever, persons using online search engines must also be able to distinguish between historical lies and suppressed truths. But those bent on continuing to mislead the world are also equally-adept at masking lies with mistruths and telling untruths that seem and sound believable.

   Truth, therefore, remains as elusive as ever, as today’s liars can bend truths more crookedly, but so smooth that you’ll see and hear persons saying and doing things on your screen -that they never said, or did. The war for truth, therefore, never ends.