"To understand beyond a limited historical epoch, we must step beyond its limits, and compare it with other historical epochs", Karl Marx, Secret Diplomatic History
The massacres that are going on before our very eyes every day because of Israeli operations, could have been stopped if there was a genuine intent to seek for peaceful settlement of the long drawn-out conflict between the Arabs and the Jews over the piece of territory called Palestine. The suspicions and mutual mistrust now building up between the United States and China, recalls to mind the dark days of the 1930s that pitted one power against the other, and alliances were constructed to seek mutual protection and to prepare for war.
It is fitting and proper for us in Africa to loudly and unreservedly proclaim our stand for world peace and mutual prosperity. Africa must not allow itself to be drawn into the dark and terrible abyss of endless conflicts and misery that have become the hallmarks of big power rivalries for the past two hundred years or so. We must at this moment of commemoration of the Second World War, show our indebtedness to the Allies for destroying Nazism and ending Adolf Hitler's nightmarish aberration in this world. In doing so, the Allies not only saved themselves, but also the rest of humanity from the brutal and pitiless fate that was awaiting them under a ghoulish Nazi world order.
The Second World War was an event that was truly epic in its conception, prosecution and consequences. Russia, the country that bore the brunt of the German aggression, still lives with the consequences of that gruesome war, that has left its deep and indelible scar on the entire nation. The West itself, especially France and the United Kingdom, and to some extent, the other European countries notably Belgium, Holland and Denmark, also experienced the equivalent of nightmarish conditions owing to the attacks against their territories and peoples by the Germans.
Between 1939 and 1945, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the other hapless countries of Eastern Europe, were laid prostrate and faced the distinct possibility of being wiped off the map and depopulated completely, a fate that they were to share with Russia. It all happened because a few people had the delusional idea that they belonged to a "Master Race", and that they alone were fit to live on this earth and rule over other people whom they considered as subhumans, and therefore liable to be conquered, enslaved, brutalized, expelled from their ancestral lands, and even exterminated.
The most odious, irrational and reprehensible ideological construct that declared people as being "unworthy of life" found its ultimate expression and manifestation during the dark and terrible days of the Second World War. The idea that others are not fit to live on this earth, was proclaimed as a national policy by the Germans, which they expressed in terms of "Lebensunwertes Leben", that some people had no right to live, drove the entire purpose and objectives of the War. The brutalization of non-German races especially the Poles, Slavs and others in Russia and the other occupied territories, left mankind aghast with horror and stark indignation.
This Dantean world of man's inhumanity to man, was nurtured by philosophies conceived in Europe, by Europeans and from Europe it spread its malignant terror around the world, to engulf virtually all the continents. To this day, the experiences of entire nations are narrated in accordance with their proximity to the World War and its impacts on their collective memories. Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Belorussians, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, Danes, Dutch, French, British, Greeks, Yugoslavs, Russians, and many others, are seared by the scourges of this terrible War.
In Africa, countless of our parents were conscripted from the colonies of France and Great Britain often against their wishes, to be sent to France and other theatres to fight for the imperialist powers. East and North Africa became battle grounds where bloody conflicts were fought against the Italians and the Germans, that contributed to the final destruction of the Fascist regimes in Italy and Germany. Africa's human power and raw materials as well as vast spaces helped in the Allie's' war efforts, whereby vital supplies to win the war were procured and used. The remains of our parents are still interred in far-flung places such as Burma and India, Libya and France, Somalia and Kenya, and other theatres of war.
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In paying tribute to those who fought and vanquished against the demonic powers of the Nazis, we should also pay respect to our own fallen heroes whose memories are no longer nursed in our collective endeavours, and whose praises are no longer sang anywhere anymore. Our fathers who shed their precious blood in campaigns in far away places laid their lives for a noble cause that saved humanity and prevented the onset of a relentlessly brutal world order of oppression and extermination.
Beyond recollecting the monumental battles of epic proportions that were fought in all the theatres during the Great War, we should pause to pay tribute to the great captains and generals the likes of whom the world will never see again. Courage, bravery, sacrifice, duty, patriotism, and the other defining characteristics of nobility and greatness that marked those who fought on the Allied side, should be noted when we remember men like Field Marshals Georgi Zhukov, Ivan Konev, Vassily Chuikov, Konstantin Rokossovskii, Aleksander Vasilevsky, Boris Shaposhnikov, Smeyon Timoshenko, Nikolai Vatutin, and other heroic Soviet warriors.
Concluded
