p The Second World War (1939-1945) left a deep mark on the minds of all. It claimed a toll of more than 50 million lives.  [5•1  Priceless treasures, the fruit of the labour and genius of many generations, were devoured by the names. Terrible was the suffering of the peoples of Europe, Asia and Africa.

p Not surprisingly, a quarter of a century after the war people still want to know the truth: how it originated, what forces were to blame, how it ended and whose were the martial feats that forged the victory. The world will never forget the men who defeated fascism. Their daring inspires poets and artists, and writers of books such as this- one.

p The title of this book, Secrets of the Second World War, was not selected merely to attract more readers. That is hardly needed. War books evoke a keen enough interest, no matter what their title. This author’s motivation was anything but that.

p It may appear to some that there were no secrets of the war. Could there indeed be secrets where tens of millions of people were involved? Yet secrecy often envelops the origins of war and many of the subsequent military developments. It will not be too much to say, in fact, that secrecy has been a satellite of the origin and course of war.

p There are two kinds .of wars—just, liberative, progressive ones, and wars unjust, aggressive and reactionary. Lenin wrote: "... there are just and unjust wars, progressive and reactionary wars, wars waged by advanced classes and wars 6 waged by backward classes, wars waged for the purpose of perpetuating class oppression and wars waged for the purpose of eliminating oppression....”  [6•1 

p No secrets would have existed if the Second World War had been one of liberation from the beginning. Liberators waging a just war are legitimately proud of their exploit, and have nothing to hide.

p A war may be unjust on both sides, if both pursue aims of conquest. A just war is just on one side only. If one side responds to aggression with a just war of liberation, the war of the other side is one of conquest and enslavement, and unjust. People are hardly likely to rally to that sort of war. That is why secrecy and deceit have a field day.

p Unjust wars were always garnished with falsehood, deceit and provocation. Foul play necessitates foul means.

p Those who pursue imperialist policy, of which war is but a continuation, choose to act in secrecy, especially in the preparatory stage. They dread publicity, knowing that it may boomerang. Those who pursue fair policies have a stake in public knowledge. Lenin said: "We must explain the real situation to the people, show them that war is hatched in the greatest secrecy—-"  [6•2 

p Secrecy covered the preparations for the First World War, and likewise those for the Second. The direct war architects, the German imperialists, professed to be lovers of peace. Hitler’s nazi party, which seized power in Germany in 1933, assured foreign statesmen that it had no concern more urgent than that of safeguarding peace. In the meantime, doing the will of its backers, the monopolies, it prepared frantically for a war for world supremacy.

p The Munichites of Britain, France and the United States, eager to channel German aggression eastward, against the Soviet Union, encouraged the German fascists and pretended to accept Hitler’s reassurances. They lifted their eyes to heaven and extolled peace, and also, in the same breath, praised the nazi methods against the disobedient. The voices of those cooking up war blended in singing specious paeans to peace.

p This mixture of pacific oratory and bellicose intention needed the weapon of secrecy to be effective. In the name 7 of this secrecy the briefcases of German delegates to the disarmament conference were closely guarded, as were the doors of that Munich hall where the fate of Czechoslovakia was sealed, giving the green light to nazi aggression.

p The criminal Munich deal struck by Britain and France with Hitler Germany and fascist Italy was paraded as an act of peace, though it was really an act of encouraging aggression and, in that sense, an act of war.

p Secrecy was an amenity for those that yearned for war, and for those, too, who were opening up the way for Hitler’s conquests. The veils, at least many of them, have been lifted by now, but some still shroud the truth. Take a recent West German volume, Wahrheit Jur Deutschland, whose writer, Udo Walendy, pleads for justice, for a "truth for Germany”, denying her war guilt. Page through it and you will smell gunpowder, acrid smoke, and blood; you will see the secrecy that shrouded Hitler’s war preparations used in a new way, for new ends.

p Walendy quotes prplifically the pacific declarations of the war culprits. He strains to show that none of the German leaders wanted a world war. What they wanted was “merely” to extend German territory. Yet the other powers did not wish to meet Germany halfway. It is their fault the war broke out.

p The drum-beaters of the neo-nazi National-Democratic Party of the Federal Republic of Germany, of whom Udo Walendy is one, repeat the Hitler clique’s claims in explaining the causes of the Second World War, unmasking the NDP as successor and heir to Hitler’s defunct National- Socialist Party.

p It may be proper to note that two phases are evident in West German historiography. During the first, from the war’s end to approximately 1965, veteran historians (Walter Goerjitz), Hitler generals (Kurt von Tippelskirch, Erich Manstein and Heinz Guderian), and younger writers ( HansAdolf Jacobsen, Jurgen Rohwer and K. D. Erdmann) alike, endeavoured to exonerate the German General Staff and German imperialism of the war guilt and of the inhumanities of the nazi army. They put all the blame on Hitler. In the second phase, however, embracing the more recent years, with the National-Democratic Party stepping on to the FRG scene, Hitler, too, is being exonerated.

p The West German revenge-seekers and militarists now 8 insist that Germany and her leaders were not to blame for the war. Czechs, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians were guilty, for instead of acknowledging German territorial claims, instead of bowing to them, they put up a fight. The war was to their intransigence.

p And what about the atrocities? The newly-fledged fascists reply there had been none, that no 12 million people had been exterminated in nazi death camps. They declare all documents testifying to atrocities to be false and the material evidence— instruments of torture, gas chambers and the mountains of human ash—to have been fabricated postwar by Germany’s enemies. In a collection of articles by NDP ideologists, Europe in Flames, atrocities are’ blandly denied. Referring to Dachau, the neo-fascists say: "Until May 1945 it had no gas chambers. These were built later by German POWs on the orders of the American occupation authorities."  [8•1  Yet it is common knowledge that the American occupation authorities and statesmen, and the British, too, chose to minimise the instances of nazi evil, and were certainly disinclined to exaggerate them. The neo-fascists follow Hitler’s explicit advice: The more monstrous the lie, the better.

p That literature of this sort has appeared is indicative. One wonders whether men of power are again, for the third time, trying to guide history along the vicious circle: secret war preparations, sudden attack, extermination of millions, total defeat and then again war preparations in secrecy, camouflaged with honeyed words of peace.

p Secret diplomacy is the resort of those who pursue unpopular policy and have reason to conceal their intentions. When the October Revolution triumphed in Russia, the Soviet Government at once declared its rejection of secret diplomacy. It said in the historic Decree on Peace, drawn up by Lenin and adopted by the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets: "The Government abolishes secret diplomacy."  [8•2  Ever since, publicity instead of .secrecy has been the basis of Soviet foreign policy. Genuinely democratic policy must be open.

p To be sure Soviet measures related to defence were concealed in wartime. But once concealment was no longer necessary, the facts were instantly published. This was true, for example, of the Yalta Conference decision of the Soviet 9 Union’s joining the war against Japan, kept secret for a year. Publicity is part of honesty. When after the war ended many secrets were revealed, it was discovered that the Soviet Union had done nothing in secret from its wartime allies.

p Could the same be said of the other members of the anti-fascist coalition? It could of the Resistance Movement, but not of the governments of the United States and Britain. They represented countries that became combatants by virtue of the inexorable logic of history in a war that developed into a just war of liberation. But even in such a war, they would not disavow their selfish and ultimately anti-popular aspirations. The contradiction between the objective nature of the war and the subjective designs of the US and British rulers kept surfacing at every point. For a long time they sabotaged a second front, concealing the true purpose of the delay. Nor did they forego secret negotiations with nazi chiefs and chieftains. They manufactured their own plans for a postwar world arrangement contrary to the joint decisions of wartime allied conferences. Naturally, these plans were kept secret.

p Apart from imperialist secrets related to the preparation and conduct of the war, there were “secrets” of a different kind. These were “secrets”, or, more precisely, riddles related to the process of history, for the true sense of many historical developments is concealed from the casual observer. It is the task of the investigator to probe these developments and pinpoint the laws that impelled them.

p To limit investigations to the superficial aspects of phenomena is not merely easier, but also, for many, more profitable. Some phases of the Second World War are reminiscent of scenes from old operas, where the actors chant, "We march, we march, we march!”, while marking time. In the meantime, others do the marching through raging enemy fire. Yet no sooner the war ended than those who talked big but did little, began declaiming that their shouting had made the enemy bastions collapse. And new secrets appear in place of the old.

p Lastly, some “secrets” are ascribable to absence of information. This applies to the “secret”, or rather the miracle, of the Soviet resistance and victory, which took many a friend of the Soviet Union, and certainly its enemies, by surprise. Those who knew of the intrinsic strength of the Soviet socialist society saw no miracle in that the Soviet Union withstood the incredible difficulties of a war against a strong enemy, 10 and ascended to victory. In a way, that victory was preordained. But even those who know, will do well to look back again on the wartime attainments of the Soviet people and review the factors that assured the Soviet triumph.

People were the makers of the victory—the people of the Soviet Union, who bore the brunt of the war, the peoples of the United States and Britain, the peoples of France, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Greece, Italy, and all those countries that were the theatre of the Resistance. Glory to them!