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Jul20

am 20. Juli 2021

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman – 20. Juli 2021

BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 193 July 20 2021

A HAPPY WARRIOR + ESTHER BEJARANO + PRESENTE

Victor Grossman

She was all of 96 years, yet Esther Bejarano’s death hits hard, leaving a painful gap in Germany’s anti-fascist scene. Until the final weeks of her long life she was a fighter, speaking, singing and passing the good word along – especially to young people.

Her life almost ended when she was herself young, 19, horribly, after being crammed into a cattle car with other Jewish Germans on a final route to Auschwitz. Unlike most of her family she survived, thanks to her ability to play the piano and please some Kultur-lover among the killers. ”Can you play the accordeon too?” Yes, she lied, and picked up the basics quickly enough to be included in the “girl orchestra” used to calm and deceive in-coming trainloads of human beings, thus avoiding incidents on the way to the gas chambers. It was a nasty job but enabled her to survive until, after escaping the guards on a forced “death march” at war’s end, she was rescued by Red Army and US army units.

Despite great doubts as to whether they would be safe there, the family moved to West Germany in 1960. Esther opens a laundry in Hamburg.

Edith went to what was still Palestine. I can add a personal note here. I was lucky enough, as a Harvard delegate, to go to the first World Youth Festival in Prague in 1947. At the Palestine evening we saw a chic uniformed Zionist dance and song group organized by the Jewish Agency. And the Ron Workers Chorus, a leftist group, no uniforms, singing leftist songs, both Jewish and Arab like the singers. The Festival asked both to perform on one evening in one place. But after the Jewish Agency group finished and the Ron chorus was ready to begin, all lights in the huge opera house went out. A minute later they were back – and a cloud of leaflets with a Zionist message floated down from the top gallery. Only then was the chorus able to sing, with Esther. So I saw and heard her 74 years ago!

The Nazis murdered Esther’s parents, her sister Ruth, her husband and many other relatives and friends. More than five million Jews fell victim to the Nazi crimes. Many Holocaust survivors then have no words to talk about their experiences. So does Esther. She finds solace in music.

She got married, had children, but was not happy. As she wrote: “My husband and I could not stand Israeli politics. It was a catastrophe… Life was difficult because we did not agree with the terrible things that were done to the Palestinians.”

In Israel, Esther later meets Nissim Bejarano. The two get married and have two children.

In 1960 she and her family made the dramatic move back to Germany, to Hamburg. But she had not forgotten her earlier suffering. She never ceased combatting fascism and former Nazis wherever they showed their heads. In West Germany in the 1960s that still meant virtually every walk of life, right up to Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger (1966-1969) and President Heinrich Lübke (1959-1969).

Despite great doubts as to whether they would be safe there, the family moved to West Germany in 1960. Esther opens a laundry in Hamburg.

She founded a German branch of the Auschwitz Committee in her living room and became honorary president of the Association of Victims of the Nazis, on occasion braving water cannon to stop neo-Nazi parades. She was active in peace demonstrations and supported Cuba against the blockade.

Bejarano takes over the chairmanship of the German Auschwitz Committee. She keeps telling young people in particular what she experienced as a persecuted Jew.

After 1988 she joined her son, her daughter and young Turkish-German musicians in groups playing modernized international songs, Jewish songs, and new political songs for all the good causes, including the rights of Palestinians to conduct their boycott campaign. In countless schools she used her story to oppose the many inroads of the fascists, and her last action was to join in urging that May 8th, the day of victory over the Nazis, be made a national holiday.

Even in 2019, at the age of 95, she does not hold back with her opinion. In the Hamburg trial against a former concentration camp guard, she sits in the audience and states: „Whoever was there knew everything and, in my opinion, is guilty.“

Most media and many politicians voiced their praise and mourning – after almost totally ignoring her in life and attacking and trying to squelch organizations she was active in, as an avowed Communist. They stressed how she had always fought anti-Semitism. She had indeed, ceaselessly, but not in the way they used the term, labeling everyone an anti-Semite who criticized Israeli government policies, its settlements, occupation, repression, its missile and drone attacks. Her opposition to this and her clearly leftist views and actions have gone almost unmentioned by officialdom and its media. But not by the thousands who attended the funeral ceremony, who had loved her, fought at her side, enjoyed her music – and would greatly miss her.

Yoram Bejarano (r.) And Hamburg’s regional rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky at the grave of Esther Bejarano

Übersetzung per Google-Translater:
Sie war 96 Jahre alt, doch der Tod von Esther Bejarano trifft hart und hinterlässt eine schmerzliche Lücke in Deutschlands antifaschistischer Szene. Bis in die letzten Wochen ihres langen Lebens war sie Kämpferin, sprach, sang und gab das gute Wort weiter – vor allem an junge Menschen.
…Ihr Leben endete fast, als sie selbst jung war, 19, schrecklich, nachdem sie mit anderen jüdischen Deutschen auf dem letzten Weg nach Auschwitz in einen Viehwaggon gepfercht wurde. Im Gegensatz zu den meisten ihrer Familie überlebte sie dank ihrer Fähigkeit, Klavier zu spielen und einigen Kulturliebhabern unter den Mördern zu gefallen. „Kannst du auch Akkordeon spielen?“ Ja, sie hat gelogen und sich die Grundlagen schnell genug angeeignet, um in das „Mädchenorchester“ aufgenommen zu werden, mit dem ankommende Zugladungen von Menschen beruhigt und getäuscht werden und so Zwischenfälle auf dem Weg zu den Gaskammern vermieden werden. Es war ein unangenehmer Job, ermöglichte ihr aber zu überleben, bis sie, nachdem sie am Ende des Krieges auf einem erzwungenen „Todesmarsch“ den Wachen entkommen war, von Einheiten der Roten Armee und der US-Armee gerettet wurde.
…Esther ging nach Palästina. Hier kann ich eine persönliche Anmerkung hinzufügen. Ich hatte das Glück, als Harvard-Delegierter 1947 zum ersten Weltjugendfest in Prag zu gehen. Beim Palästina-Abend sahen wir eine schicke, uniformierte zionistische Tanz- und Gesangsgruppe, die von der Jewish Agency organisiert wurde. Und der Ron Workers Chorus, eine linke Gruppe, keine Uniformen, die linke Lieder singen, sowohl jüdische als auch arabische wie die Sänger. Das Festival bat beide, an einem Abend an einem Ort aufzutreten. Aber nachdem die Gruppe der Jewish Agency fertig war und der Ron-Chor beginnen konnte, gingen alle Lichter im riesigen Opernhaus aus. Eine Minute später waren sie zurück – und eine Wolke von Flugblättern mit einer zionistischen Botschaft schwebte von der obersten Galerie herab. Erst dann konnte der Chor mit Esther singen. Also habe ich sie vor 74 Jahren gesehen und gehört!
…Sie heiratete, bekam Kinder, war aber nicht glücklich. Wie sie schrieb: „Mein Mann und ich konnten die israelische Politik nicht ertragen. Es war eine Katastrophe… Das Leben war schwierig, weil wir mit den schrecklichen Dingen, die den Palästinensern angetan wurden, nicht einverstanden waren.“
…1960 wagte sie mit ihrer Familie den dramatischen Umzug zurück nach Deutschland, nach Hamburg. Aber sie hatte ihr früheres Leiden nicht vergessen. Sie hat nie aufgehört, Faschismus und ehemalige Nazis zu bekämpfen, wo immer sie ihren Kopf zeigten. Das bedeutete in den 1960er-Jahren in Westdeutschland noch fast alle Lebensbereiche, bis hin zu Bundeskanzler Kurt Kiesinger (1966-1969) und Bundespräsident Heinrich Lübke (1959-1969).
…Sie gründete in ihrem Wohnzimmer einen deutschen Zweig des Auschwitz-Komitees und wurde Ehrenpräsidentin des Vereins der NS-Opfer, wobei sie gelegentlich Wasserwerfern trotzte, um Neonazi-Paraden zu stoppen. Sie war bei Friedensdemonstrationen aktiv und unterstützte Kuba gegen die Blockade.
…Nach 1988 schloss sie sich ihrem Sohn, ihrer Tochter und jungen türkisch-deutschen Musikern in Gruppen an, die modernisierte internationale Lieder, jüdische Lieder und neue politische Lieder für alle guten Zwecke spielten, einschließlich der Rechte der Palästinenser, ihre Boykottkampagne durchzuführen. In zahllosen Schulen setzte sie sich mit ihrer Geschichte gegen die vielen Einfälle der Faschisten ein, und ihre letzte Aktion bestand darin, sich dafür einzusetzen, dass der 8. Mai, der Tag des Sieges über die Nazis, zum Nationalfeiertag erklärt wird.
…Die meisten Medien und viele Politiker drückten ihr Lob und ihre Trauer aus – nachdem sie sie im Leben fast völlig ignoriert und Organisationen, in denen sie als bekennende Kommunistin aktiv war, angegriffen und versucht hatten, sie zu unterdrücken. Sie betonten, wie sie den Antisemitismus immer bekämpft habe. Sie hatte es zwar ununterbrochen, aber nicht in der Art, wie sie den Begriff benutzten, und bezeichnete jeden als Antisemiten, der die israelische Regierungspolitik, ihre Siedlungen, Besatzung, Repression, ihre Raketen- und Drohnenangriffe kritisierte. Ihre Opposition dagegen und ihre eindeutig linken Ansichten und Aktionen wurden von der offiziellen Regierung und ihren Medien fast unerwähnt gelassen. Aber nicht zu den Tausenden, die an der Trauerfeier teilnahmen, die sie geliebt, an ihrer Seite gekämpft, ihre Musik genossen hatten – und sie sehr vermissen würden.

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└ Tags: AmericanRebel, Arbeiterklasse, Ausland, Das kapitalistische System, KPD/ML, Krieg, Roter Morgen

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Jun15

am 15. Juni 2022

Veröffentlicht in: Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman 15. Juni 2022

Berlin Bulletin No. 202

BERLIN MUNICH KYIV

Victor Grossman

The tide of public opinion in Germany is as overpowering – and changeable – as elsewhere: “Stop the Russian invasion!“ – “Defend Ukraine!” – “Send money” – “More, bigger, further-reaching weapons!”- “Defeat Russia!” Sustaining this tide is an all-encompassing media campaign. No politician is exempt; even President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel are pressured to make excuses for long-past efforts to achieve detente and decrease confrontation with Russia, now denounced as “appeasement”. (Steinmeier has abjectly apologized, Merkel stubbornly refuses to do so.) And the calls to defend Ukraine are expanding: now we are told to defend our “democratic rules of order” in a new crusade.

Every epoch has had its call to battle the Forces of Evil. Once it was Anarchism, then Bolshevism, Communism. After those menaces were defeated new ones were required; in 2001 it was Terrorism. With that frightening term eroding, it is being replaced by Authoritarianism. The gargoyle staring at us from magazine covers – after Stalin, Mao and Fidel have died and Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Gaddafi been eliminated – is now a scowling Putin. And with him Russia, which must be ostracized, sanctioned, wrecked, starved and, above all, defeated. I have not yet heard any direct use of the word “bombed,” but the weapons are ready, with $800 billion spent annually in the USA, about thirteen times Russia’s military budget, not counting the others in NATO. In Germany, on top of its already huge military outlay, a special €100 billion fund was added, after receiving the required 2/3 parliamentary majority to overrule constitutional limitations. Its use is restricted to strengthening and modernizing the Bundeswehr, for F-35 planes, capable of dropping atomic bombs on Moscow in record time, for warships capable of landing at any shore, for latest-model, deadliest tanks.

Change of course: Germany is now supplying arms to Ukraine after all. | Photo: YouTube

All this is “to achieve security”. German borders are nowhere threatened, but the Ukraine invasion, it’s said, proves Putin’s plans to regain the area of the USSR or the czarist empire. So who knows? And any call to reason, to push for a truce and negotiations instead of demands to defeat and “ruin” Russia, oust Putin and put him on trial, is denounced as appeasement, with allusions to the 1938 Munich Agreement, when Neville Chamberlain and French premier Daladier sold out Czechoslovakia.

I also see parallels, but very different ones. Hitler’s main aim, proclaimed in his Anti-Comintern Pact with Italy and Japan, was to invade and destroy the USSR, seizing the wealth of its giant expanse and moving closer toward hegemony, with Japan, of all Eurasia.

How did “the West” view such plans? In a secret meeting on November 19 1937, Lord Halifax, Britain’s representative, congratulated Hitler „that the Fuehrer had not only achieved great things in Germany, but that by destroying communism in his own country he had blocked its way to Europe and that therefore Germany can rightly be regarded as a bulwark against Bolshevism.“

The West, though not itself fascist, admired Hitler’s hatred of the USSR and hoped he might attack and destroy it, thus eliminating any nasty socialist threat. It demonstrated this by supporting Hitler, Mussolini and Franco in Spain, uttering hardly a whisper of disapproval of the Nazi takeover of Austria, agreeing to the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia which brought Germany to the Russian border, and rejecting calls by Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov in the League of Nations for “collective security” against German expansion. Litvinov’s hopes for unity against fascism died with the West’s speedy recognition of Franco’s victory on April 1 1939. Within a week Stalin drew the consequential conclusion, ousted Litvinov and set his successor, Molotov, to making a deal with Germany.

As Litvinov commented: British and French leaders “… had done everything they could to goad Hitler’s Germany against the Soviet Union by secret deals and provocative moves … The Soviet Government, in order to avoid an armed conflict with Germany in unfavorable circumstances and in a setting of complete isolation, was compelled to make the difficult choice and conclude a non-aggression treaty with Germany.”

The two years it gained made the Red Army’s liberation of Berlin possible, but only after the death of over 50 million people, about 27 million of them Soviet citizens. The events following the West’s rejection of Litvinov’s “collective security” were bloody and devastating. So too are the events of 2022. Of course the world is very different and neither NATO, Putin nor Ukraine are Nazi Germany. But has it not been USA policy to push its NATO closer and closer to Russia, building up its neighbors militarily, with annually threatening border maneuvers, organizing provocations like the putsch against an elected Ukrainian president in 2014 for wanting trade with both Russia and the West? Has it not been trying to totally surround Russia, weaken it economically, aiming at a final goal of “regime change” with a pawn like Yeltsin providing full access to a giant region and a ramp for an attack on the last big barrier to world hegemony, China? Doesn’t current US (hence NATO) policy recall eastward pressures of the past – called “cordon sanitaire,” “containment“ or “rollback”?

That ugly agreement of Stalin with Hitler was necessitated by an overwhelmingly existential threat. Did Putin view the present scene similarly? We cannot tell. Of course he saw how Ukraine was being steadily armed with Javelin antitank missiles, modern artillery, drones and howitzers that fire deadly Excalibur shells “with pinpoint accuracy”. He most certainly knew of deadly, joint US-Ukrainian “biological research facilities,” as admitted by Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland (the same official who guided the 2014 putsch in Kyiv). And we needn’t simply guess at what steps Washington would take if China conducted heavily-armed maneuvers in Tijuana or Baja California; we can look up the Bay of Pigs invasion or the attacks against Guatemala, Grenada, Panama, Dominican Republic, not to mention Korea, Vietnam, Iraq , Libya, Afghanistan, all of them far distant from Washington or New York. Luckily, the toll in lives and damage in Ukraine has not approached that in some of those invasions. Of burning necessity today; those numbers must never be approached!

But even the most valid comparisons with past or present dangers cannot minimize the Putin government’s share in the guilt for present horror! Nor can they overcome worries that Putin may indeed be dreaming of Czar Peter, of a Greater Russia, denying Ukrainian rights to independence and sovereignty. Nor do accusations of Nazi rule justify the violation of international law, the wrecking of so many towns, cities and families, despite a very real Bandera cult and the strength of Azov thugs. It is more than likely that a massive attack against the Russian-speaking Donbas republics was planned and Putin moved to prevent it. But was invasion the only method of prevention? I cannot say.

There is much we do not know. But there can be only one answer to current escalation, with growing election-related American belligerency, ever more powerful weaponry which will cost ever more lives, mostly Ukrainian ones – and the constant menace of atomic war. The answer must be to pressure Biden and Johnson, Baerbock and Scholz to support negotiations and peace. Difficult as such a response may be, I think it must top the agenda, worldwide, of every progressive! And it also means welcoming similar conclusions by a very mixed crowd including Erdogan in Turkey, the Pope in Rome, courageous Lutheran leaders in Germany and even that old war hawk Kissinger.

The call for peace is also heard from inside Russia, despite attempts to silence it. I hope it bears fruit – but not for those Russians who yearn for a NATO victory – and one more regime take-over!

In Germany, weak attempts to avoid total confrontation and work for peace were heard from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, who dared briefly to look to the future, when a Europe deprived of its Russian component, unalterably aligned against it, should be unthinkable. But timid words in this direction were soon shushed by his coalition partners: the right-wing Free Democrats, ready to spend billions for war and weapons but not tax the billionaires one more euro, and the Greens, once seen as progressive, now nicknamed “Olive-Greens”, with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock loudest in the ravenous pack, outdoing even European Union Commission boss Ursula von der Layen. Scholz knows that resisting either partner could sink his coalition ship and end his captaincy. Both of them (and his own party) have happily joined in many state-level coalitions with the rightist Christian Democrats and could try it again nationally. His fears of their desertion could explain his loud support for the €100 billion package for the military. But the trend is strong all over Europe, as seen in the efforts of Sweden and Finland to break long-held traditions and apply to join NATO. The bellicose “Atlanticists” have used the Ukraine war to please the Pentagon and the Raytheons and defeat the pragmatic, business-minded advocates of trade and rapprochement with Russia and China.

Olaf Scholz now plans to forget past insults from Kyiv and pay a visit, together with Emmanuel Macron and Italian premier Mario Draghi, all of them somewhat hesitant till now but all fearful of media accusations of being slouchers, the threesome will be listening favorably to Zelenskyy’s insistent demands for heavy weapons. They will undoubtedly be spared embarrassing encounters with the Nazi-like flags, insignia and tattoos of the Azov battalions or visits to giant Bandera statues.

Scholz has already paid a first-time state visit to Vilnius, where he assured the heads of state of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that Germany was thinking of them and would send more troops to their countries, near Russian St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. No mention was made of Hitler’s use of this Baltic area when attacking the USSR in 1941 and laying deathly siege to Leningrad for 2½ years, nor the eager participation of Baltic volunteers in SS units fighting for Hitler. During the visit none of the traditional, police-protected marches of SS veterans and supporters were held; their current accent has switched to support of Ukraine.

While the western winds were blowing stronger, partly out of sympathy and solidarity, partly tainted by the smell of nationalism and hatred, where in Germany was DIE LINKE, The Left, a party traditionally standing for peace and opposing the weapons race? Sadly said, it’s better not to ask!

After its disastrous results in the national election last September, where it sank to 4.9%, down from 9.9% in 2017 and only squeezed back into the Bundestag thanks to a rule by which, if three or more delegates were elected directly by their districts, proportional representation (PR) came into force. Just three won, two in Berlin, one in Leipzig, so the party stayed in the Bundestag, but no longer the largest opposition party with 69 seats but as the weakest, down to 39. Drastic changes were more than urgent! But they were not made, and in three state elections the Left again lost catastrophically.

Despite participation in four state coalitions, in Berlin, Bremen, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Thuringia, the party’s further existence was clearly endangered. A heavy blow hit in April, when the more “reformist” co-chair Susanne Hennig-Wellsow resigned, because of her “personal situation” as mother but with a veiled attack on her more militant co-chair, Janine Wissler, based on a nastily distorted article in the crafty magazine »Der Spiegel«, always an enemy of Die Linke, which falsely wrote of Wissler covering up a case of misogyny by her ex-partner. Almost certainly allied with its usual behind-the-scenes snoopers and manipulators, it wrote of Die Linke’s mishandling of “sexism.“

Because of the co-chair’s resignation, the many election defeats, and the charges of sexism flying around (although Die Linke has a female majority in its Bundestag delegation and in state legislatures), it was decided to elect an entire new leadership at the party congress in Erfurt on June 24-26. Defying the unjust media attacks, Janis Wissner will run again for the top office. Since she is a left-leaning female West German, a likely co-chair might be a reformist-leaning male East German.

But the party is sharply divided. The “reformers,” who based their disastrous campaign last year on hopes of joining a national coalition with the Greens and the Social Democrats, had to bury this dream (for now). Even if feasible, the party would have had to abandon opposition to NATO and the deployment of German troops in foreign wars and occupations, as in Afghanistan and Mali, and its resistance to big armament plans, or sending heavy weapons to Ukraine. The ”left wing” of Die Linke insists that this would mean giving up its position as a lone party of peace, thus becoming irrelevant: a slightly left-leaning Social Democratic sector of the establishment, forgetting its opposition to the capitalist system and its mighty billionaire potentates!

Such basic questions will likely be at the center of debate in Erfurt at the end of the month – and in the choice of co-chairs and all other positions. Will the party choose sides? Will it find some compromise? Could it split, forming two weak parts, leaving a peace position unstated in the Bundestag and the media? In two weeks we should know

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Despite the current catastrophe, about forty people, also calling the past to mind. met at a small square monument at Berlin’s Lustgarten park to commemorate a tragic failure.

In May 1942 the Nazi war machine, after all its Blitzkrieg victories and early gains in its attack on the USSR, had begun to bite on granite. Unexpected reverses and heavy losses meant flagging morale, so a big, multimedia exhibition, sarcastically named “Soviet Paradise,” was set up to show the desolate, poverty-stricken Soviet they were destroying – and regain enthusiasm for ”our boys in uniform”.

Two underground groups, young Communists, decided to set fire to the exhibition. Five from one group, seven from a second, Jewish group, severely restricted but not yet hit by the deportations, were led by Herbert Baum, 29, highly talented, in sports, musically, and in support of Marxist ideas – and dearly loved by all of them.

But on the date set, May 18th 1942, the combustible material secreted around the exhibition failed to ignite; the plot was discovered and nearly all members of both groups were caught, tortured, and sent to the guillotine. Baum was found hanged in his cell. The small monument in East Berlin was erected in 1981 and only slightly altered after unification, partially veiling references to the USSR.

++++++++

On May 8th, to mark the anniversary of a great victory, many hundreds of Berliners resumed the traditional annual visit to the Soviet Memorial Monument in Treptow, one of three in Berlin, with its statue of a Red Army soldier holding a small child protectively in one arm, in the other a sword, smashing a swastika at his feet. The long green lawn below the statue contains the remains of 7000 soldiers who, after four terrible war years, died in the last fierce battle to defeat Hitler fascism.

++++++++

1. Additional side-notes: Elon Musk has started production of his electric autos in a gigafactory complex in a previously wooded area southeast of Berlin, to be his biggest plant in Europe.

2. With prices here also soaring upwards, various schemes are constantly being debated, either to allay misery or blunt growing militancy, now seen in strikes by nurses, airline attendants, hospital personnel and others, with demands as high as 8% in raises.

3. In a curious experiment, a single €9 ticket in June, July and August will grant free transportation for one month each on all subway, elevated, streetcar, bus and railroad travel, except only the fancy international routes. From the start, trains to Baltic and North Sea beaches were jammed.

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└ Tags: Annalena Baerbock, Britain’s representative, ed Army, Friedrich Merz, Germany, Groko, Horst Seehofer, liberation of Berlin, Lord Halifax, magazine Der Spiegel, NATO, Putin, Russia, Soviet Government, St. Petersburg, Ukraine, USSR, Victor Grossman

Kommentar

Jul12

am 12. Juli 2022

Veröffentlicht in: Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman – 12. Juli 2022

THE WAR * GERMANY * THE LEFT
BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 203

Victor Grossman

In 1307 in Switzerland, so goes the legend, the Habsburg rulers’ local bailiff, Gessler, stuck his hat on a pole and commanded every passerby to salute it. Wilhelm Tell refused. As fearsome punishment he had to shoot an apple from his own little boy’s head with his crossbow. His aim was sure, the boy was safe. But „Gessler’s hat” still means forced obeisance to some symbol. Or else!

In current media, every mention of the war in Ukraine must start with a denunciation of that monster Putin. Or else! What epithet is more withering than “Putin-lover”!

I, too, am not a Putin-lover. And I have a great hatred of war, especially war rained from the skies or aimed from a distance. Waging war, against civilians, even against young uniformed “adversaries,” is inherently wrong. But I will not bow my head to this modern “Gessler’s hat”, no matter what epithets I may be pelted with (crossbows are rarely available). Actually, for my last Berlin Bulletin, while some readers accused me of being too “pro-Putin” others said I was too “anti-Putin”!

Despite my horror at the death, destruction and misery I see daily on TV, my entire background demands a careful analysis of a conflagration which may yet fling flames across more borders and can all too easily kindle atomic annihilation. Why did Russia send an army into Ukraine? Was it pure imperialism? A terrible miscalculation? Did Putin see it as a dire necessity? Or was it a baited trap?

To start with, I cannot forget, deny or ignore what I have seen happen since 1945; how the Pentagon, White House, Congress and those behind them sought the defeat of one pro-socialist effort after another. They failed in Cuba and Vietnam, they succeeded in Ghana, Grenada, Chile – and, most important, in Europe! By utilizing every weakness, blunder, even offense, and exerting every form of pressure, Poland was won by a team led by Ronald Reagan, “Polish Pope” John Paul II, the CIA and a few experts in the AFL-CIO. In 1989-90 it was the GDR’s turn, with help from US Ambassador to Bonn Vernon Walters, a former CIA Deputy Director who had played a major role in Poland. In 1991 came the glorious victory over the USSR, where Yeltsin, an alcoholic marionette, opened the gates to ten years of chaos, desolation and sell-out to new Russian oligarchs and not so new US corporations.

That’s when Putin stepped in, just in time to save Russia from total collapse, using his own set of oligarchs, crossing himself piously as he knelt in church but keeping a tight state hold on banks and basic resources. This was not at all what American businessmen and politicians wanted. So the US-led military pact NATO, breaking its promise of 1990 not to move an inch eastwards, advanced, one regime-changed ally after the other, towards complete encirclement of Russia: in 1999 Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, in 2004 Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; then the hinterland in fragmented, bombed ex-Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia. Only a few more were needed to close a tight ring around Russia. Afghanistan did not pan out, nor did Georgia (though attempts are vigorously continuing). But most important was Ukraine, which could block Russia from the Black Sea and reached to within 400 miles of Moscow.

The elected president of that huge gem, unwilling to become part of the encircling noose, sought a more neutral position. “Not enough!” said NATO and sent in Nuland. Victoria Nuland, deputy in Hillary Clinton’s State Department (and wife of a top cold war strategist), went to Kyiv, dealt out at least $5 billion and even tasty cookies to a largely right-wing, anti-Russian crowd, and maybe a few to the mysterious snipers who forced the president to flee for his life. In a famous hacked phone call she personally chose the next Ukrainian ruler, banker-politician Yatzenyuk, a man supported by the “Freedom Party” of Oleh Tyahnybok, who had denounced a “Jewish-Russian Mafia” and praised Ukraine’s new hero Stepan Bandera, who led in murdering thousands of Jews and Poles in 1941.

One of the new rulers’ first measures discriminated against the many Russian-speakers, limiting the use of all but Ukrainian, making them second-class citizens and in Crimea angry enough to vote, with a big majority, to break with Ukraine and rejoin with Russia (to which they had belonged until 1954) and in eastern Donbas to form two separate republics, much as Albanian-speaking people in Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 2008. In such decisions national pride, or self-defense – superseded complex international rules. Military operations against Donbas were soon launched, using the fascistic “Azov” militia units.

With Ukraine now a new segment in the ring around Russia, USA-NATO built up its strength there, first with “non-lethal” arms and trainers, letting allies like Lithuania pass on bigger stuff. Then came a series of military maneuvers. Defender-Europe 20 was hindered by Covid-19 but, in 2021, Sea Breeze was conducted in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea with more than 30 warships and 40 planes from 32 countries not far from the Russians’ southern naval base of Sevastopol.

Then it was Operation Cossack Mace, this time to “improve compatibility between British and Ukrainian military formations, strengthen mutual relations, joint planning and perform battalion and tactical operations.” Two British-built naval bases were planned near the short Russian coast.

In September 2021 it was Rapid Trident 21. -“To increase combat readiness, defense capabilities and interoperability, the exercise features joint jumps of Ukrainian and U.S. paratroopers and, for the first time, service members will conduct battalion tactical exercises of a multinational battalion with combat shooting in a single combat order … The purpose is to prepare for joint actions as part of a multinational force during coalition operations.” Joining the USA and Ukraine were Bulgaria, Canada, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Lithuania, Moldova, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Turkey and the UK.

Such activities were allegedly for peace, defending Ukraine against “authoritarianism.” But Russia viewed the threat of cutting it off in the Baltic and Black Sea, plus 700 or 800 big or small USA bases on six continents, in a very different way. Washington was a safe 7800 miles away; St. Petersburg and Moscow were under the noses of those missile launchers, warplanes and warships, and the USA alone had a 13-1 preponderance over Russia in military spending. Bipartisan American politicians were outdoing themselves in reviling Russia, nor could the Maidan events with Victoria Nuland be forgotten.

As for Putin, like him or hate him, it is hardly surprising that he was alarmed, perhaps even for personal reasons in view of the fates of other leaders disliked by Washington: Allende, dead in his bombed residence, Lumumba, tortured and murdered, Saddam Hussein, hanged, Muammar Gaddafi, fatally sodomized, the Afghani Najibullah, castrated and stringed up, Usama Bin Ladin, shot in his rooms and dumped into the ocean, Slobodan Milošević, mysteriously dying in a prison cell. (Fidel Castro was luckier, surviving over a hundred bungled CIA assassination attempts.)

hier geht es weiter »

In a 14-page historical summary, Putin wrote:

“We respect the Ukrainian language and traditions. We respect Ukrainians’ desire to see their country free, safe and prosperous.” … “Russia is open to dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues. But it is important for us to understand that our Ukrainian partner defend its national interests not by serving someone else’s, that it not be a tool in someone else’s hands to fight against us.”

That was in July 2021. How sincere were such words? What did they mean in February 2022? Daring to ignore the “Gessler hat,” I think basic Russian policy must be seen not as expansionist but as defensive. In 2015 Russia agreed to the Minsk II agreement to avoid further warfare in Donbas and resolve the conflict with negotiations and compromises. Kyiv ignored, indeed undermined Minsk II; Germany and France, its co-sponsors, abandoned it. Foreign Minister Lavrov made proposals to discuss a neutral Ukraine. At first Zelensky seemed interested – until pressure from Washington and London to “stay tough” prevailed; Lavrov’s further requests to negotiate differences, above all to remove NATO troops and maneuvers from Russian borders, were rejected in December 2021 by Secretary of State Blinken, as “very obvious nonstarters”. Was that rejection Putin’s “red line”? Who knows? I only wish they had been “starters” instead – for the White House and Pentagon. That could have saved the Ukrainians immense suffering and exile – although it might have meant fewer billions for Northrup-Grumman or Raytheon.

And on February 24? Did Putin perhaps march into an elaborate trap – as Russia had once done in Afghanistan? Did he consider a big impending Ukrainian offensive against the Donbas republics and their Russian-speaking population, where 14,000 had died in ten years of battle, as an immediate danger to Russia? Did the many US-Ukrainian biological laboratories – admitted to by Victoria Nuland in a US Senate committee hearing – seem an immediate threat? I cannot know.

One commentator, turning to history, recalled the surprise attack on the USSR by the Nazi armies in 1941, resulting in up to 27 million deaths and vast destruction. He surmised that Putin, seeing a growing, hostile Ukrainian army, with NATO (or the USA leaders) guiding it from the wings, decided that a first attack was necessary to prevent any repetition of 1941.

Putin defended the invasion of Ukraine with the following words:

“Today we are told that we started a war in Donbas, in Ukraine. No, it was unleashed by this same collective West which organized and supported the unconstitutional armed coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, then encouraged and justified genocide against the people of Donbas …

“The West is fighting Russia with all the tools that are also used in a war: weapons, sanctions, money, media, diplomacy. The only thing that slows the West down from intervening with its own soldiers is the danger of nuclear war.

“Ukraine is only the unfortunate sacrificial pawn of the West, which had been prepared for this role since 2014 and with which the West has provoked Russia (with the Maidan coup in 2014, arms deliveries, construction of NATO bases, etc.) until Russia saw no choice but to take military action to protect its own security interests. At the beginning of February 2022, the West rejected the security guarantees proposed by Russia in December 2021 and even refused to talk about them.”

That is Putin’s position. True or not, and for whatever reason, invasion was a tragic choice! Aside from the misery in Ukraine it has led to a dangerously explosive polarization, painfully splitting the world’s weak left-wing forces for peace and progress.

And in Germany? For years the unified country was torn between two forces. Some economic groups, like gas importers and exporters of manufactured and agricultural goods, wanted to get along with Russia (and even more with China), a policy symbolized by Angela Merkel and the Baltic pipelines. This was angrily opposed by men along the Potomac, in Charles Koch’s Wichita HQ and similar locations, who wanted both to export fracked gas and to head off even limited German-Russian reconciliation. They were aiming at the eventual defeat of Russia, then China, as major barriers to their plans for world hegemony, prudently labeled “the rule of order,” democracy, liberty (and free markets!) as against “authoritarianism.”

Closely beholden to them was that force in Germany, the Atlanticists, whether because of ideology, intertwining corporate and financial interests, or perhaps even personal career hopes. After February 24th, inside and outside the governing coalition, the Atlanticists won full victory, filling the media with angry denunciation of everything Russian, working to permanently break off all commercial ties with Moscow, starting with the Baltic oil pipelines, even though this may well cause industrial shutdown s and maybe very chilly room temperatures. Christian Democrats, Free Democrats, and first and foremost the Green party joined the attack, with the young Green foreign minister Annalena Baerbock demanding that as many and as heavy weapons possible to be sent to Kyiv, with her cherished goal the “ruin of Russia”.

The Social Democrats were not so clear, with Chancellor Scholz hesitant about sending heavy weapons to Kyiv and getting deeply involved in what could become an open war, NATO vs. Russia. But media attacks grew fiercer, and Scholz bowed to that “Gessler hat,” siding with NATO and Washington, stationing more German troops in Lithuania and demanding an unprecedented sum of €100 billion for more armaments to “protect German security”.

The competition in denouncing Russia grew strong enough to revive half-forgotten tones from the 1930s, like when Lars Klingbeil, a leading Social Democrat, claimed that “Germany’s allies have great expectations and Germany must fulfil them… It is time for it to exit the end-of-history mode and become a leading power on the world stage after almost 80 years of holding back.“

Frightening words! Even more frightening were those of top air corps General Ingo Gerhartz: “For a credible deterrent, we need both the means and the political will, if necessary, to implement nuclear deterrence.“ The “old guard” in the established parties were beginning to summon up past glories!

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is all out for those past glories but, like some other far-righters in Europe, did not join the verbal attacks on Russia and opposed armaments for Ukraine! Their main mission in nearly all matters is opposition – above all to the European Union. But as dyed-in-the-wool nationalists, they also support a big German military build-up, a renewed draft and/or compulsory civil service for young men (as also recommended by President Steinmeier!).

The Left – Die Linke – has always stood out as the one party of peace, opposing deployment in Serbia, Afghanistan, Mali or anywhere outside German borders. Now it was split, with the main bone of contention the Ukraine war. Actually, disagreement on related issues was by no means new, though rarely so emotional as at the party congress session in late June.

It was a disastrous year for The Linke. In the September elections the party received only 4.9%, down from 6.9% four years earlier. Its caucus in the Bundestag was only just saved by a special rule; if three or more delegates were elected directly in their districts the caucus was saved, even without 5%. Exactly three scraped through, but proportional representation now gave it 39 deputies, not its previous 69; no longer the strongest opposition party, it had become the weakest. The urgent party reassessment and changes called for by this disaster failed to materialize and the party lost bitterly in three state elections: Saarland – from 12.8% to 2.6%, Schleswig-Holstein, 3.8 to 1.7% and in the key industrial North Rhine-Westfalia from 4.9 to 2.7%! Few workers voted Left. Some prominent members quit. The magazine Der Spiegel falsified a sex-related event (some obscure member’s alleged assault) into a malicious “Me-too” attack on the more militant co-chair Janine Wissler for allegedly covering it up. Her “reformist” co-chair, Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, quit her leadership position in a huff, and with new leadership elections now necessary, the party faced total defeat, perhaps a split and even its demise!

In the main dispute the so-called reformers weakened the party’s basic opposition to NATO in hopes of being accepted in a government coalition with the pro-NATO Greens and Social Democrats. Such dubious hopes were rendered fully impossible by the Left’s poor election results. But the reformers still tended to play down or absolve the NATO’s current role, giving Russia and Putin the entire blame for the Ukrainian tragedy while the militant wing of the party viewed the NATO, especially the USA, as provocateurs, whose expansionist policy of deploying armaments and maneuvers along Russian borders was clearly looking for trouble – and, sadly, getting it. The quarrel reflected a deeper rift – between those who called for improvements in child care, pensions, minimum wages but saw socialism only as a future goal in vague clichés while basically accepting a systemic status quo in which they strove to become accepted, despite the growing menace of the billionaires. The militants, while not calling for revolution tomorrow (like some ultra-leftists), nevertheless saw a rejection of the capitalist system as vital – and basic opposition a necessity. The one group accepted NATO, the other opposed it. Their differences colored often hot but very brief Congress debates, which were dominated by the reformers, who won out in the end with about a 60-30 ratio – and managed to slip some very ardent pro-NATO advocates into leading positions. Janine Wissner was re-elected as co-chair (thus rejecting the malicious media smear). For co-chair, the usual male-female, East-West, leftish-reformist balance formula was maintained, and the militant, popular Sören Pellmann from Leipzig, one of the three delegates to save the Left caucus by winning a seat in his district, lost out to the rather moderate Martin Schirdewan, till then a delegate in the European Parliament, who promised to put far more stress on working-class struggles while opposing armament sales to Ukraine and organizing for peace. He seemed to seek Left reconciliation – and, at last, action.

Some on the left deplored the Congress results. Others were glad there had been no split, some political positions had been rescued, a threatened stress on “gender issues,” even in grammar and punctuation, had been averted and a shaky compromise arrived at. It remain to be seen whether The Left can regain roots among working people for the many hardships and big menaces now looming. And much may yet depend on its position regarding Gessler’s hat. A side note: In the famous play by Friedrich Schiller, the events involved led to the Swiss rebellion against Habsburg tyranny.

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└ Tags: Annalena Baerbock, BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 203, Britain’s representative, ed Army, Friedrich Merz, Germany, Groko, Horst Seehofer, liberation of Berlin, Lord Halifax, magazine Der Spiegel, NATO, Putin, Russia, Soviet Government, St. Petersburg, Ukraine, USSR, Victor Grossman

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am 1. März 2023

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman – 17. Januar 2023

DESPAIR AND JOY
BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 207

Victor Grossman

Despair and joy can be so close together! – In conflicts, I know, neither side can be trusted. Both sides twist and distort, magnify and minimize in support of their cause. But the daily, almost hourly pictures from Ukraine – of hardship, suffering, of death, destruction and flight, all too genuine, cause me the despair I have always felt on hearing – and worse seeing, if only on a screen – any pain inflicted on my fellow human beings, no matter what insignia they wear or flag they honor.

But I must also recoil at the hypocrisy and dishonesty which so often go unnoticed. The propaganda producers who feign despair but seek more conflict, more medals, more billions, always praise a noble cause: freedom, democracy, rule of order, and always warn of despicable enemies; Bolsheviks, anarchists, Stalinists, communist aggressors and, when these are eliminated, terrorism. When that, too, erodes, authoritarianism must serve, or “imperialism” turned upside down. A nasty “villain” is always effective, justly or not, an Iago: Lenin, Stalin, Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Putin.

Is hypocrisy involved? Double standards? Chinese sources, like all others, must be met with caution. But can all the charges in their Foreign Affairs Department memorandum be completely denied?

So disgusting as we in Germany, here in Berlin, promoted the war. The sign reads „EVERY DEAD IS A SMALL STEP TO WORLD PEACE“

“The history of the USA is characterized by violence and expansion… After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War… In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries…The United States has also adopted appalling methods in war… massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution… Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the USA in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions.”

hier geht es weiter »

Did none of this deserve the opprobrium now directed at Putin? Were any flags of sympathy displayed when the people of Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan were bombed? When drones exploded on hospitals and wedding processions – were there also calls for tribunals against Bush – or Obama?

My despair grew far more intense when I felt the menace of escalating demands, after Leopard tanks, for powerful artillery, fighter planes and boats, and not just to win back Crimea; when I read the editorials insisting on “fighting on to victory,” no matter what it costs, above all to the people of Ukraine. Or when I read the following:

“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of US Strategic Command. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”

Adm. Richard’s threat came after the US released its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which reaffirms the US doctrine on first use of nuclear weapons. The review says that the purpose of the US nuclear arsenal is to “deter strategic attacks, assure allies and partners, and achieve US objectives if deterrence fails.” What are then the US objectives in Europe, Asia – or Africa and Latin America?

Only a few lonely voices questioned them and their likely cost, but were quickly muzzled. Peace rallies, rarely attracting more than 2-3000 faithful leftists even in Berlin, were mentioned, if at all, superciliously and dismissed as ragged little remnants of the huge rallies of the 1980’s. The media kept up its routine of repeated scenes of death, flight and destruction in Ukraine (not in Yemen), combined with rousing calls for more and deadlier instruments of war – until Ukraine was fully restored and Putin defeated, humbled, possibly deposed and preferably tried and sentenced.

How then, could I find any cause for joy, any reason to smile?

Alice Schwarzer and Sahra Wagenknecht, the initiators of the manifesto at the large demonstration on Sunday, February 26th.

Almost surprisingly, two of the best-known women in Germany overcame past differences and joined hands. Alice Schwarzer, now 80, had once, with her magazine “Emma,” been the main founder and expounder of the women’s rights movement in West Germany, including abortion rights, but had later drifted politically rightwards. Sahra Wagenknecht, 52, with an East German background, was alongside party founder Gregor Gysi the most prominent, media-wise and popular spokesperson of the LINKE, the Left, a truly brilliant orator, but who has been disavowed by most of the present reformist leaders of her party, with some of them even demanding her ouster.

This unusual duo joined to publish a manifesto calling for a cease-fire in Ukraine and urging – not tanks and armaments for the Zelenskiy government in Kyiv but pressure on both sides for peace negotiations. It warned of the consequences of more weapons – and more active participation by Germany, basically in the wake of Washington.

But what could these two women achieve against such high tidal waves? Their position, in today’s Germany, was considered purest heresy, which must quickly be exorcized.

Suddenly, the witch-doctors found this far tougher than expected – after 69 prominent Germans signed the manifesto, people originally from all the parties, popular, respected people: a former female church leader, singers, actors, the son of one-time Chancellor Willy Brandt. And then the numbers of signers grew, and grew, and grew! 50,000, 100,000 – by Saturday it had topped 650,000 and was aiming at a million!

The alarm bells rose to a deafening cacophony! The media, the politicians, sadly including many of the LINKE, they all joined in a wild attack against the manifesto and especially against Sahra.

Their attempts to disprove its arguments were less and less convincing. Could more weapons really bring Russia to its knees, forcing it to give up claims it deemed necessary to its independence – if not its survival, like keeping NATO missiles at least a minimal distance from Moscow’s doorsteps and preserving safe, unmonitored warm-water Black Sea routes to the world’s oceans? Or might bigger attacks by Ukraine-USA lead instead to desperation? All such questions are publicly taboo – like questions about who really blasted the German-Russian underwater gas pipelines, who was really throwing dangerous missiles at atomic energy plants controlled by Russian troops, or what the USA-Ukrainian biological laboratories were really researching. There were too many such questions to permit discussion; it was like opening Pandora’s box. The lid must be kept sealed!

Common lid sealers were the usual accusations of Putin-endearment, of blindness to death and destruction, denial of Kyiv’s right to territorial sovereignty and free choice of its alignments, awarding Putin territorial seizures without a fight. But none of this applied; the Manifesto made no demands on anyone – except to sit down and end the slaughter before it exploded further and irreparably.

When Sahra and Alice called for a big rally in Berlin on February 25th the fears multiplied. A counter-demonstration was organized for the 24th, the anniversary of open warfare, mostly with Ukrainians (66,000 now live in Berlin) but aimed at convincing Germans who sympathize with Ukraine and its suffering to reject any blame on the preceding NATO provocation and blame Putin alone. One effort was to transport a wrecked Russian tank to a spot next to the Russian embassy, with its big gun aimed directly at its entrance.

Over 100,000 people demonstrated against the war on Sunday.

But the main argument against Sahra and Alice stressed the support by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose anti-European Union, pro-Russian positioning led its leaders to add their names to the manifesto and announce their intention to join the peace rally. Sahra answered: “We can have nothing to do with fascists or racists, we must not permit them to raise their banners or posters. But we simply do not wish, nor or we able to exclude anyone from singly signing or attending whose heart is honestly devoted toward ending further bloodshed – or worse.”

Many in eastern Germany vote for the AfD because of anger and disappointment at hardships caused by unification and their treatment as second-class citizens. Too many are fooled into blaming “privileged foreigners.” Many are just against “those on top,” somewhat like many simpler Trump voters, they want (affordable) butter not guns, therefore distrust further involvement in the Ukraine war. Since some LINKE leaders gratefully joined in state governments they were seen, not always falsely, as “part of the Establishment,” so many LINKE voters switched to the AfD or didn’t vote at all. Such support is certainly embarrassing to Sahra and Alice, but they hope a Manifesto for Peace movement can become a healthy antidote to fascists and their deceitful initiatives.

Yet it was this issue which was played upon by both media and politicians – trying to depict the Manifesto movement as a unity: right-wing nationalists with leftist “Putin-lovers”. This method of attack has been utilized in the past to split and wreck attempts at building a broad peace movement. One might suspect that powerful groups grasp this function of the far right all too well and apply it whenever required.

Would such constant media hammering succeed? Would this peace rally end up as a pathetic flop, with a meager crowd like the Zelenskiy-friendly Ukrainian rally the evening before? Waiting for the subway, I feared to find, once again, that same small bunch of the faithful, many of them old friends.

And what did I find? On this icy-cold Saturday afternoon, with snowflakes beginning to flutter down, the subway was jammed! There was hardly room to even stand properly! And at the next station more tried to push into the car! Where were they all going?

There was no doubt about it! When I arrived at the station near the Brandenburg Gate, the site of the rally, thousands and thousands climbed out of the jammed cars, ascended and merged into the crowded streets, all headed in one direction! I too moved through the famous arch towards the big speakers’ stage – but never got to a place where I could see them. I had just barely enough room to squeeze in to a free spot. And only later did I learn from my sons that the crowd had been huge on all sides, jammed, chilly, but friendly, polite, in wonderfully high spirits at the giant turn-out, and determined in their applause, cheers, occasional boos (when war-hungry politicians were named), with occasional shouts like “No Weapons! Negotiations!”- “Make Peace not War”.

Many, perhaps most of those present, on or below the speakers’ stage, deplored and condemned the Russian invasion. But many also insisted that Kyiv’s big planned attack on the Donbas, the numerous maneuvers all around Russian ports and borders, a secret CIA intensive training program in 2015 for elite Ukrainian special operations forces, had made it unavoidable, that these were part of a trap – which Russia either fell into or was forced to fall into, as in Afghanistan in 1979.

I, too, knew of an MSNBC report on March 4, saying: “Russia’s Ukraine invasion may have been preventable: The U.S. refused to reconsider Ukraine’s NATO status as Putin threatened war. Experts say that was a huge mistake…The abundance of evidence that NATO was a sustained source of anxiety for Moscow raises the question of whether the United States’ strategic posture was not just imprudent but negligent…Senator Joe Biden knew as far back as 1997 that NATO expansion, which he supported, could eventually lead to a hostile Russian reaction.” Views on the war were far distant from those in the media!

People discussed and debated, but all I spoke to agreed that further conflict would only continue the terrible afflictions for the Ukrainians, could achieve no victories but only create giant dangers – also atomic dangers threatening the entire world.

And the neo-fascists? In media reports afterwards they were very much present, with an interview with one of their leaders somewhere on the periphery. We heard later that a few known far-rightists had indeed shown up with a banner, but a “left-wing Linke” group, at the ready, had quickly covered it over with a bigger anti-war banner and pushed the rightists – non-violently – away from the rally. I saw a few Russian and pro-Russian flags, carried, I think, by Russian-speakers, perhaps adult children of the many Russians who have moved here in recent decades. One of my sons did see a small group with nationalist flags, which could not easily be banned in that giant but always peaceful crowd, but can hardly have reached anywhere near 1%. And as for me, in all the time I spent there, or getting there and back, I saw not one rightist sign, but rather many hundreds carrying peace dove depictions or self-made anti-war slogans, happily ignoring the organizers’ request to carry no signs at all.

As Sahra and Alice commented: the Manifesto, now being signed by additional tens of thousands, and especially the rally, have frightened all those who want to continue the war, who want no negotiations, who are determined, as some say openly, ”to ruin Russia” and unseat anyone like Putin who, love him or hate him, refuses, unlike Yeltsin, to take orders from abroad. Policy-makers in the American seats of power clearly want to prevent even the weak but potentially growing cooperation between Germany with its European allies and Russia or China, which had been supported by some sectors in Germany – but had now been suffocated, with the current near-total domination by those German Herren, now in modern dress, but who recall all too frighteningly the stiffly monocled, heel-clicking warriors of past generations.

Of course, détente between Western Europe, Russia and China could mean fewer billions for US frackers and fuel providers, could cut profits for weapon-makers and other hungry expanders, from Amazon, Coca-Cola and Disney to Facebook, Unilever and the other queen bees in the honeyed hives of the pharmaceutical, movie, herbicide, food and other empires. Above all, the CEOs at Lockheed, Northrup, Raytheon, at Rheinmetall, Exxon Mobil and Chevron could then no longer rub their hands quite so gleefully or buy quite so many yachts, jets or mansions.

In her speech, Sahra reiterated: “We want no German tanks firing at those Russian women and men whose great-grandparents, in millions, were inhumanly slaughtered by the German Wehrmacht.” She condemned as cynical the signing of agreements to provide armaments for years in advance and said that true solidarity meant getting engaged for peace, not war.

Of course Vladimir Putin must also be willing to make compromises, she said, Ukraine must not be turned into a Russian protectorate. But as we have since learned, negotiations were not stymied by the Russian side. Several speakers recalled that Blinken, like his predecessors, had continued to push eastward, rejecting Russian appeals and offers and a final red-line warning in December 2021 to agree on security guarantees for all sides. New revelations by Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister of Israel, indicate that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine were moving ahead in March until Boris Johnson from London and his prompters in Washington made clear that an agreement was not desired. Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, though he succeeded in achieving grain shipments, prisoner exchanges and even a safe travel guarantee for Biden’s trip to Kyiv, felt the same outside pressure against further agreement.

Sahra and Alice got cheers when they stressed that agreements are not impossible, but must be fought for – and must be wanted! There is no need for tanks but rather for diplomacy, for a readiness to find compromises. A broad new peace movement is urgently necessary – and this rally must provide an impetus.

The media and the politicians, now more frightened than ever, were unsurprisingly quick, later, to dig up a solitary rightist they could use as Exhibit A, and then to lie about the figures. After the pro-Zelenskiy rally the night before, with about 7,000, they estimated 10,000; in our peace rally they could only count up to the same 10,000 figure, when everyone else saw 30,000, 50,000, perhaps even more. Since too many had taken part who would not swallow such a nonsense figure, TV reporters shame-facedly revised it to 13,000 or, vaguely, “thousands.” These were the least nasty, distorting even insulting examples of the immense efforts – even within a fracturing LINKE – to strangle this baby in its cradle before it emulates Hercules’ swift growth in muscle!

It was in fact the biggest peace rally in many, many years, good cause for them to fear – and for me and so many I have spoken to a source of great, unaccustomed joy! So close can despair and joy occupy one’s heart!

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