May 8 has undergone a change of meaning among the public in the Federal Republic of Germany. While the end of World War II was long considered a defeat by many opinion makers, it is now defined by the highest authorities as a day of liberation.
The expression of this change was the speech of the then President Richard von Weizsäcker in the Bundestag on May 8, 1985: "May 8 was a day of liberation. It liberated us all from the inhuman system of National Socialist tyranny."
This supposed "rethinking" had two perfidious reasons. First, the war generation was old or dead by then. With them, the Nazi functionaries who had decisively shaped the Federal Republic also disappeared from their posts. The subjective interest in justifying one's own earlier career in Hitler's Germany thus became obsolete. Presupposing this generational change, the ruling class was able to adopt the narrative of liberation that had previously been held up only by communists, Jews, and anyone else who had actually been liberated from the Nazi concentration camps. They have understood that a new attempt at German world power is more likely to be possible if the last one is condemned. They criticize German fascism in order to preserve and expand its economic basis - the rule of the bourgeoisie. So when German politicians, imperialist professional nationalists, talk about liberation, it is only with clenched teeth. More than liberation, they actually hate only the liberators, those from the Soviet Union.
The latter is currently particularly clear in Berlin. Under the harebrained pretext of the Russian attack on Ukraine, immoderate bans are being imposed on all places commemorating the Red Army on May 8 and 9. In addition to the ban on Russian and Ukrainian flags, the display of the Soviet flag, George ribbons and "Russian or Ukrainian military music" will also be punished. The Soviet soldier made of stone in Treptower Park shall not to be surrounded by Soviet flags this year.
In addition to a new blatant cut in the freedom of assembly, this also means an attack on the culture of commemoration and history. They want to harass the commemoration of the masses and make them forget that the liberators also had an alternative to their ailing system of imperialism in their marching baggage. It must be resisted and upheld who the liberators were: The Red Army under the leadership of the Communists, especially Comrade Stalin.
