Lessons from May 8, 1945

The Second World War claimed over 60 million lives. Reverence for the victims and recognition for those who helped end this war require the survivors and younger generations to learn from this.

“Never again” is the appropriate motto for this learning process.

The Ukraine War since February 2022 and the fifth Middle East War since October 2023 are just two among many other testimonies to not just isolated, but almost widespread political failure to even come close to the claim of this motto. The Nazis’ nationwide call “Germans, don’t buy from Jews!” is appearing again on German streets today. The ‘modern’ packaging is BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. While it is directed ‘only’ against the Jewish state, it is now global. It is part of a threateningly growing ‘moral’ attack on Israel’s clear legitimacy under international law.

This long-term outcome of World War II is reminiscent of the Hydra monster from the Greek underworld, whose heads grow back if one is cut off. It demonstrates that a successful, principle-based analysis of history has not taken place.

Another setback concerns Ukraine. While a Ukrainian military group appears to pay homage at the May 8 celebrations in London, it fits in there like a fox guarding the henhouse. Regardless of exactly how many Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis during the war, the frightening thing is that no proper lessons have been learned from this misguided approach to this day. The prevalence of Nazi symbols, particularly in the military and militias, demonstrates this.

These are primarily an expression of a refusal to learn how to deal with the murder of millions of Jews. At the same time, they demonstrate precisely the kind of extreme nationalism that has twice plunged Europe into devastating world wars, or more accurately, European fratricidal wars. In Ukraine, it has now gone so far as to erase Russian place and street names, which, however, is only a harmless beginning, as the Ukrainian government’s gruesome 12-point plan for the “reintegration” of the Crimean Peninsula from 2023 after its ‘reconquest’ reveals.1)

This document upgrades the decision of the Crimean residents in the 2014 referendum, which was justified by the threat of discrimination, to a justified asylum request as of 2023: The only way to escape the political persecution now looming is through protection from Russia, just as Edward Snowden was forced to seek as an individual.

Yet politicians and worryingly aligned media voices never tire of presenting the escalating arms deliveries into the fratricidal war to the citizens of EU Europe as an expression of European solidarity.

But the settlement history of the USA and other states on the American continent has long since demonstrated an integrative path by which the nationalism underlying the tensions can be overcome. Within just two or three generations, Italians, Germans, French, and other Europeans became Americans. Europe would have been spared the two world wars had the initiative of the Frenchman Victor Hugo (1802-1885) been accepted, who advocated a United States of Europe based on the American model – explicitly including Russia.

After two world wars, May 8, 1945 was to mark the dawn of a new, peaceful era. This was and is a question of survival, as advancement of weapons technology represents a time bomb, inexorably leading to conditions in which a few violent individuals will be able to threaten the lives of all of humanity.

At the two-month founding conference of the UN at the end of World War II, it seemed as if this insight had been internalized. In the preamble to their Charter, the delegates proclaimed their determination “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war … and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, …”

These principles and methods are named and explained in the subsequent text of the Charter. Since June 1945 (entered into force in October 1945), they have formed the mental toolkit for the world, with which future conflicts are to be resolved by peaceful means rather than by military force.

But the subsequent chain of civil wars, wars, terrorist activities, and military interventions demonstrate the complete failure of this well-intentioned project. The psychological reasons for this failure became apparent during and shortly after the San Francisco Conference, when the losers of the war were explicitly exempted from the Charter’s humanitarian protections through the enemy states clause. This affected not only the treatment of prisoners of war, but also that of civilians. Thus, the main wave of expulsion of approximately 14 million Germans only began weeks after the unconditional surrender.2) At the same time, peaceful conflict resolution was being debated in San Francisco.

The dropping of the two atomic bombs on non-military targets in Japan even took place after the conference.

The psychological effect that makes the consistent and fair application of principles generally difficult is hypocrisy, the unwillingness to apply the same standards to oneself and others. The tendency toward hypocrisy is even more pronounced in group conflicts, and even more so in times of war.

Although the conference participants in San Francisco could have observed this psychological obstacle in themselves, such insights were not incorporated into the text of the Charter. The widespread failure of the 1945 peace initiative is undoubtedly also due to a partial incompleteness of the Charter text, particularly with regard to the necessary prioritization of principles.3) But the psychological barrier of hypocrisy was far more obstructive. A key insight from Martin Luther King can serve as a benchmark. According to him, the ability to understand one’s enemies is the true, fundamental prerequisite for lasting peace.

But today, even the willingness to open oneself to a possible understanding is lacking. – Note: Understanding does not yet mean understanding in the sense of accepting motives, and certainly not consenting to actions, but rather the rational insight into the motivations of others. Evidence of the lack of this willingness is provided, among other things, by the Munich Security Conference, held annually in February.

This potentially important event is degraded to a meeting of militarists by not inviting Russia, the country with which we most urgently need to talk.

The dove of peace in the event announcements seems strange in this context.

The Munich Security Conference, founded in October 1963, at the very end of the short Kennedy era, is sponsored by NGOs. This fact provides a partial explanation for the ideological proximity to the UN, which also cooperates extensively with such tax-exempt organizations. NGOs are even a creation of the UN, as it introduces this term into Article 71 of its Charter.

The enormous number and outward diversity of NGOs, as well as the multitude of private television stations, newspapers, and other media, do not allow the conclusion that a freely developing plurality existed whose only political correctness lies in the common commitment to this very freedom.

On the contrary, elements of a pseudo-modern social model are emerging everywhere, which increasingly sees itself as a rival counter-model to the liberal-democratic social order. The term “domesticated socialism” fits the visions of a future economic order presented by various NGOs.

The discussion of this inconsistent mixture of socialism, wokism and unofficial elements of Islamism, militarism, corporate rule, and an Orwellian autocracy requires a book format or at least separate articles.4)

While the liberation of the Jews was a key goal in World War II, they soon became the primary victims of the newly created UN, or more precisely, of the hypocrisy flourishing within the world organization. Combating this psychological obstacle to peace has consistently failed due to a lack of self-awareness among delegates and the conflicting interests of influential figures. In an atmosphere of unfair bullying, over the decades, more resolutions have been passed against Israel than against all other states combined—today 193.

Although Israel’s legal status is firmly established on the basis of historical rights and the 1922 Mandate Treaty for Palestine (a component of the post-World War I order), and although the UN Charter itself calls in its preamble “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties … can be maintained,” the world organization has systematically undermined this legal status.

As there was never any prospect of success for a frontal assault on Israel’s secure legal foundations, since the founding of the state in 1948, the strategy has been ignoring these facts and siding with Arab counterforces. More precisely, it was the lack of a vigorous rebuke of the countless revanchist narratives that distort historical truth and clearly contradict the principles of the UN Charter. However, judging by their style and the way they are disseminated, a large portion of the pro-Palestinian narratives in particular does not originate in the Arab cultural sphere at all. Rather, the origin lies in the tens of millions of employees of tax-exempt organizations worldwide.

After decades of constant propaganda, the majority of UN delegates today would probably agree with the words of then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who, in his speech to the General Assembly on September 27, 1961, stated, “The only solution to Palestine…is that matters should return to the condition prevailing before the error was committed – i.e., the annulment of Israel’s existence.”

Under the influence of hypocrisy, the members of parliament would ignore the fact that this demand is in sharp contradiction to Article 2 of the UN Charter, which grants all UN member states equal sovereignty rights.

There is no doubt about the sincere desire of the participants in the UN’s founding conference in 1945 to free humanity from the scourge of war. However, with Article 71 of their Charter, they inadvertently smuggled a Trojan horse into civilization, which, under the guise of freedom and justice, is increasingly paving the way for an anti-democratic, anti-freedom, and polarizing rule of money. Political influence arises automatically from the fact that NGOs or similar organizations that urgently need financial support can be pushed or abandoned by major donors depending on their usefulness. This helps enforce “political correctness.”

The number, size, and influence of the NGOs that emerged on the political stage in 1945 have since grown to dimensions that most citizens have no idea about.5) Even more alarming is their qualitative development, with a trend that leads away from liberal democratic principles, a fair market economy, and peacekeeping.

The long-overdue democratic and harmonious overcoming of these increasingly autocratic tendencies is the prerequisite for the authentic adoption and implementation of the great peace initiative proclaimed in the 1945 UN Charter, after an 80-year delay. Just as this also applies to the liberal-democratic, Roman-constitutional social model, the UN Charter was and is not to be understood as a finished international constitution, but rather as a starting point for continuous further development, with the permanent aim of protecting its fair fundamental principle from the hypocrisy of the officially involved and from the financial power of autocratically ambitious forces.

References and Internal Links

• 1) https://nolteweb.wordpress.com/2023/04/08/35290/
• 2) https://www.bpb.de/shop/zeitschriften/apuz/archiv/537753/die-vertriebenen-in-der-bundesrepublik-deutschland-flucht-vertreibung-aufnahme-und-integration/
• 3) https://www.frieden-freiheit-fairness.com/en/blog/common-challenge-israel-and-free-civilization – Section The propagandistic reversal of good an evil
• 4) https://www.frieden-freiheit-fairness.com/index.php/en/blog/double-pack-suicide-programs-militarist-self-laceration-and-destabilizing-appeasement
• 5) https://www.bing.com/search?q=number+of+ngos+worldwide&form=ANNTH1&refig=14A0557367CF4A10B01905546D288C70&pc, More Data from 2015: https://volunteers.org/25-facts-and-stats-about-ngos-worldwide/