On May 8, a manifestation organized by a broad alliance of progressive and revolutionary forces to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Day of Liberation took place in Vienna, to which the Red League was invited. The call for the event can be found at rotefahne.at, where we expect a report to follow shortly. We thank you for the opportunity to speak at this wonderful event and document the speech given there below:
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Speech of the Red League (Germany) at the manifestation in Vienna at the festivity on the 80th Anniversary of the Day of Liberation
Dear comrades and dear friends,
It is a great joy and honor for us as revolutionaries from Germany to be able to participate here today. We thank you very much for the invitation and would like to briefly express ourselves on this solemn occasion.
May 8th is a day to celebrate every year, but today, when there is the 80th Anniversary of the Day of Liberation, then this is also a very special occasion. It is a day on which no one can escape from taking position.
The victory over the Hitler fascists is something that all true anti-fascists must celebrate. The defeat of Nazi Germany is the victory of the international working class and the peoples of the world. The fall of the so-called Third Reich led to the emergence of a truly anti-fascist state for several years: the German Democratic Republic, the only state on German soil that has ever served the true interests of the German people. May 8th is the Day of Liberation for all who oppose imperialism and reaction. It is the day of our victory.
But in today's Germany, where there is only one state, the so-called Federal Republic of Germany, there are no grand celebrations. The Federal Republic of Germany - which annexed the GDR, already usurped by the revisionists, almost 35 years ago and which sees itself as the successor state to the so-called Third Reich - organized no major celebrations. In Berlin, people have the day off, but that has more to do with the fact that Berlin has fewer holidays than other German states than with anything else. Apart from this, there is nothing but pathetic sham ceremonies at which the official "truth" is proclaimed, that "all we Germans are to blame" – as if it weren't the hundreds of thousands of communists and class-conscious workers who were the first to be thrown into the concentration camps, the first to be hunted down, tortured, and murdered by the Hitler fascists. The Nazis were the creatures of German finance capital, the monstrous creation of German imperialism. So it's not strange that the Federal Republic of Germany does not emphasize celebrating this day, the 8th of May. For them, it's essentially not a Day of Liberation but a day of defeat. The Federal Republic of Germany is the state of the same dark forces that summoned the so-called Third Reich; it's the state of finance capital, the state of the imperialists.
Today, when militarization is being pushed forward unrestrained, when the War Ministry is once again being provided with almost unlimited financial resources, when the population is being told that the entire society must become "war-ready" – then this is nothing else than revanchism. It's the same warmongering, it's the same spirit, the same madness inherent to imperialism that the Nazis promoted back then. The attack on civil democratic rights, the denial of freedom of assembly and expression, the increasingly open political activity of the secret service and the police – this list could go on almost endlessly – follows the same logic as with the Hitler fascists: to unleash a war, the reactionaries first had to attack their own people. No wonder they are not celebrating today.
All the more piquant is the fact that all those who present themselves as "anti-fascists," those who never tire of campaigning to fight the "threat from the right," are not flocking to the streets to celebrate this Day of Liberation. It is all the more shameful that all the "revolutionary" parties and organizations that participated with full force in the election circus did not organize a large nationwide demonstration to celebrate this day. We must self-critically say that unfortunately, we didn't have the strength for it, but they did: they poured hundreds of thousands of euros into the "election campaign", they littered entire cities with posters to gain a handful of votes, and used countless hours of their rank and file to generate election propaganda, but they did nothing to make a name for themselves when it came to celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Day of Liberation. But that's no surprise either.
The "state Antifa" is the most loyal of all the followers of the Federal Republic of Germany, who want to protect their parasitic existence in the imperialist German state at all costs. Revisionists and opportunists of all stripes don't want large-scale celebrations because they know they can not control them; they know that those who won this day for us, spelling their precious blood, would be celebrated. The revisionists and opportunists are afraid of this day, because they know Day of Liberation is the day of the victory of the Red Army, the day of the victory of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the day of the victory of the Soviet Union, the day of the victory of the partisans headed by the communists. Celebrating May 8, celebrating the Day of Liberation, is celebrating the victors, and you can not celebrate them without the force that led the Red Army and the Soviet state, which communists around the world considered their vanguard: the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Any celebration of the Day of Liberation that doesn't mention the name of the leader of the CPSU (B), the commander of the Red Army, the leader of the Soviet Union, and the leader of all communists in the world at that time, is hypocrisy and a pathetic trafficking with the blood of millions upon millions of anti-fascists. The revisionists and opportunists do not even dare to utter his name. We do. Today we honor Comrade Stalin, the terror of the fascists and all false "communists"!
Comrades, before we conclude, it is important for us to say something, especially because we are here in a country in which tens of thousands of the people's children gave their lives for the liberation from the Hitler fascists and their chauvinistic dream of "Greater Germany."
We honor the partisans who, with the oath of "Freedom!", brought death for the occupiers. We salute the vanguard of the Austrian working class, the glorious Communist Party of Austria, the shock troops of the national liberation struggle, and above all, the 12 heroes of the Central Committee. Then as now, "Greater Germany" is the flag of the fascists, the flag of plague and death, the flag of the damned swastika.
The flag of internationalism, the flag of the firm, unshakable friendship between the peoples of Austria and Germany, is our flag, the red flag with the hammer and sickle. This, comrades, is also the flag of victory, the flag of the Day of Liberation under which we unite today.
Long live the Day of Liberation!
Death to fascism!
Death to German imperialism!
Glory to the Soviet Union, the Red Army, and Comrade Stalin!
Glory to the partisans!
Thank you for your attention.
Red League, May 8, 2025
