ALMOST every day, I have the job of taking scores of tourists to some of the most important historical landmarks of Berlin. For many, this is their first glimpse of a city that was the focal point for so many of the 20th century’s most important struggles. 

At the Reichstag building, where Germany’s current Parliament also meets, I make sure to reference the fact that the fire of 1933 was the pretext used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party (National Socialist German Workers’ Party – NSDAP) to consolidate their dictatorship.

I tell people that because the accused culprits were communists, this conveniently allowed Hitler to push for emergency powers through the Enabling Act. 

This led to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) having its parliamentary members arrested, which marked the beginning of the end of German bourgeois democracy. Fascism was only possible by crushing the resistance of the communist movement, which was marked as its chief enemy.  

Most often, many in my groups will be shocked by my revelation. They never were taught this component of history when discussing the Nazis. They know, of course, about the concentration camps and the horrors inflicted by the fascist regime on the Jewish people and many others. For many, though, even the notion that communists were on the very opposite side of the Nazi regime seems a surprise. 

Fast forward 77 years since the Soviet Union lost around 80,000 troops in the span of just over two weeks to liberate Berlin in 1945, and you would be forgiven for thinking that much of Berlin also has never known this history, or has convenient amnesia. The anti-communist discourse of today has reached new heights as of late. The reason? The war in Ukraine, of course!

This is indeed an odd one of sorts, given that Vladimir Putin’s reactionary, neo-tsarist government is in many ways the antithesis of the socialist Soviet Union. 

Putin has made it clear that he detests the notion of socialism as an impossible utopia, and holds Vladimir Lenin to account for caring too much about the national self-determination of Ukrainians and others who had been oppressed by the Russian empire. 

This vital point aside, the psychological dimension of associating modern day Russia with the “evil” Soviet Union has obvious appeal. So what if Russia today is a capitalist power with a clearly chauvinist orientation at odds with communists.

What matters is that people in the West have been schooled to remember Russia — whether Red Russia or White Russia — as having always been the bad guy. Therefore, who cares what the real content of the Russian state is. It makes for effective demonisation and propaganda. 

There are several disgraceful ways this is currently manifesting in Berlin. The most recent seems to have been two massive Ukrainian flags that appeared overnight at one of the city’s three Soviet war memorials that commemorate the dead who fought to the bitter end to liberate Europe from fascism. These flags covered the first T-34 tanks that entered the city during the Battle of Berlin. 

Clearly, this act was meant to show support for the Ukrainian masses resisting Russian occupation. There is nothing necessarily controversial about trying to make that point. 

However, the implication of doing it at this location seems to be that the Soviet war memorial — where 2,500 Red Army soldiers of all different nationalities, including Ukrainians, are at rest — represents in effect what Russia is today.

The two could not be more different. Aside from the disparities in ideology, the USSR was a union of 15 republics, not simply Russia. 

We cannot — and never should — forget the massive sacrifice of those in Ukraine who suffered heavy losses during the Nazi invasion of their territory. The fact that many Ukrainians chose to fight alongside the occupiers should not mask the fact that Ukrainian Red Army soldiers heroically defended not only their own republic, but aided in the charge to Berlin. 

Conflating an anti-fascist memorial where thousands of courageous soldiers are buried with the illegal and heinous war waged by the modern Russian state is absurd. It’s also dangerous in terms of historical revisionism. 

Another bizarre way this neo-McCarthyism of a German variant is manifesting is with calls by the Pankow regional district of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to have a monument to KPD leader Ernst Thalmann demolished. 

Thalmann was not only the leader of the KPD, the main party Hitler was obsessed with smashing, but found himself murdered by the Nazi regime at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in 1944. 

The monument was inaugurated during the final years of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1986. Since then, it has regularly been defaced, only to be cleaned up periodically by activists including last year by members of the German Communist Party (DKP). 

Again, the war in Ukraine is apparently the background for the twisted reasoning of demanding that the monument be melted down. David Paul from the CDU has explained that it’s because Thalmann was an “anti-democrat,” and that “it is also about the fact that we are now at war in Europe, led by a man who uses democracy as a fig leaf.”

The mental gymnastics here are astounding. Thalmann fought for the widest possible democracy, one in which working people held political power and would have control over facets of their lives unthinkable in capitalist society. 

Perhaps Paul should instead recall the merits of Thalmann as an anti-fascist, or that he also fought for the unity of nations — something Putin clearly isn’t concerned about. Of course, Paul either wouldn’t know or be interested in this, or the fact that in his beloved bourgeois democracy, the threat of a degeneration into fascism is always possible.

There are other wonderful remembrances of the years of the GDR in Berlin that have managed to survive the annexation of the country to the Federal Republic in 1990. Karl-Marx-Allee may be the most important of these, as it is a historically protected landmark. 

One of the city’s most impressive mosaics sits on the side of the Cafe Moskau. It doesn’t only show Russians. It is supposed to represent the different ethnic groups — hundreds of them — that made up the Soviet Union. The fact that Moscow is in the name simply denotes that this is where the union’s capital was.

Nowadays, if one decides to walk or cycle down the famous avenue at night, you will notice that not all of the lights on the former cafe (now used mainly as a nightclub and conference venue) are switched on. In an act of extreme pettiness, the lights that read “Moskau” or “Mockba” remain off. The building interior is lit up with a Ukrainian flag. 

It is justified to feel outrage at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — but for this to lead irrational hatred or boycotting of everything Russian, even the name of the country’s capital, is the high point of pointless virtue-signalling derangement. 

What do the inhabitants of Moscow, now suffering the brunt of the sanctions imposed on the country, have to do with the war being waged by their country’s leadership? Have many of them have not also taken to the streets in protest? Do these Muscovites not deserve to be held in our memories when we think of the city? Do they not deserve for the lights that bear their beautiful city’s name to remain switched on?

Anti-communism is having a bit of a (at least on the surface) confusing resurgence here during these troubling days. Again, one can navigate the psychology of it all to see what it makes sense to employ under these circumstances.

However, even without the war on Ukraine, anti-communism and anti-socialist views remain the orthodoxy of the modern German state. 

Last week, the Berlin Administrative Court decided that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution may continue to name the socialist newspaper Junge Welt (Young World) in its reports as being hostile to the constitutional order. Apparently, the newspaper is seen to engage in propagating a “one-party” system. 

This characterisation would confuse the many who read the paper and who know that there are a range of left-wing organisations that have their views reflected in its pages, including those of Die Linke, which has parliamentary representation and governs in the ruling coalition in Berlin. 

Those who hold government roles with their Social Democratic and Green Party partners in the country’s capital could hardly be accused of trying to establish a one-party state. 

Junge Welt was the most widely read newspaper during the years of the GDR, and was the official organ of the Free German Youth (FDJ). However, it is now independently published and has no party or organisational association. Still, it was regarded by the Federal Ministry of the Interior in the years 1998 to 2020 as being a “communist-oriented newspaper.”

That’s precisely the thing about anti-communism and red-baiting. It is often sufficient for one to be just moderately socialist or a tad bit left-leaning to hurl the most vile insults at them. After all, once people begin turning a bit to the left and challenge the status quo, where will they end up? Of course, according to the politically and ideologically inept, the answer is simple — as a Russian chauvinist and capitalist roader named Vladimir Putin.