Backlash: the backdrop to the genocide Robert Fisk and John Pilger knew that the legacy of the aggression of the US and its allies against the Middle East was crucial to understanding that crimes like the war on Gaza will only lead to more violence, writes JOHN ELLISON
Sunday 16th Apr 2023 Strikes at home and war abroad: 1973 meets 2023 A proxy war raged in Vietnam between the West and East, while strikers took on a Tory government — JOHN ELLISON considers the similarities
Monday 27th Feb 2023 90 years ago – a key moment in the rise of the Nazis JOHN ELLISON assesses the significance of the Reichstag fire, for which communists were blamed in the early days of Hitler’s dictatorship
Thursday 02nd Feb 2023 Stalingrad – 80 years on JOHN ELLISON looks at the turning point of the second world war, when the Red Army overcame the odds to turn back the Nazi tide – to the shock of the Western powers
Sunday 29th Jan 2023 Spotlight on today’s imperialism JOHN ELLISON explains how the textile industry in Western countries was hollowed out by low-cost outsourcing at the behest of transnational companies
Tuesday 06th Sep 2022 Lifting the ban on the Daily Worker In the middle of WWII, the forerunner to the Morning Star was banned by the state for calling for colonial freedom, campaigning against profiteering, for union rights and for a better life for the workers amid the Blitz, explains JOHN ELLISON
Thursday 16th Dec 2021 Stefan Heym: a central witness to socialism Fleeing the Nazis to become a best-selling author in the US, then forced by Mccarthyism to settle in the GDR in the '50s, he would go on to open the reunified German parliament in 1994. JOHN ELLISON remembers a remarkable leftist
Thursday 28th Oct 2021 Blood and Ruins: how imperial jealousy fuelled WWII An authoritative new work by Richard Overy argues that the war was fuelled by upstart Axis powers' desire for their own empires and the Allies wanting to defend their established colonial regimes. Correct, says JOHN ELLISON — but there are some other mistakes
Tuesday 22nd Jun 2021 Remembering Operation Barbarossa Many in the West expected a swift and easy victory over the USSR for Hitler — including the Fuhrer himself. They didn't count on the iron will and enormous capacity for sacrifice of the world's first socialist state, writes JOHN ELLISON
Tuesday 13th Nov 2018 November 1918 — one war ending, another continues JOHN ELLISON gives a history of how the left press reported the end of WW1 and the start of hostilities towards socialist Russia
Friday 28th Sep 2018 How Chamberlain paved the way for world war JOHN ELLISON looks back 80 years to the signing of the Munich agreement, which authorised Germany’s occupation of the Sudetenland