By David Swanson, March 21, 2021
Remarks at the Cold War Truth Commission

The Cold War didn’t have a hard and fast beginning that transformed the world or that turned heroic anti-Nazi Soviets into Satanic Commies on a particular afternoon.

The rise of Nazism had been facilitated in part by Western governments’ pre-existing enmity for the USSR. That same enmity was a factor in the delay of D-Day by 2.5 years. The destruction of Dresden was a message originally scheduled for the same day as the meeting at Yalta.

Upon victory in Europe, Churchill proposed using Nazi troops together with allied troops to attack the Soviet Union — not an off-the-cuff proposal; the U.S. and UK had sought and achieved partial German surrenders, had kept German troops armed and ready, and had debriefed German commanders. General George Patton, Hitler’s replacement Admiral Karl Donitz, and Allen Dulles favored immediate hot war.

The U.S. and UK violated their agreements with the USSR and arranged new rightwing governments with bans on the leftists who had fought the Nazis in places like Italy, Greece, and France.