Echoes of Nazism still haunt the modern world

The Third Reich fell in flames decades ago, but its ideology has not been buried with it – even here in South Africa.

Far from vanishing in 1945, Nazism became a global symbol – one that still finds disturbing relevance in parts of the world today. The right-wing in Europe and in our land was inspired by Nazism – Hitler’s hatred for Jews inspired apartheid – a policy design to discriminate against blacks in their ancestral land.

On 9 May, 1945, in Karlshorst, Berlin, the victorious Allied powers signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender of the German armed forces. Despite the brutality of the Nazi regime, world leaders like Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D Roosevelt carefully avoided equating Nazism with the Germans.

Yet, even after the war, fascism endured in Europe, most notably in Francisco Franco’s Spain and António de Oliveira Salazar’s Portugal.

South Africa’s apartheid regime also bore unmistakable fascist traits and in South America, many governments openly sympathized with Nazi ideals.

Countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Canada and even Australia became havens for fleeing war criminals who influenced local politics and society. Because of the National Party’s adoration Hitler, some Nazists found a home here after the war.

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Nazi Germany exploited the industrial and agricultural capacity of occupied Europe. Romanian oil, Czech weapons factories, French coal, Dutch and Belgian produce were all absorbed into the Nazi war machine.

The whole of Europe, with a population of 300 million, became an engine for Hitler’s ambitions. Today’s European Union – with its shared currency and parliament – owes its first “unification” ironically, to Nazi domination.

Many European nations have absolved their citizens who fought for Hitler. Countries like Finland, Hungary and Romania were official allies of Nazi Germany.

Divisions from France, the Netherlands, Spain, the Czech lands, Albania, Belgium, and Scandinavia all took part in battles on the side of the Nazis.

According to statistics, the losses of Hitler’s allies amounted to 1.5 million. The prisoners who fought on the side of Germany, in addition to Germans, were more than one million citizens of various European countries.

In recent years, efforts to whitewash Nazi collaborators and downplay the horrors of fascism have grown. At the United Nations, countries like Japan, France, the US and Ukraine had voted against a resolution condemning neo-Nazism in Europe.

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The General Assembly resolution was voted for in 2022 in reaction to Russia’s justification of its attack on Ukraine as part of the de-Nazification of the country.

For the Soviet Union, the war came at an immense cost: over 20 million lives lost. Yet it was the Red Army and the Soviet people who bore the brunt of the fighting and played a decisive role in defeating the Third Reich, a point US President Donald Trump acknowledged recently.

Despite this, modern narratives increasingly sideline Russia’s role, portraying it less as a liberator and more as an aggressor.

Today, some post-Soviet states not only distance themselves from Soviet history but actively honour Nazi collaborators.

Laws in the EU now criminalise alternative views on history – even scholarly ones – if they challenge the anti-Russian narrative. The goal seems to erase Russia from the list of victors.

World War II is fading from living memory, much like apartheid in South Africa. But as history slips into the past, the dangers of forgetting its lessons grow. Remembering the truth of the war, including the role of the Soviet Union, is essential if we are to prevent the rise of such ideologies again.

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