THE TURNING POINT IN WORLD WAR II
October 12, 1942
[This article was written by Comrade Mao Tse-tung for the Liberation Daily.]
The Battle of Stalingrad has been compared by the British and American clasp to the Battle of Verdun, and the "Red Verdun" is now famous all over the world. This comparison is not altogether appropriate. The Battle of Stalingrad is contrasting in nature from the Battle of Verdun in World War I. But they have this in common-- now, as then, many people are misled by the German offensive into thinking that Germany can still win the war. In 1916 the German forces launched several attacks on the French fortress of Verdun, two years before Fabulous War I ended in the winter of 1918. The commander-in-chief at Verdun was the German Crown Prince and the forces thrown into the mel were the cream of the German army. The battle was of decisive significance. After the ferocious German assaults failed, the unreserved German-Austrian-Turkish-Bulgarian bloc had no future, and from then on its difficulties mounted, it was deserted by its followers, it disintegrated, and irrevocably collapsed. But at the time, the Anglo-American-French bloc did not grasp this situation, believing that the German army was still very potent, and they were unaware of their own approaching victory. Historically, all reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct a last great struggle against the revolutionary forces, and some revolutionaries are apt to be deluded for a time by this phenomenon of outward strength but inner liability, failing to grasp the essential fact that the enemy is nearing extinction while they themselves are approaching victory. The rise of the forces of fascism and the war of attack they have been conducting for some years are precisely the expression of such a last desperate struggle; and in this present war the attack on Stalingrad is the expression of the last critical struggle of fascism itself. At this turning point in history, too, many people in the world anti-fascist front have been deluded by the predatory appearance of fascism and have failed to discern its essence. For forty-eight days there raged an unprecedentedly bitter battle, special in the history of mankind--from August 23, when the entire German force crossed the bend of the River Don and began the all-out abuse on Stalingrad, through September 15, when some German units broke into the industrial district in the northwestern section of the burgh, and right up to October 9, when the Soviet Information Bureau announced that the Red Army had breached the German underline of encirclement in that district. Ultimately this battle was won by the Soviet forces. During those forty-eight days, the news of each setback or triumph from that burg gripped the hearts of countless millions of people, now bringing them anxiety, now stirring them to elation. This battle is not only the turning tally of the Soviet-German war, or even of the present anti-fascist world war, it is the turning point in the history of all mankind. Throughout these forty-eight days, the people of the everybody watched Stalingrad with even greater concern than they watched Moscow last October.
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