February 2 is the 77th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad (1943), the turning point of World War II. It was when the communist Red Army defeated the Nazis, proving that fascism can be defeated.
The Bolsheviks organized the Soviet working class to build a mighty Red Army for the wars that they knew would come either from the fascists – Hitlerite Germany and militarist Japan – or from the big imperialist powers, Britain and France.
In June, 1941, the fascist German, Italian, and Finnish armies did invade the Soviet Union, with hundreds of thousands of troops from other fascist countries (Hungary, Spain, Rumania) and German-occupied countries (France, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Holland)  
German Blitzkrieg gets unpleasant suprises
The German “Blitzkrieg” (lightening war) tactic was to punch through defense lines with paratroopers, tanks and mechanized infantry, and loop around, cut off, and capture the encircled enemy troops. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner in the first few months. But many continued to fight, forming partisan bands behind the fascist lines.
On October 8, 1941 the Nazis announced: “For all military purposes, Soviet Russia is done with.” But the Nazis had never met fighters like the Soviet troops. “The Russian troops ... [act] in striking contrast to the Poles and the Western Allies,” wrote the Nazi commanding general. “Even when encircled, the Russians stood their ground and fought.”
Stalingrad
The Nazis aimed an offensive south at Stalingrad, center of the critical remaining war production, and the southern oil fields. Without supplies, the Soviets would have to surrender. The Nazis drove the Red Army from the open fields into Stalingrad itself. Then the Nazis pushed into the city.
The Soviet 62nd Army fought to the death for literally every building in the city. Their orders from Supreme Headquarters were “Not one step back.”
Their mission was to buy time for a counter-attack. Every day brought a new crisis. The Nazis had captured 80 percent of the city. The Bolsheviks based their defense on three large factories, a housing project, a hill, and a boat landing where supplies and reinforcements landed and wounded were evacuated. At their backs was the Volga River. On the far bank was their artillery support.
The Nazis pushed forward. The 62nd Soviet Army was cut in two. Chuikov, the Soviet commander of Stalingrad, then ordered his fighters into the factories themselves. Nazis and communists fought among mazes of machinery. Chuikov organized groups of six to eight with hand-to-hand combat training. The heroic workers continued production at the tank factory. They drove each newly built tank directly from the assembly line into battle.
Red Army launches attack
Finally, in January 1943, preparations for the counterattack were complete. The Red Army launched a counter-attack with over a million well-armed reserves striking from the north, west and south in huge pincers. Outflanking and outfighting the Nazis, they linked up, encircling the Nazis, who had encircled the 62nd Army.
On February 2, 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad ended, marking the turning point of World War II and the beginning of the end of the Nazis. Today as the imperialists prepare for more wars for oil and to re-divide the world, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is fighting to rebuild the international communist movement, this time to crush all the war makers with communist revolution:
Here [in Stalingrad], heavily outnumbered and outgunned, Soviet defenders fought battles house-to-house.
It was in that city that workers, men and women, were won to the necessity of defending their new workers’ society. They voluntarily remained at their machines making tanks for the battlefield just outside their factory while bombs fell all around them. If ever an example is needed of the communist spirit, it is Stalingrad. These defenders had courage, sacrifice, determination and camaraderie–what a boundless sea of what’s best in humanity! The Soviets destroyed three fascist armies, causing 1.5 million Nazi casualties.” (Challenge Supplement, May 17, 1995.)
During the entire World War II, more than 70 percent of the active fascist troops in Europe  were fighting the Red Army. While the U.S. and British imperialists’ initial strategy was to wait it out and to come in for a quick victory, the Red Army and the communist-led partisans actually fought fascism.
Fight fascism with communism
When the Allies landed in Normandy in 1944, only three Nazi divisions faced them, because more than 100 Nazi divisions from all over Europe had to be rushed to Belarus and the South Ukraine where the Red Army had crushed all the fascist forces.
The Red Army, organized and led by communists, smashed the Nazi and fascist forces. The Soviet working class and Bolshevik Party saved the world from fascism! All this was accomplished under the leadership of
Joseph Stalin. No wonder he is hated and lied about by world capitalism’s fakers to this day.
Unfortunately, due to internal weaknesses, the world communist movement turned away from the goal of overthrowing capitalism through revolution and from reliance on the working class. After Stalin’s death in 1953, under phony communist leadership, Soviet leaders introduced more and more capitalist economic policies. These gradually eroded the foundations of the world communist movement, turning the Soviet Union into just another state capitalist and imperialist power.
Nevertheless, the defeat of fascism in World War II by the working class should inspire us with confidence in the working class, whose best is brought out by communist leadership. Let us take a long, hard look at each other and ourselves, correct our weaknesses and fight harder against the class enemy.
We have many battles to fight in an uphill struggle if humanity is to be liberated from racism, imperialist war and capitalist oppression. But fight these battles we must if we want an egalitarian society and carry on the legacy of our Soviet comrades of the Second World War.
The Bolshevik Revolution
The Bolshevik Revolution of November 7, 1917, is the most important single event of the 20th century. The working class across Russia, allied with the oppressed peasants, seized state power and held it for decades. The Bolshevik Party (name of the Communist Party of Russia) led the workers and peasants to defeat Russian and foreign armies that tried to overthrow them in a hard-fought four-year civil war (1917-1921).
From 1921 to 1941, the Bolsheviks – now under the leadership of Joseph Stalin – ended many remnants of capitalism, and collectivized agriculture to stop the endless series of devastating famines.
They outlawed racism! Black intellectuals from the U.S. like poet Langston Hughes, actor and singer Paul Robeson, and many others, praised the racial egalitarianism of the Soviet government and workers. The Bolsheviks also led the Communist Party USA to make the fight against racism primary in all its struggles, a pillar that PLP continues and advances today.