Eighty-one years ago, the US war machine incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of civilians—workers, women, children, and the elderly—were killed by these acts of mass murder, the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history. There were also thousands of injured people —those who survived with burns and other wounds caused by the nuclear disaster, as well as those who continue to live with the long-term effects of the nuclear strikes to this day. The criminals who gave the order have never been called to account.
The bourgeois myth that the bombs were dropped to “save lives” and force a swift surrender is a lie, buried by the historical record itself. Moreover, Japan’s war economy had already been destroyed by naval blockade and the firebombing of 67 cities. Japan was actively seeking a way out, and was exploring the possibility of negotiating a truce through Moscow. The US command knew that the Soviet Union’s entry into the war at that time would precipitate an unconditional surrender without any need for an invasion. Washington chose mass annihilation anyway.
The real aims were coldly calculated. The US military wanted to test a new weapon of mass destruction on densely populated, previously unbombed cities, gathering blast and radiation data on live human subjects. The overriding political aim was to brandish a weapon of terror against the Soviet Union. Truman deliberately stalled the Potsdam Conference, waiting for news of the successful bomb test, then used the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the opening act of the Cold War. This was atomic blackmail, a demonstration of raw force meant to impose US global hegemony while the Red Army was still advancing after crushing fascism.
The Unites States, NATO, the EU and other imperialist forces competing with them are nowadays raising nuclear threats over the heads of the working masses. An imperialist war continues to be waged in Ukraine between the US-EU-NATO alliance and capitalist Russia, with ever-heavier weapons shipments and open discussion of tactical nuclear use. The genocidal Israeli state is armed, funded and politically shielded by the United States and the EU as it slaughters the people of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria while, together with the United States, it wages attacks against Iran. NATO pushes deep into the Asia-Pacific, ramping up capitalist confrontation with China. Trillions are poured into modernising nuclear arsenals; new US nuclear bombs are stationed on European soil; arms-control treaties are being torn up one after another. All while American nuclear bombers litter Iran with death and decay. European governments hand over their territory, bases and airspace, turning the continent into a launchpad for the waging of imperialist war, and in this act becoming primary targets for retaliation.
At the same time, major European powers are openly moving to acquire or expand their own nuclear arsenals. The French bourgeoisie pushes ahead with nuclear modernisation, framing its nuclear deterrence force as a “European” deterrent. In Poland, the government and bourgeois staffs openly agitate for developing their own nuclear armaments, breaking with the last pretenses of post-war restraint. Under the banner of “strategic autonomy,” the EU’s ruling class prepares a new arms race among capitalist powers, driven by inter-imperialist rivalries and the need to secure their share of global plunder. At the same time, in the face of military preparations, the rights and needs of the workers and the people are being sacrificed. This drive for European nukes multiplies the danger of nuclear catastrophe and deepens the continent’s subordination to monopoly capital.
Imperialist war, imperialist peace with a gun held to the people’s heads and the threat of nuclear holocaust spring from the very nature of monopoly capitalism in its decaying, parasitic state. A system that cannot reproduce itself without the exploitation, oppression and militarisation of whole continents. The struggle for peace cannot be separated from the struggle against the root cause, capitalism itself.
The peoples of Europe must struggle for the withdrawal from NATO, the EU, and every imperialist alliance as well as against all development of nuclear arms. The memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not a call to mourn passively. It is a command to sharpen the class struggle, to break with the capitalist system and take power into the hands of the workers and the peoples. Forward, for a world without imperialism and without nuclear weapons, for socialism-communism.
