ss reason why the fight against fascism became a pivotal political question, which was to determine all subsequent world problem solving. Meanwhile, the aggressors overran country after country and the fascist bloc's armed forces controlled vast expanses of Western Europe, Asia, Africa and the World Ocean.
             The genocide, ruthless terror, raping, robbing and cruelty perpetrated by the fascists exposed the inhumanity of their ideology. The unspeakable death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald and Ravensbriick, the obliteration of Khatyn, Lidice, Oradour and other towns and villages are engraved forever on the public memory as symbols of the barbarity of fascism.
             During the Second World War fundamental issues of historical development were solved-whether socialism would continue to exist or whether fascism would block the way to progress and destroy civilization, whether the nations would be free or whether they would be under the heel of the fascist-militarist bloc.
             With the fascist invasion of the USSR the conflagration spread beyond the capitalist system. The Soviet Union's war against nazi Germany and her allies was a patriotic war of liberation, which enveloped the entire nation, spreading to every aspect of social life, to every sphere of state activity. On the Soviet-German Front socialism waged a bitter class battle against the most reactionary forces of capitalism. The political nature of the Second World War suffered a drastic change. The newly formed anti-fascist coalition was engaged in a just war of liberation against the fascist-militarist bloc. Its formation was a natural development in conformity with the salient tendency of the present-day era-the rallying of the working class, of broad public sections and of all freedom-loving forces to the fight against fascism and war, for peace and social progress.
             The Soviet Union and other nations mobilized titanic efforts and strained to the utmost to halt the aggre...