The United States has given the world many great personalities, ideas, gifts of intellect and spirit. One of the most brilliant is the Declaration of Independence – a magnificent manifesto of liberty and human dignity. In the days of Lincoln´s and later Roosevelt´s presidencies, American soldiers stood by the side of virtuous and freedom-loving people. Together with Russian soldiers they also fought for liberty seventy years ago, when they joined hands on German soil after the defeat of Nazism.

  I have walked on this soil just outside of Halbe and Teupitz south of Berlin, where the dead of the last battle of World War II – the Battle of Berlin – are buried. They rest in rows beside each other, German and Russian soldiers together. In mass graves they lie even closer. The dead in Halbe, Teupitz, Normandy, Stalingrad or Dukla do not care if today´s politicians – followers of those who sent them to death – lay wreaths at their graves. Their time ran out seventy years ago. Now the end of times seems to be approaching us again. I understand the people from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Estonia and their fear of the Russians, because millions of them were killed by the Russians. Somehow they seem to be forgetting, however, that they were killed by Germans as well. It is not the people of Germany, Russia, United States, Ukraine, Poland, or the Jewish people who present a danger to the living of today, but their fanatic, power hungry, insatiable leaders. It sounds strange when the present EU leader from Poland, Donald Tusk, blames Putin for Stalin´s pact with Hitler, but forgets to criticize Hitler himself. He also forgets to mention the Munich Betrayal from September 29th, 1938. The following day, Polish soldiers entered Czechoslovakia, betrayed by the French and the British…

The USA deserve Europe´s appreciation for their contribution to the defeat of Nazism (although they were in no rush to invade Normandy) and giving a halt to the Soviet Bolsheviks. The long-range strategic bombardment attacks against Germany (Dresden, Hamburg and dozens of other German cities; note that Russians did not bombard civilians) as well as the barbaric murder of thousands of Japanese people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a black spot on the conscience of the USA, though. I believe the nation of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin or Lincoln is not inclined to burden its conscience with further spots. I believe, that a nation which showed the world the way to the truth, shows its leaders that they do not have the right to lead their people in the opposite direction. Only ignoramuses can still claim that, today, Russia is the aggressor when it owns two military bases abroad, compared to USA´s 155 bases; when it spends 80 billion dollars on military expenditures, compared to USA´s expenditures which are eight times higher – 640 billion dollars; and that Russia´s military bases are dangerously getting closer to the USA, when it is the USA that are dangerously and provocatively more and more surrounding Russia. (Unfortunately, some representatives of the “Slovak coffeehouse group” have written an invitation letter asking NATO to build its base in our country as well.)

2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the commemorations are an appeal to those in power in this world to side with the truth, to side with God. During the American Civil War a priest blessed the Union Army with the words: “God is on our side”, Abraham Lincoln countered, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my great concern is to be on God´s side, for God is always right.” The Union Army fought for victory on the truth´s side. These days, we commemorate the Sesquicentennial of the assassination of President Lincoln by the owners of lies. But they did not kill the truth which became the base for the USA. In my library I have a valuable book – the biography if George Washington, a gift from the American congressman Douglas Bereuter, an opponent to the war in Iraq. The United States gave the world many great men of truth. I believe George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Douglas Bereuter were not among the last ones.

Jozef Banáš