Today, many Australians will mark Victory in the Pacific Day—VP Day. It commemorates Emperor Hirohito’s national radio broadcast on 15 August 1945 announcing Japan’s defeat, which effectively ended World War II. The legacy of the worst conflict in history is evident today, including in the current wars in Europe and the Middle East and tensions in the Indo-Pacific.

Less visibly, China and Russia are manipulating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II as part of a hybrid campaign to discredit the rules-based international based order that the United States and its allies, including Australia, established after 1945. To safeguard what remains of the post-war order, it is important that Australians of all generations and backgrounds engage in collective acts of remembrance, based on a clear view of history.

Although commemorative dates and details vary, Australians, New Zealanders, Americans, Canadians and the British would probably agree that the European and Pacific conflicts were linked, forming part of a collective struggle to defeat the Axis powers—Germany, Italy and Japan—and their fascist ideologies.

Europeans may have a less consistent view, especially where populations collaborated to some extent with the Nazis or endured Soviet domination long after the war. But there is still a widespread sense that the region was caught in a global struggle in the 1940s over the values that now define democratic Europe’s identity, such as human dignity and freedom from state oppression. This helps explain why Lithuania, for example, robustly advocates for the democratic freedom of Taiwan while rallying to help Ukraine.

But the concept of World War II as a collective battle against repressive ideas is problematic for non-democratic countries that fought against the Axis powers and remain authoritarian today, such as Russia and China.

Russians and those from other nations that fought under the Soviet banner paid an unimaginable price to expel the Nazis, but they were fighting to protect their families and communities rather than the regime in Moscow. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had no qualms about upholding a non-aggression pact with Japan until 1945.

Similarly, the endurance of the Chinese people—who suffered some of the worst crimes of Japanese imperialism—contributed to Tokyo’s defeat. But the People’s Liberation Army, led by Mao Zedong, played a minor role in the United Front against Japan compared with the Nationalist forces, led by Chiang Kai-shek. Then, as now, the PLA put the security of the Chinese Communist Party before the people.

The leaders of China and Russia, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, are happy to share the balcony at commemorative military parades, as took place in Moscow on 9 May and will take place in Beijing on 3 September. Their propagandists flaunt the gallery of world leaders and dignitaries mustering for these parades as evidence that the world outside the West shares their autocratic view of past sacrifice and future world order. The truth is more complicated. Many countries regard World War II in the context of their colonial experiences and pathways to independence.

This is painfully evident in Taiwan, whose population resisted Japanese colonialism for decades before World War II and then sustained their fight against Nationalist military dictatorship for decades after 1945, finally winning the democracy and human rights that Taiwanese enjoy today. Due to the Cold War, Taiwan’s status as a nation was fudged in post-war peace treaties, so its people continue to debate how to remember their national sacrifice.

Xi and Putin ignore these kinds of inconvenient historical facts, distorting our memory of World War II to bolster their arguments for firm leadership and national deference to the party-state. Their commemorative propaganda includes references to a global war against fascism, but their focus is parochial: Beijing celebrates the Chinese People’s War against Japanese aggression; Moscow champions the Great Patriotic War against Nazism—a struggle that Putin falsely claims is still underway in Ukraine.

These narratives purposefully underplay the role of the US and other democracies, including Australia, in defeating the Axis powers, which included the supply of arms and other essential materiel to China and the Soviet Union before US entry into the war in December 1941. They also provide fodder for disinformation about modern, democratic Japan’s growing regional security presence—including the provision of frigates to Australia—by making false comparisons to its historical militarism.

By diminishing the US’s role in helping the Allies win World War II, China and Russia are exploiting popular doubt in Australia and elsewhere about the US’s reliability as an ally and champion of democracy today. They are also deliberately discrediting the US-led victors’ peace settlement that shaped post-war borders and institutions and averted direct conflict between great powers.

As a multicultural nation that relies on democratic allies and the rules-based order for our peace and security, the Australian people need to recall World War II with greater acuity. Failure to collectively mark and contemplate the meaning of commemorations such as VP Day would make us a less resilient nation, vulnerable to the gathering storm.