May 18, 1995
Even after war had been declared, Germany received 300,000 barrels of oil via Italy (Italy was not in the war until May, 1940), and American cotton via Switzerland. Thus we see not only strong political support for Nazis, such as ceding Czechoslovakia in September, 1938, but also strong economic help.
During this period, France and Britain rejected five proposals from the Soviet Union to form an alliance to cut the Nazi military threat right at its start. This double-cross by the major capitalist powers forced the Soviets to enter into a pact with the Nazis, in order to gain more time to prepare for the Nazi onslaught.
According to the post-war testimony, of Nazi General Jodl, "the German Army didn't collapse during the Polish campaign [September, 1939] because the 110 French and British divisions facing 29 German divisions on the western borders did nothing," even though war had already been declared against them. France collapsed due to the treachery of its pro-Nazi high command. When the Germans approached Paris, 20 of the best French divisions remained in Syria, where their only purpose was to threaten the Central Asian Soviet Republics.
The British and French and U.S. ruling classes supported many other fascist rulers around the world. After war had been declared, they lent money to Spain and Italy, two of the Nazis' trusted allies. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Britain, France and the U.S. helped fascist General Franco by prohibiting the transport or sale of any supplies to the anti-fascist Republican government. On the other hand, Franco got free oil from Texaco and 12,000 automobiles from Ford and GM, as well as open support from Germany and Italy. While capitalists gave Spain to the fascist dogs, the working class formed the volunteer army of the International Brigades to fight the fascists in Spain. Communists and leftists from 53 countries participated in these Brigades. A large number of them gave their lives to the cause.
Had the Nazis concentrated only on terrorizing the working class and attacking the Soviet Union, the capitalist rulers of Britain, France and the U.S. would have let them alone. The history of capitalism before, during and after World War II, is littered with the open support of fascists and mass murder from Chile to Indonesia, by liberal capitalist countries.
But it was only a matter of time before the newly-armed Nazi thugs would demand their share of the loot of the world (they called it their "share under the sun") from the already established thugs y not just their "fair" share. Nazis estimated that they could get all the ripe capitalist plums with little effort. And they were right. Poland, Holland, Belgium and France fell to them with minimal loss. But they went too far in fighting for their "share" when they turned on all of Western Europe. The capitalist Allies had to fight them. Anti-fascism was never the aim of any capitalist ruler. British rulers fought for their colonial empire. The U.S. fought for the control of the Pacific and the opportunity that war gave it to emerge as the largest capitalist power.
After they had established their control over all of Europe except Britain, the fascists attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, with 270 divisions. Such a gigantic attacking force had not been assembled before (the Nazis conquered France with only 50 divisions). The fascists had some early successes as they overran one-third of Soviet land. But the Red Army fought heroically, engaging and destroying enemy forces in a series of battles, and liberated Berlin on May 5, 1945, finally finishing off the Nazi's reign of terror.
By October, 1941, the Nazis had reached the outskirts of Moscow, and Leningrad was surrounded. According to the Fuhrer's special orders, the birthplace of Bolshevism had to be wiped off the face of the earth. Leningrad was to suffer a 900-day siege. Yet, strengthened by that city's Communist organizations, it remained undefeated.
The Nazis approached Moscow from three sides; one of their units was only 25 miles from the Kremlin. Encouraged by the Soviet leadership's decision to stay in the city until the end, the entire population rose up in defense. Men joined militia units to fight the Nazis at the front. Women and youngsters spent weeks out in the cold, digging anti-tank ditches. When the Fascists were exhausted after two months of attacks, the Soviet forces counter-attacked, pushing the enemy more than 100 miles away from the city. This was the first large-scale defeat suffered by the Nazis. It became the turning point of the war, the beginning of the annihilation of the Nazis.
War on the Eastern Front raged on for another three years, until Berlin fell to the Red Army. Countless battles were fought, each one more heroic than the other. (See Alexander Werth's Russia at War and Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov for details.). Two battles in particular must be mentioned. One is the battle of Stalingrad. Here, heavily outnumbered and outgunned, Soviet defenders fought battles house-to-house. It was in this 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 Communist spirit, it is Stalingrad. These defenders had courage, sacrifice, determination and camaraderie y what a boundless sea of what's best in humanity! Stalingrad is also an example of the brilliant planning and strategy of the Soviet High Command headed by Stalin. The Soviets surrounded and destroyed three fascist armies, causing 1.5 million Nazi casualties.
During the entire war, more than 70 percent of the active fascist troops in Europe were fighting the Red Army. For instance, in November, 1942, out of a total 256 German divisions, 172 were fighting the Red Army. The remainder were either fighting the partisans in the rest of Europe, or recuperating. At this time the British were engaging only four German divisions in North Africa. When the Allies landed in Normandy, only three German divisions faced them. This was not mere chance or evidence of a brilliant strategy on the Allied Commanders' part. The main reason for this was that more than 100 divisions from all over Europe had to be rushed to Byelorussia and the South Ukraine where the Red Army had crushed all the fascist forces. More than a million fascist troops were destroyed just by Soviet partisan units behind German lines, more than all the U.S. and British forces destroyed during the entire war.
In fact, in 1941, '42, '43 and '44, when the Red Army was blasting fascists to bits, the U.S. and British strategy was to wait until the Nazis and Soviets were fatigued fighting each other, and then enter the war to get quick victories. It was for this reason that the U.S. and its allies delayed for two years opening a Second Front to Germany's west. It was opened in mid-1944 when it became apparent that the fascists had been resoundly defeated by the Red Army. Without a Second Front, the Soviets would have been able to liberate all of Europe from the Nazi yoke. The Second Front was opened to stop the Communist advance beyond Berlin.
The Nazis concentrated most of their forces against the Red Army. Their class instinct was telling them they would get much better treatment from the U.S. and Britain than from the Soviets. They were not mistaken. Barring a few at the top, all the Nazi officials, the fascist butchers, were retained in the bureaucracy of Germany under U.S. and British control. In fact, all the big capitalists, who had made profit by manufacturing and selling gas chambers and armaments for concentration camps were not only left untouched during and after the war, but the U.S. quickly opened its markets to their products.
Besides the Red Army, the other force which destroyed the fascists was partisan bands spread all over the world. Italian Communist partisans liberated Milan, Turin, Padua, Bologna and Genoa before the U.S. and British arrived. On April 27, 1945, they captured Mussolini and 18 of his top henchman and executed them for committing crimes against the working class.
Communist partisans liberated Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia by the end of 1944. In France, the partisans, whose largest group was led by Communists, was crucial in saving U.S. forces from disaster. These partisan campaigns pinned down and destroyed far more fascist troops than both the U.S. and British armies. In northern Italy, 23 German and four Italian divisions were involved in fighting partisans; in Yugoslavia, the fascists needed 24 German, nine Bulgarian and three Hungarian divisions; Greek partisans held down 10 divisions. Besides engaging fascists in open warfare, the Communist and other Left activists hampered the war preparations by organizing secret strikes and sabotage in Italy, France and even Germany.
During the Civil War in Russia he organized British intervention to fight against the Bolsheviks who were trying to establish a workers' state. He indulged in imperialist adventures with the Malakand Field Force in India, the Omdurman massacre in the Sudan, and the Boer war in South Africa. He advocated the use of poison gas in Iraq against the rebelling Arabs and was responsible for organizing the Black and Tans, which terrorized Catholics in Ireland. He was fervently against giving independence to India in 1947, even after the rest of the British ruling class decided that the cost of continuing to keep India directly subjugated was too high.
During the war, Churchill was instrumental in delaying the opening of the Second Front in the west. Among other crimes, he sent British troops to Greece, after it had been liberated of Nazi occupation by the Communist partisans, and installed a fascist king. Churchill was a good war Prime Minister for the British ruling classes, because he kept their empire for them. But even this pitiable contribution turned out to be of little historical significance, because the struggling masses in India, China, and Africa booted out open colonial rule by the British soon after the war.
Killing the enemy is part of any war, but the murder and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Hiroshima and Nagasaki civilians had no military rationale. The A-bombs were in fact used as atomic blackmail in the coming post-war period. It was meant to warn the Soviet Union and the workers of the world struggling for revolution, that a capitalist super-power had arrived which was determined to use the most destructive weapon to maintain power.
Even capitalist scholars now admit that the U. S. openly lied about the Bomb saving 500,000-700,000 American lives that would have been lost in a full-scale invasion of Japan. This invasion was never needed. Japan had been sending surrender proposals for months, and the Red Army assured a quick Japanese surrender, defeating the bulk of the Imperial Army in Manchuria. The Japanese fascists' major demand in the way of unconditional surrender was the guarantee of a Monarchy, something to which the U.S. had no objection.
In pre-capitalist societies, Alexander the Great fought for slaves and the Roman armies ravaged the world for luxuries for the Patrician rulers. Later the European capitalist class fought colonial wars in Asia, Africa and the Americas for control of its labor power and natural resources. In recent history, the U.S. invaded Panama for the Canal and launched the Gulf War to control the Middle East oil.
The holocaust is often blamed on Nazi mentality. This is not true. Nazi mentality is really capitalist mentality in its most vicious form. Capitalism thrives on racism. Although the murder of tens of millions within a few years is unprecedented in human history, there are countless other examples of racist mass murder. To name a few: the slave trade from Africa, the slaughter of the native peoples in the Americas, the bombing of Iraq, and the Belgian genocide of 15 million people in the Congo. The holocaust was a direct result of racism and the Nazis would have been much less effective without it.
The truth is that hundreds of thousands of Jews fought in the Red Army, both as enlisted men and as officers including the rank of general, and as partisans in the Soviet Union. When the partisan units were put under centralized Soviet control in late 1941, special agents were sent from Moscow to fight any anti-Semitism. Besides, the most successful Ghetto fight-backs occurred in Nazi-occupied areas of the Soviet Union (as in Byelorussia). How could this be without the anti-racism of Soviet people? On the other hand it was precisely in the post-war anti-Communist Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), that most of the Nazi killers retained their jobs in the bureaucracy. In the FRG the average jail sentence for war crimes was ten minutes per murdered victim. Similarly, many anti-Semitic officials of the pro-Nazi Vichy government in France, were never prosecuted.
When the economy is not in serious crisis and workers' opposition is not militant, the capitalist state can afford to allow some free speech, association, etc. But these "liberal rights" depend on the requirements of the capitalists. Liberalism must not be confused with anti-fascism; it is merely a mask behind which lies the actual fascist intentions of capitalist rulers. Thus when the system is in crisis, and profits are falling, unemployment is rising and the masses are restive, the capitalist State uses its dictatorial dagger more openly. Since economic crises are inevitable under capitalism, fascism is the eventual form of capitalist state power.
This was exemplified in country after country as the Great Depression of the 1930s gripped the world and Fascism became a worldwide phenomenon. Besides the better known examples of Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan many countries in Latin America, as well as Portugal, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Finland, and others had fascist governments.
The Soviet Union, which was then aspiring towards communism and was the source of inspiration to working class revolutionaries all over the world, was the main target of international fascism. Communism, not liberal democracy, is the opposite of fascism. At a time of capitalist crisis, working people can either launch a revolution and proceed towards communism, or they can die under fascism.
Films like "Schindler's List" try to imply that the Jews went like lambs to the slaughter. Nothing could be further from the truth. There was widespread resistance to the Nazis in the ghettos and camps. There were underground networks, many led by Communist Parties with ties to the Soviet Union, which organized armed resistance. Early in 1943, 50,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, organized by the Communist Party and other anti-Nazi groups, fought for weeks against an SS division, using homemade revolvers, bombs and Molotov cocktails.
Fires of revolt blazed even inside the Nazi death factories. Auschwitz inmates blew up a crematorium with the help of smuggled dynamite. The camp at Treblinka was gutted on August 2, 1943, and 200 prisoners succeeded in escaping. At Sobibor, a daring revolt was organized with the leadership of a Red Army officer. Inmates killed more than ten SS and 40 Ukrainian guards. About 300 escaped to freedom. There was widespread sabotage of production by people working as slave laborers. (For more on Jewish resistance, see the book They Fought Back by Yuri Suhl).
Communists in the ghettoes fought against right-wing Jewish religious leaders and the Judenrate, who served the Nazis by carrying out their orders and telling people not to fight back. Thousands of Jews joined and organized partisan units against the Nazis. Jews were leaders of more than 200 such units in the Soviet Union, and hundreds of thousands of Jews fought in the Red Army and helped destroy fascism.
In Minsk, Jews survived at a much higher rate than anywhere else. This was because a spirited resistance to Nazis put the German Army on the defensive and resulted in many fewer murders. The anti-racist peasants of Byelorussia supported the Jews and fought the Nazis.
There are definite reasons behind the web of lies about the holocaust in capitalist culture. One reason is that capitalist culture's paramount function is to justify and cover-up exploitation. Its main aim is to stymie the revolutionary fighting spirit of the masses. Presentation of Jews as lambs marching towards their slaughter is meant to spread passivity in the face of oppression.
Second, it is a historical fact that most of the Jewish fightback against the Nazis was led by Communists, and was anti-racist at heart. With racism and anti-Communism as its two pillars, capitalist ideology just can't present the truth of Jewish resistance. Third, the Zionist state of Israel, is a fascist state suppressing Palestinians. The Israeli capitalists cynically manipulate the memory of the holocaust.
These mistakes helped restore full-blown capitalism to the Soviet Union after Stalin's death. Working class partisans in other countries restricted their struggle to fighting local fascist enemies, without realizing that it had to be extended to communist revolution against all capitalists. Communists helped develop united front coalitions with so-called "lesser-evil anti-fascist" capitalists under the guise of fighting fascism. Thus, these liberal capitalists of France, Britain, and the U.S. were able to fully maintain capitalism in most of Western Europe, even where there were large Communist Parties..
Today, with the deepening economic crisis, the fascist clouds are gathering fast. It is imperative for our revolutionary communist party, the Progressive Labor Party, to lead the working class in another struggle against capitalism, and its monsters of fascism and war. This time the struggle may seem more difficult because there is no established center of working class power like the Soviet Union was fifty years ago. But if correct revolutionary lessons are learned from that first experience, chances of long-term success are greater. This time the struggle mustn't be left half-done, it must lead to communism, and the true emancipation of the working class.
This is our holiday, it does not belong to the bosses. It belongs to the International Working Class, and most especially to the workers of the former Soviet Union, who, led by the Communist Party and Stalin, destroyed the Nazis.
While these bosses blabber about "world peace," they are getting ready to wage World War Three. The economic contradictions among the U.S., German and Japanese imperialists are sharpening. Today's trade wars will lead to tomorrow's shooting wars.
These bosses are also carrying out fascist policies. For example, the U.S. bosses will squeeze U.S. workers even more y lower wages and higher "productivity" = unemployment and social service cuts. They justify these policies in the name of "keeping America great."
Workers are forced to make more sacrifices so the bosses can make bigger profits and compete against Germany and Japan. As the U.S. slides into crisis, it will become more warlike, more like Nazi Germany.
What was true 50 years ago is true today. PLP is building an international, multi-racial movement to fight fascist-racist attacks wherever they happen. We aim to destroy the seed-bed of fascism itself, which is capitalist oppression and war. The only solution to fascist oppression is communist revolution.
* Organize immigrant workers against Prop. 187 and racist garment bosses.
* Organize hospital, transit and industrial workers against layoffs and speed-up.
* Organize students against racist cutbacks, and cop attacks.
* Join and build the communist PLP, to turn it into a massive weapon to fight the bosses.
* Communism and fascism are not the same. World War II was a communist-led war to smash fascism.
* The Nazis were the most racist movement in history. The communist-led Soviet Union led the greatest anti-racist struggle; they increased the fight against racism throughout the world.
* The German Army was doomed to be defeated the day it invaded Soviet territory. Workers inspired by communism were invincible.
Despite Russia being the backwater of Europe only twenty years earlier; despite predictions that Hitler's superior war machine would triumph in six weeks; despite the fact that the most desperate house-to-house, door-to-door fighting ever known was in Stalingrad; despite the darkest days of the 900-day siege that was Leningrad; despite the most despicable Nazi butchery of over 20 million, the Soviet working class never faltered, never gave up and pushed the Nazis all the way back to Berlin.
What ideas could motivate such sacrifice? How could millions keep their hopes up when surrounded by starvation and such slaughter, against what seemed like insurmountable odds? How is it that tens of millions of Soviet workers and soldiers never doubted their leadership, never hesitated in their commitment?
Soviet workers were so motivated because of living for a quarter-century with workers' rule. The changes between the 1917 revolution and the invasion in 1941 were remarkable. Life improved in every conceivable way, from rapid industrialization to universal health care, employment, education. But most important, Soviet society was one where workers experienced unparalleled sharing and equality. All workers knew that Soviet society was indeed theirs, a workers' power that brought a new way of life, a life that was surely worth fighting and dying for.
We fight today for a society with no wages. One in which all goods produced by workers are distributed according to need y no privileges for anyone y all workers will be equal, not better, not worse.
Immediately after the success of the revolution, we will establish this society where everything is run in the interests of workers. Everyone is trained from the beginning for the common good. For the first time, everyone, no matter what their work, will receive a fair share from the labor of all. Each worker will work with their brains as well as their hands.
We want a society that will help each other grow and develop, with honest criticism and self-criticism. We will struggle against and destroy selfishness rooted in the old society. Individualism, racism, sexism and other reactionary ideas which are hold-overs from capitalism will be ruthlessly fought and punished.
Because the workers of the world are one class, with one class interest, only one party is needed. That party, the PLP, is internationalist in its ideas as well as membership. Workers of the world recognize no capitalist borders, no nationalist labels. We are neither "American" nor "Mexican" nor "Haitian". We are workers and we are communists. It is our internationalist duty to oppose nationalism and to spread communism throughout the world.
There's no question that the bosses have the upper-hand in today's class struggle. But look what they're doing with their power! Unemployment is in the hundreds of millions. Billions of people are suffering from infectious diseases and malnutrition, the twin evils of poverty. Workers' wages are dropping like stones. Every new technological innovation brings more unemployment. Racism and nationalism are capitalist cancers devouring workers' lives due to oppressive government policies and wars. Fascism is on the rise, from racist thugs and cops on the streets to mad dog bombers like those in Oklahoma City. The biggest fascists are the ones in three piece suits in the boardrooms and government offices that cut education, welfare and hospitals while hiring cops and filling prisons.
Just six months ago, we were told Mexico was an economic "miracle." Now the working class suffers from this latest "success" story - a 40 percent wage cut, over 500,000 jobs lost, and no end to this economic disaster in sight. Capitalist culture is one of crime, drugs and decadence. Alienation, pettiness, mistrust, lack of confidence, depression and insecurity eat away at millions. Capitalist society is spinning out of control. Chaos and disorder are the order of the day. The rulers' profit system and their need to maximize profits has created massive misery for billions of exploited and oppressed workers.
The dream is that capitalism can improve workers' lives. The illusion is that the bosses would turn over their profits to impoverished workers. The fantasy is that this system works. The mirage is that life will get better without communist revolution.
The revolutionary process is long and hard. Our outlook is not "revolution in our lifetime," but rather a lifetime of revolution. The fight for communism will take years, even generations. The struggle for a communist way of life has been going on for centuries. We are closer than we think. Part of that struggle is the daily fight against the capitalists, against the imperialist warmongers.
Wherever that fight occurs, there workers will find our Party. Whether it be amongst supermarket workers in New York fighting for unionization; garment workers in Los Angeles also fighting for unions and a living wage, PLP is active. You will find PLP amongst striking bus drivers in Mexico City; leading jute workers in Calcutta, India; amongst striking teachers in Bogota, Colombia; alongside hospital workers in Chicago and bus drivers in Washington, DC; with college and high school students in New York fighting racist budget cuts y and on and on. In more cities and more countries in ever sharpening struggles, PLP is a fighting Party. We are fighting to lead the class struggle into the inevitable fight for communist power.
The communist Julius Fuchik was a Czechoslovak underground leader under Nazi occupation. He was caught by the Nazis, but before he was executed he wrote, Notes from The Gallows. His warning to all of us, "Be on guard! In real life there are no spectators. You will participate in life."
The future for our class under capitalism in crisis is intense fascism, war and even World War III. Workers cannot afford to stand on the sidelines of the class struggle. This life and death struggle must be joined. Workers must join the PLP.