Main FI Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
THEY DO NOT WANT PEACE
The imperialists have accomplished in the second World War what they failed to attain in the war of 1914-1918, namely: they have succeeded in bringing about a clear cut decision on the military arena. Germany, the dreaded rival of Anglo-American imperialism, lies vanquished. Yet the unequalled slaughter and destruction continues. Casualties multiply while more and more European cities are reduced to rubbish and the countryside is turned into wasteland. Additional millions are left homeless, famine conditions spread, epidemics threaten. The war continues. Why?
To justify this monstrous crime the “democratic” capitalists and all their apologists are circulating through the press, the radio and the pulpit one of their most staggering war lies. For some time now they have been saying that the hostilities must continue indefinitely—and must be followed up by a prolonged military occupation of Germany—because the Nazis plan to unfold a large-scale underground resistance movement.
How realizable is such a plan? The primary condition for any large-scale underground movement is that it receive the sympathy, if not the outright support, of the mass of the population. Wherever the masses remain indifferent, let alone hostile, underground movements cannot even take root. The German people have been the first and greatest sufferers from Nazi oppression. The moment that the apparatus of ruthlessness by means of which Hitler’s regime maintains itself is shattered, the Nazis far from finding a cover among the masses will confront implacable foes everywhere. It will require, as in Italy, the intervention of Allied bayonets to safeguard these enemies of the people from the wrath of their erstwhile victims. As a matter of fact, in the German territories thus far occupied, the Allied military authorities have already sanctioned collaboration with Nazi functionaries—on the grounds that no other “qualified administrators” are available. These are the same gentlemen who talk about “rooting out” fascism, “reeducating the German people,” etc. etc.
HITLERITE DEMAGOGY
The current Allied propaganda is merely a variation of Hitlerite demagogy. Whereas the Nazis preached the racial superiority of the Germans, the Allied imperialists are now propounding the racial degeneracy of Germans, who are all presumably predisposed to fascism, or some other form of totalitarianism.
In this campaign of vilification of a great people the cowardly liberals have gleefully come to the forefront. Hypocritical posturers like Max Lerner, one of the editors of the New York daily PM, take jaunts to Europe only to report that the “future of democracy” appears quite dark in Germany, and that 90,000,000 Germans are—of course! of course!—to blame for this. Editors of the New Republic vie with their colleagues of the Nation in harping on the same theme. But the most original contribution to date must be credited to Alfred Kantorowicz, former foreign correspondent of Vossiche Zeitung. This expert on Germany denies that the Nazis have any intention of waging “a long, desperate underground battle inside the Reich.” They are too smart for that. They will instead carry on a large-scale secret struggle. By what means? By a tried and tested means. It is the secret tribunal of the Middle Ages, the Vehmgericht. The houses of those doomed by the Vehm were marked with a red cross. It was by these secret Vehin courts, the liberals are assured, that the Nazis really came to power after the first World War. No more, no less. The world, explains Kantorowicz, has unfortunately “failed to recognize the significance of the many vehmic murders which inevitably broke the democratic backbone of the country.” (The Nation, February 10.) The Nazis real strategy is to repeat the same thing but "on a far greater scale.” It is to this end that “Himmler has trained tens of thousands of his most reliable, fanatical Nazis.”
“DEMOCRACY” HAS OUTLIVED ITS DAY
Whether one derives fascism from psychology or the properties of race or from the Vehm courts, the end result is the same thereby the truth is hidden that it is capitalism that breeds fascism. And at the same time one hides the corollary, namely that bourgeois democracy is completely bankrupt and can never be stabilized, either in Europe or in the United States, in the epoch of the death agony of capitalism. The choice confronting the peoples of Germany and of all Europe today is not between fascism and bourgeois democracy, but between barbarism and Socialism.
The impending downfall of fascism in Germany will prove the most catastrophic event in modern history, catastrophic, that is, in its social consequences to the capitalist system. The advanced German proletariat will resume its struggle for a Socialist Germany. This will invest the unfolding European revolution with unconquerable power. The capitalist rulers of the world know and fear this. That is why they are prolonging the war. That is why they propose to keep indefinitely millions of troops on the soil of Germany. That is why they are spreading their latest monstrous lie.
Main FI Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 29 March 2008. This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Trotskism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.