d-day and the truth about the second world war - alan woods

8/12/2019 D-Day and the Truth About the Second World War - Alan Woods

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D-Day and the truth about the Second World WarWritten by Alan Woods Wednesday, 21 July 2004

[Writtein in 2004]On the anniversary of the Normandy D-day landing. Theleaders of the major powers were all present at the official celebrations, a farmore pompous celebration than the 50th anniversary. This has more to dowith present day politics than the events of 60 years ago. Although it was abrutal and bitter battle, with many soldiers heroically giving their lives,today's propaganda blows out of all proportion the significance of D-day interms of the overall development of the war. A far bigger and bloodier warwas being fought on the eastern front. It was in fact the speedy advance of theRed Army westwards that finally pushed the allies into opening the front inFrance in an attempt to stop the Russians from taking the whole of Germany.

Sixty years ago last month, under cover of darkness on a bleak storm-lashed morning,Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. This was D-Day, the long-postponedinvasion of Europe. One week after the official ceremonies I visited the Normandy beaches

with some friends and comrades. Today the same beaches are placid and tranquil. Strollingon the beaches in glorious June sunshine, it was difficult to imagine the terrible scenes ofmayhem and carnage of sixty years ago, when not even half the men succeeded in gettingonto Omaha Beach before they were cut down by the murderous fire from German guns.The story of D-Day has been told many times. It has made a powerful impression on thepublic through films such as The Longest Dayand, more recently,Saving Private

Ryan.The recent celebrations, accompanied by a steady stream of televisiondocumentaries, have revived the stories about the heroic invasion of France, the terriblecost in human lives, the sacrifice and the bravery. All of this is true. But it does not tellanything like the full story.The military cemeteries, with their endless lines of crosses, laid out in strict formation,provide no hint of what it was like. The American cemetery is like a beautifully manicuredpark, with background music from bells that play tunes like The Battle Hymn of the

Republic and old men adorned with medals weep for their lost companions and their lostyouth.

One curious thing was pointed out to me. The crosses in the American cemetery recordonly the date of death. There are no dates of birth. Soldiers, it seems, are never born. Theyonly die. That is, in fact, their main function in this life. They die so that others can live inpeace and democracy. That is the official legend, at any rate. The truth about war issomewhat different. But on anniversaries such as this, the last thing that is wanted is thetruth.

The official celebrations of D-day were like an elaborate piece of theatre. And like alltheatre it has to be carefully orchestrated and rehearsed. This year the role of impresario
http://www.marxist.com/wwii-anniversary-one210704.htmhttp://www.marxist.com/images/stories/history/d-day.jpghttp://www.marxist.com/wwii-anniversary-one210704.htm


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was skilfully played by Jacques Chirac and the French government. As might be expected,they played it with great panache. The villages and towns were all covered with flags of the

Allies and placards with slogans such as "Welcome, Liberators" (in English) and "Thankyou". It was all very moving.

Moving, yes, but also a little surprising. This was, after all, the sixtieth anniversary. On the

fiftieth anniversary, which is a far more logical time to celebrate, the scene was verydifferent. The celebrations then were on a far smaller scale. The official ceremonies werepractically limited to a handful of dignitaries. In fact, many of them were actually cordonedoff so as to exclude the public altogether.

What is the difference this time? Clearly more was at stake than a historical memory. It hadfar more to do with our own times, and the fact that, following the row between Europe andthe USA over Iraq, the European governments, and France in the first place, are anxiouslytrying to mend broken bridges. Stung by American criticisms of "ingratitude", the Frenchgovernment was trying to prove its sincere commitment to the North Atlantic Alliance. TheD-day anniversary was the perfect excuse.

The many former US servicemen who visited France in recent weeks were undoubtedlysincerely moved by the welcome they received from ordinary French people, who in turn

were sincere in their desire to pay tribute to the soldiers who risked everything fighting abloody war against fascism. When ordinary men and women speak of their desire to live inpeace and freedom, there is never any doubt about their sincerity. But the words and deedsof ordinary people is one thing, those of the governments and ruling classes are anotherthing altogether.

Germany's weakness

The cross-Channel invasion in the summer of 1944 was undoubtedly a massive feat ofmilitary planning, involving colossal resources and manpower. The Germans had fortifiedthe coastline with concrete bunkers and artillery - a huge defence system known as the

Atlantic Wall. Despite heavy bombardments the German forces retained considerablestrength. I was surprised to see that, even today, a number of German bunkers (some withguns still inside) still remain, like grotesque ruined castles, surrounded by deep bombcraters, defying time.

But the history of warfare shows that walls and bunkers are of little use if there are no

serious forces to defend them. In 1940, the French felt secure behind the supposedlyimpregnable defences of the Maginot Line, until the German army swept round them. TheGerman commander Rundstedt complained to close associates that the wall was nothing

but a gigantic bluff, a "propaganda wall." He believed that the invaders had to be hit hardwhile they were still on the beaches, and driven back into the sea. This required mobilearmour, not static defences. Unfortunately, Rundstedt knew his forces were depleted andof generally poor quality:

"Most of the troops left in France were either over-age, or untrained boys, or else Volksdeutschef ethnic Germansfrom eastern Europe. There were even Soviet prisoners of war -Armenians, Georgians, Cossacks, and otherethnic groups who hated the Russians and wanted to rid their homelands of communism. The weaponry of the

coastal divisions was also second-rate, much of it being foreign-made and obsolete." (M. Veranov, The ThirdReich at War, p. 490.)


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Alarmed by the prospect of an Allied invasion in France, Hitler dispatched Germany's mostfamous general, the legendary Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, former commander of the

Afrikakorps, to assess the coastal defences. The German high command expected to benefitfrom Rommel's experience and sound technical knowledge, and also hoped that hispresence would calm the German public and worry the Allies. But Rommel was shocked bythe relative weakness of the German defences and particularly the lack of effective fighting

forces.

"Rommel was dismayed by what he found. He was so shocked by the lack of an overall strategic plan that, at first,he dismissed the whole idea of the Atlantic Wall as a figment of Hitler's imagination, calling it aWolkenkucksheim, cloud-cuckoo-land. He rated the army troops he saw as no more than barely adequate, andhe wrote off the navy and the air force as all but useless. The Luftwaffe could muster no more than 300serviceable fighter planes to meet the thousands of British and American aircraft that could be expected to coverthe skies over the invasion beaches, and the navy had only a handful of ships

"Given the manifest weakness of the German forces, Rommel could see no alternative except to make every effortto stop the invaders at the water's edge. From his experience in North Africa, he was convinced that Allied fighterplanes and bombers would preclude any large-scale movement of German troops hoping to counter-attack

against an established beachhead." (M. Veranov, TheThird Reich at War, p. 490.)

The only possibility for the Germans was tohalt the invasion on the beaches. As theabove lines show, this tactic was determined

by weakness, not strength. The Germansconcentrated all their best forces for thispurpose, with deadly results. Near SaintLaurent, a powerful 88mm anti-tank canoninside a massive protective bunker can still

be seen to this day. From this strategic

position, with a clear sighting range acrossthe length of Omaha beach, it is easy toimagine the devastating effect of such guns,combined with an incessant hale of

machine-gun fire raking the shore, destroying tanks and cutting down soldiers by thescore.Such was the intensity of the German fire that one naval commander prematurelyunloaded 29 supposedly amphibious Sherman tanks, too far from the calmer waters nearthe beach, sending 27 of the tanks straight to the sea-bed with their crews. This left themen of the 116th Regiment without vital tank cover once they were on the beach. On the

first day alone, over 2,000 British and American men were killed, wounded or missing.

Despite the heavy losses on the beaches of Normandy, once the British and Americanforces had landed, the result was a foregone conclusion. The German forces were too weakto offer effective resistance. The reason for this lamentable state of affairs is clear. Hitlerhad been draining the reserves based in France, in order to make good the heavy losses onthe Russian front.

Imperialist intrigues

The Normandy landings were an impressive and costly military operation, but they cannotbe compared to the scale of the Red Army's offensive in the east. This was quite clear to


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anyone with the slightest knowledge of the conduct of the war, including the Alliedcommanders and the governments they represented. In August 1942 the US Joint Chiefs ofStaff drew up a document that said:

"In World War II, Russia occupies a dominant position and is the decisive factor looking toward the defeat of theAxis in Europe. While in Sicily the forces of Great Britain and the USA are being opposed by 2 German divisions,the Russian front is receiving the attention of approximately 200 German divisions. Whenever the Allies open a

second front on the Continent, it will be decidedly a secondary front to that of Russia; theirs will continue to bethe main effort. Without Russia in the war, the Axis cannot be defeated in Europe, and the position of the UnitedNations becomes precarious." (quoted in V. Sipols, The Road to Great Victory, p. 133.)

These words accurately express the real position that existed at the time of the D-daylandings. Yet an entirely different (and false) version of the war is assiduously beingcultivated in the media today.

The truth is that the war against Hitler in Europe was fought mainly by the USSR and theRed Army. For most of the war the British and Americans were mere spectators.Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in the Summer of 1941, Moscow repeatedly

demanded the opening of a second front against Germany. But Churchill was in no hurry tooblige them. The reason for this was not so much military as political.The policies and tactics of the British and American ruling class in the Second World War

were not at all dictated by a love of democracy or hatred of fascism, as the officialpropaganda wants us to believe, but by class interests. When Hitler invaded the USSR in1941, the British ruling class calculated that the Soviet Union would be defeated byGermany, but that in the process Germany would be so enfeebled that it would be possibleto step in and kill two birds with one stone. It is likely that the strategists in Washington

were thinking on more or less similar lines.

But the plans of both the British and US ruling circles were fundamentally flawed. Insteadof being defeated by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union fought back and inflicted a decisivedefeat on Hitler's armies. The reason for this extraordinary victory can never be admitted

by the defenders of capitalism, but it is a self-evident fact.The existence of a nationalisedplanned economy gave the USSR an enormous advantage in the war. Despite thecriminal policies of Stalin, which nearly brought about the collapse of the USSR at the

beginning of the war, the Soviet Union was able to swiftly recover and rebuild its industrialand military capacity.In 1943 alone, the USSR produced 130,000 pieces of artillery, 24,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, 29,900 combat aircraft. The Nazis, with all the huge resources of Europe

behind them, also stepped up production, turning out 73,000 pieces of artillery, 10,700tanks and assault guns and 19,300 combat aircraft. (See V. Sipols, The Road to a GreatVictory, p. 132.) These figures speak for themselves. The USSR, by mobilising the immense

power of a planned economy, managed to out-produce and outgun the mightyWehrmacht. That is the secret of its success.There was another reason for the formidable fighting capacity of the Red Army. Napoleonlong ago stressed the decisive importance of morale in warfare. The Soviet working class

was fighting to defend what remained of the gains of the October Revolution. Despite themonstrous crimes of Stalin and the Bureaucracy, the nationalized planned economyrepresented an enormous historic conquest. Compared with the barbarism of fascism the

distilled essence of imperialism and monopoly capitalism, these were things worth fightingand dying for. The working people of the USSR did both on the most appalling scale.


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The real turning point of the War was the Soviet counteroffensive in 1942, culminating inthe Battle of Stalingrad and later in the even more decisive Battle of Kursk. After aferocious battle lasting one week, the German resistance collapsed. To the fury of Hitler,

who had ordered the Sixth Army to "fight to the death," General Paulus surrendered to theSoviet army. Even Churchill, that rabid anti-Communist, was compelled to admit that theRed Army had "torn the guts out of the German army" at Stalingrad.

This was a shattering blow to the German army. Though accurate figures are not available,it seems that half of the 250,000 men of the Sixth Army died in combat, or from cold,hunger and disease. About 35,000 reached safety, but of the 90,000 who surrendered,

barely 6,000 ever saw Germany again. The Russian victory had cost them about 750,000men dead, wounded or missing. The cumulative picture was even blacker. In just sixmonths fighting since Mid-November 1942, the Wehrmacht had lost an astonishing1,250,000 men, 5,000 aircraft, 9,000 tanks and 20,000 pieces of artillery. Over a hundreddivisions had either been destroyed or ceased to exist as effective fighting units.

Martin Gilbert writes: "In the first weeks of 1943 the resurgent Red Army seemed to be onthe attack everywhere. Operation Star was a massive Soviet advance west of the river Don.On 14 February the Russians captured Kharkov, and further south they were approachingthe Dnieper river." (M. Gilbert,Second World War) Far more than the Normandy landings,the battle of Kursk in July 1943 was the most decisive battle of the Second War. TheGerman army lost over 400 tanks in this epic struggle.

After this shattering blow, the Russian armies began to push the Germans on a long frontback towards the west. This was the greatest military offensive in all of history. Itimmediately caused the alarm bells to ring in London and Washington. The real reason forthe Normandy landings was that if the British and Americans had not immediately openedthe second front in France, they would have met the Red Army on the Channel.

The reason for the Churchill-Roosevelt conflict

Already at that time, the ruling circles in Britain and the USA were preparing for thecoming conflict between the West and the USSR. The real reason why they hastened toopen the second front in 1944 was to ensure that the Red Army's advance was halted.George Marshall expressed the hope that Germany would "facilitate our entry into thecountry to repel the Russians." (ibid., p. 135.).

The conflicts between Churchill and Roosevelt on the question of D-day were of a politicaland not a military character. Churchill wanted to confine the Allies' war to theMediterranean, partly with an eye on the Suez Canal and the route to British India, andpartly because he was contemplating an invasion of the Balkans to bloc the Red Army'sadvance there. In other words, his calculations were based exclusively on the strategicinterests of British imperialism and the need to defend the British empire. In addition,Churchill had still not entirely given up the hope that Russia and Germany would exhaustthemselves, creating a stalemate in the east.

The interests of US imperialism and British imperialism were entirely contradictory in this

respect. Washington, while formally the ally of London, was all the time aiming to use thewar to weaken the position of Britain in the world and particularly to break its stranglehold


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on India and Africa. At the same time it was concerned to halt the advance of the Red Armyand gain control over a weakened Europe after the war. That explains the haste of the

Americans to open the second front in Europe and Churchill's lack of enthusiasm for it.Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's main diplomatic representative, complained that Churchill'sdelaying tactics had "lengthened the timing of the war."

In August 1943 Churchill and Roosevelt met in Quebec against the background of apowerful Soviet offensive. The Soviet victories at Stalingrad and Kursk forced the Britishand Americans to act. The remorseless Soviet advance obliged even Churchill to reconsiderhis position. Reluctantly, Churchill gave in to the insistent demands of the AmericanPresident. Even so, the opening of the second front was delayed until the Spring of 1944.

All along the conduct of the war by the British and US imperialists was dictated, not by theneed to defeat fascism and defend democracy, but by the cynical considerations of greatpower politics. The divisions between London and Washington arose because the interestsof British and US imperialism were different, and even antagonistic. American imperialismdid not want Hitler to succeed because that would have created a powerful rival to the USAin Europe. On the other hand, it was in the interests of US imperialism to weaken Britainand its empire, because it aimed to replace Britain as the leading power in the world afterthe defeat of Germany and Japan.

The decision to open a second front in Italy was dictated mainly by the fear that, followingthe overthrow of Mussolini in 1943, the Italian Communists would take power. The mainaim of the British and Americans was, therefore, to prevent the Italian Communists fromtaking power. So at a time when the Red Army was taking on the full weight of the

Wehrmacht in the battle of Kursk, the British and Americans were wading ashore on thebeaches of Sicily. In vain Mussolini pleaded with Hitler to send him reinforcements. All

Hitler's attention was focused on the Russian front.

Churchill's attention was fixed on the Mediterranean, a position determined by thestrategic concerns and interests of British imperialism and its empire. However, from late1943 it became clear to the Americans that the USSR was winning the war on the easternfront and if nothing was done, the Red Army would just roll through Europe. That is whyRoosevelt pressed for the opening of the second front in France. On the other hand,Churchill was constantly arguing for delay. This led to severe frictions between London and

Washington. One recent article on the subject states:

"The Normandy landings were long foreshadowed by a considerable amount of political manoeuvring amongstthe allies. There was much disagreement about timing, appointments of command, and where exactly thelandings were to take place. The opening of a second front had been long postponed (it had been initially mootedin 1942), and had been a particular source of strain between the allies. Stalin had been pressing the WesternAllies to launch a 'second front' since 1942. Churchill had argued for delay until victory could be assured,preferring to attack Italy and North Africa first."

(http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Battle%20of%20Normandy)

The concerns of the imperialists were openly expressed in a meeting of the Joint Britishand American Chiefs of Staff that took place in Cairo on November 25, 1943. They notedthat "the Russian campaign has succeeded beyond all hope and expectations [that is, thehopes of the Russians and the expectations of their "allies"] and their victorious advancecontinues." Yet Churchill continued to argue for a postponement of Operation Overlord.


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Conflicts with Stalin

The date of the invasion had been fixed for 1 May, but a Note submitted to the meetingstated: "We must not, however, regard Overlord' on a fixed date as the pivot of our wholestrategy on which all else turns. In actual fact, the German strength in France next Springmay, at one end of the scale, be something which makes Overlord Completely impossible."

It would "inevitably paralyse action in other theatres." (Public Record Office, Prem.3/136/5, vol. 2, pp. 77-8.)

What "other theatres" are referred to here? The answer was provided in another Noteentitled "Entry of Turkey into the War." It stated that for Turkey to declare war onGermany would spark off hostilities in the Balkans which "would involve the postponementof Overlord' to a date that might be as late as the 15th of July." (Public Record Office,Prem. 3/136/5, vol. 2, pp. 106-7.). In other words, Churchill was still concentrating on theMediterranean and the Balkans. Referring to this, George Marshall told the US Joint Chiefsof Staff that "the British might like to ditch Overlord' now in order to go into the Balkans."

(John Ehrman, Grand Strategy, vol.V, August 1943-September 1944, p.117.)The argument about the second frontcontinued in Teheran, where Stalinmet Churchill and Roosevelt onNovember 28, 1943. The next day, thefollowing exchange took place betweenStalin and Churchill:

"Stalin: If possible, it would be good to

undertake Operation Overlord during themonth of May, say, on the 10th, 15th or 20th.

"Churchill: I cannot give such a commitment.

"Stalin: If Overlord were to be undertaken inAugust, as Churchill said yesterday, nothing would come out of that operation because of the bad weather duringthat period. April and May are the most convenient months for Overlord.

"Churchill: [] I do not think that many of the possible operations in the Mediterranean should be neglected asinsignificant merely for the sake of avoiding a delay in Overlord for two or three months.

"Stalin: The operations in the Mediterranean Churchill is talking about are really only diversions." ( The TeheranConference, p. 97.)

That was absolutely correct. The Mediterranean operations were a sideshow compared tothe titanic battles on the eastern front. To make matters worse, the British and US forces inItaly, although they had a considerable superiority over the German army, were slowingtheir advance, allowing the Wehrmacht to move forces from Italy to the Russian front. OnNovember 6, 1943, Molotov had pointed out that the Soviet Union was "displeased by thefact that operations in Italy have been suspended," allowing for this transfer of troops tothe eastern front. "True," he said, "our forces are gaining ground, but they are doing so atthe cost of heavy losses." (Quoted by Sipols, p. 161.)

The slowness of the Allied advance in Italy was no coincidence. It is now commonknowledge that the British and American forces could have taken Rome without having to


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battle it out for months at Montecassino. They organised a landing at Anzio, further up thecoast from Montecassino, and if they had marched quickly towards Rome they could havecut off the German troops who had dug in around the Abbey of Montecassino. Instead they

wasted precious time in building their bridgehead on the beach. This allowed the Germanarmy to regroup and build a defensive line that basically kept the Allied troops on the

beach of Anzio. Once this happened there remained no alternative but to fight their way

through the formidable German defence lines at Montecassino. The Allies lost a hugenumber of soldiers and were bogged down for months as result.

What is evident is that the British and Americans were worried that the partisans couldcome to power long before the arrival of the Allied forces. Their view was that it was betterto let the Nazis fight it out with the partisans and thus weaken the resistance forces. Thus

while the Allies were fighting the Germans in Italy, there was an undeclared and tacitagreement between the two sides when it came to stopping the common class enemy, inthis case the Italian working class.

However, going back to the question of the second front, it was clear that Roosevelt took arather different position to Churchill. The Americans had their own reasons for wanting tosatisfy the demands of the USSR to open the second front in Europe. They were involved ina bloody war with Japan in the Pacific, where their troops had to capture heavily defendedislands, one by one. They realised that, to take on the powerful land armies of Japan on the

Asian mainland would be a formidable task, unless the Red Army also launched anoffensive against the Japanese in China, Manchuria and Korea. Stalin let it be known thatthe Red Army would attack the Japanese, but only after the German army had beendefeated. This was a weighty reason for Roosevelt to agree to Russia's demand to launchOverlord' and overrule the objections of the British.

Fears in London and Washington

The rapid advance of the Red Army in Europe at last forced Churchill to change his mindabout Overlord. From a position of supine inactivity in Europe, the Allies hurriedly movedinto action. The fear of the Soviet advance was now the main factor in the equations of bothLondon and Washington. So worried were the imperialists that they actually worked out anew plan, Operation Rankin, involving an emergency landing in Germany if it shouldcollapse or surrender. They were determined to get to Berlin before the Red Army. "Weshould go as far as Berlin []", Roosevelt told the Chiefs of Staff on his way to the Cairomeeting. "The Soviets could then take the territory to the east thereof. The United States

should have Berlin." (FRUS, The Conferences at Cairo and Teheran, 1943, p. 254.)Despite the successes of the Red Army, Hitler still had considerable forces at his disposal.The Wehrmacht remained a formidable fighting machine, with over ten million men, oversix and a half million of them in the field.But what is never made clear in the West is thattwo-thirds of these were concentrated on the Russian front. The only contribution of theBritish and Americans was the bombing campaigns that devastated German cities likeHamburg and killed a huge number of civilians, but which completely failed either todestroy the Germans' fighting spirit or halt war production.The German forces on the eastern front had 54,000 guns and mortars, more than 5,000tanks and assault guns and 3,000 combat aircraft. In spite of the Allied bombing raids,

Hitler's war industries were increasing their production in 1944. They produced 148,200


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guns, as against 73,700 in 1943. Production of tanks and assault guns increased from10,700 to 18,300 and of combat aircraft from 19,300 to 34,100.

The Red Army launched a huge offensive in late December, 1943, which swept all before it.After liberating the Ukraine, they pushed the German forces back through Eastern Europe.The fact is that both Roosevelt and Churchill (not to mention Hitler) had underestimated

the Soviet Union. In the event, the Allies met the Red Army, not in Berlin but deep insideGermany. If they had not launched Overlord when they did, they would have met them onthe English Channel. That is why the D-Day landings were launched when they were.

The fact is that even after the Normandy landings of June 1944, the eastern front remainedthe most important front of the war in Europe. The British and US armies got as far as the

borders of Germany but were halted there. On the other hand, the advance of the RedArmy was the most spectacular in the whole history of warfare. In December 1944, theGerman High Command decided to launch a counteroffensive in the Ardennes (the "Battleof the Bulge"), with the aim of cutting off the British and US forces in Belgium and Hollandfrom the main Allied forces. The aim of this offensive was more political than military.Hitler hoped to force the British and Americans to sign a separate peace. But the Germanforces on the western front were too weak to inflict a decisive blow, since most wereconcentrated on the main theatre of operations in the East. The Wehrmacht advancedsome ninety kilometres before being halted.

Churchill wrote to Stalin on January 6, 1945:

"The battle in the West is very heavy and, at any time, large decisions may be called for from the SupremeCommand. You know yourself from your own experience how very anxious the position is when a very broadfront has to be defended after temporary loss of the initiative. It is General Eisenhower's great desire and need toknow in outline what you plan to do, as this obviously affects all his and our major decisions [] I shall begrateful if you can tell me whether we can count on a major Russian offensive on the Vistula front, or elsewhere,during January [] I regard the matter as urgent." ( Correspondence between the Chairman of the Council ofMinisters of the U.S.S.R. and the Presidents of the United States and the Prime Ministers of Great Britainduring the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, vol. 1, Moscow, 1957, p. 294.)

The Soviet forces did advance on January 12, pushing the German army back on a broadfront. The British and US imperialists were placed in a difficult position. On the one hand,as Churchill's letter shows, they were dependent on the military power of the USSR todefeat Hitler. On the other hand, they were terrified of revolution in Eastern Europe andthe rapid advance of the Red Army and the power of the USSR.

Behind the German lines on the Eastern Front, many thousands of Soviet workers andpeasants engaged in a heroic and desperate partisan war. On the night of June 19, 1944,more than ten thousand demolition charges laid by Soviet partisans damaged beyondimmediate repair the whole German rail network west of Minsk. On the next two nights, afurther forty thousand charges blew up the railway lines between Vitebsk and Orsha, andPolotsk and Molodechno. The essential lines for German reinforcements, linking Minsk

with Brest-Litovsk and Pinsk, were also attacked, while 140,000 Soviet partisans, west ofVitebsk and south of Polotsk, attacked German military formations.

Martin Gilbert writes: "All this, however, was just the opening prelude to the morning ofJune 22, when the Red Army opened its summer offensive. Code-named OperationBagration, after the tsarist General, it began on the third anniversary of Hitler's invasion ofRussia, with a force larger than that of Hitler's in 1941. In all, 1,700,000 Soviet troops took


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impossible as it might seem. Negotiations were opened in Switzerland between the chief ofAmerican Intelligence in Europe, Allen Dulles, and the representative of the German HighCommand in Italy, S.S. General Wolff, about a German surrender in Italy.

Upon learning of these negotiations, the Russians insisted on their right to be present inany such negotiations. They were concerned quite rightly that the aim of such a

surrender would be to transfer German troops from Italy to the eastern front to hold up theadvance of the Red Army, thus permitting the British and US forces to advance furthereastwards.

Churchill wrote to Stalin with an air of hurt innocence, while Roosevelt assured Stalin ofhis "truthfulness and reliability". (Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 206 and vol. 1, pp. 317-8.)

American representatives said that the only contacts they had established with theGermans were to discuss the opening of negotiations. This was a lie. American recordsreveal that negotiations were already being conducted in Bern. From this it is clear that theaim of the Nazis was indeed to halt the fighting in Italy to transfer troops to the easternfront. (See Bradley F. Smith and Elena Agarossi, Operation Sunrise, The Secret Surrender,Basic Books, New York, 1979.)In mid-April, the Red Army delivered a crushing blow to the German forces defendingBerlin. It had 2.5 million troops, 41,600 guns and mortars, 6,250 tanks and self-propelledguns, and 7,500 combat aircraft. They closed in on Berlin on April 25. Simultaneously, theSoviet and US forces linked up at Torgau on the Elbe, cutting Germany in half.

All this, however, did not mean that the British and American imperialists had not givenserious consideration to the possibility of a war against the USSR. In fact, the ruling circlesin both London and Washington had considered the possibility, but they realised it wasimpossible. After fighting a bloody war that was supposed to be a war against fascism, the

American and British soldiers would never have been prepared to fight against the SovietUnion. The fears aroused by the economic and military successes of the USSR wereexpressed in internal memos that were only published years later. A special document wasprepared by the US State Department, which stated:

"The outstanding fact [that] has to be noted is the recent phenomenal development of the heretofore latentRussian military and economic strength a development which seems certain to prove epochal in its bearing onfuture politico-military international relationships, and which is yet to reach the full scope attainable withRussian resources." (FRUS, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945, pp. 107-8.)

These lines startlingly reveal the real calculations of the imperialists. At the height of the

War, the British and US ruling circles were already sizing up the situation in Europe andpreparing for a struggle against their Russian allies. The Americans considered thepossibility of a war against the Soviet Union even before Hitler was defeated, and ruled itout only because they correctly though that they could not win.

The report pointed out that the USSR's military and industrial strength was already greaterthan that of Britain. Even if the USA joined forces with Britain against the USSR, the reportconcluded, with amazing frankness, they "could not, under existing conditions, defeatRussia." The State Department concluded that in such a conflict the USA "would find itselfengaged in a war which it could not win." (ibid., my emphasis, AW)

Collapse of Nazi regime


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The German bourgeoisie paida heavy price for handingpower to Hitler and his fascistgangsters. Once in power, theNazi bureaucracy could not becontrolled by the ruling class.

They were guided by their owninterests, which did notnecessarily coincide with thoseof the bourgeoisie. As long asHitler protected them againstBolshevism, the Germancapitalists were happy to backhim. As long as Hitler's armies

were advancing, they joined inthe applause and fascist

salutes. But when they sawthat Germany was losing thewar, their attitude changed.

Even before this, the bourgeoisie would have ended the war and sought to reach anagreement with the British and Americans. Unfortunately for the German bankers andindustrialists, it was not possible to influence Hitler or remove him from office byconstitutional means. Therefore they resorted to conspiracies with a section of the generalstaff. An attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944 failed and a savage purge ensued in whichthousands were arrested and murdered. Colonel Graf Klaus von Stauffenberg, the chiefconspirator, was shot. Rommel, the hero of the Africa campaign who was also implicated,

was ordered to take poison. Other officers were not so lucky. Eight of them were hangedwith piano wire an unambiguous message from the Gestapo to any other officers withdoubts about the Fuehrer. Having liquidated the bourgeois opposition and terrorised theGeneral Staff, Hitler and his clique were now more determined than ever to fight to the

bitter end, irrespective of the consequences for Germany and the bourgeoisie.

The Nazi regime was now in a state of total disintegration. Some of the Nazi leaders werestill hoping for a split between the USSR and the British and Americans. They were tryingup to the last minute to come to terms with the latter. One such attempt was made byHimmler through the Swedish government, but it came to nothing. When Hitler found outabout it he was furious. According to eyewitness accounts, he raged like a madman, his faceturned bright red and he was almost unrecognisable.

Lord Acton wrote: "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Hitlerwas completely out of touch with reality, and this unhinged his mind. In the end he wasobviously insane. He ordered the complete destruction of the Ruhr, Germany's industrialheartland, to stop it falling into enemy hands: He ordered that "all industrial and food-supply installations within the Reich, which could be of any immediate or future use to theenemy for the continuation of his fight, will be demolished." (Milton Shulman,Defeat inthe West, p. 283.)

"Hold on till the end", Hitler ordered. But by this time, Hitler's hold on his state and armywas slipping. The Ruhr was not destroyed. General Friedrich Koechlin, the commander of


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the 81st Corps, later wrote: "The continuation of resistance in the Ruhr was a crime." (ibid.,p. 284.) On April 16, 80,000 German soldiers gave themselves up to the Allies. Two dayslater, 325,000 troops, including thirty generals, crawled out of their holes to surrender.

Almost to the end, Hitler continued to issue orders to non-existent troops, and to moveimaginary planes and divisions. But the Twilight of the Gods had arrived. He committed

suicide on April 30th and his body was soaked with petrol and burnt a fittingly sordidend for a fascist monster. As his corpse went up in flames the sound of Russian guns washeard in the heart of Berlin. On May 1, the Soviet flag was hoisted over the Reichstag. Thefollowing day the Soviet forces were in complete control of the German capital.

Once it became clear that a deal with Britain and America was impossible, what remainedof the Nazi leaders' will to fight on collapsed. Five days later, Germany surrendered.

Counterrevolutionary policy

As it became clear that the Soviet Union would emerge as the dominant force in Europeafter the War, Churchill's reactionary tendencies, which he had been compelled todissimulate, came to the surface. For this counterrevolutionary gangster, the main enemy

was no longer Nazi Germany. It was the Soviet Union. The Red Army had smashed thearmies of Hitler in East Prussia and was on the point of entering Berlin. Churchill wrote tothe Soviet Government that the Red Army's achievements deserved "unstinted applause"and future generations acknowledge their debt to them "as unreservedly as do we who havelived to witness these proud achievements." (Correspondence..., Vol. 1, pp. 305-6.)But these words reeked of hypocrisy. In reality, Churchill was not at all pleased at theRussian advance. The American general Eisenhower planned to encircle and destroy theGerman forces defending the Ruhr, and then divide the enemy forces by linking up withthe Soviet army. But this plan was vehemently opposed by Churchill, who wanted at allcosts to keep the Russians out of Berlin. He wanted the British and Americans to takeBerlin, not the Red Army. He wrote a cable to Roosevelt on April 1: "I therefore considerthat from a political standpoint we should march as far east into Germany as possible, andthat should Berlin be in our grasp, we should certainly take it." (Roosevelt and Churchill,Their Secret Wartime Correspondence, p.669.)

The British Prime Minister wrote in his memoirs that the destruction of Germany's militarypower "had brought with it a fundamental change in the relations between CommunistRussia and the Western democracies. They had lost their common enemy, which was

almost their sole bond of union." Outlining his strategy, Churchill advocated the creation ofa front to halt the advance of the Red Army. This front had to be as far to the east aspossible. Berlin was the main objective. The Americans should enter Prague and occupyCzechoslovakia. And a settlement should be reached on all major issues between the Westand the East in Europe before the British and Americans "yielded any part of the Germanterritories they had conquered." (Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. VI, p.400.)Throughout the War, the genuine interests of the peoples of occupied Europe were not themain motivating force of the ruling circles in London and Washington. All their actions

were merely an expression of the crudest big power politics. And fear of revolution was

never very far away. Thus, it was decided that Germany should be disarmed, but that sheshould be allowed to retain "such forces as were required for the maintenance of public


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order." These gentlemen remembered only too well the revolutionary wave that sweptthrough Germany after the end of the First World War.Churchill feared a revolution in Germany after the collapse of the Nazi regime. He lateradmitted that he had instructed Field Marshall Montgomery in late April "to be careful incollecting the German arms, to stack them so that they could easily be issued again to theGerman soldiers," if London thought it necessary. (See The Daily Herald, November 24,

1954). This was exactly the same policy pursued by the British at the end of the First WorldWar, when they allowed the German army to keep thousands of machine-guns, in violationof the Versailles Treaty, to put down the German Revolution.Even while the war with Nazi Germany was still raging, the Allies were preparing to putdown uprisings of the masses and prop up right wing regimes, like the regime of Badoglioin Italy. The American historian D.F. Fleming points out: "We sought to preserve the powerof the top social strata which had long ruled these countries." (D.F. Fleming, The Cold Warand its Origins, 1917-1960, Vol. 1, p. 210.)In January 1945 the US State Department proposed the setting up of a Provisional SecurityCouncil for Europe or Emergency High Commission to "achieve unity of policy and joint

action" in Europe. The purpose of this body was to set up provisional governments inEurope after the defeat of the Nazis and "the maintenance of order" that is, thesuppression of revolutions. The authors of the document stressed that "every possibleeffort" must be made "to induce the Soviet Government to agree."

The imperialists were terrified that the entry of the Red Army into Eastern Europe, and theoverthrow of the Nazi puppet regimes, would be the signal for revolt. These fears were wellfounded. The spectacular advance of the Red Army and the collapse of the Nazi regimes inEastern Europe produced a revolutionary wave both in Eastern and Western Europe.However, contrary to the belief of Churchill, Stalin had no interest in seeing workers'revolutions in Europe, because of the effect this would have on the workers of the USSR.

As an indication of his "good intentions", Stalin ordered the dissolution of the CommunistInternational (Comintern), which was set up by Lenin and Trotsky in 1919 to further thecause of world revolution. The Comintern was wound up ignominiously, without even thepretence of a congress, on May 15 1943. This was Stalin's signal to the British and

American imperialists that they had nothing to fear from him at least as far as worldrevolution was concerned:

A Stalinist author writes: "Replying on May 28 to the question of Harold King, Moscowcorrespondent of Reuters, as to the effect the dissolution of the Comintern would have on

the future of international relations, Stalin wrote that the dissolution of the CommunistInternational facilitated the organization of a common onslaught of the United Nationsagainst the common enemy. The Comintern's dissolution exposed the Nazi lie that'Moscow' intended to intervene in the affairs of other nations and to 'Bolshevise' them." (V.Sipols, p. 142.)

In 1944 the British imperialists intervened militarily in Greece to crush the partisans whowere led by the Communist Party. This was a direct result of the policies of Stalin, who haddone a deal with Churchill to carve up the Balkans and Eastern Europe into Russian andBritish spheres of influence. This is not the place to deal with the diplomatic horse-trading

that went on between Russia, the USA and Britain during the war, but it is quite clear thatall three powers were jockeying for positions after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Stalin had


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attempted to come to an accommodation with the imperialist powers between 1944 and1945 at the Big Three Conferences at Teheran, Moscow, Yalta and Potsdam. Churchillnoted down his conversation with Stalin in October 1944:

"The moment was apt for business, so I said, 'Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are inRomania and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions, and agents there. Don't let us get at cross-purposes in smallways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have 90 per cent predominance in

Romania, for us to have 90 per cent of the say in Greece, and go 50-50 about Yugoslavia?' While this was beingtranslated I wrote out on a half sheet of paper:

Romania: Russia 90 per cent; The others 10 per centGreece: Great Britain (in accord with USA) 90 per cent; Russia 10 per centYugoslavia: 50-50 per centHungary: 50-50 per centBulgaria: Russia 75 per cent; The others 25 per cent"I pushed this across to Stalin, who had by then heard the translation. There was a slight pause. Then he took hisblue pencil and made a large tick upon it, and passed it back to us. It was all settled in no more time than it takesto set down. After this there was a long silence. The pencilled paper lay in the centre of the table. At length I said,'might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of

people, in such an off-hand manner? Let us burn the paper.' 'No, you keep it' said Stalin." (W.Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 227-8.)

The actions of Stalin gave the green light to Churchill to crush the revolution in Greece. InGreece the British army smashed the partisans of EAM, who had led the struggle againstthe Nazi occupation, in order to give power to the king and his reactionary clique. This ledto a bloody civil war and a reactionary government in Greece that lasted for decades.

Counterrevolution in a democratic form

Plans for the carve-up of post-war Europe had already begun well before the invasion ofFrance. The US army was supposed to occupy Germany from the Swiss frontier to

Dsseldorf, while the British were to occupy the territory from Luebeck to the Ruhr. TheAmericans intended to control France and Belgium, and the British aimed to controlHolland, Denmark and Norway. The situation in Eastern Europe was more difficult,

because of the presence of the Red Army. But there too Churchill was manoeuvring withso-called governments of exile.

As early as 1943 the British Foreign Office had begun to work out plans for putting downrevolutionary movements in liberated Europe. The intention of the British and Americans

was to impose on the liberated populations of Europe the rule of so-called governments inexile that were really only right wing bourgeois cliques without any base, who had been

sitting in London for the duration of the War, like the "government in exile" of Charles deGaulle. The so-called "Gaullist Resistance" was not nearly as significant as French

bourgeois historians claim it was. It cannot be compared with the real French Resistance,which, as in every other country, was led by the Communists. The latter were actuallyresponsible for the liberation of Paris. De Gaulle was shipped back to France by the Britishand sent to make pompous speeches in Bayeux and other liberated cities, although hisactual role in the fighting like his "mass base" of support in France was non-existent.

On August 18th a general strike broke out. Factories were occupied by the workers. On the19th, the police went on strike and seized control of the Prefecture. Under the leadership of

Colonel Rol-Tanguy, the former leader of CGT Metalworkers Union, the CommunistResistance passed over to an all-out offensive. The movement, involving 100,000insurgents from the outset, was so widespread that the Germans could do nothing. A


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counter-offensive was considered, but then cancelled. The German commander, Generalvon Choltitz, entered into secret negotiations with the Resistance through the medium ofthe Swedish Legation.

A truce was agreed on, in which important parts of Paris were handed over to theResistance and the Germans agreed to treat all Maquis fighters as soldiers. But the

ceasefire broke down almost immediately and the street fighting recommenced. Barricadeswere set up all over Paris. It was a complete insurrection. The demoralized German forcescould put up only relatively mild resistance. The officers locked themselves up in hotelsand barracks for safety and waited for the Allies to save them from the anger of the masses.

After five days of fighting, Paris had fallen to arevolutionary insurrection.De Gaulle, personally, and the British and Americanstroops played absolutely no role in the liberation of Paris.Originally, the Allied armies moving inland fromNormandy did not even intend to enter Paris, but to skirt

around it to the South. Only the pressure of de Gaullemade them change their plans. He was anxious to enterParis as soon as possible, not out of any concern for the

sufferings of the people of Paris, but to prevent a repeat of the Paris Commune of 1871, butnow under the infinitely more favourable conditions from a revolutionary point of view.

On the day the communist-led insurrection broke out, the Second Armoured Divisionunder Gaullist command was still 200 kilometres away from Paris. A small number oftanks were rushed ahead to the capital, in order to allow the Gaullist forces to claim at leastsome part in the uprising, but did not arrive until the 24th, by which time the Germanforces were already defeated. When de Gaulle finally entered Paris on the 26th, he washorrified to discover that Rol-Tanguy had accepted and signed the official surrender ofGeneral von Choltitz on the previous day.

A revolutionary wave swept through France and the whole of Europe. But it was betrayedby the combined efforts of the leaders of the Social Democracy and Stalinism. In Italy andGreece, as in France, the Resistance was controlled by the Communist Parties. They couldhave taken power after the War but were prevented by Stalin, who feared revolution likethe plague. Instead, he instructed the Communists of France and Italy to join PopularFront governments, from which they were later ejected. As a result, in Western Europe, wehad counterrevolution with a democratic face.

When Mussolini was overthrown in June 1943, the Allies hastily recognised thegovernment of the fascist marshal Badoglio, who changed sides and even declared war onGermany. But in reality Badoglio's government was hanging in mid air. Power was in thehands of the Italian workers and the partisans who were led by the Communist Party. Not

by accident, the first act of the RAF was to bomb hell out of the northern cities in order toterrify the masses and as a warning to the partisans.

But by 1945 the real power in Italy was, in reality, in the hands of the Communist Party andthe partisans. They captured and executed the hated fascist dictator Mussolini, who ended

his days suitably hanging from a petrol pump together with his mistress. Communistpartisans liberated Milan on April 25, just as they had earlier liberated Paris. The workersseized the factories. The road to a socialist revolution in Italy was open. Yet Togliatti and


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the other leaders of the PCI, following orders from Moscow, held the workers back fromtaking power. Instead, they advocated entering a coalition with the Christian Democrats.The policies of the Stalinists effectively derailed the revolution and handed power back tothe reactionary circles backed by London and Washington.

The counterrevolutionary policies of the so-called "Western democracies" included

collusion with Nazis and other right wing forces in Europe. By this time their mainobjective was to combat "Communism". Churchill was the main moving force in thiscounterrevolutionary activity, but he was backed (albeit more cautiously) by Washington.In order to prevent revolution, Churchill backed the monarchists in Italy as a bulwark ofreaction. It is well known that the British and Americans helped many Nazi war criminalsto escape from Italy to South America with the enthusiastic aid of the Vatican. Others wentto the United States where they played an active role assisting the CIA in the Cold War.

Matters in Eastern Europe were very different. With the advance of the Red Army, the oldstate power collapsed. The ruling class had collaborated with the Nazis and fled before theadvancing Soviet forces. Again, the working class could have taken power, but they wereheld back by the Stalinists, who took their orders from Moscow. Coalition governments

were set up in which the Communists were in a minority. But they always held twoministries: defence and interior the army and the police. In addition, the Red Army waspresent as an insurance policy.

Trotsky once said that to kill a tiger one requires a shotgun but to kill a flea, a thumbnail issufficient. The Stalinists liquidated capitalism in Eastern Europe but they did not introducesocialism. These regimes began where the Russian revolution ended as bureaucraticallydeformed workers' states. The expropriation of the capitalists and landlords wasundoubtedly a progressive task, but it was carried out bureaucratically, from above,

without the democratic participation and control of the working class.

The regimes that emerged from this were a bureaucratic and totalitarian caricature ofsocialism. Unlike the Russian workers' state established by the Bolsheviks in 1917, theyoffered no attraction to the workers of Western Europe. With the exception ofCzechoslovakia, the bourgeoisie of Eastern Europe had been very weak before the War. TheUS imperialists attempted to strengthen the bourgeois elements and gain control ofEastern Europe by offering them Marshall Aid. Stalin understood the manoeuvre and gavethe order. The Stalinists took power by expelling the bourgeois elements from thecoalitions and nationalising the means of production.

Origins of the Cold War

President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 and was replaced by Vice President Truman.Many people have assumed that Roosevelt was less anti-Communist than his successor.But this is not the case. The reason why Roosevelt did not want an immediate clash withMoscow was that it did not suit the interests of American imperialism to break withMoscow at that point in time. In addition to the considerations already mentioned, the

Americans had another reason for not sharing Churchill's enthusiasm for a "crusadeagainst Bolshevism" or, at least, the timing. The Americans' main preoccupation was the

war in the Pacific, where they were still locked in a life-or-death struggle with Japaneseimperialism.


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The problem was that the USSR had a huge army in the heart of Europe. Only thepossession of nuclear weapons gave the USA a potential advantage, since the USSR did not

yet have the atom bomb. But the bomb had not yet been tested, and there was no guaranteethat it would work. The Americans tested the first atom bomb on June 16, 1945, at the verytime the wartime Allies were meeting in Berlin to discuss the post-war situation. Trumanand Churchill were informed that the test had been successful and wasted no time in letting

Stalin know all about it. They hoped to use the threat of nuclear devastation to tip thebalance of the negotiations in their favour.

Some have maintained that the Cold War did not begin until 1947, but in fact it beganimmediately after the surrender of Japan, and was prepared even before that. D.F. Flemingstates: "that President Truman was ready to begin it before he had been in office two

weeks." (D.F. Fleming, The Cold War and its Origins, 1917-1960, Vol. 1, p. 268.) Thepossession of the atom bomb gave Truman a sense of superiority, which he did not feel theneed to hide. James F. Burns, director of the US war mobilisation department, assuredTruman that possession of the atom bomb would put the USA in a position "to dictate our

own terms at the end of the war." (Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, vol. I, Year of Destiny, NewYork, p. 87.)As usual, Churchill was the first to foment an anti-Communist crusade. This rabidreactionary and warmonger was doing everything in his power to push the Americans intoa conflict with Russia. Describing his mood at this time, General Allen Brooke, the Chief ofthe British Imperial General Staff, noted in his diary that "he was always seeing himselfcapable of eliminating all the Russian centres of industry and population[]" (ArthurBryant, Triumph in the West, 1943-1946, London, 1959. p. 478.) But the British workingclass had had enough of Churchill. They had had enough of war too, and certainly had nodesire to engage in a new war, least of all against the Soviet Union. In the 1945 generalelection they kicked Churchill and the Conservatives out of power and voted massively for aLabour government.In any case, Britain was already reduced to the role of a secondary power, a mere satelliteof the USA a role that has continued to the present-day. The Americans did not pay muchattention to Churchill's raving because they still had unfinished business in the Pacific.They needed the help of the Soviet Union to defeat Japan, and therefore were not in ahurry to bring about a premature confrontation with the Russians in Europe. That could

wait until Japan had surrendered.

The defeat of Japan

The Japanese had a powerful land army in Manchuria, the Kwantung army. Its totalstrength was up to a million men. It had 1,215 tanks, 6,640 guns and mortars and 1,907combat aircraft. This formidable fighting force was faced by 1,185,000 Soviet troopsstationed in the Soviet Far East. These were reinforced with additional forces after thesurrender of Germany and when the offensive began on August 9 totalled 1,747,000 troops,5,250 tanks and self-propelled guns, 29,835 guns and mortars and 5,171 combat aircraft. Ina campaign lasting just six days the Red Army smashed the Japanese forces and advancedthrough Manchuria with lightning speed. The Soviet forces entered Korea and the SouthSakhalin and Kurile Islands and were in striking distance of Japan itself.

On August 6, the Americans had dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later,the very day the Soviet army began its offensive, they dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki.


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They did this despite the fact that these were civilian cities with no military value and theJapanese were already defeated and suing for peace. The fact is that these atom bombs

were intended as a warning to the USSR not to continue the Red Army's advance,otherwise they could have occupied Japan. The use of the atom bomb was a political act. It

was intended to show Stalin that the USA now possessed a terrible new weapon of massdestruction and was prepared to use it against civilian populations. There was an implicit

threat: what we have done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki we can do to Moscow andLeningrad.

Once Japan had surrendered, Washington's attitude to Moscow changed immediately. Thewhole shape of the post-war world was now determined. The world would be dominated bytwo great giants: mighty US imperialism on the one hand and mighty Russian Stalinism onthe other. They represented two fundamentally opposed socio-economic systems withantagonistic interests. A titanic struggle between them was inevitable.

The American imperialists now felt themselves masters of the world. They had sufferedrelatively little from the war. Their productive base was intact, whereas most of Europe'sindustry lay in a heap of smouldering rubble. Two thirds of all the available gold in the

world was in Fort Knox. The USA had a huge army and a monopoly of nuclear weapons.They could impose their conditions on the rest of the world. Only the Soviet Union stood intheir way. The arrogance of American power was put into words by the managing directorof The New York Times Neil MacNeil, who wrote that "both the United States and the

world need peace based on American principles a Pax Americana [] We should acceptan American peace. We should accept nothing less." (Neil MacNeil,An American Peace,New York, 1944, p. 264.)

Postscript: the end of a myth

Last month's celebrations around the 60th anniversary of D-day were designed toperpetuate a myth. The Normandy landings did not end the Second World War in Europe,

which was fought and won on the eastern front.

To say this is not to belittle the courage of the British and American troops. The soldierswho had to endure the Normandy landings went through hell. According to figures issuedby Supreme Headquarters, Allied casualties in the first 15 days of battle totalled 40,549.The British lost 1,842 killed, 8,599 wounded, and 3,131 missing. The Americans lost 3,082killed, 13,121 wounded, and 7,959 missing. The Canadians lost 363 killed, 1,359 woundedand 1,093 missing. This was bad enough Yet it does not bear comparison with the appalling

losses suffered on the eastern front. (See MartinGilbert,Second World War, p. 536.)

All the peoples paid a terrible price for the War.Britain'scasualties totalled 370,000, the USA, 300,000.But the

Soviet Union lost a staggering 27 millions about halfof all the casualties of the Second WorldWar.According to one estimate, even before the

Normandy landings, 90 percent of all young menbetween the age of 18 and 21 in the Soviet Union hadalready been killed. These chilling figures accurately


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express the real situation. They show that the people of the Soviet Union suffered adisproportionate number of casualties, because the main front in Europe was the easternfront.In addition to the terrible loss of life, the productive base of the Soviet Union was severelydamaged by the depredations of Hitler's hordes, who bombed, burned and looted, causingthe wholesale destruction of industry in the occupied territories of the USSR. Yet after the

war, the USSR rebuilt its economy in a very short space of time. The superiority of anationalized planned economy, which was already demonstrated by the War itself, wasconfirmed in the period of post-war reconstruction, when it achieved a regular rate ofgrowth of 10 percent per annum.

Western historians, motivated rather by political considerations than historical truth, havesystematically minimised the role of the Soviet Union in the Second World War. Thissystematic campaign of distortion has increased a hundred-fold since the fall of the Berlin

Wall. The defenders of capitalism are not willing to acknowledge the achievements of thenationalized planned economy in the USSR. They cannot admit that the spectacular

military victory over Hitler Germany was due precisely to this.

In order to belittle the role of the USSR in the war, they exaggerate the importance ofthings like American Lease-Lend to the Soviet Union. This falsification is easy to answer.The fact is that the Red Army had halted the German advance and begun to counterattack

by the end of 1941 in the Battle of Moscow before any supplies had reached the USSRfrom the USA, Britain or Canada.

These supplies came mainly in the period 1943-5, that is, at a period when the Sovieteconomy was already producing more military hardware than the German war machine.They accounted only for a fraction of Soviet war production: two percent of artillery, ten

percent of tanks and twelve percent of aircraft. In no sense can this be considered decisiveto the Soviet war effort as a whole. Its importance was marginal.

The real reasons for the marvellous achievements of the Soviet Union in the Second WorldWar was something the Western historians are never prepared to admit firstly, thesuperiority of a nationalised economy and central planning, and secondly, thedetermination of the Soviet working class to defend what remained of the conquests of theOctober Revolution against fascism and imperialism.This was no thanks to Stalin and the bureaucracy, who had placed the USSR in extremedanger by their criminal and irresponsible policy before the War, but in spite of them. The

Soviet workers, despite all the crimes of Stalin and the bureaucracy, rallied to the defenceof the USSR and fought like tigers. This was what ultimately guaranteed victory.

As a matter of fact, the capitalist regimes in Britain and the USA, in an indirect way,admitted the superiority over central planning over market anarchy during the war. Whenmatters were really serious and their backs were against the wall, how did they react? Didthey say, as they do nowadays, that everything should be left in private hands? Did theysing hymns to the glories of market economics and private enterprise? They did not!

They introduced emergency legislation to centralise production, especially of the war

industries. They introduced measures of planning, the direction of labour, rationing and soon. Why did they do this? For one very good reason: because these methods gave better


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results. So much for the argument about the alleged superiority of the "free marketeconomy"!

Of course, this was not socialism. The basic levers of the economy remained in the hands ofprivate capitalists. Real planning is not possible under capitalism. And the nationalizedindustries were run by bureaucrats. But despite these limitations, even these elements of a

planned economy gave serious results for a time. The elements of planning, even on acapitalist basis, gave better results than the free-for-all of the market economy. Justimagine the results that would be possible in a real socialist planned economy in which the

benefits of a central plan would be combined with the democratic control andadministration of the working people themselves.

After 1945 the United Nations was set up, supposedly to guarantee world peace. But today,six decades after D-Day, the world is anything but a peaceful place. One war succeedsanother in one country after another, in one continent after another. In the modern epoch

wars are the expression of the unbearable contradictions that flow from the capitalistsystem itself. The entire world is dominated by a handful of super-rich nations, which inturn are dominated by a handful of super-rich and powerful corporations and banks. Theactions of these are determined as they were always determined by the greed for rent,interest and profit, for markets, raw materials and spheres of influence.

In the Second World War, fifty-five million men, women and children perished. Millionsmore will perish in the coming years and decades, not just in wars and other militaryconflicts, but from starvation and epidemics like malaria, AIDS and simple diseases caused

by the lack of clean drinking water.

The worst thing about all this is that it is objectively unnecessary. In the first decade of the

21st century, when science and technology have performed unheard-of miracles, themajority of the human race faces a grinding struggle to survive. The gap between rich andpoor has widened into an abysm, and at the same time the gap between the so-called richand poor nations has never been greater.

These facts lie behind the tensions and antagonisms that create wars, ethnic strife,terrorism, and all the other horrors that afflict our tortured and turbulent planet. As longas these central contradictions are not resolved, wars and other violent conflicts willcontinue to sow death and destruction. It is useless to bemoan the results of war, asmoralists and pacifists do. It is necessary to diagnose the source of the illness and prescribe

a cure.

The enormous potential of a nationalised planned economy was demonstrated by theSoviet Union, before, during and in the first 25 years after the Second World War. Despiteall the efforts of the bourgeoisie and its hired prostitutes to deny it, the fact is that theUSSR (and later China) showed that it is possible to run an economy without privatecapitalists, bankers, speculators and landlords, and that such an economy can obtainspectacular results.

Ah, but the Soviet Union collapsed. Yes, the Soviet Union collapsed after decades of

bureaucratic and totalitarian rule, which completely negated the regime of workers'democracy established in 1917. As early as 1936, Leon Trotsky predicted that the StalinistBureaucracy that usurped power after Lenin's death, would not be satisfied with its legal


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and illegal privileges, but would inevitably strive to replace the nationalised plannedeconomy by privately owned monopolies.

The capitalist counterrevolution in Russia, however, offers no way forward to the peoplesof the former USSR. It has been accompanied by a horrific collapse of the Russianeconomy, living standards and culture, as Trotsky predicted. If there is a country in the

world where capitalism stands condemned, that country is Russia.

The prolongation of senile capitalism threatens the future of human culture, civilization,democracy, perhaps even the survival of humanity itself. The world is crying out for afundamental social and economic transformation. The only hope for humanity consists inthe radical abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a harmonious system ofproduction and distribution based on the common ownership of the means of productionunder democratic workers' control and administration.

The future socialist planned economy will not be based on backwardness, as was theregime established by the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky in November 1917. It willdraw on the colossal advances of industry, science and technology, which will become theservants of human needs, not the salves of the profit motive.

On the basis of a modern, technologically advanced economy, rational planning will spurproduction to an unprecedented level. It will be possible in a relatively short time to abolishhunger, homelessness, misery and illiteracy and all the other elements of barbarism thatmake life a hell on earth for countless millions of people. In place of the old strife andrivalry between nations it will be possible to unite the productive forces of the whole planetin a socialist commonwealth, where wars will be consigned, along with slavery, feudalismand cannibalism, to a museum of barbarous relics of the past.

d-day and the truth about the second world war - alan woods

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