World war two and the socialist project today
Posted on Tuesday 1 September, 2009
Filed Under History
HITLER started it. Personally. That – with only slight exaggeration – is what eight year olds are still being taught at school about the origins of the second world war, as I have discovered from conversations with Daddy’s Little Princess senior.
OK, you have got to simplify things for kids. At her age, I’m happy enough to see the girl reading JK Rowling; AJP Taylor can wait. Now is not the time to walk her through contending interpretations, which range from blaming everything on the aggressive expansionism of Nazi Germany to the thesis that world war two was essentially the continuation of world war one.
But of course, other eight years olds in other European countries are being offered entirely different explanations. This is especially the case in eastern Europe, where the conflict still has a resonance far in excess of that to be found here.
In the Baltic States and Poland, in particular, Soviet dictator Stalin is held as much to blame as his Nazi counterpart. They point to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of 1939, as a carve-up that implicates the USSR as much as Germany.
Earlier this year, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe passed a resolution recommending that 23 August, the date the pact was signed, be observed as a day of remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.
Such a position might as well have been purposely calculated to cause apoplexy in Moscow, where world war two is known as the Great Patriotic War, on the understandable basis that the eastern front was the location of one-third of the 70m deaths arising from the global hostilities.
While the claim that the USSR should take most credit for the military defeat of the Third Reich chimes with the nationalist agenda regnant in the Kremlin, it has sufficient accord with the truth to represent more than propaganda. On any fair reading of history, the contention is true.
Moreover, the experience of Britain’s wartime alliance with the Soviet Union was a seminal event for the UK left. The Communist Party of Great Britain, despite the twists and turns it had to go through every step of the way, and despite its shameful strikebreaking role, saw its membership jump from single-figure thousands to perhaps 60,000 on the back of the reflected prestige.
I can still remember discussions with that generation, who continued to be actively involved in the east London labour movement when I arrived on the political scene in the early 1980s. Vicarious pride in the achievement of ‘their Red Army comrades’ clearly sustained a lifetime of political commitment for many of them.
That just leaves the need to explain away the shabby and cynical little deal concluded by two certain foreign ministers way back when.
Those sympathetic to Russia routinely compare the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact to another shabby and cynical little deal struck in Munich the previous year, in which Chamberlain and Daladier agreed to let Hitler detach Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.
Morally, it is difficult to maintain equivalence. It’s not as if Britain and France said ‘alright then, Adolf, if you must. Bagsy Carpathian Ruthenia and we’ll shake on it.’ The case that both were essentially attempts to play for time, at whatever expense to other peoples, probably bears more scrutiny.
But evidence suggests that rather than using the period that followed the Ribbentrop-Molotov to enhance war preparations, Stalin was actually surprised when the Nazi tanks rolled into his turf.
All that is for the historians. Ideologically, the importance of the OSCE’s call is the explicit attempt to draw an ‘equals’ sign between fascism and Stalinism. At the analytical level, the anti-Stalinist left can make the case that the social content of the two systems was qualitatively different, but we should always be mindful of the quantitative similarities. On balance, lesser evilism dictated critical support for the USSR.
But ultimately, it is not our job retrospectively to defend Soviet foreign policy seven decades after the event, and nor is it our job to specify what commemorative events are appropriate for countries with varying historical experiences.
As historical experience of Stalinism renders plain, repudiation of its legacy is a sine qua non for the rehabilitation of any meaningful Marxist project today.
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19 Responses to “World war two and the socialist project today”
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One ought not to forget that between the signing of the pact and the start of Barbarossa the Soviets also invaded Finland – the Winter War.
It must be remembered that, Czechoslovakia apart, virtually all the countries in Central/Eastern Europe were ruled by authoritarian governments in 1939. Many of these did their best to jump on the Nazi bandwagon in an attempt to seize territory from their neighbours or to provide an opportunity to oppress or murder ‘undesirable’ elements. Thus the desire in many of these nations to blame it all on Hitler and/or Stalin.
“Thus the desire in many of these nations to blame it all on Hitler and/or Stalin.”
Well, had the USSR not supplied precious raw materials then the German War machine might not have been able to conquer Europe, as it did.
So the USSR paid a key role in enabling the Nazis take over of Europe. All thanks to Stalin.
If you had to sum up the reasons for World War Two in a single sentence to a class of eight year olds you don’t want to start introducing concepts like the economic consequences of the peace or the traditional British balance of power approach to foreign policy.
Admittedly the location of the 8 year old is important in context. An American child would presumably be informed that the Japanese started it by bombing Pearl Harbour and the Germans declared war 2 days later. This is also accurate, although much is left out.
The Chinese date WW2 from 1933 – until 1948! As you point out, Russians tend to focus on the launch of Barbarossa in June ’41, skating carefully over the M/R pact.
However in the context of today being the 70th anniversary of Chamberlain’s declaration the question is clearly set in a UK context, and the simple response that Hitler started it perfectly reasonable. More nuanced analysis is possible and to be encourgaged, but no sensible analysis can escape the simple fact that Hitler was hell bent on war, knowing full well that it was the certain consequence of his actions.
The USA also played a huge role in supporting Bourgeois Nazi Germany economically and it only intervened in the war late to serve it’s own interests.
I also agree with Mr Belanov. (is that really you).
I also think the Soviets were fully aware of the fanatical hatred of Communism by the Nazi’s.
Fanatical hatred? It didn’t stop them running a joint tank combat training centre during the early 30s.
Where does one start with the Second World War?
Perhaps to start: unfinished business from the First World War; that is, inter-imperialist rivalries that were put on hold at the Armistice, rather than resolved with Germany’s defeat, and then accentuated through the terms of the Versailles Treaty.
Then we could look at Germany’s internal problems throughout the Weimar period leading to Hitler’s victory in 1933; the evolution of the Soviet regime into Stalinist nationalism; continued problems for the victor imperialist powers; the huge economic problems after 1929; the impact of Hitler’s regime upon international relations.
And we haven’t even gone beyond Europe…
Norman Davies, despite his softeness on the pre-war Polish government, get it right in Saturday’s ‘Independent’:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/we-must-not-forget-the-real-causes-of-the-war-1778973.html
Interesting to note that Putin is still trying to blame Poland and Britain for the outbreak of WW2, minimise the crimes of Hitler towards Poland in 1939 and explain away/minimise the MR pact and the period before 1941 when the USSR switched sides.
I really do think that the Versailles treaty is overplayed.
There was a quasi-governmental group in the post Great War period, in Germany, who’s sole responsibility was to push out propaganda specially around the Versailles Treaty
And, of course, this ties into the German Nationalist and Far Right’s victimhood and notion of a stab in the back. All nonsense.
The 1929 crash is more to blame for events and the withdrawal of American loans, which helped to pay off the reparations.
1929 is a key date.
Modernity,
are you saying that the USSR should have boycotted Germany?
Wasn’t the Bush family also implicated in helping the Nazi’s rise to power?
Also, around this time the USA supplied over 60% of Soviet machine and equipment, thereby facilitating the Soviet ‘support’ of Nazi Germany.
See it all gets a bit more complicated than the idea that “the USSR paid a key role in enabling the Nazis take over of Europe. All thanks to Stalin”.
Norman Davies really is soft on the Polish Republic of 1918-1939. So much so, that his books are used by today’s Polish state for tuition.
It was in fact a fairly nasty colonels’ regime, esp. during the Sanacja period, with an anti-Semitic streak that gets overlooked only because Nazi Germany’s was so much wider.
A key role in Sanacja was played by a party called the Camp of National Unity. Polish Wikipedia notes that this was accused of fascist and anti-Semitic tendencies, on the grounds that it refused to let Jews join it and organised anti-Semitic boycotts. Interestingly, the English Wikipedia does not mention this, presenting a more anodyne picture of the “Camp”.
In “Schindler’s Ark” by Keneally, members of the “Camp” are described as doing things before the war like hanging around outside lecture halls and slashing Jewish women students’ faces with razors when they came out.
JameieT,
Germany didn’t need machinery in 1939, it needed raw materials.
These were supplied, on time, to the Germans by the Soviets until the day of Operation Barbarossa in 1941.
Pre-WW2 Germany had key shortages of raw materials, without which their war effort would falter and fail.
Stalin’s pact provided those much needed raw materials, Stalin made a choice, no one else did.
By the late 60s, at least in London, those that were still in the Communist Party and those that were joining were a pretty discredited bunch. Among them quite a few very conservative factory union conveners.
The CPGB was never a mass party like some on the Continent or elsewhere. But it is odd that its union presence outpaced that of Trotskyist groups, long after the late 1960s. Of course, this may be more about Trot failure than CPGB success.
I don’t think leftists are born with the “original sin” of Stalinism that we have to make a parade out of denouncing.
Me, I never even met the chap. In fact, he died long before I was even born!
There’s an article in the Telgraph today, about atrocities carried out under Stalin. It’s a sad episode of history, but it’s one that none of us had a hand in. Stalin’s crimes are Stalin’s crimes, not ours.
Yes, thank you
The establishment will make you a “Stalinist” if it wants to, whether you are or not. Trotskyists have themselves deployed the label without much discrimination, which doesn’t stop them being associated with Stalinism themselves when the bourgeoisie is in the mood.
Despite its actual hostility to the USSR, I remember a story about “Militant” appearing in the Sunday Times or some other paper c.1980, alleging that a Soviet agent had entered “Militant” with the aim of protecting it from damaging disclosure (“Militant” was just starting to be accused of trying to take over the Labour Party). About that time, “Militant” actually had a front cover with photos of AVO members being gunned down in Budapest in 1956, and expressed approval of this. But it didn’t save it from being considered a Soviet stooge.
As far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, Soviet Russia was bad in 1917, not just in 1927, 1937, 1947 or whenever.
Everything dynamic and very positively!
Thanks