[Sunday 11 November]The Unpatriotic History of the Second World War

[Jean-Luc]

James Heathfield introduces his new book The Unpatriotic History of the Second World War in which he argues that the Second World War was just as much as the First World War a conflict, on both sides, between rival imperialist powers for a re-division of the world and not, as popularly portrayed, a "people's war" of "democracy" against "fascism". He shows that this was just the ideological smokescreen to disguise the imperialist economic and strategic interests that were the real issue.

Both sides screwed down their working class ,regimenting them and reducing their living standards. Both sides committed atrocities. After the German conquest of Europe, for the first few years the war was fought in Africa (they've just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the battle of El Alemain), the Middle East and Asia as the dominant imperialist powers fought to defend their empires. When the war did spread to Europe again the winning powers installed regimes favourable to their interests in what Heartfield describes as "the second invasion of Europe".

Come and hear James Heartfield develop these arguments at 6pm on 11 November. Venue: Socialist Party premises, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN (nearest tube: Clapham North)

 

[Quartz]

After the German conquest of Europe, for the first few years the war was fought in Africa

So the Blitz didn't happen, eh? Nor the Battle of Britain? Nor the Battle of the Atlantic? And of which atrocities were the British and Americans guilty?

 

[Jean-Luc]

So the Blitz didn't happen, eh? Nor the Battle of Britain? Nor the Battle of the Atlantic?

OK, I should have specified I was talking about the war on land.

And of which atrocities were the British and Americans guilty?

Chapter 26 of Heartfield's book "A War of Extermination in the Pacific" lists a number of atrocities committed by US (and Australian) troops:

Allied troops regularly beat, tortured and killed captured Japanese. One academic who had been with the army in Okinawa and Peluliu remembered GIs taking Japanese body parts and gold teeth, and urinating on the dead, as well as shooting defenceless old women. Edgar Jones, who was War Correspondent of the Atlantic Weekly wrote in February 1946: "We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific, boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers."

Heartfield also recounts how the British authorities provoked the Bengal Famine of 1943, in which 3 and a half million died, by a policy of destroying rice crops to prevent them falling into the hands of the advancing Japanese army and their allies in the Indian National Army (Indians fighting alongside the Japanese and who enjoyed considerable popularity in India, particularly Bengal). Then there was Bomber Harris's bombing campaign against German civilians.

 

[Quartz]

Chapter 26 of Heartfield's book "A War of Extermination in the Pacific" lists a number of atrocities committed by US (and Australian) troops:

Are these just accusations, attested by multiple sources, or were there convictions?

Heartfield also recounts how the British authorities provoked the Bengal Famine of 1943, in which 3 and a half million died, by a policy of destroying rice crops to prevent them falling into the hands of the advancing Japanese army and their allies in the Indian National Army (Indians fighting alongside the Japanese and who enjoyed considerable popularity in India, particularly Bengal).

Scorched Earth is a standard tactic going back millennia. Civilians always suffer in war, and the British would not have destroyed the crops if the Japanese had not been advancing, so you can blame that one on the Japanese.

I wasn't aware that the INA were particularly popular in India, being basically a tool of the Japanese. And it was mainly the Indians who defeated the Japanese at Imphal.

Then there was Bomber Harris's bombing campaign against German civilians.

I know that's an emotive subject but I don't believe that was either an atrocity or a war crime.

 

[Jean-Luc]

Are these just accusations, attested by multiple sources, or were there convictions?

Heathfield gives as his sources these two books:

John W. Dower, War Without Mercy. Race and Power in the Pacific War.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor.../American-troops-murdered-Japanese-PoWs.html#


Convictions? You must be joking. American imperialism defeated Japanese imperialism in the Pacific and victorious powers don't put their own troops on trial, just those of the defeated enemy.

Scorched Earth is a standard tactic going back millennia. Civilians always suffer in war, and the British would not have destroyed the crops if the Japanese had not been advancing, so you can blame that one on the Japanese.

Well, whatever the position, the scorched earth policy was carried out not to defend "democracy" but to retain British imperialism's control of India. No doubt the sacrifice of three-and-a-half million Bengalis was considered a price worth paying for this. If that wasn't an atrocity, what was?

I wasn't aware that the INA were particularly popular in India, being basically a tool of the Japanese. And it was mainly the Indians who defeated the Japanese at Imphal.

The INA may well have been tools of Japanese imperialism but the Indians fighting with the British Army were equally the tools of British imperialism. That's what the war in that part of the world was all about, a clash of rival imperialisms, as Heartfield contends.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Are these just accusations, attested by multiple sources, or were there convictions?

 

[Idris2002]

FDR was presented with a letter opener made from one of the rib bones of a dead "Jap". He politely returned it.

As for the war being either imperialist or anti-fascist, surely it was both?

Heartfield is one of the loons around the RCP/Living Marxism/Spiked, also.

 

[likesfish]

Because it only became a Glorious fight against Facism when the warrior gods of the red army got involved and they spread freedom and socialism where ever they went.
didnt murder poles dump them in a forest
watch the poles die fighting the germans in warsaw
go on a rape orgy across eastern europe.
Hang around for near fifty years being unwanted guests

 

[Idris2002]

Because it only became a Glorious fight against Facism when the warrior gods of the red army got involved and they spread freedom and socialism where ever they went.
didnt murder poles dump them in a forest
watch the poles die fighting the germans in warsaw
go on a rape orgy across eastern europe.
Hang around for near fifty years being unwanted guests

Well your lads hung around India and sundry other countries (cough, Ireland, cough) being unwanted guests for more than a century, so. . .

What you say about Ivan is true though - but he was still preferable to Fritz.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Because it only became a Glorious fight against Facism when the warrior gods of the red army got involved and they spread freedom and socialism where ever they went.
didnt murder poles dump them in a forest
watch the poles die fighting the germans in warsaw
go on a rape orgy across eastern europe.
Hang around for near fifty years being unwanted guests

There was of course General Andrei Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Army. Stalin had him hanged though.

 

[likesfish]

Yes but we had to do that to er civillise the savages and teach them cricket build railways and genrally improve the place you know what its like getting the builders in.
And in no way loot the place silly thats a vile slander and all those dead bodies nasty spot of flu obviously

 

[Idris2002]

There was of course General Andrei Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Army. Stalin had him hanged though.

Kharashoh.

 

[Idris2002]

The wee girl I share an office with is half Polish. Like everyone else of Polish extraction that I've ever met, she talks about Katyn as if it was yesterday.

 

[Bakunin]

Scorched Earth is a standard tactic going back millennia.

Perfectly true. It's long been standard practice for a retreating army to destroy absolutely anything that would be useful to the enemy. Food stocks, munitions dumps, vehicles, medical supplies, hospitals, barracks, airfields, weapons, docks, railways, stations, roads, bridges, everything that could be useful in enemy hands is either sabotaged, blown up, burnt, poisoned or otherwise rendered useless. In a desert climate even water sources such as wells, lakes, ponds and rivers are routinely poisoned by dumping rubbish and carcasses (animal or human or both, whatever's available) because it forces the advancing enemy to constantly resupply water instead of delivering more weapons, troops, vehicles or munitions.

'Scorched Earth' is a standard military tactic and has been for centuries, it's nothing more than that unless it's used against the civilian population as some form of collective punishment or reprisal. To a retreating army, anything that might be useful to the enemy is simply considered fair game.

 

[Jean-Luc]

FDR was presented with a letter opener made from one of the rib bones of a dead "Jap". He politely returned it.
As for the war being either imperialist or anti-fascist, surely it was both?
Heartfield is one of the loons around the RCP/Living Marxism/Spiked, also.

Yes of course it was both, at least on one of the sides. What else but "anti-fascism", ie. opposition to the attempts by German imperialism and Japanese imperialism to break-out of their economic confinement to find markets and gain access to sources of raw materials, could have united British imperialism (seeking to defend its Empire in India and Malaya), American imperialism (fighting with racially segregated armed forces) and Russian imperialism (with a regime even more totalitarian than Nazi Germany)? It certainly could not have been "democracy". In fact the propaganda that it was (that survives to this day) is so ridiculous that it is surprising that it should ever have been taken seriously.

Heathfield is in fact expressing a position that was held at the time by the Communist Party (until 22 June 1941), the ILP, the SPGB, anarchists and some Trotskyists (throughout the war). It is a respectable position that deserves a hearing, especially as the government is now preparing to "celebrate" the centenary of the First Imperialist World War (of which in fact the Second World War can be seen as a continuation).

 

[ayatollah]

I would have thought most of this stuff, for anyone vaguely Left of Ed Miliband , is pretty standard fare by now. Though I fail to be particularly shocked by the undoubted summary shootings of Japanese prisoners by US soldiers. This happens in ALL theatres of war throughout history, but for the Axis miitary it was a Leadership enforced POLICY, whereas for the Allies the acts of individual soldiers and units.The typical US soldier was undoubtedly fired up by a welter of anti Japanese racist indoctrination during WWII - such as to produce the nowadays astonishing phenomenum of the widespread sending home of "Jap skulls" as "trophies" to loved ones ! This attitude was largely produced by the fear that highly motivated Japanese individual combat ferocity produced in the typical , pretty ideologically uncommitted, GI. The harsh fact is the majority of Japanese soldiery simply would't surrender, and many, many, pretended to surrender whilst concealing grenades. In the end the typical Allied soldier just shot em down wholesale.

It is simply a historical fact though that the (non aerial bombing related ) atrocities of the Japanese Imperial forces against both Allied soldiery and sundry civilian populations dwarf by a gigantic magnitude the crimes of the Allies. It's simply a fact.. the Japanese were a military/fascist regime, whereas the Allies were a Bourgeois Democratic entity -- and that actually did result in significant differences in operational behaviour vis a vis local populations and prisoners, etc. This didn't of course stop the US firebombing Tokyo , etc.and dropping 2 nukes, causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, so the differences in total bodycount are not as large overall as the more "humane" battlefield prisoner practices of the Allies might suggest. Count in Japanese atrocities in China though and the Japanese Empire is WELL ahead in the total murder bodycount.

The aspect I always find more interesting, because it is generally more covered in a very deep pile of ideological bullshit, is the role of the USA, both up to and in WWI and up to , in, and after WWII. In the UK at least we still have a generally popular collective view of the USA throughout the 20th century as our very bestest, bestest pal. Whereas in reality throughout the early years of the 20th century the world naval arms race in particular was as much between the USA and the British Empire, as with Germany and Japan and France.

Certainly the long term hegemonic interests/ambitions of the USA in Latin America ( eg, the Monroe Doctrine), and its ever increasing economic hegemonic sphere of interest ambitions in the Pacific rim, always put it on a potential collision course with the British Empire quite as much as the Japanese Empire. Behind all the "we are inseparable blood cousins" bullshit from Churchill during WWII, he was always well aware that the USA fully intended to bleed the British Empire dry of its gold reserves , and was setting the scene for the post WWII collapse of the British Empire colonial possessions in its intended future "Grand Area" of hegemony, before it offered any significant support against the Axis powers.

The "decolonisation" propaganda of the USA was always predicated on the real intention to create, via its growing world economic and military dominance, a new form of global imperialism...a US Imperial world order, without formal colonial domination, but instead domination via free trade, finance and the support/installation of puppet pro-US Imperialist governments.

For most of the post WWII 20th century of course US Imperialism's topdog role and excuse for intervention all over the world was justified by its lead role as capitalism's attack dog against "Communism". Communism (in it's Stalinist perverted form) was an absolute accidental gift ideologically and strategically throughout the high water mark period of US Imperialism's world hegemony. If it hadn't existed they'd have had to invest it. Attempting to elevate the "menace" of a handful of Islamic fundamentalists to the same bogyman status as the Red Menace -- such as to justify the entire apparatus of US dominance and military intervention across the USA's "Grand Area" , just hasn't worked so well. Only Tony Blair really believed in the "War against Terror".

 

[likesfish]

The blokes a cunt basicilly the communist party had this view until hitler back stabbed his bff.
The nazis really were the ultimate bad guys.
The japense were pretty evil as well .

Tbf killing 2996 people in a single attack is going to bring a massive response especailly against a country that wasnt at war

 

[Jean-Luc]

Though I fail to be particularly shocked by the undoubted summary shootings of Japanese prisoners by US soldiers. This happens in ALL theatres of war throughout history, but for the Axis miitary it was a Leadership enforced POLICY, whereas for the Allies the acts of individual soldiers and units.

I think the evidence is that this was official US policy in the Pacific War. No plans were made for Japanese POWs and few were taken. There was also an element of racism in the US policy. Although their war against Japan was over control of the eastern Pacific and its resources, markets and investment outlets it was portrayed as a war against the sub-human "Japs" who could be killed just because they were subhuman (and had dared to mistreat Europeans as Europeans had traditionally treated "Asiatics" who stood up to them). Note also that Nazi Germany did not have a policy of systematically killing enemy soldiers. It appears that the "rules of war" were only regarded as applicable amongst Europeans.

It is simply a historical fact though that the (non aerial bombing related ) atrocities of the Japanese Imperial forces against both Allied soldiery and sundry civilian populations dwarf by a gigantic magnitude the crimes of the Allies. It's simply a fact.. the Japanese were a military/fascist regime, whereas the Allies were a Bourgeois Democratic entity -- and that actually did result in significant differences in operational behaviour vis a vis local populations and prisoners, etc.

True (but the Bengal Famine in which 3.5 million died must rate high on the list of the atrocities of the Second World War), but why? Why were Britain, America and France "bourgeois democracies" and Germany and Japan dictatorships? Surely because British, American and French imperialisms had already divided the world amongst themselves and were the dominant powers, the top dogs, the alpha-males of world imperialism . Any power challenging their hegemony, as Germany and Japan, deprived of access to markets and sources of raw materials, were obliged by economic necessity to do had to be the aggressors and employed more violent and brutal methods. The German and Japanese dictatorships were the opposite side of the coin to the "bourgeois democracies". You can't just isolate them and treat them as a special case due, for instance, to the nasty character of Germans and Japanese. It was the whole world imperialist system that was responsible for the Second (as well as the First) World War.

 

[ayatollah]

I think the evidence is that this was official US policy in the Pacific War. No plans were made for Japanese POWs and few were taken. There was also an element of racism in the US policy. Although their war against Japan was over control of the eastern Pacific and its resources, markets and investment outlets it was portrayed as a war against the sub-human "Japs" who could be killed just because they were subhuman (and had dared to mistreat Europeans as Europeans had traditionally treated "Asiatics" who stood up to them). Note also that Nazi Germany did not have a policy of systematically killing enemy soldiers. It appears that the "rules of war" were only regarded as applicable amongst Europeans.

True (but the Bengal Famine in which 3.5 million died must rate high on the list of the atrocities of the Second World War), but why? Why were Britain, America and France "bourgeois democracies" and Germany and Japan dictatorships? Surely because British, American and French imperialisms had already divided the world amongst themselves and were the dominant powers, the top dogs, the alpha-males of world imperialism . Any power challenging their hegemony, as Germany and Japan, deprived of access to markets and sources of raw materials, were obliged by economic necessity to do had to be the aggressors and employed more violent and brutal methods. The German and Japanese dictatorships were the opposite side of the coin to the "bourgeois democracies". You can't just isolate them and treat them as a special case due, for instance, to the nasty character of Germans and Japanese. It was the whole world imperialist system that was responsible for the Second (as well as the First) World War.

Yes I entirely agree with you. Whilst we need to acknowledge the particular savagery of Axis militarism/fascism during WWII it is all to easy to discount the ruthless undoubted brutality of the Allied powers. eg,The extraordionary destructiveness of the Allied advance across Europe following D-Day is something we in Britain remain especially blind to -- "Liberation" for all too many French, Dutch, Belgian, citizens, meant being blown to smithereens under Allied bombing to dislodge stubborn pockets of German resistance !

It is also, as you say, all too easy to be appalled by the undoubted atavistic savagery of the rising competitor capitalist powers (Germany, Japan, Italy) trying to break into the closed imperial colonial system dominated by Great Britain , France, the Dutch - and then forget the extraordinarily brutal historical background to the creation of these empires, stretching over centuries . from the slave trade, to the conquest , and systematic deindustrialisation, of India, the Irish famines, the rape of Africa, etc. If one was to do a crude "murder bodycount" the deathtoll behind the formation and maintenance of the British and other European empires(and the capital base on which ALL of us in the UK and France and Holland today to a certain extent benefit, across all classes) would exceed all the murder bodycounts achieved by, Stalinism, Japanese militarism, Nazism.

No, WWII was not a war for "freedom" and "Liberation of peoples". Nevertheless if the Axis powers had won, which they might well have done throughout Europe and Asia (The USA would almost certainly have survived in a long term standoff with the Japanese Empire) today a Nazi dominated Europe/Russian landmass would be some sort of nightmare exterminatory totalitarian Slave State. Bourgeois Democracy is undoubtedly a facade for capitalist rule.. but we need to remember its still a lot, lot, better than living (or usually dying) under Nazism !

 

[DotCommunist]

The wee girl I share an office with is half Polish. Like everyone else of Polish extraction that I've ever met, she talks about Katyn as if it was yesterday.

I read it was one bloke who shot all those officers. over the space of a week. How he ever slept again...

 

[Jean-Luc]

No, WWII was not a war for "freedom" and "Liberation of peoples". Nevertheless if the Axis powers had won, which they might well have done throughout Europe and Asia (The USA would almost certainly have survived in a long term standoff with the Japanese Empire) today a Nazi dominated Europe/Russian landmass would be some sort of nightmare exterminatory totalitarian Slave State. Bourgeois Democracy is undoubtedly a facade for capitalist rule.. but we need to remember its still a lot, lot, better than living (or usually dying) under Nazism !

Interesting speculation but I suggest a more realistic scenario would have been: a peace deal in 1940 or 1941 between Britain and Germany, leaving Germany dominant in Europe and Britain to keep its Empire. There is some evidence that sections of the British ruling class were tempted by this. In conditions of peace, the German ruling class would no longer have any use for Hitler and would have got rid of him one way or another. A period of de-hitlerisation (even de-nazification) would have followed. So many Jews would not have been exterminated. In any event a modern capitalist economy cannot be run for any length of time as a "totaliarian Slave State" (as the Russian ruling class eventually discovered) so that couldn't have lasted, certainly not until "today". There'd have been a European Economic Union 20 or so years before it actually came about. In the East,Indonesia, Malaya and the countries of Indo-China would have got independence earlier than they did.

But this is all more or less idle speculation. What happened happened.

 

[Lock&Light]

No plans were made for Japanese POWs and few were taken.

The Japanese attitude to being taken prisoner was clearly reflected in the way they treated those allied soldiers who surrendered, so the fact that there were no plans made for Japanese POWs should be seen in that light.

 

[editor]

In short: war is brutal, dehumanising and leads to horrendous acts of brutality being committed against soldiers and civilians alike. That's what war is. Fucking horrible. Always.

 

[likesfish]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japane...n_World_War_II#Prisoners_taken_during_the_war

There were pow camps and plans were made to handle pows the red cross was informed of pows the japenese goverment refused to acknowledge the exsistance of japanese prisoners.

US forces had to be bribed with ice cream to keeps prisoners alive though
The japanese were very fanatical though if they did surrender often broke down completely.

 

[ayatollah]

Interesting speculation but I suggest a more realistic scenario would have been: a peace deal in 1940 or 1941 between Britain and Germany, leaving Germany dominant in Europe and Britain to keep its Empire. There is some evidence that sections of the British ruling class were tempted by this. In conditions of peace, the German ruling class would no longer have any use for Hitler and would have got rid of him one way or another. A period of de-hitlerisation (even de-nazification) would have followed. So many Jews would not have been exterminated. In any event a modern capitalist economy cannot be run for any length of time as a "totaliarian Slave State" (as the Russian ruling class eventually discovered) so that couldn't have lasted, certainly not until "today". There'd have been a European Economic Union 20 or so years before it actually came about. In the East,Indonesia, Malaya and the countries of Indo-China would have got independence earlier than they did.

But this is all more or less idle speculation. What happened happened.

I think this is a common, very complacent, but fundamental and serious misunderstanding of the immense transformational power of the ideology and operational practices of German Nazism. Italian and Spanish Fascism is a very, very, different thing to the SS Nazi state which had emerged by WWII. The German capitalist class had definitely lost real state power to the Nazi Party and state elite by 1940. A showdown with the traditional German capitalist class and its Army/Navy class representatives would almost certainly have arisen at some stage if the Germans had ended up dominating the Western European and Eastern European landmasses,. But the idea that the German/European capitalist class could simply have "dispensed with " the services of its Nazi goonsquads when they were no longer "needed" , and found to be economically inefficient, is a dangerous misunderstanding of the power of Nazism. Nazism has/had the potential to immoveably capture the entire European capitalist state/s and set the overrarching ideological agenda for its supporting/acquiescing populations in all classes - and drive it in an entirely new , undoubtedly irrational and inefficient Totalitarian Industrial Slave State mode of production direction. Not only would this SS State have exterminated ALL the Jews in Europe, and the Middle East, it would have exterminated all those with any slight Jewish ancestry, plus a large part of the indigenous populations of the Eurasian landmass - via "extermination through (slave) labour" and simple mass extermination as a permanent tool of SS state terror and the creation of the "lebensraum" strategy of creating empty land for German colonisation .

The orthodox Trotskyist idea of Nazism being identical with all other manifestations of "fascism", and both as simply a trivial surface confidence trick by the capitalist class, a short term stunt to smash the workers movement, before returning to business as usual, is simply wrong. Nazism is potentially a genuine "third way" distinct from bourgeois capitalism, just as the Nazis claim. The Allied forces invading Europe were not only smashing Nazism.. but rescuing the European Capitalist class from the crazed "fascist Tiger" they had so unwisely mounted up on in the 20's and 30's.

I'm pretty sure that the European capitalist class, if not the Left, have learnt this lesson, and in places like the current Greek crisis the capitalist class will be VERY careful to try and keep the rising fascist movement firmly in check, kept to being "the hired goonsquad help" if necessary behind a military takeover if the social crisis point of "dual power" with the working class emerges. There will be no unconditional handing over of the entire state machine to the Nazi madmen this time round if the capitalist classes have any choices at all in the matter, But will they ? That's the unknown question.

 

[Jean-Luc]

Nazism has/had the potential to immoveably capture the entire European capitalist state/s and set the overrarching ideological agenda for its supporting/acquiescing populations in all classes - and drive it in an entirely new , undoubtedly irrational and inefficient Totalitarian Industrial Slave State mode of production direction.

Nazism is potentially a genuine "third way" distinct from bourgeois capitalism, just as the Nazis claim.

If you were talking about the 1930s you might have had some sort of a case for this claim, but not today. "Nazism", and its programme of a "totalitarian Industrial Slave State mode of production" as you put, has no chance whatsoever of coming into being again in modern country. It is not even advocated by the parties that are labelled "fascist" that enjoy some electoral support today. Nazism was a product of the particular historical circumstances that capitalist Germany found itself in in the 1920s and 1930s as a result of its defeat in the First World War (hemmed in by the other capitalist powers and denied access to markets and sources of raw materials, to which it could only gain access by a policy aggression and so with a war economy). As the product of specific historical conditions that no longer apply, it is not something that is at all likely to be repeated today. Nazism has been and gone. In any event, a modern capitalist economy, depending on an educated and self-motivated workforce, simply cannot be run as a slave economy.

The much more likely form that any "return to the 30s" would take would be a return to a narrow economic nationalism with countries trying to compete against each other through protectionism and tariffs, competitive devaluations, quotas, etc as happened then. This is a policy favoured by the Left as well as the Right, both calling for their country to, for example, withraw from the EU so they can do this. Which does seem to be gaining in popularity even if it is not what the dominant section of the capitalist class in any country wants.

 

[likesfish]

Nazism was terribly well thought out adolfs response to some one whineing about his local party was take it over by force

 

[ayatollah]

If you were talking about the 1930s you might have had some sort of a case for this claim, but not today. "Nazism", and its programme of a "totalitarian Industrial Slave State mode of production" as you put, has no chance whatsoever of coming into being again in modern country. It is not even advocated by the parties that are labelled "fascist" that enjoy some electoral support today. Nazism was a product of the particular historical circumstances that capitalist Germany found itself in in the 1920s and 1930s as a result of its defeat in the First World War (hemmed in by the other capitalist powers and denied access to markets and sources of raw materials, to which it could only gain access by a policy aggression and so with a war economy). As the product of specific historical conditions that no longer apply, it is not something that is at all likely to be repeated today. Nazism has been and gone. In any event, a modern capitalist economy, depending on an educated and self-motivated workforce, simply cannot be run as a slave economy.

The much more likely form that any "return to the 30s" would take would be a return to a narrow economic nationalism with countries trying to compete against each other through protectionism and tariffs, competitive devaluations, quotas, etc as happened then. This is a policy favoured by the Left as well as the Right, both calling for their country to, for example, withraw from the EU so they can do this. Which does seem to be gaining in popularity even if it is not what the dominant section of the capitalist class in any country wants.

I've already stated that the experience of their impotence in the face of the German Nazi takeover in the 30's has made the capitalist class very unwilling to go down this route again - even if faced in the future with mass revolt bythe working class. (read the end of my last post). You do however appear to concede to my analysis of the special emerging aberration of an "industrial Slave State" that the victories of German Nazism represented on the Eurasian Landmass during WWII. I am not for a moment claiming that the exterminatory totalitarian Nazi state that would have emerged across Eurasia if the Nazis had won the European part of WWII would have been a rational, efficient, mode of production . It wouldn't have. The point is that under Nazism, the "ideological superstructure" of exterminatory racism and dictatorship was in the driving seat, and no one , certainly not the capitalist class were in a position to deflect it from its own crazed path of destruction. This is not unique in history.. the completely crazed , murderous disasters of Collectivisation, The Great Leap Forward, and The Cultural Revolution, under the Chinese Mao dictatorship provides another example of the totalitarian state set up allowing the sheer crazed ideological fantasy of a mistaken belief system to drive an entire society in a completely self-destructve direction.

You seem to have retreated from your earlier extraordinary complacent claim that if only the British Ruling Class had cut a deal with Nazi Germany in circa 1940, after the fall of France, the German Ruling class would have taken its winnings (after next conquering Russia presumeably ?) , got rid of the Nazis, spared the surviving Jews, and set up the EU a few years earlier !

 

[Captain Hurrah]

I would suggest you need to understand more about the Cultural Revolution especially before sounding off like you have done above.

 

[ayatollah]

I would suggest you need to understand more about the Cultural Revolution especially before sounding off like you have done above.

I understand everything there is to know about the nightmare of the Cultural bloody Revolution you toy stalinist tit, Hurrah. Why don't you give us all a sick laugh with some sort of sad apologia for it ? Next up an appreciation of the greatly misunderstood achievements of Kim Il Sung and Pol Pot ?