The Meaning of the Second World War

Ernest Mandel

The Meaning of the

Second World War

First published by Verso 1986

© Ernest Mandel 1986

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

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Verso

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ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-480-0 (hbk)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-479-4 (pbk)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed in the US by Maple Vail

Contents

To the memory of all those who gave their lives fighting against fascism and imperialism – in the first place all those who fell in order to transform that fight into the victory of world revolution:

Abram Leon;

León Lesoil;

Marcel Hic;

Hendrik Sneevliet;

Victor Widelin;

Pantelis Pouliopoulos;

Blasco;

Tha-Thu-Tau;

Cher Dou-siou;

Tan Malakka;

and above all to the heroic unknown editors of Czorwony Sztandard, who published their Trotskyist underground paper in the Warsaw Ghetto until the last days of the uprising in which they actively participated.

Part One

The Historical Framework

1.

The Stakes

Capitalism implies competition. With the emergence of large corporations and cartels – i.e. the advent of monopoly capitalism this competition assumed a new dimension. It became qualitatively more politico-economic, and therefore military-economic. What was at stake was no longer the fate of businesses representing some tens of thousands of pounds or hundreds of thousand of dollars. At stake now were industrial and financial giants whose assets ran into tens and hundreds of millions. Accordingly, states and their armies involved themselves more and more directly in that competition – which became imperialist rivalry for outlets for investment in new markets, for access to cheap or rare raw materials. The destructiveness of such competition became increasingly pronounced, amidst a growing trend towards militarization and its ideological reflection: the justification and glorification of war. On the other hand, the development of manufacturing, the growth in productive capacity of the technically most advanced firms, the total output of the main industrial powers, and especially the expansion of finance capital and investment potential, increasingly spilled across the boundaries of nation-states, even the largest ones. This spread of individual national capital outwards inevitably led to breakneck competition for external resources, markets and control of trade-routes, within Europe but also – and most spectacularly – outside the continent: between 1876 and 1914 European powers managed to annex some eleven million square miles of territory, mainly in Asia and Africa.

Yet the creation of colonial empires following the international thrust of capital proved to be only a temporary answer to the problem of the growing disproportion between development of the productive forces and the political form within which this development had taken place: the nation-state.¹ Given the poverty and low growth rates of the colonies, their demand for manufactured goods was inherently limited; they were hardly a substitute for the lucrative markets to be found in the industrial countries themselves, whose systematic closure – via the high tariffs on imported goods and capital increasingly imposed by the end of the nineteenth century – accelerated the colonial drive. At the same time the fact that the world had become divided relatively early on, to the especial advantage of the Western rim of the European continent, meant that later industrial powers (USA, Germany, Russia, Japan) had little space to expand overseas. Their prodigious development issued in a powerful challenge to the existing territorial arrangements. It upset the concomitant balance of political and economic power. The growing conflict between the burgeoning productive forces and the prevailing political structures could less and less be contained by conventional diplomacy or local military skirmishes. The power coalitions which this conflict fostered merely exacerbated it, ensuring that it would reach explodingpoint. The explosion occurred with the First World War.¹

It is not surprising that the first move in questioning the status quo should have been made by Germany, which had assumed the industrial leadership of Europe and hence was in a position to challenge a colonial share-out favourable to Britain and France by force of arms. The prospect of the continent’s unification under German domination, with all its implications for the future of the colonies and other dependent states, was a matter of concern not only to those most immediately affected, like Britain, France or Russia, but also for the non-European powers: Japan and the United States. In the event, US intervention on the side of the Entente proved decisive in the defeat of Germany.

Yet World War One in no way ‘solved’ the growing contradiction between economy and politics within the capitalist world. True, Germany was defeated, but not so decisively as to eliminate her from the race for world leadership. And the war had opened the door for a new arrival: socialist revolution. The victory and consolidation of Bolshevik power in Russia; the revolutionary ferment leading to the appearance of Soviet power in the other defeated countries and Italy; the generalized revulsion against the war which produced a massive shift to the left in the victor countries themselves at its close – these changed the whole meaning of international warfare for the bourgeoisie. From the outset the new arrangement between victors and vanquished was overshadowed by the desire of the ruling classes to prevent the spread of revolution, especially to Germany. American, British and even French imperialists did not dare completely to disarm their German competitors, lest the German working class take power. Indeed, between November 1918 and October 1923, the Reichswehr was the only real force defending the weakened capitalist order in Germany. The contradiction of Versailles was that the victors wanted to weaken German capitalism without really disarming it and while keeping its industrial power intact. This made its military comeback inevitable.

The point has been made many times that the Second World War was a logical and inevitable outcome of World War One. But the link between the two is commonly reduced to the anti-German clauses of the Versailles Treaty, and especially the foolish policy of reparations on which the French bourgeoisie was particularly insistent. In truth, although the terms of the peace settlement certainly helped to exacerbate the political, military and above all economic conflicts that dominated the twenties and thirties and paved the way to WWII, they did not create these problems – any more than ‘reckless’ planning by the Austrian, Russian, German or French general staffs caused WWI.

In this respect it is instructive to look beyond strictly European politics to the peculiar relationship developing between China, Japan and the USA, which would eventually lead to the Pacific War. In 1900 Japan and the USA collaborated in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China. In 1905 the Russo-Japanese peace treaty was signed under US auspices. In the First World War Japan intervened as an ally of the United States and the other two powers with economic interests in the Far East: Britain and France. She was not badly treated by the Paris Peace Conference nor by the Washington Naval Agreement of 1922. Hence the fact that Japanese foreign policy gradually embarked upon a course of violent agression hardly different from that of German imperialism cannot be explained by any ‘humiliation’ imposed on her by her future enemies. On the contrary, the target of the Japanese war drive was China, the most populous country in the world. Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1931, and the all-out war it unleashed against China in 1937, made armed conflict with the USA inevitable, since the latter was resolved at all costs to prevent the transformation of China into a Japanese colony or dependency. At a deeper level, the American-Japanese conflict was fuelled by the grave economic crisis of 1929-32 in both countries. It flowed from the perception that a long-term solution involved a decisive break with economic isolationism (a shift from growth centered on the home market), and hence the need to achieve for oneself (or deny others) strategic insertion in the world market via hegemony over a substantial part of the world, as a necessary step on the path to world dominance.²

So the second act of the imperialist drama unfolded according to the inner logic of the world capitalist system. Once again the stake was the international hegemony of one imperialist power, to be won and maintained by an active combination of military conquest or pressure and economic domination or plunder – the exact mix depending on the relative strength or weakness of the individual contestants, deriving from such inner constraints as the level of economic development and the character of political institutions. On the eve of the Second World War these powers were the USA, Germany, Japan and Britain, with France and Italy playing the role of secondary allies, lacking the strength to be real contenders.

It might be objected that the above characterization of the stakes of WWII is too sweeping and does not correspond to the real course of events, which reveal much more limited ambitions on the part of the warring powers; that one ought to distinguish more sharply between causes and effects, and differentiate the aggressors from those states which entered the war in self-defence. Was not the Second World War simply a concatenation of regional conflicts whose origin lay in the peculiarities of German and Japanese politics, inducing a rupture in what otherwise would have been a peaceful evolution of the world economy towards what Kautsky had termed ‘ultra-imperialism’? In this view, Japan’s drive was limited to the creation of an East-Asian and Pacific zone of influence and German expansionism to parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The British bourgeoisie’s desire to retain its imperial possessions can then be cleared of responsibility for Japanese or German militarism, and US goals vis-a-vis Asia and Africa, not to speak of Europe, can be seen as more modest and benign in essence than the policy of armed conquest sprouted by German and Japanese fascism.

However, this objection misunderstands the role which interimperialist wars have played in the internationalization of the capitalist economy and reduces them to the pursuit of – or a reaction to – violent conquest. But the most violent and murderous cases of imperialist aggression are expressions of relative weakness rather than strength. The imperialist conquest of the world is not only, or even mainly, a drive to occupy huge territories permanently with millions of soldiers. On the contrary, the motor of the Second World War was the major capitalist states’ need to dominate the economy of whole continents through capital investment, preferential trade agreements, currency regulations and political hegemony. The aim of the war was the subordination not only of the less developed world, but also of other industrial states, whether enemies or allies, to one hegemonic power’s priorities of capital accumulation. In this perspective US domination of the countries of Latin America, achieved largely by economic warfare and with relatively marginal military involvement, was not a feasible paradigm for establishing world rule – any more than Tojo’s or Hitler’s military machines were sufficient in themselves for that purpose. For the USA, an economic power par excellence, this meant building up a powerful navy and forcing Britain soon after the end of the First World War to accept parity on the seas – just as Japan would insist on parity with Britain and USA and thereby torpedo the Washington agreement a decade and a half later. World hegemony, in other words, can be exercised only through a combination of military strength and economic superiority. Naturally, it cannot be known what precise combination Germany or Japan would have adopted in the event of ultimate victory; but it would certainly have been some such combination rather than a reliance on sheer brute force. In occupied Europe even the Nazis knew how to deal quite differently with, for instance, the French, Belgian, Dutch or Danish bourgeoisies from the way they treated the Jewish people or the people of Poland or the Soviet Union, exceptional circumstances of the unfolding war notwithstanding.³

Equally, there is not the slightest proof of any limitation on the war aims of Japan, Germany or the USA, the real challengers of the status quo in the Second World War. Very early on the Tanaka Memorandum established that for the Japanese army, the conquest of China was only a stepping-stone to the conquest of world hegemony, which would be achieved after crushing US resistance.⁴ Indeed, Japan’s alliance with Germany could be only temporary, and remained fragile and ineffectual throught the war, for it was seen as a provisional truce with a future enemy.⁵ Hitler’s understanding of the meaning of the coming war was equally clear: ‘The struggle for hegemony in the world will be decided for Europe by possession of the Russian space. Any idea of world politics is ridiculous (for Germany) as long as it does not dominate the continent … If we are masters of Europe, then we shall have the dominant position in the world. If the (British) Empire were to collapse today through our arms, we would not be its heirs, since Russia would take India, Japan East Asia and America Canada.’⁶

American imperialism was also conscious of its ‘destiny’ to become the world leader. ‘The decision he (Roosevelt) made in 1940, on his own authority and without clarion calls, involved the commitment of the United States to the assumption of responsibility for nothing less than the leadership of the world.’⁷ The breakdown of the world economy in the late 1920s, to which the United States had itself generously contributed, and the creation of exclusive trading blocs (the largest of which centered on the British sterling area) imperilled not only America’s markets but also its supply of raw materials. For the United States the war was to be the lever which would open the whole of the world market and world resources to American exploitation.⁸ Cordell Hull, the US Secretary of State, put it quite bluntly in 1942: ‘Leadership towards a new system of international relationships in trade and other economic affairs will devolve largely upon the United States because of our great economic strength. We should assume this leadership, and the responsibility that goes with it, primarily for reasons of pure national self-interest.’⁹

As for British imperialism, even if it indeed had already chewed off more than it could digest, it by no means ceased jockeying for more positions. Its intervention in East Africa, mopping up of the Italian colonial empire, liquidation of the French enclaves in the Near East, heavy hand laid upon Iran, preparation of a Balkan invasion with the evident purpose of making Greece a stepping stone for the creation of British client states in Eastern Europe replacing the French satellites which had emerged in 1918, various attempts at power politics in Latin America (such as the backstairs encouragement given to Peron against US imperialism)—indicate that the dream of hegemony was still being dreamt in the City too, albeit under conditions where the disproportion between end and means became increasingly pathetic.

In the era of imperialism, even a quest for regional zones of influence presupposes a readiness to fight on a world scale. The logic of this emerges in the military directives and decisions of the Second World War’s opening stages. Already in November 1940, Hitler’s Directive No. 18 mentions the need to capture the Canary and Cape Verde islands, the Azores and West Africa, because of their strategic importance vis-a-vis the USA. Iraq and Iran were mentioned as further goals of the Caucasion operations, and Directive No.24 of 5 March 1941 extends German war plans as far as Australia.¹⁰ Echoing these concerns, Iceland, the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands and the port of Dakar were all seen by US strategists as necessary for the reconquest of Europe and a line of defence to be held against possible German attack.¹¹ Roosevelt was convinced in 1940 that ‘if Britain fell, a disastrous war for the United States would be inevitable, (for) Germany would attack the Western hemisphere, probably at first in Latin America, as soon as she assembled a sufficient naval force and transport and cargo fleet (not too long a process with all the shipbuilding facilities of Europe at Germany’s disposal) and Japan would go on the rampage in the Pacific.’¹²

To be sure, geographical constraints and military requirements partially dictated these lines of expansion.¹³ But underlying these constraints and considerations was the inner logic of imperialism, which can be seen quite clearly in the planning councils of the warring states. Oil, rubber, copper, nickel, tin, manganese, iron ore, cotton, etc. had to be secured; sea-lanes had to be kept open to ship these home; workers and forced labour had to be mobilized, housed and fed; exports had to be expanded and foisted upon reluctant clients; foreign competitors had to be dragooned into partnerships or simply absorbed; opponents’ exports had to be cut and their populations starved. The war indeed showed itself to be nothing but the continuation of politics by other means.¹⁴

But if the meaning of the Second World War, like that of its predecessor, can be grasped only in the context of the imperialist drive for world domination, its significance lies in the fact that it was the ultimate test of the relative strength of the competing imperialist states. Its outcome determined the particular pattern of the world accumulation of capital for a whole period. In the world organised by capital based on nation-states, war is the mechanism for the final resolution of differences. For although military power is not the only kind of pressure which a capitalist state can bring to bear upon its rivals, nevertheless it is the highest form of power: the potential or actual use of armed might to impose its will is the decisive proof of an imperialist state’s superiority. Therefore, what we are dealing with here is the capacity of each of the belligerents to use military force in a sustained way and more successfully than its opponents, which in turn depends on the ability of each state to mobilize all necessary resources, human as well as material, for victory. Consequently, wars on this scale are the supreme test of the solidity of the social order and its economic health, as they are of the political stamina of the ruling classes and their leaderships.

So far as the latter are concerned, the central issue is the ability of the bourgeoisie to reign in its own back yard, above all over its native working class. In the final analysis, imperialist expansion expresses an insatiable thirst for surplus value, its production and realization – the snowball dynamic of capital accumulation. But qualitatively increased surplus-value production is possible only through a specific relationship with wage labour, a subordination of the working class to capital. Hence a strategic integration of the working class in the metropolitan centres is a necessary component of the imperialist countries’ ability to pursue the struggle for world dominance. The world that emerged from the 1914-1918 war was at least partially shaped by the unprecendented rise in working-class self-organization and self-confidence, especially in Europe but also in the USA, during the quarter century that preceded it. The attitude of the working class to imperialist wars was therefore of importance not only to the ruling classes, but also to the future of the working class itself. The historic debate which took place among the parties of the Second International between 1907 and 1917 – a debate which started before the war (though at a time when the warring alliances were already in place) and continued right through it – linked the question of the forthcoming war to a wider discussion on whether the workers’ organizations should be instruments of reform of the bourgeois order or its grave-diggers.¹⁵ When the war started, and after initial nationalist euphoria had evaporated amidst hunger, death and destruction, the social truce broke under its impact right across the continent.

Mutinies in the French, German, Austrian and Russian armies; hunger marches and strikes in factories; the overthrow of Tsarism in Russia; the dissolution of Austria-Hungary; the overthrow of the Ottoman sultanate; the abdication of the German Kaiser; the advent of revolution in the cities of Central, East and Southeastern Europe; and finally the success of the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia – these represent the many varied attempts by the exploited populations of this part of Europe and Asia to find alternative solutions to captalism’s intensifying structural crisis and to the war-prone anarchy of the international order established by the bourgeoisie. The abdication of the Second International majority before the raison d’état of the national ruling classes in 1914 found its response in the organization of the minority into a Third International and in the formation of Communist parties throughout the world to challenge the discredited social-democratic formations.

Labour’s resistance to the hegemonic drive of the bourgeoisie, and the young Soviet republic, which survived despite the concentrated efforts of the imperialist powers to destroy it, constituted formidable obstacles to the pursuit of imperialist designs, especially for European capital. Both had to be, if not eliminated, then at least neutralized before any imperialist power could seriously contemplate starting another international war. The history of the preparation and unleashing of WWII is, therefore, not just the history of an increasingly explosive differentiation of sectional (national) interests of the world bourgeoisie, but also of its sustained and more or less successful efforts to remove these obstacles. In other words, it is also a history of counter-revolution. By 1939 the record of this counter-revolutionary consolidation was promising but uneven. The fate and evolution of the Soviet Union was particularly crucial. The revolutionary upheavals following WWI had been strong enough to prevent the restoration of capitalism in erstwhile Imperial Russia. But the fact that they produced no new victories gravely weakened the Soviet working class: the Soviet republic had survived, but in a greatly distorted form. This in turn contributed to the impotence of the European working class in the inter-war period. A downturn of revolution gave the green light for a new onslaught against the labour movement as soon as the crisis demanded this. The stepping-stones towards World War Two were Chiang Kai-Shek’s massacre of Communist and other labour militants in Shanghai in 1927; the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s; the defeat of the Spanish republic; the collapse of the Popular Front in France. The failure of the British General Strike and the stranglehold imposed by the CIO bureaucracy upon the rising militancy of the American working class likewise played far from marginal roles in preparing the new conflict.

The assertion here that the real stake of WWII was the establishment of the world hegemony of one imperialist power, and that the war was also the culmination of a process of counter-revolution,