Seventy years since the beginning of World War II

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Seventy years since the beginning of World War II
3 September 2009

The outbreak of World War II 70 years ago today set in motion a chain
of events that was to result in the deaths of up to 70 million people.
Over the next six years, the war saw the eruption of barbarism on an
unimaginable scale—the horrors of the Russian front, the fire-bombing
of Tokyo and Dresden, the mass murder of 6 million European Jews, and
the dropping of the atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are some of the events that immediately come to mind.

It is often said that in war, truth is the first casualty. Seven
decades on, all the official organs of public opinion are still
working overtime to cover up the causes of the war and the lessons to
be drawn from it.

Contrary to the prevailing myths, this was not a war of democracy
versus fascism, any more than World War I was a “war to end all wars.”
It was an imperialist war waged by the capitalist great
powers—“democratic” and fascist alike—for the division of the world
and its resources in the interests of profit.

Following the outbreak of World War I, Lenin had warned that unless
the working class overthrew the capitalist order in a socialist
revolution more wars would inevitably follow. Any “peace” among the
imperialist powers, he insisted, would be merely an interlude before
the eruption of the next conflict. That warning was now confirmed.

The immediate cause of the war was the Nazi invasion of Poland on
September 1, 1939. The previous year, at the infamous Munich
conference, the British government under Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain had conceded to German demands over Czechoslovakia. Hoping
that German expansion could be confined to Central Europe, Chamberlain
had returned from Munich declaring that he had achieved “peace in our
time.” Just 11 months later, he announced the declaration of war.

The invasion of Poland had made it clear that Germany was not merely
seeking to advance its position in Europe, but aspired to become a
world power. This was an outcome which Britain—as the world’s chief
colonial power, dominating the Indian subcontinent as well as vast
regions in Africa, and extracting material and financial resources
from every corner of the globe—could not tolerate.

One year before the outbreak of war, the Fourth International had been
established. Its took on the task of resolving the crisis of working
class leadership and preparing the socialist revolution, without
which, as the new International declared, “a catastrophe threatens the
whole culture of mankind.”

The treacherous leaderships of the working class—the Social Democratic
and Stalinist Communist parties—bore a direct responsibility for the
outbreak of war. Had the Spanish Revolution, which erupted in 1936,
been victorious, it would have led to a renewal of revolutionary
struggles across Europe, threatening even the seemingly powerful Nazi
regime in Germany.

Likewise, had the French general strike of 1936 gone forward to a
direct struggle for political power, it would have dramatically
changed the balance of forces. But both of these revolutionary
movements were strangled by the Stalinist and social democratic
leaderships.

Consequently, as Leon Trotsky explained, the bourgeoisie “convinced
itself that with such ‘labour leaders’ at its disposal, it could go
ahead with anything, even a new slaughter of peoples.”

In a manifesto issued in May, 1940 as the German armies invaded
France, the Fourth International explained the essential social
significance of Hitler and the fascist movement he led.

“The democratic governments, who in their day hailed Hitler as a
crusader against Bolshevism, now make him out to be some kind of Satan
unexpectedly loosed from the depths of hell, who violates the sanctity
of treaties, boundary lines, rules and regulations. If it were not for
Hitler the capitalist world would blossom like a garden. What a
miserable lie! This German epileptic with a calculating machine in his
skull and unlimited power in his hands did not fall from the sky or
come up out of hell: he is nothing but the personification of all the
destructive forces of imperialism. Just as Genghis Khan and Tamerlane
appeared to the weaker pastoral peoples as destroying scourges of God,
whereas in reality they did nothing but express the need of all the
pastoral tribes for more pasture land and the plunder of settled
areas, so Hitler, rocking the old colonial powers to their
foundations, does nothing but give a more finished expression to the
imperialist will to power.”

The war began as a European conflict but rapidly extended to the
entire globe. In the 19th century, the capitalist powers had competed
with each other on the basis of an expanding world market. But the
Great Depression and the contraction of the world market had seen the
global economy split into rival blocs.

Japan, confronted with the collapse of its export markets, sought to
overcome its crisis through the conquest of China and the
establishment of an empire in the East. But this was intolerable to
the United States, which also sought expansion into the Pacific, thus
making war inevitable. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December
1941 was simply the trigger for a war which had been in preparation
over the preceding decade.

For German imperialism, the resources of central and southeastern
Europe were insufficient if it was to develop the capacity to
challenge the greatest capitalist power, the United States. The
invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 was aimed at
establishing the economic basis for a German empire able to sustain
its position as a world power.

As for the United States, it had risen to power on the basis of the
vast resources of the American continent. But it could no longer
sustain itself on that foundation—that was the lesson of the Great
Depression which had struck so hard at its economy. The markets of the
world had to be opened up to American exports, to American investment
and American technology, so as to secure American profits. This
perspective was incompatible with the attempts of both Germany and
Japan to carve out empires for themselves, as well as with the already
established empire of Washington’s ally, Britain. All would have to
give way to the American “open door” program.

On the basis of its economic capacity and the vast superiority it
enjoyed over its exhausted rivals, the United States was able to
stabilize the world capitalist system at the conclusion of World War
II. The subsequent post-war boom and the Cold War with the Soviet
Union provided the framework for the regulation of the
inter-imperialist rivalries that had twice exploded into world war in
the space of just three decades.

Today, the foundations of this equilibrium no longer exist. The
eruption of the deepest economic and financial crisis since the Great
Depression is once again creating the conditions for the
transformation of competition on the world market into a ferocious
conflict of each against all.

The deep crisis of US capitalism and its increasing resort to military
means to overcome its loss of economic power, together with the rise
of new powers and the renewed strivings of old ones, are creating the
conditions for another imperialist conflict, even more terrible than
the last.

The lessons must be drawn. Only through the overthrow of the
capitalist profit system and the establishment of a planned world
socialist economy—rationally and democratically regulated to meet
human needs—can the threat of imperialist war be banished forever.
This is the perspective of the world party of socialist revolution,
the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Nick Beams

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/pers-s03.shtml

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