Shane Mage ([email protected]) wrote on 2009-09-13 at 00:57:33 in about Re: [Marxism] This Rewriting of History is Spreading Europe's Poison:
commenting on a guest comment in the British Guardian: > On Sep 13, 2009, at 12:08 AM, Dennis Brasky wrote: > >> By Seumas Milne > >> The Guartdian (UK) > >> September 9, 2009 > >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/09/second-world-war-so viet-pact > >> > Stalin's pact with Hitler did indeed set off the war. But without > that pact the war would have broken out anyway within a year or two, > and it would have been an even greater disaster. No, the pact allowed Hitler to start the war he wanted to. Hitler could no longer wait, if he wanted to win the first alternative of his supreme maxime: "Germany must be a world power, or it will not be". In 1938 with the Munich conference, Hitler could still rely on a bluff, but in 1939 no longer. He had to start. > It was in June 1939 that Trotsky wrote that Chamberlain and Daladier > were forcing Stalin to do a deal with Hitler. No, Trotsky wrote since 1933 that Stalin actually wanted a pact with Hitler. In June 1939 Trotsky wrote that it is Hitler's choice if he would give in to Stalin, and wage war first in the West, or if his first strikes should go against the Soviet Union. > By August it was clear to everyone that the British and French > empires had no interest in an alliance with the Russian empire > against the German. Wrong. The imperialists would very much liked to have the Kreml on their side, and let Hitler deal with it... > Stalin therefore had every reason to expect that > the British and French would do another Munich accepting Hitler's > declaration that Danzig and the Corridor were his last territorial > ambitions in Europe, a deal which would leave a German-dominated > Polish regime, motivated by its hereditary hatred of everything Russian, > at Hitler's service for an invasion of Russia. Well, striking a deal with Nazi Germany was certainly giving an advantage to the USSR of postponing the war for some time, and to prepare militarily. Unfortunately, not even the latter was really done -- Germany's onslaught against the USSR in June 1941 met completely unprepared defenses and could achieve major advances in the first weeks of the attack. Worse for the defenses of the first workers state was the political alliance with German fascism, putting the blame on the war exclusively on the Western competitors of German imperialism and sharing the responsability of the fourth partition of Poland with Nazi Germany. This resulted in an important weakening of the solidarity of working people the world over with the country of the first successful socialist revolution. It increase the effect of the lies and crimes of the four show processes in Moscow against the leaders of the 1917 revolution, and the de facto destruction of the Russian communist party. Add to that the fact that the Kremlin delivered German communists to the Gestapo and did not even demand the release of Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the KPD during the catastrophic defeat of the German working class, and you can imagine the devastating effect of this pact on the security of the first workers state. > Having destroyed the military capability of the Red Army in 1937-38, > Stalin had placed himself in the position where Russia could > not plausibly threaten war, and so he could claim to have > no choice but to realize his long-term ambition to form an alliance > with the German nationalists. Long before that came the complete destruction of the workers movement in Germany due to the disastrous policies of the KPD on the instigation of the Kreml. This put the continuation of the inter-imperialist war on the agenda. This catastrophe was followed by more defeats, most notably the defeat of the Spanish republic by fascism, also due to a disastrous political course of the "Communists" in Spain on the instigation of the Kremlin. The victory of fascism in Spain removed the last element which could have prevented the new war (actually the continuation of the old). > He did disrupt the Anglo/French strategy and forced them into war > (they were forced to declare war because the Russian alliance nonsense. France and England declared war, but did not wage a war. Since the end of the so-called First World War, real wars were always started without a declaration of war, while a formal declaration of war amounted to nothing more than a formal protest. > and the resulting German domination of east-central Europe > meant that Hitler would become ever stronger so the military balance, > still equal in 1939, would inevitably tilt ever more toward the German side). Well, you overlook what really happened, namely that Hitler had decided to strike first against England, and take up the USSR after England's defeat, and that Hitler waged that war according to _his_ agenda, not to the one by Paris or London, who did _not_ have one in the first place. > Unfortunately for Stalin, Hitler was no Hindenburg or Ludendorff. > He turned out to be quite the wrong sort > (the insane plebian vonless sort) of German nationalist. Whaddaya mean? To sum up: what you wrote above is complete bonkers. Incredible that one read such a nonsense in a mailing list claiming to be "Marxist". But such nonsense is also one of the reasons for me to refuse the designation as "Marxist". Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- Message-ID: <[email protected]> From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?L=FCko_Willms?=" <[email protected]> To: "Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition" <[email protected]> Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:24:46 +0200 (MES) In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> Priority: Normal User-Agent: PMMail/3.05 (os/2; U; Warp 4.5; de-DE-EURO; i386; ver 3.05.47.1427) X-Mailer: PMMail 3.05.47.1427 for OS/2 Warp 4.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: [Marxism] This Rewriting of History is Spreading Europe's Poison Shane Mage ([email protected]) wrote on 2009-09-13 at 00:57:33 in about Re: [Marxism] This Rewriting of History is Spreading Europe's Poison: commenting on a guest comment in the British Guardian: > On Sep 13, 2009, at 12:08 AM, Dennis Brasky wrote: > >> By Seumas Milne > >> The Guartdian (UK) > >> September 9, 2009 > >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/09/second-world-war-so viet-pact > >> > Stalin's pact with Hitler did indeed set off the war. But without > that pact the war would have broken out anyway within a year or two, > and it would have been an even greater disaster. No, the pact allowed Hitler to start the war he wanted to. Hitler could no longer wait, if he wanted to win the first alternative of his supreme maxime: "Germany must be a world power, or it will not be". In 1938 with the Munich conference, Hitler could still rely on a bluff, but in 1939 no longer. He had to start. > It was in June 1939 that Trotsky wrote that Chamberlain and Daladier > were forcing Stalin to do a deal with Hitler. No, Trotsky wrote since 1933 that Stalin actually wanted a pact with Hitler. In June 1939 Trotsky wrote that it is Hitler's choice if he would give in to Stalin, and wage war first in the West, or if his first strikes should go against the Soviet Union. > By August it was clear to everyone that the British and French > empires had no interest in an alliance with the Russian empire > against the German. Wrong. The imperialists would very much liked to have the Kreml on their side, and let Hitler deal with it... > Stalin therefore had every reason to expect that > the British and French would do another Munich accepting Hitler's > declaration that Danzig and the Corridor were his last territorial > ambitions in Europe, a deal which would leave a German-dominated > Polish regime, motivated by its hereditary hatred of everything Russian, > at Hitler's service for an invasion of Russia. Well, striking a deal with Nazi Germany was certainly giving an advantage to the USSR of postponing the war for some time, and to prepare militarily. Unfortunately, not even the latter was really done -- Germany's onslaught against the USSR in June 1941 met completely unprepared defenses and could achieve major advances in the first weeks of the attack. Worse for the defenses of the first workers state was the political alliance with German fascism, putting the blame on the war exclusively on the Western competitors of German imperialism and sharing the responsability of the fourth partition of Poland with Nazi Germany. This resulted in an important weakening of the solidarity of working people the world over with the country of the first successful socialist revolution. It increase the effect of the lies and crimes of the four show processes in Moscow against the leaders of the 1917 revolution, and the de facto destruction of the Russian communist party. Add to that the fact that the Kremlin delivered German communists to the Gestapo and did not even demand the release of Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the KPD during the catastrophic defeat of the German working class, and you can imagine the devastating effect of this pact on the security of the first workers state. > Having destroyed the military capability of the Red Army in 1937-38, > Stalin had placed himself in the position where Russia could > not plausibly threaten war, and so he could claim to have > no choice but to realize his long-term ambition to form an alliance > with the German nationalists. Long before that came the complete destruction of the workers movement in Germany due to the disastrous policies of the KPD on the instigation of the Kreml. This put the continuation of the inter-imperialist war on the agenda. This catastrophe was followed by more defeats, most notably the defeat of the Spanish republic by fascism, also due to a disastrous political course of the "Communists" in Spain on the instigation of the Kremlin. The victory of fascism in Spain removed the last element which could have prevented the new war (actually the continuation of the old). > He did disrupt the Anglo/French strategy and forced them into war > (they were forced to declare war because the Russian alliance nonsense. France and England declared war, but did not wage a war. Since the end of the so-called First World War, real wars were always started without a declaration of war, while a formal declaration of war amounted to nothing more than a formal protest. > and the resulting German domination of east-central Europe > meant that Hitler would become ever stronger so the military balance, > still equal in 1939, would inevitably tilt ever more toward the German side). Well, you overlook what really happened, namely that Hitler had decided to strike first against England, and take up the USSR after England's defeat, and that Hitler waged that war according to _his_ agenda, not to the one by Paris or London, who did _not_ have one in the first place. > Unfortunately for Stalin, Hitler was no Hindenburg or Ludendorff. > He turned out to be quite the wrong sort > (the insane plebian vonless sort) of German nationalist. Whaddaya mean? To sum up: what you wrote above is complete bonkers. Incredible that one read such a nonsense in a mailing list claiming to be "Marxist". But such nonsense is also one of the reasons for me to refuse the designation as "Marxist". Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany -------------------------------- ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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