Untaught Syllabus: Who Divided Germany And Why?

[evolution2005 at btinternet.com]

WHO DIVIDED GERMANY AND WHY?

By Brian Mitchell
The media recently (November 2009) has been awash with its occasional historical propaganda reminder about the Berlin Wall, built by those nasty socialists to divide Germany to keep the East German people away from our wonderful freedom and democracy. 
The truth, however, is entirely different. 
As this article will show, with all the evidence necessary to convince even the most reactionary mind, it was not the East, but the West that wanted to divide Germany and Europe. 
The reason for the post-war division of Germany has to be seen, as with any other historical geo-political topic, in the context of the underlying Cold War ideology bearing on it. 
In the case of the division of Germany, this means we have to understand what fear created it, who was afraid of who, and why. 
The following is re-constructed from a series of articles, themselves chapters from a Cold War history book I originally wrote and intended as a Ph.D. but never gave myself time off from other work to submit a proposal and present it academically; although it is written in a fully referenced academic style. References have been omitted for reasons space and of readability flow. 

When Did The Cold War Begin?
The Cold War started not, as mainstream Tellytubby history maintains, in the immediate post-war period; not in the 1950s or 60s. No. The Cold War started as soon as there was somebody to have a cold war about. The Cold War started following the Russian Revolution of November 7-8 1917, when Russia's wealth fell into the hands of the Russian people. 
The Cold War didn't come from the politically conscious working class, who greeted the revolution with enthusiastic support. It came from the capitalists, whose newspapers screamed:
"a danger as grave as was the invasion of Gengis Khan or Tamerlane"
(Daily Chronicle Dec 18 1918.)
"The remedy for Bolshevism is bullets."
(The Times, Nov 1917.)
"A condition of barbarism worse than the Stone Age."
"The Bolshevik baby should have been strangled in its cradle."
"Of all the tyrannies in history the Bolshevik tyranny is the worst, the most destructive, the most degrading."
"...the avowed enemies of civilisation."
"An infected Russia, a plague-bearing Russia." 
"The dark conspirators in the Kremlin."
"Diabolical machinery all over the world."
 (Winston Churchill.)
Others were even more ridiculous: 
Rankin:"Is it true that they eat human bodies there in Russia?"
Bullitt:"I did see the skeleton of a child eaten by its parents."
Rankin:"Then they're just like human slaves in Russia?"
Bullitt:"There are more human slaves in Russia than ever existed anywhere in the world."
Rankin:"You said before that sixty percent of the Communist Party here are aliens. Now what percent of these aliens are Jews?
... Is it true, Mr. Bullitt, that the Communists went into the southern states and picked up niggers and sent them to Moscow to study revolution?
Are you aware they teach niggers to blow up bridges?"
(Testimony of William C. Bullitt to US Un-American Activities Committee.) 
"Bolshevism is worse than war."
(Herbert Hoover, Chairman of the American Relief Administration.)
"No one could tell what would emerge from the immense, horrible catastrophe of Russia, except that it would probably be something very menacing to civilisation and very dangerous to the peace of Europe and Asia... His Majesty's Government does not recognise the Petrograd Administration as a de jure or de facto Government."
(British Foreign Secretary Balfour, to Parliament, Jan 16 1918.)
"The liquidation of the Bolsheviks is only a matter of days or even hours."
(Daily Chronicle, Nov 12 1917.)
"I would very much like the Bolsheviks to have it [poison gas BM.]."
(Winston Churchill, April 1919,, approving General Sir William Ironside's plan to use poisonous gas against the Soviets.) 
Why do you think they hated the Russian Revolution? Would the following have anything to do with it?: 
"Russia is a great country. You all know, because you are intimately connected with it in your business, what the potentialities of Russia are, whether it be from the point of view of manufacture or the point of view of mineral wealth, or any other thing, because Russia has everything."
(Sir Francis Baker, European manager of Vickers, Chairman of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce.) 
"Siberia, the most gigantic prize offered to the civilised world since the discovery of the Americas."
(British Federation of Industries Bulletin.) 
"In oil Baku is incomparable... Baku is greater than any other oil city in the world."
(From the British journal "The Near East".) 
"Russia, with her 180,000,000 of people, with her fertile soil stretching from Central Europe across Asia to the shores of the Pacific and from the Arctic down to the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea... market possibilities such as even the most optimistic dared not dream of... Russia, potentially and actually - the granary, the fishery, the lumber-yard, the coal, gold, silver and platinum mine of the world."
(From the Business journal "Japan Salesman".) 
Similar ideas were in the mind of another capital aim a few years later: 
"If I had the Ural Mountains with their incalculable treasures of raw materials, Siberia with its vast forests, and the Ukraine with its tremendous wheat fields, Germany and the National Socialist leadership would swim in plenty."
(Adolf Hitler, Sept 12 1936.) 
The first act of the new Soviet Government, early in the morning after the very night it took power, was the Decree on Peace: 
"The Workers' and Peasants' Government created by the Revolution... supported by the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, proposes to all combatant peoples and their governments to begin immediate negotiations for a just and democratic peace... To continue this war in order to determine how to divide the weak annexed nationalities between the powerful and rich nations, the Government considers the greatest crime against humanity... The Government abolishes secret diplomacy... conduct all negotiations quite openly before the whole people, proceeding forthwith to the publication in full of the secret treaties... concluded by the Government of landlords and capitalists... All the contents of these secret treaties ...are hereby unconditionally and completely annulled. ...government of Russia addresses itself in particular to the class conscious workers ...England, France and Germany... to free mankind from the horrors of war and its consequences..."
(From the Decree on Peace; the first act of the new Soviet Government, Nov 8 1917.)
The Soviet peace proposals were completely rejected by the governments of Britain, France, the US and others. The Russian workers thought it better to make a separate peace with the Germans than continue to drag on a war for objectives hidden in their capitalist rulers' secret treaties.

The Secret Wars Of Intervention.
"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive �it is the right of the people to alter it."
(The US Declaration of Independence.)
"No nation has a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another; that everyone has a right to form and adopt whatever government they liked best to live under."
(US President George Washington.) 
"Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right � a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world."
(US President Abraham Lincoln.)
"Any nation's right to a form of government and economic system of its own choosing is inalienable... Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible."
(US President Eisenhower.)
The capitalist governments feared the idea of a state run by the working class, in case workers in their own countries should also dare to want to run their countries without capitalists.
A secret treaty signed in Paris in December 1917 by the Allied representatives of Britain, France, and other Western powers was for joint military intervention and the division of Russia into spheres of influence. 
In 1918 the new Soviet state was invaded by the armies of fourteen capitalist nations led by Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the USA, and included Finland, Poland and Czechoslovakia.
British school syllabus and mainstream history books largely ignore the Wars of Intervention against Soviet Russia. 
British plans to attack Russia in 1917 had to be kept from public opinion:
"We should represent to the Bolsheviks that we have no desire to take part in any way in the internal politics of Russia... It is essential that this should be done as quietly as possible, so as to avoid the imputation - as far as we can - that we are preparing to make war on the Bolsheviks." (My italics BM) 
(From the secret Balfour Memorandum, adopted by the War Cabinet on Dec 21 1917.) 
"Of course we are at war with Soviet Russia, but as far as the press and public are concerned we are not."
(Written reply given to a journalist at the War Office in Nov 1919.) 
"It is necessary to take steps to put the Bolsheviks in the wrong, not only before public opinion, but before those who hold the view that Bolshevism is democracy gone astray with large elements of good in it."
(British Foreign Secretary Balfour. 1919.) 
"It would be absolutely fatal to the success of military operations to allow freedom of speech and propaganda to the Bolsheviks... Here amongst the working classes Bolshevism has many devoted adherents."
(General Poole, British interventionist armies, Sept 15 1918.) 
"In pursuance of the cabinet instructions I saw Sir George Riddell about the anti-Bolshevist campaign. He told me... to get together all the facts on the subject... and he would arrange for the facts to be distributed to the more important popular papers." (My italics. B.M.)
(Note from Lord Robert Cecil to Lloyd George, Nov 20 1918.)
"So little of this appeared in print that not only was the newspaper reader at the time kept in ignorance of the role his countrymen were playing in the intervention, but the student of today can find little reference to it in his country's history books."
(Phillip Knightly "The first Casualty: The War Correspondent As Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker.")
"One of the most deadly weapons wielded by the ruling classes of all countries is their power to censor the press; for thereby they are able to create under the pretext of military necessity an artificial public opinion with the object of hiding their fell designs. ...never was it more obvious that the governments of the Central Powers and the Allies, in order to suppress the workers and peasants revolution in Russia, must hide from their own people the truth about this revolution, must represent it to the proletariat of the West as the work of a gang of robbers... I am in a position to see more clearly than those outside this iron ring the power possessed by the ruling classes... Telegrams to my newspaper are suppressed or if passed by the British censor are decapitated, so that no sense is left in them... provocative rumours about what is happening here are spread in London and Paris and my attempts to deny them are frustrated. All the technical apparatus of the capitalist states of Western Europe is set in motion against those whose duty it is to tell the truth."
(Manchester Guardian correspondent in Russia Morgan Philips Price, 1918.)
Douglas Young, the British Consul at Archangel in the Northern USSR, where invading British troops were landed, exposed the interventionist plans:
"During my eleven years' service under the Foreign Office... I have seen how the direction of foreign affairs is the class preserve of an exclusive class bureaucracy; ...The plea of 'State Secrecy' is used by this bureaucracy to conceal their blunders, which often involves the lives of thousands of people... This British Government... proceeded to suppress any news or any expression of opinion which did not coincide with their preconceived ideas... misrepresent and blacken every action of the Soviet Government, giving either deliberately untrue or evasive replies to the independent members of all parties who have tried by questions in Parliament to extract the truth; though there is, of course, always the possibility that Ministers have not been allowed by their officials to know what was going on."
(Douglas Young, "Britain and Russia", Daily Herald, December 14 1918.) 
Young was removed from office and recalled. His dismissal was even considered:
"The only point that occurs to me is whether he (Young) would not be rather dangerous if dismissed from the Service. He can make out a rather plausible pro-Bolshevist case... and it would be extremely inconvenient to have him at large countering such anti-Bolshevist propaganda as we are able to conduct."
(J.D.Gregory, British Foreign Office Chief, April 3 1918.) 
"The unfortunate thing is that in substance he (Young) has been proved right."
(Lord Curzon, on the question of Douglas Young.) 
Invading foreign armies eventually surrounded a small area of central Russia. The Soviets had to fight or be crushed.
Foreign armies were eventually forced to withdraw because of the lack of any mass support from the Soviet people: 
"The evidence that came home from our most trusted and best informed agents in Russia convinced me they although the majority of the people were not Communists, they preferred Bolshevik rule to that of the supporters of the old regime... They did not want the landowners back. The revolution had given them... ownership of the land they imperfectly cultivated, and they did not like the idea of foreigners coming with arms into their country to restore the old order of landlord domination and exaction."
(Lloyd George, in "The Truth About the Peace Treaties.")
Further evidence of this was revealed by US intelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Eichelberger on November 7 1919, and not declassified until 55 years later:
"...the Kolchak government... backed strongly by England... has not been able to withstand the advances of the Red Army... The Russian peasant, after a year of the Kolchak government, can only point to... his villages burned; his goods stolen... Many of the reports which have reached the world concerning the merits of the Kolchak government, have emanated from the British Government... ...the [anti-Soviet BM] government has been engaged in fighting democracy." 
(Secret US report of Nov 7 1919, declassified in 1974.) 
"We had failed to create a reliable Russian Army... now there was nothing to be gained by British forces remaining at Archangel a day longer than necessary."
(British War Office Document 33.950.) 
"Situation is becoming more and more hopeless. Bolsheviks are masters of the situation."
(British Ambassador George Buchanan, in a report to London, Sept 18 1917.)
And the British capitalists failed to influence public opinion strongly enough for continued intervention:
"The difficulties of the Entente in formulating a Russian policy have indeed proved insurmountable, since in no allied country has there been a sufficient weight of public opinion to justify armed intervention against the Bolsheviks on a decisive scale, with the inevitable result that military operations have lacked cohesion and purpose."
(Sir Henry Wilson, British Chief of Staff, Dec 1 1919.) 
"The Soviet government is firmly established and the Communist Party is strong politically and morally... the Soviet government is the only constructive force in Russia today... No government save a socialist government can be set up in Russia today except by foreign bayonets, and any government so set up will fall the moment such support is withdrawn."
(William Bullitt, American agent on a mission to Soviet Russia, in a telegram to US President Woodrow Wilson, 1919.) 
Counter-revolution from within and intervention from without forced the Soviets to build a workers' Red Army in order to maintain strong defences against capital, which they knew would never leave them in peace. Even British spy Captain Francis McCullough admitted that:
"...the abolition of war and militarism is one of the great objectives of the Communists. ...it was the attacks made on them by Denikin, Kolchak, the Czechs, the British, the French, the Americans and others which made them take up arms to defend their existence... Had it not been for the intervention... there would have been no Red Army in Russia. The Bolsheviks are pacifists and anti-militarists."
(British spy in Russia Captain Francis McCullough. 1920.) 
Now began a long and arduous task of building a modern industrial Socialist State in a backward country covering one sixth of the earth, under a complete economic blockade, with a national "debt" to imperialism of 80,000,000,000 gold roubles, with material losses from a war of $60,000,000,000 for which the invading nations paid not a penny of reparations, and with a nation of uneducated workers and peasants 80% of whom were illiterate. 
No other socio-economic system has ever industrialised on such a vast scale and so rapidly. Even in two centuries, capitalism has not solved a single problem facing mankind - poverty, starvation, homelessness, education, medicine, health, unemployment, wars, economic security and stability. 
While the Soviet people; surrounded by a hostile capitalist world which was already plotting their destruction; built the heavy industry necessary for their massive agricultural, health, education, housing and industrial programmes of the 1920s and 30s, including massive dams, hydro-electric power and electrification of the whole country - a project no capitalist country could undertake even today; the capitalist world was already heading for economic and social crisis, fascism and another war:
"Unless drastic measures are taken to save it, the capitalist system throughout the civilised world will be wrecked within a year."
(Governor of the Bank of England Montague Norman in a letter to the Governor of the Banque de France M.Monet in 1931.) 

A Solution To Capitalism In Crisis: Adolf Hitler Is Brought To Power
In January 1933 after a meeting between German big capitalists and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.
"I met the Fuhrer for the first time in 1927... recognising that only the policy of Adolf Hitler could lead to our goal, I put myself completely at the services of his movement, beginning with that time... As a result of a pamphlet written by the Fuhrer which I distributed, several meetings took place between the Fuhrer and leading personalities from industry in which Adolf Hitler formulated his ideas in a brief and clear cut form."
(Head of the Rhine-Westphalia Coal Syndicate Emil Kirdorf. 1934.)
"I established the connection between Hitler and the important industrialists... It is generally known that on 27 January 1932 � a year before he came to power � Adolf Hitler made a 2� hour speech in the Industrialists' Club in Dusseldorf. This speech made a deep impression on the assembled industrialists, and as a result, a number of substantial donations began to flow from the sources of the heavy industries into the funds of the NSDAP [National Socialist German Workers' Party � the Nazi Party B.M.]... In the last years before the seizure of power the large industrial associations provided funds continuously."
(German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, in his book "I Paid Hitler", 1941.)
The banks and the big monopolies of Krupp, IG-Farben, Flick and Thyssen paid over 60 million Reichsmarks a year to the Nazi Party between 1933 and 1945, totalling over 700 million Reichsmarks. 
"Hitler had only to command and the most powerful of the pre-nazi potentates would snap to obey - or else. Our poking about in the Villa Hugel and questioning of Alfred Krupp and his works managers erased that impression. Adolf Hitler and his party had never been allowed quite to forget that they had depended upon the industrialists to put them in office, and in the future they could go further with the industrialists' help than without it."
(James Martin, post-war US military administration section leader in Berlin.)
"It is not true that the big German industrialists joined national socialism at the last moment... They were its enthusiastic promoters from the very beginning. Seizure of power by the national socialists was only made possible with the support of the German heavy industries and high finance. Conversion of the German economy to a war economy and to the feverish armament for the war of aggression was made under direct guidance of the German industrialists."
(From the US Senate Kilgore Committee, Oct 1945.) 
Much the same as with Iraq's Saddam Hussein, British and American capitalists who financed German fascism, then, at the end of the war, put the "fascists" on trial. 
A brief description of fascism is that it is naked capitalism � capitalism stripped of its mask of democracy. It is necessary to be aware of the distinction that Hitler's racism was against the Slavic and other races and the Jews; but his fascism was essentially against the organised working class, their trade unions and political parties, especially where it held real political power � the USSR. This was what big business invested in and made Hitler and the Nazis and their organisations powerful, not Hitler's racism against the Jews. Indeed, rich Jews invested in German Fascism. 

Who Supported The Nazis?
"I agree with the words spoken by Herr Hitler last month when he said that cooperation between our two peoples in full confidence with one another would be fortunate for the whole world."
(British Prime Minister Chamberlain, in a speech at Blackburn, Feb 22 1939.) 
British political support and armaments soon began to flow in large quantities to Germany. 
German Fascism had many friends and supporters in British big business, the British landed aristocracy, Royal family, bankers, finance and industrial capital, press lords and Government ministers. They included Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Governor of the Bank of England Sir Montague Norman, Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare, British Ambassador in Germany Sir Nevile Henderson, Lord and Lady Astor (Marquis of Londonderry, owner of the Observer, Secretary for Air 1931-35, owners of the Clivedon estate - where the Munich deal was planned), J.J.Astor, Chairman of The Times, Winston Churchill, the Duke of Hamilton, Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon, the Windsors and other members of the Royal family. It was the Duke of Hamilton's estate on which Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess landed during the war in 1941 in order to try and conclude an alliance between Britain and Germany against the USSR. 
As First World War reparations, Germany was to pay thirty thousand million dollars over 58 years. But just after the war ended the US loaned Germany ten thousand million dollars under the Dawes Plan in order to prevent Germany from going communist. It was the same pattern after the Second World War, when war reparations and debts were waived and billions of dollars of capital were pumped into Germany under the Marshall Aid plan to prevent Germany again going communist.
Thus Germany was built up as the "bulwark against Communism" to the point that she was able to launch another world war after only twenty years from losing the first one.
"Will the Germans go to war again? I don't think that there is any doubt about it; and the curious thing is that I am almost persuaded that some day we shall have to let the Germans arm or we shall have to arm them... One of the present menaces to peace in Europe today is the totally unarmed condition of Germany."
(Sir Arthur Balfour (Lord Riverdale), Advisor to the Treasury, Chairman and Managing Director of Arthur Balfour Co. Ltd; Capital Steel Works, Sheffield; Chairman of High Speed Alloys; in a speech reported in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Oct 24 1933.) 
As a result of the Treaty of Versailles Germany had lost its former colonies, many to Britain. Germany was an imperial power without an empire or an army.
Germany continued to build up its military strength.
On October 14 1933 Germany withdrew from the Geneva disarmament conference. On October 19 1933 Germany walked out of the League of Nations (forerunner of the UN). On March 13 1935 Germany repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, which forbade Germany to re-arm. On March 16 1935 Germany introduced universal military conscription; and an Anglo-German agreement was signed enabling Germany to increase its Navy more than five times. And British Labour Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald tabled a draft at the 1933 Geneva Disarmament Conference to double Germany's land based forces from the Treaty of Versailles limit of 100,000 to 200,000.

Why Did They Support The Nazis? 
"I wished to be the destroyer of Marxism. I will achieve this task."
(Adolf Hitler, at his trial, 1923.)
"It is one of the foremost aims of the NSDAP [Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party B.M.] to overcome and destroy the Marxist world outlook, and to liquidate its chief exponents."
(Hitler's chief Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg.)
"The roots of the Hitlerite movement is the struggle against socialism, in other words against Marxism."
(Karl Friederick von Siemens, in a lecture to General Electric bosses, Oct 27 1931.) 
"Yes, we have taken the unalterable decision to tear Marxism out by its roots."
(Adolf Hitler, addressing the Dusseldorf Industrialist's Club, Jan 27 1932.) 
"If the National Socialist Party collapses, there will be another 10 million Communists in Germany."
(Adolf Hitler, to his financial backers, 1932.)
"We shall not only extirpate this plague. We shall tear the word "Marxism" out of every book. In fifty years time no one in Germany is to know what that word means."
(Goering, March 19 1933.) 
"We have broken the international solidarity of the proletariat."
(Adolf Hitler, 1933.)
"National Socialism, with its philosophy based on the racial principle, has recognised Bolshevism in the Jewish-Marxist doctrine as its principle adversary, which tries to push forward the world revolution in the military or ideological sphere, having Russia as its base, and which must be regarded as the fiercest enemy of all German and European culture."
(Nazi Professor H. Ludat, 1939.)
"In their systematic destruction of all opposing groups, Hitler and Mussolini had the communists first on their list. Among the early opponents of fascism, the communists were in the forefront."
(From US Army bulletin "Army Talk." March 1945.)

Who Else Supported The Nazis And Why? 
Support for German and Japanese fascists also came from capitalists everywhere including Royal Dutch Shell, an Anglo-Dutch oil company which previously owned the Russian Baku oil fields; ICI; the French Comite de Forges; US capitalists; five major British banks, and US and French banks. Arming Germany and Japan were Vickers Armstrong; Rolls Royce; ICI; Hawker; and the British Aluminium Company. 
"The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution. There is a deep sense not only of discontent but of anger and revolt among the workers against pre-war conditions. The whole existing order in its political, social and economic aspects is questioned by the masses of the population from one end of Europe to the other."
(Lloyd George, in a secret memo. March 1919.)
"Bolshevism is spreading... It has invaded the Baltic provinces and Poland... we have received very bad news regarding its spread to Budapest and Vienna. Italy, also, is in danger... Therefore, something must be done against Bolshevism."
(French Premier Clemenceau, at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.)
"The whole of American policy during the liquidation of the armistice was to contribute everything it could to prevent Europe from going Bolshevik."
(Herbert Hoover, in charge of American relief in Europe, Aug 17 1921.) 
"If the Powers succeeded in overthrowing Nazism in Germany, what would follow? Not a Conservative, Socialist or Liberal regime, but extreme Communism. Surely that could not be their objective? A Communist Germany would be infinitely more formidable than a Communist Russia."
(Lloyd George. 1933.) 
"Unity is essential and the real danger to the world today does not come from Germany or Italy... but from Russia."
(Sir Arnold Wilson, House of Commons, June 11 1938.) 
"I feel that if the Nazi regime in Germany is destroyed then the country will go Communist."
(Marquess of Londonderry.") 
"...the acute danger from Bolshevism that threatens Europe... The extension of Bolshevism throughout Europe remains the fixed determination of Russia. It is extraordinary that so many people in this country do not appear to be alive to the dire peril that exists. �Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini are the direct outcome of Bolshevism, and there can be no doubt that had it not been for them, Bolshevism would be devastating the greater part of Europe today."
(Sir Robert Gower, The Times July 31 1936.)
"If we were to isolate Germany and therefore prove to the German people that Herr Hitler had failed them... eventually they will discard him and seek another God... There is only one, the anti-Christ of Communism."
(Sir Thomas Moore MP, Sunday Dispatch, Oct 22 1933.)
"In a very short time, perhaps in a year, perhaps in two, the Conservative elements in this country will be looking to Germany as the bulwark against Communism in Europe. She is planted right in the centre of Europe, and if her defence breaks down against the Communists - only two or three years ago a very distinguished German statesman said to me: " am not afraid of Nazism, but of Communism" - and if Germany is seized by the Communists, Europe will follow; because the Germans would make the best job of it that any country could. Do not let us be in a hurry to condemn Germany. We should be welcoming Germany as a friend."
(Lloyd George, House of Commons, Nov 28 1934.) 
"I consider the danger from the left far exceeds the danger from the right, and in the event of a new outbreak of communism in Germany, these organisations [Nazi B.M.] would powerfully serve the cause of order."
(British Ambassador in Berlin Lord D'Abernon, in his diary, Nov 1920.)
"I ask those who hate Hitler... what has Hitler done of which we can reasonably complain?... Let us try to forget his misdeeds of the past, and the methods which, no doubt, we all of us deplore, but which I suggest have been very largely forced upon him."
(British Tory MP C.T.Culverwell, Oct 6 1938.) 
"I was at a loss to understand why we could not make common ground in some form or other with Germany in opposition to Communism."
(Lord Londonderry, 1938.)
"The [Conservative B.M.] leaders... became extremely alarmed at the prospect of the spread of the ideology of communism... to Great Britain itself. They were, therefore, prepared to do almost anything to build up protection for British capitalism and imperialism against the spread of this, to them, dangerous disease, which had already gained a considerable hold amongst the British working class... To fight this ideology must mean hostility to Russia... throughout this period the major factor in European politics was the successive utilisation by Great Britain... of various fascist governments to check the power and danger and the rise of communism or socialism."
(Sir Stafford Cripps, Feb 1940.)
"Will the Germans go to war again? I don't think that there is any doubt about it; and the curious thing is that I am almost persuaded that some day we shall have to let the Germans arm or we shall have to arm them... One of the present menaces to peace in Europe today is the totally unarmed condition of Germany."
(Sir Arthur Balfour (Lord Riverdale), Advisor to the Treasury, Chairman and Managing Director of Arthur Balfour Co. Ltd; Capital Steel Works, Sheffield; Chairman of High Speed Alloys; in a speech reported in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Oct 24 1933.)
"From 1924 to 1929 a passion amounting almost to mania developed in the City of London for lending money to Germany."
(Lord Boothby, 1934.)
"Who finances Germany? Without this country as a clearing house for payments and the ability to draw on credits... Germany could have not have pursued her plans... Time and again Germany has defaulted on her obligations, public and private; but she has gone on buying wool, cotton, nickel, rubber and petrol until her requirements were fulfilled, and the financing has been done directly or indirectly through London..."
(Stock Exchange Gazette, May 3 1935.)
"We regret to admit that from a small but rather influential circle in the City of London, there flows a constant stream of propaganda in favour of credits for Germany. These propagandists say that a loan to Germany would be a twofold investment. We could buy off German aggression, and by propping up an admittedly desperate and faithless tyranny we could prevent Germany from falling into Communism."
(From the City journal "The Banker", Feb 1937.)
"There can be no doubt that practically the whole of the free exchange available to Germany for the purchase of raw materials was supplied directly and indirectly by Great Britain.  If the day of reckoning ever comes, the liberal attitude of the British Government in this matter may well be responsible for the lives of many British soldiers and civilians. War materiel which will eventually be used against this country could never have been produced but for the generosity with which Great Britain is giving her enemy free exchange for the purchase of raw materials."
(British economist Paul Einzig, "World Finance 1938-1939.")
"Huge German orders for rubber and copper were executed in London yesterday regardless of cost. The buying of nearly 3,000 tons of copper sent the price rocketing... Already Germany has bought over 10,000 tons this month in London alone. The London Rubber Exchange enjoyed almost a record turnover owing to a German order for 4,000 tons. The price shot up... Germany is reported to have bought 17,000 tons already this month - two months' normal supply."
(News Chronicle Aug 19 1939. � 15 days before war started.)
"Only thirteen days before war was declared; 17,000 tons of rubber, 8,000 tons of copper, large quantities of tin and lead, and other materials necessary for armaments were furnished by Britain to Germany."
(British historian Ivor Montagu, in "The Traitor Class.")
"To execute the orders in time, heavy withdrawals were made from stores in the UK. A third of our stocks of rubber and a quarter of our stocks of nickel have gone and are now on their way to Germany. All deliveries have to be made by September 1st. Mr Burgin, Minister of Supply, had the power to ban the deals, but refused to do so."
(Evening Standard Aug 21 1939.)

Pushing Hitler Eastward
The Second World War began long before 1939. Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936 and 1937. And from 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria and the USSR, Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia), The Germans and Italians bombed Spain and the democratically elected Republican government there was overthrown and Franco's fascists siezed power, and Germany entered the Rhine zone and seized Austria.
In all these actions Britain did nothing. 
Not only did that same British government which launched wars of intervention against the Soviets have a policy of "non-intervention" when the democratically elected Spanish Republican Government requested aid against Franco's fascist army, but they recognised Franco not long after he seized power.
On March 1 1938, the German army occupied Austria and incorporated it into the Reich (Anschluss). Again, the British did nothing. The British and French officially recognised the Anschluss.
Capitalism was in deepening crisis and making frantic preparations for war on the Soviet Union. The imperialist powers of international finance capital were already planning joint attacks on the newly built socialist state. Heads of states, government ministers, members of the aristocracy, international bankers, financiers and capitalists were careering about all over the globe conducting secret talks, agreements, treaties and alliances.
Right up till September 1939, when war was declared by Britain, the "enemy" was the 'nasty Russian Bolsheviks':
"Unity is essential and the real danger to the world today does not come from Germany or Italy... but from Russia."
(Sir Arnold Wilson, House of Commons, June 11 1938.) 
"The sturdy young Nazis of Germany are Europe's guardians against the Communist danger... Germany must have elbow room... The diversion of Germany's reserves of energies and organising ability into Bolshevik Russia would help to restore the Russian people to a civilised existence, and perhaps turn the tide of world trade once more towards prosperity. By the same process Germany's need for expansion would be satisfied, and that growing menace which at present darkens the horizon would be removed forever."
(Lord Rothermere, in his Daily Mail, Nov 28 1933.) 
"We give Japan freedom of action with regard to Russia... We open to Germany the way to the east by giving it a possibility of expansion."
(Lord Lloyd, 1934.) 
"If Germany once again becomes a colonial power, not only will her interests clash with ours in that field, but she will inevitably be drawn into rivalry with us as a Naval Power. Surely, then it is the first elementary duty of British statesmanship to see to it that the great energies, ambitions and enthusiasms of the new Germany are directed into channels where they will not clash with the essential interests of Great Britain."
(Churchill's son in law Duncan Sandys, member of the staff of the Foreign Office, May 2 1935.) 
"I am convinced that neither Germany nor the other fascist powers want to go to war with the western democracies so long as these democracies do not hamper the drive of fascism towards the East."
(US President Herbert Hoover. 1938.) 
"Geographically Germany must occupy the predominating position in relation to the States of central and south-eastern Europe. I do not see why we should expect a fundamental change to take place in these regions. Far from this country being concerned, we have no wish to crowd Germany out of these countries or to encircle her economically. "
(Chamberlain, House of Commons, Nov 1 1938.) 
"I would like to try... to discover in what direction the pressure of German dynamism can be exercised, to examine if we can still consider this dynamism as directed exclusively towards the East and to draw some practical conclusions for our conduct."
(French Ambassador to Berlin Coulondre, to French Foreigh Minister Bonnet, March 19 1939.) 
"By 1938 I had come to the conclusion that if a war occurred between Germany on the one side and England and France on the other, it would result in either a German victory or in a prostrate and devastated Europe. I, therefore, advocated that England and France... permit Germany to expand Eastward into Russia without declaring war."
(Lindburgh, to the America First Committee, Oct 30 1941.) 
"The basic idea was that if Britain would leave Herr Hitler alone in his sphere (Eastern Europe), he would leave us alone."
(British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Aug 26 1939.) 
"Tell your government that I am always ready to abrogate the Franco-Soviet pact in order to conclude a broad based Franco-German pact."
(French Foreign Minister Pierre Lavalle to the German Ambassador in Paris.) 
"Leave us our colonial empire and we'll let you have the Ukraine."
(French Foreign Minister Bonnet to Nazi Foreign Minister Ribbentrop.) 

The West Rejects The Only Alliance That Can Prevent War.
On May 7 1939, Britain rejected a triple mutual assistance pact (Britain, Poland and the USSR) proposed by the USSR on April 16 1939. Poland also refused to accept it. An Anglo-French-Soviet mutual assistance pact was also rejected by Britain. Either of these treaties could have stopped Hitler's war plans. Hitler, in 1939, was awaiting the outcome of the Anglo-French-Soviet talks before considering taking action over Danzig:
The British wanted the USSR to come to their aid if they were attacked but wanted no commitments to come to the aid of the USSR:
The rejection of a joint alliance with the Soviet Union, an alliance which would have ensured the defence of Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France and Britain, sealed the fate of these countries.
For the second time in their short history the Soviet people had to prepare themselves to fight or be exterminated.
Britain, France and Poland alone could certainly never have withstood the Nazi powers. But an alliance of the USSR, France, Britain and Poland had the overwhelming power to stop German militarism in its tracks.
The USSR was thoroughly adequate in terms of material and productive resources. But the USSR has a long land border to defend against the Fascist bloc, which would stretch manpower to its limits. As history was to prove; it was the Western powers that were thoroughly inadequate.
Even Churchill acknowledged that:
"There was no military organism, nor could there have been for several years, which could ever have given the blows which Russia has given or survived the losses which Russia has borne."
(Winston Churchill.)
And:
"...There was no force in the world which could have been called into being, except after several more years, that would have been able to maul and break the German army..."
(Winston Churchill, House of Commons, Aug 2 1944.)
Only the inclusion of the USSR into a Western alliance had the power to stop Hitler. The USSR had already on more than one occasion called for a conference of all nations for collective security against Nazi Germany in 1939. But the British Tories were so hostile towards communism that they betrayed the chance of this alliance which would have prevented the war; as was admitted later. 
Britain had effectively signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in September 1938 when it signed the Munich agreement. France signed a similar pact with Germany in December 1938. 
Britain, and other Western powers, did not want an alliance with the Soviet Union. They all hoped to move in after German and Soviet armies had destroyed each other. These British actions were also in line with the 1941 Truman/Moore Brabazon policy of waiting for the two to destroy each other and leave Britain in a dominating position over Soviet territory.
They did not sign an Anglo-Soviet treaty until July 12 1941, after Hitler had occupied Europe and attacked the Soviet Union and they realised Hitler would have the material resources of the USSR at his disposal and security in his rear in order to be in a stronger position to now attack Britain. 
The "phoney war" conducted by the British from September 3 1939, when war was declared, to Dunkirk, was a war in which nothing serious was intended. Likewise, the British Government, in order to placate public opinion, conducted phoney negotiations with the Soviet Government, in which nothing serious was intended.
As late as July and August 1939, World War Two could have been prevented had the British Government the integrity and morality to ally itself with the Soviet Union instead of with Hitler.
While conducting secret negotiations with Hitler and refusing an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance, the British Government accepted Soviet proposals for military talks on July 25 1939. Diplomatic and military missions were sent to Moscow. But every delay was put in the way of the progress and conductance of these talks. On July 10 the British Ambassador to Germany said to the French Foreign Minister that:
The German Government was following these proceedings and expressed its willingness to sign a Non Aggression Pact with the USSR on several occasions, and, as it was known in Britain, the Soviet Government refused this until the Anglo-French-Soviet negotiations had failed on August 21. The Soviet-German Non Aggression Pact was signed on August 23. The British and French even refused a similar Non Aggression Pact with the USSR.
No Anglo-Soviet treaty was signed.  The result was a year later British and French troops were paying the cost at Dunkirk when the `Phoney War' ended.

The Soviet Unions Only Alternative: 
Sign Germany's Non-Aggression Pact.
So much distortion and lies are written about the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact of August 23 1939 that it must be explained in detail.
Not very intelligent and dishonest and usually Right Wing political and history hacks often, without any further thought, make the dangerous suggestion that: "the Soviet Union caused the war by forming an alliance with Hitler." And sadly, I have heard this lie propagated by certain "peace" activists.
Such ignorant or wilful distortions of history show nothing but hypocrisy and contempt for the Soviet struggle for joint security since the mid 1930s and the West's rejection of it. The lack of a Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact would anyway clearly not have stopped Hitler for a single second. However, neutralising the Soviet Union for a while would buy time for Germany. Hitler was worried that British and French negotiators were still in Moscow, and thought that offering a deal with the Soviets was a way of neutralising them while he invaded Poland.
It is no exaggeration to say that the capitalist powers, both fascist and non-fascist, had put the Soviet Union in an emergency situation. After the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, the immediate question for the Soviet Union was: to face an immediate attack, or to hold it off for whatever breathing space it could get. As already shown, the Western powers, individually, or even collectively, could not possibly have the capacity to stop Hitler's armies without the inclusion of the USSR. Only in an alliance with the USSR could this be done. But at this late hour the British continued to reject any form of alliance with the USSR while secretly negotiating with Hitler. The Soviets realised that the British Government had no intention of any alliance against Hitler; and thus isolated, played for time to further industrialise and arm against the coming war by signing the Non-Aggression Pact offered by the German Government. It is important to point out that this was a mutual non-aggression treaty, not an alliance, as some bourgeois historians try to make out. Furthermore, it was a treaty the Soviets were under no illusions that Hitler would keep.
Also, it is obvious that had the Soviet Union not gained this extra time to arm itself the outcome of the war would have been quite different. And right up to the day war was declared, and even at the end of 1943 and again after the war was finished, powerful leading British circles wanted alliances with Germany to destroy the USSR. The period of the "Phoney War", Hitler's backing off at Dunkirk in order to give the British army a chance to escape, and Hess' mission to Scotland, were further invitations for this, British consideration for which is still kept secret.
If the Soviets had not signed the Non-Aggression Pact with Germany, fighting the Germans would have meant not only fighting on two fronts but also without any allies.
Thus is refuted the ridiculous lie that the USSR started the war by forming an alliance with Hitler and let Britain "go it alone" in 1939-1941. Britain's going it alone was none other than Britain's own making.

Britain Conducts "Other Negotiations" � An Alliance With Hitler?
What "other negotiations" were conducted on behalf of the British people by their government and big business during the years and even weeks leading up to the Second World War?
On the day Hitler entered Prague the Federation of British Industries was drawing up agreements with German big business Reichsgruppe Industrie in Dusseldorf. In July it was revealed that the British Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade Robert Hudson had been with Hitler's Economics Minister Helmuth Wohlthat to negotiate a �1,000,000,000 loan to Nazi Germany. 
If in the economic field the lives of the millions who were to die in the coming war were betrayed by capital, over which they had absolutely no control; in the diplomatic and political field they were even more betrayed by their 'democratic' leaders. 
The British appeasers did nothing when the Nazis marched into Austria. In fact; while the Nazi armies were marching into Vienna, Chamberlain was entertaining Ribbentrop at a dinner in his honour at 10 Downing Street. During the dinner Chamberlain was handed a note informing him of Hitler's invasion of Austria. 
Even at the late hour of August 26 1939, one week before war 'broke out', the British Government hoped for a deal with Hitler:
In a poll conducted in April 1939, 87 percent of British people were in favour of an Anglo-Soviet alliance. 
The Germans were meticulous in keeping records of every meeting and conversation. And the Soviets were fortunate in capturing these records from the Reichstag, the German Foreign Ministry, and many other sources. One such source was Herbert von Dirksen, the German Ambassador to Britain 1938-1939. Von Dirksen did a very careless thing for a diplomat in keeping secret documents and records at home. The Soviet army in 1945 discovered von Dirksen's private papers in his estate at Groeditsberg in Germany. Among his papers were typed copies of his messages from London and messages of the German Foreign Ministry, and secret talks involving Sir Horace Wilson and Robert Hudson and von Dirksen and Goering's economics advisor Helmuth Wohlthat. Dirksen's papers show that even at this late hour, the British Government proposed an agreement with Hitler. 
Goering's US educated economist Helmuth Wohlthat met Horace Wilson in July and August 1939 to discuss Anglo-German cooperation and a non-aggression pact:
Much of these secret negotiations for an alliance with Hitler in the build up to the war, and continued during the war, is still kept an official secret from the British people.
In comparison with its "slow boat" low level mission to Moscow, the British Government made hurried, high level arrangements with Nazi Germany:
The British Government erupted in frantic activity. On August 19 the British secret service arranged to bring Goering to Britain. Backed by Chief of British Intelligence Sir Stewart Menzies and with the consent of Lord Halifax and Prime Minister Chamberlain, British Intelligence Officer Sydney Cotton flew to Germany to persuade Goering, who could influence Hitler, to come to Britain. On August 21 London received a message that Goering agreed to come to Britain to talk with the Prime Minister. It was planned that the plane carrying Goering would land at some remote airfield in Britain, and Goering would be taken by car to see the Prime Minister at his country estate at Chequers.
Three days before Hitler invaded Poland the British Government were still looking for an agreement with Germany. 
The "No War" Daily Express headlines were planned by Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare (Lord Templewood); who also, in secret meetings with the press owners and editors, revealed the British Cabinet's non hostility to the German demand that no news unfavourable to the Nazis was printed in the British press. The British press, being "free", kindly obliged. Daily Herald editor Francis Williams resigned when his articles were censored by the paper's commercial board of editors. 
On May 6 1938 German Ambassador Von Dirksen thanked the editor of the Daily Mail for awaiting German approval before publishing Lord Rothermere's article extolling the Nazi viewpoint saying that "Czechoslovakia is not of the remotest concern to us." 
Press lords and editors were to the fore of the Clivedon set of pro-Nazi supporters including J.J.Astor, chairman of The Times, and Lord Astor, owner of the Observer, and their editors Dawson and Garvin.
The British Government persuaded the press owners that:
"...out-spoken criticism of Hitler's policy or of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews would be against the national interest. Many of these approaches were, unfortunately successful... such words just at this moment would do the gravest harm to negotiations then proceeding, as a result of which things would shortly take a turn for the better."
(Francis Williams, former editor of the Daily Herald.) 
A secret Government Ministry of Information was set up. Newsreel films showing Nazi aggression were censored.
"We did not want to show a film which was going to enhance hatred towards Germany. We made the decision on a report that was read to us. I have not seen the film... it could not be arranged in time."
(Chairman of the Watch Committee responsible for censoring films, Nov 1939.) 
The Official Secrets Act was judiciously used to suppress any newspaper hostile to the Government's policy. Newspapers like the Daily Worker (now Morning Star) were suppressed and closed down. The Daily Worker was banned twice, once for 14 months after Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union.
At that time it was feared by the Government that if the British public knew that the British Government's relations with the USSR were antagonistic, in the words of a telegram from Eden to the US in March 1942: "the situation in Great Britain will be catastrophic." 
Such was Britain's policy of appeasement and of pushing Hitler to the East, and the accompanying unarmed condition of Britain, that Britain had to be sold, lock, stock and barrel, to the US in exchange for war supplies.

Britain Begins A "Phoney War" � 
And Hitler Shows His Appreciation At Dunkirk.
This was not called the "Phoney War" for nothing. It was called the "Phoney War" because no serious attempt was made to oppose Hitler in Europe.
Hitler had long planned his war strategy. He knew that the Western allies would not seriously attack him so long as he was going to fight their common enemy in the East. Also Hitler didn't want a war on two fronts:
Hitler needed Britain to stand aside while he mopped up Europe's industry because Germany would not have had the resources for a sustained war.
Hitler also needed the resources of Europe at his disposal and a subdued Europe in his rear before invading the USSR. And he needed the resources of a subdued USSR before turning on Britain and the other powerful Western nations:
The "Phoney War" allowed Hitler to gather territories and resources in Western Europe for his invasion of the USSR without any serious intervention in his rear.
Because of this and the rapid capitulation and surrender of their capitalist governments Hitler was able to occupy the nations of Western Europe one by one in a very short time: Poland - 25 days, Denmark - 1 day, Holland - 5 days, Belgium - 19 days, France - 44 days, Norway - 63 days. Hitler's experience of Britain's inactivity was learnt in Poland. 
The British Government's "Munich" gift of Czechoslovakia to Hitler gave him a free ride down the Danube, with all its coal and iron; and the Black Sea and its oil.
The Phoney war put up by the British allowed Hitler a free reign in Europe when Germany was getting short of war materials and Hitler was organising his "Barbarossa" invasion of the Soviet Union to gain the materials he needed. A note on drafting Hitler's "Barbarossa Plan" said:
Hitler used tanks from the massive Czech Scoda armaments works to break through the French army on his way to Paris and drove the British Army into the sea at Dunkirk a few weeks later. How many British soldiers were killed by "exceptionally good" Czech armaments given to Hitler at Munich by their British capitalists?
The trickery of Munich had failed. While Hitler was handed the whole of Europe's industrial and material potential on a plate and supplied by Britain right up to the first day of the war by the British Nazi collaborators, and because they had sent stocks of war supplies to Finland's anti-Soviet war, the British government had to face the embarrassment of not being sufficiently armed at the beginning of the war.
So sure was the British government of their appeasement policy of giving Hitler territories in the East as their bulwark against communism that they left Britain totally unprepared for war. 
The very industries that were called upon to speed up arms production for Britain after September 1939 were those who had been busy for years speeding up arms production for Hitler.
Such was Britain's policy of appeasement and of pushing Hitler to the East, and the accompanying unarmed condition of Britain, that Britain had to be sold, lock, stock and barrel, to the US in exchange for war supplies.
After keeping silent about its re-armament and appeasement of Hitler, which included the gift of Czechoslovakia with its massive Skoda tank, aircraft, transport and armaments works, the British Government suddenly, as if surprised, declared on September 3 1939 that war had "broken out". Thus began what became known as the "Phoney War".
Hitler, who was still considering an anti-Soviet alliance with Britain, showed his appreciation by giving the British Expeditionary Forces a "sporting" chance to escape at Dunkirk. It was also reflected in Hitler's deputy, Hess' mission to Scotland in 1941 to discuss the conclusion of an alliance against the USSR.
While Hitler, unmolested by the British Army, was making his preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union; there were British plans for negotiating an alliance with Germany against the Soviet Union. 
Just before Dunkirk, British Foreign Secretary Halifax planned to negotiate with the Nazis stating that "we could get reasonable terms."
Hitler ordered a halt at Dunkirk on May 24 1940 and announced that all he wanted was that Britain should acknowledge Germany's position on the continent.
On May 25 1940 Halifax drafted a telegram to Roosevelt asking if the US would approach Hitler; but it was withheld. Halifax also asked the Italian Ambassador in London if Mussolini would act as intermediary in the negotiations with Hitler and secure peace through an international conference. Halifax told the British Cabinet of his plan for a peace conference sponsored by Mussolini, saying that peace in Europe was the aim, and that we should "consider any proposals which might lead to this."
The British Cabinet was divided, the choice, in simple terms -- whether it would be best to give Britain to the US or Germany, was between those, like Churchill, who wanted to draw the Americans into the war, and the appeasers, who were opposed to spending what remained of the British Empire with America 
The Government were gravely concerned about the public's attitude and morale, which was poor. The British were in a desperate situation. The British Army was defeated and home defences were unprepared. Halifax concluded that the British might have to accept Hitler's mastery of Europe.
Much of this is still kept secret from the British public and from researchers. Public Record Office files on the subject are still closed. Slight hints of British interest in a negotiated peace can be found in Manstein's memoirs and by a careful study of the Mosely Papers declassified in the early 1980s. But the remainder of the Mosely Papers, those from 1937 onwards, which it is suspected could reveal British desire to cooperate in an alliance through appreciation of Hitler's gesture at Dunkirk, are still firmly under lock and key, away from the prying eyes of researchers at the Public Record Office. The details of Hess' visit to discuss an Anglo-German alliance is also still kept secret from the British people.
Evidence from the German side and from a British Major General in charge of the British evacuation of Dunkirk shows that Dunkirk was not quite the "miracle" it is made out to be; or if it was, then the "miracle" was due to none other than Adolf Hitler himself, who ordered his main heavy land army to allow the British to escape at Dunkirk. 
Hitler also refrained from invading Britain when he obviously had the chance immediately after Dunkirk when Britain was at its weakest:
On May 10 1941, a few weeks before Hitler's planned attack on the Soviet Union; playing on the combined capitalist's fear of working class power and communism; Hitler's official deputy Rudolf Hess flew to the Duke of Hamilton's estate in Scotland with an offer from Hitler of an Anglo-German alliance against the USSR.
Some bourgeois historians try to allege that Hess was acting on his own accord. But Himmler and Ribbentrop discussed the matter with Fritz Hesse, Ribbentrop's former assistant and an expert on Britain, immediately after Hess's flight to Britain, asking him what he thought of Hess' chances. It was also noted that the German bombing raids on London more or less ceased for some time after May 10, the day of Hess's flight.
There was also support for an alliance with Hitler in the US, especially among the America First Committee.

Britain Delays The Opening Of The Second Front. 
The Soviets Fight The Nazis Alone For Three Years. 
That it was intended that German finance capital would destroy the USSR is evident from the whole political conduct of the war.
If Churchill kept his true policy hidden behind diplomatic deceit; others were more open about their intentions and policies. The day after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union:
"If we see Germany winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible."
(US Senator, later President, Harry Truman, June 23, in New York Times June 24 1941.) 
The opening of a second front by the West was delayed for three years in the hope that Germany might "kill as many as possible."
A second front was not opened in 1942 or in 1943.
A second front was called for at the Teheran Conference in December 1943. It was called for by the British Labour movement and the TUC. And it had wide and popular public support. Even US President Roosevelt supported it. But Churchill made all sorts of excuses, including "unsuitability of the weather" in order to delay it.
Because of this inactivity the Germans were able to transfer 39 divisions from Western Europe to the Soviet front between December 1941 and April 1942, laying almost bare the Western front to invasion by the Anglo-American forces. 
The Soviet people were left to fight the Nazis in Europe virtually alone for three more years.

Stalingrad And Kursk � The Turning Point Of The War.
But the Nazis' confidence was soon to suffer the first in a series of defeats on the Soviet front.
The following series of letters shows the rapid change over only a few days in German confidence after the Red Army proved for the first time that the German army was not invincible when they halted them at Moscow:
"We are now at a distance of 30 kilometers from Moscow and can see some of its spires. Soon we will have surrounded Moscow and then we'll be billeted in sumptuous winter quarters and I will send you presents which will make Aunt Minna green with envy."
(Letter home from a German soldier, Dec 1 1941.) 
"When you receive this letter the Russians will be defeated and we will be in Moscow parading in Red Square. I never dreamed I'd see so many countries. I also hope to be on hand when our troops parade in England."
(Letter home from a German soldier, Dec 3 1941.) 
"My dear wife, This is hell. The Russians don't want to leave Moscow. They've launched an offensive. Every hour brings news of terrifying developments. It's so cold my very soul is freezing. It's death to venture out in the evening. I beg of you - stop writing about the silks and rubber boots I'm supposed to bring you from Moscow. Can't you understand I'm dying? I'll die for sure. I feel it."
(Letter home from a German soldier, Dec 6 1941.) 
The Red Army halted the Germans at Stalingrad. The only road open for the Germans was back to Berlin. The Soviet victories at Stalingrad and Kursk were indeed the turning point of the war.
Unlike Churchill's false words, Roosevelt had genuine admiration and respect for the Soviet conduct of the war. Commenting on the Soviet victory he said:
"Their (the Soviets') glorious victory stemmed the tide of invasion and marked the turning point in the war of the Allied Nations against the forces of aggression."
(US President Roosevelt.)
Communist national liberation movements in the German occupied countries of Europe exacerbated the Nazis in their rear and helped to change the military-political aspect of the war, and the political geography of post-war Europe. These combined features led the Western Allies to fear the spread of communism in the liberated countries of central and even Western Europe before their own forces could get there.
The West now had to acknowledge their urgent need for a second front. This was the main reason the second front was launched; since by now it was obvious that the Soviets were going to be to the forefront of the victory and peace. 
"By 1943, panic seized the Western rulers at the prospect of the fall of fascism and the victory of communism."
(Labour Monthly, March 1963.)
After the Soviet victory at Stalingrad the US began working frantically on the atom bomb. It began to dawn on the minds of world capital that the Soviet Union was not going to be beaten. Western attitudes changed.
Now that the Germans had suffered their first retreat in the war at Moscow, even a limited operation by the Western Allies would have forced the Germans to divide their now harder pressed forces between two fronts. The Germans were fully occupied on the Eastern front and left Europe comparatively free, giving a good opportunity for attack. But such ideas were kept from the British public:
"In those first days when the invaders were sweeping towards Moscow, ...if the West attacked while the Nazis were fully engaged in the East, the war could be won in 1942. Working on Reynolds News, that letter provided me with a 'scoop', but the censor killed the story."
(British journalist Gordon Schaffer.)
"Most Secret. It is impossible to explain to Parliament and the Nation how it is our Middle East armies had to stand for 4� months without engaging the enemy while all the time Russia is being battered to pieces. I have hitherto managed to prevent public discussion, but at any time it may break out."
(Churchill, in a telegram to Field Marshal Auchinleck, Oct 18 1941.) 
Demands for a second front and for a British force alongside the Soviets were becoming increasingly difficult for the Government to resist:
"Let no man doubt how very near the Russians came to defeating the Germans last winter. It was a close thing, so close that with a little more the Germans would have been defeated. The German army would now be invading Britain if the Russian army had broken down last autumn. For the future we must work together in the war and in the peace."
(Lord Beaverbrook, Daily Herald June 22 1942.)
Plenty of praise! But what was Britain doing?
"There seems to me to be a lack of urgency, almost as if we were spectators rather than participants. Germany can be smashed in 1943."
(Sir Stafford Cripps, Bristol, Feb 8 1942.)
"For weeks, millions of workers, massed at 'Aid to Russia' meetings, have demanded it. [A second front B.M.]"
(Daily Herald June 3 1942.)
"Now the day has come when, in almost every quarter of Britain, the cry goes up, 'Attack, attack in support of Russia'... We know the Russians kill more Germans every day than all the allies put together. We know they destroy more enemy tanks and bring down more enemy planes than any of us or all of us. Russia is the fighting front. That is the opportunity, the chance to bring Germans to battle... Russia may win victory in 1942... That is a chance, an opportunity to bring war to an end here and now... How admirable Britain is now equipped in weapons of war for directing such an attack upon Germany I well know." 
(Minister of Supply Lord Beaverbrook, in a broadcast in New York, April 23 1942.)
The truth is that Churchill had no intention of launching a second front until the Soviet Union had been thoroughly beaten. 

Berlin And Victory � Another Capital Power Prepares World Domination.
It was part of the western powers' Yalta agreement that Berlin was to be in the Soviet zone of operations.
It was the Western leaders that had other ideas:
"Clearly, Berlin is the main prize. There is no doubt whatsoever, in my mind, that we should concentrate all our energies and resources on a rapid thrust to Berlin."
(Eisenhower, in a letter to Montgomery, Sept 15 1944.) 
"The Russian armies will no doubt overrun all Austria and enter Vienna. If they also take Berlin will not their impression that they have been overwhelming contributors to our common victory be unduly imprinted on their minds, and may this not lead them into a mood which will raise grave and formidable difficulties in the future? I therefore consider that from a political standpoint we should march as far East into Germany as possible, and that should Berlin be in our grasp we should certainly take it."
(Churchill, in a letter to Roosevelt, April 1 1945.) 
"I deem it highly important that we shake hands with the Russians as far to the East as possible; and, if circumstances allow, enter Berlin."
(Churchill, in a letter to Eisenhower, April 5 1945.) 
But the Western Allies' race for Berlin could not materialise. The Western Allies' strength had still not been enough even to defeat Germany themselves. However, Soviet economic and military strength had grown so strong that it could easily defeat the Nazis alone. At the end of the war the Red Army could have swept on and taken the whole of Europe and driven the Nazis into the Atlantic. 
"The outstanding fact to be noted is the recent phenomenal development of... Russian military and economic strength... In a conflict between these two powers [Britain and the USSR B.M.] the disparity in the military strengths... would... be far too great to be overcome by our intervention... we could not, under existing conditions, defeat Russia. In other words, we would find ourselves engaged in a war which we could not win."
(US Joint Chiefs of Staff to the US Secretary of State, May 16 1944.) 
In April 1945, from defending within 20 miles of their own capital, Moscow, the Red Army reached the German capital, Berlin, and victory.
German finance capital was broken.
But the war was not quite finished. Another world finance capital had already been planning world domination at least since 1940:
"...to set forth the political, military, territorial and economic requirements of the United States in its potential leadership... including the United Kingdom itself as well as the Western hemisphere and the Far East. The first and foremost requirement of the United States in a world in which it proposes to hold unquestionable power in the rapid fulfilment of a programme of complete re-armament... the United States with other countries to secure the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by foreign nations that constitutes a threat to the minimum world area essential for the security and economic prosperity of the United States."
(Memo of the Economic and Financial Group of the US Council of Foreign Relations. 1940.) 
"...to think of world organisation in a fresh way. The measure of our victory will be the measure of our domination after victory."
(US Council of Foreign Relations Director Isaiah Bowman, Dec 15 1941.) 
Bowman formulated US plans for postwar areas of the world that were:
"...strategically necessary for world control."
(Memo of Jan 16 1942, US Council of Foreign Relations.) 
What plans did the US have for Britain after the war was over?:
"At best, England will become a junior partner in a new Anglo-Saxon imperialism in which the economic resources and the military and naval strength of the US will be the centre of gravity."
(President of the US National Industrial Conference Board Virgil Jordan, to the Annual Convention of the Investment Bankers' Association of America, Dec 10 1940.) 
"...the British Empire as it existed in the past will never re-appear... the United States may have to take its place. ...must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement after this war which will enable us to impose our own terms, amounting to perhaps a Pax-Americana."
(US Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy, May 6 1942.) 
As a result of her own corruption, Britain had become totally dependent on the US economically, militarily and politically; and was forced to be drawn into the Third World War which the US was already planning. Even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II the US was planning a nuclear World War III against the Soviet Union:
"If there can be anything quite definite in this world, it is the future war between the USSR and the US."
(US Under Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew, May 19 1945.) 
"There is, I know, a systematic whispering campaign that the next war will be of Anglo-America against Russia."
(H.G.Wells. May 24 1945.)
"I realised even before the war ended that there were powerful groups in the Army, Navy and State Department, working closely with important business men, who looked on Russia as the next enemy and were getting ready for the next war."
(Roosevelt's Vice President Henry Wallace, 1945.) 
"If a contest of will against the Russians involving possible transit into war should prove inevitable, it would be better to have it come after we and the world knew of this new master weapon."
(US historian Herbert Feis.) 
The US "atom bomb diplomacy" started at Potsdam.
On April 12 1945 US President Roosevelt died and Truman was sworn in as President.
Truman delayed the Potsdam meeting because the first atom bomb test was due and he wanted to face the Soviets with the "ultimate weapon." The day after the test Truman received a coded message: "Operated on this morning. Diagnosis not yet complete but results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations." 
US world nuclear diplomacy had begun.

Who wanted geopolitical military blocs? 
It is a political and historical deception to say that the 'superpowers' "divided" Europe among themselves, as I have sometimes heard among some peace activists and capitalist oriented historians and journalists. It is equally false to say that the Soviet Union divided Europe or imposed socialism on the countries of Eastern Europe.
"Nowhere and at no time has any credible evidence been presented to show that the Soviet Union wanted to divide Berlin, Germany or Europe; or to create a massive military alliance system; or that these developments were in reply to threats or aggressive moves by the USSR. Any careful and objective study will... show that the exact opposite was the case. Not only did the Soviet leaders oppose the division of Berlin and Germany and the splitting of Europe but the record shows that they have consistently called for a reunion of a disarmed and neutral Germany and the abolition or merger of the two alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact."
(US General Hugh B. Lester.) 
After the war Soviet forces were stationed in Austria for 10 years, Iran for 5 years, in Denmark and Norway; yet no revolutions happened in those countries, nor did the Red Army see its business to impose any. 
"We must not allow... our well-planned and steady rebuilding of America's defences to be overcome by a child-like hope for detente with a country whose sole aim is and always has been world domination."
(Caspar Weinberger, Detroit, Jan 30 1986.)
"We are being told that we can sit down and negotiate with this enemy of ours, and that there's a little right and a little wrong on both sides. How do you compromise between good and evil? How do you say to this enemy that we can compromise our belief in God and his dialectical (sic) determinism?"
(President Reagan in the 1960s.) 
Contrary to capitalist propaganda designed to frighten people and vilify socialism in the minds of the politically conscious working class, there is no evidence anywhere that the Soviet Union, or any genuine Communist Party in the world, has any policy of imposing socialism on anybody. 
It is a fundamental Marxist principle among genuine communists that revolutions cannot be imposed by anyone from outside; and that conditions in a country have to be right for a socialist revolution. 
"The victorious proletariat cannot impose on any other country its own idea of a happy life without doing damage to its own victory."
(Karl Marx.)
"The times of that superstition which attributed revolution to the ill will of a few agitators have long passed away. Everyone knows nowadays that whenever there is a revolutionary convulsion, there must be some social want in the background, which is prevented, by outworn institutions, from satisfying itself."
(Frederich Engels, 1851.)
"We Marxists believe that revolution will occur in other countries as well... Export of revolution is nonsense... to assert that we desire to bring about revolution in other countries by interfering with their way of life is to speak of something that does not exist, and which we have never preached... The export of revolution is nonsense. Every country makes its own revolution if it wants to, and if it does not want to, there will be no revolution... Without the support of millions, the best minority is impotent."
(Soviet leader Josef Stalin.)
"The Communist system must be based on the will of the people, and if the people should not want that system, then that people should establish a different system... "If you feed the people just with revolutionary slogans they will listen today, they will listen tomorrow, they will listen the day after tomorrow, but on the fourth day they will say: "To hell with you!" ... True, we recognise the need for the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into socialist society. It is this which distinguishes the revolutionary Marxist from the reformist, the opportunist... The history of a social system will be decided not by... bombs, but by the fact of which social system ensures greater material and spiritual benefits to man."
(Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev.)
"If they want to maintain capitalism in their own countries, let them maintain it for as long as they want. That is their own business. We are not going to go to the United States to make a revolution there or to impose socialism on them. In an academic discussion we can prove to them that socialism is better, more humane, more rational and fairer than capitalism, but we cannot go there and tell them: change your social system... that is not our business... We're not advocating... a social revolution... We cannot suggest socialism as a prerequisite. We're not recommending socialism, but of course neither are we advising against it."
(Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.)
When the Anglo-American allies lost their unofficial and unagreed 'race for Berlin' they tried to discredit the Soviet Union by hostile propaganda about the Soviet Union's rightful occupation of the territories agreed at Yalta. The West vilified the USSR in its occupation of Berlin; but said nothing about new Western postwar occupations and economic. political and territorial gains. 
It was the West who felt the need to create military blocs and re-divide Europe and Germany. It had been these needs which had determined their whole political conduct of the war and its consequent military strategy. 
Immediately after the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, US and British plans were devised in London for the partition of Germany, a federation of Danube countries of Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia with the southern German lands of Bavaria, Wurtenberg and Baden:
"The need for a Scandinavian bloc, Danubian bloc, and a Balkan bloc appears to be obvious."
(Winston Churchill, Feb 2 1943.) 
German Archive documents captured by the Soviets at the end of the war show that, in a statement reminiscent of Hitler and modern revanchists, CIA director Allen Dulles had said:
"By extending Poland to the East and preserving Romania and a strong Hungary, the establishment of a cordon sanitaire against Bolshevism and Pan-Slavism must be supported."
(US representative Allen Dulles, in a private meeting with Nazi German representative Prince Hohenlohe, February 1943.) 
But Poland's eastern frontier, the Curzon Line, had been agreed in 1919 at the end of the First World War at the Treaty of Versailles. And Poland had annexed Byelorussian and Ukrainian territories in 1921. Poland's western border, the Oder-Neisse Line, was agreed by the West at Teheran in 1943.
How did the West intend to "extend Poland to the East" yet again? One cannot simply go and move the fence posts. A war had failed to do this in their favour and had drastically weakened capitalism. 
Contrary to the wishful aims of Western propaganda, the emergence of the new socialist countries after the war was largely a result of the efforts and popularity of their resistance movements, in which communists played a leading part, and the influence of their strong Communist Parties; just as they did against capitalism and fascism in their countries before the war broke out. Communists all over Europe had always tried to organise to prevent war:
"We are fighting for peace. And there can be no peace while Hitler is in power and the power of the real masters of Germany, the Krupps, Thyssens, Siemens and Klockners is not completely smashed. This time we want to pluck out the evil by its roots, and build a new Germany where an end is made to exploitation and the drive for profits which always leads to wars."
(Illegal leaflet circulated by the Trade Unionist, Social Democrat and Communist Workers of the Siemens armaments factory, Berlin, December 1939.) 
"From this war there must emerge as victors not those who have called it forth: neither Hitler nor Chamberlain; neither Daladier nor Mussolini nor Beck. The victors must be those who, against the will of these people, will end the war: and they will be the international working class..."
(Manifesto of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Dec 1939.)
It must be quite obvious that the Second World War was one of the organised capitalist class against the organised working class. 
But even during the war, in August 1943, the US was preparing for the prevention of a Europe in which capitalism was not the dominant power:
"...to prevent the domination of Europe in the future by any single power (such as the Soviet Union)... after the defeat of Germany, no single power, and no group of powers in which we do not have a strong influence, shall direct the strength of Europe."
(US secret wartime Quebec Conference document, Aug 1943.) 
The Soviet Union had gained much well earned prestige during the war and the peoples of Europe had a lot of sympathy and respect for their own communists and the Soviet Union.
"In... the ideological phase - the Soviet challenge became increasingly powerful. In most of the world effective popular leadership is in the hands of persons who are sympathetic to Soviet Communist doctrines and who turn to Moscow for moral support. In India, Soviet Communism exerts a strong influence... In Latin America Communist leaders are steadily gaining in political power. They are effectively agitating against the so-called "capitalism" and "imperialism" of the United States... In western Europe Communist strength has grown so that in France and Italy Communists now exercise a large measure of governmental power."
(John Foster Dulles, in a speech, Jan 17 1947.) 
At the beginning of the war, in 1939, there were 4.3 million communist party members in Western Europe. By the end of the war, in 1945, their numbers exceeded 20 million; not forgetting several millions more who were killed by the Nazis and by Nazi collaborators. Communist parties won leading positions in the first post-war elections in France and Italy; and there were Communist Ministers in the post-war governments of many capitalist countries including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Norway and San Marino, and Communist MPs in Britain. In other countries of Europe and of Asia the communists became the leading party. Communism was gaining popularity and support all over the world:
In Britain in 1945 two Communist MPs were elected to parliament and the British people voted overwhelmingly towards socialism in the shape of Clause 4 in the Labour Party programme, which stipulates common ownership of the means of production. But it was anti-socialist elements in the Labour Party that betrayed them and gained control, implementing only a bourgeois or state capitalist nationalisation of the economy, which never actually got into real common ownership and control. This is not socialism. A kind of state capitalism perhaps. 
The fascist elements in British ruling circles among finance, industrial and land-owning capital had never actually had to fully show their hand during the war. But it can be certain that had Britain been occupied by the Nazis, Britain would have collapsed from the top with a massive majority of the ruling class collaborating fully with the invading Nazis, just as was the case in the rest of Western Europe.
By the end of the Second World War, capitalism had been thoroughly weakened in Europe; though it had gained immensely in the US. What's more, Western Europe was so thoroughly impoverished that there was a real fear among capitalists that more countries would soon become socialist.
The decisive victory shown by the Soviet Union in the war had demonstrated the superior productive and social capabilities of socialism over capitalism. With all this popular support for the Soviet Union and the popularity of socialism, capitalist Cold War media immediately began to scream "Soviet threat!" once more. 
Emigre governments during war tended to be Right Wing or directly home grown fascist, whether their governments had collaborated with the Nazis or not. On the other hand, the resistance fighters in these countries, most of whom were communists or progressives who stayed and fought, were the true patriots of their countries. The British feared that these would hinder the post-war restoration of the former capitalist order in Europe. Britain and the US crushed any popular resistance and liberation movement and promoted the interests of the right-wing emigre governments.
One wartime example of this is the use by the British of the murder of Heydrich in Czechoslovakia; which was the idea of the Czech emigre government and not the Czech resistance fighters who stayed to fight the Nazis. The result of this ill planned adventure, which was not supported by the genuine Czech resistance, was the particularly vicious Nazi reprisal of the total elimination of the village of Lidice and its entire population. 
A similar operation was the Warsaw uprising which was planned and failed by the British backed Polish emigre government and not by the broad based popular resistance movement in Poland.
Anti-communist organisations were set up by the CIA and other capitalist security institutions in Western Europe, usually using Nazi collaborators and supporters or the home grown fascists of those countries. The US and British used ex Nazi supporters and collaborators, ex fascists, right-wing elements, depossessed capitalists, bankers and land owners and other dissident and emigre elements for propaganda purposes and as spies and provoking agents in incidents to destabilise and discredit their post war socialist governments such as in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and tried to sow discontent among the populations in last ditch attempts to provoke counter-revolutionary uprisings in these countries. 
In some countries, such as in France and Belgium, and especially in Greece, popular mass liberation movements were crushed by the British. In Italy it was the US use of the Mafia which put an end to any Communist presence in the Government. Eventually in Western Europe it was the capitalists who had collaborated with the Nazis that were soon back in power, and communists and resistance fighters who were kept from positions of power, such as under the West Germany government's Berufsverbote (refused employment) policy:
"The secret investigations have started once again. Files are combed to see whether there is any indication that postman Muller is a member of the Communist Party or whether tram conductor Schmidt is a member of the Association of Nazi Victims... We are returning to the dictatorship of Hitler's Third Reich."
(Frankfurter Neue Presse Oct 26 1950.)
The West German Minister of the Interior ex-Nazi Dr. Robert Lehr applied to the Federal Constitutional Court for the Communist Party to be dissolved as "an unconstitutional organisation." The West German newspaper Welt der Arbeit stated that this application had been made on direct orders from the USA. 
The power of US finance capital in the shape of the Marshall Plan, combining with big business and anti-communist and fascist elements in the church, accompanied by Cold War rhetoric, succeeded in securing the removal of elected Communist ministers from West European governments where they were becoming stronger, such as France and Italy, by 1947 as a condition of these countries receiving Marshall Aid.
"Mr Marshall used the occasion to serve notice to all European countries that they can expect no sympathy or help from America if they conspire with Communism, even to the extent of including Communists in Coalition Governments."
(American correspondent, News Chronicle, June 3 1947.)
In territories liberated by the Soviets, on the other hand, unmolested by forces of capitalism, these resistance and liberation movements were able to form credible popular governments.
In Asia, in Indonesia, Malaya and Indochina also, it was the British forces who crushed any popular communist uprisings. In Vietnam the British rearmed Japanese prisoners of war against Ho Chi Minh and turned the country over to the French. The US occupied South Korea and installed its puppet government there. They also established their domination of the Philippines by installing Roxas, who had collaborated with the Japanese in their atrocities against the Filipino people. Like his ilk who collaborated with the Nazis in Europe, in exchange for exclusion from war crimes convictions, Roxas was prepared to make his country fully subservient to the US economy.
In country by country, the West used every means possible short of all out war to see that the popular spread of socialist ideas was halted and reversed.
In Europe it was not Moscow, but London who used its armies to impose Right Wing exile governments on people who didn't want them:
"As victory was approaching British policy seemed inclined to support many of the worn out regimes in Europe as against the popular forces which had emerged."
(British Labour MP Seymour Cocks, in a speech in Parliament, 1945.) 
In Belgium Churchill used the propaganda of a deliberate lie in Parliament that an armed uprising was planned against the Belgian government in exile in London on its return. Churchill said that:
"A putsch had been organised at the end of November to throw out the properly constituted Government of M. Pierlot."
(Annual Register, London, 1945.)
The Belgian resistance was disarmed by the British army and the emigre government installed under the usual British pretext, as declared by Eden in Parliament of maintaining law and order.
Later the truth came out. A News Chronicle correspondent wrote that:
"After making careful enquiries he had been unable to find any trace of the intended putsch which Mr. Churchill had alleged as the ground of British interference in Belgium."
(Annual Register, London, 1945.)
In Italy the British disarmed resistance forces and prevented social reforms.
The Italian partisans, anti-fascists and communists held great anti-fascist rallies and organised strikes for peace. The Italian communists had tremendous support and prestige and were set to win elections to the Italian parliament. But the US tried its hardest to prevent communists being elected to the Italian government:
"The Italian elections were described as a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. There was massive American intervention, but there was no Soviet interference of any kind and never had been... The United States officially identifies Communist Parties (and Socialist or other parties allied with Communists) everywhere as fifth columnists and agents of the Soviet Government. Therefore any approach to power by any means, constitutional as well as revolutionary, is regarded as Soviet interference and internal aggression and the United States must fly to the rescue."
(British Labour MP Koni Zilliacus, in "Dragon's Teeth.")
The US had plans in case of a Communist electoral victory in Italy:
"In the event of Communist electoral victories in Italy, the United States should among other things: Provide military equipment and supplies to Italy only if such equipment and supplies are received by anti-communist elements."
(US NSC Directive 1/3, Dec 14 1947.) 
Various methods were used to get the Communists out of the Government, including the use of the Mafia:
"...the OSS became the CIA and the Mafia was used to save Italy from the Communists... The switch from resisting the Fascists to resisting the Communists was begun in 1945, when the Communists came very near to gaining control of the labour unions... in all Italy and southern France. At that time, cooperation between the OSS and the Mafia was successful in stemming the tide. No serious historian, left or right, who is familiar with the situation at that time can deny that had it not been for the Mafia the Communists would by now be in control of Italy, and the world balance of power would be decisively in favour of the Soviets."
(Ex CIA officer Miles Copeland, in "The Real Spy World.")
In his memoirs "The White House Years" Henry Kissinger said of the Italian elections:
"The communists... were tilting the entire spectrum to the left... before a final push to obtain participation in government... The communist influence therefore graduated from a tacit to a formal veto under Moro's sponsorship... The general sense of impotence was reflected in a State Department memorandum to the president of January 22, 1970... It urged that we 'keep the problem under close scrutiny and continually assess the means of using our resources to make our view known in a discreet, but effective fashion'."
(Henry Kissinger "The White House Years.")
Italian Minister of the Interior Aldo Moro was one of those progressive Italian politicians to whom the US made their view felt in a "discreet but effective fashion." He spoke for all political forces playing their democratic part in the Italian government. The US Ambassador to Italy declared publicly that Aldo Moro was a dangerous politician. Two weeks later Moro was kidnapped and murdered by the so-called "Red Brigades". The testimony of his wife at the trial of those accused of his murder show that he was threatened while on a trip to the US in 1974:
"My husband told me word for word what had been said to him... I shall try to repeat them exactly: "Mr. Minister, you will have to give up pursuing any further your political course of bringing about direct co-operation of all political parties in Italy. Either you stop doing that, or you'll pay dearly for this. Decide for yourself how you should understand this warning"."
(Testimony of Eleonora Moro, wife of murdered Italian Interior Minister Aldo Moro.) 
The Italian newspapers Il Giorno, L'Europeo and others, quoting Italian Senator Giuseppe Giovagnello, said of Moro's murder that "Traces lead to the White House", that he had been killed by agents of a "foreign power" and that behind the "Red Brigades" stood the CIA, the US State Department, Henry Kissinger and Italian fascists. A Red Brigade leader stated at his trial in 1983 that Moro was killed because or his support for communist participation in the Italian government. And in January 1978 the US State Department stated that it would not accept participation of communists in any West European governments. 
Today there is large communist influence in local government in Italy with communist majorities or total control of some town councils such as Milan, Perugia, and others. But they were still effectively excluded from central Government.
In France, after the German defeat at Stalingrad there were intensified operations by the French resistance. 
A British Special Operations Executive memorandum of March 22 1943 to the French National Committee warned their contacts to prevent the spread of the resistance. The memorandum said that the assistance requested for the resistance by French President de Gaulle was counter to Britain's policy of averting the spread of popular uprisings. 
It was the French Resistance and labour movement, and not the Anglo-Americans, who liberated much of France including a large area of Paris and more than 40 other towns including Lyons and Toulouse and hundreds of villages, a large area south of the Loire and west of the Rhone, and the whole of the territory from the Western Alps to the Italian and Swiss borders, all before the Western Allies arrived. US supreme commander Eisenhower immediately ordered the French resistance to cease fighting the Germans. 
"I could have taken it [Paris B.M.] had I not been told not to."
(US General Patton, in his book "War As I Knew It.")
"...we are not at all anxious to liberate Paris... It would be good if Paris could pull in its belt and live with the Germans a little longer."
(US General Omar Bradly, in his book "A Soldier's Story.")
The French resistance took no notice and the surrender of the German garrison in Paris was received in August 1944 by General Jaques Leclerc and Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy � a Communist.
As in Italy, the US forced the removal of communists from the French government, especially as a prerequisite of Marshall Aid:
"America is preparing plans to help France stop the growth of Communism, as part of a world-wide policy of resisting it wherever it has prospects of gaining control of governments. This means that America has decided... that even where there is no question of Russian pressure, as in the case of France, Communism must be avoided at all costs. It was expected that very substantial aid would have to be given over the next two years. This decision means that even if the French people decided to elect a Communist majority under the present French constitution, the American State Department would not regard this as "democratic government, nor France as an independent country."
(New York correspondent, News Chronicle May 12 1947.)
"In plain English, a government is democratic and a country is independent only when its government has been made to order for the State Department. This policy was imposed on France and Italy and is still being enforced by the USA in those countries (in the ways described below)... As long ago as December 5th 1947, Mr. James Reston, Diplomatic Correspondent of the New York Times, reported from Washington that... it was not much use giving economic assistance to anti-Communist regimes in Europe in order to keep them in power, unless the United States was prepared to back up this policy with armed force in case of need, to prevent Communists or their political allies having any share in power whatever the majority of the electorate in the countries concerned might want, and even if the alternative was fascism and counter-revolution, as it may well prove to be in France. On March 18th, 1948, President Truman, in a violently worded message to Congress, said the United States must rearm in order to protect Western Europe against not only external but also "internal aggression"."
(British MP Koni Zilliacus in his book "Dragons Teeth.")
By 1947 French Communists were removed from Government as a condition of Marshall Aid.
Nevertheless, there is still a strong communist movement in France, with majority or total communist control of some town councils, such as Lyon, Boulogne, Calais, and districts of Paris. 
Compared with British communist party's tiny membership, infrastructure and influence, most European and other countries' communist parties are massive and widespread. One Communist Party headquarters I visited in Calais in the early 1980s had a building more impressive than the Tory headquarters in London. And the Communist Party of Portugal has both a daily newspaper and a weekend paper; whose massive circulation among the Portuguese working class was such that big businesses such as car manufacturer Nissan were taking full page advertisements. The British communist party does not even have a newspaper. Counter to propaganda, the Morning Star newspaper does not belong to the communist party, but is a workers' cooperative owned by its readers and members, who as well as communists, are members of other parties and organisations, such as trade unionists. European communist parties are so large and influential that they hold massive annual summer festivals lasting a week or two, such as the Portuguese party's Avante and the French communist party's L'Humanite festivals, which attract communists, internationalist workers, environmentalists and peace campaigners from all over the world. 
The British intervention in Greece, because of the powerful influence of the Greek communists, was as bloody and destructive as that of any Nazi. 
Before the war Greece was ruled by a corrupt and repressive fascist dictatorship, which collaborated fully with the occupying Nazis. After the war these same fascists cooperated fully with the British who landed there in 1944 after the Nazis had retreated.
The Greek resistance, comprised of Liberals, Agrarians, trade unionists, Socialists, Communists and other progressives forming the National Liberation Front of Greece (EAM) and together with progressive Greek Army officers, its People's National Army of Liberation (ELAS) armed forces.
Churchill then ceased aid to these resistance organisations and aided Greek emigre fascists who supported the monarchy and had collaborated with the Nazis, and to the Royalist EDES "resistance" forces, who had spent most of their time not fighting the Nazis, but against ELAS.
The EAM/ELAS forces eventually controlled the whole of Greece and began entering Athens.
EAM and ELAS had set up a Political Committee of Liberation in March 1944 to convene a National Council of elected people's representatives. Even The Times noted that the Greek liberation movement had the support of 90 percent of the population. And it was supported by the Greek forces based in Cairo, who mutinied in April 1944, and were crushed by British forces.
As Churchill had admitted in Parliament, there was no military need for landing British troops in Greece in 1944. And although British forces played no part in the liberation of Greece, Churchill switched his plans to a British Army landing there after the Germans withdrew in order to impose the reactionary emigre Monarchy on the Greek people:
"If substantial British forces take part in the liberation of Greece the King should go back with the Anglo-Greek Army."
(Churchill, in a letter to Eden, August 1943.)
"If Greece is liberated as a result of an Axis withdrawal, we should be forced to provide sufficient troops to further the present policy of His Majesty's Government. This would involve us in a military commitment of at least two divisions, since a weaker force might land us in an embarrassing position vis-a-vis the Resistance groups, who were... carrying considerable sway in the country when it had been liberated."
(British Chief of Imperial Staff, Sept 1943.) 
British paratroopers under General Scobie were landed in Athens on October 13 1944 followed five days later by the Right Wing Papandreou monarchist Government from exile.
The Greek resistance movement not only had the support of the majority of the Greek people, it also earned the deep respect of British Army officers who had fought with them:
"We should never have been able to set foot on Greece had it not been for the magnificent efforts of the resistance movements of EAM and ELAS."
(British Brigadier Barker-Benfield, at a press conference in Athens, Oct 18 1944.) 
Brigadier Barker-Benfield had served with other British officers with the Greek partizans. Two days later Barker-Benfield and other British Officers who had served with the Greek partizans were ordered out of Greece.
So weak was the support for the Papandreou emigre government flown in by the British that not only had it to be preceded and accompanied by British paratroopers, but it also had to be maintained by the diversion of 60,000 British troops to suppress the popular EAM/ELAS resistance in December; all this while the Allies were still in trouble with the Germans in the Ardennes.
EAM accepted the Papandreou government flown in by the British as a provisional government until a general election. Papandreou proposed that ELAS disarmed, which they agreed, provided that EDES and royalist troops disarmed also.
On November 16 General Scobie was instructed to get ELAS forces out of Athens and disarm them. Churchill gave an order to Scobie to smash the ELAS resistance movement "as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress." 
Churchill ordered:
"Do not hesitate to act... We have to hold and dominate Athens. It would be a great thing for you to succeed in this without bloodshed if possible, but also with bloodshed if necessary... It is most desirable to strike out of the blue without any preliminary crisis."
(Winston Churchill "The Second World War.")
"Stop, being neutral between the Greek parties; shoot at the communists without hesitation."
(Churchill, in a telegram to General Scobie, Dec 6 1944.) 
A civil and interventionist war was started by the British, fascists and royalist police forces against the Greek people and their EAM/ELAS organisations. 
"[British troops B.M.] gradually conquered, block by block... Hundreds of buildings were destroyed, usually containing homes of the poorer people of Athens, at least eighty per cent of whom were on the side of EAM."
(British historian D.F.Fleming, in "The Cold War and its Origins.")
In February 1945 in Varkiz, near Athens, EAM and ELAS signed an agreement with the Greek Government to end the state of emercency and hold a plebiscite on the form of the state system and disarm the resistance and form a combined army. But the Greek Government did not keep its word. While ELAS disarmed, a repressive monarchist government was installed by the British and presented as "defending democracy" by the media. 
With the support of the Labour leaders Churchill stepped up the intervention, and in a major attack by three British divisions with tanks and planes ELAS forces were eventually driven into the mountains, where they continued fighting for several years.
World capitalist policy, dominated by the US, now sees Europe as part of its global strategy:
"To put the problem in a nutshell - our policy must be both "global", ie: embrace every part of the world, and also "total", ie: include political, psychological, economic, military and special measures integrated into one whole. 
In Europe we started with economic aid. It is quite possible that without the Marshall Plan we would have found it more difficult to form NATO. What in fact happened in this case was that a co-ordinated foreign policy using every kind of pressure, resulted in the creation of what we hoped was a solid military union... 
...First of all, we should pick out the countries with anti-communist governments friendly to us, which are already bound to the US through stable long-term military agreements. In this governmental subsidies and credits may take the form mainly of military appropriations. The hooked fish needs no bait... At the same time economic support for those strata of the local business community which are ready to co-operate with the US should be increased and the necessary conditions would be created for businessmen of this type to be put in key economic positions and accordingly for their political influence to be increased... 
Such countries may be given direct economic aid as well but we must give them only as much as is necessary in order to keep suitable governments concerned in power and to check any hostile opposition elements." 
(From a letter from US Council on Foreign Relations member millionaire Nelson Rockefeller to President Eisenhower, January 1956.) 
"The hooked fish needs no bait." 
Thus the US had bought a large collection of European states subservient to their and who would vote the US way in any UN or other negotiations.
It remains undisclosed how many European countries have secret treaties or agreements which are not openly written into their constitutions - that NATO forces of another country have the right to intervene if the interests of NATO (ie: the US) are considered to be threatened - eg. by the coming to power of a socialist or non-aligned government or one that wanted to remove US nuclear weapons and bases, or get out of NATO. 
"Do you know what would have happened then? You may read about this in the Bonn Treaty on relations between the FRG and the Western powers of the 26th May, 1952, in which Article 2 refers to the rights of the Allies, and Article 5 to a state of emergency. According to this treaty the Federal Government 'in case of serious violation of public security and order' shall first use its police force and if it cannot restore order and, in addition, in the opinion of the three powers, a threat arises to the armed forces of the Western allies, their commanders have a right immediately to take respective protective measures, including the use of arms, needed for removing this threat. You see that even 'a serious threat of violation of the free, democratic order' is sufficient to impose a state of emergency. ...if there was an uprising in the FRG threatening the Constitution and the FRG's NATO membership the Americans would the very next day intervene in our country."
(Henri Nannan, publisher, in his journal Stern, FRG, Jan 1982.)
"...including the ability to deal with a serious disturbance of public security and order [ie: a communist (proper socialist) government BM.]."
(From Article 5 of the "Convention On Relations Between The Three Powers And The Federal Republic Of Germany" as amended by the Paris Agreements of October 1954.)
"In case the Federal Republic and the European Defence Community are unable to deal with the situation which is created by... subversion of the liberal democratic basic order, a serious disturbance of public order, or a grave threat of any of these events, and which in the opinion of the Three Powers endangers the security of their forces, the Three Powers may, ...proclaim a state of emergency... Independently of a state of emergency, any military commander may, if his forces are imminently menaced, take such immediate action appropriate... to remove the danger."
(From Article 5 of the original Bonn Treaty.)
"In the present situation it is certainly the internal unrest, sabotage and civil war type conflicts, that is, local disturbances in their broadest sense, which under certain circumstances could most of all endanger the Eastern borders of the NATO bloc."
(W.Ritter von Schramm, Der Deutsche Soldat. Flensberg 1961.) 
"The draft of the committee enables the executive to deploy the armed Bundeswehr inside the country and to misuse it for internal political aims - without having obtained the sanction of parliamentary authority. The armed forces may not only be deployed for police tasks, but also internally 'with weapons'. The decision rests with the federal government because if any such action becomes topical it is always possible to say that 'the situation required this sort of immediate action'."
(Frankfurter Rundschau, 26 April 1965.)
When discussions on ratifying the North Atlantic Treaty were held, US Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Dean Acheson stated that one of NATO's chief aims was to prevent what it called aggression, even "by an election" or "conquest through persuasion." And the NATO Commander in Chief in Central Europe in 1956 referred to NATO as a shield against the "infiltration of ideas." Various NATO "leaks" to the press in 1970 stated that the US in Europe could resort to sabotage and subversion and other warfare in the event of "emergency situations" (ie: genuine socialist governments coming to power) and if necessary take over and bring any weapons onto a country's territory, including chemical and biological weapons, and suppress any movement "threatening US strategic interests." A US document published in the Italian press in 1981 showed that of over 23,000 missile targets only about 2,500 were in Warsaw Pact countries. The rest were in capitalist countries in case of the coming to power of a communist majority government. 
Soon after Marshall Aid was agreed by the US Congress, Britain and the US had secret talks on NATO in the Pentagon in 1949. These discussions were only made public in 1979. In the documents of these discussions NATO's class war policy is clearly stated that:
"The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties [ie: Capitalism B.M.] is threatened."
(From Clause 4 of the Constitution of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO).)
Thus the European capitalist leaders have given the US and NATO the right to intervene diplomatically, economically, and finally militarily in any "political change favourable to an aggressor" (ie: to any friendship or assistance from a socialist country) in any NATO country. In other words, the election or otherwise coming to power of any genuine socialist government or any government committed to and actually implementing disarmament in any West European country. 
And "territorial integrity" includes colonial or neo-colonial territories. The exiled people of the Chagos Islands and Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territories and the people of the British Commonwealth territory of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada know full well what NATO policies mean. 
It is also important to understand and point out that this means that it is only necessary that the "political independence or security" of any NATO or NATO dominated country is judged to be "threatened" not by the country concerned, but by "any one of them".
"Article Four is even more important. This, with no regional limitations, provides that if there is any situation anywhere which appears to affect the security of any member, they will all consult on what action to take... If developments in Burma, or the Malay peninsula led America, Britain or France to feel her security was threatened, she could call a conference of Atlantic Powers... Should the Italian Government fear that Communist sabotage threatened its political independence, it could call a meeting of the Atlantic Powers with the possibility that joint action would be taken to meet the danger."
(Daily Telegraph March 23 1949.)
There is no doubt that in the event of civil unrest in any West European country not being able to be contained by the forces of "law and order" of that country the US would intervene.
The domination of US world capital has given itself as NATO the right to be the world anti-Communist policeman.
A group of wealthy and powerful people which has such fears and responds to them with such contingency plans is already on the slippery slope to a repetition of the rise of Fascism in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and committed to intolerance and world domination.
Events in Malaya, Kenya, and other countries where war was made on their peoples by the British show what they will do in what they call an "emergency." 
Have no doubt about it. If a genuine socialist majority government did ever come to power in Britain, it won't be "freedom and democracy" that they will be screaming at us from the rooftops as they try to remind us every day. It will be US helicopter gunships. 

A New Socialist Europe Is Formed.
It is a dangerous and provocative lie to suggest, as most bourgeois historians do, followed sadly and unfortunately by some in the peace movement, that the Red Army imposed socialist revolutions on the countries of Eastern Europe at the end of the war; and the consequent misleading referral to these countries as "Soviet satellite states". These countries are not "satellites" of anybody. They are equal members of CMEA (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance - known in the West as Comecon). The CMEA is a socialist equivalent of the West European EEC, or the Common Market. These countries are no more "satellites" of the Soviet Union than Britain is of France or West Germany. However, it is true to say that Britain, France, West Germany, and almost every other country in the capitalist world, is a satellite of the US global New World Order. 
Some of these so-called East European countries had socialist revolutions either before the Red Army arrived or long after the Red Army had left them. The Red Army had left Czechoslovakia in 1945 and the communists took power there in 1948.
Regarding Czechoslovakia, British Labour MP Koni Zilliacus said that:
"The change of regime in Czechoslovakia was the unaided work of the Czechoslovak Trade Unions, Communists and Socialists and there was no Russian influence of any kind."
(British Labour MP Koni Zilliacus, in "I Choose Peace." and "Dragon's Teeth.")
"The Russians maintained reasonably correct relations with the Czechoslovak 'London Government', and never attempted to set up a rival pro-Communist Czechoslovak Government either in Moscow or in the liberated part of Czechoslovakia."
(British historian Alexander Werth "Russia at War 1941-1945.")
Other socialist states were brought about by popular anti-fascist and anti-capitalist uprisings that took place in the wake of the retreating Nazis, in some cases even before the Red Army had reached them. Even the US had to agree that:
"The majority of Europeans regard them [the Soviet Army B.M.] as their liberators. Even in the West the Red Army receives the major share of the credit."
(From a memorandum on "International Communism" prepared for Truman at the Berlin Conference.) 
In many of these Eastern European countries which became socialist after the war, communists were elected to governments and as their prestige increased more of them were elected and they became the majority, with other parties eventually fading into insignificance, finally dropping out of government altogether.
Even US General Clay, a noted anti-communist, noted that:
"New governments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary had Communist participation, but were not Communist dominated. Even the Balkan States were not under Communist control."
(US General Clay, In his book "Decision in Germany.")
In what became new socialist countries, where the people had become more class conscious as a result of their own fascist bourgeoisie having cooperated fully with the Nazis, capitalism was thoroughly discredited during and after the war, and it was the Communists in those countries who enjoyed mass popular support from their peoples. The war enabled these peoples to develop well organised and politically educated mass liberation movements. The resistance and liberation movements became the only credible patriotic authority in these countries. They rejected capitalism and capitalist rule and formed their own socialist governments. Then, ensured that the fascists and capitalists, external and internal, could never return, and that the peoples in these countries could defend themselves, the Red Army withdrew from these countries either immediately after they had been liberated from fascism or had achieved political stability.
It is also another twisting of history to say that the 'superpowers' "divided" Europe among themselves at Yalta. There was never any agreement to 'divide' Europe. This would have been against Soviet policy anyway and they would not have agreed to it. A socialist system is not imposed by another country, not can it be. This is a fundamental tenet of Marxism. Nor is it established by international conferences, agreements or treaties such as Yalta. The Eastern European socialist states were not decided by the three powers at Yalta or by the Red Army, but by the peoples of those countries themselves through political organisations of their own. Contrary to what is suggested by some dishonest historians, whose work is mainly discursive and not referenced, sourced or attributed. What was decided and agreed at Yalta was that the peoples of the liberated countries should decide their own future under the protection of the occupying Allied Powers:
"There is much misunderstanding about the substance of the Yalta conference. Let me state as clearly as I can: There was no agreement at that time to divide Europe up into 'spheres of influence'. On the contrary, the powers agreed on the principle of the common responsibility of the three Allies for all the liberated territories."
(George Bush, in US Department of State Bulletin, 1983.) 
It was part of the Yalta agreement that declared:
"The establishment of order in Europe and the rebuilding of national economic life must be achieved by processes which will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of Nazism and fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice."
(Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin's Joint Declaration on Liberated Europe, Yalta Conference, Feb 1945.)
In the Balkan countries the choices for the peoples of countries like Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania was whether to continue to be governed by their capitalist governments who had collaborated with Hitler or to form popular democratic governments of their own. Presented with such a choice, it is small wonder that the peoples of these countries opted for socialism.
In the Balkan countries the British wanted the old reactionaries and fascists back in power. Throughout the war the British Balkan strategy, which was to offset the opening of a second front in Western Europe, was to occupy the Balkan countries with British and US forces before the Red Army reached them in order to reinstate the former regimes with whom they had consulted all through the war, and who were so discredited that they could only be maintained in power with British and US military assistance.
Cretzianu, the Rumanian envoy who conducted negotiations for the fascist government of Antonescu with the British in Ankara in 1943 said in his memoirs that:
"The present Government [of Antonescu B.M.] considers itself to be in office solely to ensure order, and that it would immediately yield the reins to a Government approved by the British and Americans... Rumania is not waging war against Britain and the United States. When British and American troops arrive on the Danube, they will not be opposed by Rumanian troops. The Rumanian troops at that moment will be on the Dniester, fighting back the Russians"
(Alexandre Cretzianu "The Lost Opportunity.")
When Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania withdrew from the war and popular uprisings in these countries put progressive governments in power, the presence of the Red Army in these countries blocked the plans of any Anglo-American occupation and throttling of the revolutions under the pretext of establishing 'democracy'. 
"Democracy" to the British and Americans meant the return to power of the same capitalists who had established fascist governments in these countries and collaborated with Hitler and fought with the Nazis against the USSR and the Western Allies. But the peoples in those countries did not want this bourgeois "democracy". They had established their own popular peoples' democracies. 
After the failure of British attempts to join hands with the Nazis against the USSR at the end of the war, Churchill tried to continue his Balkan strategy at Potsdam; even though this meant breaking the existing Allied agreement of Yalta.
For the time being the British and US delegations at Potsdam refused to recognise the new Governments of Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania unless they were integrated into the capitalist system:
"We cannot resume diplomatic relations with these Governments until they are reorganised as we consider necessary."
(US President Truman, at Potsdam Conference, July 24 1945.)
The Soviet delegation's proposal of a denouncement and non-recognition of fascism in Franco's Spain was met with Churchill's flat complaint that this would be "interference in domestic affairs" of Spain. The West's refusal to recognise the newly formed governments of these countries was not seen as "interference in domestic affairs" of these countries by Churchill, who had interfered in the domestic affairs of just about every other nation on earth throughout his life.
The British Labour Government was just as reactionary as the Tories, and more reactionary in some respects than Roosevelt. Blaming Roosevelt's Yalta decisions as the cause of the loss of the new European socialist states, British Prime Minister Attlee wrote:
"That was Roosevelt's line at Yalta. It was two to one against us. We had to agree to many things we oughtn't to have agreed to... I think if Alexander had been allowed to go into Italy, he would have joined hands with the Yugoslavs and moved across into Czechoslovakia and perhaps right over Germany before the Russians got there."
(British Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee.) 
In other words, the Labour Prime Minister was an ardent supporter of Churchill's wartime Balkan strategy. And what makes the "socialist" Attlee think that the Yugoslavs would want to "join hands" with the British army?
The Americans were more realistic about the situation at the time:
"Neither our military, our economic nor our ideological power reached far enough to determine the fate of the Balkan states."
(New York Herald Tribune March 5 1947.)
In Yugoslavia there was tremendous popularity and respect for the Soviet Union and for the communist led resistance movement. After the war the Soviet Union gave enormous economic and material help to Yugoslavia.
"Our sacrifices, our efforts and our faith were crowned with victory because the mighty Soviet Union and its Red Army were on our side. The Soviet Union was the country that helped us selflessly from the very outset, requiring nothing in return and binding us to nothing that would clash with our national interests."
(Edvard Kardelj, Yugoslav resistance leader, Ljubljana, June 12 1945.) 
In Yugoslavia extensive operations to ensure the crushing of the popular resistance and liberation movements were carried out.
In opposition to the resistance in Yugoslavia there were the Cetniks, directed by Mikhailovic's emigre government in London, who mostly fought against the resistance and collaborated with the Nazis. The British wanted the return of the King and the Right Wing Yugoslav emigre government in London. Even the British admitted that:
"During the last few months Mikhailovich had been displaying little activity against Axis [Nazi BM.] forces... The partizans have undoubtedly undertaken operations against the Axis, but at the same time fighting has occurred between their forces and those of General Mikhailovich... It has been decided to continue to support General Mikhailovich, since it is felt that his organisation affords the best chances of preventing an outbreak of anarchy and chaos in Yugoslavia on the withdrawal of the Axis forces."
(British Government memorandum to the Soviet Government, March 9 1943.) 
By "anarchy and chaos" the British mean socialism.
A secret British mission was sent to Bulgaria in September 1944 to plan for Turkish troops to occupy Bulgaria, handing over to British and American troops later.
After the Soviet army declared war on the Bulgarian fascists a Fatherland Front Government was formed after an uprising by Bulgarian Communists and others in September 1944 and immediately declared war on Germany and signed an armistice with the USSR.
In Hungary after the war the fascist dictatorship of Horthy, which put Hungary's industry and workers in the service of the German Nazis, was defeated and a socialist government was set up. Nazi collaborators such as the big landowners, industrialists, bankers, the church and aristocracy were convicted and expropriated of their land and wealth by a government decree. Middle and small peasantry kept their land; and post war socialist construction went ahead. In the elections of August 1947 the Communist Party emerged elected as the largest single party.
British strategy in Hungary was along the same lines as in Bulgaria. The Hungarian troops who had been allies of Hitler were to hold back the Red Army while offering no resistance to the British and Americans:
"Foreign circles feel that Hungarian troops must hold the front against the Russians and offer no opposition to the British."
(Hungarian Chief of General Staff, to Council of Ministers of Hungary, Aug 25 1944.) 
"The Anglo-Saxons do not want Hungary to be occupied by the Russians. They want the Hungarians to keep the Russians back until they themselves are able to occupy Hungary."
(Hungarian Deputy Foreign Minister, to Council of Ministers of Hungary, Aug 25 1944.) 
In Czechoslovakia, even before the war had ended, in August 1944 there was a popular uprising against the German Nazis and the Czech capitalists who had enlisted their aid and support against the working class and their organisations. There had also been a Czech-Soviet mutual support treaty signed between progressive Czechs and the Soviet Union in 1943.
The Slovak uprising was internationalist in character, comprising some 30 nationalities including 3,000 Soviet partisans, Czechs, Hungarians, French, German, Poles, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Italians, Bulgarians, Belgians, Dutch, Austrians, Americans and British and other resistance fighters and escaped prisoners of the Nazis and of their own fascist governments. Such was the general anti-fascist feeling in Europe.
Czechoslovakia became a Socialist Republic in 1945 after being liberated from German and Czech fascists by the Red Army and the Czech people's Army under Ludvik Svoboda who became the President. 
General Elections were held in May 1946. There were nine parties; and the elections were confirmed as free and fair by British and American observers and a British all party parliamentary delegation. The Communists took 114 seats - almost 40 percent of the votes - more than double the votes of any other party; while their nearest rivals took only 55 seats. MPs elected to the Czech parliament were 114 Communists, 55 Benes Socialists (anti-Marxist bourgeois "socialists" like the British Labour party), 47 People's Party, 36 Social Democrats. The votes in the Czech lands were: Communists 2,205,658, Benes Socialists 1,298,917, People's Party 1,126,777, Social Democrats 862,494. In Slovakia: Democrats 988,275, Communists 490,257, Freedom 67,575, Labour 49,983.
The new Czech government was faced with the choice in 1947 of accepting US Marshall Aid and losing their economic and political independence to US capital or of increasing their trade and relations with the Soviet Union. To the annoyance and frustration of the capitalist world, the Czechs rejected Marshall Aid and signed a trade agreement with the USSR.
Right-wing members of the Czech cabinet resigned in 1948 in an attempt to provoke a constitutional crisis and prevent the communists from their predicted victory in the next elections. But the plot failed. The right-wing had put themselves out of government and the communists gained an overwhelming victory.
In Poland the popular patriotic government of the Krajowa Rada Narodowa was formed in Warsaw on January 1 1944.
After the Red Army had liberated Poland the London Polish Government in Exile instructed its agents in Poland to liquidate the patriotic democrats who stayed and fought in the resistance against the Germans. And the Armija Krajowa, also controlled by the London Poles, was instructed to cease fighting the Germans and prepare to seize power. The London Poles were as anti-Soviet as any Nazi or US cold warrior:
"An essential condition for our victory and our very existence is at least the weakening, if not the defeat of Russia."
(Underground newspaper of the Polish government in exile Penstwo Polski, spring 1944.) 
"I talked to your General Anders the other day, and he seemed to entertain the hope that after the defeat of the Germans the Allies will then beat Russia."
(Winston Churchill, to Mikolajczyk, 1944.) 
"The London Poles openly talk about a third world war, which they expect within a very short time."
(Kingsley Martin, in New Statesman and Nation May 26 1945.)
The London Poles rejected a Soviet offer, which the British agreed to at Tehran, to amend its borders � the Curzon Line � in favour of Poland with a large area including Bialystok.
Unlike the London Poles who fled their country and left the Polish people to their fate, and their 'friends' who collaborated with the Nazis; true patriotic Poles formed resistance units and a Polish division named after Tadeusz Kosciuszko. In reaction to this the London Poles formed their own underground organisations in Poland with the intention of eventually using them against the USSR. These organisations spent more time and energy fighting against the Polish partizans than against the Nazis.
After the battle of Kursk and the Soviet drive West, the British became more concerned about the post-war 'Polish question'. The British Foreign Office now urged the Poles to recognise the Curzon Line and accept Danzig (now Gdansk), East Prussia, and the Oppeln province of Upper Silesia. Eden suggested that the British and the London Poles recognise the Curzon Line as Poland's Eastern frontier in exchange for the Soviet Government's cooperation with the London Polish Government in exile with regard to the Polish resistance fighters and the Polish division fighting on Soviet territory. Thus the British were prepared to accept Soviet claims to what was anyway original Soviet territory in Western Ukraine and Byelorussia if the Soviets would withdraw their support for the Polish resistance and progressive Poles and help Britain impose on them after liberation a government of reactionary emigres who were as anti-Soviet as any Nazi. Naturally, this was untenable.
The British Government exercised complete control over the Polish Government of General Sikorski in exile in London during the war while backing his claims to Soviet territory in Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine. In the US in 1943 Sikorski outlined plans with US Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles of the creation of:
"An Eastern European union running from Poland in the North down to Turkey in the South... Poland would be the anchor in the North and Turkey the anchor in the South."
(Polish General Sikorski, to US Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, Jan 1943.) 
Sumner Welles said that:
"[this plan B.M.] could only be interpreted by the Soviet Union as a cordon sanitaire of a purely military character directed squarely against the Soviet Union."
(US Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, Jan 1943.) 
In a visit to the US in March 1943 Eden told Roosevelt that the London Polish Government: "has very large ambitions after the war" which were used in vicious anti-Soviet propaganda in the Polish press in London, even to the disturbance of the British Foreign Office and the US Government:
"Polish opposition press in London would continue to be a disturbing factor."
(Foreign Relations of the United States, 1943.)
The London Poles refused to accept the Tehran agreements and Churchill followed them, now saying that the Polish question could only be settled after the war had ended and, in an open threat to abandon plans for a second front, "would affect the operations which all three were about to undertake." In other words, he preferred to take advantage of any weak position that the West could put the Soviet Union in by political-military means by the end of the war. He also demanded that parts of Lithuania and Western Ukraine be administered by the London Poles and that United Nations authorities take part in the administration of the rest of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia. Naturally, the Soviet Government could not agree to these outrageous proposals.
"As regards the desire to place certain Soviet territories under foreign control, we cannot agree to discuss such encroachments, for, as we see it, the mere posing of the question is an affront to the Soviet Union."
(Soviet Government's reply to Churchill, March 3 1944.)
"I shall soon have to make a statement... that we continue to recognise the Polish government with whom we have been in continuous relations since... 1939; that we now consider all questions of territorial change must await the armistice or peace conferences of the victorious powers; and that in the meantime we can recognise no forcible transferences of territory."
(Winston Churchill to Stalin, March 21 1944.)
Apart from accusing the Soviets of any "forcible" transfer of territory in 1944; Churchill was notable silent when these territories were forcible taken from the Soviets after the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Stalin replied:
"I was struck by the fact that both your messages and particularly Kerr's statement bristle with threats against the Soviet Union. I should like to call your attention to this circumstance, because threats as a method are not only out of place in relations between Allies but also harmful... The Soviet Union's efforts to uphold and implement the Curzon Line are referred to in one of your messages as a policy of force, This implies that you are now trying to describe the Curzon Line as unlawful and the struggle for it as unjust... I must point out that at Teheran you, the President and myself were agreed that the Curzon Line was lawful. At that time you considered the Soviet government's stand on the issue quite correct, and said it would be crazy for representatives of the Polish emigre government to reject the Curzon Line. But now you maintain something to the contrary. 
You say... that the problem of the Soviet-Polish frontier will have to be put off till the armistice conference... I think there is a misunderstanding here. The Soviet Union is not waging, nor does it intend to wage, war against Poland. It has no conflict with the Polish people and considers itself an ally of Poland and the Polish people... It would be strange, therefore, to speak of an armistice between the USSR and Poland. But the Soviet Union is in conflict with the Polish emigre government, which does not represent the interests of the Polish people or express their aspirations."
(Stalin to Churchill, March 23 1944.)
As with any other country, the situation in Poland is best understood with the knowledge of its past:
In May 1926 a military coup brought Pilsudski to power. In 1935 elections were held. All opposition parties and 55.6 percent of the public boycotted these 'elections'. A new 'constitution' gave unlimited powers to the President including appointing and dismissing the Cabinet, the Commander in Chief of the army, the President of the Supreme Court, summoning and dissolving Parliament, deciding to make war, and foreign policy. Conditions were so poor in Poland in the 1920s and 30s that its biggest export was people in search of work. Poland became a country to emigrate from.
As is their usual practice, the British Government wanted to keep any fascist power, native or otherwise, in control of Poland; even the post World War One German army. But even that failed:
"A Polish Socialist leader in London, M.Ciolkosz, has revealed how the Allies attempted to keep the German Army of Occupation in Eastern Poland for fear of Bolshevism, and were seriously troubled when most of the army proceeded to go red, elect soldiers' councils, etc, and the whole of it was disarmed and sent home by the Poles."
(British Labour MP Koni Zilliacus, in his book "The Mirror of the Past.")
During the war the main thrust of the London Poles was to restore the old fascist order after the war. Incidentally, it was the London Poles who organised the disastrous Warsaw uprising towards the end of the war largely with the effect of discrediting the Soviet Union and the genuine Polish resistance who stayed and fought.
It was the Polish Committee for National Liberation, known as the Lublin Poles, who remained in Poland through the war which had the respect and support of the majority of the Polish people, especially the working class based political organisations. 
After the Russian Revolution the Baltic states wanted to make peace with the Soviets and become autonomous Soviet states themselves. But it was the Western Allies that forced them to continue the war against Soviet Russia. Previously these countries, with their reactionary and fascist regimes, were Churchill's "outpost of Europe against Bolshevism." The West had always tried to detach the Baltic states from the Soviet union. But at the Paris Peace Conference after the First World War the British Government, like their Russian Tsarist Generals and their allies, made it quite clear that they were absolutely opposed to the separation of the three Baltic states from a Tsarist Russia: 
At a conference on September 30 1919 the Baltic states decided to open peace negotiations with Soviet Russia. The Western Allies responded by imposing a blockade of the three Baltic republics. Despite Allied denials of their forcing the Baltic states into submission, the three Baltic states were forced to accede to the Allied demands:
"In spite of the various disclaimers of various members of the Government, there is little doubt that Allied pressure has been exerted upon the Baltic states generally... to induce them to continue the war against the Bolsheviks."
(British General Sir Hubert Gough, in a letter to the press, Jan 1920.) 
By early 1940 the peoples of the Baltic countries, under the burdens and threats of fascism from without and within, were in a state of social crisis. It was admitted privately and publicly at the time and since even by bourgeois historians and politicians in their moments of honesty, such as Estonian Minister for Foreign Affairs Jurimaa, that had the people freedom of political expression these countries would easily have become "bolshevised" long before.
In late 1940, under popular pressure, parliamentary elections were held in the three Baltic states and Soviet governments which had been abolished by the fascists who took power there during the 1918-1919 wars of intervention, were restored, and after plebiscites, the USSR Supreme Soviet granted their re-admittance to the USSR as autonomous sovereign republics with their own parliaments (Soviets.) By 1940, the Soviets had merely regained their own territory taken by Germany and Poland as a result of the Brest-Litovsk treaty and the armed intervention between 1918 and 1921.
And that the Soviets had any right to re-enter this territory anyway was intrinsic in the separate Mutual Assistance Treaties signed between the USSR and the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in September and October 1939.
"In the Baltic States: between June 17-21, 1940, the Fascist or semi-Fascist Governments in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fell and Left-wing Governments were set up. Elections by secret ballot held in these States, July 14, 1940, in which 81.6 to 95.5 per cent of the electorates voted, resulted in the formation of new Governments which decided to set up Socialist Soviet Republics, and on July 21, 1940, the Parliaments of these three Republics applied for incorporation into the USSR as Constituent Republics of the Union, and were accepted by the latter in August."
(British historians Pat and Zelda Coates, "A history of Anglo-Soviet Relations.")
To the interfering Westerners who have no business meddling in the internal affairs of the Baltic states or any country of the Soviet Union, the Soviets reply for instance that:
"It is high time it was understood that the question of the Baltic States is an internal Soviet matter which is none of Mr Wilkie's business. Anyone interested in such questions should take the trouble to become acquainted with the Soviet Constitution and with that democratic plebiscite which took place in these Republics; and let him also remember that we know how to defend our constitution. As for Finland and Poland, not to mention the Balkan countries, the Soviet Union will manage to thrash things out with them, without any assistance from Mr Wilkie."
(Pravda, Jan 1944.)
At the 1942 talks on the post war Soviet frontiers during the drafting of the Atlantic Charter, which was to agree a post-war settlement, Eden used as a stalling excuse that Britain's "Dominions" would have to be consulted; while at the same time objecting to the legitimate Soviet demands for recognition of its 1941 frontiers. The Atlantic Charter continued the West's hostile policy against the USSR:
"I thought the Atlantic Charter was directed against those people who were trying to establish world dominion. It now looks as if the Atlantic Charter was directed against the USSR... Why does the restoration of our frontiers come into conflict with the Atlantic Charter?... All we ask for is to restore our country to its former frontiers. We must have these for our security and safety... I want to emphasise the point that if you decline to do this, it looks as if you were creating a possibility for the dismemberment of the Soviet Union."
(Stalin.)
As has been admitted by many who could not be accused of pro-Soviet sentiments, the Soviet Union was concerned only with its own security and was rightly suspicious of any attitudes or actions of the West:
"One of the chief aims of Soviet policy has been and no doubt still is to obtain the maximum guarantees of Russia's security so that the Soviet Government can work out their own social and economic experiment without danger of foreign intervention or war."
(Lord Halifax, at US State Department, 1942.) 
"There is little doubt that the Soviet Government is suspicious lest our policy of close collaboration with the United States Government will be pursued at the expense of Russian interests and that we aim at an Anglo-American peace and post-war world."
(British Foreign Office telegram to the US, 1942.) 
But the British had persisted in trying to obtain an advantage over the Soviet Union in regards to Soviet Baltic territories all through the war.
Like the modern revanchists, Britain and the US, in their negotiations all through the war, and the political conduct of the war, were pursued with the aim of depriving the USSR of its rightful territory. But after the German defeat at Moscow they found it might no longer be possible to deprive the USSR of its rightful territory and reducing it to its 1920s or 1939 frontiers:
"We cannot be certain... that Germany's defeat may not be brought about in principle by Russian action before our own and American war potentiality is fully developed... It would be unsafe to gamble on Russia emerging so exhausted after the war that she will be forced to collaborate with us without our having to make any concessions to her."
(Foreign Relations of the United States, 1942, Vol.III.)
"It is particularly important that Great Britain make no concessions, that are not essential to victory over the Germans, in Eastern Europe. This is true even of the three Baltic states � Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania... No one can tell what frontiers... will be in the interests of England and most favourable to the balance of power, because the condition of Eastern Europe as it will be at the end of the war is unpredictable."
(The British journal "Nineteenth Century and After." 1942.) 
The war over; the balance of power in Europe had changed in favour of socialism.
The West then tried political and diplomatic means to limit and reverse the strength of socialism.
Against all their plans; at the end of a war which was supposed to destroy socialism; the balance of political and ideological power in Europe had changed drastically in favour of socialism in the spirit of peaceful coexistence, which even Roosevelt agreed was the only way:
"The spirit of Yalta, which he [Roosevelt B.M.] vainly fostered, was an expression of his determination to keep the competition peaceful lest mankind suffer the agony of a new war on the very morrow of finishing the old one."
(American historian Professor J.P.Morray "From Yalta to Disarmament, Cold War Debate.")
But as the attempts on Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the GDR and Poland were to reveal; as we shall see in a later chapter; they were to make further attempts to "roll back" socialism later:
"The way to bring peace is to produce revolutions in the countries behind the Iron Curtain."
(US General Clay, quoted in New York Times June 29 1952.)

Who Divided Germany?
"Both the President and Eden agreed that, under any circumstances, Germany must be divided into several states."
(Harry Hopkins.)
"If you had a unified Germany it would be owned by the Russians."
(US historian Steven Ambrose, Channel 4 TV May 24 1987.)
It was the West who wanted a divided Germany.
While publicly presenting a policy for a united Germany the West did everything possible to ensure that Germany was divided.
As early as the Teheran conference in 1943 the US proposed dividing Germany into five small independent states; which would thus be harmless and easy for US capital to dominate. In 1944 Churchill and Eden went to Moscow with a plan to divide Germany into three parts. Stalin flatly refused.
"Not only did the Soviet leaders oppose the division of Berlin and Germany and the splitting of Europe but the record shows that they have consistently called for a reunion of a disarmed and neutral Germany and the abolition or merger of the two alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact."
(US General Hugh B. Lester.) 
The Soviets never wanted Germany to be divided. The Soviet view was that it was not the German people but the Nazis and their financial and industrial capitalist backers and supporters who were to blame for the war and it was they who should be punished and pay reparations; it was they who should be broken up, not the German nation. Throughout the war Stalin refused to identify the Nazis with the German people. Even in February 1942, when the Nazis were at the gates of Moscow and surrounded Leningrad, he said in a speech:
"It would be ridiculous to identify the Hitler clique with the German people, with the German State. The experience of history teaches us that Hitlers come and go, but the German people, the German State, remains."
(Stalin, Feb 1942.)
And after the war Stalin opposed any policy which would destroy or divide Germany and thus punish the German people:
"Three years ago Hitler publicly stated that his task included the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the severance from it of the Caucasus, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic and other regions. He definitely said, "We shall destroy Russia so that she shall never rise again." This was three years ago. But Hitler's insane ideas were fated to remain unrealised. ...the very opposite of what the Hitlerites dreamed of in their delirium occurred. Germany is utterly defeated... The Soviet Union is triumphant, although it has no intention of either dismembering or destroying Germany."
(Stalin, May 9 1945.)
At Potsdam the Soviets proposed the setting up of a central German administration for political and economic unity. This was rejected by the US and Britain.
In dividing Germany the West broke a Potsdam agreement, a Soviet proposal, that Germany should remain a single economic unit under the control of the German people. The Soviets also proposed the withdrawal of all occupational troops and let Germany be run by the German people. Fearing that a people released from living under fascism will invariably opt for socialism, this of course was rejected by the Western Allies.
In Paris, Moscow and London Soviet minister Molotov consistently proposed the establishment of a provisional government of all political parties and trade unions in all four occupation zones of Germany followed by an all German constitution with secret elections by proportional representation to an all German government of the German people, supervised by observers of the four occupying powers. Bourgeois democracy could certainly not have complained about that; since in no way could it have been dominated by communists, since the Soviet zone had only 18 million out of Germany's 67 million population. 
Fearing that the whole German people might vote for the Communists, the West rejected all these proposals.
A unified Germany under terms of the Potsdam Treaty would put Germany under the control of the German people and give them the opportunity to opt for socialism. To the twisted thinking of the West this meant "giving it to the Russians." The West greatly feared a communist Germany:
"The first question is whether Germany will turn Communist... Manifestly, then, if we wish to make any effort to prevent Germany from going Communist we, along with Great Britain and France, are impelled to exert every effort to breathe new life into Germany's prostrate economy by integrating it as a prospering element, into our own... ...if the people of western Germany became convinced that Communism offered the best means of unity, the majority of them would become Communist." 
(US Government Memo "Future Policy Towards Germany," March 26 1946.) 
The West was so afraid of the possibility of Germany becoming communist that they staged a repeat of the Zinoviev letter incident. A letter known as "Protocol M", written in pseudo-Marxist language and calling for strikes and "liberation of the world proletariat", was "released" by British Intelligence onto the British and world press. Repressions against Communists and closures of Communist newspapers followed immediately as eagerly as those of the Nazis, and left-wing books banned by the Nazis were also banned by the Westers powers. Three months later it was admitted in the House of Commons that "Protocol M" was a fake.
The Soviet view was that a divided Germany would always be dangerous to world security, since sooner or later along could come another Bismark or Hitler to "re-unite" Germany. The ideas of US military commander of Germany General Clay, and the modern German and US revanchists are examples of this.
A divided Germany enabled US forces to intervene and put down any socialist transformation if the German people had any thoughts of 'going communist'; which they could not have done if the whole of Germany was under joint control with the Soviets.
A divided Germany enabled separate peace treaties to be made by the West which they could not make with a unified Germany under the terms of the Potsdam treaty because of the influence of the USSR. Separate peace treaties paved the way for West Germany to be incorporated into NATO.
A divided Germany enabled US monopoly capital to dominate a separated West German state, whereas they could not have dominated a unified Germany under the joint East-West supervision terms of the Potsdam agreement. A divided Germany enabled US monopoly capital to dominate West German heavy industry and restore the power of the cartels and multi-nationals; which would become part of the foundations of the European Common Market and part of the formation of NATO - both as an anti-Soviet alliance; and both of which they could not have done in a unified Germany under the terms of the Potsdam Treaty.
A divided Germany also presented for the US a possible future starting point for the cause of another war against communism:
"The hell of it is that the State Department is always six months behind us. They have only just now accepted our demand to set up a separate West German state. We have been all set to go on that for more than six months... Now they've accepted the idea of a separate state, of course, we're ready to go ahead with the Peace Statute. With the Peace Statute signed, we can make Germany an ally. We'll have a seventeenth nation in the Marshall plan with its heavy industry and 44 million more people on our side... We're losing precious time. We should be all set to go in another few months... of course we'll be ready to go. I should say we'll be ready to go. As a matter of fact, one of my last jobs has been drawing up a paper on our occupation policy for the Soviet Union."
(Richard Scammon, US Military Government, Berlin, 1947.) 
The capitalist world's desire to destroy the world socialist community of countries becomes even more obvious when you consider that the USSR, our ally in the war against German Fascism, was denied membership of NATO; while Germany, who had just attempted to take over the whole of Europe - East and West, was immediately welcomed with open arms as a friend and ally in NATO:
"First of all we should see that Germany is firmly tied into the other nations of Western Europe and become a full partner in the North Atlantic Pact [NATO B.M.]. The importance of this cannot be overemphasised... The Shuman plan offers a real assurance in this direction."
(New York Herald Tribune Oct 27 1950.)
The formation of NATO by the West was a direct violation of the Potsdam Treaty:
"Each High Contracting Party undertakes not to conclude any alliance and not to take part in any coalition directed against the other High Contracting Party."
(From the Potsdam Treaty.)
The NATO military alliance was formed in 1949, just after the Soviet Union had demobilised 8.5 million of its armed forces. NATO was created solely as an anti-socialist military alliance. The Warsaw Pact socialist military alliance was formed six years after NATO.
Plans for rearming Germany, against the Potsdam Treaty, were in the making despite the deceitful and naive statements of US and British politicians.
"There is no intention to rearm Germany."
(US Secretary of Defence Louis Johnson, Nov 1949.)
"We are all against German rearmament."
(Ernest Bevin, House of Parliament, summer 1950.)
However, there is a power far higher than a British Labour Foreign Secretary:
"Mr. Bevin went to New York, determined to prevent the precipitate rearmament of Germany... He failed... Faced with an American ultimatum... he toed the line."
(New Statesman and Nation, Dec 2 1950.)
"I have discussed the whole thing with Monty and he fully shares my view that we must get a German army as soon as possible. Some dumb politicians are against it, but they won't be much longer."
(Commander in Chief of the British Army on the Rhine Sir Charles Keightley, at the Press Club, Berlin, June 1950.) 
As part of NATO and against the Potsdam Treaty, and away from public view, West Germany again rearmed; just as it did in the 1930s:
"It is the great merit of the entire German military economy that in those bad years it did not remain inactive, even if, for understandable reasons, its activities were hidden from the public. In years of quiet work the scientific and practical requisites were created so that the German Wehrmacht could resume work without loss of time and experience at the given hour... Only due to this work of the German enterprises, which was shrouded in silence... was it possible immediately after 1933 to find speedy solutions to the new tasks of rearming, could the many new problems be mastered."
(Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, in a speech at the University of Berlin in Jan 1944.) 
And for the British, in typical contradictory British logic, that was fine, just as it was in the 1930s:
"I do not consider that the repeal of the disarmament dispositions of the various peace treaties would in actual face lead to an increase in arms. On the contrary, I believe that the announcement of the German rearmament programme brings new hope of a general limitation of arms by all countries."
(Winston Churchill's son-in-law, Foreign Office official Duncan Sandys, Nov 2 1935.) 
Even before the Second World War had ended it was decided by the West that post-war Germany should again be the capitalist world's bulwark against communism:
"Back to War Office to have an hour with Secretary of State discussing post-war policy in Europe. Should Germany be dismembered or converted into an ally to meet the Russian threat of twenty years hence? I suggested the latter and feel certain that we must, from now onwards, regard Germany in a very different light. Germany is no longer the dominating power in Europe - Russia is. Therefore, foster Germany, gradually build her up and bring her into a federation of Western Europe. [Forerunner of the EEC. B.M.] Unfortunately, this must all be done under the cloak of our policy of a holy alliance between England, Russia and America, not an easy policy and one requiring a super Foreign Secretary."
(British Chief of Staff Field Marshal Sir (later Lord) Alan Brooke, in his diary, July 27 1944.) 
In 1945, under personal pressure from the King and Churchill, and against even Attlee's choice, which was to be Hugh Dalton, Ernest Bevin was installed as that "super Foreign Secretary".
About NATO Bevin had said:
"This pact is a powerful defensive arrangement, it is not directed against anyone."
(British Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.)
Italy's Fascist Foreign Minister Ciano had said the same before the war about the Anti-Comintern Pact:
"The pact has no hidden aims. It is directed against no one."
(Italy's Foreign Minister Ciano, talking about the pre war Anti-Comintern Pact between Nazi Germany and its allies.)
All that was needed then, and capital has been trying to conjure one up in people's minds ever since, was to create a situation of conflict in order to start a war with the Soviet Union and the Socialist world:
"Inasmuch as the Russians appear to be achieving great success with the peace, and are unlikely to gain more by war, the conflict will have to be of our making, sparked off by some event, either in Berlin or elsewhere in Europe, where Russia and the West may come into conflict."
(Monetary Times, Nov 1948.)
As we shall see in other parts of this book; further attempts to create situations of potential conflict were made later in Hungary and Czechoslovakia as well as the GDR, Poland, Cuba and Vietnam.
The same policy was still in operation over 20 years later:
"The new policy will be to fire battlefield nuclear weapons at targets in E. Germany, Poland or Czechoslovakia, but not at the Soviet Union, directly relevant to the front line fighting. This would mean tactical airfields, first line supply depots or collecting points for reinforcements."
(Defence correspondent Douglas Home, The Times Dec 23 1969.)
Also, Sir Alec Douglas Home, as Foreign Secretary, according to The Times, told the NATO Council in Paris on December 22 1961, in a reference to Berlin that the British people were prepared to "be reduced to atomic dust."
Europe didn't have to wait many years for a conflict.
As the diaries and memoirs of US Government officials such as Forrestal, Vandenberg and Hickenlooper now reveal; since British scientists played a large part in the development of the atom bomb, there was a secret pledge made by Roosevelt and Churchill at the Quebec Conference in 1943 not to use it without British consent. The US threatened to oppose Marshall Aid to Britain if the British Government didn't release them from this treaty. The Attlee Labour Government agreed, the US was released from the Quebec agreement, and Marshall Aid arrived in Britain accompanied by American bombers - for a "short training" and "good will" visit. Also as a requirement of Marshall Aid Britain sold over to the US Britain's share in the Congo uranium mines, which the US needed for its nuclear weapons programme, and Britain's assets abroad such as military bases for US nuclear bomber use; as well as opening the British colonies up to US capital. 
The British Government had already secretly agreed to Britain's own nuclear arms programme in 1947. 
Bases for the US bombers had already been set up in Britain under the pretext of airlifting supplies to "starving Berlin" which was said to be "blockaded" by the Soviets, who in fact were themselves feeding the people of West Berlin. 
The truth, however, was that the West had begun to divide Germany by introducing a separate currency into the Western zones, which upset the economy of the Soviet zone. As was expected by the West, the Soviets closed the border in order to protect the currency and the economy in their sector. But movements of supplies and people were not heavily restricted. The Soviets even offered to supply the whole of Berlin since there was no shortage in the Soviet zone of Berlin. A similar offer was made by the Mayor of Berlin's Soviet zone:
"We have the coal and food stored in our warehouses. They can be had by Herr Reuter [West Berlin's Mayor] for the whole of Berlin without any conditions whatsoever. And if Herr Reuter does not want to accept, individual suburban bergermeisters can have it. They can collect from us or we will deliver it to them."
(Mayor of Berlin's Soviet zone Friedrich Ebert.) 
Herr Reuter, who had said he would hang all communists "from the nearest trees and lamp-posts", rejected the offer and forbade Western mayors to accept. Even Western companies who accepted Ebert's offer of coal were blacklisted by the Western authorities. Western Berliners had their sacks of coal given to them by the Eastern sector confiscated by West Berlin border police.
The crisis and the airlift had to continue. There was no "blockade" of essential supplies at all.
"The so-called 'blockade' began when the Americans and the British decided to establish a separate West German State. That decision was a breach of the Potsdam Agreement."
(D.N.Pritt KC. MP. in his book "Russia is for Peace.")
The so-called German "food crisis" was created by the West. The "food crisis" enabled the US separate and get complete control of Western Germany.
It is significant that the day after the US currency reform many categories of food suddenly became unrationed and luxury foods suddenly appeared in the shops. The industrial workers, however, had been going short of basic foods since 1945, surviving on about 700 calories a day (a slice of bread and a few potatoes was the daily food intake for most of the Ruhr working class) as against the promised 1,500 calories. The US controlled all food movement and prices, and prevented the traditional trade of Ruhr coal and steel for foods from the East on a barter basis. Instead, food had to be imported at US prices. The day after currency reform it was planned to end potato rationing because a sudden "surplus" of potatoes had accumulated in the US zone.
The "Berlin airlift" was nothing but an expensive propaganda show in order to "prove" the Soviet Union's "hostile intentions" and provide a reason for setting up the anti-Soviet alliance of NATO and for initiating another war against the USSR.
Dividing Germany was also part of the US strategic war plans:
"1. To evaluate the chances of success in delivering a powerful strategic air offensive... and to appraise any adverse effect on this offensive of the continuation of the Berlin airlift at its contemplated level until war occurs...
4. The Berlin airlift will be continued... until the outbreak of hostilities...
5. The strategic air offensive will be implemented on a first-priority basis."
(From declassified US security document JCS 1952/1, of Dec 21 1948.) 
The Berlin airlift had the required propaganda value:
"There could be a settlement of the Berlin situation at any time on the basis of a Soviet currency for Berlin and our right to bring in food, raw materials and fuel to the Western sectors. The present situation is, however, to US advantage for propaganda purposes. We are getting credit for keeping the people of Berlin from starving; the Russians are getting the blame for their privations. If we settle Berlin, then we have to deal with Germany as a whole. We will have to deal immediately with a Russian proposal for withdrawal of all occupation troops and a return of Germany to the Germans. Frankly I do not know what we would say to that. We cannot keep up the airlift indefinitely."
(Truman's foreign policy advisor, later Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in an off-the-record speech to the Overseas Press Club, Paris, Jan 24 1949.) 
It was much better for the US if the crisis could be maintained and the shortages blamed on the Soviets and the fact that Germany had "lost" the rich agricultural lands East of the Oder-Neisse line.
At the end of January 1949 Dulles stated in a New York Herald Tribune interview that the US did not want the Berlin situation settled until NATO existed and West Germany was integrated into Western Europe. 
It was the West's actions which created a separate German state. The West introduced their separate currency into the Western zones on June 18 1948. This was extended to West Berlin on June 23. The new notes had been printed in the US many months before, and made the Marks in the Soviet zone valueless. The Soviets immediately, as from June 20, put a tight control on all road, rail and river transport into the Soviet zone. As an emergency measure the Soviets had to prepare stamps which were pasted over the notes in their zone. These currency reforms in West Berlin and West Germany seriously affected the economic relations between West and East Germany. Over the 12 years of its open border policy the GDR lost nearly 30 billion Marks.
Also a separate West German constitution was drawn up. The Allied Control Council was dissolved by the West. On December 5 1948, separate elections were held in the Western zones for a separate West German state. On December 21 1948 the British, US and French established a separate tripartite Kommandatura in West Berlin. Finally, a separate Bonn state was established on September 7 1949. Since Germany no longer existed as a whole, on October 7 1949 the GDR was formed.
The FRG (capitalist Federal Republic of Germany) was again set up as Europe's "bulwark against communism."
Coupled with this is the dangerous West German ideology of revanchism; to "reclaim" Europe's "lost territories".
"The best way to get back the German Eastern territories is the rearmament of Germany in the framework of the European army."
(West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Feb 10 1952.) 
"Our aim is the liberation of our 18 million brothers and sisters in the Eastern territories. Until now we have always spoken of the reunification of Germany. But we should rather say 'liberation'."
(West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Sept 7 1953.) 
"The Eastern frontier of Bavaria must be strengthened for a solution of the Sudeten German question in the spirit of the Munich pact and for an all European solution."
(West German Minister, ex-Nazi Theodor Oberlander, in "Bulletin of the Federal Government" Nov 6 1953.)
The same Oberlander had envisaged the same ideas in 1940: 
"In any case we must achieve complete Germanisation in the eastern territories. Measures effecting complete ejection and resettlement may seem to be harsh to those involved... but severity employed once is better than small scale warfare carried on for generations... For this reason, along with many others, an assimilation of the Polish people must be rejected."
(Theodor Oberlander, Neues Bauerntum April-May 1940.)
"I can only welcome any reinforcement of the defence front, whether through the despatch of atomic weapons or by other military means."
(West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, to US Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, Nov 1953.)
"If we give the Germans weapons and equal rights in the Atlantic Defence Community, and also the hope that the East German zone can be liberated and the lost territories East of the Oder-Neisse Line can be won back in a war, then there can be little doubt that we can win the Germans as our most reliable allies."
(The American Mercury, after Chancellor Adenauer's visit to the US, June 1953.) 
"The Potsdam Agreement contains not only economic principles, it also contains political principles which are for us Germans unacceptable and will remain unacceptable."
(West German Chancellor Adenauer, Feb 1 1953.)
"The following definitions and written forms are to be applied in regard to the East German territories... For the East German territories beyond the Oder and Neisse: German Reich territory within the frontiers of 31 December 1937 under temporary Polish (or Soviet) administration, or the corresponding short form: Eastern territories of the German Reich (as of 31 December 1937) at the moment under foreign administration."
(West German War Ministry instructions on the official "designation of the eastern territories, Dec 1958.) 
"Our territorial demands reach far beyond the Oder-Neisse line; we want to recover the old German domains. The year 2000 must not be allowed to become the 83rd anniversary of the October Revolution in the world."
(Von Hassel, West German Minister for Expelled Persons, Refugees and War Victims, Bulletin des Presse und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung, Bonn, Aug 21 1960.)
The border remained open till 1961.
In the middle of 1960 two West German Army officers; Major Bruno Winzer and Captain von Gliga went to the GDR and revealed detailed plans for the FRG to launch a lightning war against the GDR. The plans used the idea of creating an 'incident' in the GDR so that West German forces could intervene and occupy and present the world with a fait accompli, saying that an internal German question had been settled. These plans were made public by the GDR, who made it quite clear in conjunction with the USSR that the Warsaw powers would defend their ally.
On June 14 1961, West German revanchists in the Bundestag passed a resolution for the revision of Europe's frontiers. In the US on July 25 1961 the West German Minister of defence, ex-Nazi Franz Josef Strauss, who still suffered from frosbitten toes as a constant reminder of his exploits at Stalingrad, said that the Second World War had still not ended and that a kind of civil war was in the making. 
A plan called "Outline" was developed to seize the GDR by force. On August 1 1961 NATO troops were ordered on a full alert for an armed clash in Berlin. A public threat was issued by Kennedy and a nuclear attack was planned. The USAF mobilised planes and the West German navy was deployed in the Baltic and ex-Nazi General Spiedel had NATO ground forces mobilised for the attack. 
The Warsaw Pact member nations met in Moscow. 
War was imminent. On August 13 1961 the West woke up to find the Berlin wall had been built and manned by the GDR workers' militia, the People's Army of the GDR; backed by rows of Warsaw Pact tanks and artillery and troops behind it. On August 25 1961 US General Clay's tanks approached the border only to find lines of Soviet tanks opposing them. 16 hours later Clay's tanks withdrew. The world stepped back from the brink of World War III. 
NATO's plan was abandoned; switching their plans to Czechoslovakia in 1968, as we shall see later, when again their plans were stopped by the sudden appearance of five Warsaw Pact forces, not just Soviet, to defend Czechoslovakia against a combined counter-revolution and any desires of NATO to establish a military base in Czechoslovakia.
The Berlin wall was a normal border of a sovereign state. It was not a wall that simply divided East and West ethnically or geographically; but a wall that divided two world economic systems. It divided two ideologies and two world outlooks; two worlds, one controlled by capital and one controlled by labour.
The division of Germany is on class lines. In the GDR, the working capital of the whole state is owned by the whole people - by the working class, there is no other class of people in a true socialist state, no capitalist class. What share of their countries' working capital do working people own in the capitalist world? None! 
The Berlin wall and the borders of the socialist countries are a barrier against economic and political destabilisation of the world socialist community. The defence of socialism begins at the Berlin wall. Does Wall Street or Threadneedle Street intend to move it? Does the Pentagon or Whitehall intend to knock it down?
In 1961 the GDR used the power of its borders to show the imperialists the limits of their power. Imperialist power ends at the wall. But even though the events of August 1961 showed the West the limits of its power, they haven't given up, as revanchism shows: 
"Our fatherland is Germany, not only the Federal Republic but also the Soviet zone as well as the territories under Polish administration and the Soviet annexed region around Konigsberg."
(Soldatenkurier, soldier's newspaper of the 5th Tank Division, Dietz/Lahn, May 1 1962.)
"Our all-German positions are against the stabilisation of the status quo in Germany and Europe. As long as we - supported by the free world - refuse to accept the facts established by the communists in Germany, we are not only keeping open the German question, but we are at the same time becoming effective against the finality of the stabilisation of the status quo in Europe. The non-recognition of the zone and the Oder-Neisse line fulfils a European function... for the destiny of the Europeans under communist domination is... a matter of political, historical and moral concern."
(Rainer Barzel, Die Welt, West Berlin, Oct 30 1965.)
"In my talks in the USA I explained that the Federal Republic of Germany... would struggle with all political means for the restoration of the frontiers of the German Reich of 1937... with a view to providing lasting conditions and a peaceful order throughout the whole of Europe."
(Franz-Josef Strauss, Bayerne Kurier, Munich, June 25 1965.)
So a "peaceful order" in Europe is dependent only on restoration of the 1937 German Reich. And what if "all political means" fails? How then does one move the frontiers of Europe? One cannot simply go and move the fence-posts:
"Without possession of atomic weapons it is unthinkable that Germany can restore its historical frontiers."
(Secret memo of the Bonn Government, Dec 1961.) 
"If it were up to me, we could break down the wall in Berlin. You have in the meantime learned enough from me that I would risk a break-through. And I am sure I could rely on you."
(Captain Ott, to soldiers of Armoured Rifle Brigade 13 of the West German Army.) 
"As far as I am concerned, it could begin tomorrow. In one day we could be in Leipzig [GDR B.M.] and by night-time I would already be sleeping on the stairs of the central railway station."
(Captain Schubert, Signal Battalion Clausthal-Zellerfeld, to West German Army recruits.) 
"An atomic war of extermination should be made the basis of total military preparations by the government leadership. All military measures must be reconsidered from the viewpoint of a war of extermination."
(Land Defence of the Federal Republic of Germany as an Organisational Problem. Wehrkunde, Munich, 1966, No.5.)
"No, in this question of German life and destiny complete clarity and frankness are all the more necessary... the final aim which is the united Reich including the German territories in the East."
("Might and Right", in German Soldier's Yearbook 1966.) 
Like Hitler's Nazis, the West German revanchists still keep their military options open for expansion to the East:
"Whoever is of the opinion that the best forward defence is a foreign policy, which pushes its position ahead towards the East, will not allow the military instrument to become blunted."
(Frankfurter Allgemeine, Feb 9 1967.)
"Once flourishing stretches of country are situated beyond the Oder-Neisse line which had formerly brought forth a surplus of food for the provision of many millions of people - and which are now in a state of decay. The Polish settlers installed there consider their presence in the Eastern German territories as temporary."
(Information fur de Truppe, special issue with map with 1937 frontiers "Die Deutschen Ostgebeite." (The Eastern German Territories).) 
The US government and its faithful owners of the British media still pander to West German revanchism in the 1980s:
"Let me be very clear, the United States does not recognise the legitimacy of the artificially imposed division of Europe... This division is the essence of European security and human rights problems."
(US Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs George Schultz, to Stockholm Conference on Confidence Building Measures and Disarmament, Jan 17 1984.)
Even during the world's 40th anniversary of its victory over fascism the West German and US revanchists were calling for the restoration of the 1937 Reich borders:
"May 8 1945 did not draw a line through the German question. The Reich within the 1937 borders is not abolished."
(Alfred Dregger, former Nazi army Captain, chairman of the Christian Democratic Union - CDU/CSU faction in the West German Bundestag, May 1985.) 
"The reason Yalta remains important is that the freedom of Europe is unfinished business."
(US President Ronald Reagan, Feb 1985.) 
"Forty years ago today the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States and the United Kingdom, met at Yalta in the Crimea to discuss the future of Europe... Yalta means the root of all their present political evils... That is what divided Europe and divides it still."
(The Times Feb 4 1985.)
Revanchism is presented to West Germans several times a day. Every time they see the weather map on television it shows the 1937 frontiers. West German postage stamps are issued which show as belonging to West Germany cities which belong to other states. Thus revanchism is kept alive in the minds of the people in the hope that one day conditions might present themselves in which the West can take back the GDR into the imperialist fold. And psychological preparation of public opinion continues:
"This fourth dimension is a war which cannot be shown on any strategic map, but is wherever the press, radio or pictures can reach into the last village. 
The battles of a third world war, fought on the level of this fourth dimension, have long been in action, it is the struggle for the minds of the people of our world."
("Press Freedom and Psychological Armament." in Wehrkunde, official organ of the West German War Ministry, Munich, 1964, No.9.)
To those in the West who speak of a reunification of Germany, the GDR people asked: under what socio-economic system? Socialism but with a Mercedes? 

Who Forced The Creation Of An East German State? 
In the GDR (German Democratic Republic - what the West calls East Germany), in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, there are no Fascists in power, no armaments industries, and no large army. Unlike West Germany, however, there was also no Marshall Aid. The social and economic production systems of the socialist countries had to be build by the people themselves with their own resources of materials and labour. Nobody helped them. 
Contrary to malicious Western propaganda, designed for no other purpose than putting any thoughts of socialism as an alternative socio-economic system firmly out of the enquiring minds of ordinary people, the Red Army did not "impose" socialism on East Germany or any other country after the war.
Regarding Germany, Stalin said at Potsdam that the political system of Germany must be the decision of the German people:
"Germany is what she has become as a result of waging a war, there is no other Germany. It is a nation without a government, without borders, without wealth, without an army and without heavy industry and without Nazis. Germany is now Zones of occupation. Therefore let the German people choose its government and means of production and distribution of wealth."
(Stalin, Potsdam, 1945.)
In strict accordance with the Potsdam Treaty, and in direct contrast with the FRG (West Germany), in the GDR (East Germany) land reforms were carried out, and the property of Fascists was turned over to the people, and non-fascist political parties and trade unions were formed. Local self government and administration was established, and elections to community, district, and state assemblies of people's representatives were held in 1946. Elections were equal, direct, and by secret ballot, in which representatives of the Socialist Unity Party won the majority of votes. Junkerdom, fascism and militarism were abolished, and monopoly capital in land, finance and industry was handed over to the people; and the press, judiciary and education were purged of fascists.
Contrary to the Potsdam Treaty, in the western Zones of occupation the formation of a single German government was impeded, unification of political parties on a nationwide basis was prevented and the Socialist Unity Party was prevented from functioning. The Western occupied zones were united in a block as part of the West's policy of splitting Germany. In September 1948 Western military commanders formed a so-called "parliamentary council" which drafted the Bonn constitution of a separate West German state which was approved of by the Western military commanders-in-chief on May 12 1949. The West German people took no part in the drafting of this constitution, which provided for the re-domination of the monopolies and gave no guarantees against militarism, fascism and revanchism (reformation of the 1937 German "Reich" lands).
The FRG was formed on September 20 1949 and headed by Adenauer.
"Bismark spoke about the coalition against Germany as his nightmare. I also have my nightmare which is Potsdam."
(West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.) 
Not long after the ink was dry on the Potsdam Agreement, West Germany was absolved most of its war debts and reparations and received billions of dollars of US capital investments known as "Marshall Aid." The German economy was so poor that it was feared again, as it was before the war, that the German people would opt for socialism.
There had always been a strong socialist tradition in Germany, with many fine leaders, such as Ernst Thaelmann, who spent ten years in Nazi jails from 1933 and was finally killed in Buchenwald, a concentration camp specifically for political prisoners � communists, socialists, trade union leaders and members, working class leaders and other anti-Nazi political prisoners from all the nations of Europe including British, all of whom had a politically aware working class internationalist consciousness; and was the only concentration camp in which the inmates organised to overpower the guards and liberated themselves. 
When the town of Eisleben, now in the GDR, was liberated, a banner which had been presented to the workers of the town long before the war by Soviet miners from Krivoi Rog was brought out to greet the Red Army. 
"The market-place was a sea of red flags. In the old town-hall a democratic administration, a representative body of the working class was installed under the glorious banner of the Krivoi Rog miners which Otto Brosowski, the Party veteran, would not relinquish despite torture and solitary confinement by the fascists. In the open... stood a statue of Lenin - material evidence that in this part of Germany the torch of proletarian internationalism had never gone out, that the banner of Ernst Thaelmann's Party had been held high, untainted, despite the fascist darkness."
(Otto Winzer.) 
Another act of solidarity by the town was the hiding of a bronze statue of Lenin which the Nazis had brought from Smolensk in the Soviet Union to melt down for armaments. Reprisals were taken, but the statue remained hidden. When the Red Army liberated the town, the inhabitants wanted to give the statue back to its rightful owners. The Smolensk Soviet authorities said: you saved it, we donate it to you. A German journalist writes:
Many of the founders of the GDR were members of the Free German Committee formed during the war by anti-Nazi German army officers and Reichstag deputies, some of whom managed to reach the safety of Moscow before the war, and some of whom were German prisoners of war captured by the Soviets. One such prisoner was Field Marshal von Paulus, who surrendered the German armies at Stalingrad and joined the Free German Committee in Moscow. After the war he taught at a Soviet military academy. He died in the GDR in 1957.
The program of the Free German Committee had stated in 1943 that: 
"If the German people continue inertly to follow Hitler, then he can be overthrown only by the armies of the Coalition. But that would mean the end of our national independence and the partition of our country. If the German people have the courage to free Germany of Hitler... then Germany will have won the right to decide her own fate, and other nations will respect her... But no one will make peace with Hitler; therefore the formation of a genuine National Government is an urgent task... Such a government can be formed only by men who have risen against Hitler... The forces in the Army, true to their Fatherland, must play a decisive part in this. Our aim is a free Germany, i.e.a strong democratic power totally unlike the impotent Weimar Republic."
(From the Programme of the Free German Committee, 1943.)
The majority of Government ministers in the GDR also spent time in Hitler's concentration camps - on the inside of the wire, including GDR President Erich Honecker, who survived 10 years in Nazi concentration camps. President Honecker and the people of the GDR say that as far as they are concerned: "Never again will capitalism, exploitation, fascism or war emanate from German soil."
The GDR had a difficult birth. Berlin. like the rest of Germany, was a heap of rubble, no food, since the Nazis had destroyed all the food stores, and little of anything else. Most of the food, transport and other essentials were supplied by the Soviet Union. British historian Alexander Werth describes:
"The feeding of Berlin was a terrible problem, since the Nazis had destroyed all the food-stores, saying: 'While we are here you'll have food, but when the Bolsheviks take over, you'll starve.' But things were not nearly as bad as the Germans - very frightened at first - had expected. The Red Army had presented Berlin with a thousand lorries... twenty-five million marks..."
(British historian Alexander Werth.) 
One of the first priorities of the GDR was to rid the country of fascism. Nazis were removed from all positions of power and given other work to do. Nazi school books were replaced and it was difficult to find enough anti-Nazi teachers.
Government. banks, land and industry were taken over by the East German people, who, after paying heavy war reparations and without a penny of Marshall Aid, built themselves a fine, modern industrial country whose industrial output became among the world's top ten, with an economic growth rate that was the envy of the capitalist world, and whose standard of living was at least as high as the average worker's in Britain. 
Like the other Socialist countries, the GDR has no inflation, prices remain stable, and wages rise steadily, so the real standard of living steadily rises. 
Without any capital aid from the West, the East German people also had to rebuild their ruined and destroyed cities; 
"Berlin, another of the cities largely decimated by World War II, immediately involved one in thought of all the tortuous calamities resulting from warfare. whilst the people were still living largely in cellars, dugouts or ruins, it had been a question of whether it was worth trying to rebuild East Berlin at all, or whether it would not be simpler to start afresh on a new site."
(Dean of Canterbury, Hewlett Johnson.) 
East Berlin is now a bright new clean and impressive modern city in almost all respects and to an immensely greater degree than London, New York, and certainly by contrast with West Berlin. It is often said that if you photographed or filmed East and West Berlin and reversed the titles, such are people's abysmal ignorance and prejudices engendered by a mind-saturating Western media, most people would believe you. Much of West Berlin is dirtier, more run down and full of rubbish, empty buildings, unemployment, homelessness, drug addicts, vandalism, crime and every other example of Western inner city depravity and decay. East Berlin's equivalent to London's Oxford Street is a wide boulevard with wide tree lined pavements, bright new shops, office blocks and apartments of a quality which disgraces much of its London counterpart. And how many working people in London could afford the rent to live in an apartment in Oxford Street; as they do in the centre of East Berlin?
To have an idea of what the GDR has had to cope with since 1945, let GDR workers speak:
"For years we have been rebuilding Semper's Opera House which was destroyed during a barbaric air raid on my home town. I don't know if anyone can imagine how many bricks had to be carefully laid one by one with a spirit level, before a window appeared, closed by an arch. The old stately building had thousands of broken doors and windows. And inside the ring walls there was hardly a vault left standing. But we have all grown up with concrete slabs. Who would know how to model stucco rosettes? Who would know what colours were used for the painting on the ceiling 110 years ago?
We had to learn all that and undertake the reconstruction work in full accordance with the old designs, as if court architect Semper was standing right behind us. He needed eight years to complete the building; the air raid in 1945 only needed eight seconds to destroy it. The surrounding pond was drained empty to extinguish the fire. I sometimes wish that the general staff officers of the American Air Force had had to drag all the bricks for us so that they might think a little before they press the button again! With the bombs they have on board today, the surrounding pond would evaporate in a flash.
I merely want to say: we builders will still not be finished with this project when the Opera House is opened on 13 February 1985. That will be the 40th anniversary of its destruction.
We must also ensure that anyone who wants to throw again a firebrand into our building has his hand stayed. For this reason, I have served three years in the National People's Army and, thus, I go on marches with the workers' militia at the weekends: for the Zwinger, for the Kreuzkirche, for Semper's Opera House, and for life in this city."
(Gerolf Otte, 27, bricklayer, Dresden, GDR.) 
"As I see it, there's a two-fold political as well as a two-fold economic reason why we had to carry out land reform and make a success of it. First of all we had to get rid of the Junkers, the princes, counts, barons and such junk. They have been the curse of Germany and the curse of the small peasants and labourers too, for long enough. They were a breeding ground for militarists, adventurers and reactionaries of all sorts. They had to go. Without their estates, they're no power and no danger at all. Let them go to the West and sit in their friends' castles there and make their plans. They'll never come back, take my word for it. Think of it, 2,000 of them owned as much land as 2,000,000 of our peasants."
(East German village committee official, to Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, in his book "Cold War in Germany.)
"The expropriated enemies of the people were received in the West German zones of occupation with open arms. They put many a spoke in our wheel. We had a miserable inheritance: we had four blast furnaces, and they were only fit for the scrap heap. In what is now the Federal Republic, there were 156. In Leuna, not one piece of piping was intact, in the IG-Farben works, by contrast, the chimneys soon began smoking again."
(Gerda Hesse, Director of the Pirna Industrial Health Academy, GDR.) 
"When I was born, the question of who would win out, socialism or capitalism, had been decided in favour of socialism. For 16 years the imperialists tried to bleed us white on account of the open state borders, causing us losses in excess of 100,000 million marks. They tried to roll socialism back through terrorist groups, the discontinuation of vital supplies, phoney currency exchanges, deliberate brain drains and smear campaigns. But we soon learnt to fight against this. The workers' militia, the National People's Army, the Soviet Army and the Warsaw Treaty Organisation created an impregnable barrier in August 1961. From then on, we could at last work for ourselves."
(Carola Guntert, GDR.) 
Much propaganda is made by the West about people in the European socialist countries inability to travel to the West. In Britain it is often complained about the "brain drain", where, doctors and other specialists trained here go off and earn big dollars in the US or elsewhere. This issue needs to be properly evaluated in the contextual terms of the socialist countries. 
When I stayed in the Moscow hotel which was built for the 1980 Olympics there was a conversation going on in the bar with a group of British mainstream journalists and a group of students from the GDR (Eastern Germany). The British journalists kept trying to plug away at the socialist countries' lack of freedom to travel ot the "West." One bright GDR agricultural engineering student put it this way: 
Taking the example often quoted in the West of a surgeon going abroad, he said, and I cannot recall his exact words: In our country, somebody wanting to be a surgeon first of all goes to university for an extension of his education. Then he goes to medical gollege, followed by medical training in a hospital or medical institute. When he qualifies, he is then as what we in the West would call a house doctor or a registrar. This extends his training and experience for a few more years until he qualifies and becomes what we in the West call a consultant. This whole process covers some ten or more years of his life. Who do you think pays for his upkeep, his living expenses, and all this education and training? It is us who work in the factories and in the fields. What do you think we feel when he turns round and says to us "Thanks fellas, but I want to go and earn big money in the West." Do you think we want to say to him: "Sure! Have a nice time. Send us a postcard."? No. We have supported him all these years and now he pays back our society by looking after our health, as we continue to provide for his living and lifestyle. 
When I originally wrote the book that this article is edited from, the GDR was still in existence and going strong, and I added the following paragraph: 
Can anyone seriously imagine that the people of the GDR want to give the factories back to the Krupps, Thyssen and IG-Farben monopolies, the banks back to finance capital, and the land back to the Junkers land owners?
Well, the "wall" has come down and Germany is now unified. And mainstream journalism and academia will be gleefully rubbing their hands together, gloatingly telling me what a fool I was. 
So what do I say about that? 
In a brief way, I can say that all attempts at creating manned flight failed or collapsed, and people said it was impossible, before the Wright brothers made their historic first flight in their not much more than paper and string aircraft. 
Less briefly, I will say that it is necessary to take into account several things which contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the European socialist community. 
I will also say that sooner or later there will be another, stronger, well founded European, indeed world socialist community. But that's another story and will involve heaps of debate and discussion and validification of Marxist socio-economic philosophy. 
But to understand the historically temporary collapse and failure of the European socialist community, first of all it is necessary to understand the terrible losses these countries, especially the USSR, suffered in the Second World War � the primary aim of which was to destroy the Soviet Union and any notions of real socialism in the first place. 
Also, whereas billions of US dollars was pumped into the capitalist countries to keep them afloat and surviving; the socialist countries got nothing. 
The West had millions of dollars of Marshall Aid to implement a much smaller amount of reconstruction. Not only did the Soviet Union not get a penny of Marshall Aid, but they were cheated out of war reparations at Potsdam:
At both Yalta and Potsdam it was agreed that nations should be compensated according to losses. 
It was a provision of the Yalta agreement that:
"Germany must pay in kind for the losses caused by her to the Allied nations in the course of the war. Reparations are to be received in the first instance by those countries which have borne the main burden of the war, have suffered the heaviest losses and have organised victory over the enemy."
(From the Crimea (Yalta) Conference Protocol, signed by the USSR, the US and Britain, Feb 11 1945.)
Eventually the Soviets dropped their claims for percentages and accepted nominal figures. The Soviet's share of other reparations, such as shares of industrial enterprises, and German gold - after the return of what Germany had plundered from other countries, and German investments and enterprises abroad, including those in the US, was either lowered or blocked altogether. At Potsdam Bevin asked:
Later, on August 1 1945, the US and Britain proposed that in exchange for an agreed percentage of capital equipment, the Soviet Union should waive its claims to German assets abroad, gold, and its shares from German enterprises in the Western zones of occupation. The Soviet Union later waived many other claims to which it was entitled.
Also not only did the Soviet Union have to settle Poland's claims from its own share of reparations, but it had to supply the Western zones with the equivalent value in food and coal and other commodities in exchange for 15 percent of usable industrial capital equipment.
It is indubitable that the Soviet Union bore the main burden or war and suffered the heaviest losses and organised the main victory over the enemy. But the Soviets were compensated the most unfairly.
The socialist countries' infrastructure, industry and economies were in ruins, they had to build it all up themselves, with nothing but socialist capital - their own labour. Their recovery and advances were more remarkable in the rate of their achievement than anywhere in the West. For instance, food rationing in the UK remained in force during my early childhood and for longer than in the Soviet Union. And note that it was the USSR which not only launched the world's first satellite into outer space, but also put the world's first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, into space. 
Secondly, dragging them down was the vicious and crippling arms race imposed by the West. 
Another issue was problems associated with world socialist integration. Something which is an anathema to imperialist global economic domination, which only exploits and impoverishes the rest of the world. 
The instrument of economic integration of the socialist community of countries is called the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA � what the West calls "comecon" � a sort of socialist world common market.) 
As I understand it from Soviet and GDR officials I met in the 1970s, the the nature of the world socialist community was that, with the creation of the CMEA, the world socialist community integrated their economies. At a certain stage in its history, the policy was for the European advanced socialist economies such as the USSR, GDR, Czechoslovakia and Hungary to tread water and put massive resources and efforts into building up the newer and poorer socialist countries such as Cuba and Vietnam. This caused a certain amount of stagnation in the advanced socialist countries' domestic economies. One example of CMEA mutual economic assistance was after the Cuban revolution when Cuba nationalised its oil refineries, the US placed an international boycot on Cuba's sugar and other exports and on supply of oil to Cuba. So Cuba and the Soviet Union signed an sugar for oil deal. A point about this is that the Soviet Union doesn't need to import sugar; it has masses of resources of its own � though more from beet sugar than from cane sugar. But as world sugar prices dropped, the USSR continued to pay the higher 1960s prices for Cuba's sugar, and continued to supply Cuba with oil at lower 1960s prices as world oil prices rose. 
Another thing was that some of the European socialist countries took a direction independently from the USSR and the main CMEA block policies, and took massive crippling loans in Western hard currency. Others imported large elements of capitalism and allowed big capitalist corporations to invest in their economies and build capitalist complexes in their countries. It doesn't need me to tell you that capitalism never invests in anything without getting massive profits out of it. Continuing massive and unpayable debts to the West, and the West's "investment" in the rest of the world cripples the poor world and is the direct cause of their continuing poverty today. 
Also, historically there were always two political trends competing in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union � hard line and easy going. The easy going side won out and culminated in Gorbachev's ultimate sell out to the West and the Soviet Union's ultimate demise, along with most of the rest of the world socialist community, and the economic and social help it gave to other, non-socialist, poor countries. 
But as I say, there will eventually be another, stronger, world socialist community. Communist parties in the former Soviet states are still strong and influential. Once the populations of these countries have had enough of their taste of this wonderful capitalist freedom and democracy thye will re-think the potential of a better form of the socialist alternative. 
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its massive former support, it wasn't going to be easy for the rest of the socialist community to survive. Today, Cuba remains an example to the world of what a socialist system can do for its people and is the model most Latin American countries aspire to. The trends in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, and Bolivia under Evo Morales are good examples of this encouraging trend. Vietnam and China are other advances in examples of the possibility of socialist alternatives. 
So what have the people of the former GDR gained under unification? 
Well, they have certainly lost their socialist advances in education, health and welfare services. But have they all now got a Mercedes? 
After the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Unification of Germany, an old GDR party member and journalist friend of mine referred to what she called the "socialism but with a Mercedes" syndrome among GDR people pre-unification; saying that many former GDR workers thought they were voting for being able to keep their socialist social, education, health and welfare system but also have a Mercedes. 
With unemployment and homelessness unheard of in the USSR or the GDR, it is so sad that millions of inhabitants of these countries are now unemployed, homeless and unhealthy, drug addicts and criminals, and I would probably now be in tears if I dared to venture into the back streets behind Moscow's Prospekt Marxa or Berlin's Unter Den Linden. 

Postscript: 
British school and college history syllabus teaching and books do not contain this information. 
All the material and information I have presented here is readily available to historians, writers, journalists, teachers, educators and syllabus publishers. Although I have spent many hundreds of hours gathering it all together, I did not have to look very far to find any of it. 
Most people think British education is among the best in the world. It isn't. It never has been. From before and right through the industrial revolution, the British ruling class has always feared an educated working class. When it was proposed to build free libraries for working people a century ago, Lord Salisbury said: "Libraries! They don't want libraries; give them a circus." 
Now we have an education circus. 
"The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives� It sometimes seems as though we were trying to combine the ideal of no schools at all with the democratic ideal of schools for everybody by having schools without education."
(Robert Maynard Hutchins.)
"We are in a period of considerable social change� There may be social unrest, but we can cope with the Toxteths [Liverpool riots BM.)� but if we have a highly educated and idle population we may possibly anticipate more serious social conflict. People must be educated to know their place."
(Secret report of British Department of Education on rationalising school curricula, 1984.)
It means that as a teacher you can get away with teaching about the Nazis or Apartheid on a superficial level, because these historical eras are too well known. But if you ventured seriously and treated them with any depth, revealing the whole story, including British complicity and support for Nazism and Apartheid, and seriously investigated British complicity in most other such events in history, you soon learned that you would be progressively marginalized, criticised, then ostracised, left out of career improvements or promotion, and get a sense of the unspoken threat of not being able to pay the mortgage and bills supporting a teacher's lifestyle. 
When as a trainee history lecturer, it was suggested I take the class on a trip to the Tower of London and then set them an essay on what life was like for a soldier in King Charles' Army centuries ago. Very useful knowledge that! A sociology of the past perhaps? But certainly not history in its most important sense; unless history is to mean simply anything old or `interesting' that you might do in evening classes, like antiques, flower arranging or basket weaving. When instead, in my teaching practice in a Further Education college in Slough, I taught real history � learning from the past in order to change the future � the collective life-experience of humanity, I was got rid of. The head of the history department complained that the students had remarked that I made them think; which the head of history had probably never done in a lifetime of teaching. I ended up washing and cleaning and emptying surgical and clinical waste in a hospital in Slough, the stress of the boredom of which made me physically and mentally ill for a few years, and later the only employment that would take me was serving customers in a large local DIY store, in livery that wouldn't look out of place on American prisoners at Guantanamo. 
Unless teachers learn to be brave and intellectually honest (difficult when they have a mortgage and bills to pay), future historical, social and economic education and popular `knowledge' will also not refer to the US or British history and capitalism's continuing complicity in global plunder, exploitation, domination and control, wars of aggrandisement and acquisition, causing the deaths and devastation of the homes and lands of millions of people � the 40, or is it now 50 thousand children under the age of two who will die tonight through simple lack of food, clean water, medicine and education � things that we take from them every day without even thinking about it � the untold millions of unnecessary deaths among the overwhelming majority of humanity on this incredibly rich and abundant and ultimately sustainable earth � a world which we, the 15 percent rich, have taken from humanity and still own and control. The only viable solution to which is socialism spreading across the world. 


>From Brian Mitchell. Evolution Independent Journalism and Publishing. 

Responses and criticisms welcomed. 
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This article is taken from "1917 And All That - The Untaught History Syllabus. In Their Own Words � A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE COLD WAR 1917-1983."  By Brian Mitchell. Written originally in the 1980s. 
Original references have been removed from this text for reasons of space and reading flow. 
A list of references for all my work is available on request. 
The book from which this article is edited was never published in the UK and is is now probably out of print in most countries in which it was published. 
The original manuscript (latest edit, with additional notes) is also available from the author on CD to individuals and researchers. It is available free to organisations. 
The original manuscript (latest edit, with additional notes) is offered on CD free to educational establishments, political organisations and individuals in developing countries. 


In Their Own Words: The Untaught Syllabus series - History For Peace Activists: