WORLD WAR II, whose end in Europe the media celebrating, set the framework of current politics. It was incomparably the greatest armed confliet in human history. But it was also something more. It was the greatest class struggle in the twentieth century. DICK CARTER looks history the newspapers don't tell.
The first problem in approaching World War II is its sheer size. nIty minon acao — tmirty mulon or them in Eastern Europe, three continents, with the greatest number ot beoble under human history it bears the same sort Himalayas do an anthill.
when the great class struggles of the twentieth century are noted, you often are given a list something like Russia in 1917, Germany 1919-23, 1936-38, China in 1946-49 etc. World War Il, while absent from the standard agendas, LUNCA these in terms of its impact on world politics.
The immediate origins of the great conflagration of 1939-45 lay in the unfinished business of 1914-18. World War I the combined power of and above United States, defeated Germany in a straightforward inter-imperialist war:
World War II was a direct continuation of this inter-imperialist struggle. this second however the two chief imperialist antagonists, Germany and the United States, were much more counterposed. Hitler rapidly crushed would easily defeated Britain without the support the latter received from the US from 1939 onwards. From the point of view of inter-imperialist struggle the entire period has rightly been entitled 'the struggle for world supremacy between Germany and the United States 1914 45'. All other forces, including essentially termediaries in that clash.
In Asia the United States fought it out directly with Japan. Through a war in which it smashed its imperialist opponents; Lue States emerged in 1945 as the greatest capitalist state in the world.
But at the very moment of its triumph the United States found its Mao Tse-tung power threatened by the two fundamental forces which, hination. rapid defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan. They were the struggle waged he L'SSR on the one hand and that : the people of Asia -led by the Chinese Communist Party — on the other.
Indeed, in a military sense it may ie said that the outcome of War II was in a sense aiready decided in he period 1931-39. irategic dection of the war was thai a: Japan no::= crack the L'SSR from Se car e Hier simultanecesis entire at With with war on ALEIS that the Spain Yet UVCI all In all the conflict directly have assaulted it from the west.
by Germany. inthe more profound •United those transferred from army in China. was the munist Party, that saved the China which its armed forces.
forced secondary while its main armies were trated in the campaigns in China.
for the control of Chin Asia. But in the ple defeated both of then the crushing defeats St ed on the l Led by the Chines saved despite the Chinese revolution , in their comwhole post-war world. above all the The VLLOr revolutionary capitalism The greatest Alf the the Snviet Union had been forced in 1941 almost certainly have been defeated Even purely militarily, let alone economic and Tae Soviet divisions which in 1941 threw back the German armies at the gates of Moscow, were ed in June castan borders of the USSR where they had previously been facing the Japanese war in China, spearheaded by the Chinese Com- CILIDICS USSR tom a war on two Ironis and tnereds conclusively decided the outcome of World War II. Japanese imperialism could not strike westward and northwards into the USSR because its armies were bogged down in a war in absorbed two thirds of Even the war with the United States in the Pacific was, in terms of the forces committed, an eneffort for Japan concenThe war in the Pacific was waged between Japan and the United States and -east Chinese peoWhereas fold.
the 1920s and 1930s led directly to Lenin.
from defeat mas ve setback the had suffered at Stalin's hands in 1926-27. Out of the combined victory of China and the USSR flowed the entire course not jority simply of the war itself but of the of the USSR Europe decisively made possible the overthrow in Yugoslavia the subsequent destruction of capitalist - and installed a bureaucratic branny in the new workers' states of Easter Europe — but the victory of USSR in walt decisively strengthened the working class movement throughout the world.
In Asia the Chinese Communist Party emerged from the struggle with Japan ruling one third of the country and with an army which succeeded in destroying that of Chiang Kai-shek in the four years of civil war that follow1945. The Chinese workers' state then fought to a halt the US armies in Korea.
To the south of China the initial victories of Japan struck devastating blow against the Asian Holland. Out of the first victories of an Asian power over the white im perialisms of Europe rose an immense wave of crisis and revolt. By the end of the war it was clear the British augurating 'decolonisation of the post period. By 1945 the Vietnamese Communist Party could launch the thirty years of war that led it to defeat first French and then US imperialism The victory of the USSR, the vic tory of the Chinese revolution, successive victories of the revolution Indochina allowed the revolutions first in Cuba and then in Central America to un . World War II provided the basis of all that followed it It was an extraordinary realisation of before In his words, analysis, the outcome of the struggle (for socialism) will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China etc account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe. And during the past few years it is this mathat has been drawn into the for emancipation with extraordinary rapidity, that in this respect there cannot be the slightest doubt what the final outcome of the world struggle will be World War II, and the struggle which it propelled, and which succeeded it, was the greatest confirmation in history of this perspective. The west European working class proved incapable of defeating fascism.
Soviet working working class and peasants of China and Asia, proved capable of smashing to pieces German fascism, Japanese militarism, march of the United States.
But there was perspective with shattering clarity by World War Il in addition to Lenin. This was Leon Trotsky.
In 1933, at the moment of the rise to power of Hitler, Trotsky drew two fundamental conclusions. Firstly that the victorv of fascism under Hitle meant inevitable war between GerIllally state which had utterly own working class could risk war with the Soviet Union. Furthermore that this war would bring revolution in its wake The second conclusion of Trotsky, the most shattering at the time war was his conclusion that the policy o the Soviet bureaucracy in permitting Hitler to come to power represented the definitive end of its role as an instrument of world revolution - that world socialist revolution from then the take place bureaucracy This conclusion, which led Trotsky to launch the Fourth tional, appeared bizarre at a moment when Stalin stood at the height of his prestige the Webbs, and the New Statesman last were singing the praises of the Soviet leadership Yet Trotsky was proved entirely correct in his overall perspective -although the time scale involved was far longer, and the forms more complexithan he had forseen.
The L'SSR was World War Il not because of but despite Stalin. It was Stalin's policies which permitted Hitler to come to power, which allowed the defeat of the revolution in working finally led to the Soviet Union bein But followed the policies urged on ir b the Stalin. rather than those of Mao Ise Stung, destroyed and then the triumphant the another socialist was confirmed Where working class crushed its had torsee day the only Internawhen self-styled Latin America.
point, victorious in Spain and of the class in France, and which Fo: The Soviet Army outside the Reichstag the USSR would have beer It was only through breaking with orientation demanded by the Soviet bureaucracy that each of the World War II — Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam were achieved. the line of Stalin Soviet bureaucracy was followed as in France, italy, and Greece — the result was either catastrophic missed. opportunity or crushing defeat of the The later revolutions in Cuba and Nicaragua dia not tionally take place through the Communist Parties. In Cuba the Communist Party backed the revolution only at the last moment. In Nicaragua the FSLN triumphed independently of the Communist Party While the forms of development were far more complex than Trotsky - in particular he ha not imagined that certain of the Com munist Parties could break with the line of Moscow - nevertheless his historical perspective triumphantly confirmed. The Fourth International which he founded is to.
• international revolutionary organisation in the world and one with by far the largest number of revolutionaries within it in the imperialist countries well as a definite, and growing, influence in Trotsky's perspective was confirmed in this field as well -although again on a time scale to the one he had imagined. different But, to return to our starting the celebrations of the press this week are besides the point. The! are largely concentrating on what was the small campaign in western Europe waged by Britain and the United States which never absorb ed even a third of the German army. The real World War II - the one waged in the USSR and Asia - ha: only a few marginal gestures made to it in the celebrations. The sheer scale of what took place still makes it hard for sections of the left to grasp the magnitude of those years 1939-45 took place the greates single class struggle in human . The Second World War.