War and Humanity (1945)

From the August 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

After what is now cynically referred to as World War I, there sprang into existence a number of organisations whose propaganda could be summed up as “No More War.” One line of approach was to publish illustrated pamphlets showing in vivid photographic detail the effect of near explosions on the bodies of human victims, adding such captions as “This was a man.” They reasoned that the coming of another war could be prevented if they successfully appealed to the human sense of self-preservation. How mistaken they were in spite of their humanitarian motives, we who have passed through World War II know only too well. We became “hardened” to the daily scenes of destruction caused by air raids and V weapons, and knew from our own experiences what the great bomb loads were doing to the people of Germany. They, like us, for all that was assumed to the contrary, could and did “take it.” The Burgomaster of Hamburg in an interview with Edward J. Hart of the Sunday Express said : —

“But like Londoners we have shown we can take it. even when the streets were piled with our dead in their thousands. You have seen for yourselves what has been done to us here, yet when your 18 hour curfew is lifted and you meet our people going about their daily business in street and shop you will find there is no hatred in Hamburg for British or R.A.F. During four raids in July 1943, incendiary bombs destroyed 70,000 houses in Northern and Eastern Hamburg alone. In the eastern section where 700,000 people used to live all but 3 per cent. of the houses were burned down in one night. Temporary wooden structures to house 30,000, have since been built. Burgomaster Krogman added that of a pre-war population of 1,700,000 more than 1,000,000 remain in Hamburg in roofless dwellings.”—Forward, May 19th, 1945.

All this has a familiar ring especially if one shifts the location to the London dock area, where the workers dwellings were clustered around their place of work just like those of the dockers of Hamburg. It further shows how far our rulers are removed from the life of those dependent on wages, when Churchill told the German industrial workers, in a warning of heavy bombing to come to “take to the fields.” Whether the like advice was tendered to Japan’s millions by American spokesmen is not known, for according to the latest news, 5,000,000 are homeless in Tokio, while Yokohama’s docks are burnt out. British workers with over 60,000 civilians killed, can without “giving comfort to the enemy” realise what tragedy and horror the bombed workers of Japan are suffering.

The war before it became “global” was openly described as the struggle between the “haves” and the “have nots,” that is between the formation called the Axis consisting of Germany, Japan and Italy who had arrived late in the field of capitalist trade and colonies and found themselves frustrated in their national capitalistic expansion and the powers that had long ago partitioned the world into their respective spheres of influence and protected trade routes.

This naked view was soon covered by the welter of propaganda inseparable from modern war; the German workers who had known mass unemployment were told that victory would mean that they would be “swimming in fat,” while Italian and Japanese workers were told a like tale of empire and prosperity. The British Empire fell back on the time honoured “democracy and freedom,” while Russia, relied on her hastened industrialisation man-power, and aid from capitalist America.

The “ideologies” in the line-up presented some strange bed-fellows ; the Nordic “herrenvolk” whose pure Aryan stock “entitled” them to rule “lesser races,” found themselves the allies of the Latins and yellow men of Japan, while democratic Britain and America opposed Nazism as the allies of authoritarian Russia which had never known a free democratic election in her history.

Meanwhile with the Italo-German part of the Axis defeated, the victorious powers sitting at San Francisco are concerned not with any humanitarian motives, but with how their rival claims can he met without a major war breaking out between themselves.

Nor are they neglecting their preparations for such an eventuality; America has already an advanced type of “doodlebug,” while Britain’s House of Lords recently discussed the development of “novel devices.” Lord Darnley said “he visualised the possibility of the atomic bomb destroying not only humanity, but the globe on which humanity lived. The world he said must reach some general agreement to avoid these conseriuences.”

Lord Cherwell replying ended with : —

“Unless the nations could agree on some self-denying ordinance it was certain that the range and lethality of weapons would continue to increase. Unfortunately this country had most to lose by this. Our geographical advantages were rapidly diminishing. Unless and until our safety could be absolutely guaranteed by some into international organisation we must insist that we not only keep abreast of but ahead of any nation who might conceivably attack us in every scientific device. No effort should be spared to ensure this.”—Manchester Guardian, May 31st, 1945.

The noble Lords were discussing the world dilemma of how to carry on Capitalism with its trade rivalries, and territory protected by force, without wiping out humanity in the end; a problem before which capitalism stands impotent.

To-day man must either abolish capitalism or end his own existence. The forces of destruction must be struck from the hands of the capitalists and their hordes of militarists, by the workers. The workers can only effect this when armed with the knowledge of their power to end the system under which they are wage-slaves to the capitalist class. Thus in a classless society with abundance for all will the world be free from want and fear.

Frank Dawe