Will There Be Another War? (1938)

From the April 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

At no time since the end of the Great War has the talk of war, the fear of war, the imminent probability of war, so weighed upon the minds of men and women as during the last few years. For a decade following the Great War the comforting reflection prevailed that it could not happen again, pacifist sentiment grew, and books and plays portraying the horrors of war became popular. Then events happened in rapid succession. Japan conquered Manchuria, Italy Abyssinia, and now Germany has marched into Austria and has wiped it out as an independent State—the latter event throwing the whole world into consternation, because of the implied threat to French and British capitalist interests. What is the explanation of the German invasion of Austria and why should British capitalists appear to be so shocked by it?

Quite obviously, the political union under one government of people speaking the same language and having the same traditions is in itself not a sufficient explanation. In fact, English statesmen, Tory and Labour, have approved the idea, and when a few years ago the attempt to form a customs union by Germany and Austria was frustrated by France the same Labour and Tory Pecksniffs wagged their heads sadly at the bitterness of the French. The explanation for the British capitalists’ concern is that the event threatens to bring the danger of war perilously near its own doorstep.

What is the position?

After the Great War, as part of the business of breaking up German alliances, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up and Austria was created an “independent” State and maintained in that position by the allied enemies of German capitalism. Germany’s conquest of Austria means more than the surface appearance of just the union of German-speaking people. It means that German capitalism has recovered from the dismembered condition in which its victors left it after the Great War. It means that Germany has developed the economic, military and political power to throw off a dominance exercised over it by similar forces stronger than its own. Any capitalist who faces the realities of the capitalist world, who can see through the mealy-mouthed pieties which the event has provoked, knows that Germany could not have achieved the same result by any other means than those used. Germany has been undergoing industrial expansion, which until recent years had been restricted by the political situation inside Germany and by competitive forces outside it. In response to their needs, Nazism developed to solve the domestic problem for the German industrialists and the problem of their clash of interests with capitalist competitors outside Germany.

As Mr. Winston Churchill points out, the Nazi mastery of Vienna dominates all the roads, railways and rivers upon which the States of the Little Entente depend for their military cohesion, and all the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe depend for their economic life. Vienna, the ancient capital of a once mighty empire, is the ganglion nerve-centre of the trade and communications of all countries of the Danube basin, and others besides.

Thus Germany has achieved a position of strategic military importance, besides gaining the power of economic dominance in Central Europe formerly possessed by France and her allies.

What, then, are the chances of war?

Unquestionably, the expansion of German capitalism will demand opportunities for raw materials and trade which will conflict with those powers who already have a grip on the world’s sources of supply and markets. Must—need—this conflict break into war? The plain and simple fact is that the factors likely to lead to war to-day are more alive than at any time since 1914. Enormous military machinery has been created at staggering costs, in order to defend existing possessions and advantages—or to gain them. This process has gone on because respective capitalists do not intend to concede what they have and because they cannot obtain what they have not without force. It would represent a bad investment if the purpose for which armaments were built up were forsaken. But what of the possibility that the fear of "war being the end of civilisation” will act as a brake? This pious sentiment is very little short of a wish-fulfilment. It is doubtful whether any capitalist really believes war would be continued to the point where “civilisation” was destroyed beyond power of recuperation. It is more likely that capitalists, if the armed conflict occurred, would hope for and aim at a short war of a violent and decisive nature—resulting, perhaps, by reason of its shortness and violence, in no greater

loss in cost and destruction of property than would a larger war fought with less effective military weapons. In short, the position is that in the present condition of the capitalist world a war fought out for that rich, ripe plum—the British Empire—is ever an imminent possibility.

But if war comes the workers will not be told that it is a quarrel over markets and trade, and fought out in the interests of the capitalists. They will be told anything but that—the humbug, the liar, the Press, the pulpit, the Labour leader, the Tory, the sincere and the insincere would join together to persuade the workers that it is war to preserve peace—democracy—the independence of Austria.

The independence of Austria! It is a lie and a myth. For twenty years the meaning of the word has been foreign to Austrian capitalist and worker. For twenty years Austrian capitalists have been in the pockets of the French and British capitalists. The rulers of Austria, whom Hitler suppressed, were Fascists, the tools, until Hitler stepped in, of Mussolini, the exterminators of Austrian democracy and of Austrian working-class industrial and political organisations, the bloody murderers of Austrian working men and women when the Christian-Fascists took power in 1934.

The independence of Austria is not at stake. British capitalist interests are; and when the miscalled Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, headlines an article which demands that the British Government take action in defence of Austrian independence with the slogan, “Britain’s Honour at Stake,” they are playing the capitalist game of deluding the workers.

The Austrian question represents a quarrel between the capitalists of Europe over the wealth they own and want to own. The working-class bone is not at stake. Socialists will play no part in obscuring the issue in this quarrel or any future quarrel between the capitalists of Europe. 

Harry Waite

The German Drive Through Central Europe (1938)

From the April 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The collapse of Germany at the end of the World War was completed by an economic blow delivered, with crushing vigour, by the Allied Powers at Versailles in 1919. Valuable sources of raw material, such as the Ruhr basin, Silesia and Alsace-Lorraine, were stripped away. Her erstwhile allies, Austria and Hungary, were reduced to unimportant geographical areas, and their territory made over to the new states of Czechoslovakia and Jugoslavia. The whole trend, therefore, of German policy has been to obtain a reversal of this crippling verdict. Hitler has merely given it fresh impetus and new direction.

One of the first tasks for the German ruling class under the Dictatorship was to find allies in a Europe of rapidly changing orientations. With this in view, a ten-year pact of non-aggression was concluded with Poland in 1934. The way then became clear for the “Drang nach Osten,” the much proclaimed “Drive to the East." This is nothing more than an attempt to control important sources of raw materials, embodying ideologically the vision of a great Germanic Empire. So one of the first tasks was to wean Austria from French and Italian influence. The culmination of this process was on February 12th last, when Dr. Schuschnigg met Herr Hitler at Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s mountain home near the Austrian frontier. An ultimatum was presented to the Austrian Chancellor, while German troops were massed on the frontier.

On the morning of February 16th it was announced that pro-Germans had been appointed to key positions in the Austrian Government and police. At the same time, Austrian Nazis undergoing sentence were released from jail. Germany's complete control of Austria was merely a matter of days.

As a bar to further progress stands the opposition of Czechoslovakia. Here the problem is different. With a population of 15 million and an area of 55,000 square miles it was formed at the end of the Great War out of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The districts of Bohemia and Moravia in the north-west were originally Austrian; while Slovakia and Ruthenia were Hungarian. There is also a small but important part of Upper Silesia ceded by Germany. Bohemia projects like a bastion into Germany. Mountain ranges form a strong natural barrier, broken by the valleys of the Eger, Elbe and Oder, which provide the only practical entrances into Czechoslovakia from Germany. On the south the “Moravian gateway" admits access from Austria.

If Germany, with the aid of Austria, were by a pincer-like military movement enabled to nip off this region, the remainder of Czechoslovakia, which is agricultural, but otherwise poor and resourceless, would be easily reduced. The Bohemian basin around Pilsen, Brno and Silesia is rich in coal and iron—commodities very necessary to German capitalists, whose present sources of supply are insufficient for their needs. Moreover, Bohemia and Moravia have great and profitable textile, boot, glass, steel and armament industries. In order to resist such an invasion from Germany the Czechoslovakian Government has created a large army and air force, well organised and equipped. In addition, the frontiers are strongly fortified and defended at assailable points. In return for a loan to build armaments, Rumania was asked to guarantee that the Czernowitz railway, from Russian Ukraine to Czechoslovakia, would be completed in order to ensure a ready transit of troops and goods in time of war.

German attempts to awaken pro-Nazi sympathies among the dissident minority have proved less fruitful than in Austria. The Sudeten Germans are a racial group chiefly clustered along the German frontier. The Government has repeatedly refused them minority rights, such as the Slovaks enjoy; and in spite of frequent appeals to the League of Nations they have received little satisfaction. The movement in 1933 was unified under Konrad Henlein into the Sudeten Deutsche Party, and possibly received financial support from Germany. But there are considerable differences of opinion within the minority and only a few demand complete alliance with the Third Reich. Moreover, attempts have been made by the Government in the scheme of frontier defence to stiffen the nationalist morale of these minorities.

Against this must be put the fact that Czechoslovakian frontiers are land-locked. Her outlets to the sea are the rivers Elbe and Oder, both through Germany. There are railway exits to Italian ports of Trieste and Fiume on the Adriatic, and to Danzig on the Baltic. There is only one other route to the sea, via the traffic-laden Danube through the plains of Hungary, Jugoslavia and Rumania. Moreover, the encirclement of Czechoslovakia by unfriendly powers is nearly complete. Hungary, on the south, hopes that the outcome of a successful war would be the return of the large estates handed over to Czechoslovakia in 1919. German diplomacy has the task of converting this “ unfriendliness ” into, at least, passive hostility. The circle is incomplete by the absence of Rumania. At this juncture, it is hardly likely that Germany will risk the hazards of war, which would certainly invite the opposition of France, Great Britain and the U.S.S.R. It is worth noticing in this connection that the fall of M. Goga’s Government in Rumania on February 10th, which undoubtedly had pro-German sympathies, was occasioned by pressure from Moscow, Prague and Paris.

It may be that fresh alignments of the capitalist powers of the world may alter this outlook, even in the near future. Nothing, however, is so likely as that eventually, when they are unable to prosecute the struggle for markets and cheap sources of essential supplies by diplomatic means, they will turn to war. To the working class of the countries concerned the conflict will be presented as one to preserve democracy and individual rights (Czechoslovakia claims to be the most democratic of the Central European countries); or to maintain the Germanic ideal against Bolshevism, World Jewry and “bastardised negroidisation." This is the delicate language of “Mein Kampf."

No Socialist could take exception to the struggle of the workers to preserve a democratic platform. On the other hand, we cannot support any movement which encourages workers to sacrifice themselves in defence of capitalist wealth. If working class history has any meaning for those who wage the struggle to-day, it is that the association of workers with capitalist movements has led only to their division and confusion. The clearest presentation of the class struggle leads to another conclusion; that every movement of the workers must be waged on the basis of unity with their fellows and of fundamental opposition to the capitalist class. If in Czechoslovakia, and other countries, where minority movements obscure the final issue, thousands of workers were fighting for Socialism, then the minority movements would collapse overnight. There is one thing the Czechoslovakian capitalists fear more than racial dissidence or German invasion; that is the growing understanding and rising power of the working class.

K. Devereux.

C. J. Kilner.