Not According to Plan (1941)

From the August 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

When German capitalism essayed the task of staging a come-back, it built up a machine calculated to fulfil its function according to plan; but plans go wrong. For the first twelve months Hitler’s time-table was rigidly adhered to. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and France—all fell like skittles. The mass attack with tanks and the supporting air armadas worked smoothly. Then the plan received its first check. The narrow channel could not be “tanked,” and for the first time millions of pounds worth of mechanism were useless and Germany could now only fight with one arm—the air armada. In this way Germany’s chance of victory was considerably reduced.

It now became possible for one country to hold out against Germany, who would have to fight without being able to smash through by using the heavy land weapons. The failure of this air war to destroy Britain put a spoke in the Nazi wheel and entirely upset the whole plan of world conquest. Having no Navy to replace the now useless tanks, Germany had to rely upon Italy to deal with the Mediterranean end of the plan. That was her undoing. The British Navy put paid to that and Musso. became one of the also rans. These material conditions reshaped the war, and the German war machine was pushed perilously into the one position its whole strategy had been planned to avoid; indeed, for which reason the German-Soviet pact was designed to help in avoiding—the war on two fronts: East and West. Here is a lesson in “dialectics.” The positive weapon becomes negative and Nazi race myths receive a nasty rejoinder. The Channel fails to respond to Aryan appeals. Now, had it been the Red Sea—

Germany thus has to revert to an eastern land campaign, and Roumania (oil), Yugo-Slavia and Greece go under. Germany planned for a short war and acted in line with her plan; but the very success of her military measures would be her undoing unless she could guarantee a short war. To achieve this end she unsparingly used up her oil and grain and the hoped-for short war failed. The resistance by Britain compelled her to accept a long war. Britain drew the German war machine further away until it reached the Middle East, and so increased the consumption of vital oil, grain and metal resources by that machine. Meanwhile, American material comes to Britain in ever-increasing quantities and leaves Germany exhausted. Nazi capitalism, having failed to win a short war, is compelled to prepare for a long war. This means huge reserves of oil and grain and metal. To be sure of this supply Germany must possess them, not merely buy them. Where are these to be found? RUSSIA! So Stalin’s pact in 1939 was but a postponement of the inevitable. Hitler and his capitalist gangsters can no more evade the social laws of capitalism than Canute could keep back the waves.

Lew Jones