75 years since the Nazi assumption of power
The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze
By Stefan Steinberg
Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, Allen Lane: 2006, 832 pages, now available in German translation
Seventy-five years after the taking of power by the National Socialists in Germany the phenomena of the party led by Hitler and the enormous destruction wrought by his movement in the space of just over a decade still remain a source of mystery for many commentators.
In its special edition to mark the anniversary of the Nazi takeover (14 January 2008), the prominent German news magazine Der Spiegel headlined its main article “The Triumph of Madness.”
Writing in the January 24 edition of the London Book Review the veteran Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm struck a similar note: “The fact is that no one, right, left or centre, got the true measure of Hitler’s National Socialism, a movement of a kind that had not been seen before and whose aims were rationally unimaginable ...”
There can be no doubt that Hitler fascism was responsible for a degree of human depravation and brutality which quite rightly continues to shock and horrify today, but that does not mean his movement was incomprehensible. In fact, there has been a great deal of scholarship in recent years that has thrown important new light on the emergence and rise to prominence of National Socialism.
Utilising new sources, including important archives opened up by the fall of Stalinism in the former USSR and Eastern Europe, the British historians Ian Kershaw and Richard Evans have both published multi-volume works which considerably broaden our understanding of the social and political background to Hitler’s own rise to power—Kershaw’s two-volume biography of the dictator (Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris, and Hitler: 1936-1945: Nemesis) and the three volumes by Richard J. Evans on the Third Reich (the third volume of the series is still to be completed).
A third very valuable contribution to the current wave of research into National Socialism is the volume by a British historian based at Cambridge University, Adam Tooze—The Wages Of Destruction, which is now available in German translation. In his book Tooze sets out to identify and examine the economic driving forces behind the National Socialist project and in so doing presents the first extensive investigation of this type for many decades.
Tooze begins his book with the famous quote by Karl Marx whereby people “make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Tooze then notes that Marx in his famous text The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) then proceeds to deal with a host of political and ideological aspects dealing with the rule of Louis Bonaparte rather than merely presenting a discourse over economics and modes of production. By the same token, Tooze goes on: “it is with good reason ... that recent writing on the Third Reich has been preoccupied with politics and ideology.”
However, such concentration on politics and ideology also comes at a cost. For far too long there has been no serious research into the significance of economic issues in the ascension to political prominence and power on the part of the National Socialists. Tooze undertakes to set the record straight and examines the explosive economic contradictions that played such a crucial role in determining the path of National Socialism.
It is only on the basis of studying the significance of such economic issues that one can explain the support won by Hitler’s movement from important sections of the German business and political elite.
In the introduction to his book Tooze puts forward his basic thesis:
“The originality of National Socialism was that rather than meekly accepting a place for Germany within a global economic order dominated by the affluent English speaking countries, Hitler sought to mobilise the pent-up frustrations of his population to mount an epic challenge to this order. Repeating what Europeans had done across the globe over the previous three centuries, Germany would carve out its own imperial hinterland; by one last great land grab in the East it would create the self-sufficient basis both for domestic affluence and the platform necessary to prevail in the coming superpower competition with the United States.... The aggression of Hitler’s regime can thus be rationalised as an intelligible response to the tensions stirred up by the uneven development of global capitalism, tensions that are of course still with us today.”
It is only on the basis of grasping this “intelligible response” by the Hitler regime, which was shared by broad layers of the German ruling and military elite, that one can explain the ultimately crazed nature of Hitler’s military campaign whereby Germany and its fascist allies conducted a series of simultaneous wars against all of the major imperialist powers.
As Tooze explains later in his book, other aspects of the National Socialist strategy which are also often dismissed as simply incomprehensible—such as its campaign against European Jewry and the eventual mass destruction of the Jews—can only be fully understood in connection with the imperial aims laid down by the leading National Socialists in their program and policy statements. As Tooze notes in his introduction: “I emphasise the connections between the wars against the Jews and the regime’s wider projects of imperialism, forced labour and deliberate starvation.”
In order to underline his argument, Tooze cites at some length from Hitler’s little known Second Book, a collection of passages drawn from speeches made by the NS leader towards the end of the 1920s. Drafted some three years after Mein Kampf, Hitler increasingly turns his attention to economic issues and, in particular, the widening social and economic gap between Europe and America. Tooze quotes a key passage from the Second Book:
“The European today dreams of a standard of living, which he derives as much from Europe’s possibilities as from the real conditions of America. Due to modern technology and the communication it makes possible, the international relations amongst peoples have become so close that the European, even without being fully conscious of it, applies as the yardstick for his life, the conditions of American life...”
Hitler points out that in contrast to the disparate European nations, America possessed the advantage of a huge internal market and access to abundant supplies of raw materials. In particular, Hitler identifies the car industry as the outstanding example of American productive superiority. Due to the advantages of scale and forms of production, Germany, in its existing state, would never be able to compete with American industry.
Hitler estimated that German levels of production and living standards lagged approximately 25 to 30 years behind those of America. This gap is confirmed by statistics drawn up at the time. The census of 1933, for example, records that nearly 30 percent of the German workforce still worked in agriculture, and Tooze presents additional material that makes clear the low level of wages in German industry and the limited development of its middle class compared to Great Britain and America.
The issue for Hitler in the Second Book was how to close this gap. His conclusion was the necessity for an explosive expansion of the German Reich towards the East aimed at securing access to raw materials and a hugely expanded workforce. As Tooze puts it: “Fordism, in other words, required Lebensraum.”
At the same time, Tooze also dispels any illusions that Hitler spoke or acted in the manner of a committed European: “Not that Hitler was an adherent of pan-European ideas. He regarded any such suggestion as vapid, ‘Jewish’ nonsense. The European response to the United States had to be led by the most powerful European state”—i.e., Germany.
Tooze reinforces his presentation of the economic factors that led Hitler to develop his plan for imperialist expansionism based on military force by making a comparison between the dictator and the Weimar chancellor and foreign minister Gustav Stresemann. Stresemann and Hitler were avowed enemies—the former dedicated to the defence of the Weimar Republic, the latter a vicious opponent of the republic. But as Tooze points out, both men were part of a shared political culture and carefully studied the standpoints of one another.
Stresemann was also very aware of the economic and social disadvantages shared by Germany and Europe compared to America, but Stresemann sought to resolve this problem largely through increased cooperation with the US. Where the two men did overlap was with regard to expansionism towards the East. Following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended the First World War, Stresemann was a vehement advocate of the expansion of the German Reich towards the East (Grossraum)—in particular, the German annexation of large areas of Polish territory, albeit through diplomacy and trade rather than war and imperialist occupation.
National Socialism and German big business
Stresemann’s own “Atlantis strategy” was shattered by the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the resulting economic crisis, which opened the way for Hitler’s much more radical solution to Germany’s woes. Characteristic of the political shift within the German elite was the itinerary of the president of the Reichsbank under Stresemann, Hjalmar Schacht, who became increasingly disillusioned with the Weimar Republic.
In 1932, Schacht helped petition industrial leaders requesting that President Hindenburg nominate Adolf Hitler as German chancellor; and following the Nazi takeover in 1933, Schacht was restored to his post as chairman of the Reichsbank. In this position, he played a key role in the key early years of Hitler’s rule by integrating German big business and banking interests into the National Socialist strategy—in particular, the freeing up of capital for a massive rearmaments programme and preparation for war.
Tooze sums up the relationship between German big business and the Nazis in his chapter “The Regime and German business.” Tooze writes: “The meeting of 20 February (1933) and its aftermath are the most notorious instances in the willingness of German big business to assist Hitler in establishing his dictatorial regime. The evidence cannot be dodged. Nothing suggests that the leaders of German big business were filled with ideological fervour for National Socialism, before or after National Socialism. Nor did Hitler ask Krupp & Co. to sign up to an agenda of violent anti-Semitism or a war of conquest.... But what Hitler and his government did promise was an end to parliamentary democracy and the destruction of the German left, and for this most of German big business was willing to make a substantial down-payment.”
Following the disastrous “social fascism” policy imposed on the German Communist Party by the Stalinist International, the German working class was divided and robbed of the opportunity of conducting its own struggle against the fascists. In April 1933, Hitler was able to make good on his promises to German big business leaders. The offices of the social democrats, Communists and trade unions were ransacked by Nazi stormtroopers and thousands of leftists consigned to the NS concentration camps.
The leading German business figures watched this process with approval and in the knowledge that the “destruction of the German left” opened up unprecedented opportunities for increased profits based on a huge intensification of the exploitation of labour. This was to find its finished form in the massive use of forced labour to realise the military ambitions of the Third Reich.
Under Hitler’s rule, the race to catch up with the levels of production in the US and Great Britain centred increasingly on production for war. At the same time, he concealed his intentions by promising the German people improvements in their living standards. In typical demagogic fashion, Hitler used the International Motor Show in 1934 to announce his intention of producing “a people’s car,” an affordable car based on mass production and mass consumption. In collaboration with the Porsche car company, designs were drawn up for the first German Volkswagen. As Tooze points out, however, not a single car was delivered to a civilian during the entire period of the Third Reich.
Although tens of thousands of Germans had paid hundreds of millions of Reichmarks in pre-payments for such a car, the entire production of Volkswagen Beetles in wartime was allocated for the use of the Nazi bureaucracy and its allies. At the same time, production at the Porsche factories was increasingly concentrated on making tanks and armoured transporters, while the network of roads built across Germany was designed to facilitate the speedy dispatch of military hardware to the various fighting fronts that opened up after the start of the Second World War in 1939.
Behind a smokescreen of speeches in the 1930s emphasising the peaceful ambitions of the Third Reich, Hitler and the NS leadership systematically undertook the reorganisation of German industry and economic life in order to achieve definite military targets. Initially, Hitler calculated that the German economy would only be able to fulfil its production quotas and conduct war in the early 1940s, his planned date for the commencement of war. Tooze notes that in the course of the 1930s, Hitler anxiously followed the figures for steel and coal production, which were vital for the Reich’s plans for military rearmament. Until 1939, Hitler had always hoped that he could avoid a war with Great Britain and even win the imperial power as an ally.
The rapid and successful military occupation of Czechoslovakia combined with increasing indications of an economic crisis at home, including a particularly bad harvest, forced Hitler to move sooner than he wished. The German army marched into Poland and the die was cast. The slaughter of the Second World War would commence.
Following the seemingly effortless sweep of the German Wehrmacht into France, Hitler used the treacherous vacillations of Stalin and the bureaucracy in Moscow to open up an additional front towards the East. Under the terms of the pact signed by Rippentrop and Molotov in August 1939, the Soviet Union was still delivering materials vital for Hitler’s war preparations in the same year—1941—that the German dictator sent his troops across the Soviet border.
Forced labour, the Hunger Plan and the destruction of European Jewry
The engagement of hundreds of thousands of German troops across Eastern and Western Europe as well as in North Africa had inevitable consequences for the German economy. At the start of 1940, the size of the German army totalled more than 5 million. Increasingly, industrial leaders pointed to the growing lack of labour in German factories following waves of military call-ups. Such labour was necessary for the production of goods for day-to-day life, but especially in order to fulfil the constantly increasing quotas for military production.
Following the dismal failure of an initial effort in 1940 to voluntarily encourage Polish workers to work in German factories, the NS leadership set in motion plans for the forceful deportation of hundreds of thousands of East European workers. At the same time, the “Aryan” occupation of Eastern Europe (Generalplan Ost) depended on huge numbers of slave workers. SS leader Heinrich Himmler spelled out the leadership’s intentions for the colonisation of Eastern Europe to a meeting of the SS in 1942:
“If we do not fill our camps with slaves—in this room I mean to say things very firmly and very clearly—with worker slaves, who will build our cities, our villages, our farms without regard to any losses, then even after years of war we will not have enough money to be able to equip the settlements in such a manner that real Germanic people can live there and take root in the first generation.”
The initial total put forward for the labour force necessary for the implementation of Generalplan Ost was between 400,000 and 800,000 workers—“Jews, Poles and Soviet prisoners of war.” The first camps to be set up in Eastern Europe operated on the basis of providing the reservoir of slave labour necessary for the increasingly maniacal plans of the NS leadership. Tooze deals with this issue at length in his chapter “Labour, Food and Genocide.”
While Hitler had made anti-Semitism a stock in trade of his politics from the beginning of the 1920s [1] the annihilation of European Jewry in the course of the Second World War can only be properly understood in connection with the increasing crisis of the NS leadership and its plans for the colonisation of Eastern Europe in the wake of a series of military setbacks on the Eastern Front. Tooze writes: “If one accepts that the Judaeocide was an ideological end in itself, indeed an obsessive fixation of the Nazi leadership, then it is even possible to see the forced labour programme and the genocide less as contradictions than as complementary. Gauleiter (Fritz) Saukel’s success in recruiting millions of workers from across Eastern and Western Europe made the Jews appear dispensable.”
As the level of casualties within the German army rose to huge proportions, Hitler was increasingly forced to intensify the mobilisation of forced labour. From the start of 1942 to the summer of 1943, a total of 2.8 million foreign workers were forcibly transported to work in the German factories. The fittest of those incarcerated in the labour and concentration camps spread across Eastern Europe were selected for work. In a chilling passage, Tooze cites the criteria laid down by the Wehrmacht, outlining the relation between the availability of food and labour power.
“The concepts of normal labour, heavy labour and extra heavy labour have to be regarded in objective terms, independent of racial consideration, as a through-put of calories and muscular effort. It is illusory to believe that one can achieve the same performance from 200 inadequately fed people as with 100 properly fed workers. On the contrary: the 100 well-fed workers produce far more and their employment is far more rational. By contrast, the minimum rations distributed to simply keep people alive, since they are not matched by any equivalent performance, must be regarded from the point of view of the national war economy as a pure loss, which is further increased by the transport costs and administration.”
The bloodcurdling logic of this argument was clear. Under conditions where food was in short supply, it was preferable to dispense with a part of the forced workforce rather than keep alive malnourished workers unable to maintain production targets. The shortage of food in the middle of the war therefore became a powerful impetus for the systematic decimation of a part of the workforce, which according to Nazi ideology was of inferior stock—the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. Tooze writes: “[I]n the summer of 1942 it was the concerted extermination of Polish Jewry that provided the most immediate and fail-safe means of freeing up food for delivery to Germany.”
In fact, the extermination of entire population groups already had been drawn up by Nazi ideologists in 1941. While the Final Solution and the Generalplan Ost remained secret, the so-called Hunger Plan had been widely discussed in National Socialist leadership circles in early 1941. Drawn up by the racist ideologue Herbert Backe, the plan envisaged the systematic extermination of up to 30 million people in the western Soviet Union in order to free up Ukrainian grain (the Ukrainian bread basket) for German consumption. Only the setbacks suffered by the German Army high command on the Eastern Front prevented the plan from being put into operation.
In this connection, Tooze devotes a chapter in his book to the role played by Albert Speer, who was appointed as Nazi in charge of war production following the death of the minister for armaments and war production, Fritz Todt, in a plane crash in 1942. Speer has been a controversial figure in recent German historical research, in particular following his partial rehabilitation by the prominent German biographer of Hitler, Joachim Fest. Tooze, however, makes absolutely clear that far from being just an obedient lackey of the NS leadership who was kept in the dark about many of the most abominable Nazi crimes, Speer was in fact instrumental in massively intensifying the regime of forced labour in Germany and Eastern Europe—in the closest collaboration with the SS.
The final chapters of Tooze’s important book deal with the increasing reverses and defeats suffered by the National Socialists as its plans for a Thousand Year Reich unravelled in the space of months. While the entry of the United States with its enormous productive capacity served to mightily boost the alliance of Western capitalist countries opposing Hitler, the most devastating blow to the Wehrmacht was delivered on the Eastern Front. Despite the enormous betrayals and vacillations of the Stalinist leadership, the Soviet people and soldiers rallied with grim determination to repulse the Nazi invasion. Western historians have often spoken of an “armaments miracle” to describe the transformation of the German economy into production primarily for war.
Tooze takes a different view and writes: “If there was a true ‘armaments miracle’ in 1942 it occurred, not in Germany, but in the armaments factories of the Urals. Despite having suffered territorial losses and disruption that resulted in a 25 percent fall in total national product, the Soviet Union in 1942 managed to out-produce Germany in virtually every category of weapons.” It was the reverses for the German army at the hands of Soviet troops on the Eastern Front that finally spelled the end of the Reich.
In his final chapter, Tooze returns to the support given by German business to the National Socialist project and makes clear that, while there were tensions between the heads of industry and finance with regard to Hitler’s war policy and international agenda, “the domestic authoritarianism of Hitler’s coalition was much to their liking, as were the healthy profits that rolled in from the mid-1930s.”
Tooze opposes the thesis of Götz Aly
Tooze’s book serves as a refreshing and very necessary antidote to some of the more absurd theories currently in circulation concerning the nature of the National Socialist dictatorship. In particular, Tooze has directly opposed the ludicrous thesis put forward by the German historian Götz Aly in his recent book, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State.
While Tooze is quite explicit about the class forces and elitist interests that helped National Socialism into the saddle, Götz Aly takes a very different approach. As Aly told the newspaper Die Welt: “Because I knew better, I was disturbed from the start by the one-sided delegation of blame on German industry, on the banks, etc.”
For Aly, National Socialism represented an unprecedented experiment in the equitable distribution of social wealth. National Socialism created “a hitherto unknown level of equality and social mobility towards the top.”
What has to be emphasised about National Socialism, according to Aly, is not the brutality of a regime based on concentration camps and the torture chambers of the SS, but rather Hitler’s pernicious promotion of a welfare state to benefit all Germans. Aly writes: “Whoever seeks to understand the destructive success of National Socialism must also examine the reverse side of the policy of destruction...the modern, social political, warmed-over dictatorship based on favours.”
A careful reading of Tooze’s book makes nonsense of Aly’s attempts to whitewash the role of German business and industry in the rise to prominence of the National Socialists. At the same time, in separate articles and speeches (recently in the Humboldt University in Berlin), Tooze has directly tackled the historical distortions made by Aly. According to Tooze, Aly’s outrageous claims are “contrary to all empirical evidence and to any body of economic theory.”
Tooze demonstrates that Aly is thoroughly selective and one-sided in his use of sources when he seeks to demonstrate that German industry was subject to coercion by the Nazis and that ordinary Germans enjoyed favourable living standards during the war at the expense of the expropriated Jews and other national groups.
Tooze comments in his polemic with Aly: “Recent studies...suggest that coercion was far from the norm and that on the whole the industrial politics of the Third Reich rested on a mutually profitable partnership between the public authorities and the business community....”
At the same time, Aly’s claim that the German wartime economy was largely buoyed by confiscated foreign reserves is also not backed up by the historical record. Tooze notes that, in fact, “The relative contribution from foreign and domestic sources [to the German economy] was the inverse of that claimed by Aly—25 percent foreign to 75 percent German.”
Tooze goes on to draw a parallel between the arguments used by Aly and the notorious American historian Daniel Goldhagen: “Whereas Goldhagen spoke in undifferentiated terms of Germans as eliminationist anti-Semites, Aly is no less blanket in his condemnation of Germans as witless, apolitical animals.”
Finally, Tooze points to the political agenda motivating Aly: In contrast to Goldhagen “Aly...is overt in his instrumentalisation of the atrocious history of the Third Reich for present-day polemical purposes.” Aly represents “a segment of the German left which now takes flight into an absolute rejection of the welfare state, legitimised by Aly’s association of social egalitarianism with National Socialism.” [2]
While Tooze undertakes his examination of the economic roots and motivation of National Socialism in The Wages of Destruction with the assiduous attention to detail and the historical record one expects from a leading historian, he also makes clear that the system that gave rise to fascism is still with us today. As pointed out in the already cited quote: “The aggression of Hitler’s regime can thus be rationalised as an intelligible response to the tensions stirred up by the uneven development of global capitalism, tensions that are of course still with us today.”
His book is highly recommended.
Notes:1. Hitler’s brand of anti-Semitism was crucially linked to his virulent opposition and hatred of the organised socialist workers movement: “When I recognised the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy, the scales dropped from my eyes. A long soul struggle had reached its conclusion” (Mein Kampf).2. At the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, Götz Aly was active in Maoist political circles. “He was a member of the Rotan Zellen and founder of the magazine Hochschulkampf. Between 1971 and 1973 Aly was a member of the Maoist Roten Hilfe and according to his own recollections sympathised at the time with the Red Army Faction” (taz).In many respects, Aly’s political itinerary resembles that of the French radicals and former Maoists and Stalinists who later became the most virulent opponents of socialism (see The Black Book by Francois Furet, et al).
Showing posts with label fascism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fascism. Show all posts
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Dimitrov's notes for his first speech in Court
Born on June 18, 1882, at Radomir, near Sofia.
Left school in the 6th grade, worked as a compositor up to 1904.
Son of the Bulgarian working class.
Born and brought up in the ranks of the revolutionary workers' movement (I have been active in this movement from the age of 15).
For thirty, years member of the Bulgarian Communist Party, - (formerly the Party, of the so-called Narrow or Left-Wing Socialists.
For twenty-three years member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bulgaria.
From 1904 to 1923 secretary of the Trade Union Federation.
From 1913 to 1923 Party national representative for Sofia in the Bulgarian Parliament - also representative of the Party in the municipal Council of Sofia and in the Regional Council of Sofia.
At the same time I was active as a Party speaker and writer.
June 9, 1923 - Military coup d'etat - overthrow) of Stamboliiski's Government - by officers and Macedonian terrorists under the patronage of the Tsar himself, aided by, Social-Democrats and from abroad.
Thousands upon thousands of peasants, workers, intellectuals murdered. Stamboliiski murdered.
Largest parties - Agrarian Union and Communist Party - dissolved.
All rights and liberties of the mass of the people abolished.
Introduction of a military-fascist regime.
Boundless indignation - mass uprising inevitable.
September 23 - Workers' and peasants' uprising under the leadership of the Communist Party against the oppressors of the people and the usurpers of power, for a worker-peasant government.
In this uprising I was delegated by my Party to take an active and leading part.
After a week of armed struggle the uprising was defeated. Fighting every step of the way, with about a thousand of my comrades-in-arms I crossed over into Yugoslav territory.
There we were treated at first as political prisoners and later as political refugees.
From that time onwards - exactly ten years - I have been living abroad as a political refugee and a political writer - unregistered and under a false name, because while abroad I was again threatened with death by my enemies.
Several months after the September uprising I was sentenced to death by default - as the press announced at the time. I never had the opportunity of hearing the sentence pronounced against me.
I am proud of the heroic uprising.
I only regret that I and my Party were not yet real Bolsheviks at that time. That is why we were unable successfully to organize and lead this historic people's uprising, headed by the proletariat.
Our insufficiently Bolshevik organization, policy and tactics, the lack of revolutionary experience, and especially our opportunist and so-called neutral attitude towards the military-fascist coup on June 9, did much to help the murderers and executioners of the Bulgarian people, the usurpers of state power, to suppress the uprising of the masses.
But the Party has learned and appreciated the bloody lessons of this experience, and the struggle for the emancipation of the Bulgarian workers and peasants, under the leadership of the Communist Party, enlightened by the great experience of the September Uprising, is going unfalteringly forward to the final victory.
In order to root out Communism, immediately after the uprising and in the two following years the government's fascist gangs murdered more that 20,000 workers, peasants and intellectuals. My brother, too, was murdered in the police prison. But, notwithstanding this, Communism has incomparably deeper and stronger roots in Bulgaria now than in 1923 - undoubtedly a useful warning for all the eager extirpators of Communism in other countries - for all the many varieties of modern Don Quixotes.
October 1, 1923, I left for Vienna.
Support for my suffering fellow-fighters in Yugoslavia. Campaign for the defence of persecuted and bestially slaughtered class comrades in Bulgaria.
Here, for three months, I edited and published the Party organ, Rabotnicheski Vestnik.
Published two pamphlets against the bloody White Terror in Bulgaria, in Bulgarian, German and English.
In the spring of 1924 went to Moscow as a political refugee and political writer and stayed until the end of 1926.
In 1927 I was again in Vienna, in connexion with the projected amnesty, up to the autumn of 1929. I was not amnestied.
Publication of the Party paper, Komunistichesko Znamé, contacts with certain Party papers.
From the autumn of 1929 I was settled in Berlin - far fewer Bulgarian refugees were there, and therefore safer incognito.
Two fairly long interruptions - from November 1929 to May 1930, and from December 1931 to June 1932, in the Soviet Union.
I returned specially to Berlin in the summer of 1932 in connexion with the last draft Amnesty Law, in order personally to organize the amnesty campaign.
Journeys to Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris.
I have never taken part in German politics - have no contacts with the Communist Party of Germany. This was not necessary for my work.
But I openly state that if I had needed these contacts for my work I certainly should have been associated with the Communist Party of Germany.
I was ill touch with International Press Correspondence only because of my articles.
It is true that I am a Bolshevik, a proletarian revolutionary. I must emphasize prolelarian revolutionary because this is a period of confusion in which even the German Crown Prince is accustomed to proclaim himself a revolutionary, and in which there are also such crazy revolutionaries as, for instance, van der Lubbe.
It is also true that as a member of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist international, I am a responsible and a leading Communist.
And I am ready to accept full responsibility for all the decisions, documents and actions of my Bulgarian Party and of the Communist International. But precisely for this reason I am not a terrorist adventurer, a conspirator or an incendiary.
Further, it is perfectly true that I am in favour of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. I am firmly convinced that this is the only way out of, the only salvation from the economic crisis and the catastrophe of war under capitalism.
And the fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat and for the victory of Communism is, without any doubt, the whole substance of my life. I should like to live at least another twenty years for Communism and then quietly die. But precisely for this reason I am a convinced opponent of the methods of individual terror and conspiracies.
And this is not from any sentimental or humanitarian considerations. In agreement with our Leninist theory, and with the decisions and discipline of the Communist International, which for me and for every true Communist are the supreme law, I am opposed to individual terror and to putschist activities from the standpoint of revolutionary expediency, in the interests of the proletarian revolution and of Communism itself.
I am, in fact, an enthusiastic follower and admirer of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, because this Party rules the largest country in the world - a sixth part of the earth - and is building up socialism with such heroism and with such success,
But I have never been an emissary in Germany of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as the indictment tries to indicate.
The only breach of the law which I have committed in Germany consists in the fact that I have lived there unregistered and under a false name.
But unfortunately it was impossible for me to live in any other way.
With the burning of the Reichstag I had absolutely nothing to do, whether directly or indirectly. The Reichstag incendiary, van der Lubbe, I now see for the first time in this hall. When, early in the morning of February 28, in the train from Munich to Berlin, I read in the papers about the burning of the Reichstag, I immediately took the view that the instigators of this action were either despicable provocateurs or mentally and politically demented people, and in any case enemies of the German working class and of Communism.
I am now more inclined to assume that the burning of the Reichstag - this anti-Communist undertaking - must have taken place as a result of a double alliance between political provocation and political madness.
It would hardly be possible to make a graver attack upon my revolutionary, political and personal honour than to cast upon me the suspicion arid the accusation that I had a share in this crime against the people and against Communism.
My consolation was, and is to this day, that my Bulgarian comrades-in-arms, the class comrades abroad, the revolutionary proletarians in Germany, and all who are acquainted with me in some degree, cannot doubt for a single instant that I am innocent. I wish most forcefully to stress that I have had just as much to do with the burning of the Reichstag as, for instance, any foreign correspondent in this hall or the judges themselves could have had.
At the same time I wish to state most emphatically that I have had absolutely no connexion, not even a chance connexion or the most remote connexion, with this crime.
During the preliminary examination I submitted two written statements - on March 20 and May 30 - where practically everything essential in my defence has already been said.
On the other hand, I did not sign the depositions at the preliminary examinations because they were incomplete and tendentious.
My whole preliminary examination was based on the express intention of turning me into an incendiary of the Reichstag for the benefit of the Supreme Court - at any price, and in spite of the facts which disproved this; and even after the preliminary investigation, which had lasted for months, had still failed - as I now see clearly - to discover the real criminals.
September 25, 1933
Left school in the 6th grade, worked as a compositor up to 1904.
Son of the Bulgarian working class.
Born and brought up in the ranks of the revolutionary workers' movement (I have been active in this movement from the age of 15).
For thirty, years member of the Bulgarian Communist Party, - (formerly the Party, of the so-called Narrow or Left-Wing Socialists.
For twenty-three years member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bulgaria.
From 1904 to 1923 secretary of the Trade Union Federation.
From 1913 to 1923 Party national representative for Sofia in the Bulgarian Parliament - also representative of the Party in the municipal Council of Sofia and in the Regional Council of Sofia.
At the same time I was active as a Party speaker and writer.
June 9, 1923 - Military coup d'etat - overthrow) of Stamboliiski's Government - by officers and Macedonian terrorists under the patronage of the Tsar himself, aided by, Social-Democrats and from abroad.
Thousands upon thousands of peasants, workers, intellectuals murdered. Stamboliiski murdered.
Largest parties - Agrarian Union and Communist Party - dissolved.
All rights and liberties of the mass of the people abolished.
Introduction of a military-fascist regime.
Boundless indignation - mass uprising inevitable.
September 23 - Workers' and peasants' uprising under the leadership of the Communist Party against the oppressors of the people and the usurpers of power, for a worker-peasant government.
In this uprising I was delegated by my Party to take an active and leading part.
After a week of armed struggle the uprising was defeated. Fighting every step of the way, with about a thousand of my comrades-in-arms I crossed over into Yugoslav territory.
There we were treated at first as political prisoners and later as political refugees.
From that time onwards - exactly ten years - I have been living abroad as a political refugee and a political writer - unregistered and under a false name, because while abroad I was again threatened with death by my enemies.
Several months after the September uprising I was sentenced to death by default - as the press announced at the time. I never had the opportunity of hearing the sentence pronounced against me.
I am proud of the heroic uprising.
I only regret that I and my Party were not yet real Bolsheviks at that time. That is why we were unable successfully to organize and lead this historic people's uprising, headed by the proletariat.
Our insufficiently Bolshevik organization, policy and tactics, the lack of revolutionary experience, and especially our opportunist and so-called neutral attitude towards the military-fascist coup on June 9, did much to help the murderers and executioners of the Bulgarian people, the usurpers of state power, to suppress the uprising of the masses.
But the Party has learned and appreciated the bloody lessons of this experience, and the struggle for the emancipation of the Bulgarian workers and peasants, under the leadership of the Communist Party, enlightened by the great experience of the September Uprising, is going unfalteringly forward to the final victory.
In order to root out Communism, immediately after the uprising and in the two following years the government's fascist gangs murdered more that 20,000 workers, peasants and intellectuals. My brother, too, was murdered in the police prison. But, notwithstanding this, Communism has incomparably deeper and stronger roots in Bulgaria now than in 1923 - undoubtedly a useful warning for all the eager extirpators of Communism in other countries - for all the many varieties of modern Don Quixotes.
October 1, 1923, I left for Vienna.
Support for my suffering fellow-fighters in Yugoslavia. Campaign for the defence of persecuted and bestially slaughtered class comrades in Bulgaria.
Here, for three months, I edited and published the Party organ, Rabotnicheski Vestnik.
Published two pamphlets against the bloody White Terror in Bulgaria, in Bulgarian, German and English.
In the spring of 1924 went to Moscow as a political refugee and political writer and stayed until the end of 1926.
In 1927 I was again in Vienna, in connexion with the projected amnesty, up to the autumn of 1929. I was not amnestied.
Publication of the Party paper, Komunistichesko Znamé, contacts with certain Party papers.
From the autumn of 1929 I was settled in Berlin - far fewer Bulgarian refugees were there, and therefore safer incognito.
Two fairly long interruptions - from November 1929 to May 1930, and from December 1931 to June 1932, in the Soviet Union.
I returned specially to Berlin in the summer of 1932 in connexion with the last draft Amnesty Law, in order personally to organize the amnesty campaign.
Journeys to Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris.
I have never taken part in German politics - have no contacts with the Communist Party of Germany. This was not necessary for my work.
But I openly state that if I had needed these contacts for my work I certainly should have been associated with the Communist Party of Germany.
I was ill touch with International Press Correspondence only because of my articles.
It is true that I am a Bolshevik, a proletarian revolutionary. I must emphasize prolelarian revolutionary because this is a period of confusion in which even the German Crown Prince is accustomed to proclaim himself a revolutionary, and in which there are also such crazy revolutionaries as, for instance, van der Lubbe.
It is also true that as a member of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist international, I am a responsible and a leading Communist.
And I am ready to accept full responsibility for all the decisions, documents and actions of my Bulgarian Party and of the Communist International. But precisely for this reason I am not a terrorist adventurer, a conspirator or an incendiary.
Further, it is perfectly true that I am in favour of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. I am firmly convinced that this is the only way out of, the only salvation from the economic crisis and the catastrophe of war under capitalism.
And the fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat and for the victory of Communism is, without any doubt, the whole substance of my life. I should like to live at least another twenty years for Communism and then quietly die. But precisely for this reason I am a convinced opponent of the methods of individual terror and conspiracies.
And this is not from any sentimental or humanitarian considerations. In agreement with our Leninist theory, and with the decisions and discipline of the Communist International, which for me and for every true Communist are the supreme law, I am opposed to individual terror and to putschist activities from the standpoint of revolutionary expediency, in the interests of the proletarian revolution and of Communism itself.
I am, in fact, an enthusiastic follower and admirer of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, because this Party rules the largest country in the world - a sixth part of the earth - and is building up socialism with such heroism and with such success,
But I have never been an emissary in Germany of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as the indictment tries to indicate.
The only breach of the law which I have committed in Germany consists in the fact that I have lived there unregistered and under a false name.
But unfortunately it was impossible for me to live in any other way.
With the burning of the Reichstag I had absolutely nothing to do, whether directly or indirectly. The Reichstag incendiary, van der Lubbe, I now see for the first time in this hall. When, early in the morning of February 28, in the train from Munich to Berlin, I read in the papers about the burning of the Reichstag, I immediately took the view that the instigators of this action were either despicable provocateurs or mentally and politically demented people, and in any case enemies of the German working class and of Communism.
I am now more inclined to assume that the burning of the Reichstag - this anti-Communist undertaking - must have taken place as a result of a double alliance between political provocation and political madness.
It would hardly be possible to make a graver attack upon my revolutionary, political and personal honour than to cast upon me the suspicion arid the accusation that I had a share in this crime against the people and against Communism.
My consolation was, and is to this day, that my Bulgarian comrades-in-arms, the class comrades abroad, the revolutionary proletarians in Germany, and all who are acquainted with me in some degree, cannot doubt for a single instant that I am innocent. I wish most forcefully to stress that I have had just as much to do with the burning of the Reichstag as, for instance, any foreign correspondent in this hall or the judges themselves could have had.
At the same time I wish to state most emphatically that I have had absolutely no connexion, not even a chance connexion or the most remote connexion, with this crime.
During the preliminary examination I submitted two written statements - on March 20 and May 30 - where practically everything essential in my defence has already been said.
On the other hand, I did not sign the depositions at the preliminary examinations because they were incomplete and tendentious.
My whole preliminary examination was based on the express intention of turning me into an incendiary of the Reichstag for the benefit of the Supreme Court - at any price, and in spite of the facts which disproved this; and even after the preliminary investigation, which had lasted for months, had still failed - as I now see clearly - to discover the real criminals.
September 25, 1933
Statement to the Police Inquiring Magistrates
Georgi Dimitrov
In connexion with my arrest, I have to state the following:
1. I, Georgi Dimitrov, former Bulgarian national representative, former secretary of the General Workers' Trade Union in Bulgaria, and a member of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party ever since 1910, have been a political emigrant since the month of October 1923, sentenced in Bulgaria by default in connexion with the events of June - September, 1923. Persecuted by my political opponents with attempts at my life abroad, I was unable to live in Europe under my real name and was compelled to use other names, such as the name of Dr Rudolf Hediger, under which I was arrested.
2. When in the spring of 1932, the question of granting an amnesty to the remaining persons convicted in connexion with the events of 1923 was again brought up in Bulgaria, and a great political struggle flared up on this question, I decided to leave the Soviet Union, where I was at that lime, and to return to Central Europe, to take an immediate part from abroad in the campaign for a general political amnesty. At the end of June 1932, I arrived in Berlin, and from here I made trips to Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam, Paris and Brussels where I endeavoured to get prominent personalities interested in the matter, such as Zweig and others in Austria, Prof. Nevedly and others in Czechoslovakia, Babusse, Romain Rolland and others in France, the editorial offices of various newspapers and magazines as well as different organizations - cultural, scientific, etc. - and to secure their moral and political support in favour of the demanded amnesty. For the purpose, I compiled information on the question of the amnesty, published letters addressed to prominent personalities, editorial offices and organizations, and wrote a series of articles on Bulgaria's economic and political situation, on its foreign and home policy, etc., for the foreign press, as well as for the International Press Correspondence magazine, published in French in Paris, in English in London and in German in Berlin. For this purpose I followed the Bulgarian press and literature, all that appeared about Bulgaria in the foreign press, collected statistical and other data in the Prussian Library and other institutions, as can be seen from the Bulgarian and other papers, magazines and books, newspaper clippings and other publications found at my lodgings.
3. I defrayed my personal maintenance as well as the expenses for my trips with the fees I got for my articles and for translations from the Russian and the German. The sum of 350 Marks and 10 dollars, found on me at my arrest, is all I possess as an emigrant over a period of 10 years.
4. During my stay in Germany I have not interfered in German home affairs. I have not taken any part, direct or indirect, in this country's political struggles. I was completely dedicated to my own task, which for me, as a Bulgarian political worker, was a vital question - to help promote, to the best of my abilities, an early and general political amnesty in Bulgaria, so as to be able, after a period of 10 years of emigration, to return freely to my country and there to serve my people according to my own convictions and ideal. The documents found on me: the united front appeal of the Communist International, and the appeal for convening an international anti-fascist congress, were used by me only as information. They were published by the whole world Communist press aiid are not illegal documents. In general, I have neither composed nor distributed in Germany any document on the German situation or problems.
5. I learned about the Reichstag fire from the papers in the morning on February 28, in the train from Munich to Berlin, like all other passengers in this train. I saw the name and the photograph of the 'incendiary' for the first time in the German papers after they were published. I have never seen or met him personally in my life. As a Communist, as a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Communist International, I am in principle against all individual terror, against all senseless fires, because these actions are incompatible with the Communist principles and methods of mass work and with the economic and mass political struggle, and because they can only be harmful to the liberation movement of the proletariat, to the Communist cause. The programmes and constitutions of all Communist Parties and of the Communist International forbid individual terror under the threat of expulsion from the Party of any member who may resort to methods of individual terror. All terrorist actions perpetrated in Bulgaria, including the blowing up of the Sofia Cathedral in April 1925, were publicly and categorically condemned both personally by myself and by the Party to which I belong, as well as by the Communist International. We are Communists and not anarchists. According to my deepest conviction, the Reichstag fire can be the work only of madmen or of the worst enemies of Communism, who through this act intended to create an atmosphere conducive to the crushing of the workers' movement and the Communist Party in Germany. I am, however, neither mad, nor an enemy of Communism.
6. Moreover, at the time when the fire took place, I was not even in Berlin, but in Munich, where I arrived on February 26 in the morning and from where I returned to Berlin on February 27 in the evening by the through train, sleeping car, 3rd class.
7. I reject with the deepest indignation all suspicion of having taken a direct or indirect part in this anti-Communist act, in this crime reprehensible from every point of view, and resolutely protest against the unprecedented injustice committed against me by my arrest on the pretext of and in connexion with this crime.
My sole offense against the laws of Germany is that, as a political emigrant threatened with murder, i have lived underground in Germany.
8. I also protest against being kept in the position of a war prisoner, to whom not a single cent out of his own money, was left to meet my most immediate needs, and that I am deprived even of the most elementary legal defence.
Berlin, March 20, 1933G. Dimitrov
P. S. As regards the papers found at my lodgings, I acknowledge as indisputably my own only those among them which were proved to be such at the perquisition. My lodgings were searched in my absence
In connexion with my arrest, I have to state the following:
1. I, Georgi Dimitrov, former Bulgarian national representative, former secretary of the General Workers' Trade Union in Bulgaria, and a member of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party ever since 1910, have been a political emigrant since the month of October 1923, sentenced in Bulgaria by default in connexion with the events of June - September, 1923. Persecuted by my political opponents with attempts at my life abroad, I was unable to live in Europe under my real name and was compelled to use other names, such as the name of Dr Rudolf Hediger, under which I was arrested.
2. When in the spring of 1932, the question of granting an amnesty to the remaining persons convicted in connexion with the events of 1923 was again brought up in Bulgaria, and a great political struggle flared up on this question, I decided to leave the Soviet Union, where I was at that lime, and to return to Central Europe, to take an immediate part from abroad in the campaign for a general political amnesty. At the end of June 1932, I arrived in Berlin, and from here I made trips to Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam, Paris and Brussels where I endeavoured to get prominent personalities interested in the matter, such as Zweig and others in Austria, Prof. Nevedly and others in Czechoslovakia, Babusse, Romain Rolland and others in France, the editorial offices of various newspapers and magazines as well as different organizations - cultural, scientific, etc. - and to secure their moral and political support in favour of the demanded amnesty. For the purpose, I compiled information on the question of the amnesty, published letters addressed to prominent personalities, editorial offices and organizations, and wrote a series of articles on Bulgaria's economic and political situation, on its foreign and home policy, etc., for the foreign press, as well as for the International Press Correspondence magazine, published in French in Paris, in English in London and in German in Berlin. For this purpose I followed the Bulgarian press and literature, all that appeared about Bulgaria in the foreign press, collected statistical and other data in the Prussian Library and other institutions, as can be seen from the Bulgarian and other papers, magazines and books, newspaper clippings and other publications found at my lodgings.
3. I defrayed my personal maintenance as well as the expenses for my trips with the fees I got for my articles and for translations from the Russian and the German. The sum of 350 Marks and 10 dollars, found on me at my arrest, is all I possess as an emigrant over a period of 10 years.
4. During my stay in Germany I have not interfered in German home affairs. I have not taken any part, direct or indirect, in this country's political struggles. I was completely dedicated to my own task, which for me, as a Bulgarian political worker, was a vital question - to help promote, to the best of my abilities, an early and general political amnesty in Bulgaria, so as to be able, after a period of 10 years of emigration, to return freely to my country and there to serve my people according to my own convictions and ideal. The documents found on me: the united front appeal of the Communist International, and the appeal for convening an international anti-fascist congress, were used by me only as information. They were published by the whole world Communist press aiid are not illegal documents. In general, I have neither composed nor distributed in Germany any document on the German situation or problems.
5. I learned about the Reichstag fire from the papers in the morning on February 28, in the train from Munich to Berlin, like all other passengers in this train. I saw the name and the photograph of the 'incendiary' for the first time in the German papers after they were published. I have never seen or met him personally in my life. As a Communist, as a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Communist International, I am in principle against all individual terror, against all senseless fires, because these actions are incompatible with the Communist principles and methods of mass work and with the economic and mass political struggle, and because they can only be harmful to the liberation movement of the proletariat, to the Communist cause. The programmes and constitutions of all Communist Parties and of the Communist International forbid individual terror under the threat of expulsion from the Party of any member who may resort to methods of individual terror. All terrorist actions perpetrated in Bulgaria, including the blowing up of the Sofia Cathedral in April 1925, were publicly and categorically condemned both personally by myself and by the Party to which I belong, as well as by the Communist International. We are Communists and not anarchists. According to my deepest conviction, the Reichstag fire can be the work only of madmen or of the worst enemies of Communism, who through this act intended to create an atmosphere conducive to the crushing of the workers' movement and the Communist Party in Germany. I am, however, neither mad, nor an enemy of Communism.
6. Moreover, at the time when the fire took place, I was not even in Berlin, but in Munich, where I arrived on February 26 in the morning and from where I returned to Berlin on February 27 in the evening by the through train, sleeping car, 3rd class.
7. I reject with the deepest indignation all suspicion of having taken a direct or indirect part in this anti-Communist act, in this crime reprehensible from every point of view, and resolutely protest against the unprecedented injustice committed against me by my arrest on the pretext of and in connexion with this crime.
My sole offense against the laws of Germany is that, as a political emigrant threatened with murder, i have lived underground in Germany.
8. I also protest against being kept in the position of a war prisoner, to whom not a single cent out of his own money, was left to meet my most immediate needs, and that I am deprived even of the most elementary legal defence.
Berlin, March 20, 1933G. Dimitrov
P. S. As regards the papers found at my lodgings, I acknowledge as indisputably my own only those among them which were proved to be such at the perquisition. My lodgings were searched in my absence
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Fascism is War
Georgi Dimitrov
Two years ago, in August 1935, the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, in analyzing the international Situation and seeking ways and means whereby the working class could carry on the struggle against the offensive of fascism, pointed to the indissoluble connection between the struggle against fascism and the struggle for peace. Fascism is war, declared the Congress. Coming to power against the will and interests of its own countrymen fascism seeks a way out of its growing domestic difficulties in aggression against other countries and peoples, in a their redivision of the globe by unleashing a world war. As far as, fascism is concerned, peace is certain ruin The preservation of international peace renders it possible for the enslaved masses in the fascist countries to gather their forces together and to prepare for the overthrow of the hated fascist dictatorship, and to enable the international proletariat to win time for the establishment of unity tit its ranks, to rally together the supporters of peace, and to establish an insurmountable barrier against the outbreak of war.
When the Seventh Congress characterized fascism as the firebrand of war, when it pointed to the growing danger of a new imperialist war and to the need for establishing a powerful united fighting front against fascism, there were very few people even in the labour movement who did not hesitate to accuse us Communists of deliberately ascribing this role to fascism, for purely propagandist purposes and of exaggerating the war danger. Some did this consciously, in the interests of the ruling classes, while others did so out of political shortsightedness. The past two years however, have provided a sufficiently clear demostration of the complete Absurdity of such accusations. Now both the friends and fees of peace are openly speaking of the menace of a new world war which has come upon us. And it would be difficult to find seriousminded people who at all doubt that it is precisely the fascist governments that are foremost in the desire for war. In actual fact, war is already raging in a number of countries. For one year now, both the Italian and the German interventionists have been carrying on a war against the Spanish people before the eyes of the whole world. After having accomplished the seizure of Manchuria, the Japanese fascist militarists are now again attacking the Chinese people and are waging a new war in North China.
Manchuria, Ethiopia, Spain, North China - these are stages towards the new great robber war of fascism. These are not isolated acts. There exists a bloc of fascist aggressors and warmongers - Berlin, Rome, Tokyo. The German-Japanese 'anti-Comintern' Pact, an agreement which, as is well known, is of a military nature and to which Mussolini has in fact also linked himself, is already being applied in practice. Under the flag of a struggle against the Communist International, against the 'Red menace', the German, Italian and Japanese aggressors are trying by means of partial wars to seize military-strategic positions, key positions on land and naval routes, and sources of raw materials for their war supplies with a view to the further unleashing of an imperialist war.
There is no need to be under any illusions, there is no need to wait for a formal declaration of war, to see that war is now on. As far back as March 1936, Comrade Stalin, in his interview with Roy Howard, said:
'War may break out unexpectedly. Nowadays wars are not declared. They simply break out.'
All events of recent years serve as a glaring confirmation of this thesis. Without officially declaring war, Japan started military operations against China and seized Manchuria, Italy attacked the Ethiopian people and seized Ethiopia, and Germany and Italy are waging a war against the Spanish Republic.
It is well known that the people have no desire for war, and that a number of non-fascist states are, in the present conditions, interested in maintaining peace. On what, then do the fascist war-makers base their calculations? The entire experience following the robber drive by the Japanese imperialists into Manchuria and by Italian fascism into Ethiopia shows unquestionably that the bandit bloc of the rulers of Germany, Japan and Italy, in order to carry out their military plans in practice, are striving:
first of all, to hinder united action by the states interested in the maintenance of peace,
secondly, to prevent unity of action by the international labour movement, the establishment of a mighty united world front against fascism and war;
thirdly, to carry on undermining diversionist and espionage work in the Soviet Union, which is the foremost bulwark of peace.
It is on this chiefly that the fascists base their calculations.
And in actual fact the fascist aggressors and warmongers are working strenuously and jointly in these three directions. They are blackmailing the Western European states by threatening their territorial interests. They are preparing an onslaught on the USSR. They are making extensive use of the appeasement of the ruling circles of Britain, France and the United States. While making proposals for an agreement on the plundering of the small countries, Spain and China, they are striving in every possible way to win the good graces of the British Tories and a number of Liberal and Labour leaders, so as to wean Britain away, from France and other democratic countries.
Holding out a similar lure, the fascists are exerting incredible efforts to come to an agreement with the French reactionaries so as to induce France to renounce the Franco-Soviet pact, thus isolating it from the Soviet Union. The fascist states left the League of Nations to get a free hand for their aggression. They terrorize the weak states by threatening attacks from outside, and by organizing conspiracies and rebellions within these countries. The fascist warmongers make use of traitors, and particularly of the Trotskyites, to carry on disruptive, disorganizing work in the ranks of the labour movement, to disrupt the People's Front in Spain and France. The recent putsh in Barcelona gave a particularly clear demonstration of how the fascists make use of Trotskyist organizations to stab the People's Front in the back. The fascist firebrands also make splendid use of the work of the opponents of international proletarian unity in the ranks, of the Second International and the International Federation of Trade Unions, and assiduously recruit their agents everywhere.
On more than one occasion the Soviet Union has upset the war plans of the fascist aggressors by its consistent and resolute peace policy. It can be asserted without any exaggeration that mankind would long ago have been plunged into the most terrible war in history had not the Soviet Union been insistent and unswerving in carrying through its peace policy, had there been no glorious Red Army in existence.
But while the fascist aggressor, meet with necessary rebuffs from the Soviet Union, which is acting in the interests not only of the Soviet people but also of the whole of toiling mankind, this cannot be said of the countries of bourgeois democracy. Here, as is being demonstrated with particular clearness by the examples of Spain and China, we meet with the overt and concealed assistance being given to the fascist bloc by the ruling circles of the most important Western non-fascist states.
Was it not support for the fascist warmongers when the seizure of Manchuria by, the Japanese militarists was met with appeasement? Was not the lacks of resolute resistance to the bloody campaign of Mussolini against the people of Ethiopia encouragement to the fascist aggressor? Take the entire farce of non-intervention in Spanish affairs, which has already been carried on for a year under the leadership of the 'British government, and the negotiations going on regarding the recognition of Franco as a 'belligerent' - are they not in fact an encouragement to the war being waged by the fascist states against the Spanish Republic Is not the present complacent attitude towards the brazen marauders in North China the most scandalous encouragement to the unbridled Japanese militarists, who wish to enslave the great Chinese people? How can the people of Great Britain, France, the United States and the other non-fascist countries look on calmly at these things? Flow can they put up with this, systematic appeasement and encouragement of fascist aggression, which facilitates the foul work of the fascist firebrands of a new world war?
In the face of these things, it becomes still clearer how great is the historic responsibility which lies on those circles and leaders of the Socialist Labour International and the International Federation of Trade Unions which are stubbornly resisting the establishment of united action by the international proletariat, of action by its organization on the basis of a united, co-ordinated policy against the fascist makers of the establishment of a mighty international front of peace.
When the Japanese militarists seized Manchuria, there were people claiming to be leading lights in the labour movement who assured the workers in their organizations that Manchuria was a long way off and the Japanese invasion did not touch on the interests of the international labour movement. When Mussolini's fascist hordes crushed the Ethiopian people, these functionaries asserted that the events in Ethiopia were a local colonial conflict and that the international proletariat ought not to interfere. When later on the fascist aggressors brazenly attacked the Spanish Republic and started a war within Europe itself, it was only after many months of tormenting vacillations that the leaders of the Second International agreed to a joint conference with the delegation of the Communist International at Annemasse, and yet not for the purpose of actually bringing about united action between the international workers' organizations, but only to recognize the advisability of joint action 'wherever possible.'
Since then the fascist intervention in Spain has been considerably intensified. And now there has been added the new aggression of the Japanese militarists in North China which, according to Japanese plans, is to become a second Manchukuo and the basis for a further amputation of China.
Is it not clear that at this moment, when the Spanish people are exerting all their efforts to beat off the onslaught of the fascist interventionists, when the Chinese people are rising up against the Japanese militarists who have attacked them the international workers' organizations should at last unite their efforts and come to the defence of international peace, resolutely and fully prepared for action?
The situation is now developing in such a way that to maintain peace throughout the world means first and foremost to bring about the defeat of the fascist invaders of Spain and China. They must be taught a good lesson, they must be really made to feel that the international proletariat and all progressive and civilized mankind will not tolerate their military aggression and acts of robbery, and are ready to do everything to prevent them from fulfilling their plans of igniting the flames of a new world war.
Can it be that the Socialist Labour International and the International Federation of Trade Unions will rest content now with general wordy declarations and incantations in favour of peace, while in deeds they shun joint action by all organizations of the international labour movement which is so vitally needed? Surely it is clear that joint action by the international workers' organizations in each separate country and on an international scale is alone capable of mobilizing the forces of progressive mankind for a struggle against war, to bar the road to the warmongers, and also to exert pressure on the official policy of the most important non-fascist states so as to curb fascist aggressors who have thrown off all restraint.
It is impossible to wage a serious struggle for the preservation of world peace unless first and foremost all necessary steps are taken to establish a united front of the working class in each country and united action by the international workers' organizations. It is impossible to carry on a serious fight for peace unless the forces of the labour movement and of the wide masses of the people are mobilized to drive the fascist usurpers out of Spain and China as rapidly as possible.
The balance of the forces of war and the forces of peace is not what is was in 1914. Major world-historic changes have taken place since that time. The imperialists succeeded m hurling millions of people into the inferno of a world slaughter under circumstances when neither a powerful proletarian state nor its Red Army existed, when there was no Popular Front in France and 'Spain, when the Chinese people were not in a position to defend their national independence, when the masses of the people had not had the experience of an imperialist war and a great proletarian revolution, when the international working class did not as yet possess such a world organization as the Communist International.
The international labour movement has sufficient forces and means at its disposal to bring about the cessation of the intervention of German and Italian fascism in Spain, the onslaught of the Japanese militarists in China, and to secure international peace.
This, however, requires that the tremendous forces and means at the disposal of the international labour movement be united and directed towards an effective and unyielding struggle against fascism and war.
Two years ago, in August 1935, the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, in analyzing the international Situation and seeking ways and means whereby the working class could carry on the struggle against the offensive of fascism, pointed to the indissoluble connection between the struggle against fascism and the struggle for peace. Fascism is war, declared the Congress. Coming to power against the will and interests of its own countrymen fascism seeks a way out of its growing domestic difficulties in aggression against other countries and peoples, in a their redivision of the globe by unleashing a world war. As far as, fascism is concerned, peace is certain ruin The preservation of international peace renders it possible for the enslaved masses in the fascist countries to gather their forces together and to prepare for the overthrow of the hated fascist dictatorship, and to enable the international proletariat to win time for the establishment of unity tit its ranks, to rally together the supporters of peace, and to establish an insurmountable barrier against the outbreak of war.
When the Seventh Congress characterized fascism as the firebrand of war, when it pointed to the growing danger of a new imperialist war and to the need for establishing a powerful united fighting front against fascism, there were very few people even in the labour movement who did not hesitate to accuse us Communists of deliberately ascribing this role to fascism, for purely propagandist purposes and of exaggerating the war danger. Some did this consciously, in the interests of the ruling classes, while others did so out of political shortsightedness. The past two years however, have provided a sufficiently clear demostration of the complete Absurdity of such accusations. Now both the friends and fees of peace are openly speaking of the menace of a new world war which has come upon us. And it would be difficult to find seriousminded people who at all doubt that it is precisely the fascist governments that are foremost in the desire for war. In actual fact, war is already raging in a number of countries. For one year now, both the Italian and the German interventionists have been carrying on a war against the Spanish people before the eyes of the whole world. After having accomplished the seizure of Manchuria, the Japanese fascist militarists are now again attacking the Chinese people and are waging a new war in North China.
Manchuria, Ethiopia, Spain, North China - these are stages towards the new great robber war of fascism. These are not isolated acts. There exists a bloc of fascist aggressors and warmongers - Berlin, Rome, Tokyo. The German-Japanese 'anti-Comintern' Pact, an agreement which, as is well known, is of a military nature and to which Mussolini has in fact also linked himself, is already being applied in practice. Under the flag of a struggle against the Communist International, against the 'Red menace', the German, Italian and Japanese aggressors are trying by means of partial wars to seize military-strategic positions, key positions on land and naval routes, and sources of raw materials for their war supplies with a view to the further unleashing of an imperialist war.
There is no need to be under any illusions, there is no need to wait for a formal declaration of war, to see that war is now on. As far back as March 1936, Comrade Stalin, in his interview with Roy Howard, said:
'War may break out unexpectedly. Nowadays wars are not declared. They simply break out.'
All events of recent years serve as a glaring confirmation of this thesis. Without officially declaring war, Japan started military operations against China and seized Manchuria, Italy attacked the Ethiopian people and seized Ethiopia, and Germany and Italy are waging a war against the Spanish Republic.
It is well known that the people have no desire for war, and that a number of non-fascist states are, in the present conditions, interested in maintaining peace. On what, then do the fascist war-makers base their calculations? The entire experience following the robber drive by the Japanese imperialists into Manchuria and by Italian fascism into Ethiopia shows unquestionably that the bandit bloc of the rulers of Germany, Japan and Italy, in order to carry out their military plans in practice, are striving:
first of all, to hinder united action by the states interested in the maintenance of peace,
secondly, to prevent unity of action by the international labour movement, the establishment of a mighty united world front against fascism and war;
thirdly, to carry on undermining diversionist and espionage work in the Soviet Union, which is the foremost bulwark of peace.
It is on this chiefly that the fascists base their calculations.
And in actual fact the fascist aggressors and warmongers are working strenuously and jointly in these three directions. They are blackmailing the Western European states by threatening their territorial interests. They are preparing an onslaught on the USSR. They are making extensive use of the appeasement of the ruling circles of Britain, France and the United States. While making proposals for an agreement on the plundering of the small countries, Spain and China, they are striving in every possible way to win the good graces of the British Tories and a number of Liberal and Labour leaders, so as to wean Britain away, from France and other democratic countries.
Holding out a similar lure, the fascists are exerting incredible efforts to come to an agreement with the French reactionaries so as to induce France to renounce the Franco-Soviet pact, thus isolating it from the Soviet Union. The fascist states left the League of Nations to get a free hand for their aggression. They terrorize the weak states by threatening attacks from outside, and by organizing conspiracies and rebellions within these countries. The fascist warmongers make use of traitors, and particularly of the Trotskyites, to carry on disruptive, disorganizing work in the ranks of the labour movement, to disrupt the People's Front in Spain and France. The recent putsh in Barcelona gave a particularly clear demonstration of how the fascists make use of Trotskyist organizations to stab the People's Front in the back. The fascist firebrands also make splendid use of the work of the opponents of international proletarian unity in the ranks, of the Second International and the International Federation of Trade Unions, and assiduously recruit their agents everywhere.
On more than one occasion the Soviet Union has upset the war plans of the fascist aggressors by its consistent and resolute peace policy. It can be asserted without any exaggeration that mankind would long ago have been plunged into the most terrible war in history had not the Soviet Union been insistent and unswerving in carrying through its peace policy, had there been no glorious Red Army in existence.
But while the fascist aggressor, meet with necessary rebuffs from the Soviet Union, which is acting in the interests not only of the Soviet people but also of the whole of toiling mankind, this cannot be said of the countries of bourgeois democracy. Here, as is being demonstrated with particular clearness by the examples of Spain and China, we meet with the overt and concealed assistance being given to the fascist bloc by the ruling circles of the most important Western non-fascist states.
Was it not support for the fascist warmongers when the seizure of Manchuria by, the Japanese militarists was met with appeasement? Was not the lacks of resolute resistance to the bloody campaign of Mussolini against the people of Ethiopia encouragement to the fascist aggressor? Take the entire farce of non-intervention in Spanish affairs, which has already been carried on for a year under the leadership of the 'British government, and the negotiations going on regarding the recognition of Franco as a 'belligerent' - are they not in fact an encouragement to the war being waged by the fascist states against the Spanish Republic Is not the present complacent attitude towards the brazen marauders in North China the most scandalous encouragement to the unbridled Japanese militarists, who wish to enslave the great Chinese people? How can the people of Great Britain, France, the United States and the other non-fascist countries look on calmly at these things? Flow can they put up with this, systematic appeasement and encouragement of fascist aggression, which facilitates the foul work of the fascist firebrands of a new world war?
In the face of these things, it becomes still clearer how great is the historic responsibility which lies on those circles and leaders of the Socialist Labour International and the International Federation of Trade Unions which are stubbornly resisting the establishment of united action by the international proletariat, of action by its organization on the basis of a united, co-ordinated policy against the fascist makers of the establishment of a mighty international front of peace.
When the Japanese militarists seized Manchuria, there were people claiming to be leading lights in the labour movement who assured the workers in their organizations that Manchuria was a long way off and the Japanese invasion did not touch on the interests of the international labour movement. When Mussolini's fascist hordes crushed the Ethiopian people, these functionaries asserted that the events in Ethiopia were a local colonial conflict and that the international proletariat ought not to interfere. When later on the fascist aggressors brazenly attacked the Spanish Republic and started a war within Europe itself, it was only after many months of tormenting vacillations that the leaders of the Second International agreed to a joint conference with the delegation of the Communist International at Annemasse, and yet not for the purpose of actually bringing about united action between the international workers' organizations, but only to recognize the advisability of joint action 'wherever possible.'
Since then the fascist intervention in Spain has been considerably intensified. And now there has been added the new aggression of the Japanese militarists in North China which, according to Japanese plans, is to become a second Manchukuo and the basis for a further amputation of China.
Is it not clear that at this moment, when the Spanish people are exerting all their efforts to beat off the onslaught of the fascist interventionists, when the Chinese people are rising up against the Japanese militarists who have attacked them the international workers' organizations should at last unite their efforts and come to the defence of international peace, resolutely and fully prepared for action?
The situation is now developing in such a way that to maintain peace throughout the world means first and foremost to bring about the defeat of the fascist invaders of Spain and China. They must be taught a good lesson, they must be really made to feel that the international proletariat and all progressive and civilized mankind will not tolerate their military aggression and acts of robbery, and are ready to do everything to prevent them from fulfilling their plans of igniting the flames of a new world war.
Can it be that the Socialist Labour International and the International Federation of Trade Unions will rest content now with general wordy declarations and incantations in favour of peace, while in deeds they shun joint action by all organizations of the international labour movement which is so vitally needed? Surely it is clear that joint action by the international workers' organizations in each separate country and on an international scale is alone capable of mobilizing the forces of progressive mankind for a struggle against war, to bar the road to the warmongers, and also to exert pressure on the official policy of the most important non-fascist states so as to curb fascist aggressors who have thrown off all restraint.
It is impossible to wage a serious struggle for the preservation of world peace unless first and foremost all necessary steps are taken to establish a united front of the working class in each country and united action by the international workers' organizations. It is impossible to carry on a serious fight for peace unless the forces of the labour movement and of the wide masses of the people are mobilized to drive the fascist usurpers out of Spain and China as rapidly as possible.
The balance of the forces of war and the forces of peace is not what is was in 1914. Major world-historic changes have taken place since that time. The imperialists succeeded m hurling millions of people into the inferno of a world slaughter under circumstances when neither a powerful proletarian state nor its Red Army existed, when there was no Popular Front in France and 'Spain, when the Chinese people were not in a position to defend their national independence, when the masses of the people had not had the experience of an imperialist war and a great proletarian revolution, when the international working class did not as yet possess such a world organization as the Communist International.
The international labour movement has sufficient forces and means at its disposal to bring about the cessation of the intervention of German and Italian fascism in Spain, the onslaught of the Japanese militarists in China, and to secure international peace.
This, however, requires that the tremendous forces and means at the disposal of the international labour movement be united and directed towards an effective and unyielding struggle against fascism and war.
Youth Against Facism
Georgi Dimitrov's
Speech at the Opening of the Sixth Congress of the Young Communist International
COMRADES, I am bringing you warm greetings from the Executive Committee of the Communist International.
No dangers that beset your long and arduous road, no fascist or police cordons were able to prevent you from gathering in the Red proletarian capital for the purpose of discussing, in a friendly and amicable way, like the international family that you are, the tasks of uniting the forces of the young generation of toilers.
You are a congress of the revolutionary youth, a congress of strength and courage. How many of the best and most exemplary fighters in the cause of the working youth have assembled at your congress!
It is with pride and affection that I welcome, through you, in the name of the older revolutionary generation, the glorious young guard of the working people of the whole world.
Comrades, a month ago the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International completed its work in this hall where you are assembled today. The Congress, led by the brilliant teaching of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, thoroughly discussed all the main problems of the international labor movement and mapped out the road that must be taken to overcome the split in this movement, and to weld together the forces of the toilers in the struggle against exploiters and oppressors, against fascism and war. The Congress of the Communist International paid particular attention to the youth movement as one of the principal problems of the international revolutionary movement, understanding full well that the victory of the class struggle of the working people depends upon the correct and successful development of the youth movement, upon its assuming a sweeping mass character.
Fascism has wreaked bestial vengeance upon the best fighters of the revolutionary youth. At the same time it is making every effort to adapt its putrid demagogy to the moods of the wide mass of the youth, and to take advantage of the growing militant activity of the youth for its own reactionary ends, in order to convert it into a prop of dying capitalism.
Depriving the young generation of working people of all rights, the fascist governments militarize the entire youth, and try to train from their ranks obedient slaves of finance capital in civil as well as imperialist war.
What can we place in opposition to fascism and the threat of imperialist war, which has become particularly acute in view of the preparations being made by Italian fascism to attack Ethiopia and the growing aggression of German fascism?
We can and must place in opposition to it the union of all anti-fascist forces and, first and foremost, the union of all the forces of the young generation of working people, at the same time enhancing a thousandfold the role and activity of the youth in the struggle of the working class for its own interests, for its own cause.
Let the entire activity of the Congress of the Young Communist International be devoted to the attainment of this immediate and principal goal.
On the basis of the experience you already have gained, and the decisions of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, we expect you to be able to find the proper ways and means of accomplishing the most important task of your movement, the task of uniting the forces of the entire non-fascist youth, and, first and foremost, of the working class youth, the task of achieving unity with the socialist youth.
This, however, cannot be achieved if the Young Communist Leagues keep on trying, as they have done hitherto, to construct their organizations as if they were Communist Parties of the youth; nor will this be possible if they are content, as heretofore, to lead the secluded life of sectarians isolated from the masses.
The whole anti-fascist youth is interested in uniting and organizing its forces. Therefore you, comrades, must find such ways, forms and methods of work as will assure the formation, in the capitalist countries, of a new type of mass youth organizations, to which no vital interest of the working youth will be alien, organizations which, without copying the Party, will fight for all the interests of the youth and will bring up the youth in the spirit of the class struggle and proletarian internationalism, in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism.
This requires that the Congress should very seriously check up and reappraise the work of the Young Communist Leagues, for the purpose of actually achieving their reorganization and the fearless removal of everything that obstructs the development of mass work and establishment of the united front and unity of the youth.
We expect the Young Communist International to build up its activity in such a manner as to weld and unite all trade union, cultural, educational and sports organizations of the working youth, all revolutionary, national-revolutionary, national-liberation and anti-fascist youth organizations, for the struggle against fascism and war, for the rights of the young generation.
We note with great pleasure that our young comrades in France and the United States have actively joined the mass movement for a united front of the youth which is so successfully developing, and have already achieved in this sphere successes which hold out great promises. All sections of the Young Communist International should profit by this experience of the French and American comrades.
In many countries the Communist and Socialist youth are coming closer and closer together. A striking example of this is the presence, at this Congress of the Young Communist International, of representatives of not only the Communist but also the Socialist youth of Spain.
Therefore, comrades, follow boldly the course of uniting with the Socialist youth and of forming joint and united organizations with it. Follow boldly the course of uniting all forces of the anti-fascist youth!
The Executive Committee of the Communist International will encourage and support in every way your initiative and activity in the fight for unity and for all the vital interests of the working youth.
The millions of young men and women for whom capitalist society has created impossible conditions of existence, who are either outside any organization at all or are in organizations led by the class enemy, are your brothers and sisters, whom you can and must win over to the side of socialism by your persistent work.
Don't wait until unity between the Communist and Social-Democratic Parties and other organizations of the working class has been reached.
Be bold, independent and full of initiative!
You are the Congress of the most active, the most self-sacrificing section of the young generation of today. You cannot stand aside from the movement in favor of unity which is growing and strengthening in the ranks of the working class. You do not have to wait like the Socialist Youth International for permission "from above" before you can support the united front movement and the union of the toiling youth in one organization.
In the name of the Executive Committee of the Communist International I declare that the youth united in the ranks of the Young Communist International enjoys and will continue to enjoy every opportunity of independently developing its revolutionary movement and solving the problems of this movement.
Communists in youth organizations must be able to work in such a way as to influence the decisions of these organizations by convincing their members, and not by issuing orders in the name of the Party.
I call to mind the words of the great Lenin which form the basis for the relations between the Communist International and the youth and its organizations:
Frequently the middle-aged and the aged do not know how to approach the youth in the proper way, for, necessarily, the youth must come to socialism in a different way, by other paths, in other forms, in other circumstances than their fathers. Incidentally, this is why we must be decidedly in favor of the organizational independence of the Youth League, not only because the opportunists fear this independence, but because of the very nature of the case; for unless they have complete independence, the youth will be unable either to train good Socialists from their midst or prepare themselves to lead socialism forward.
[V. I. Lenin, Collected Works Volume 23, page 164]
Comrades, you must study, study, while you fight.
Combine your day-to-day practical activities with a profound study of the original sources of Marxism-Leninism, for without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary practice.
Be exemplary, staunch and valiant fighters against fascism, against capitalism.
Hold aloft the banner of the liberation of humanity from capitalist slavery, the banner of the Communist International.
Rally the young generation of working people of the whole world around this banner. This banner of the greatest victories already waves over one-sixth of the globe and it will triumph all over the world!
[Cheers! Audience breaks into songs.]
Speech at the Opening of the Sixth Congress of the Young Communist International
COMRADES, I am bringing you warm greetings from the Executive Committee of the Communist International.
No dangers that beset your long and arduous road, no fascist or police cordons were able to prevent you from gathering in the Red proletarian capital for the purpose of discussing, in a friendly and amicable way, like the international family that you are, the tasks of uniting the forces of the young generation of toilers.
You are a congress of the revolutionary youth, a congress of strength and courage. How many of the best and most exemplary fighters in the cause of the working youth have assembled at your congress!
It is with pride and affection that I welcome, through you, in the name of the older revolutionary generation, the glorious young guard of the working people of the whole world.
Comrades, a month ago the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International completed its work in this hall where you are assembled today. The Congress, led by the brilliant teaching of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, thoroughly discussed all the main problems of the international labor movement and mapped out the road that must be taken to overcome the split in this movement, and to weld together the forces of the toilers in the struggle against exploiters and oppressors, against fascism and war. The Congress of the Communist International paid particular attention to the youth movement as one of the principal problems of the international revolutionary movement, understanding full well that the victory of the class struggle of the working people depends upon the correct and successful development of the youth movement, upon its assuming a sweeping mass character.
Fascism has wreaked bestial vengeance upon the best fighters of the revolutionary youth. At the same time it is making every effort to adapt its putrid demagogy to the moods of the wide mass of the youth, and to take advantage of the growing militant activity of the youth for its own reactionary ends, in order to convert it into a prop of dying capitalism.
Depriving the young generation of working people of all rights, the fascist governments militarize the entire youth, and try to train from their ranks obedient slaves of finance capital in civil as well as imperialist war.
What can we place in opposition to fascism and the threat of imperialist war, which has become particularly acute in view of the preparations being made by Italian fascism to attack Ethiopia and the growing aggression of German fascism?
We can and must place in opposition to it the union of all anti-fascist forces and, first and foremost, the union of all the forces of the young generation of working people, at the same time enhancing a thousandfold the role and activity of the youth in the struggle of the working class for its own interests, for its own cause.
Let the entire activity of the Congress of the Young Communist International be devoted to the attainment of this immediate and principal goal.
On the basis of the experience you already have gained, and the decisions of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, we expect you to be able to find the proper ways and means of accomplishing the most important task of your movement, the task of uniting the forces of the entire non-fascist youth, and, first and foremost, of the working class youth, the task of achieving unity with the socialist youth.
This, however, cannot be achieved if the Young Communist Leagues keep on trying, as they have done hitherto, to construct their organizations as if they were Communist Parties of the youth; nor will this be possible if they are content, as heretofore, to lead the secluded life of sectarians isolated from the masses.
The whole anti-fascist youth is interested in uniting and organizing its forces. Therefore you, comrades, must find such ways, forms and methods of work as will assure the formation, in the capitalist countries, of a new type of mass youth organizations, to which no vital interest of the working youth will be alien, organizations which, without copying the Party, will fight for all the interests of the youth and will bring up the youth in the spirit of the class struggle and proletarian internationalism, in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism.
This requires that the Congress should very seriously check up and reappraise the work of the Young Communist Leagues, for the purpose of actually achieving their reorganization and the fearless removal of everything that obstructs the development of mass work and establishment of the united front and unity of the youth.
We expect the Young Communist International to build up its activity in such a manner as to weld and unite all trade union, cultural, educational and sports organizations of the working youth, all revolutionary, national-revolutionary, national-liberation and anti-fascist youth organizations, for the struggle against fascism and war, for the rights of the young generation.
We note with great pleasure that our young comrades in France and the United States have actively joined the mass movement for a united front of the youth which is so successfully developing, and have already achieved in this sphere successes which hold out great promises. All sections of the Young Communist International should profit by this experience of the French and American comrades.
In many countries the Communist and Socialist youth are coming closer and closer together. A striking example of this is the presence, at this Congress of the Young Communist International, of representatives of not only the Communist but also the Socialist youth of Spain.
Therefore, comrades, follow boldly the course of uniting with the Socialist youth and of forming joint and united organizations with it. Follow boldly the course of uniting all forces of the anti-fascist youth!
The Executive Committee of the Communist International will encourage and support in every way your initiative and activity in the fight for unity and for all the vital interests of the working youth.
The millions of young men and women for whom capitalist society has created impossible conditions of existence, who are either outside any organization at all or are in organizations led by the class enemy, are your brothers and sisters, whom you can and must win over to the side of socialism by your persistent work.
Don't wait until unity between the Communist and Social-Democratic Parties and other organizations of the working class has been reached.
Be bold, independent and full of initiative!
You are the Congress of the most active, the most self-sacrificing section of the young generation of today. You cannot stand aside from the movement in favor of unity which is growing and strengthening in the ranks of the working class. You do not have to wait like the Socialist Youth International for permission "from above" before you can support the united front movement and the union of the toiling youth in one organization.
In the name of the Executive Committee of the Communist International I declare that the youth united in the ranks of the Young Communist International enjoys and will continue to enjoy every opportunity of independently developing its revolutionary movement and solving the problems of this movement.
Communists in youth organizations must be able to work in such a way as to influence the decisions of these organizations by convincing their members, and not by issuing orders in the name of the Party.
I call to mind the words of the great Lenin which form the basis for the relations between the Communist International and the youth and its organizations:
Frequently the middle-aged and the aged do not know how to approach the youth in the proper way, for, necessarily, the youth must come to socialism in a different way, by other paths, in other forms, in other circumstances than their fathers. Incidentally, this is why we must be decidedly in favor of the organizational independence of the Youth League, not only because the opportunists fear this independence, but because of the very nature of the case; for unless they have complete independence, the youth will be unable either to train good Socialists from their midst or prepare themselves to lead socialism forward.
[V. I. Lenin, Collected Works Volume 23, page 164]
Comrades, you must study, study, while you fight.
Combine your day-to-day practical activities with a profound study of the original sources of Marxism-Leninism, for without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary practice.
Be exemplary, staunch and valiant fighters against fascism, against capitalism.
Hold aloft the banner of the liberation of humanity from capitalist slavery, the banner of the Communist International.
Rally the young generation of working people of the whole world around this banner. This banner of the greatest victories already waves over one-sixth of the globe and it will triumph all over the world!
[Cheers! Audience breaks into songs.]
Saturday, November 24, 2007
From the Verbatim Report of the Court September 26, 1933
From the interrogation of expert Josse1)
Dimitrov: Did van der Lubbe leave for Berlin on the following morning alone or with somebody else?
Dimitrov: I wish to protest against the falsified version of my words in the fascist press.
President: Shut up! I have not given you permission to speak. I am the one who decides when statements can be made.
Dimitrov: I should like to state on Saturday...
President: I do not permit you to make any statements now.
Dimitrov: I note that I am deprived of the possibility...
President: Keep quiet! You can note nothing here! Turn to your defence counsel!
Dimitrov: I am defending myself!
President (to van der Lubbe, after reminding him of the minutes of the inquest where the presumed course of the three minor fires is mentioned, but obtains either no reply or exceedingly short replies): Why did you perform these three acts of arson?
Van der Lubbe (after a long silence, through the interpreter): I was prompted by reasons of my own.
President: What did you want to prove thereby?
Van der Lubbe: At that time I did not know it myself2).
President: Was it not meant to be a public protest against capitalism (van der Lubbe keeps silent)?
Dimitrov: It is quite inexplicable that earlier van der Lubbe made such detailed depositions before the examining magistrate, while here, at the public hearing, he keeps quiet and makes no reply whatever. If he is normal indeed, as the professorial experts claim, there remains only one hypothesis.
Chief Prosecutor and President (interrupting): You cannot put forward any hypotheses here, but can ask questions only in connexion with the fires which are being examined at this moment.
Dimitrov: I shall do that at once. At any rate, I must state my viewpoint at least for once. Van der Lubbe was a simple, quite good boy, He was a mason, wandered, travelled, and then committed this crime. There can be only one hypothesis here. Either van der Lubbe is mentally unbalanced, or else he is normal. If he is normal and keeps quiet, he is keeping quiet on account of his monstrous crime against the proletariat. I wish to put to van der Lubbe the following question: Has he ever in his life heard my name?
President: Question overruled. It is inexpedient here.
Dimitrov (addressing van der Lubbe in a loud voice): He must tell the truth!
President: You have no right to ask questions. It is I who ask them (van der Lubbe keeps quiet).
Dimitrov: I put one more question to van der Lubbe.
President: What is it?
Dimitrov: Why does he behave here in this way? Why does he say once 'yes', the second time 'no', the third time 'yes' and 'no' and the fourth time does not answer at all? Does he understand this or not? It is indeed wonderful! Ridiculous!
President: Listen, you have no right to interfere in the deliberations. You speak as though you were taking a direct part in the deliberations. Your question is overruled.
Dimitrov: The third question: Has van der Lubbe talked with anyone about these fires?
President: Why this question?
Dimitrov: Has he had an agreement with anyone on this matter?
President: Question overruled.
Dimitrov: A final question: Why did he commit this monstrous crime against the German working class and with whom did he commit it?
President: Well, your questions are overruled. We have already heard everything. He has acted alone, and has told us part of his reasons without telling us the other part. Enough with those questions (The court hastily withdraws for deliberation).
President: The accused Dimitrov is not allowed to ask further questions, because he has abused his right of asking questions and asks them only for the purpose of making Communist propaganda (In spite of this Dimitrov insists on speaking. The policemen force him to sit down).
President: That is enough now, Dimitrov!
Dimitrov: I protest against this!
3)
Dimitrov: Why were you unable to set fire to the small charity institution, yet managed to set fire to the large stone building of the Reichstag, and in just a quarter of an hour at that?
Dr. Sack: See, see! Dimitrov now wants to interrogate the accused van der Lubbe as an expert?
President: It is quite clear that such a question should be asked! How can you answer this, van der Lubbe? (Van der Lubbe keeps quiet).
Dimitrov: The Communist International demands full clarity on the question of the Reichstag fire. Millions are waiting for an answer!
President: Who is president here? Shut up immediately!.
Dimitrov: Millions are waiting for a clear answer!
President: I can no longer brook this! You must keep quiet when I order you to do so, otherwise I shall order you to be taken out of the courtroom.
Dimitrov: Did van der Lubbe leave for Berlin on the following morning alone or with somebody else?
Dimitrov: I wish to protest against the falsified version of my words in the fascist press.
President: Shut up! I have not given you permission to speak. I am the one who decides when statements can be made.
Dimitrov: I should like to state on Saturday...
President: I do not permit you to make any statements now.
Dimitrov: I note that I am deprived of the possibility...
President: Keep quiet! You can note nothing here! Turn to your defence counsel!
Dimitrov: I am defending myself!
President (to van der Lubbe, after reminding him of the minutes of the inquest where the presumed course of the three minor fires is mentioned, but obtains either no reply or exceedingly short replies): Why did you perform these three acts of arson?
Van der Lubbe (after a long silence, through the interpreter): I was prompted by reasons of my own.
President: What did you want to prove thereby?
Van der Lubbe: At that time I did not know it myself2).
President: Was it not meant to be a public protest against capitalism (van der Lubbe keeps silent)?
Dimitrov: It is quite inexplicable that earlier van der Lubbe made such detailed depositions before the examining magistrate, while here, at the public hearing, he keeps quiet and makes no reply whatever. If he is normal indeed, as the professorial experts claim, there remains only one hypothesis.
Chief Prosecutor and President (interrupting): You cannot put forward any hypotheses here, but can ask questions only in connexion with the fires which are being examined at this moment.
Dimitrov: I shall do that at once. At any rate, I must state my viewpoint at least for once. Van der Lubbe was a simple, quite good boy, He was a mason, wandered, travelled, and then committed this crime. There can be only one hypothesis here. Either van der Lubbe is mentally unbalanced, or else he is normal. If he is normal and keeps quiet, he is keeping quiet on account of his monstrous crime against the proletariat. I wish to put to van der Lubbe the following question: Has he ever in his life heard my name?
President: Question overruled. It is inexpedient here.
Dimitrov (addressing van der Lubbe in a loud voice): He must tell the truth!
President: You have no right to ask questions. It is I who ask them (van der Lubbe keeps quiet).
Dimitrov: I put one more question to van der Lubbe.
President: What is it?
Dimitrov: Why does he behave here in this way? Why does he say once 'yes', the second time 'no', the third time 'yes' and 'no' and the fourth time does not answer at all? Does he understand this or not? It is indeed wonderful! Ridiculous!
President: Listen, you have no right to interfere in the deliberations. You speak as though you were taking a direct part in the deliberations. Your question is overruled.
Dimitrov: The third question: Has van der Lubbe talked with anyone about these fires?
President: Why this question?
Dimitrov: Has he had an agreement with anyone on this matter?
President: Question overruled.
Dimitrov: A final question: Why did he commit this monstrous crime against the German working class and with whom did he commit it?
President: Well, your questions are overruled. We have already heard everything. He has acted alone, and has told us part of his reasons without telling us the other part. Enough with those questions (The court hastily withdraws for deliberation).
President: The accused Dimitrov is not allowed to ask further questions, because he has abused his right of asking questions and asks them only for the purpose of making Communist propaganda (In spite of this Dimitrov insists on speaking. The policemen force him to sit down).
President: That is enough now, Dimitrov!
Dimitrov: I protest against this!
3)
Dimitrov: Why were you unable to set fire to the small charity institution, yet managed to set fire to the large stone building of the Reichstag, and in just a quarter of an hour at that?
Dr. Sack: See, see! Dimitrov now wants to interrogate the accused van der Lubbe as an expert?
President: It is quite clear that such a question should be asked! How can you answer this, van der Lubbe? (Van der Lubbe keeps quiet).
Dimitrov: The Communist International demands full clarity on the question of the Reichstag fire. Millions are waiting for an answer!
President: Who is president here? Shut up immediately!.
Dimitrov: Millions are waiting for a clear answer!
President: I can no longer brook this! You must keep quiet when I order you to do so, otherwise I shall order you to be taken out of the courtroom.
An Interview with Dimitrov
'Goering wants me to be executed!'
'A door was opened,' wrote the correspondent, 'and Dimitrov entered, accompanied by a guard... His first words revealed that he was suffering.'
'Physically I feel allright,' he said. 'It is true that I have been smoking much, but I am in good spirit. You can easily understand that. For five months in manacles, three months before the Court, and in the end - this. No, I am not in good shape. The prison has an adverse effect on a man like myself... Why do they not release me? I understand that Goering wants me to be executed, and I too would think like him if I were a member of the German government, but to keep a man in prison after a verdict of 'not guilty' - that is what I cannot understand. I protest against this, and believe that you too will protest for me.'
'For a moment,' wrote the correspondent, 'I caught a glimpse of that Dimitrov who had resisted judges, lawyers and witnesses... a man fighting for his life.'
'When set free,' explained Dimitrov, 'I shall not go to Russia. Russia is the motherland of every revolutionary, but I have not lost my Bulgarian citizenship, and I wish to go to my own country. I sent a letter to the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Moushanov, but do not doubt that he will have me arrested at the frontier
To the journalist's question whether after his release he would not leave for America to shoot films, Dimitrov explained with a smile: 'Of course not. I shall continue to fight for my Communist ideals. I am a Communist, a true Communist and shall always be a Communist.'
London, February 7, 1934
'A door was opened,' wrote the correspondent, 'and Dimitrov entered, accompanied by a guard... His first words revealed that he was suffering.'
'Physically I feel allright,' he said. 'It is true that I have been smoking much, but I am in good spirit. You can easily understand that. For five months in manacles, three months before the Court, and in the end - this. No, I am not in good shape. The prison has an adverse effect on a man like myself... Why do they not release me? I understand that Goering wants me to be executed, and I too would think like him if I were a member of the German government, but to keep a man in prison after a verdict of 'not guilty' - that is what I cannot understand. I protest against this, and believe that you too will protest for me.'
'For a moment,' wrote the correspondent, 'I caught a glimpse of that Dimitrov who had resisted judges, lawyers and witnesses... a man fighting for his life.'
'When set free,' explained Dimitrov, 'I shall not go to Russia. Russia is the motherland of every revolutionary, but I have not lost my Bulgarian citizenship, and I wish to go to my own country. I sent a letter to the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Moushanov, but do not doubt that he will have me arrested at the frontier
To the journalist's question whether after his release he would not leave for America to shoot films, Dimitrov explained with a smile: 'Of course not. I shall continue to fight for my Communist ideals. I am a Communist, a true Communist and shall always be a Communist.'
London, February 7, 1934
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