Mention The War.. DAVY JONES Ernest Mandel, The Meaning of the Second World War, THE WAR shaped the world into which successive generations were born. The teaching of its causes, history and outcome equally shaped the consciousness and ideology of those generations.
From parents and school, comics and films I learned that 'we' had won the war against the fascists. The moral superiority of democracy had triumphed over ex-
The Americans had joined in (late, of course) and helped us, while the sly Italians kept changing sides. rejected appeasement and stood firm against the Nazi aggressors in a rare and inspiring display of national unity and patriotism — 'Dunkirk spirit. Finally the war had ended when the Americans were forced to drop the Bomb to curb the cruel and fanatical Japanese.
If you detect exaggeration, just remember how quickly those themes returned just a few years ago over the Falklands -class collaboration under the guise of national unity, standing up against the aggressor dictators, and racist Argybashing. Or how unilateral nuclear disarmament is equated with pre-war appeasement and giving in to totalitarianism. Never mind the irrationality and inaccuracy of it all - Germany and Japan are now on 'our' side, while the Soviet Union is on the 'other' side - the ideology of the war is still with us.
In a typically clear and synthetic account Mandel traces the causes of the different conflicts, the aims of the protagonists, the reasons for the eventual
Tand its meaning for world politics. If the First World War was fought over the division of overseas markets by the expanding national capitals, Second was about the subordination of other advanced industrial states'economies in order to achieve world hege-
The war was inevitable mechanism to bring the military and political balance of forces into line with the emerging industrial/tinan-
This war was only made possible by the defeat of the Chinese Revolution in 1927, the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, the victory of Franco in Spain and the collapse of the French Popular Front.
ERNEST MANDEL THE MEANING OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR Mandel rightly highlights the morally obscene role of the retormist and Stalinist leaderships responsible for these defeats, who opposed developing revolufions on the grounds of their potential loss of life, the net result of which was the loss of 80 million lives in the Second World
This first 'war within the war' was won by the United States whose enormous industrial/military capacity once fully outcome almost inevitable. For example, Mandel cites the German author Dieter Petzina's estimates for arms production in billions of 1944 dollars as rising from 3.4 to 13.8bn for Germany between 1939 and 1942, 3.3 to 13.9 for the Soviet Union, and from 0.6 to 37.5 for the United States! Ensuring the world market was open to this mighty industrial/economic strength was the meaning of 'making the world safe for democracy.
But there was also a second major 'war within the war' - that of the successful defence of the Soviet Union against the imperialist Nazi attempt to overturn the social gains of the October Revolution and to colonize the country. The enormous role of the Soviet Union scarcely figured in most popular accounts of the war that I encountered, blotted out by the Cold War. Yet the facts are staggering: 35% of the Red Army died in the first German blitzkrieg of 1941, three million Soviet prisoners captured by Germany by 1942, four fifths of the entire German Army were stationed in the
Soviet Union for substantial phases of the War, more Soviet losses in the single Untied States steered lirad that the
States suffered throughout the entire war. All sides underestimated the social and economic reserves of the Soviet planned economy.
Neither was the war all Europe and America. In Asia the Chinese people fought against imperialism and overthrew capitalism just four years after the war 'ended'. Various other Asian colonial peoples tought similar wars tor national liberation, some such as that in Indochina reaching a successful socialist revolution only decades later and after suffering greater destructive bombing than in the entire Second World War. And in occupied Europe wars for national liberation were fought, some of which subsequently 'grew over' into the overthrow of capitalism as in Yugoslavia and Albania, others as in Greece ending in bloody defeat through the collusion of Stalin and the
The final act of the war epitomised the cynical inhumanity of the imperialist protagonists. Overwhelming evidence exists, including the testimony of General MacArthur, that the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had less to do with ending the war anc more to do with warning tormer Allies, especially the Soviet Union, of the awesome power which the United States could potentially unleash. It culminated a long series of atrocities by 'our sidé' including the carpet bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and Tokyo and Churchill's refusal to send aid to alleviate the 1943 Bengal famine in which 3 million
The enormously strengthened positions of the United States and Soviet Union after the war, combined with war weariness on all sides, led not to a direct conflict between the two main 'victors', but to a consolidation of their positions and the developing Cold War. Through the Marshall Plan the United States embarked on the rebuilding of capitalism in Western Europe and Japan under American economic and military hegemony. The Soviet Union bolstered its position by abolishing capitalism in Eastern Europe. The Cold War and the campist ideology so prevalent in the international labour movement were the result. Neither did the war and the Bomb bring peace. Every year since 1945 has
'local wars', many imperialist intervention, whose total victims already surpass that of the First
I found the analytical sections of Mandel's book more compelling than the description of its events. But no matter. It is the best Marxist account of the most important event of the 20th century •
International No 8 January/February 1987
international REVIEWS Living through Barbarossa
COLIN MEADE K.S. Karol: Solik: Life in the Soviet Union 1939-1946 Pluto Press £7.95 THE EXISTING world order is largely the
roduct of the outcome of the Second World War. It is fundamental therefore for those of us who wish to question the pretensions of the powers that be to examine the history of that war. K.S.