crashed to defeat ON JULY 20 1944, a group of German military officers and state officials attempted to assassinate Hitler. Three days later the Red Army liberated the Majdanek concentration camp near Lublin in eastern Poland. On August 1 the Warsaw underground rose in revolt. These events were all linked to the impending military defeat of the Nazi regime and to the future of Europe. Above all the assassination attempt and the Warsaw uprising were responses to the westward march of the Red Army, reports GEOFF RYAN. GENERALS Von Stauffenberg, OIbricht and Beck and other leaders of the July 20 attempt were hoping to remove Hitler in order to negotiate a separate peace deal with the western Allies.
While some of them had engaged in oppositional activities most had been quite happy to serve under Hitler when the war was going well.
But while Hitler received the backing of these traditional conservative forces his real support came from the German capitalist class.
From the late 1920s he received substantial donations from German big business, particularly from heavy industry and the banks. Fritz Thyssen (steel), Friedrich Flick (steel, mining and banking), Robert Bosche (electrical goods) and Wilhelm Zangen (banking) were among the most enthusiastic supporters of the Nazis.
The liberation of Majdanek, and later of Auschwitz (near Cracow), by the Red Army, revealed the massive collaboration between the Wehrmacht (regular German officers surrender to French Resistance army, the SS and German industrialists.
Both Maidanek and Auschwitz were extermination centres and concentration camps. They had an important economic role in supplying slave labour to German industry.
The aircraft manufacturers Heinkel operated a factory at Majdanek whilst Monowitz, one of the three Auschwitz sites, was built by the largest German chemical firm, IG Farben, to produce artificial rubber. Krupp and Siemens also had plants at Auschwitz.
Life expectancy at IG-Auschwitz was three to four months. Workers either died through exhaustion or were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau to be gassed.
Auschwitz
As the advance of the Red Army forced the closure of Auschwitz Majdanek, and the extermination sites in Poland (Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Treblinka), German industry simply arranged for the transfer of slave labour to camps or factories inside Germany.
An estimated hundred thousand slave workers were employed by armaments manufacturers Krupp. Even the SS were on the Krupp payroll.
The irrational nature of Nazi ideology led to occasional conflicts of interest. The RSHA (Reich Central Security Office) frequently preferred to murder camp inmates - particularly Jews -whilst the WHA (Central Economic Administrative Office) wanted to concentrate on increasing the productive capacity of German industry.
Despite these occasional conflicts German industry worked closely with the Nazi regime until the end of the war.
The approach of the Red Army and the attempted assassination of Hitler en1944: US and Russian troops meet in Germany couraged the Polish undergr ind to rise up in August 1944. The Prish Home Army was led by conservative forces determined to liberate Warsaw before the arrival of the Red Army, though they mistakenly counted on Stalin's willingness to come to their aid.
On August 5 German planes began the systematic bombing of Warsaw. The main task of crushing the uprising was given to Himmler and his SS, who were also engaged in liquidating those involved in the plot to murder Hitler, though regular Wehrmacht forces were also used.
For nine weeks the Home Army of 25,000 to 30,000 fighters, of whom only ten percent were adequately armed, resisted the much greater combined Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS and police forces. At least 10,000 members of the resistance and 150,000 civilians were killed.
More than 150,000 Poles were deported to Germany as slave labourers. The central districts of Warsaw, and much of the suburbs, were laid waste.
Contrary to the myths that have surrounded D-Day the real battles of the Second World War were fought in eastern Europe.
Total war
In eastern Europe the Nazis fought a total war, a war of alles oder nichts (all or nothing). For Hitler the major enemy was the Soviet Union and Bolshevism -though the frequent use of the term «Judeobolshevism" links together two of the main tenets of Nazi ideology.
The launch of war to achieve a third aim, Lebensraum, (living space) resulted in the occupation of Poland and parts of the Soviet Union, the countries in which were found the two largest Jewish communities in Europe.
The conquest of Poland and the initial victories in the Soviet Union also brought into play a fourth aspect of Nazism, Social Darwinism. The Slav peoples, along with the Jews, were reviled as Untermenschen (sub-human).
The combination of anti-Semitism, anti-Bolshevism, social Darwinism and Lebensraum led to mass slaughter throughout eastern Europe, but particularly in Poland and the Soviet Union.
The massacre at Malmedy in France of American prisoners of war stands out because it was an exception. In the east such massacres were the norm.
Non-Nazi, even anti-Nazi, Generals of the Wehrmacht had few compunctions about massacring Slav or Jewish civilians or soldiers, especially if they were also Communists.
The advance of the Red Army dramatically increased the slaughter. The leaders of the Wehrmacht and the SS were at one with Hitler's view of the war "Judeobolshevism": Sein oder Nichtsein (to be or not to be).
Stalingrad
The Nazi war machine was stopped in the east. Certainly by the time of the Red Army victory at Stalingrad in 1942 -and, arguably, even by the failure to capture Moscow in late 1941 - the Nazis were defeated. The D-Day landings, therefore, were not so much a question of defeating Hitler but of halting the advance of the Red Army and of saving German capitalism.
The British, French and American ruling classes knew that the victory of the Red Army would unleash revolutionary movements throughout Europe, ever the intentions of Stalin in holding back such developments.
Far from de-Nazifying German society they ensured that tens of thousands of criminals who had actively aided the Nazi regime were able to take over the running of the German Federal Republic.
Not one of the 632 war criminals executed by British and American military courts was a General. It was their subordinates who, with much greater justification could plead "orders" who were executed.
The German capitalists who made systematic use of slaves who were literally worked to death were restored to their former positions, or even promoted.
The tiny minority given prison sentences were out within three to four years in order to rebuild the west German economy as a bulwark against the Soviet
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 67, August 1994, Page 10