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SECOND OF THREE PARTS

By RAY STEVENSON

In Part 1, Stevenson, largely
through direct quotations from the
Nazis themselves, showed the
military-political aim of annihilation
of peoples and states.

To recount these ghastly events, and
the success of the Nazi-Fascist war
machines, is to reveal in broad outline
the bankruptcy of official western Euro-
pean and North American policy up to
that time, in the face of the looming dan-
gers that had been repeatedly warned
against during the preceding decade.

These were policies based on the to-
tally false assumption that the Nazi-
Fascist war machines would be turned
eastwards against the first land of social-
ism, the Soviet Union. :

The, western powers steadfastly re-
fused to enter a coalition with the Soviet
Union in what became known as the pol-
icy of ‘“‘appeasement”’ of the aggressor
states. The policy of collective security,
repeatedly called for by the Soviet Union
was rejected again and again by the
western powers. Finally, a few weeks
before the initial attack by the Nazis on
Poland, the negotiation of a ‘‘non-ag-
gression pact”’ between the Soviet Union
and Nazi Germany, knocked these in-
sane dreams of the western imperialist
powers into a cocked hat.

Nowhere was the bankrupt policy of
‘‘appeasement’’ more dramatically
shown than by the western powers’ re-
fusal to come to the aid of Republican
Spain in its civil war for survival against
the Fascist Falangist forces led by
Generalissimo Franco. It was in Spain
that the Nazi-Fascist tactics and
weaponry were first war-tested.

It is worthwhile to recall that it was the
Spanish town of Guernica that first suf-
fered the ‘‘total destruction”’ of mass ter-
ror bombings at the hands of the Nazi-
Fascist forces, a fate that in short order
became common to city after city in
Europe. But still the western powers did
nothing to stop the, aggression and in-
stead continued to lend encouragement
to Hitler through their policy of ‘‘ap-
peasement”’. :

With the overthrow of France by the
summer of 1940, successful invasions of
the countries of southeastern Europe and
a sympathetic and ‘‘helpful’’ Spain in
southwestern Europe, the Nazi high
command was assured of the economic
and war potential of virtually all Europe
west of the Soviet boundaries. The
theory of blitzkrieg war had been sus-
tained and victorious throughout most of
the continent. It was time, in the estima-
tion of the Nazi warlords, to turn to their
next great war adventure, the ‘‘total de-
struction’’ of the Socialist Soviet Union.
The attack began on June 22nd, 1941,

and was to lead to the most massive,
barbaric and deadly war of all history.
Nazis Attack Soviet Union

More than 20 million Soviet citizens
were to die, and there was total destruc-
tion and decimation of a territory ap-
proximately equal in extent to that of the
United States from its Atlantic seaboard
westward to a line drawn south from
Chicago to the Mexican border. In that
area, literally everything was destroyed,
homes, factories, schools, hospitals,
transportation and tens of millions of
human beings were slaughtered. There
was no historical precedent to the vio-
lence and destruction waged by the
Nazis on the Soviet people, and nothing
comparable in magnitude and ferocity
has happened since.

But Nazism had made a fatal miscalcu-
lation. Two central results emerged from
the attack that were to lead four years
later to the final total destruction of the
Nazi state and unconditional surrender.

Sacrifices of Soviet People
For the first time, the Nazi War

ae

lives will have been lost.

machine had come face to face with a
united people, possessed of an incom-
parable military force and a superior
strategy on which the blitzkrieg was to
smash itself. The Soviet army, airforce,

-navy and in the temporarily conquered

areas, a heroic and tenacious partisan
force first blunted and ‘‘bled the enemy
white’ in a fearful war of attrition, then
seized the strategic initiative and
mounted the most massive offensive in
history, culminating finally in the vic-
torious Battle of Berlin in April and May
1945. The military success of the Soviet
forces was based on the unconquerable
will of the Soviet people, and their readi-
ness to sacrifice for the defence of their
homeland and for victory over the Nazis.

rayal of 50 million lives

This unconquerable force was organized
by the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union and its entire military cadre.
Soviet Union, Britain and USA
. The second ceniral result of the
treacherous Nazi attack was, at long last,
the emergence of a war coalition be-
tween the western powers and the Soviet
Union, a fact signalized by Britain’s
prime minister within days of the in-
vasion. At long last the bankrupt policies
of ‘‘appeasement’’ were shelved and a
mighty new coalition emerged, guaran-
teeing final victory over Nazism.

The Japanese imperialist attack on the
Pacific territories of the USA in De-
cember 1941, brought that country into
the war, after a long period of vacillation
and ‘“‘isolationist’’ policies that were

- grounded in some of the top financial and

industrial circles in the country.

The main strategic front remained that
of the Soviet Union, where the vast bulk
of the Hitlerite and satellite forces had
been thrown into a total effort to win a
quick victory.

arm

The city of Narvy in the Soviet Estonian Republic joins scores of cities and thousands of
towns and villages to be laid to ruin by Hitler's forces. By thé end of World War 1150 million

As many as 250 division of the Nazi
forces were thrown into this war over a
vast territory stretching from the far
north of the Soviet Union to the Black
Sea. In all, a total of more than five mil-
lion troops and the preponderence of
Nazi war materials and weapons were
engaged in the increasingly frantic efforts
by the Nazis to score a “‘total’’ victory.

By comparison, when the Allied sec-
ond front was finally opened on the coast
of Normandy, in June 1944, the Com-
bined Allied Force faced fewer than 30
divisions. The opening of this front, that
compelled Hitler to fight a strategically
fatal two-front war, was delayed for
three years from the time Chruchill de-
clared the war coalition, in June of 1941.

That this long delay in opening the
Second Front in Europe prolonged the
war and increased the casualties and suf-
fering in Europe, and particularly in the
eastern areas of the continent, is indis-
putable. True, the Allied Western High
Command. mounted an ever heavier ae-
rial bombardment on Nazi Germany
from the British Isles. True, the same
Command mounted offensive and suc-
cessful attacks on the Nazi and Fascist
forces in North Africa, Sicily and Italy
which finally culminated in the downfall
of the Italian Fascist government in Au-
gust 1943. True the Battle of the Atlantic
was being won and massive naval and
‘island hopping’’ campaigns were being
waged in the Pacific Ocean against the
Japanese aggressors.

West Wavered on Second Front

But none of these compelled the
Hitlerite Command to either pull back, or
re-deploy troops and war materials from
the central war arena on the eastem
European front.

Why was there hesitancy, wavering
and delay on this central necessity for
shortening the war and total victory over
the Nazi empire? Certainly in Britain,
Canada and the United States massive
popular opinion was for the opening of
the strategic west-European Second
Front. :

Military unpreparedness could not
either be used as an excuse for the delay,
as millions of troops marched and
counter-marched throughout the British
Isles, fully equipped and in fact ‘‘over-
trained” for the assault on the continent.

There is every reason to believe that
the wavering and hesitancy of the west-
ern powers was rooted not in immediate
military strategic or tactical reasons, but
rather in hidden political considerations
for the post-war period.

Harry S. Truman, then Senator for

Missouri, in 1942 had declared himself
2 for a policy of ‘‘letting the Russians and

Germans bleed each other to death’’ and

= in the post-war period the western pow-
~ ers, and primarily the United States,

would pick up the spoils.

Truman, of course, was to become
vice-president in 1944 and president in
1945, following the death of Roosevelt in
April 1945. That Truman spoke for a
powerful segment of the isolationists and
anti-Soviet crowd in the USA is without
doubt, as later, during the immediate
post-war years he became a central ar-
chitect of the Cold War and U.S. aims to
dominate the world, and in 1948 was able
to win re-election on this program.

Ray Stevenson, of Canada, is serving
as a member of the secretariat of the
World Peace Council, Helsinki. He
served, during World War II, as the
Chief Information and Educational Of-
ficer of the Canadian Armored Corps.
The present article first appeared in New

Peace. Council.

=

Perspectives, the journal_of the nF

e The junta continues the policy imposed by the International
Monetary Fund. (Later reports show a 20% hike in oil prices, currency
devaluation and other draconian measures).

e The coup was first announced by the U.S. State Department Two underground radios are now operating from inside Turkey
which stressed the military takeover would not harm American inter- and canbe heard in Greece. One, called ‘‘Our Radio’ on the 40.5-metre
ests in the region. : band and the other, ‘‘The Voice of the Turkish Communist Party’’ are

@ All progressive unions have been dismantled (some 150 alto- broadcasting daily. :
gether). The leadership of DISK, the largest federation of workers, e The Greek Communist Party and AKEL, the communists of
have been jailed and its leader tortured. DISK offices were looted and Cyprus, have both condemned the coup as NATO-inspired and a
destroyed by the army; thousands of workers, students and intellec- threat against the region. ‘>
tuals are before military courts. At the same time, the Western world is f : ‘
content because the deposed civilian government are housed in luxury As the coup consolidates, Washington continues to express satisfac-
hotels and remain unharmed. tion with its outcome receiving Deputy Prime Minister Ozal in the U.S.

e NATO troops were on Turkish soil at the time of the coup andone to signa$145-million Joan. As expected NATO welcomed the coup and ~
junta general had just returned from Washington prior to the takeover. Turkey’s announcement it would continue in the alliance.

Shortly after the Sept. 19 military coup in Turkey, the Greek press
offered this point-by-point insight into its purposes:

Turkey’s
trade unions
main target
chun

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCT. 24, 1980—Page 8