a | Hi it ILL aX TTT 2 _ HAVE WE LEARNED THE LESSON OF | GERMANY? By JESSICA SMITH iwenty-one years after the victory over the Kaiser’s Germany in World War I, Nazi Germany’s. reborn, mechanized army marched again, un- leashing World WarII. | This week (May 8) marks the 24th Anniversary of the Allied victory over Hitler, and it finds West Germany with another reborn army, trained in the use of the most modern weapons. Will it march again? Who would re- main to learn the third lesson? The First World War cost 8,538,317 lives in all belligerent countries. The Second World War cost 56 million people all told — over 20 million dead in the So- viet Union alone. The cost of a Third World War, fought with nuclear weapons, wculd be hundreds of million deaths. Two world wars have been started by Germany. But Germany was not alone responsible. The Second World War need not have happened had not the Western imperialists helped rebuilc the German war machine and encouraged Hitler’s aggression. The imperialist powers needed Ger- many to crush the world’s first socialist state. They had failed with their own forces. Neither boycott nor blockade, neither Western-sutsidized counter- revolutionary generals nor intervention- ary armies of 14 nations, including our own, could defeat Soviet power. So they helped rearm the Germany they feared, because they feared most of all the example to their own working class of a successful socialist revolu- tion. be They helped Germany tear up the peace of Versailles, build the mightiest army in Europel to become, with its allies — Italy and Japan — imperialism’s spearhead against Communism. They stood aside while the Spanish Republic was crushed and left open the way for German arms to bring Franco to power. The men of Munich sought to appease Hitler by giving him Czechoslovakia, hoping to turn his aggression Eastward.” Then as now the USSR sought to avert world war. It struggled ceaselessly for peaceful coexistence, for disarmament. Until the last supreme moment of danger it sought collective security agreements with the West to stop Hitler. The socialist state the capitalist rulers wanted to destroy played the chief role in the victory over Nazi Germany on V-E day. The postwar rise of a whole system of socialist states — a socialist third of the world — aroused frenzied new fears in the capitalist nations. The U.S. Government saw in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries the main ob- stacle in its drive for world domination. Indeed, the USSR by its existence, power and conrete aid has been the main force in advancing national land < olonial liberation. In the UN and elsewhere the socialist bloc leads the fight to end colon- ialism in all its forms in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This fight has re- sulted in ending colonial domination in over 40 African countries since World War II. The Truman Doctrine initiated US. postwar anti-Communist policy, uphold- ing reaction everywhere, beating back every move toward socialism, national liberation, or even democratic reforms that might lead-to more radical social change. This policy led in a direct line to the bloody wars in Korea and Vietnam. In Europe, the instrument of U-S. policy is the North Atlantic Treaty Organi- zation, the anti-Soviet military alliance based on rearmed West Germany. In deadly parallel to the pre-world War II period, the United States has help- ed to nullify every provision of the Pots- dam Treaty. Former Nazis are in power in the Federal Republic of Germany. The monopolies are back. The growing Neo- Nazi Democratic Party counts on winning 50 Bundestag seats in September. The FRG Government aims to revise its post- war borders with Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Soviet Union and to take over the German Democratic: Republic. Emer- gency Laws passed last May are poised to crush the growing popular opposition. The Bundeswehr, largest army in Europe, staffed with Hitler’s generals, is reaching for control of U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiled. all around it. West German projects for developing their own nuclear and chemical-bacteriolog- ical weapons are under way. Members of the Warsaw Pact, brought into being by NATO, have werked unceas- ingly to end the dangerous confrontation of two opposing blocs in Europe’s center. They have called again and again for a non-aggression pact between them, for nuclear free zones, for disbanding of the tow military alliances in favor of an All- European Security Pact. Pursuing its current determined peace drive, the Soviet Union urged the NATO 20th anniversary meeting in Washington to act on the appeal of the Warsaw Pact countries (March 17, Budapest) for an early all-European conference to work out a program of cooperation and peace for all the nations of urope. The USSR called on NATO to end its aggressive policies and increased military activities spurred on by the Nixon Administration. It urged a halt to ‘‘the colossal waste of the people’s resources in astronomical sums spent for armaments instead of for social, economic and cultural needs.” It renewed its call of a year ago for a World Disarmament Conference to consider Soviet proposals to end the arms race, to ban the use of nuclear weapons, for complete, universal disarmament. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 1, 1969—PAGE 4 NUREMBERG IN HITLER’S GERMANY On May Day, celebrated in Moscow without the traditional military display, CPSU General Secretary Leonid Brez- hnev again urged US-USSR disarma- ment talks. Meantime, the Nixon Administration drives ahead with its war policies. De- fense Secretary Melvin Laird tries to whip up new anti-Soviet hysteria by om- inous warnings about a looming Soviet “first strike capability,’ in an effort to put over Nixon’s grossly misnamed ‘Safeguard’? ABM system. Under the tutelage of Henry Kissinger, the Pentagon works out proposals for U.S. global nu- clear strategy. ‘‘Options’’ include ‘‘a policy stressing a large scale build-up of offensive forces to outdistance the Soviet Union and remain in a position to launch a surprise attack at any time,” and a ‘“‘world policeman”’ plan, under which the country would attempt to ‘‘combat aggression”’ (read “‘fight social change’’) wherever it occurred. (New York Times, Mayl,2) Such are the choices held out by geno- cidal maniacs whose fear and hatred of socialism is so great that to prevent its final victory they would risk the exter- mination of most of mankind in a thermo- nuclear war. The fight against ABM has broadened out into a mass protest against the whole Hite! sh ait military-industrial compiex, military budget with its cr¥ burdens on the people, the sprialllll at race, ail merging into a new UPS” demands to end the Vietnam wal is Senators and Congressmen, 5© i if top members of the establishM® ‘9 exposing the facts about our nan military machine and its strangle” (it all areas of American life. Section i) trade union movement are joi; i) protests arising from all section yr population. All this, together W of contradictions and divisions with? jt ernment circles, creates an unpre ed opportunity to swell the © ji | movement into a tidal wave of one i to the Administration’s aggres® \ eign policy. . peso" We must grasp this moment 7 ant is too late. There must be a uM! vel f to stop the war in Vietnam, a pe USSR disarmament talks, end ine of a thermonuclear war. This }§ nnd! mediate, over-riding task that Be ye separated from the struggle fo et liberation, for all liberation ™° allt for peace and socialism, for life i : pl? MISS SMITH is the editor of NEW WO iq REVIEW, a quarterly foreign policy cout | azine specializing in the socialis . tries.