79

[introduction.]

By the beginning of the Second World War, China, Ethiopia, Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Albania had fallen victim to the aggressor. Many other countries of Europe, Asia and Africa found themselves dependent on the fascist-militarist bloc. But those were only the first consequences of the criminal policy of appeasement of the aggressors pursued by the ruling quarters in Britain, France and the United States.

80

Western Allies Betray Poland

p At crack of dawn, September 1, 1939, Hitler Germany invaded Poland. The German air force delivered massive attacks on Polish airfields, railway junctions, major administrative and industrial centres. The powerful Wehrmacht land forces pierced the Polish defences with concentrated armour attacks at several points and surged forth deep into the country in the direction of Warsaw from the north, west, and south-from eastern Prussia, eastern Germany and Slovakia.

p On September 8, the Nazis reached the approaches to Warsaw and, two days later, encircled it.

p The garrison and residents of Warsaw braved the savage air strikes and artillery fire for 20 days. But the forces were not equal. Early in October all combat operations on the territory of Poland ceased. Hitler Germany thus received additional raw material and industrial resources, and a good vantage ground for further aggression in the East.

p The day Germany attacked Poland went down in history as the first day of the Second World War.

p On September 3, 1939, the British and French governments declared war on Germany. They had to do that because they had earlier given Poland guarantees of independence and security and were . also bound by their own allied treaties. The entry of Britain and France into the war did not at all mean that those in power were concerned about the future of the Polish people.

p The passivity of the British and French ruling quarters, despite the commitments they had assumed to help Poland in the event of German aggression, was so obvious that none of the Western historians could pretend otherwise. This, however, has not prevented them from producing an array of "arguments" in support of this position of the Anglo-French coalition. Many of them favour the version that in September 1939, Britain and France were "unable" to give an armed rebuff to Nazi Germany and to help allied Poland. The American historians Bragdon and McCutchen write; "Two days after Hitler’s armies 81 invaded Poland, Great Britain and France, abandoning appeasement at last, declared war on Germany. The British and French were unable, however, to aid the Poles. They had neither sufficient land forces to invade Germany, nor enough bombers to attack from the air."  [81•1 

p This line of reasoning is false because it is meant to cover up for the betrayal of Poland by its Western allies. In early September 1939, Britain and France, with their combined land and air strength, to say nothing about their naval superiority, had an edge over Germany. The West German historian Michael Freund quotes Alfred Jodl, the Chief of the Operations Staff of the Wehrmacht, who said at the Nuremberg Trial in 1946: "We did not suffer defeat in 1939 only because almost 110 French and British divisions in the West, at the time of the Polish campaign, were utterly passive in the face of the advancing twenty-five German divisions"  [81•2 .

p The British historian, Nicholas Fleming writes in his book August 1939 (about the initial stages of the Second World War) that on September 3, 1939, the British air force proceeded with its operation codenamed Nickels whose objective was to drop propaganda leaflets over Germany, rather than attack it. The U.S. government also failed to come out in support of Poland. and limited itself to calling upon Hitler "to show humanity"  [81•3 . At the same time Fleming sets out to justify the inaction on the part of Britain and France, claiming that they were "dominated by defensive thinking" and were guided by "humanitarian motives", trying to spare the otherwise "inevitable casualties among German civilians"  [81•4 .

p The real reason for the inaction of the ruling quarters in Britain and France should be sought elsewhere, namely in the political directives worked out even before the 82 outbreak of the German-Polish war. Poland was deliberately sacrificed to the Nazis as part of a plan hatched long since to help bring the Nazi army directly to the frontiers of the USSR and in this way have it deployed for an attack on our country. Evidence of this is their persistent attempts to settle their own outstanding problems with Germany at the expense of other countries and their efforts to disrupt the Moscow talks in the summer of 1939. These and other actions of the Western "democracies", and the anti-Soviet policy of the Polish ruling quarters convinced the Nazis that they could seize Poland without impeachment. On August 31, 1939, the Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht’s land forces made this entry in his diary: "The Fiihrer is calm.... He hopes that the French and British will not enter German territory."  [82•1  This forecast was based on the much advertised readiness of the appeasers to come to an agreement with the Nazis on joint action against the USSR. Neither Britain, nor France, nor the United States took the necessary steps to prevent Nazi Germany from advancing east, to the Soviet frontiers.

p Walther Hubatsch (FRG) and other reactionary historians and political analysts also veer far from the truth when they claim that the Nazis, after their invasion of Poland, were prepared to sign a peace treaty with Britain and France  [82•2 . But the latter apparently were not concerned about peace: they wanted to see the aggression in Europe continued. In October 1939, right after the fall of Poland, the Nazis began to redeploy the HQs of Army Groups North and South and six field armies, and some large combat units. By the beginning of November the number of German divisions on the Western front had grown to ninety-six.  [82•3  On October 19, the General Staff of the German land forces issued a directive on preparations 83 for an advance on Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France in order to rout them in a Blitzkrieg  [83•1 .

The hypocritical statements of the Hitler government about its peaceful intentions in the autumn of 1939 only served as a screen for the deployment of the German forces in the West and were clearly meant to lull the vigilance of other nations the Nazis were planning to attack. Moreover, Nazi Germany demanded that Britain and France recognise all German conquests in Europe and that the colonial possessions be redivided in Germany’s favour. Should they have accepted these demands, the Western imperialist states would have lost their positions as great powers and would have had to abandon most of the raw material resources they had captured earlier, and also the traditional markets for their goods and the spheres of investment. They could not have possibly made such sweeping concessions. But even then Britain and France still entertained hopes of striking a bargain with Germany, at the same time using other countries to weaken its power by re-directing the Hitler war machine from the West to the Scandinavian and Balkan countries, and onto the Soviet Union. In his memoirs the Commander-in-Chief of the French armed forces wrote that one of the aims of the Anglo-French coalition was to bring about a clash between German and Soviet interests.  [83•2 

The Phony War

p The period of obvious inaction of the British and French armies between the declaration of war by Britain and France on Germany and the Nazi offensive in the west in May 1940, came to be known in Western history books as the "phony war", or the "sitting war".

p Many Western historians admit that during the phony war the Anglo-French ruling quarters, on the one hand, 84 did not wage any active struggle against Germany and, on the other, busied themselves with plans for making war on the Soviet Union. According to the British historian AJ.P. Taylor, the British government took no action against Germany because it had underrated the state of the German economy. He insists that in the opinion of Britain’s military and political leaders "the Nazi economic system was at its last gasp" following Poland’s downfall, and that "Germany would collapse without further fighting”.  [84•1  As for the plans of Britain and France to start aggression against the USSR, they were brought forth by a desire to cut off "German supplies of oil from the Caucasus" and "to aid Finland".  [84•2  Similar views have been aired by many other Western historians. In actual fact, the main reason for the phony war in Europe and for the plans of joint Anglo-French intervention against the Soviet Union was the unremitting anti-Sovietism of the ruling elite of Britain and France, ruinous to the national interests of both countries, and their continuing hopes that they would after all be able to settle their differences with Nazi Germany at the expense of the USSR. With this aim in view, the governments of Britain and France had, according to some incomplete data, at least 160 contacts with the Nazis at different representation levels between September 1939 and April 1940.  [84•3  In pressing for compromise with Germany the leaders of the Anglo-French coalition brought forth a host of plans for a joint Anglo-French-German military campaign against the USSR. That was the last and riskiest gamble in the strategy of the "Munichmen". Today some bourgeois historians are trying to present the plans for this campaign as some sort of pipe dream.  [84•4  But the documents of that 85 time prove to the contrary. British and French troops were intended to deliver two strikes: one in the north in the direction of Leningrad and Murmansk, and the other in the south, in the direction of the oil fields in the Caucasus and at the Soviet navy in the Black Sea. The AngloFrench plans gave Germany the option of taking the "natural step" and delivering a strike at the central areas of the Soviet Union. At the same time the British and French strategists heavily relied on the anti-Soviet sentiments of the Japanese militarists who they hoped would draw Japan into the war, thus driving the USSR into a situation where it would be caught between two fronts.  [85•1 

p The military preparations in Britain and France for war against the USSR dealt a telling blow to the political prestige and, indeed, the military power of these countries, making them incautious of an impending attack by the Wehrmacht. "The mood of a crusade was strongly felt everywhere", wrote French journalist Henri de Kerillis about the atmosphere of that time. "There was only one call heard: ’War on Russia!’ Those who but recently demanded immobility and inaction behind the Maginot Line, are now pleading that an army should be sent to fight at the North Pole.... The delirium of anti-communism has reached its epileptic peak ."  [85•2 

p The leaders of the fascist German Reich were fully informed of the anti-Soviet activities of the British and French governments. A political intelligence service report for the foreign policy department of the Nazi party (May 3, 1940) reads: "With the outbreak of the war, the countries hostile to the Soviet Union have grown increasingly active. They attach particular importance to this question and have formulated a slogan: ’liberation from the Moscow yoke’ ... The activity of Paris and 86 London can be illustrated by the fact that they have created a government of the so-called Ukrainian National Republic..., also a Ukrainian legion in France and nationalist Caucasian units in the army of Weygand.  [86•1  This information undoubtedly strengthened the confidence of the Hitlerite leadership that the Western powers were too busy with their anti-Soviet military preparations to be able to give sufficient attention to defence, ma King it that much easier for the Germans to defeat them.

p On April 9, 1940, the Nazi armies invaded Norway and Denmark. The Anglo-French coalition again demonstrated, as they had done in the case of Poland, their unwillingness to counter the aggression. The influential quarters in London and Paris believed that the seizure of Scandinavia would draw the attention of the Hitlerites away from the Western front, on the one hand, and, on the other, would bring them closer to the Soviet border. In 1940, Winston Churchill said: "We have more to gain than lose by a German attack upon Norway and Sweden”.  [86•2 

p When the Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway (this operation was- codenamed Weseriibung) the Anglo-French coalition landed a small number of troops at several ports of central and northern Norway between April 14 and 18. This landing, however, did not amount to any mdre than a limited action. In early May the allied troops left central Norway and early in June 1940, northern Norway. This gave the Hitlerites full control of an important strategic vantage ground for carrying the war to the north of Europe, both against the Soviet Union and the Western countries.

The hopes of the Anglo-French coalition that the struggle for Scandinavia would draw the attention of the German military command away from the war with Britain and France were built on sand.

87

Defeat of the Anglo-French Coalition

p On May 10, 1940, the Wehrmacht mounted a sweeping offensive in Western Europe. The Scandinavian campaign did not prevent Germany from concentrating a large striking force in the West: 3,300,000 troops, 136 divisions, 2, 580 tanks, 3,824 aircraft. The combined force of France, Britain, Belgium and Holland to counter this offensive on the northeastern front had 3,785,000 troops, 147 divisions, 3,099 tanks and 3,791 aircraft.  [87•1  This means that the total strength of the Allied armies was greater than that of the Nazis. This superiority was not put to good use, which led to the capitulation of Holland on May 14 and of Belgium on May 28. On June 22, the representatives of the French government signed the instruments of surrender in the Compiegne Forest, in the same railway carriage in which, twenty-two years before, French Marshal Foch had dictated the terms of truce to Germany after its defeat in the First World War. The representatives of the French government recognised control by German occupation authorities over two-thirds of French territory and undertook to bear all the expenses of the upkeep of the German occupation troops, and gave their formal consent to the demobilisation and disarmament of the French armed forces.

p The less than one-year-old Anglo-French military alliance collapsed in an attempt to counter the Nazi summer offensive of 1940, which largely contributed to all further successes of the fascist bloc whose armed forces occupied in the spring of 1941 Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete, and mounted aggressive operations in northeast Africa.

p Western historians have written many books about the military defeat of France, which they call "the battle of France". Their arguments nearly always boil down to the superiority of the German Blitzkrieg strategy over French defence strategy. The West German military historian Friedrich Ruge holds, for example, that the outcome of the Western campaign was a foregone conclusion due to the 88 “operative action and surprise tactics and to the good use of the new weapons" by the German command.  [88•1  The American historian Jeffrey Clarke considers that the outcome of the battle of France was determined by "the concentration of German armor and vehicles in the panzer divisions and panzer corps". He interprets the victory of the Nazi troops as a sound strategic plan of attack on France which "put his [Guderian’s] long-held theories about armor into practice in leading the German advance to the sea”.  [88•2  Thus the entire course of the armed struggle in the West in 1940 is presented as the triumph of the Wehrmacht, while the reasons for France’s defeat are put down to the ineptitude of her generals.

p Of course, the military factor played an important part in the defeat of the Anglo-French coalition. In its West European campaign the German command succeeded in carrying out its Blitzkrieg strategy by the careful preparation for and the suddenness of its attack, by the massive use of armour and air force. The main Nazi force broke through the Belgian Ardennes unresisted, and struck at the rear of the Anglo-French troops which had moved into northern Belgium where as the Anglo-French command had mistakenly thought the enemy would deliver his main strike.

p On March 20 the German tanks reached the English Channel, splitting the front of the Western allies. In a report to the French War Minister, General Gamelin wrote in those critical days: "The emergence of German armour divisions, and their ability to break through our defences over a broad front, were the main strategic factor. The massive use of armour by the Germans paralysed all attempts to close the breach and each time tore apart the chain of defences set up to hold up the advancing enemy. The defence measures could not be promptly carried out because of the lack of sufficient mechanised units and formations."  [88•3  Having thus wrecked the strategic 89 defence plans of the allies, and having defeated them in the north, the German armies turned south in early June, overran the hastily erected French defences along the rivers Somme and Aisne and struck at the rear of the Maginot Line which had until then been thought impregnable. The fall of the Maginot defences became the symbol of the collapse of the Third French Republic.

p But it would be wrong, of course, to pretend that the defeat of the Anglo-French coalition was due to the military factor alone. Its defeat was inevitable, and due primarily to the foreign policy of the Western powers. Their numerous concessions to the aggressors, their refusal to uphold the Soviet proposals to create a collective security system, their outright betrayal of the peoples of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and finally their plans of aggression against the USSR during the phony war-all served to block the creation of an alliance of states which could have halted the aggression of the fascist bloc countries. The policy of compromise at the expense of the Soviet Union was at the bottom of the wait-and-see strategy of the Western allies whereby they gave the enemy a free hand in prosecuting the war on his own terms.

p One of the factors behind the military success of the Nazis in 1940 was the weakness of the Anglo-French coalition, which failed to stand the test of war. The ruling elite in Britain, which had taken the leading position in the military alliance with France, had planned in line with its old tradition to have other countries pull their chestnuts out of the fire. The British put up a small contingent of its troops and air force on the continent against Nazi Germany. When the German armoured units broke through to the English Channel via the Ardennes, creating a dangerous situation, the military and political leaders of Britain refused to give its ally additional assistance with troops and materiel and left it to the mercy of fate. Already on May 19, the British command had begun working on its secret plans (codenamed Dynamo) for returning its expeditionary corps to the British Isles. On May 27 this plan was put into effect. By June 4, more than 330,000 British soldiers had been 90 shipped back home from Dunkirk and adjacent coastal areas.

p A number of historians, especially British, try to present the evacuation of the British troops as a wise strategic manoeuvre. According to Peter Calvocoressi and Guy Wint, the evacuation of Dunkirk "was a triumph for the British navy”.  [90•1  Frederick Grossmith is quite definite that "at Dunkirk, Germany lost the war" and that "Britain ensured ... freedom from Hitlerism and enslavement”.  [90•2 

p The fact is, first, that the evacuation of the British troops from France made it a lot easier for the German command to carry on with the war in the West. On the one hand, this helped the Nazis to release their forces that had been operating in the northeast of France and use them for an offensive southwards into the French heartland, where the French command, given enough time, might still have organised a stable defence. On the other hand, the German victory increased the defeatist sentiments of the ruling elite in France and in this way opened the way to seizure of power by the arrantly capitulatory elements headed by Petain and Laval, who did not conceal their intention to make peace with Nazi Germany.

p Second, the evacuation of the British troops via Dunkirk where they left about 700 tanks and a mass of other materiel to the enemy, has since been variously interpreted in Britain herself. Winston Churchill wrote in his memoirs that after the "Dunkirk miracle" the British troops lost much of their former strength: "Our armies at home [in Britain] were known to be almost unarmed except for rifles.... Months must pass before our factories could make good even the munitions lost at Dunkirk."  [90•3 

One of the reasons for the defeat of France was the reactionary internal policy of its ruling elite who, in the 91 words of one of the leaders of the French Communist Party, Etienne Fajon, "sacrificed national defence and collective security for the sake of the reactionary and defeatist privileged caste”.  [91•1  They used martial law declared in September 1939 for further abridging the already abridged bourgeois democracy, for banning the French Communist Party and related organisations, and for routing progressive trade unions. The British historian Anthony Adamthwaite writes about the absence of national unity in France,  [91•2  but he says nothing about the fact that the French government, which advocated collusion with Nazi Germany on an anti-Soviet basis, did nothing to halt the activities of proGerman elements and organisations in France. Fear that the struggle of the French patriots against fascism could develop into a struggle for revolutionary changes paralysed the French ruling elite, which could no longer steer the ship of state.

"We Are Looking Due East"

p After the capitulation of France the first immediate goal of the German strategists was preparations for war against the Soviet Union. Their second goal was to bring Britain to heel and force it-having lost her allies-to sign a peace treaty on terms suitable to Germany. On June 30, several days after fighting had died down in France, Franz Haider, the chief of the General Staff of the land forces, made this entry in his diary: "We are now looking due East.... We will yet have to demonstrate our military force to Britain before it yields and gives us a free hand in the East."  [91•3  On July 1 fi the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht issued a directive for Operation Sealion. Under this operation the German troops in Western Europe began to prepare for the 92 invasion of Britain. "The French, Belgian and Dutch ports were crammed with craft of every description. Embarkation and debarkation exercises went on without pause."  [92•1  Two months after the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk the Nazi leaders made still another decision: to start massive bombings of British cities, while demonstratively continuing the preparations for Operation Sealion.

p The Nazis began their air offensive against Britain on August 13, 1940. British fighters and other air defences joined in the fighting which reached its peak in the middle of September 1940. After that the heavy losses of its air power over Britain  [92•2  compelled the German High Command lo abandon any further daytime air attacks and reduce its operations to night bombings of British industrial centres. Thus the Na/i hopes that the British people would lose their nerve under the bombs never materialised.

p It would be wrong, however, to consider Britain and not the USSR the main Nazi goal in 1940, and to pronounce the Battle of Britain "one of the fateful battles of history", and one of the most decisive victories in the Second World War, which forced Hitler to call off Operation Sealion.  [92•3  It would likewise be wrong to believe that the defeat of the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Britain compelled Germany to carry the war to the East in order to rout the USSR which was nothing but a continental sword in the hands of Great Britain.  [92•4  The British air defence did beat back massive Nazi air attacks. The population of Britain held out against the enemy with fortitude. But the reason the German command gave up the idea of landing on the British Isles 93 was primarily that they sought to throw all they could against the USSR, the main obstacle to world domination. Fritz Hesse, a former German diplomat, an expert working on "the British problem", cites the following fact in his memoirs. In the autumn of 1940, the Chief-of-Staff of the German air force drafted an order for transferring to Flanders the air units which were intended for war against the USSR and which were then stationed in Poland. The air force command tried to assure Hitler that with the help of these aircraft Germany would be able to break Britain’s resistance. Significantly, Hitler did not sign this order, saying that "nobody dared make free with the air force set aside specially for this purpose”.  [93•1 

p After the defeat of France the Nazi General Staff concentrated on preparations for a treacherous attack on the Soviet Union, which, incidentally, was originally planned for the autumn of 1940. However, at the end of July 1940, Hitler, acting on the advice of his generals, decided to put off his Eastern campaign until the spring of 1941.  [93•2  On July 31, 1940, General Haider wrote down in his diary these words of Hitler’s: "If Russia is smashed, Britain will lose its last hope. Then Germany will dominate in Europe and in the Balkans.... Russia must be liquidated. Deadline: the spring of 1941.... Camouflage: Spain, North Africa, England.”  [93•3 

p Now for the so-called preventive war that Germany allegedly had to fight against the USSR. This version is still current among some of the historians who expound extremely reactionary anti-Soviet views. Ugo Walendy, W. Glasebock and Erich Helmdach present the measures taken by the Soviet Union to strengthen its frontiers in the 1930s as a preparation for an invasion of Central Europe. A self- 94 styled American military historian, General MacCloskey, holds that "Hitler, fighting the British in the West could not accept the Russian expansion"  [94•1 . Quoting some mythical intelligence reports, the British historian David Irving says that "the Russians were going to invade Germany".  [94•2  A similar version has been used by some Japanese historians (Takushiro Hattori for one) to justify Japan’s aggressive actions against the USSR.

p The "preventive war" version does not bear serious discussion. The myth of a preventive war is given the lie by the peaceful foreign policy of the Soviet Union in the prewar years and its consistent struggle at that time for a collective security system in Europe and Asia in order to curb the aggressors. Also well known are the documents from the Nazi archives which shed light on the preparations for a treacherous attack on the USSR. It should be noted that practically , all the leading Western historians dissociate themselves from this story of a German preventive war against the Soviet Union. B. H. Liddell Hart, for example, writes that when the German troops had already crossed the Soviet border "the generals found little sign of Russian offensive preparations near the front, and thus saw that Hitler had misled them".  [94•3 

p The war that the Nazis waged against Britain at the time they were preparing for an attack on the USSR gradually deteriorated to a "diversionary operation" which was meant to conceal the preparations for a war against the Soviet Union. Beginning September 1940, the Nazis-eased off on their bombing raids and by February 1941, had reduced them to a minimum. Whatever hopes the Nazis still had of making Britain change her foreign policy as a result of the air raids these were related to the fact that many influential members of the British ruling elite were still strongly inclined to compromise with Hitler and his inner 95 circle.  [95•1  This circumstance was at the back of the Hess mission to Britain in May, 1941.  [95•2 

p A well-informed British author, F. W. Winterbotham, writes that when France was practically out of the way, the Reich "obviously wanted peace in the West before he [Hitler] set out on the great mission... - the destruction of Communist Russia".  [95•3  The West German historian Janusz Piekalkiewicz has also come to the conclusion that after the decision had been made to start direct preparations for an attack on the USSR, the war in the West was put on a backburner in the plans of the German leaders.  [95•4 

p Some British historians claim that the Battle of Britain prevented Hitler from concentrating all of his forces against the USSR.  [95•5  However, they fail to provide enough facts in support of their thesis. The air war between Britain and Germany did not bring about any substantial change in the strategic situation in Western Europe following the defeat of France and did not prevent the Nazis from concentrating their invasion forces on the Soviet frontier. In the summer of 1941 the British army engaged two German divisions in North Africa.  [95•6 

96

The early period of the war showed that neither Britain nor France was in a position to repulse the fascist aggressors, which was a logical outcome of the phony war waged by the ruling elite, since this war was nothing but an updated version of the prewar policy of appeasement. As a result, the Nazis and their allies, over the first twenty-two months of the war, took control over almost the whole of capitalist Europe with its tremendous manpower and industrial resources. The policy of appeasement of the fascist aggressors and of instigating an attack on the USSR proved to be catastrophic for Britain^ France and many other countries of Europe.

Exacerbation of U. S.-Japanese Contradictions

p With militarist Japan pursuing a course of aggression against the United States, the situation in the Far East rapidly deteriorated. Her immediate aim was to capture Uncontrolled territories in the Pacific.

p According to many American historians the United States pursued, in the 1940-1941 period, a brinkmanship policy in order to contain expanding Japanese aggression. To bear out this contention, they refer to the government decision to curtail U.S. trade with Japan, to step up assistance to Chiang Kai-shek, and then to concentrate its navy in Hawaii and freeze Japanese assets in the United States. Compromise with Japan was possible provided "American security and principles" were ensured in Asia and the Pacific, which in a less euphemistic form means the strategic and colonial positions of the United States and its potential allies (China, Britain, France and Holland) in that part of the world.  [96•1 

p According to these historians, the main reasons that drew the United States into the war were events in other parts of the globe, especially in Europe, which were outside U.S. control and for which the administration could bear no responsibility. If the analysts differ at all, it is only on the 97 interpretation of the views of this or that political or military figure of the period. Some historians say that State Secretary Cordell Hull was more cautious in the pursuit of the "tough" political line towards Japan, than, say, Henry Stimson, Frank Knox or Henry Morgenthau who were insisting on more resolute measures and tried to bend Roosevelt to this course of action. Others believe that Roosevelt overestimated the influence of his opposition. However, these individual assessments do not affect in any substantial way the basic concept of the U.S. entry into the Second World War. This prevalent concept is exhaustively illustrated in the book Command Decision published by the military history department of the Army. Louis Morton, one of the contributors, gives the above problems most of his attention.

p He makes a detailed step-by-step analysis of the escalating Japanese aggression in Asia and puts his own interpretation on America’s attitude to Japan in those days. "Japan’s action in China was in violation of all existing treaties and, in the American view, the only solution to the China Incident was the complete withdrawal of Japanese forces from China."  [97•1  Of a slightly different view is H.-A. Jacobsen who insists that "The United States also contributed to the outbreak of war in the Pacific (by its tough economic policies, among other things). This, of course, does not absolve Japan of the responsibility for its action on December 7, 1941."  [97•2 

p The tendency to whitewash the imperialist policy of the USA gives birth to another tendency, that of concealing the brutality and avarice of the Japanese monopoly capitalists who tried to cover their predatory actions and plans with anti-communist propaganda, pan-Asiatic slogans and spurious protestations of their readiness to grant independence to oppressed nations. Morton takes great pains not 98 to sound offensive in passages dealing with the predatory plans of the Japanese militarists spearheaded against the United States, as seen here: "The Japanese, it must be emphasized, did not seek the total defeat of the United States and had no intention of invading this country."  [98•1  But was this really so? Later we shall speak about the German plans for the conquest of the American continent, and we have no grounds for thinking that the Japanese aggressors had no such plans. The commander of Japan’s navy Admiral Yamamoto wrote soon after Japan had joined in the war "that it would not be enough ’to take Guam and the Philippines, not even Hawaii and San Francisco’. To gain victory ... they [the Japanese] would have ’to march into Washington and sign the treaty in the White House’."  [98•2  As a well-informed historian, Morton understands that he could not keep silent about this statement of Yamamoto’s, but in his wording and interpretation this bluntly worded intention of the Japanese militarists to invade U.S. territory sounds almost noble. He writes, "They [the Japanese] planned to fight a war of limited objectives... To the Japanese leaders this seemed an entirely reasonable view. But there were fallacies in this concept which Admiral Yamamoto had pointed out when he wrote that it would not be enough ’to take Guam and the Philippines, not even Hawaii and San Francisco’."  [98•3  There is an obvious desire to reduce the differences between Japan and the United States, and to mutually "circumscribe" their expansionist imperialist goals for world domination, an attempt to make this biased interpretation of history serve present-day U. S.-Japanese relations.

p Louis Morton is the most influential semi-official interpreter of the U.S. entry into the war with Japan. His own report United States and Japan 1937-1941: Changing Patterns of Historical Interpretation (Washington, 1971), calls attention to the folio wing:

99

p First, a statement of the fact that the problem has not yet been sufficiently studied. Second, recognition of the growing influence of Marxist historiography and of its concept that the United States sought to channel the Japanese in a northerly direction, against the Soviet Union. Third, the influence of the "New Left", who put forth their own interpretation of the origins of the war between the United States and Japan. Morton writes that the works of William Williams and many of his followers (also exponents of this school, such as Lloyd C.Gardner, D.Bernstein, and Gabriel Kolko) put the emphasis on the economic factors and on the interconnection between the internal problems of industrialised society and its foreign policy. Fourth, the need to study the role of the United States’ military circles in the events under review. The role of the Japanese military circles, Morton states, has been studied exhaustively, but that of the American military circles is still open to investigation. According to Morton, this is happening most likely because in the United States the military play a subsidiary role in shaping foreign policy.

p In the concluding part of his report Morton does not sound convincing enough. He elaborately enumerates all the existing schools and trends and sets out their concepts, but fails to put his own evaluation on them. For instance, he does not provide a clear-cut answer to such cardinal questions as which concept of the outbreak of the war between the USA and Japan is more objective? Who started the war-the United States or Japan?

Historians of more reactionary views have espoused a fundamentally different concept. In their opinion the Axis powers posed no threat either to the United States or to American interests. Roosevelt, they say, was deliberately steering the United States into war and deceived the American people about the true goals of his policy with words about peace. According to these historians, Roosevelt stoked the flames of war in Europe, provoked a clash between the United States and Japan in Asia, thus pushing America into war "through the back door".  [99•1 

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p The immediate threat coming from the Axis powers resulted, according to these historians, from the near-sighted and instigatory policy of the United States itself. This policy reached its climax when, in their words, the United States government froze Japanese assets on July 26, 1941, and delivered a note to Japan on November 26, 1941, which they refer to as an ultimatum. These two acts, they claim, forced Japan to start hostilities. Setting forth their version of the military aspect of the problem these historians clear the U.S. armed forces command of the Pearl Harbor disaster and put the blame squarely on Marshall, Stark, Stimson and Knox, whose top military posts in Washington allegedly gave them access to information on the imminent attack on Pearl Harbor but who refrained from taking the necessary counter-measures so that they could use this attack as a pretext for plunging the United States into war. Contrary to the official American version, these historians conclude that the United States "drew itself into the war”, and that the American involvement was not in any way consequent on the situation in the world.

p The books written since about the events immediately predating the Pacific war put the spotlight on the U.S.- Japanese talks which were held in Washington from the spring of 1941 until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Unlike the historians of the official trend, most of whom try to substantiate the American position at the talks, the " revisionists" blame Roosevelt and Hull, directly and by implication, for deliberately exacerbating the situation which eventually exploded into war.

p Professor Paul Schroeder of the University of Illinois thinks that the talks in Washington were foiled by the evolution of the American position on the Sino-Japanese conflict. In his words the version played up by the "court historians" 101 that the United States did not modify its position at the talks has been developed at the State Department.  [101•1 

p Contrary to Basil Rauch who believes that "Japan in the spring and summer of 1941 would accept no diplomatic arrangement which did not give it everything that it might win in the Far East by aggression”,  [101•2  and to Herbert Feis who, with certain qualifications, shares this point of view,  [101•3  Schroeder insists that as time went on, the two sides at the Washington talks markedly altered their positions. According to Schroeder, "Japan was clearly asking for less, and the United States was demanding more...".  [101•4 

p He does not produce sufficient proof in support of this view. At the same time, in their attempts to discredit Roosevelt, Hull and the official historians their opponents on the right often operate with basically correct facts. For example, ridiculing the statement made by Hull’s political adviser Stanley K. Hornbeck that "the intentions of the United States in regard to the Western Pacific and Eastern Asia have always been peaceful intentions”, Schroeder remarks sarcastically: "The American acquisitions of Hawaii, Guam, and even of the Philippines, Mr. Hornbeck is careful to point out, are also in reality clear evidences of a peaceful, liberal attitude.”  [101•5  Though based on facts, this criticism must be taken with a grain of salt. The point is that while concentrating attention on the vulnerability of the apologia for the foreign and military policies of the Roosevelt Administration, the reactionary historians try to build up an anti-Roosevelt concept. All their discussions eventually boil down to the pro-fascist thesis that the policy of the United States before and during the war brought forth a much more serious threat to peace and 102 security in the form of communist Russia and her allies.

p The attempts of the bourgeois historians to at least somehow justify the policy of appeasement cannot conceal the catastrophic results of this policy for the whole world. For Europe in the middle of 1941 these were the enslavement of twelve countries and the mortal danger to Britain. By that time the policy of appeasement of militarist Japan had already run into crisis. The concessions that the United States had made to the Japanese militarists so they could have their hands free to unleash a war against the Soviet Union, also the Japanese occupation of vast areas in Asia encouraged Japan to commit new acts of aggression.

p All this goes to show that the examination and interpretation of the causes of the Second World War by bourgeois historians points to their utter rejection of the laws of historical development, and to their attempts to clear the imperialists, who are chiefly to blame, of all responsibility and to put in a bad light the peaceful policy of the USSR, the dauntless struggle of the Soviet Union against the fascist threat. Bourgeois historians are thus confusing the issue of the origins of the Second World War. This can be explained primarily by their class positions. The available material, which would otherwise cover the problem in full, is not examined objectively. Instead, it is treated only within the narrow limits of blinkered bourgeois ideology and a priori judgements in support of the anti-Soviet policies of imperialism.

In February 1945 British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden speaking in Parliament on the results of the Crimean Conference of the leaders of the USSR, the USA and Britain, said: "Can anyone doubt that, if we had had, in 1939, the unity between Russia, this country and the United States that we cemented at Yalta, there would not have been the present war?”  [102•1  A belated conclusion? Nevertheless it is still very edifying for those in the West who ignore the lessons of history.