D-Day + 70 years.

[M-L-C-F]

I know I know, the Western Allies and the redrawing of the lines of imperialism. I'm well aware of that, and the issues that are associated with it. But the point is, this was part of the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. Operation Overlord is important to history because of that fact. It also helped decrease the burden for the Red Army on the Eastern Front as well. The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history too. So let's remember this day, and those who fell fighting Fascism. Cheers!

[GimmieFire]

Nice tribute to those heroes. No matter how much time passes they will always be remembered.

[Devrim]

Supporting your own states imperialist wars is the anti-thesis of everything that revolutionary communism stands for.

Devrim

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

I pay my respects privately to the people who died on the 6th June 1944, not because I support imperialism but because I find the waste of life to be saddening and disgusting. I respect their courage in the face of the sheer horror that they must have endured and reject the cause that they endured it for.

[M-L-C-F]

Supporting your own states imperialist wars is the anti-thesis of everything that revolutionary communism stands for.

Devrim

It's merely noting the significance, and remembering those who fought. It's not meant as support for the western governments. I can separate the people and significance from the bullshit.

[Alexios]

I wonder when the moderators will ban this pathetic troll.

[DOOM]

If "imperialism" was necessary to stop the most horrific regime since ever, then I don't give one flying fuck about the "imperialist interests of the West". It reminds me a little bit of german Neo-Nazis and righties relativizing the german atrocities by saying "b-b-b-ut they were bad too!!!11!!!1". Really, just stop it.

[M-L-C-F]

I wonder when the moderators will ban this pathetic troll.

Who's trolling? I'm just making note of the anniversary today. I haven't trolled anyone here. Nor am I trying to be a troll. Since when can't we talk about stuff like this?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Who's trolling? I'm just making note of the anniversary today. I haven't trolled anyone here. Nor am I trying to be a troll. Since when can't we talk about stuff like this?
Don't mind them. My grandfather fought in World War II. I'm sure some here would demand that I piss on his grave to prove my revolutionary bonafides.

[Devrim]

If "imperialism" was necessary to stop the most horrific regime since ever, then I don't give one flying fuck about the "imperialist interests of the West". It reminds me a little bit of german Neo-Nazis and righties relativizing the german atrocities by saying "b-b-b-ut they were bad too!!!11!!!1". Really, just stop it.

It was all necessary...from the Gulag...to the Bengal famine...to Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Don't mind them. My grandfather fought in World War II. I'm sure some here would demand that I piss on his grave to prove my revolutionary bonafides.

Nobody is demanding that people desecrate graves. The overwhelming majority of those who died in World War II, including those in the German army, were workers butchered by capital.

There is a difference though between people quietly remembering a loved one (of whom they are probably very few left today), and the international jamboree of jingoism that surrounds the D-Day landings. The left wing version of this with its talk of 'fighting fascism' while supporting the imperialist wars of its own state is particularly poisonous.

Devrim

[exeexe]

Funny no one mentioned the anniversary of the 6th army under command of General Karl Strecker surrendering. There the germans lost 100.000 men compared to D-day where the Germans lost 1.100 men.

[Atsumari]

The Allies winning in World War II was preferable to the Axis powers and we should we glad they triumphed in the end, but fuck anyone who says that the Allied fight was a noble war and even go so far to justify Hiroshima, Bengal, and the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo as well as the countless atrocities by the Red Army.

[Devrim]

The Allies winning in World War II was preferable to the Axis powers and we should we glad they triumphed in the end,...

Why? We don't know what would have happened. Nobody has an alternative history time machine.

To play devil's advocate for a moment, a Nazi victory could have led to the collapse of the German state due to its own internal contradictions, no final solution, as it is something that the Nazis only fully embarked on after the tide bean to turn against them, and no allied occupation of Europe, which conceivably held revolution at bay in the defeated powers after the war, so we could be living 70 years into the establishment of workers' power in a world where far less Jews had been massacred.

I am not in any way advancing this argument.

I am merely saying that communists at the time didn't have crystal balls to see the future in. The class position was, as in the First World War, 'a plague on both houses'. not being glad that your own side was winning.

Devrim

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

The class position was, as in the First World War, 'a plague on both houses'. not being glad that your own side was winning.

Devrim

In other words: we have no side. :)

[Alexios]

Don't mind them. My grandfather fought in World War II. I'm sure some here would demand that I piss on his grave to prove my revolutionary bonafides.

Congratulations. So did mine. I still oppose it entirely as an inter-imperialist war since I'm not enough of a dolt to be overcome with nationalist emotions.

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

Nobody is demanding that people desecrate graves. The overwhelming majority of those who died in World War II, including those in the German army, were workers butchered by capital.

There is a difference though between people quietly remembering a loved one (of whom they are probably very few left today), and the international jamboree of jingoism that surrounds the D-Day landings. The left wing version of this with its talk of 'fighting fascism' while supporting the imperialist wars of its own state is particularly poisonous.

Devrim

Oh, what fucking ever. You're reading way too much into this. All we're saying is literally thank god the Nazis lost. Also, that it sucks that so many working class soldiers had to die in an imperialist war. You're reading into it like people on here are saying GO AMERICA WOOOO. Which nobody has done. Get off your self-righteous pedestal.


Congratulations. So did mine. I still oppose it entirely as an inter-imperialist war since I'm not enough of a dolt to be overcome with nationalist emotions.

Who on this thread ever expressed nationalist emotions?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Congratulations. So did mine. I still oppose it entirely as an inter-imperialist war since I'm not enough of a dolt to be overcome with nationalist emotions.
So people with nationalist sentiments (which no one in this thread has expressed) simply lack intelligence? Now there's a good materialist explanation. :rolleyes:

[M-L-C-F]

The class position was, as in the First World War, 'a plague on both houses'. not being glad that your own side was winning.


In other words: we have no side. :)

See, that's where I completely disagree. It's a whole different situation than The Great War. The true class position was to support the Soviet Union in the war. Because they had it thrust upon them. The Soviets tried the whole both sides are bad ideal. They even signed the treaties of non-aggression with both Germany and Japan. Retaking the territory that was lost with Brest-Litovsk, and getting on with the business at hand. While letting the west and the Axis fight out their bullshit. However Hitler and Nazi Germany broke the treaty, and invaded the Soviet Union. But really, what did you expect the Soviets to do? Shake hands with the Nazis, when they got back to the border? Hell no, they kept going, and finished Nazi Germany off. Rightfully so too, I think.

I completely support the Soviet Union in The Great Patriotic War. While in The Great War, the only sides that I support are the Irish Republicans and the Bolsheviks. My reasoning isn't outta "nationalism", but supporting of my comrades historically. That being said, where my families are from were occupied by the Nazis: Poland and Malta. Malta fought for it's freedom from the Nazis, and the British as well. While Poland was liberated by the Soviet Union, and the White Poles were pieces of shit. Again, I don't place relevance on it outta "nationalism". I place relevance on it because of lineage. Those are two different things. My ancestors were already long in America by that time. But that doesn't mean it's any less important to me. Placing relevance isn't nationalism.

I don't expect you to get it, with the infantile disorder that you've got Devrim. Just like how I wasn't surprised with the liberalism by people here, in the topic that I created about Victory Day a while back. But I think I'm done in this topic however. As arguing with Left Communists is more annoying than arguing with kids, and it's a waste of my time. Anti-Leninism is a juvenile disorder.

[Devrim]

Oh, what fucking ever. You're reading way too much into this. All we're saying is literally thank god the Nazis lost. Also, that it sucks that so many working class soldiers had to die in an imperialist war. You're reading into it like people on here are saying GO AMERICA WOOOO. Which nobody has done. Get off your self-righteous pedestal.

Except that you are saying "thank God the Nazis lost" in one of the countries that actually won, which is a country that has created an entire myth around 'the greatest generation', and which has a massive thing around supporting its troops. I think that this is at the very least a reflection of the massive nationalism that exists in the US.


See, that's where I completely disagree. It's a whole different situation than The Great War. The true class position was to support the Soviet Union in the war.

MLCF at least has a fig leaf of a political position to cover his latant nationalism with.


That being said, where my families are from were occupied by the Nazis: Poland and Malta.

Malta wasn't occupied by the Germans.

Devrim

[CubanDream]

Supporting your own states imperialist wars is the anti-thesis of everything that revolutionary communism stands for.

Devrim

So what's your suggestion then - just let Hitler keep Europe, yeah right, that sounds good:rolleyes:

[Devrim]

So what's your suggestion then - just let Hitler keep Europe, yeah right, that sounds good:rolleyes:

My suggestion is that communists should have argued for overthrowing 'their own' states in the countries of the Western allies, the Axis, and the USSR.

What's your suggestion? start by interning Japanese citizens of your own country, prop up brutal colonial empires, massacre tens of thousands of surrendering Japanese prisoners of war across the Pacific, fire bomb civilians in German cities, round it all off by dropping two atomic bombs on Japanese civillians, and then just let the US, and the USSR keep half of Europe each, yeah right, that sounds good.

Devrim

[Zukunftsmusik]

It's a whole different situation than The Great War. The true class position was to support the Soviet Union in the war. [...] They even signed the treaties of non-aggression with both Germany and Japan. Retaking the territory that was lost with Brest-Litovsk, and getting on with the business at hand.

That's not a "true class position", that's support for a (arguably capitalist) state's geopolitical aims, on behalf of support for the working classes of the countries involved in the war.


My reasoning isn't outta "nationalism", but supporting of my comrades historically. [...] Again, I don't place relevance on it outta "nationalism". I place relevance on it because of lineage. Those are two different things.

You do, however, support your "comrades" "historically" for fighting on nationalist sides in an inter-imperialist war. The lineage you show to is entirely anti-proletarian.


I don't expect you to get it, with the infantile disorder that you've got Devrim. Just like how I wasn't surprised with the liberalism by people here, in the topic that I created about Victory Day a while back. But I think I'm done in this topic however. As arguing with Left Communists is more annoying than arguing with kids, and it's a waste of my time. Anti-Leninism is a juvenile disorder.

Personally, I find enveloping nationalist ideology and support of murdering workers as "true class positions" really juvenile. Otherwise, please be more original with your insults: the above is so 1920.

[Remus Bleys]

Just so we are all clear about who the real "infantiles" are http://www.sinistra.net/lib/upt/comlef/ren/renegadeae.html the argument form here only validates this pamphlet, where you see the left communist calmly and unemotively viewing the situation and, without being sensationalist, determines the line of communism. Compare to the stalinist who whines and points at a document that directly contradicts what he is saying.

Aldo relevant: USSR demanding normalized relations with Germany: http://www.histdoc.net/history/molotov_31101939.html

[Xena Warrior Proletarian]

My grandfather was there on D-Day. He was 19. In a letter he wrote home he said "Oh mother, all those helmets". He was never the same again. He later went on to throw himself in front of a train.

The whole thing was tragic. To be taking positives out of the situation is insulting to all who died. Let us not proclaim heroes, and fly flags. Those who died were victims not heroes. Let us make sure that it never happens again.

The enemy is not Germany or the other Axis powers. The enemies are fascism, imperialism, and war. The military parades and flags are disgusting; to condone them or any other form any nationalist sentiment on these occasions is truly insulting to those who died.

[CubanDream]

My suggestion is that communists should have argued for overthrowing 'their own' states in the countries of the Western allies, the Axis, and the USSR.

Idealistic hogwash - WW2 was a fight to the death - Nazi fascism or Nazi colonisation - war had to be won by the Allies first, perhaps have a revolt afterwards.


What's your suggestion? start by interning Japanese citizens of your own country, prop up brutal colonial empires, massacre tens of thousands of surrendering Japanese prisoners of war across the Pacific, fire bomb civilians in German cities, round it all off by dropping two atomic bombs on Japanese civillians, and then just let the US, and the USSR keep half of Europe each, yeah right, that sounds good.

YES - a high price was needed to avoid a World Fascist takeover.

[Invader Zim]

It was all necessary...from the Gulag...to the Bengal famine...to Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

Devrim

What do the Bengal famine, the Gulag system or the atomic bombs, have to do with Operation Overlord? It seems to me that you confuse not only the chronology of the Second World War but also the geography of the conflict.

[Devrim]

What do the Bengal famine, the Gulag system or the atomic bombs, have to do with Operation Overlord? It seems to me that you confuse not only the chronology of the Second World War but also the geography of the conflict.

No, I am quite clear as to when and where these things happened. It was in reply to a post saying that 'imperialism was necessary to stop fascism', and I was just pointing out what imperialism meant.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Idealistic hogwash - WW2 was a fight to the death - Nazi fascism or Nazi colonisation - war had to be won by the Allies first, perhaps have a revolt afterwards.

Wars generally are a fight to the death, and it is generally the working class on both sides doing the dying.

I don't think it was 'idealistic hogwash' at all. It was something that the ruling class was very fearful of at the time:


In late 1939 the French ambassador Robert Coulondre had his last meeting with Hitler before the coming of war. The Führer was in a boastful mood, Coulondre recalled in his memoir, having just concluded a pact with Stalin, and spoke of the inevitability of further triumphs. The ambassador sought to sober him by warning of the unintended consequences of conflict. "You are thinking of yourself as victor," Coulondre said, "but have you given thought to another possibility—that the victor may be Trotsky?" Hitler leaped to his feet, as if "he had been hit in the pit of the stomach," and yelled that this threat was reason enough in itself for Britain and France to capitulate at once.

Of course, barely twenty years early, the European, and particularly the German (and obviously Russian) working class had revolted, stopped the war, and launched massive struggles for power.

There were also those who told those at Zimmerwald in 1915 that their ideas were 'idealistic hogwash'.

Devrim

[Invader Zim]

No, I am quite clear as to when and where these things happened. It was in reply to a post saying that 'imperialism was necessary to stop fascism', and I was just pointing out what imperialism meant.

Devrim

Did British imperialism create the cyclone and fungus which destroyed the Bengal rice crop, and the Japanese invasion of the primary alternative source of rice?


Of course, barely twenty years early, the European, and particularly the German (and obviously Russian) working class had revolted, stopped the war, and launched massive struggles for power.

The Russian revolution did not end the war, and nor did the German Revolution. The First World War ended because Germany was unable to economically sustain its continued participation in the conflict.

[Devrim]

Did British imperialism create the cyclone and fungus which destroyed the Bengal rice crop, and the Japanese invasion of the primary alternative source of rice?

Of course, apologists for the imperialists will blame the weather or the 'Japs'. Others see it differently:


With the progress of the Japanese Army towards the borders of Bengal – alongside the battalions of the Indian National Army led by Subhas Chandra Bose – the British were panic-stricken at the fear that Bengali saboteurs and provocateurs – the ‘Fifth Column inIndia’ – could ‘gravely impair the efficiency of Indian defence’.18 And so it was, at that crucial moment in the war, that the British forces attacked, not the Japanese, but their own colonial subjects, the people of Bengal.

The policy they adopted was ‘Rice Denial’. This was the same scorched earth policy that Churchill had demanded of Dorman-Smith in Burma and of Wavell in Singapore, except that this time they would follow it through. The authorities planned first to impose the policy across Bengal, but then re-thought and restricted it to a strip twenty-five miles in from the
coast – which meant that the brunt was borne largely by Hindus, and much less so by Muslims.



The essence of the policy was that rice stores in the countryside would be seized or destroyed. The pretext was that they were being denied to the invading Japanese forces, but in fact it was the disloyal Bengali civilians who were being punished. If resources could not burned or blown up ‘dumping in the sea will suffice’. As well as destroying rice, troops and
police were sent to destroy the boats that, in that low-lying delta were the only transport.



Wavell was not sure, but Amery cabled him on 27 March 1942 ‘it is essential that destruction should be ruthless and should achieve without fail total denial of such resources as would assist enemy operation’. Wavell, who had been humiliated by Churchill for letting the Japanese take Singapore was not going to fail a second time. More than 40,000 boats, two
thirds of the total registered, were wrecked. Nearly ten thousand bicycles were taken from the Bengali town of Midnapore.



British historians talk about the Bengal Famine today as if it was a natural thing, and as if it was wholly unrelated either to the war or to the British campaign against Congress. It ‘began with a cyclone and the loss of imports from Japanese-occupied Burma, not with an
order from Churchill to starve Bengalis’.19 There was a cyclone, and there was a loss of imports from Burma, but the cause of the famine was an order from Churchill to starve the Bengalis, the order was called the Rice Denial policy.



The truth was that Bengal was already at the point of collapse before the Rice Denial policy was put in place. As the British war effort sucked resources out of India, the country was close to starvation. While the Bengalis were being robbed of their rice, many different authorities were buying up what few stores were left in the country. The Civil Supplies
Department was buying rice for the war effort, as were the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, the railways, the Government of India and the army. Prices doubled in days, and carried on rising. All the time government agents were buying up rice to store it in warehouses. In 1942
Bengal was made to export 185,000 tons of rice to Ceylon, the British Army in North Africa, and Britain itself, to make up the shortfall created by the loss of Burma. Ceylon was particularly important because after the loss of Malaya, it was the Empire’s only source of rubber. Linlithgow told Chief Minister Hug in January of 1943 that he ‘simply must produce
some rice out of Bengal for Ceylon even if Bengal itself went hungry’. Over and again the War Cabinet had been warned of the impending famine – by Sir Jeremy Raisman in August1942, by Lord Linlithgow from the beginning of 1943. Linlithgow was desperate by March, but Churchill was adamant that ‘they must learn to look after themselves as we have
done’.20 Churchill was advised by Lord Cherwell, who, as we have seen, applied Malthusian logic to the question of Indian hunger: ‘In my view the Indians have got themselves into a mess very largely through their own fault’.21



The impending famine, though, had nothing to do with India’s population, which far from being a drain on resources was the source of the surplus that was paying for Britain’s war effort. It was Britain’s requisitioning – and its wanton destruction – of the Indians’ food and resources that caused the famine. That plunder was not incidental to the war, it was caused by the war; and the destruction was the policy that Britain pursued to crush those they feared would become India’s Fifth Column, the population of West Bengal. Already in 1942 Sir John Herbert was ordering the removal of ‘excess rice from the three districts within 24 hours’, while others reported thousands of tons of rice being destroyed.


Rice Denial was a policy closely tied up with the plan to crush resistance in India. In September 1942 police occupied Midnapore District to smash pro-Congress protestors. The District Magistrate ordered that relief should be withheld until the ‘disaffected villages’ give ‘an undertaking that they will take no further part in any subversive movement’. Police burned down huts and destroyed rice in those villages. When distribution centres were set
up, villagers complained that police followed them home and smashed pots and trampled on the cooked food. The following January hundreds of soldiers and police occupied the village of Masuria, beating men and raping 46 women. ‘The war has to be won and the Congress
rebellion kept under’, explained Sir John Herbert.22


Once the famine took hold around three and a half million Bengalis died. As the death toll mounted, the authorities went from denial, to bluster, to eventually demanding control over the relief effort.


According to the authorities the answer to the Bengal Famine was that the government needed to take control of the rice and distribute it. But Indians fiercely resisted the British backed authorities’ attempts to requisition rice for famine relief. They set up their own Relief Committees like those run by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, who called on cultivators not to sell to government agents, saying ‘the bureaucracy has taken away the food for the army and for exports’.23



Subhas Chandra Bose, with the support of the Burman leader Ba Maw, offered to give Bengal Burmese rice – that was only days away across the border – through the Red Cross. Indeed Bose’s supporters in India were already active in Mukherjee’s Relief Committees distributing rice which the British were trying to grab for themselves.24 The British authorities
dismissed Bose’s offer out of hand, preferring to see India starve than British rule exposed.



The Russian revolution did not end the war, and nor did the German Revolution. The First World War ended because Germany was unable to economically sustain its continued participation in the conflict.

I think it is quite widely accepted that sailors' revolt at Wilhelmshaven, which then rapidly spread across the rest of Germany overthrew the monarchy, and brought an end to the war.

Devrim

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

It should be noted that two fascist powers, Portugal and Brazil, supported the Allies during the Second World War, Brazil directly and Portugal economically. The Allies themselves supported the fascist Četnik movement, the fascist admiral Darlan, gave assurances to Cossack and Vlasovite fascists, and so on. If the government of Wang Jingwei was fascist, so was the government of Chang Kaishek, supported by the Allied imperialists.

[Invader Zim]

Of course, apologists for the imperialists will blame the weather or the 'Japs'. Others see it differently:

And those who are interested in reality will observe the facts, which are that huge swathes of agricultural land were destroyed in the cyclone, that a fungus destroyed much of what remained, and that Japan did indeed cut a major supply line.

Decrying opponents who present facts as 'pro-imperialist' is the typical retort on this board of those who have no argument, and no, regurgitating Heartfield's self-contradicting assertions is not a substitute for either the provision of facts or argument.

"The pretext was that they were being denied to the invading Japanese forces, but in fact it was the disloyal Bengali civilians who were being punished. If resources could not burned or blown up ‘dumping in the sea will suffice’. As well as destroying rice, troops and police were sent to destroy the boats that, in that low-lying delta were the only transport."

An assertion which is ten promptly contradicted by the evidence then presented:

"...Amery cabled him on 27 March 1942 ‘it is essential that destruction should be ruthless and should achieve without fail total denial of such resources as would assist enemy operation’."


I think it is quite widely accepted that sailors' revolt at Wilhelmshaven, which then rapidly spread across the rest of Germany overthrew the monarchy, and brought an end to the war.

I see, so the collapose of Germany had nothing to do with the failure of Germany's last ditch effort during the Spring Offensive, nothing to do with the Second Battle of Marne, nothing to do with the economy crippling blockade (and the evidence of the collapse of the Central Powers also, I guess, wasn't evident during the 100 Days Campaign, didn't begin with the capitulation of Bulgaria in September 1918 (followed by the Ottoman Empire in October, and within days the Austro-Hungarian Empire) ad infinitum) all of which preceded the outbreak of the German Revolution?

It is strange to see Nazi the propaganda myth, that German collapse in the First World War was the product of backstabbing reds and socialists, as opposed to the material realities of the German military and economic situation evident to all informed observed from August 1918.

[Rurkel]

I don't think that there can be much debate when it comes to British authorities exercising a callous and criminally negligent policy regarding the food supply in Bengal, though.

[Devrim]

And those who are interested in reality will observe the facts, which are that huge swathes of agricultural land were destroyed in the cyclone, that a fungus destroyed much of what remained, and that Japan did indeed cut a major supply line.

I don't think that famines in the modern world are natural disasters. I think they are man made disasters. Britain exported food from Bangledesh while people starved.


...regurgitating Heartfield's self-contradicting assertions is not a substitute for either the provision of facts or argument.

"The pretext was that they were being denied to the invading Japanese forces, but in fact it was the disloyal Bengali civilians who were being punished. If resources could not burned or blown up ‘dumping in the sea will suffice’. As well as destroying rice, troops and police were sent to destroy the boats that, in that low-lying delta were the only transport."

An assertion which is ten promptly contradicted by the evidence then presented:

"...Amery cabled him on 27 March 1942 ‘it is essential that destruction should be ruthless and should achieve without fail total denial of such resources as would assist enemy operation’."

If that is the biggest contradiction you can find there then you are clutching at straws. The fact that a British officer during the war and a writer today have a different opinion about the reasons for a policy doesn't mean that it wasn't a policy that had murderous results.


I see, so the collapose of Germany had nothing to do with the failure of Germany's last ditch effort during the Spring Offensive, nothing to do with the Second Battle of Marne, nothing to do with the economy crippling blockade (and the evidence of the collapse of the Central Powers also, I guess, wasn't evident during the 100 Days Campaign, didn't begin with the capitulation of Bulgaria in September 1918 (followed by the Ottoman Empire in October, and within days the Austro-Hungarian Empire) ad infinitum) all of which preceded the outbreak of the German Revolution?

All of these things are interconnected. If the Germans had been winning the war, the sailors may well have not revolted.. It was the revolt though that overthrew the monarchy, and brought in a new government, which then felt forced to make peace.

Devrim

[Invader Zim]

I don't think that there can be much debate when it comes to British authorities exercising a callous and criminally negligent policy regarding the food supply in Bengal, though.

Certainly. There is no such thing as a wholly 'natural' famine that results in demographical collapse in the modern era. Food shortage does not immidately translate into a humanitarian crisis without endemic policy and administrative failure, typically the product of callous disregard, parsimony and staggering ignorance, on the part of government and officialdom. However, this did not create the famine, a series of natural disasters created the shortage and administrative ineptitude and bad policy was a contributing reason why a disasterous shortage was able to develop into a full blown crisis. But, of course, the extent to which that latter fault lies entirely with the token British administration in India, or also with the vastly greater local administrative elite and bourgeoisie is a more interesting question. However, at the end of the day, without the natural disasters there would have been no crisis for officials to fail to resolve.


If that is the biggest contradiction you can find there then you are clutching at straws. The fact that a British officer during the war and a writer today have a different opinion about the reasons for a policy doesn't mean that it wasn't a policy that had murderous results.
Hardly, the author's central thesis in the passage you quoted was that the slash-and-burn policy, which no rightminded historian actually argues was the cause of the Bengal Famine, contends that this was a punative measure to attack an unruly local population, yet the actual evidence cited on this issue promptly contradicts that assertion.



All of these things are interconnected. If the Germans had been winning the war, the sailors may well have not revolted.. It was the revolt though that overthrew the monarchy, and brought in a new government, which then felt forced to make peace.

Germany would have been forced to make peace anyway, a fact that the High Command was well aware of (Hindenburg informed the Kaiser that the war was lost on 29 September and had been saying the same thing to colleagues since August). The question was not if, as you seem to believe, but how soon and with how many political cards left to play to get Germany a better armistice. In short, with or without the German Revolution, Germany had lost the First World War and lost and lost it without question. The Revolution might have dictated the precise timing of German capitulation, but nobody with even half an idea about the position of Germany after August 1918 would suggest that it caused it.

[Luís Henrique]

Why? We don't know what would have happened. Nobody has an alternative history time machine.

We know very well what happened in the occupied territories.

More occupied territories -> more of what happened in the occupied territories.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Wars generally are a fight to the death, and it is generally the working class on both sides doing the dying.

Well.

No, usually wars aren't fought "to death", though evidently lots of people die in them. They are usually fought to extent to which one of the sides accomplishes its strategical or tactical objectives.

WWI and WWII were arguably "fought to death" but Vietnam, Korea, the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Balcanic wars, etc., were not.


Of course, barely twenty years early, the European, and particularly the German (and obviously Russian) working class had revolted, stopped the war, and launched massive struggles for power.

Unhappily it couldn't do anything similar in WWII; the reasons for such a failure are an important discussion, but the impossibility was very real. Merely saying that people should have done the same as twenty years earlier is completely insufficient as analysis.


There were also those who told those at Zimmerwald in 1915 that their ideas were 'idealistic hogwash'.

And they were of course wrong, as the events that followed showed. "Events" that were remarkably absent in WWII.

Luís Henrique

[Devrim]

Hardly, the author's central thesis in the passage you quoted was that the slash-and-burn policy, which no rightminded historian actually argues was the cause of the Bengal Famine, contends that this was a punative measure to attack an unruly local population, yet the actual evidence cited on this issue promptly contradicts that assertion.

A slash and burn policy was instituted. While it may not have been the cause of the famines (I don't know enough to comment), I am sure that destroying crops, and producing refuges would not have helped. Neither would a policy of exporting food during a famine. As it stated in that extract from Heartfield's book:


Linlithgow told Chief Minister Hug in January of 1943 that he ‘simply must produce some rice out of Bengal for Ceylon even if Bengal itself went hungry’.


the slash-and-burn policy, which no rightminded historian actually argues was the cause of the Bengal Famine

I have come across more than a few Bengalis who argue that the famine was caused by the Brits. They probably weren't 'rightminded historians' though.

As you say:


There is no such thing as a wholly 'natural' famine that results in demographical collapse in the modern era.


Germany would have been forced to make peace anyway, a fact that the High Command was well aware of (Hindenburg informed the Kaiser that the war was lost on 29 September and had been saying the same thing to colleagues since August). The question was not if, as you seem to believe, but how soon and with how many political cards left to play to get Germany a better armistice. In short, with or without the German Revolution, Germany had lost the First World War and lost and lost it without question. The Revolution might have dictated the precise timing of German capitulation, but nobody with even half an idea about the position of Germany after August 1918 would suggest that it caused it.

So what you are saying here is that it was the working class who stopped the war. Although the balance of power had turned decisively against Germany it was the working class that stopped it when they did.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Well.

No, usually wars aren't fought "to death", though evidently lots of people die in them. They are usually fought to extent to which one of the sides accomplishes its strategical or tactical objectives.

WWI and WWII were arguably "fought to death" but Vietnam, Korea, the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Balcanic wars, etc., were not.

Yes, I know. It was a play on words.


Unhappily it couldn't do anything similar in WWII; the reasons for such a failure are an important discussion, but the impossibility was very real. Merely saying that people should have done the same as twenty years earlier is completely insufficient as analysis.

This is much clearer with twenty-twenty hindsight. You are obviously right, yet many on the left didn't realise it at the time, and thought that a similar situation was coming again. My point was that it didn't appear idealistic to them at the time. It seemed like a possibility, and to some currents even a strong likelihood. That we now know how it turned out gives us a privileged position to sit in judgement, but communists at the time didn't.

Devrim

[Luís Henrique]

Yes, I know. It was a play on words.

Fair enough.

There is a problem, though, in many analysis of international conflict by leftist theorists, in that they ignore this aspect of wars.

Here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2553389&postcount=62), for instance, I discuss a quite famous paragraph by Trotsky, and I hope I have been able to show that it posits a hypothetical war between Brazil and Britain as a complete abstraction.


This is much clearer with twenty-twenty hindsight.

Hindsight is evidently wonderful.


You are obviously right, yet many on the left didn't realise it at the time, and thought that a similar situation was coming again.

And they were wrong.


My point was that it didn't appear idealistic to them at the time.

I don't think it was idealistic, at all. Except to the extent that a naïve belief in history repeating itself is "idealistic". Biggest problem, to me, seems to have been a replacement of actual analysis by "general laws of history", schemes about "productive forces", "third period", etc, etc, etc, which were all rooted in the quasi-religious belief that capitalism was destroyng itself automatically, that victory was guaranteed, that we didn't need to understand reality beyond a very simplistic notion about the contradictions of capitalism.


It seemed like a possibility, and to some currents even a strong likelihood. That we now know how it turned out gives us a privileged position to sit in judgement, but communists at the time didn't.

Yes. What I am afraid of is that we are still refusing to properly analyse situations. People are still deluding themselves that history is some kind of automatic machine that dispenses with actual human action. In my opinion, this is a recipe to failure.

****************

More on topic, I think it is important that we realise how exactly WWII was a very different war from WWI, even if the former was also quite obviously a continuation of the latter. And I mean different in several ways, such as different technologies (tanks and planes), different military doctrines (Guderian, above all), different conceptions and delusions about war (from the naïve enthusiasm and the delusion of a quick war in 1914 to a generalised disgust with war and a myth of the preeminence of defensiveness in 1939), different war aims, and a different relation between the aims of the diverse military actors (a very sharp increase in the importance of ideology, for instance, and a visible difference between the aims (in the very nature of these aims, indeed) of Nazi Germany as opposed to both the Soviet Union and the Western allies, while in WWI each military actor aimed more or less the same, just in reverse).

Without understanding these differences, I fear we won't be able to understand why it wasn't possible to effectively oppose WWII in the same way and with the same tactics that were more or less successful in opposing WWI. Without realising that these differences existed, that different wars are alwasy different and need to be opposed in different, innovative ways, I fear, even more, that we are going to delude ourselves about future wars in similar ways, and make any future bloodshed of our class-comrades meaningless and useless.

It is said that generals always fight the previous war; it would seem that communists also have the bad habit of opposing wars that are already over, instead of opposing those that we are involved in.

Luís Henrique