Atrocities—Cynical Ruling Class Attitude
For weeks on end the British Press carried horrifying accounts and pictures of atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps; mass starvation, brutality, sadistic cruelties perpetrated by degenerate guards on helpless men, women and children, prisoners buried alive, tortured by solitary confinement and so on. Some of the worsened conditions of recent months may have been due, as one of the German guards said, to transport difficulties—the stupendous Allied bombing of roads and railways can hardly have failed to produce disorganisation—but this does not affect the main facts of appalling brutalities over a long period. But if the facts are substantially agreed this is certainly not true of the conclusions that can be drawn from them. Far from accepting the views of many newspapers and capitalist politicians we deny their right to raise hands in holy horror; or to attempt to fasten the responsibility on the German workers. On several counts the British ruling class and their spokesmen have not the slightest justification for the attitude they adopt.
Mr. John Gordon in the Sunday Express (April 22nd). recalls that this is not a new story. “It has been going on in Germany for something like 15 years,” and the Sunday Times correspondent who visited the Belsen camp writes: “It is a thing you read about and refused to believe in from 1933 onwards.”—(Sunday Times, April 22nd). A News-Chronicle correspondent, under the heading “Guilty Germans” makes a specific charge against the German workers that their guilt was that of “supine surrender” to the Nazis and that their slavishness was brought on themselves “when they failed to seize their chance in 1918.” (News-Chronicle, April 24th). It is all very well for these charges to be made, but what were the newspapers and politicians (with a very few exceptions) saying and doing in 1933 when Nazi atrocities began, or to go further back, in the years from 1922 when Italian Fascist atrocities began? Some, like the late Lord Rothermere were carrying on active propaganda in support of the Nazis and Fascists. They knew all the facts about atrocities (at that time perpetrated against German and Italian workers), but they either denied the truth or glossed it over, or maintained that it was a purely internal affair of the German and Italian Governments. Here was the late Lord Rothermere’s declaration : —
“These ranters . . . have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call ‘Nazi atrocities’ which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consist merely of a few isolated acts of violence, such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalised, multiplied, and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny. If one turns to the English newspapers of the years 1921 and 1922, one finds that the old women of both sexes in our country were just as hysterical then about alleged Fascist ‘outrages’ in Italy. . . . the minor misdeeds of individual Nazis will be submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany.”—(Daily Mail, July 10th, 1933).
It suited British capitalist policy in those years to give support to Mussolini and Hitler so there was no protest about concentration camp horrors and no attempt to hold those two individuals responsible. Instead we had stuff like Mr. Churchill’s account of his interview with Mussolini, reported in the Times (January 21st, 1927):—
“I could not help being charmed, like so many other people have been by Signor Mussolini’s gentle and simple bearing and by his calm, detached poise in spite of so many burdens and dangers.”
Lord Rothermere was similarly affected by Hitler :
“He exudes good fellowship. He is simple, unaffected, and obviously sincere. . . . His courtesy is beyond words, and men and woman alike are captivated by his ready and disarming smile. He is a man of rare culture:.”—(Daily Mail, May, 1938, quoted In “Socialism Can Defeat Nazism.”—I.L.P.).
Others, like the Beaverbrook Press, and many Conservative politicians, were preaching for British capitalism the line of cutting off from all Continental entanglements (meaning in effect let Germany and Russia fight it out), so they were against any interference in Germany’s internal affairs, and German concentration camps were an internal affair. It was only when capitalist interests were involved in the struggle with German capitalism that these gentlemen discovered that Nazi brutalities were horrifying. When it was only working class organisations that were being crushed in Italy and Germany, British capitalism did nothing, made no protest, and was utterly indifferent; in some quarters actively approving.
Russia, too, was following the same line. Just after the Nazis came to power Russia renewed her agreements, with Germany, and Litvinov for the Russian Government had this to say in shamefaced defence of Russian policy :—
“We, of course, are sensitive to the sufferings of our German comrades, but we Marxists can be reproached least of all for permitting our feelings to dominate our policy. . . . We do not interfere in the internal affairs of Germany, just as in those of other countries, and our relations with her are determined not by her internal, but her foreign policy. We want to have the best relations with Germany, as with other states.”—(Moscow News, January 6, 1934).
As for the charge that the German workers were supine and that they ought to have seized their chance in 1918, does the News-Chronicle recall the attitude of the British ruling class towards those German workers who were not supine? The Daily Mail was urging that Karl Liebknecht should be shot “like a mad dog,” and the Allied authorities, put pressure on Germany by threatening to withhold essential supplies of food and other materials unless the authorities suppressed the insurgent German workers.
Ruling class sensitiveness to atrocities is not based on sentiments of humanity, but is merely a weapon in the struggle to protect capitalist interests against rival capitalist States. Their horror consequently changes direction along with foreign policy, it is worked up or allowed to subside according to the needs of the moment. At one period it is directed against Turkey or the Boers, at another against Russia or France. It is always on tap, ready to be turned on or off as interests dictate.
It was, of course, not the British Government, but mainly working class organisations that protested against the sufferings of Boer women and children in the Concentration camps established by the British authorities in South Africa during the War with the Boer Republics.
A British historian: G. M. Trevelyan has this smug account of it. “Finally, to catch the farmers in these vast spaces where the scattered population was on their side, it was found that no method would answer but to destroy their farms and concentrate their families in camps. Unfortunately many of the children died there.” (British History in the Nineteenth Century,” 1922 (p. 422).
Michael Davitt in his “Boer Fight for Freedom,” (1902, p. 587), says that there were 45,000 women and 50.000 children “inside of barbed wire fences surrounded by British soldiers, arms in hand,” and that “14,000 of these children have died already of sickness induced by the cold and the privations inflicted upon them in one year.”
In the first World War much was made of German atrocities, including the fictitious, but very effective propaganda story of the Corpse Factories in which German dead were supposed to he boiled down for oils and fats, etc. It was not until 1925, when British policy had veered against France and towards Germany, that the story was dropped. Only then did Sir Austin Chamberlain announce in the House of Commons that “The Chancellor of the German Reich has authorised me to say, on the authority of the German Government, that there never was any foundation for it. I need scarcely add, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, I accept this denial, and I trust that this false report will not again he revived.” (Hansard, 2nd December. 1925). The German Government, by the way, had been denying the story for eight years and it was the British Government in the first place which had circulated the false report.
Memories are short or the use made by the other capitalists of atrocities would be realised. In 1927 when Mr. Churchill found Mussolini such a charming man, Russia was still a main worry of the British Foreign Office, and Churchill was therefore not concerned to denounce the “bestial appetites and passion” of Italian Fascism, but applied those words to what he called “Leninism.”
In 1919 Mr. Churchill, as Minister for War, had told the House of Commons that he had been looking at photographs of Bolshevik atrocities and found them “of a very painful nature.”—(Hansard, November 20th, 1919). That year the Foreign Office published a White Book dealing with alleged Bolshevik atrocities and some of the contents of the book were recounted by Mr. Clement Edwards, M.P., in the House of Commons, on April 2nd, 1919. In Mr. Edwards’ view they showed that the Lenin regime was synonymous with “mad anarchy” and “wicked cruelty beyond any possible conception of any British mind at least.” Among the cases cited was that of 12 labourers who were alleged to have been cast alive into a hole in which were hot slag deposits; naval officers burnt alive on planks which were slowly pushed into furnaces inches at a time; others tortured with jets of scalding steam followed by exposure to freezing air; men bound, put into barges and the barges sunk.
Another alleged Bolshevik atrocity was the employment of Chinese executioners, “who were sawing prisoners into pieces.”—(Hansard, April 16th, 1919 (col. 2,978). About this last story Colonel Wedgwood pointed out that it was based on what an anonymous Englishman was told at Stockholm by an anonymous Estonian—nevertheless it was good enough for our Foreign Office. He also pointed out that the stories about the Bolsheviks were “worse than any atrocity stories we have seen during the war against Germany.” He should not have been surprised. Capitalist Governments are not concerned with atrocities as such, but with the use that may be made of reports, true or false, proved or merely rumoured, against the enemy of the moment.
In “The Russian Soviet Republic,” by E. A. Ross, Professor of Sociology, Wisconsin University (Allen & Unwin, 1923), there are further particulars of alleged atrocities reported in the British and American press, including such incidents as 38,000 Russian soldiers, returned from imprisonment in Germany being starved to death in a Russian Concentration Camp (New York Times, 24th February, 1919). The newspaper’s correspondent passed on the statement of his informant who “saw train load after train load of corpses being transferred from the camp to the municipal refuse destruction furnaces.” (p. 280).
In the same issue was a report of “impalement on wooden stakes, torture by flame, and mutilations too hideous to relate.”
Just as Germany was the target from 1914 for many years until it was finally dropped in 1925, and is again the target now, so also Russia was alleged to be the worst offender for many years after 1919. All attacks on Russia stopped in 1941, but does any one doubt that with some future change of policy that tap may be turned on again in full force. Then we shall be told about existing concentration camps in Russia, not to mention the material already used only a few months ago against the Greek E.LA.S., and its Communist supporters.
Those with long memories will recall how, for a space in the early nineteen twenties, France was singled out on account of the French occupation of the German Ruhr by black troops: British foreign policy had by then diverged from close association with France.
An important aspect of the recent German atrocities is the conclusion drawn by many people that they prove the brutality and degeneracy of the German people as a whole. If they do then the world is peopled with degenerates—no nation escapes the indictment. Who invented concentration camps? The British in South Africa; and many foreign countries affected to be horrified. Were Churchill and the British Government, in 1919, right about Bolshevist atrocities? are then the Russians, as a Nation also brutal and degenerate? What of the Belgians in the Congo slaughtering or maiming native men, women and children by the thousand because they failed to bring in sufficient tribute of rubber? Or the French in their neighbouring African colony, with a like brutal record. What of the atrocities alleged against the Boers in the Boer War; against the British Black and Tans in Ireland; the Chinese in the Boxer rising and their counter charges against the occupying white troops?
The charge against whole nations will not hold. Every nation can show a certain number of people brutalised by the conditions under which they live, but the responsibility rests in every case with the authorities who deliberately train and use such people as part of the state machinery of suppression.
During the last War the British Government appointed a committee to consider and report on the evidence of outrages committed by German troops. It was presided over by the late Lord Bryce and among its members was the late H. A. L. Fisher. Mr. Francis Hirst writing to the Times (May 3, 1945), quotes from Fisher’s life of Bryce the following observation:—
“Bryce knew far too much to draw an indictment against the whole German nation. He knew that in every country there are a certain proportion of savage natures, in some countries more than in others, and that in the excitement and demoralization of war such temperaments find a free vent.”
As far as the recent Nazi atrocities are concerned we should remember that when there were in existence working class organisations opposed to the Nazi regime (and eventually suppressed by it), the ruling class in countries outside Germany who could have helped did nothing to protect them or aid them. Later on individual Germans opposed to Nazi brutalities were helpless. As a contributor writing to the Times reminds its readers (April 23rd), the large majority of the prisoners in the Nazi camp at Buchenwald, Belsen and elsewhere were Germans, and the Observer’s correspondent who interviewed a German Pastor in a village near Belsen received from him a convincing answer to his question why did the Pastor not make a protest.
“But what could they do said the little man. Preach against it? If he preached against it once his wife and children would be taken to a concentration camp.”—(Observer, April 22).
The Pastor went on to remind the correspondent that he had himself just seen what the camp was like, and asked the correspondent if he would have done anything to send his own wife and children to such a fate.
Of course the German people were responsible for voting, in large numbers, to put the Nazis into power, but the Germans can hardly be distinguished from voters of other nations in respect of credulously swallowing the extravagant and high sounding promises made by vote-catching politicians and discovering their mistake only by experience.
Moreover, there is evidence that at least some German workers were opposed to the Nazis and their methods and did what little they could. The News-Chronicle (April 21st), reports an interview with a French Army Officer who had been a prisoner in Germany. He said:—
“There was considerable anti-Nazi sentiment in the Ruhr among the workers. They have been opposed to the War I think since the start, and many of them have been cruelly punished by the Nazi for their views.” The News-Chronicle correspondent adds this :—
“I came across concrete instances of how some German workers helped the victims of the Nazis.
One working-class family in a Duesseldorf suburb has for two years hidden two Jews, feeding them out of their own rations, to save them from the Nazis.
A Polish slave worker hunted by the Gestapo for his underground activity was sheltered by a German girl who helped him in his work.”
By all means we protest against atrocities and brutality, but we do so not as an expedient according to circumstances but against atrocities and brutality wherever and whenever they occur.
It is for the working class of the whole world to see as it really is the cynical and hypocritical use made, by the capitalist class of atrocities, and not to let themselves be divided by capitalist propaganda directed against first one and then another foreign nation. It is capitalism itself that produces the worst atrocity of all—war, and which everywhere has a record of brutality towards the working class and colonial peoples in peace or in war.
Only Socialism can end it and only world working class unity can achieve that end.
H.