From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 21, 21 May 1950, pp. 1 & 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
By courtesy, international diplomatic gatherings of the powers are called peace conferences. It would take a lot of courtesy to call the London Conference of the that name. As frankly as is possible for diplomats and statesmen today, the item on its agenda was WAR: HOW TO PREPARE FOR IT.
The communiqué on Germany has meaning only under that head.
The press has headlined the “concessions to Germany.” These have been greeted in anticipation by Chancellor Adenauer. Only in anticipation, because even the concessions to German sovereignty were promised only in the vaguest form and even the promises are not to be spelled out till September 1.
Actually, the main point of the Big Three communique does not lie here. It is, rather, the announcement that Germany is to remain militarily occupied by foreign troops in permanence.
“Permanence,” of course, is a long time, and it is doubtful whether the term can be used for anything in the A-bomb world of today. Specifically, Germany is to remain occupied for the duration of the cold war. This, in turn, will last until the beginning of the hot war or until the governments of the two imperialist war blocs are swept out by their people.
In other words, the return of German national independence is indefinitely postponed until doomsday – literally.
Once again, the Western powers give the Stalinists weapons which those puppets of Russian totalitarianism could not possibly forge for themselves.
Once again, in the name of military considerations (which were the only decisive considerations for the world rulers who met at London), Western capitalism showed itself impotent to fight Stalinism in the only way it can be beaten for the advancement of democracy and freedom – by the POLITICAL weapon of permitting democracy and freedom to the people they wish to mobilize against the enemy.
Once again the Western capitalist powers saved the Russians from the hole into which they had fallen through their recent announcement that one million German prisoners of war will never be returned to their country.
Chancellor Adenauer is gleeful at the prospect of concessions, but he is the chancellor of the German industrialists and not of the German people. The people will ask themselves: If Germany had been the victor in the recent war, had occupied the United States, and then had announced occupation in permanence, what would have been the screams of the capitalist democrats at this new barbaric innovation of Nazism, unheard of before in modern times?
The German people want independence, not merely elimination of the “inconveniences” of the occupation fwhat a term, invented by the Big Three conference, for the denial of a nation’s liberty and sovereignty!).
They showed that so unmistakably at the time of the last German election that the U.S. press was full of. agonized cries at the “rebirth of nationalism” – which was per se equated to neo-Nazism. Adenauer, in order to get himself elected, had to talk along those lines, vying with the Social-Democrats in assertions of the country’s right to freedom. All that has been as quickly forgotten by the German counterparts of Truman, Bevin and Schuman as the Atlantic Charter was forgotten by the Western rulers.
This is what will be exploited by the Russian rivals for dictatorship over Germany, in their own democratic and lying way. It will do only a minimum of good, however, to be able to prove with impeccable evidence that the Russians are lying and hypocritical in exploiting the issue.
What is the pretext for this neo-barbaric innovation of permanent occupation? So thin a veil was thrown over it that it would not even satisfy the cops at a burlesque show. The show at London did not even satisfy the New York Times correspondent, Raymond Daniell, who straight-facedly pointed out that the Big Three communique blatantly contradicted itself, in the crude manner hitherto supposed to be the peculiar talent of the Russians.
Consider, for example, the following four key paragraphs from the communiqué, the first of which flatly makes one statement and the last makes a diametrically contradictory one. One of them is a lie.
“This regime is imposed on the Germans and on the Allies by the consequences of the division of Germany and of the international position; until this situation is modified it must be retained in accordance with the common interests of Germany and of Europe.
“The Western powers desire to see the pace of progress toward this end as rapid as possible. Progress will depend upon the degree of confident and frank cooperation displayed by the Government and the people of the Federal Republic.
“In the first place the pace will be determined by the extent to which the Allies can be satisfied that their own security is safeguarded by the development in Germany of a desire for peace and friendly association with themselves.
“In the second place the pace will be set by the rate at which Germany advances toward a condition in which true democracy governs and the just liberties of the individual are assured. Therefore, the Western powers wish to emphasize most strongly that the natural desire of uie German people to secure a relaxation of controls and the restoration of the sovereignty of their country depends for its satisfaction only upon the efforts of the German people themselves and of their government.”
The first paragraph is the one which makes clear that the occupation will exist as long as Russia is in Eastern Germany. The last says its end depends “only” on the German people. In between is the threat that the German people had better “behave themselves.” This open bullying threat is made in exactly those two words by what the Times terms “reliable sources” – who are quoted anonymously from Frankfort, Germany, coincident with the arrival in that city of U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy.
Which is the truth?
“According to reliable sources, the security interests of the Allies in retaining the state of War is now frankly directed toward the Russians rather than the Germans.” – N.Y. Times correspondent from Germany, Jack Raymond, May 16.
“The three foreign ministers said today, in a statement communicated to the Bonn government prior to publication, that the German people could blame Soviet policy for this delay.” – N.Y. Times correspondent from London, Raymond Daniell, May 15.
The thin pretext used is that the state of war cannot be ended, a peace treaty signed, and the occupation encjed, as long as Germany remains divided; this division is solely the fault of the Russians; therefore as long as there is a cold war with Russia, there must be a technical state of war with Germany.
This is simply nonsense, well worthy of the mumbo-jumbo in a Cominform resolution. There is no good reason why a treaty of peace cannot be signed with Western Germany separately, and with Eastern Germany in addition if possible. Acheson, Bevin and Schuman simply did not want to say openly: We will remain in occupation in Germany because we want to, because we need Germany as an advanced miltary base, and it is for this reason that the German people cannot have their independence.
But the German people (not represented by Adenauer) do not want to become the West’s permanent base against Russia. And there is not one, but two, forces in Germany ready to capitalize upon this. We have mentioned the Stalinists. Their weakness is that the German people in their mass are not going to be convinced that Russia’s intentions are any more honorable. If the people’s choice were limited to Adenauerism or Stalinism, there could be no way out for them.
There is a second reactionary force which can capitalize on the role of Adenauer. This is the neo- Nazi movement.
Officially, the U.S. views this political tendency with horror. In practice, control of the commanding heights of German economy has been returned, by the U.S. occupation, to exactly the industrialist and financial forces from which this movement springs, while it seeks to utilize the national-independence sentiment of the people. The Big Three declaration will bring grist to the mill not only of the Stalinists but of the organizers of reactionary nationalism – while the American press writes editorials about how the German people obviously can’t be trusted – look how the neo-Nazis are blooming ...
A struggle for national independence – the elementary democratic right of a people – which remains in Germany either in the hands of the Communist Party or of the reactionary neo-Nazi nationalists (or, as is not at all unlikely, of a working coalition of the two!) would be a catastrophe for the German people. But the only progressive choice is right before them.
There is one and only one force in Germany which can and should lead the fight for an independent united Germany in a democratic direction. This is the strong labor and socialist movement.
During the last German election, the Social-Democratic Party under Kurt Schumacher was unequivocal enough in its denunciation of the occupation and demand for independence. The only news so far reported on Schumacher’s reaction in the present situation does not bear out the fiery speeches he made then, under the pressure of the people:
“He said it [the communiqué], gave no reason to become ‘emotional’ and deplored its failure to render specific plans on matters ranging from the limitations of shipbuilding to the all-German elections.”
If that is all he says, it is up to the ranks of the Social-Democratic Party. The German socialist movement is the most powerful single organized force in the country. Better than anyone else, its militants know that Stalinism cannot be fought by any political tendency bearing the table of the Allied quisling camp. Better than anyone else, also, they know that the Allied occupation cannot be fought by any truck with the Communist. Party and the camp followers of Russia.
In Germany, almost in Germany alone, the politics of the Third Camp is the immediate, clearly visible and key question of domestic policy, as well as of war or peace. And the politics of the Third Camp approach is indivisibly tied up with the demand for national independence, an end to the occupation, an end to the conversion of Germany into a permanent Allied garrison, a clear appeal to the people of Eastern Germany that the alternative to Russian oppression is not submission to national oppression by the West.
Last updated on 7 January 2024