Reading notes on Chapters 1 and 2 of The meaning of the Second World War By Ernest Mandel [1986]

The meaning of the Second World War

By Ernest Mandel

Verso: 1986

Chapter 1 The Stakes

1876 and 1914

....creation of colonial empires following the international thrust of capital proved to be only a temporary answer to the problem of the growing disproportion between development of the productive forces and the political form within which this  development had taken place: the nation-state.1 Given the poverty and low growth rates of the colonies, their demand for manufactured goods was inherently limited; they were hardly a substitute for the lucrative markets to be found in the industrial countries themselves, whose systematic closure - via the high tariffs on imported goods and capital increasingly imposed by the end of the nineteenth century - accelerated the colonial drive.

....Germany.... assumed the industrial leadership of Europe and hence was in a position to challenge a colonial share-out favourable to Britain and France by force of arms.

....World War One in no way 'solved' the growing contradiction between economy and politics within the capitalist world.

1918-1939

....military and above all economic conflicts that dominated the twenties and thirties and paved the way to WWII, they did not create these problems - any more than 'reckless' planning by the Austrian, Russian, German or French general staffs caused WWI.

....the target of the Japanese war drive was China, the most populous country in the world. Japan's occupation of Manchuria in 1931, and the all-out war it unleashed against China in 1937, made armed conflict with the USA inevitable, since the latter was resolved at all costs to prevent the transformation of China into a Japanese colony or dependency. At a deeper level, the American-Japanese conflict was fueled by the grave economic crisis of 1929-32 in both countries. It flowed from the perception that a long-term solution involved a decisive break with economic isolationism (a shift from growth centered on the home market), and hence the need to achieve for oneself (or deny others) strategic insertion in the world market via hegemony over a substantial part of the world, as a  necessary step on the path to world dominance....

....the stake was the international hegemony of one imperialist  power, to be won and maintained by an active combination of military conquest or pressure and economic domination or plunder -  the exact mix depending on the relative strength or weakness of the individual contestants, deriving from such inner constraints as the  level of economic development and the character of political institutions.

....role which interimperialist wars have played in the internationalization of the capitalist economy and reduces them to the pursuit of - or a reaction to - violent conquest. But the most violent and murderous cases of imperialist aggression are expressions of relative weakness rather than strength. The imperialist conquest of the world is not only, or even mainly, a drive to occupy huge territories permanently with millions of soldiers. On the contrary, the motor of the Second World War was the major capitalist states' need to dominate the economy of whole continents through capital investment, preferential trade agreements, currency regulations and political hegemony. The aim of the war was the subordination not only of the less developed world, but also of other industrial states, whether enemies or allies, to one hegemonic power's priorities of capital accumulation.

....World hegemony, in other words, can be exercised only through a combination of military strength and economic superiority.

....inner logic of imperialism, which can be seen quite clearly in the planning councils of the warring states. Oil, rubber, copper, nickel, tin, manganese, iron ore, cotton, etc. had to be secured; sea-lanes had to be kept open to ship these home; workers and forced labour had to be mobilized, housed and fed; exports had to be expanded and foisted upon reluctant clients; foreign competitors had to be dragooned into partnerships or simply absorbed; opponent's exports had to be cut and their populations starved. The war indeed showed itself to be nothing but the continuation of politics by other means.

....In the world organised by capital based on nation-states, war is the mechanism for the final resolution of differences.

....In the final analysis, imperialist expansion expresses an insatiable thirst for surplus value, its production and realization - the snowball dynamic of capital accumulation. But qualitatively increased surplus-value production is possible only through a specific relationship with wage labour, a subordination of the working class to capital. Hence a strategic integration of the working class in the metropolitan centres is a necessary component of the imperialist countries' ability to pursue the struggle for world dominance. The world that emerged from the 1914-1918 war was at least partially shaped by the unprecedented rise in working class self-organization and self-confidence, especially in Europe but also in the USA, during the quarter century that preceded it. The attitude of the working class to imperialist wars was therefore of importance not only to the ruling classes, but also to the future of the working class itself.

....it is also a history of counter-revolution. By 1939 the record of this counter-revolutionary consolidation was promising but uneven. The fate and evolution of the Soviet Union was particularly crucial. The revolutionary upheavals following WWI had been strong enough to prevent the restoration of capitalism in erstwhile Imperial Russia. But the fact that they produced no new victories gravely weakened the Soviet working class: the Soviet republic had survived, but in a greatly distorted form. This in turn contributed to the impotence of the European working class in the inter-war period.

....A downturn of revolution gave the green light for a new onslaught against the labour movement as soon as the crisis demanded this. The stepping-stones towards World War Two were Chiang Kai-Shek's massacre of Communist and other labour militants in Shanghai in 1927; the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s; the defeat of the Spanish republic; the collapse of the Popular Front in France. The failure of the British General Strike and the stranglehold imposed by the CIO bureaucracy upon the rising militancy of the American working class likewise played far from marginal roles in preparing the new conflict.

....real stake of WWII was the establishment of the world hegemony of one imperialist power, and that the war was also the culmination of a process of counter-revolution, should not, of course, be taken to refer solely to the particularly abhorrent role played by Hitler and German Nazism in bringing about a new world war. On the contrary, it represents a general judgement upon imperialism, as a specific form of capitalism generated by the fundamental contradiction between the internationalization and socialization of the productive process, on the one hand, and its continued organization by private and national interests, on the other….

Chapter 2 The Immediate Causes

....Trevor-Roper: 'In order to realise his ultimate aim, the restoration and extension of the lost German empire in the East, Hitler had always recognised that diplomacy could not be enough. Ultimately there must be war: war against Russia'.

....once the German army occupied Prague in March 1939. From that point onwards British imperialism (taking a reluctant French ally into tow) was determined to resist by force any further German expansion in Eastern Europe. Hitler knew this. But he did not want to forego the advance in modern weapons he still enjoyed for a couple of years. He deliberately risked war with Britain by attacking Poland on 1

....The responsibility of German imperialism in the outbreak and extension of the Second World War was overwhelming - in contrast to the situation in July-August 1914, when all the major powers more or less blundered into a world war

....German imperialism, did intend to create a new order in Europe - and this in turn made war inevitable.

....What is basically correct in [A.J.P.] Taylor's approach is his understanding that German imperialism was not intrinsically different from other imperialisms: all are stained by blood, treachery and odious crimes against humanity. But to recognize the fact that you live in a gangsters' world does not imply the conclusion that a specific crime is not committed by a particular gangster at a given moment. There cannot be the slightest doubt that German imperialism deliberately and brazenly unleashed the war against Poland, and therewith the Second World War, on 1 September1939. Whatever the responsibilities of the world capitalist system as a whole, and of the other imperialist powers, that particular act was the work of the German ruling class led by the Fuhrer and his military henchmen.

....[French] demoralization corresponded to a material reality and to specific social interests. France enjoyed political-military predominance on the European continent at the end of World War I. But that status in no way corresponded to the real economic balance of forces on that continent, let alone on a world scale. Neither French capital nor French industry could sustain armies in Western and Eastern Europe ready to crush any German attempt at regaining the upper hand. If anything, the disastrous financial and diplomatic consequences of Poincare's occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 only confirmed the total discrepancy between French diplomatic ambitions and economic power. Subsequent absence of political will was a result - and not a cause - of material weakness.

Furthermore, large sectors of the French ruling class were terrified by the potential strength of the French working class, exemplified by the general strike of June 1936. To eliminate the 'Communist danger' became an obsession with many of them, taking precedence over any international design. They increasingly viewed parliamentary democracy as an intolerable burden that prevented any effective elimination of trade-union strength. Laval was the embodiment of this outlook, which enjoyed large scale support inside parliament. Petain was widely deemed the ideal figure for a new order, even before the war had started. In a report sent to Rome by the Duce's main agent in Paris - Lavoni -and recently discovered in the Italian archives, Laval is reported as saying on 17 March 1938 that he was about to form a national government under Petain. When asked what would be the reaction of the Communists, he answered by making a gesture which could mean either putting the screws on them or breaking their necks.

Because of his tiny parliamentary majority, Paul Reynaud, when he became Prime Minister on 23 Mary 1940, included several conservative sympathizers with such projects in his Cabinet.19 Fear of a workers' uprising in Paris, even after the defeat of the September 1938 general strike, remained intense. 'Weygand and the others were afraid of a Commune in Paris', Admiral Darlan told Raymond Tournoux. This was the main motivation behind Weygand's desire to end the war at any price - one fully shared by Petain and Laval. 'If the morale of the Army was to be preserved and a revolutionary movement in Paris avoided, the government has to assert its will to remain in the capital at all costs, to keep control of the situation, even at the risk of being taken by the enemy. "The issue is one of internal order and dignity" declared Weygand.

.....Chamberlain's 'appeasement' was essentially a function of London's judgement of the time necessary to overcome Germany's lead in rearmament - Hitler having started in 1933, while British imperialism seriously began to rearm only three to four years later. In other words, it was an illusory and foolhardy attempt to outmaneuver Hitler, not an acceptance of a Europe dominated by Berlin. By contrast with the French bourgeoisie, the British ruling class was in no way demoralized or defeatist where the defence of Britain's world position - in the first place that of the British Empire itself - was at stake. The difference between its Chamberlain and Churchill wings was not one between those ready to capitulate before German imperialism and those who were not. It was a conflict over the most effective way to preserve the Empire and to oppose Hitler: now or later.

....Japanese imperialism was likewise engaged in a step-by-step conquest of China - while aiming at South East Asia as the next prize. From the point of view of the more radical imperialist circles in and around the Imperial Army, such a course did not necessarily imply an open conflict with Britain and certainly not with the USA. Indeed, the conquest of China increasingly appeared as a formidable undertaking - much more complicated, protracted and costly than the Japanese warlords had calculated. Here again the preferred variant was to have faits accomplis recognised by London and Washington, rather than to embark upon a simultaneous confrontation with China, Britain, the USA and possibly the USSR too.

....Tokyo's course was largely determined by overwhelming economic necessity. Before the war, Japan imported 66% of its oil from the USA. Ten million tons of the coke needed for its steel plants in China, all of the bauxite it needed for aircraft production, all the nickel for its weapons programme, all its tin and its rubber,60% of its copper and nearly all its industrial salts came to Japan from the outside. Virtually all these goods could be supplied from the Dutch East Indies, Indochina, Malaya, the Philippines or China.

....American imperialism considered a future conflict with Japan for hegemony over the Pacific-East Asia area (including China) as in the long run unavoidable. Under these circumstances, it would be foolish to let a future enemy first consolidate formidable conquests, allowing him to double, triple or quadruple his industrial, financial and military strength, and thus to enable him to unleash the final confrontation under conditions much worse for the USA than the current relationship of forces.

....American imperialism's determination to involve itself decisively in the redrafting of the international political order has to be considered as the third immediate cause of World War Two (the other two being Germany's and Japan's thrusts beyond their national borders). 

....US imperialism had at its disposal tremendous reserves of unemployed capital, productive capacity and manpower. The attempt to mobilize them via the New Deal (i.e.an orientation towards the internal market), while lifting economy and society out of their worst crisis, was to a large extent a failure. In 1938, there were again twelve million unemployed. The turn towards the world market became imperative. Capital had to be invested and lent abroad. Goods had to be sold abroad, to qualitatively larger extent than before 1929 or between 1933and1939 (as indeed they would be after 1945).22 But first the world had to be made safe for such giant capital and commodity exports.

....it was hoped that Japan's initial successes, coupled with those of her ally Germany, would influence Washington to seek a compromise peace that would give her as table and secure sphere of influence in East and South Asia. Washington, however, was dead set against any recognition of something that might lead to Japanese hegemony in Asia

....The very isolation of the Soviet Republic, and the internal convulsions which it generated had given free rein to inter-imperialist struggles, so that the opening of the Eastern Front primarily derived from the desire of German imperialism to strengthen its hand vis a vis its Western competitors. Within the USSR itself an explosive contradiction appeared between the strengthening of the USSR's industrial and military infrastructure under the Five Year Plan on the one hand, and the grave political crisis into which Stalin's purges and his reckless diplomatic game plunged the country, on the other. The second process decapitated the Red Army, disorganized the defences of the country, delivered Poland and Europe to Hitler, and facilitated the Nazi attack on the USSR.

....that Germany was a potential enemy was firmly suppressed at the important chiefs of staff war study conference of December 1940, as was any notion of the possibility of war in the near future. The training plans released after the conference were therefore not the product of any in-depth study of the state and needs of the army, nor did they form part of any coherent war plan. The 'State Frontier Defence Plan 1941', which the General Staff released in April 1941, and with which the Soviet Union entered the war two months later, committed the Red Army to defend the forward frontiers of the Soviet Union and paid minimal attention to strategic defence.

....Stalin gave the green light to Hitler's aggression, temporarily saving the Third Reich from the nightmare of a prolonged war on two fronts. Russian historiography continues to deny this - by keeping silent about the secret protocol of 27 August 1939. Likewise, it draws a veil over Stalin's formal opposition to the survival of any Polish state.