Fighting on all Fronts Read online

  Our struggle would not be so stubborn and so successful if the Yugoslav peoples did not see in it not only victory over fascism but also victory over all those who have oppressed and are still trying to oppress the Yugoslav peoples…if it did not have the aim of bringing freedom, equality of rights and brotherhood to all the peoples of Yugoslavia…25

  In Greece’s EAM-ELAS the same motivations were present. One female resistance fighter, speaking in the 1990s, recalled that during the struggle “we women were, socially, in a better position, at a higher level than now… Our organisation and our own [resistance] government… gave so many rights to women that only much later, decades later we were given”.26

  The French resistance had many currents but, as one study puts it, they were “virtually unanimous in predicting and declaring revolution”.27 The tone of the resistance press, which attained a daily circulation of 600,000 despite the Gestapo, was captured by this article: “the masses will not act unless they know what the aim is, and it needs to be an ideal that will justify their efforts and great enough to encourage supreme sacrifice”.28 This went far beyond driving out the Nazis and involved:

  Liberation from material servitude: hunger, squalor, the machine

  Liberation from economic servitude: the unfair distribution of wealth, crisis and unemployment

  Liberation from social servitude: money, prejudice, religious intolerance

  And the selfishness of the oppressors.29

  The Italian resistance developed in a situation where the population had had to endure decades of fascism (from 1922 onwards) while the economy was far weaker than in Germany. During the conflict living standards collapsed and malnutrition stalked the working population. In the winter of 1942-1943 mass strikes swept the industrial north and this, combined with the Allies landing in Sicily, led the king and Fascist Grand Council to depose Mussolini in the hope of extricating itself from the war. This failed as the Germans proceeded to occupy the north and reimpose the Duce through the puppet Republic of Salò. The Italian resistance for obvious reasons therefore had no allegiance to its pre-war government and its economic system. Although dominated by the communists, even the Catholic segment adopted a radical tone:

  the age of capitalism that has produced astronomical wealth and led to unspeakable misery, is in its death throes. A soulless regime encouraged the spread of poverty that was beyond belief, sabotaged the productive efforts of the people and deliberately provoked man’s inhumanity to man… From the final convulsions of this age a new era is being born, the era of the working classes…30

  Even in Britain, which was not under occupation (the Channel Islands excepted), there was enthusiasm for victory which, as Mass Observers noted, was indissolubly linked with the idea of a welfare state, a concept approved by 90 percent of people in polls.31

  There were exceptions to this pattern, of course. For example, in Poland, a country which lost more people per head of population than any other but early on suffered the brutality of German occupation in the west and Russian occupation in the east, the resistance movement took a less radical form. Poland’s extensive “underground state” encompassed a range of viewpoints from left to right and included both the “official” form of resistance discussed above and more rebellious elements. In 1944 it was the pressure of the latter that compelled the former to give up waiting for the Allies and to launch the Warsaw uprising. In Latvia the sheer weight of the opposing imperialist forces was such that any hopes of meaningful resistance were extinguished. The 1940 Russian occupation was followed a year later by a German invasion. This was generally welcomed by the population and there was even a locally generated Holocaust of 70,000 Jews which pre-dated the German Holocaust.

  Anti-colonial resistance

  The rhythm of popular resistance to imperialism in the Asian colonies differed from Europe. Here the Second World War had not initiated an era of foreign invasion but was a continuation of it. The British in India, the French in Vietnam and Dutch in Indonesia already operated with repressive brutality against subject populations. For example, India in 1919 suffered the Amritsar massacre during which some 1,000 non-violent protesters were butchered. In 1926 and 1927 Indonesian communists were arrested in their thousands and many were killed. In 1930 the French reacted to a Vietnamese nationalist attack on the Yen Bay garrison by executing many rebels and bombing villages indiscriminately.

  The Japanese offensive that launched open inter-imperialist struggle in the East did not immediately change this dynamic. In India, for example, a local army was raised to fight to preserve the chains holding the sub-continent in subjugation. The burden of feeding this force pitched Bengal into a famine costing around 2.5 million lives. India’s Congress Party had offered to assist London’s fight against the Axis in return for a promise of independence at the conclusion of war. When its offer was spurned and repression stepped up once again, the Congress Party took the road of resistance, inaugurating a “Quit India” movement in 1942. Gandhi intended to keep action within the frame of non-violent civil disobedience but after mass arrests of Congress leaders it soon escaped these confines, becoming a mass movement from below. Leadership fell to J P Narayan of the Congress Socialist Party who explained:

  India’s fight for freedom is at once anti-imperialist (and therefore antifascist for Imperialism is the parent of Fascism)… We work for the defeat of both Imperialism and Fascism by the common people of the world and by our struggle we show the way to the ending of wars and the liberation of the black, white and yellow”.32

  Britain quelled the Quit India movement but to do so it arrested 100,000 people and fired on protesters no less than 538 times, killing several thousand.

  This proved to be only a temporary solution as war severely weakened the European colonisers with France and the Netherlands occupied and Britain under attack. Taking advantage of this situation, Tokyo rapidly supplanted former colonial masters in much of south east Asia.

  In such conditions the resistance tended to be pulled in two directions. As the Quit India movement showed, some hoped that Allied rhetoric about fighting for freedom and democracy could be converted into national independence. Others, such as the Indonesian nationalist leader Sukarno and Subhas Bose, leader of the Indian National Army (INA), swallowed Japan’s claim that it was campaigning to rid Asia of white racist domination. The former worked uncritically with the Japanese till the very end of the war. Bose organised Indian army prisoners of war (POWs) into a force which invaded India alongside Japan’s army, though without success. In Vietnam, France continued to be formally in control for most of the war, though it collaborated closely with Japan. So, despite Ho Chi Minh’s efforts to cultivate links with the Allies, the resistance had no choice but to oppose both camps. Alas, it was too weak to prevent a famine, again created by wartime conditions, that cost 2 million lives in Tonkin in 1945.

  Rulers and masses interact: phase 1

  While the Second World War began as an inter-imperialist struggle, it is clear that as it progressed popular movements also developed with their own goals. Both elements were involved in combat, but shared little beyond having a common foe (although even here there were exceptions such as the INA). An important question is therefore how the two currents interacted.

  Once again certain rhythms can be detected. In Europe there was cooperation between Allied imperialism and resistance at the outset in the joint enterprise of defeating the Axis. The sheer weight of the Axis offensive left the Allied imperialists no choice but to call on all possible forces to oppose it and if resistance movements could challenge the Axis behind the lines this was welcome. The Allies were keenest to support the “respectable” resistance movements tied politically to governments-in-exile (often based in London) but since these tended to attentism, others might be considered.

  The first European resistance movement to be recognised by the Allies was the Chetniks of Yugoslavia. At that point France had been defeated, the Soviet Union and the US were still to enter combat. The British state stood alone and unable to fight on the Continent. Churchill therefore decided to back forces which could “set Europe ablaze” and to establish the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to liaise with them. At this stage Western Allied governments were prepared to work with a wide variety of movements including those dominated by communists, such as in Italy, France and Greece. However, politics remained paramount since the point, in government eyes, was to assist the inter-imperialist struggle and nothing more.

  Since many of the resistance movements were led by communists one might have expected major assistance from Moscow. Russia was so involved battling for its survival until the turn of fortunes in Stalingrad (February 1943) that military aid was unlikely but political support could have been made available. It was not. Stalin’s attitude was demonstrated graphically when the Communist International was dissolved in the same year. For him Russia’s need to work closely with other Allied governments to defeat Hitler took precedence. In its dissolution statement the Communist International declared:

  the sacred duty of the broadest masses of the people, and first and foremost of progressive workers, is to support in every way the war efforts of the governments of [Allied] countries for the sake of the speediest destruction of the Hitlerite bloc…irrespective of party or religion.33

  As the war progressed there was a cooling of relations between Allied governments and resistance movements. By the end Allied governments frequently acted with outright hostility as the ultimate purpose of the war came into focus for each side.

  The case of Poland showed the role of Allied political calculations clearly. Although Hitler’s invasion was the official reason for Britain entering the war, while the struggle was in the balance London’s attitude was generally influ
enced by Moscow which, following the Hitler-Stalin pact, regarded the country as its to conquer. So Western aid to the resistance was limited. Although by late 1944 the Polish resistance had killed eight times more German troops than the Greek resistance and at least 15 times more than the French, it received respectively just 10 percent and 5.6 percent of the supplies committed to these countries.34

  In the Far East resistance movements were unlikely to receive support from Allied powers either because those powers were themselves already defeated (such as France or the Netherlands) or because a strong resistance movement would be able to throw off the shackles of colonialism once the war ended. Only the US, which had yet to establish formal political influence in the area, dabbled with the resistance movements in places like China and Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was even temporarily counted as a US agent! But Washington concluded before long that its interests lay in bolstering the former colonial masters rather than forces opposed to foreign control in general.

  In Greece, Britain initially backed both EAM-ELAS and the attentist EDES movement, a famous example of this being the destruction of the strategically important Gorgopotamus viaduct by a combination of British secret agents and fighters from both Greek groups. However, this ran against the political grain, which was to favour the more right wing tendencies. In France de Gaulle’s Secret Army received favourable treatment over other more radical groups. In Yugoslavia, in the words of one British official, Mihailovich’s Chetniks should be favoured by London over communist-led partisans: “independently of whether or not he continues to refuse to take a more active part in resisting and attacking Axis forces”.35 It required incontrovertible proof of Chetnik collaboration with the enemy to shift support to Tito’s partisans.

  Rulers and masses interact: phase 2

  The official war aims of the Allies were supposed to be expressed in the Atlantic Charter of 14 August 1941 upholding “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live”.36 But this was a sham designed to draw in the masses. The real stance of these governments was developed at the various meetings of the Big Three (Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill). One famous encounter between Churchill and Stalin in the Kremlin in October 1944 took decisions which Churchill himself described as “crude, and even callous”. Churchill’s account of the notorious “percentages agreement” goes as follows:

  The moment was apt for business, so I said…how would it do for you to have ninety percent predominance in Roumania, for us to have ninety percent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about Yougoslavia?… It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down…37

  In Europe therefore the usefulness of resistance movements to Allied governments decreased in direct relation to the declining power of Axis forces and the increasing possibility of imposing an imperialist peace. There was a tipping point, discernible almost everywhere, when the imperialists concluded that the benefits of popular national movements confronting the Axis were outweighed by the disadvantages of potential democratic interference in their plans. The transition from one phase to another was brilliantly expressed by a British brigadier writing about Greece. He argued for public disapproval of EAM-ELAS as follows:

  we can expect them to be anti-British. Military considerations, however, demand that we should give maximum support…thus bolstering up EAM. Although these two policies appear to be diametrically opposed, this is not the case, as it is solely a question of timing. Our immediate policy should be the purely military one of giving support to the guerrilla organisations to enable them to assist us in liberating their country… This should give way to the political policy of no support to EAM as soon as liberation is achieved.38

  This policy was followed meticulously. Germany was allowed to withdraw without interference from the Greek islands to the mainland so that the resistance could not gain control before the British were ready. When the Germans left Greece (a little too early for London’s liking) Britain rushed troops to Athens to destroy EAM-ELAS. They arrived on 14 October 1944 with the following orders from Churchill: “Do not hesitate to fire… Act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion was in progress”.39 Wholesale Royal Air Force (RAF) bombing of working class residential districts in Athens followed. By the end of December 50,000 Greeks had been killed. Thereafter Nazi-trained Greek battalions were mobilised to pursue a civil war which ultimately cost 158,000 lives.

  In Poland, Stalin achieved the same effect by letting the Germans do the dirty work. On 1 August 1944, as the Red Army approached Warsaw, the poorly armed resistance there launched an urban insurrection against Nazi occupation that was the largest of the war. Although it only had arms for one week of fighting it fully expected imminent Russian assistance. But Stalin’s attitude was immediately hostile. The rising, he wrote, “does not inspire confidence” and was “a reckless and terrible adventure”.40 Not only did the Red Army halt its advance but Russia put obstacles in the way of a British-US airlift of supplies for the rebels, refusing refuelling rights to their planes.

  In Italy the change in Allied policy also occurred in late 1944. An Anglo-American army had control in the south but Germany held the north. Since the summer of 1944 it faced what the Wehrmacht commander Kesselring called “unlimited guerrilla warfare”. The partisans fought 218 pitched battles and destroyed hundreds of locomotives and bridges.41 Fifteen republics were established in liberated areas at the same time. Yet on 10 November the Commander of the Allied Forces announced on open airwaves that the resistance should stand down and go home.42 To publicly disassociate itself in the very midst of battle amounted, in the words of a prominent resistance leader, to “an attempt on the part of the Allied command to eliminate the Italian liberation movement”.43

  The critical moment for France had occurred a little earlier. Inspired by the Allied D-Day landing in June 1944, the resistance, backed by waves of strikes, intensified the pressure on the German forces occupying Paris. By August, Germany was losing control of the capital. At that moment the officially recognised leader of the Free French in London, General de Gaulle, ordered Parisians to: “Return to work immediately and maintain order until the Allies arrive”.44 This threw the Germans a lifeline and an enraged resistance fighter commented: “It was impossible to imagine a greater divorce between the action sustained by the masses and the coterie which had positioned itself between them and the enemy”.45

  The case of Yugoslavia was an exception to this pattern. In the situations considered so far there was only one wing of the Allies decisively involved militarily with each particular resistance movement. For Greece, Italy and France this meant the Western Allies. With Poland it was Russia. In the case of Yugoslavia, Tito managed to balance the Western Allies and Russia by using imperialist rivalry between them. Britain and the US had belatedly supplied Tito while the Red Army was involved in the liberation of Belgrade. For one wing to have openly sabotaged the resistance would have given political advantage to the other.

  As we have seen, resistance movements in the Far East lacked Allied patronage and so there was no period of cooperation, only hostility. With the exception of the crushing of Quit India there was little the Allies could do practically as long as the Axis ruled the territories in which they operated. This situation changed in August 1945. In Vietnam the collapse of Japan opened the way to a mass uprising which the Viet Minh came to head. The revolution swept all before it in the north, partly because here China’s weak and corrupt Kuomintang government had been allocated responsibility by the Allies and was in no position to exercise control. However, Britain was assigned the south and General Gracey described his arrival in these terms: “I was welcomed on arrival by the Viet Minh who said ‘Welcome’ and all that sort of thing. It was a very unpleasant situation, and I promptly kicked them out. They were obviously Communists”.46 Using British troops, a ragbag of forces including Vichy and even Waffen SS soldiers, the revolutionary movement was blocked and the country prepared for the return of the French.