Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Jozef Beck was recruited by the Nazis in 1938

The following article is an English translation by Professor of Montclair State Univeristy Grover Furr. The original Russian translation was published in the History Foundation:

June 28, 2011

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland Jozef Beck (right) sitting next to Führer of Germany Adolf Hitler (left).

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland Jozef Beck was recruited by the Nazis in 1938. This is revealed in the confessions of Luftwaffe General-Lieutenant Alfred Gerstenberg, published in the documentary collection “Tainy diplomatii Tret’ego Reikha: Germanskie diplomaty, rukovoditeli zarubezhnykh voennykh misii, voennye i politseiskie attaché v sovetskom plenu. Dokumenty iz sledstvennykh del” [“Secrets of the Diplomacy of the Third Reich. German Diplomats, Leaders of Foreign Military Missions, Military and Political Attachés in Soviet Captivity. Documents from Investigative Files”] (Moscow, 2011), published by the “Democracy” fund.

In an interrogation of August 17 1945 General Gerstenberg, who had occupied the position of air force attaché in Poland since 1938, communicated the following information concerning Beck’s recruitment:

“Question: It is well known that Goering often visited Poland. Was he really only interested in hunting in Poland?

Answer: Goering often went to Poland and other countries to hunt, but in reality he was not so much interested in hunting as in carrying out political tasks under this guise. Before my departure for Poland Goering told me that he would be travelling to Poland for hunting and would facilitate my task.

And in fact in 1938 Goering arrived in Poland, where he went hunting together with Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs de Beck. During this hunting trip Goering gave Beck a check for 300,000 marks, after which Beck began to strongly champion friendship with Germany.

Question: How do you know that Goering bribed Beck?

Answer: I learned that Beck had been bribed by Goering from Moltke, German ambassador to Poland, who took part in the hunting trip. In this connection Moltke said that Beck would not escape from our clutches.”

(Tainy diplomatii Tret’ego Reikka. Moscow, 2011, p. 581. The transcript is kept in: TsA FSB. D. N-21147. T. 1. L. 35-53.)

The information about the Nazi recruitment of Jozef Beck explains many strange things about the foreign policy of Poland in 1938 and 1939, according to Aleksandr Diukov, director of the Fund for Historical Memory. “When Germany began the revision of European boundaries, Poland undertook analogous actions”, he said. “Thus, in March 1938 Warsaw organized a provocation on its line of demarcation with Lithuania and gave her an ultimatum demanding that she officially recognize as Polish territory the Polish annexation of the province of Vilna in 1922, occupied by Polish forces in 1920. In case of refusal Poland threatened to declare war on Lithuania. That initiative received the support of Berlin.

Shortly afterwards Poland took part with Germany in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by seizing the Těšín province. Poland was the de facto aggressor. In the September 20 1938 talk with Hitler the Polish ambassador to Berlin stated that that the position his country had taken paralyzed the “possibility of Soviet intervention into the Czech question.” In March 1939 Poland again stood on the same side of the barricade with Germany by actively supporting the idea of Hungarian occupation of Transcarpathian Ukraine.

Speaking of these events contemporary Polish historians try to convince us that in reality during the 1930s Poland was only carrying out a policy of “equilibrium” between Germany and the Soviet Union. However this is untrue. It is easy to see that the foreign policy of Poland was in the Nazi channel. The information about Beck’s recruitment explains why.”

“I would also like to note that in the summer of 1939 it was precisely the position of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs that facilitated the breaking off of negotiations towards an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance against Germany.

Thus, for example, at the end of April Warsaw informed Berlin that “Poland will never permit a single soldier of Soviet Russia on its territory.” “We have no military treaty with the USSR and we do not wish to have any”, declared Jozef Beck on August 19, 1939. Nazi Germany was the main beneficiary of this position of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Beck repaid with interest the money he received from the Nazis”, concluded Aleksandr Diukov. The historian remarked that after the defeat of Poland by German armies in September 1939 Beck fled to Rumania, where he lived until his death in 1944.

James Petras : Chavez’s Right Turn — State Realism versus International Solidarity

by James Petras
June 14, 2011

Introduction

The radical “Bolivarian Socialist” government of Hugo Chavez has arrested a number of Colombian guerrilla leaders and a radical journalist with Swedish citizenship and handed them over to the right-wing regime of President Juan Manuel Santos, earning the Colombian government’s praise and gratitude. The close on-going collaboration between a leftist President with a regime with a notorious history of human rights violations, torture and disappearance of political prisoners has led to widespread protests among civil liberty advocates, leftists and populists throughout Latin America and Europe, while pleasing the Euro-American imperial establishment.

On April 26, 2011, Venezuelan immigration officials, relying exclusively on information from the Colombian secret police (DAS), arrested a naturalized Swedish citizen and journalist (Joaquin Perez Becerra) of Colombian descent, who had just arrived in the country. Based on Colombian secret police allegations that the Swedish citizen was a ‘FARC leader’, Perez was extradited to Colombia within 48 hours. Despite the fact that it was in violation of international diplomatic protocols and the Venezuelan constitution, this action had the personal backing of President Chavez. A month later, the Venezuelan armed forces joined their Colombian counterparts and captured a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Guillermo Torres (with the nom de Guerra Julian Conrado) who is awaiting extradition to Colombia in a Venezuelan prison without access to an attorney. On March 17, Venezuelan Military Intelligence (DIM) detained two alleged guerrillas from the National Liberation Army (ELN), Carlos Tirado and Carlos Perez, and turned them over to the Colombian secret police.

The new public face of Chavez as a partner of the repressive Colombian regime is not so new after all. On December 13, 2004, Rodrigo Granda, an international spokesperson for the FARC, and a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, whose family resided in Caracas, was snatched by plain-clothes Venezuelan intelligence agents in downtown Caracas where he had been participating in an international conference and secretly taken to Colombia with the ‘approval’ of the Venezuelan Ambassador in Bogota. Following several weeks of international protest, including from many conference participants, President Chavez issued a statement describing the ‘kidnapping’ as a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and threatened to break relations with Colombia. In more recent times, Venezuela has stepped up the extradition of revolutionary political opponents of Colombia’s narco-regime: In the first five months of 2009, Venezuela extradited 15 alleged members of the ELN and in November 2010, a FARC militant and two suspected members of the ELN were handed over to the Colombian police. In January 2011 Nilson Teran Ferreira, a suspected ELN leader, was delivered to the Colombian military. The collaboration between Latin America’s most notorious authoritarian rightwing regime and the supposedly most radical ‘socialist’ government raises important issues about the meaning of political identities and how they relate to domestic and international politics and more specifically what principles and interests guide state policies.

Revolutionary Solidarity and State Interests

The recent ‘turn’ in Venezuela politics, from expressing sympathy and even support for revolutionary struggles and movements in Latin America to its present collaboration with pro-imperial rightwing regimes, has numerous historical precedents. It may help to examine the contexts and circumstances of these collaborations:

The Bolshevik revolutionary government in Russia initially gave whole hearted support to revolutionary uprisings in Germany, Hungary, Finland and elsewhere. With the defeats of these revolts and the consolidation of the capitalist regimes, Russian state and economic interests took prime of place among the Bolshevik leaders. Trade and investment agreements, peace treaties and diplomatic recognition between Communist Russia and the Western capitalist states defined the new politics of “co-existence”. With the rise of fascism, the Soviet Union under Stalin further subordinated communist policy in order to secure state-to-state alliances, first with the Western Allies and, failing that, with Nazi Germany. The Hitler-Stalin pact was conceived by the Soviets as a way to prevent a German invasion and to secure its borders from a sworn rightwing enemy. As part of Stalin’s expression of good faith, he handed over to Hitler a number of leading exiled German communist leaders, who had sought asylum in Russia. Not surprisingly they were tortured and executed. This practice stopped only after Hitler invaded Russia and Stalin encouraged the now decimated ranks of German communists to re-join the ‘anti-Nazi’ underground resistance.

In the early 1970’s, as Mao’s China reconciled with Nixon’s United States and broke with the Soviet Union, Chinese foreign policy shifted toward supporting US-backed counter-revolutionaries, including Holden Roberts in Angola and Pinochet in Chile. China denounced any leftist government and movement, which, however faintly, had ties with the USSR, and embraced their enemies, no matter how subservient they were to Euro-American imperial interests.

In Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China, short-term ‘state interests’ trumped revolutionary solidarity. What were these ‘state interests’?

In the case of the USSR, Stalin gambled that a ‘peace pact’ with Hitler’s Germany would protect them from an imperialist Nazi invasion and partially end the encirclement of Russia. Stalin no longer trusted in the strength of international working class solidarity to prevent war, especially in light of a series of revolutionary defeats and the generalized retreat of the Left over the previous decades (Germany, Span, Hungary and Finland) .The advance of fascism and the extreme right, unremitting Western hostility toward the USSR and the Western European policy of appeasing Hitler, convinced Stalin to seek his own peace pact with Germany. In order to demonstrate their ‘sincerity’ toward its new ‘peace partner’, the USSR downplayed their criticism of the Nazis, urging Communist parties around the world to focus on attacking the West rather than Hitler’s Germany, and gave into Hitler’s demand to extradite German Communist “terrorists” who had found asylum in the Soviet Union.

Stalin’s pursuit of short term ‘state interests’ via pacts with the “far right” ended in a strategic catastrophe: Nazi Germany was free to first conquer Western Europe and then turned its guns on Russia, invading an unprepared USSR and occupying half the country. In the meantime the international anti-fascist solidarity movements had been weakened and temporarily disoriented by the zigzags of Stalin’s policies.

In the mid-1970’s, the Peoples Republic of China’s ‘reconciliation’ with the US, led to a turn in international policy: ‘US imperialism’ became an ally against the greater evil ‘Soviet social imperialism’. As a result China, under Chairman Mao Tse Tung, urged its international supporters to denounce progressive regimes receiving Soviet aid (Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, etc.) and it withdrew its support for revolutionary armed resistance against pro-US client states in Southeast Asia. China’s ‘pact’ with Washington was to secure immediate ‘state interests’: Diplomatic recognition and the end of the trade embargo. Mao’s short-term commercial and diplomatic gains were secured by sacrificing the more fundamental strategic goals of furthering socialist values at home and revolution abroad.

As a result, China lost its credibility among Third World revolutionaries and anti-imperialists, in exchange for gaining the good graces of the White House and greater access to the capitalist world market. Short-term “pragmatism’ led to long-term transformation: The Peoples Republic of China became a dynamic emerging capitalist power, with some of the greatest social inequalities in Asia and perhaps the world.

Venezuela: State Interests versus International Solidarity

The rise of radical politics in Venezuela, which is the cause and consequence of the election of President Chavez(1999), coincided with the rise of revolutionary social movements throughout Latin America from the late 1990’s to the middle of the first decade of the 21st century (1995-2005). Neo-liberal regimes were toppled in Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina; mass social movements challenging neo-liberal orthodoxy took hold everywhere; the Colombian guerrilla movements were advancing toward the major cities; and center-left politicians were elected to power in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador and Uruguay. The US economic crises undermined the credibility of Washington’s ‘free trade’ agenda. The increasing Asian demand for raw materials stimulated an economy boom in Latin America, which funded social programs and nationalizations.

In the case of Venezuela, a failed US-backed military coup and ‘bosses’ boycott’ in 2002-2003, forced the Chavez government to rely on the masses and turn to the Left. Chavez proceeded to “re-nationalize” petroleum and related industries and articulate a “Bolivarian Socialist” ideology.

Chavez’ radicalization found a favorable climate in Latin America and the bountiful revenues from the rising price of oil financed his social programs. Chavez maintained a plural position of embracing governing center-left governments, backing radical social movements and supporting the Colombian guerrillas’ proposals for a negotiated settlement. Chavez called for the recognition of Colombia’s guerrillas as legitimate ‘belligerents” not “terrorists’.

Venezuela’s foreign policy was geared toward isolating its main threat emanating from Washington by promoting exclusively Latin American/Caribbean organizations, strengthening regional trade and investment links and securing regional allies in opposition to US intervention, military pacts, bases and US-backed military coups.

In response to US financing of Venezuelan opposition groups (electoral and extra parliamentary), Chavez has provided moral and political support to anti-imperialist groups throughout Latin America. After Israel and American Zionists began attacking Venezuela, Chavez extended his support to the Palestinians and broadened ties with Iran and other Arab anti-imperialist movements and regimes. Above all, Chavez strengthened his political and economic ties with Cuba, consulting with the Cuban leadership, to form a radical axis of opposition to imperialism. Washington’s effort to strangle the Cuban revolution by an economic embargo was effectively undermined by Chavez’ large-scale, long-term economic agreements with Havana.

Up until the later part of this decade, Venezuela’s foreign policy – its ‘state interests’ – coincided with the interests of the left regimes and social movements throughout Latin America. Chavez clashed diplomatically with Washington’s client states in the hemisphere, especially Colombia, headed by narco-death squad President Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010). However recent years have witnessed several external and internal changes and a gradual shift toward the center.

The revolutionary upsurge in Latin America began to ebb: The mass upheavals led to the rise of center-left regimes, which, in turn, demobilized the radical movements and adopted strategies relying on agro-mineral export strategies, all the while pursuing autonomous foreign policies independent of US-control. The Colombian guerrilla movements were in retreat and on the defensive – their capacity to buffer Venezuela from a hostile Colombian client regime waned. Chavez adapted to these ‘new realities’, becoming an uncritical supporter of the ‘social liberal’ regimes of Lula in Brazil, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, Vazquez in Uruguay and Bachelet in Chile. Chavez increasingly chose immediate diplomatic support from the existing regimes over any long-term support, which might have resulted from a revival of the mass movements. Trade ties with Brazil and Argentina and diplomatic support from its fellow Latin American states against an increasingly aggressive US became central to Venezuela’s foreign policy: The basis of Venezuelan policy was no longer the internal politics of the center-left and centrist regimes but their degree of support for an independent foreign policy.

Repeated US interventions failed to generate a successful coup or to secure any electoral victories, against Chavez. As a result Washington increasingly turned to using external threats against Chavez via its Colombian client state, the recipient of $5 billion in military aid. Colombia’s military build-up, its border crossings and infiltration of death squads into Venezuela, forced Chavez into a large-scale purchase of Russian arms and toward the formation of a regional alliance (ALBA).

The US-backed military coup in Honduras precipitated a major rethink in Venezuela’s policy. The coup had ousted a democratically elected centrist liberal, President Zelaya in Honduras, a member of ALBA and set up a repressive regime subservient to the White House. However, the coup had the effect of isolating the US throughout Latin America –not a single government supported the new regime in Tegucigalpa. Even the neo-liberal regimes of Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Panama voted to expel Honduras from the Organization of American States. On the one hand, Venezuela viewed this ‘unity’ of the right and center-left as an opportunity toward mending fences with the conservative regimes; and on the other, it understood that the Obama Administration was ready to use the ‘military option’ to regain its dominance.

The fear of a US military intervention was greatly heightened by the Obama-Uribe agreement establishing seven US strategic military bases near its border with Venezuela. Chavez wavered in his response to this immediate threat: At one point he almost broke trade and diplomatic relations with Colombia, only to immediately reconcile with Uribe, although the latter had demonstrated no desire to sign on to a pact of co-existence.

Meanwhile, the 2010 Congressional elections In Venezuela led to a major increase in electoral support for the US-backed right (approximately 50%) and their greater representation in Congress (40%). While the Right increased their support inside Venezuela, the Left in Colombia, both the guerrillas and the electoral opposition lost ground. Chavez could not count on any immediate counter-weight to a military provocation.

Chavez faced several options: The first was to return to the earlier policy of international solidarity with radical movements; the second was to continue working with the center-left regimes while maintaining strong criticism and firm opposition to the US backed neo-liberal regimes; and the third option was to turn toward the Right, more specifically to seek rapprochement with the newly elected President of Colombia, Santos and sign a broad political, military and economic agreement where Venezuela agreed to collaborate in eliminating Colombia’s leftist adversaries in exchange for promises of ‘non-aggression’ (Colombia limiting its cross-border narco and military incursions).

Venezuela and Chavez decided that the FARC was a liability and that support from the radical Colombian mass social movements was not as important as closer diplomatic relations with President Santos. Chavez has calculated that complying with Santos political demands would provide greater security to the Venezuelan state than relying on the support of the international solidarity movements and his own radical domestic allies among the trade unions and intellectuals.

In line with this Right turn, the Chavez regime fulfilled Santos’ requests – arresting FARC/ELN guerrillas, as well as a prominent leftist journalist, and extraditing them to a state which has had the worst human rights record in the Americas for over two decades, in terms of torture and extra-judicial assassinations. This Right turn acquires an even more ominous character when one considers that Colombia holds over 7600 political prisoners, over 7000 of whom are trade unionists, peasants, Indians, students, in other words non-combatants. In acquiescing to Santos requests, Venezuela did not even follow the established protocols of most democratic governments: It did not demand any guaranties against torture and respect for due process. Moreover, when critics have pointed out that these summary extraditions violated Venezuela’s own constitutional procedures, Chavez launched a vicious campaign slandering his critics as agents of imperialism engaged in a plot to destabilize his regime.

Chavez’s newfound ally on the Right, President Santos has not reciprocated: Colombia still maintains close military ties with Venezuela’s prime enemy in Washington. Indeed, Santos vigorously sticks to the White House agenda: He successfully pressured Chavez to recognize the illegitimate regime of Lobos in Honduras- the product of a US-backed coup in exchange for the return of ousted ex-President Zelaya. Chavez did what no other center-left Latin American President has dared to do: He promised to support the reinstatement of the illegitimate Honduran regime into the OAS. On the basis of the Chavez-Santos agreement, Latin American opposition to Lobos collapsed and Washington’s strategic goal was realized: A puppet regime was legitimized.

Chavez agreement with Santos to recognize the murderous Lobos regime betrayed the heroic struggle of the Honduran mass movement. Not one of the Honduran officials responsible for over a hundred murders and disappearances of peasant leaders, journalists, human rights and pro-democracy activists are subject to any judicial investigation. Chavez has given his blessings to impunity and the continuation of an entire repressive apparatus, backed by the Honduran oligarchy and the US Pentagon.

In other words, to demonstrate his willingness to uphold his ‘friendship and peace pact’ with Santos, Chavez was willing to sacrifice the struggle of one of the most promising and courageous pro-democracy movements in the Americas.

And what does Chavez seek in his accommodation with the Right?

Security? Chavez has received only verbal ‘promises’, and some expressions of gratitude from Santos. But the enormous pro-US military command and US mission remain in place. In other words, there will be no dismantling of the Colombian para-military-military forces massed along the Venezuelan border and the US military base agreements, which threaten Venezuelan national security, will not change.

According to Venezuelan diplomats, Chavez’ tactic is to ‘win over’ Santos from US tutelage. By befriending Santos, Chavez hopes that Bogota will not join in any joint military operation with the US or cooperate in future propaganda-destabilization campaigns. In the brief time since the Santos-Chavez pact was made, an emboldened Washington announced an embargo on the Venezuelan state oil company with the support of the Venezuelan congressional opposition. Santos, for his part, has not complied with the embargo, but then not a single country in the world has followed Washington’s lead. Clearly, President Santos is not likely to endanger the annual $10 billion dollar trade between Colombia and Venezuela in order to humor the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s diplomatic caprices.

Conclusion

In contrast to Chavez policy of handing over leftist and guerrilla exiles to a rightist authoritarian regime, President Allende of Chile (1970-73) joined a delegation that welcomed armed fighters fleeing persecution in Bolivia and Argentina and offered them asylum. For many years, especially in the 1980’s, Mexico, under center-right regimes, openly recognized the rights of asylum for guerrilla and leftist refugees from Central America – El Salvador and Guatemala. Revolutionary Cuba, for decades, offered asylum and medical treatment to leftist and guerrilla refugees from Latin American dictatorships and rejected demands for their extradition. Even as late as 2006, when the Cuban government was pursuing friendly relations with Colombia and when its then Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque expressed his deep reservations regarding the FARC in conversations with the author, Cuba refused to extradite guerrillas to their home countries where they would be tortured and abused. One day before he left office in 2011, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva denied Italy’s request to extradite Cesare Battisti, a former Italian guerrilla. As one Brazilian judge said –and Chavez should have listened: ”At stake here is national sovereignty. It is as simple as that”.

No one would criticize Chavez efforts to lessen border tensions by developing better diplomatic relations with Colombia and to expand trade and investment flows between the two countries. What is unacceptable is to describe the murderous Colombian regime as a “friend” of the Venezuela people and a partner in peace and democracy, while thousands of pro-democracy political prisoners rot in TB-infested Colombian prisons for years on trumped-up charges. Under Santos, civilian activists continue to be murdered almost every day. The most recent killing was yesterday (June 9,2011): Ana Fabricia Cordoba, a leader of community-based displaced peasants, was murdered by the Colombian armed forces. Chavez’ embrace of the Santos narco-presidency goes beyond the requirements for maintaining proper diplomatic and trade relations. His collaboration with the Colombian intelligence, military and secret police agencies in hunting down and deporting Leftists (without due process!) smacks of complicity in dictatorial repression and serves to alienate the most consequential supporters of the Bolivarian transformation in Venezuela.

Chavez’ role in legitimizing of the Honduran coup-regime, without any consideration for the popular movements’ demands for justice, is a clear capitulation to the Santos – Obama agenda. This line of action places Venezuela’s ‘state’ interests over the rights of the popular mass movements in Honduras. Chavez’ collaboration with Santos on policing leftists and undermining popular struggles in Honduras raises serious questions about Venezuela’s claims of revolutionary solidarity. It certainly sows deep distrust about Chavez future relations with popular movements who might be engaged in struggle with one of Chavez’s center-right diplomatic and economic partners.

What is particularly troubling is that most democratic and even center-left regimes do not sacrifice the mass social movements on the altar of “security” when they normalize relations with an adversary. Certainly the Right, especially the US, protects its former clients, allies, exiled right-wing oligarch and even admitted terrorists from extradition requests issued by Venezuela, Cuba and Argentina. Mass murders and bombers of civilian airplanes manage to live comfortably in Florida. Why Venezuela submits to the Right-wing demands of the Colombians, while complaining about the US protecting terrorists guilty of crimes in Venezuela, can only be explained by Chavez ideological shift to the Right, making Venezuela more vulnerable to pressure for greater concessions in the future.

Chavez is no longer interested in the support from the radical left: His definition of state policy revolves around securing the ‘stability’ of Bolivarian socialism in one country, even if it means sacrificing Colombian militants to a police state and pro-democracy movements in Honduras to an illegitimate US-imposed regime.

History provides mixed lessons. Stalin’s deals with Hitler were a strategic disaster for the Soviet people: Once the Fascists got what they wanted they turned around and invaded Russia. Chavez has so far not received any ‘reciprocal’ confidence-building concession from Santos military machine. Even in terms of narrowly defined ‘state interests’, he has sacrificed loyal allies for empty promises. The US imperial state is Santos primary ally and military provider. China sacrificed international solidarity for a pact with the US, a policy that led to unregulated capitalist exploitation and deep social injustices.

When and if the next confrontation between the US and Venezuela occurs, will Chavez, at least, be able to count on the “neutrality” of Colombia? If past and present relations are any indication, Colombia will side with its client-master, mega-benefactor and ideological mentor. When a new rupture occurs, can Chavez count on the support of the militants, who have been jailed, the mass popular movements he pushed aside and the international movements and intellectuals he has slandered? As the US moves toward new confrontations with Venezuela and intensifies its economic sanctions, domestic and international solidarity will be vital for Venezuela’s defense. Who will stand up for the Bolivarian revolution, the Santos and Lobos of this “realist world”? or the solidarity movements in the streets of Caracas and the Americas?

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Message to Communists of the World – Syrian Communist Party (Unified)

May 31, 2011

Dear comrades of the communist and workers’ parties of the world,

Comradely greetings.

Painful events have been continuing in Syria for nearly two months, since the emergence of a protest movement raising legitimate local and general demands among people in the governorate of Daraa. This movement threw light on the presence of major problems in the political life in Syria: the continuation of the state of emergency, the absence of laws governing political activity, and so on. Further, it drew attention to the popular discontent about the deteriorated living as well as social conditions as a consequence of Syria’s turn toward a free market economy — the reduction of state support for the poor, the erosion of subsidies for basic necessities and agricultural inputs, and free trade unaccompanied by an upgrading of the Syrian industry — which has raised the unemployment rate, especially among young people. This has already led to three decrees: the abolition of the state of emergency, the dissolution of the State Security Court, and the legalization of peaceful demonstrations. Special committees have been also set up and assigned to draft election, party, media, and other laws. Other new laws addressing the social and economic aspects of life are also in the works.

Nevertheless, protests have spread to other cities, due to the authorities’ disproportionate security responses in dealing with protestors in the streets which have resulted in a number of casualties. No sooner did this popular movement arise than an extraordinary mass media campaign was launched by many Arab and foreign satellite TV channels, using the latest technology. This campaign has resorted to forgery, exaggeration, and psychological incitement. Notable in the campaign is the American interest, falsely claiming to have sympathy for the Syrian citizens, as if we are supposed to forget the death, destruction, and ethnic and sectarian strife caused by the successive US administrations in various parts of the world, especially in Iraq.

Syria has played a key role in foiling the US schemes in the Middle East that aim to remake the region against the interests of the Arab peoples, to deal a blow to the Palestinian resistance, and to further Israel’s expansionism, violating the Palestinian people’s right to return, their right to self-determination, their right to a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and Syria’s right to regain the occupied Syrian territories. That is why our party supports the steadfastness of Syria against such schemes, and that is why Syria’s national stance has enjoyed the support of the Arab peoples, the world communist movement, and the national liberation movements in the world.

As we all know, Syria’s national political approach has been stronger than any foreign plots, no matter how powerful they are. But we have always warned that a plot might arise from within, and we have insisted that Syria’s foreign policy of resistance must be accompanied by a domestic policy counterpart equal to it and that neglecting it would pave the way for the powers bent on global domination to manipulate the country’s internal situation and to meddle in it, trying to derail its course to serve their interests.

Our party has publicly said, from the very beginning, that the protests were originally launched by masses whose political orientations are against colonialism and all forms of foreign intervention in the Syrian affairs, who have the right to protest against the injustices done by local security and administrative officials in the governorate and against the injustices suffered by large sectors of the Syrian society. Our party has demanded that violence be ended, that the legitimate demands of the masses be addressed, that peaceful demonstrations be dealt with peacefully, and so on. At the same time, we have warned that popular protests might be exploited, to instigate sectarian strife and destroy the national unity of the Syrian people with the goal of spreading chaos, by conspirators financed and encouraged by external forces opposed to the national policy of Syria. Thus many times we have urged the government to issue reform laws and carry them out as swiftly as possible. We have made it clear that such measures require the restoration of calm and normal life in the cities of Syria, which in turn demands the cessation of the spiral of violence, arrests and reactions, by all parties.

But the course of events has changed recently. Armed gangs targeting army and police personnel, ransacking public and private properties, have emerged, killing many victims, both civilians and members of the security forces. Normal life in several cities has been brought to a standstill. The aggressive behavior of these armed gangs has overshadowed the peaceful protest movement. Syrian media have broadcast films showing terrorist fundamentalist groups who admitted to receiving money and weapons from external sources to launch attacks against security personnel and their families.

The Syrian Communist Party (Unified) issued a statement — which has won wide support among national forces — demanding the convening of a national conference of all political parties, including the national opposition inside Syria, representatives of trade unions and professional associations, intellectual, cultural, economic, and religious leaders, for dialogue and reconciliation. The task of the national conference is to reach consensus on a national program to put the country on the path to a comprehensive political, economic, and social reform which would help create a new democratic Syria under the rule of law, a state that guarantees public liberties for all citizens and for all components of civil society such as political parties, trade unions, and civic associations, a state that recognizes political pluralism and the freedoms of assembly and expression, a state where public life is free from censorship, a state that allows citizens to express their political, economic, and social needs and desires within a collectively agreed-upon framework for peaceful competitions, a state in whose institutions all citizens participate for the progress of Syria, a state that promotes the dignity of its people, achieving comprehensive social and economic development, defending the interests of all social strata, putting the poor before the rich, reinforcing the steadfastness of our country in the face of the schemes to make us surrender, and strengthening the straggle to liberate the Golan Heights.

Our party has said that the Syrians have been aware of the shortcomings of their own internal affairs. They can also distinguish those who are demanding political reforms and social and economic development in order to strengthen the home front from those who are trying to exploit the situation to stir up strife that only serves the enemies of Syria.

It has become quite clear that imperialist interventions in the internal affairs of Syria under the pretext of “democracy,” led by the governments of France and the United States, together with the British and German governments, are behind the mass media campaign against Syria, the campaign employing a number of Syrian dissidents in exile who have associated themselves with the US-Israeli project in the region.

Our people take the threats to our country seriously and stand together in confronting them. The foreign plots thus will not succeed in changing the national policy of our country: Syria’s opposition to the US-Israeli project; Syria’s struggle to liberate the Golan Heights; Syria’s support for the struggle of the Palestinian people to liberate their land, to build an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, as well as for the struggles to liberate Iraq from the US occupation and South Lebanon from the Israeli occupation.

We very much appreciate the firm positive stances of Russia and China exposing the threats to Syria and giving full support to Syria in this crisis.

Now our party is working with other Syrian parties, the Syrian national opposition forces, and various currents of civil society in order to put in practice the proposal for a conference for national dialogue.

With our best comradely wishes,

Hunein Nemer
First Secretary of the Syrian Communist Party (Unified)

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Video: Soviet Union could have won WWII alone

Although this professor clarifies himself as being anti-Stalin, and does indeed demonize Stalin over crimes that, as I believe, were not committed by him, the professor does a great job in pointing out Stalin’s importance in WWII, despite cold war propaganda.

Those who wish to acquire Prof. Geoffrey Roberts’ fascinating work can do so by clicking here.

Video: Russia’s Red Square 2011 Victory Day Parade!

Russian communists rally for socialism on Victory Day

MOSCOW, May 9 (RIA Novosti)

Thousands of members of the Communist Party marched downtown Moscow on Monday proclaiming the socialist model as the only way for Russia’s revival and development.

Victory Day in Russia on May 9 marks the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in the 1941-45 Great Patriotic War.

According to Moscow police, the communist rally gathered about 5,000 people, and the march was carried out without incidents.

“We marched from Pushkin Square to Lubyanka…Many young people took part in the rally. Their numbers are growing from year to year,” said Ivan Melnikov, deputy chairman of the Communist Party.

“Part of our slogans [during the rally] was dedicated to the revival of Russia, its industry, agriculture, and education, to the modernization of the country, because the modernization is possible only on the road to socialism,” Melnikov said.

The Communist Party is the second major political party in Russia.

The party has emphasized its uniquely Russian character and it has consistently invoked Russian patriotism and nationalism in addition to the official Marxism-Leninism.

Source

Poll points to possible left-wing coalition in Saxony-Anhalt

March 11, 2011

With just over a week until a state election in Saxony-Anhalt, the centre-left Social Democrats are tied in an opinion poll with the socialist Left party – potentially opening the way for an alliance that could topple the current grand coalition.

According to public broadcaster ZDF’s Politbarometer survey on Friday, both parties garnered 24 percent of voter approval just days before voters go to the polls on March 20.

This means that they could team up to form a so-called “Red-Red” coalition, named after their shared party colours. However, the SPD has said it will not agree to be the junior coalition partner to The Left party should the hard-line socialists win a larger share of the vote.

The state parliament in Magdeburg is currently ruled by a “grand coalition” of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats.

The CDU earned some 32 percent of voter approval in Friday’s poll, while the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), the environmentalist Greens and the neo-Nazi NPD took five percent each.

A “Red-Red” coalition shuffle after the election would be another blow to Merkel’s conservatives in a “super election year,” during which seven state elections will occur.

The SPD already crushed the CDU in a February 20 vote in the city-state of Hamburg, winning by a landslide with some 50 percent of the vote.

The opposition party also hopes to unseat the CDU after 58 years in power in the most important upcoming election in the state of Baden-Württemberg on March 27.

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Trotsky’s struggle against fascism, according to one of his latter-day admirers

The following article is from Lalkar. For more see The Marxist-Leninist’s anti-Trotskyism reading guide:

Finding the lies about, and distortions of, revolutionary leaders of the Soviet Union, the policies of the Soviet Communists, and the actions of that once great state is quite easy; virtually any bourgeois paper, TV programme or internet blog site can be depended on to serve that up. However, it is those who pose as socialists/communists, while peddling this anti-Soviet, anti-communist filth, that are the real danger to the proletariat and its crying need to take the road of understanding Marxist-Leninist ideology and indulging in revolutionary practice. Finding lies and distortions from these individuals/sects/groups/parties is just as easy as finding them from bourgeois sources. It is impossible to answer each and every one of these slanders individually; so we have to lump them together for a general response or pick out the odd one to answer in some depth, knowing that much of our answer will apply also to the lies of other renegades and enemies of the proletariat. This article is of the latter type.

On the social networking site, Twitter, there is a group by the name of ‘Left News’ which gathers articles from a variety of sources, usually Trotskyist or Social-Democratic in nature, and pumps them out. On 6 August 2010 they put out an article by one Liz Walsh entitled “Trotsky and the struggle against fascism”. This is essentially a review of a collection of Trotsky’s articles on the subject, put together in pamphlet form by Socialist Alternative under the title of The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany.

The article/review starts by telling us of the “…growth of fascist and far-right parties such as Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in Holland, the Northern League in Italy and Nick Griffin’s British National Party – which has a membership of some 10,000. All attempt to use extreme nationalism and racist ideology to glue their supporters together; all focus the social discontent that capitalism in crisis creates on to scapegoats.”

A statement which begs the question: which bourgeois party (including the Labour Party) does not use nationalism and racism not only to “glue their supporters together” but, more importantly, to create splits and animosity within the working class, essential for them in times of economic crisis? But of course most of the Trot and revisionist opportunists in Britain have just spent a lot of time and energy exhorting people to vote Labour to keep the BNP out in the recent General Election and don’t really want to dwell on this aspect of Social-Democracy.

Moving swiftly on, Ms Walsh tells us that, although we are not at the same stage as thirties Germany, “the growth of the European far right and the threat of fascism that acute economic crises provoke, demands an understanding of what fascism actually is.” So what is fascism according to Ms Walsh?

She tells us that “Leon Trotsky developed an analysis of fascism which remains today the best in the Marxist tradition. His numerous articles and pamphlets written during fascism’s forward march in Germany in the 1930s (many of which have been collected together in ‘The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany’), give the clearest exposition of the social conditions that can give rise to fascist movements, the class basis of fascism and the methods it deploys, as well as the most effective means to fight it.”

So what is this “clearest exposition of the social conditions that can give rise to fascist movements?” What is the “class basis of fascism” its “methods” and the “most effective means to fight it”, laid out in these works, that we are told, are “the best in the Marxist tradition?”

First we are told that “Trotsky argued against any notion that fascism could be reduced to some peculiarly authoritarian German national tradition. After all fascism was not just a German phenomenon.” This is hardly a revelation. The assertions of some bourgeois historians that fascism was something to do with German ‘military’ genes, and a ‘natural’ authoritarianism, were only ever a flimsy cover to hide the real nature of fascism. No serious Marxist has ever put forward such an absurdly unscientific position. So that hardly makes these works “the best in the Marxist tradition.”

Next we are told that Trotsky “correctly understood that fascism was the result of the deepest crisis in the history of world capitalism, which was tearing German society apart. The Great Depression of the 1930s particularly devastated the German economy”. We think that anyone around at that time may have noticed the depression going on and assumed it had an effect not only upon the rise of fascism but also, and more importantly, upon the rise of communism among workers in imperialist countries to which fascism was an answer. Ms Walsh informs us that this depression in Germany “impoverished not only the working class, but also ravaged the middle class (or petty bourgeoisie)” who were, in Trotsky’s words, “brought to desperation and frenzy”. She continues, further quoting Trotsky: “In the atmosphere brought to white heat by war, defeat, reparations, inflation, occupation of the Ruhr, crisis, need, and despair, the petty bourgeoisie rose up against all the old parties that had bamboozled it. The sharp grievances of small proprietors never out of bankruptcy, of their university sons without posts and clients, of their daughters without dowries and suitors, demanded order and an iron hand.” And further still “Isolated and impotent before the two main classes in society, the fascist movement could give the ruined middle class a sense of power through its militant nationalism and violence, violence which was targeted first and foremost at the radical left and the labour movement.” So if Ms Walsh and Trotsky are to be believed, fascism is the political expression of the middle classes “brought to desperation and frenzy”.

Let us consider that alongside another quote; “The petty-bourgeois is in such an economic situation, the conditions of his life are such, that he cannot help deceiving himself, he involuntarily gravitates now towards the bourgeoisie, now towards the proletariat. It is economically impossible for him to pursue an independent line” (Lenin, ‘Constitutional Illusions’, Selected Works Vol 6, page 182).

Fascism is not, cannot be an independent political expression of the middle classes. Fascism is the response of the bourgeoisie to the rising militancy of the proletariat, to its growing revolutionary preparedness. It is the weapon to be used against the proletariat when the sly and, unrecognised by many, weapon of Social-Democracy is no longer capable of diverting the working class away from revolution. Why does Trotsky, the author of these works that are “the best in the Marxist tradition” according to Ms Walsh, not understand why this “violence”, supposedly emanating from an independent petty-bourgeois political tendency, “was targeted first and foremost at the radical left and the labour movement”? To explore this question can only lead one to the conclusion that fascism is the method by which the bourgeoisie drowns revolutionary workers in their own blood.

Ms Walsh must have started to realise this, for she informs us that “…while racism has increasingly become the means by which fascist organisations have cohered their supporters, it has not been a core feature of every fascist movement. Violence against the left and the labour movement, on the other hand, has always been at the heart of fascism.

“In Italy, for instance, anti-Semitism was absent from early fascist ideology. The Italian ruling class had turned to fascism in Italy because they were terrified out of their wits by the Bienno Rosso. During these ‘two red years’ that followed the First World War, millions of workers in the north of Italy had occupied their factories and rural workers, having formed unions, took over the land.

“Keen to teach the working class a bloody lesson, Mussolini’s brown shirts, armed and financed by industrialists and landowners, began killing activists, burning union halls and using terror to intimidate the left.”

At last! The truth comes shining through! The ruling class “had turned to fascism in Italy because they were terrified out of their wits by the Bienno Rosso” ie. a build up of workers militancy in practice based upon Marxist ideology. It matters not which class Mussolini had been born into. Fascism was, is, the political expression of the ruling class at a certain revolutionary juncture ie. a time when the working class are growing in political militancy and revolutionary ideology and will not be ruled in the old way (led by the nose by Social-Democracy in the interests of the bourgeoisie) and the ruling class cannot rule in the old way. In short, the time that fascism is used is just prior to, during, or following a revolutionary situation.

Far from being an independent theory and system born in opposition to capitalism, far from being an independent ideology of the petty bourgeoisie hostile to the proletariat and monopoly capital alike, fascism is, on the contrary, the most consummate expression, in certain conditions of extreme decay, of the chief tendencies and policies of capitalism in its imperialist stage. Fascism is the response in practice of the imperialist bourgeoisie faced with the threat of proletarian revolution. It is a counter-revolutionary mass movement which, while enjoying the full support of the bourgeoisie, deploys a mixture of social demagogy and terrorist methods in order to crush the revolution and strengthen the dictatorship of finance capital. In order to define fascism and place it in its concrete reality, one must expose its class basis, the system of class relations which give birth to it and within which it operates, and the class role assigned by finance capital to it and which it duly performs.

Through its social demagogy fascism was able to build a somewhat broader mass base by appealing preponderantly to the petty bourgeoisie (also crushed by monopoly capital), as well as the lumpen proletariat and the demoralised sections of the working class, helped along by the robber barons of finance and industry, as well as the big landed magnates, all of whom supported it financially and directed it politically. Once in power, however, fascism carried out the ruthless behests of monopoly capital, and mercilessly turned the state machinery against those of its supporters who had been gullible enough to expect anti-capitalist measures from it.

Once in power, casting aside its anti-capitalist rhetoric, fascism revealed itself in its true colours as “a terrorist dictatorship of big capital” (‘Programme of the Comintern’, 1928)

“Fascism arises where a powerful working-class movement reaches a stage of growth which inevitably raises revolutionary issues, but is held in from decisive action by reformist leadership … Fascism is the child of reformism” (R Palme Dutt, Labour Monthly, July 1925).

Having a vague realisation of the real nature of fascism, Ms Walsh tries to back-track, not fully, but just enough, she hopes, to cover Trotsky’s errors. “A particular strength of Trotsky’s writings on the class nature of the fascist movement was his recognition of fascism’s complex relationship to the capitalist class. He never simply reduced it to being a pawn of big business or the army high command. Indeed, the plebeian character of the movement and the instability it causes by its all or nothing game, gave some sections of the ruling elite in Germany cause for hesitation.

“However, it is also true that from their inception, the German Nazis had important allies within the capitalist class, receiving considerable behind the scenes political support and significant financing, particularly from the captains of the coal, iron and steel industry.”

Oh dear, that’s not very helpful to her earlier assertions about the class nature of fascism, is it?

Ms Walsh continues; “Fascism is a particular governmental system based on the uprooting of all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society… To this end…it is…necessary to smash all independent and voluntary organisations, to demolish all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat, and to uproot whatever has been achieved during three-quarters of a century by the Social Democracy and the trade unions.”

And further: “Identifying these core features of fascism and its particular capacity to devastate the working-class movement reveals why bandying around the term fascist for any right-wing government – as so many on the left do today –misunderstands what fascism actually is and downplays the threat it poses. Unfortunately, this is precisely what the German Communist Party did in the 1930s.

“Loyally following the line issued from the Communist International, now dominated entirely by Stalin, the KPD held to a theory that German society was undergoing a process of ‘gradual fascisation’. All governments in Germany, whether headed by right-wing nationalist parties or even the reformist Social Democratic Party, were judged to be fascist.

“Ernst Thälmann, a leading member of the KPD, for instance, declared that ‘fascism will not begin when Hitler arrives; it began a long time ago,’ which was patently absurd given the continuing existence of strong working-class organisations and the abundance of national elections contested by multiple parties. Social Democracy was also absurdly labelled ‘social fascist’ or the ‘twin’ of fascism, a term coined by Stalin himself.

“Trotsky railed unceasingly against the danger of the theory of ‘social fascism’, pointing out that the KPD’s seemingly ‘ultra radical’ line could only breed complacency and passivity towards the rising fascist movement.”

We reply to this long quotation, and the previous one, with the following long quotes from Harpal Brar’s book Imperialism, the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat;

“Although German Social-Democracy had originated on the basis of the revolutionary programme of Marxism and had a long and glorious tradition, in the imperialist era opportunism, parliamentary cretinism and corruption, and the economist politics of trade unionism, had made increasing inroads into the Party. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 completed this process, with the Social-Democratic Party openly and unashamedly siding with Kaiser Wilhelm, German militarism and the bourgeoisie. Adopting the slogan of ‘defence of the fatherland’ in an imperialist predatory war, German social democracy, like its counterparts in other European countries (the sole honourable exception being the Bolsheviks in Russia and James Connolly and his comrades in Ireland), betrayed the working class and trampled underfoot the banner of proletarian internationalism. The November 1918 revolution was organised by scattered revolutionary elements who had gathered, in the very difficult conditions of war censorship and Party censorship, in the illegal Spartacist League (founded in 1916) and the independent Socialist Party (founded in 1917).

“The Social Democratic Party played no part in the victorious 1918 revolution. On the contrary, it was opposed to the revolution from the start.” The SDP leaders were part of the defeated government at the outbreak of the revolution “but the moment the revolution had triumphed on 9 November, Social Democratic leaders rushed to Liebneckt and the Independents begging to be included in the leadership of the victorious revolution and form a joint government. Ignoring Liebneckt’s advice, the Independents fell for the bait in the name of ‘unity’ and formed a coalition with the Social Democrats, i.e., with the enemies of the revolution, the open agents of the bourgeoisie. Thus, when all other means had proved useless, bourgeois influence was restored at the heart of the new regime through the treacherous social democracy.”

The SDP in government soon earned their keep from their masters, the bourgeoisie “…the Social Democratic government protected the old regime at every step. Instead of arming the proletariat for the defence of the revolution, it not only ordered the disarming of the workers but also armed and equipped special counter-revolutionary corps under the command of the ultra-reactionary monarchist officers. And it is these White Guard troops who went on to drown the proletarian revolution in blood. Liebneckt and Rosa Luxemburg were brutally murdered, their murderers going unpunished and openly gloating in their crime under the Social Democratic government…with the defeat of the 1918 revolution by social democracy, the basis was laid for the subsequent rise of fascism.

“Far from acting out of blindness, folly and stupidity, as their apologists would have us believe, the Social Democratic leadership were driven solely by a burning desire to ‘save Germany from Bolshevism’, that is save capitalism. To achieve this aim, social democracy was prepared to commit any crime, perpetrate any outrage, against the proletariat.” It can surely be no exaggeration, no mistake to say that fascism grew out of social democracy.

After calling Ernst Thälmann absurd for implying that the Social Democrats were responsible for the rise of fascism Ms Walsh states without any apology:

“While the KPD were right when they claimed that the SPD had helped pave the way for fascism’s triumph by refusing to actively oppose the Nazis, amongst other things, the very fact that that fascism aimed at uprooting not only revolutionary but ‘all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society’, made it the mortal enemy of Social Democracy. For Social Democracy, the struggle against fascism was ultimately a matter of life and death.

“Importantly, this shared threat laid the basis for what Trotsky termed the united front – working-class organisations coming to an agreement to engage in concrete struggle around common aims. Trotsky maintained that in making such an agreement, the Communists needed to preserve their political independence, their right to criticise and pursue further action in the likely event that the pro-capitalist SPD leadership would pull back, attempt to restrain the working class and fail to take the necessary steps to defeat fascism.

“In Trotsky’s articles in this period he implores the KPD to attempt to unite in action with the SPD to physically confront the Nazis, because it was the only strategy which held out the possibility of victory…. It was plain that the reformist SPD leadership would not take genuine action against the fascists unless they were forced to. An appeal from the KPD for united activity would have placed considerable pressure on them.

“It would also have opened up the opportunity for the KPD to undermine the hold of the reformist leaders over their overwhelmingly working-class rank and file. If the SPD leaders rejected the communists’ offer for united action around widely supported common aims, dissatisfaction amongst the ranks of the SPD with their conservative leadership would only increase, making it more likely they would abandon the SPD for the KPD as the ones who were serious about fighting for workers’ interests.

“Accepting the offer, on the other hand, would have led to the fraternisation between the KPD and SPD rank and file. It would have led to strikes, demonstrations, and the possibility of winning the demands.

“Fascism would actually fall to pieces if the Communist Party were able to unite the working class, transforming it into a powerful revolutionary magnet for all the oppressed masses of the people….Only strong and decisive action by the powerful working-class organisations, not conciliation or caution, would have been capable of winning over the middle layers and other vacillating sections of the population which were no longer interested in moderation or preserving the status quo. Concerted resistance from the working class would at least have driven the fascists off the streets, out of the political mainstream and back into the gutter where they belonged…. Trotsky’s urgent appeals for united struggle tragically fell on deaf ears.

“As a result of the passivity of the German left, Hitler took power without a finger being lifted. There was no general strike, no civil war, only a truly demoralising capitulation.”

Oh those silly Stalinists, if only they had listened to wise old Trotsky, things could have been so different! Of course they had no need to turn to Trotsky for this sage advice because they were already trying to create joint action with the SDP and being turned down every time! We will not be too hard on Ms Walsh, for she may not have read the history of the time before writing about it: we only charge her with stupidity in attempting to write on a subject she obviously knows very little about. Trotsky, however, was aware of what was going on and as usual his utterances were designed to mislead workers and spread pessimism about the possibility of defeating imperialism. We shall once again return to comrade Brar’s excellent book to acquaint readers with the facts about the pleas for a united front made to the SPD by the KPD:

“Before the Nazis came to power the Communist Party and the Red Trade Union opposition issued calls to the Social Democratic Party and the General Trade Union Confederation for joint action of all labour organisations against the then impending wage offensive (April 1932 appeal) and for the organisation of a general strike for the repeal of emergency decrees and the disbanding of Storm Troops (20 July 1932 appeal). Both these appeals were rejected, the second on the spurious ground that the call for a general strike was provocative and that the ballot box was the only instrument for opposing fascism. A third appeal for a united front was issued by the Communist Party on 30 January 1933 after the installation of Hitler as Chancellor. There was such a groundswell of support for this call that, although it did not respond officially, the leadership of the Social Democratic Party was compelled to explain its refusal in its own publications. While specifically rejecting any joint action against Hitler on the spurious ground that, as he had assumed power legally, he should not be opposed, it proposed a ‘non-aggression pact’ with the Communist Party, i.e., abstention from mutual verbal criticism. The fourth call for a united front, made on 1 March 1933, after the burning of the Reichstag and the unleashing of unbridled Nazi terror, was also left unanswered by the Social Democratic leadership, as the latter was busy at the time trying to come to an understanding with the Hitlerites for the toleration of social democracy under fascism. Ignorant quarters have levelled the criticism that the Communist Party’s emphasis on the ‘united front from below’ and its failure to appeal directly to the leadership of German social democracy and the trade unions earlier than 1932, contributed to the failure of the working class to frustrate the fascist advance to power. This criticism is totally groundless, failing as it does to take into account the actual conditions then prevailing in Germany. When the social democrat, Severing, in his capacity as Minister of the Interior, was shooting down the workers’ May Day demonstrations in 1929, it would have been pointless to have appealed to the leadership of social democracy for a united front against the attack on the workers. However, with the expulsion of the Braun-Severing government by Von Papen, an opportunity for such an appeal presented itself, and the Communist Party sent its proposal to the Executives of the Social Democratic Party and the General Trade Union Federation for a united front. The firm rejection of the Communist proposal by these two bodies ensured the victory of fascism.”

As always Social Democracy is the door warden of fascism and those in Britain who ask us to vote Labour to keep out the BNP have little idea of this history.

According to the unread Ms Walsh “the responsibility for the catastrophe lay at the feet of the leaders of the SPD and KPD.

“It was in the aftermath of this defeat, in the face of a total lack of uproar within the Communist Parties over how such travesty could happen, that Trotsky concluded it was no longer possible to reform the Stalinist Communist Parties: ‘The German workers will rise again – Stalinism, never.’”

Of course Trotsky had his own motives for trying to discredit the Communist Parties which even Ms Walsh understands were the most committed to fighting against fascism. The collusion between Trotsky and his followers and German and Japanese fascism are well documented and even a basic understanding of his treachery makes Ms Walsh’s claim that Trotsky’s work on fascism is “the best in the Marxist tradition” look either very misguided or very mischievous.

Ms Walsh finishes (at long last I hear you cry) her awful article with the words;

“For those committed to not repeating the mistakes of the past, Trotsky’s writings on fascism remain an invaluable part of our arsenal.” That this assertion of Ms Walsh is absurd, must be clear to anyone in the light of the foregoing.

If we really want to make sure that the past mistakes within our movement are not repeated, the one lesson to learn is to regard Social Democracy as the enemy within the working-class movement and to wage an uncompromising struggle to expose and destroy its influence and grip on the working class. A part of that struggle is the exposure of Social Democracy’s apologists – the revisionists and Trotskyists. This fight against Social Democracy and its apologists is an essential part of the struggle to overthrow imperialism. Without this struggle, all this talk about socialism is only hypocritical cant.

__________________

If you want to know more of the rise of fascism in Germany we suggest you send £10 to E.J.Rule, 14 Featherstone Road, Southall, Middx UB2 5AA and ask for a copy of Imperialism, the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat. If you only read chapter ten, which deals with this question, it will be money well spent.

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Wilayto vs. Landy

The following was originally published on Stephen Gowans’ blog what’s left.

In the battle for public opinion over war on Iran, one strikes at the heart of Washington’s informal case for war while the other endorses it

By Stephen Gowans

Antiwar activist Phil Wilayto’s criticism of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s (CPD) petition condemning both Washington and Tehran, and the Campaign’s reply to him, illustrate the tensions in the antiwar movement among what I call challengers, formalists, and CPD anarchists. These three modes of opposition to Washington’s aggressions are largely defined by how the demonization of target regimes is responded to, and whether it is responded to at all. The challengers attack the informal campaigns of demonization aimed at building popular support for war, the formalists ignore them, and the CPD anarchists (self described peace and democracy campaigners) embrace them. In the battle against Washington for public opinion, the approach of the challengers has the greatest chance of success, the blows of the formalists fall wide of the mark, and the CPD anarchists play into Washington’s hands by endorsing the aggressor’s demonization campaign from within the antiwar movement itself.

The accustomed practice of countries that seek to change the political regime of other countries is to demonize the target of their aggression in order to justify the war, subversion, economic strangulation and other measures they have taken to achieve regime change. The aim is to legitimize their actions in the court of public opinion in order to secure at least popular acquiescence to, if not ardent support for, the toppling of a foreign government. Campaigns of vilification—typically based on hyperbole, distortion and occasionally outright deception–are invariably begun by aggressive governments and then amplified and carried on by a mimetic mass media (dishonestly labelled “independent” though dependent on the class of super-wealthy businesspeople who own them.) An emblematic case is the demonization of Iraq’s Ba’athist regime. A mighty oak sprang from a tiny acorn — an acorn that in the end, turned out to exist not at all. Iraq was said to represent a looming threat (the oak) on the basis of its alleged possession of banned weapons (the acorn.) If Iraq had indeed possessed hidden biological and chemical weapons, would it have posed any more danger than countries that possess infinitely larger and more deadly arsenals? That it did not pose even this modest threat shows that the aggressor never had a legitimate case for war. Today, the echoes of the demonization campaign are heard in the justifications of George Bush and Tony Blair for starting the war. We didn’t find weapons of mass destruction, they concede, but insist the war was just all the same, for a terrible tyrant was toppled. Since objections to this line of reasoning are heard only among a tiny minority of vocal opponents of Washington’s wars (and not all of them) we can conclude with some degree of certainty that creating an understanding that the head of a target regime is a brutal dictator—or simply emphasizing this where it is true–is enough to secure public acquiescence to the squandering of billions of dollars in military expenditure and the waste of countless lost and ruined lives.

The strategies of the various sectors of the antiwar movement are defined, on one level, by their orientation to the campaigns of demonization. There are three approaches. All share a common objection to the aggressive government’s stated reasons for waging war, but differ in how–and whether—they respond to the government’s attempted legitimization of its actions. One group challenges the invariable campaigns of demonization that depict target regimes as horrible and inhuman, another ignores them, while a third embraces them.

The Challengers

The first group, the challengers, seeks to undermine the emotional basis of popular support for wars that aggressive states and their media allies construct through their vilification of the intended victim. This the challengers do by scrutinizing the evidentiary basis of the informal campaign and exposing its lies and weaknesses. For example, against the charge that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the physical annihilation of Israel, the challengers have shown that Ahmadinejad’s oft-cited call to “wipe Israel off the map” is a mistranslation of Farsi to English. What the Iranian president actually called for was regime change in Jerusalem (which is to say, an end to Zionist hegemony over—and clearing the way for Arab self-determination within—former mandate Palestine.) To be sure, Zionists and their supporters condemn even this progressive aim as the rankest Judeophobia, but it hardly constitutes a call for the destruction of the people of Israel. Similarly, the challengers place the accusation that Ahmadinejad is a holocaust-denier in context, showing that while the Iranian president’s position on the historical existence of the Nazi program to exterminate European Jewry is unquestionably ambiguous, his pronouncements on the matter are largely concerned with exposing how Zionists dishonestly exploit the holocaust to deny Arab self-determination. Hence, what Ahmadinejad has done is condemn in a highly visible way the Zionist project of dispossessing Arabs to create a Jewish homeland, while pointing to the exploitation of the holocaust by the same forces to justify Israeli actions and stifle objections to Israel as a colonial settler state. Inasmuch as this stirs up the Arab street against Israel—and the United States counts on Israel as an instrument of its foreign policy in the Middle East—Washington’s interest in eliminating the Islamic regime in Tehran is obvious. Tehran’s support for Hamas (which seeks Arab self-determination within former mandate Palestine) and Hezbollah (which exists as a bulwark against Israeli incursions into Lebanon) bolsters Washington’s enmity to Tehran. The latest salvo in the campaign to build an emotional rationale for replacing the government in Tehran is the claim that the last presidential election was stolen and that Ahmadinejad’s mandate is therefore illegitimate. To be sure, Western popular sympathies, no less on the left, lie with an opposition which appears to exemplify anti-theocratic values. All the same, evidence that the election was stolen is thin at best and evidence that it wasn’t is compelling. There is also reason to believe that the mass protests following the elections were helped along by the support of “pro-democracy” forces generously backed by payments taken out of the king’s ransom in destabilization program funding set up by the Bush administration and carried on by Obama. There’s nothing secret about this funding; it’s on the public record.

The challengers represent the most reviled sector of the antiwar movement. This is so because they carry on their debunking in the face of opposition, not only from pro-war forces, but also from some antiwar opponents, who are never as happy as when they can turn their venom on their nominal allies, accusing them of supporting thuggish regimes. Accordingly, the challengers are branded as dictator-lovers and tyrant-supporters and are accused of tripping over the logical error of assuming the enemy of their enemy is their friend. This accusation is hurled so frequently and uncritically as to have become a comfortable part of the dogma of a certain sector of the antiwar movement. That it is dogma, and not a particularly compelling explanation of the challengers’ position, is evidenced by the following: The support the challengers extend to targeted regimes is support, not for the regimes per se (though in some case it can be), but support for their struggles against the aggression of which they have become a target. No one ever accused Churchill of being a Soviet Marxist for supporting the Soviet Union against the Nazis, but those who support the Iranian government against the predations of the United States and Israel are regularly accused of being partisans of and apologists for political Islam. If Churchill’s support for the Soviet Union against Hitler didn’t make him a Stalinist, how is it that the challengers’ support for the Iranian government against US imperialism makes them Islamists? Challenging propaganda aimed at preparing and sustaining popular support for aggression against a regime—and supporting it in its struggle against unjust aggression– in no way amounts to support for the regime’s political content. Falsely equating one with the other is a means by which one sector of the antiwar movement pressures another to abandon its solidarity with the victims of US aggression.

The Formalists

Another sector of the antiwar movement, the formalists, ignores the demonization campaigns of the aggressor states altogether, choosing to focus its attack on the formal, legal, case for war. For example, rather than challenging the depiction of Ahmadinejad as a Judeophobe and holocaust denier whose political rule is based on electoral fraud, formalists dismiss these accusations as irrelevant to the question of whether there is a just or legal basis for war. A war cannot be prosecuted justly or legally, they say, simply because a leader’s views are unpalatable or because the election that brought him to power has been called into question. Therefore, even if the charges against the regime are true, there’s no legitimate case for war. Besides, the formal case for an attack on Iran, for example, rests, not on these allegations, but on fear that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons. The attack on the formal case then proceeds with an examination of the evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear arsenal, while pointing to the hypocrisy of nuclear armed countries denying Iran nuclear arms, as they allow Israel to dangle the threat of a nuclear strike over the heads of its opponents, while calls for Israel to disarm and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are blocked. Since threatened countries are compelled to seek nuclear arms to provide for their self-defense against nuclear-armed powers, a further argument is made that the key to preventing Iran and other countries from developing their own nuclear arsenals is to reduce the threat level, not increase it.

One view is that the formalists’ strategy is preferable to that of the challengers because it focuses debate on what is seen to be the weakest part of the war-promoters’ argument (the absent legal basis for aggression), and therefore prevents the war-promoters from turning to demonization to build emotional mass support for war. Moreover, since the formalists ignore the accusations of brutality, dictatorship, human rights violations and so on against the target regime as irrelevant to the question of whether there is a just or legal basis for war, they reduce their chances of being tarred as thug-huggers, dictator-lovers, and tyrants’ apologists. To the extent these labels stick, the antiwar movement is discredited within the larger population.

The alternative view is that the formalists’ strategy fails in practice. Neutrality on the question of whether the targeted leader is brutal, holds unpalatable views, and has come to power through electoral fraud, is met by accusations that the formalists, through their silence, are tacit supporters of the regime. The charge is loosed: Failure to condemn is tantamount to support! What’s more, trying to keep the debate focussed on the formal case doesn’t stop the emotional case being made. And while the formalists may win the debate on the terrain they’ve chosen, the emotional case remains a potent pacifier of popular opinion. “Oh sure,” reasons the man on the street, “Maybe the formal case for war was flawed, but a brutal dictator (or the misogynist Taliban, or the ethnic cleansing Serbs, and so on) was removed. ”

The formalists’ error, in training their attack on the formal case for war, is to mistake where the enemy’s strength lies. The formal case carries little weight in popular discourse. What matters is the public’s emotional reaction. Is the target regime and its leader brutal, thuggish, unpredictable, dangerous, hate-filled and detestable? In other words, is he a demon? If that’s what the public understands, the fact that there’s no case for war under the UN Charter; that war hasn’t been blessed by the Security Council; that the accused hasn’t done what he’s accused of doing; that there’s a double standard involved, doesn’t matter. The public will go along. First, because wars as they’re fought by imperialist powers today—invariably against weak countries—demand no obvious sacrifice on the part of the public; and second, because they can be rationalized as an enterprise whose outcome, on balance, is desirable. This rationalization, depends, of course, on a fair degree of blindness to the scale of humanitarian tragedy US-led wars of imperialist aggression have created in the former Yugoslavia and more clearly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it’s a blindness the mass media play a hand in creating and many people, besotted with patriotism, are happy to accept. The formalists, while perceiving their own path to be wiser than that of the challengers, have, on the contrary, stumbled into a cul-de-sac. If the goal is to arouse the public against preparations for war, their blows miss the real target.

The CPD Anarchists

The third sector of the antiwar movement, the CPD anarchists, neither challenges the campaigns of demonization that prepare public opinion for aggression against a target regime, nor ignore them. Instead, they embrace them. This sector of the antiwar movement is against the state—any state—whether it is a powerful aggressor or a weak victim, an imperialist power or a successor to a movement of national liberation, an enforcer of a regime of exploitation or an enforcer of a regime against it. During the Cold War CPD anarchists were against both the United States and the Soviet Union. In the Persian Gulf War they were against both the United States and Iraq, and remained so in 2003. Today they are against both the United States and Iran. Mostly, this sector is made up of anarchists who call themselves campaigners for peace and democracy. But while not all of its members self-identify as anarchists, they are guided by anarchist principles. Their invariable opposition to any state is accompanied by an invariable solidarity with anyone who challenges any state. They are for the dissidents in Cuba who take money from Washington to overthrow Cuba’s socialism and are against the Cuban state for jailing them. They were for the anticommunist Polish trade union Solidarity and anticommunist dissidents in Eastern Europe as ardently as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and The Wall Street Journal were. We can be sure that the State Department likes the CPD anarchists a good deal. They are for the same people they’re for (anyone working against the regimes the US is opposed to) and against the regimes they’re against (the Soviet Union, Cuba, Iraq, Iran.) True, the CPD anarchists are also against regimes the United States is for (like Saudi Arabia). And they’re against US foreign policy, but their opposition, as we shall see in a moment, is more a help to the State Department than a hindrance.

CPD anarchists have a curious habit of launching demonization campaigns of their own at the peak of the US state’s demonization of the next regime to be taken down. When Washington demonized the Soviet government to justify the Cold War, the CPD anarchists were not far behind. When Washington deplored Havana’s jailing of mercenary dissidents, the CPD anarchists joined in. On the eve of the 2003 US-British invasion of Iraq, they let it be known that they too condemned Saddam Hussein. Unlike the challengers, who expose the distortions and deceptions that make up Washington’s informal campaigns for war, the CPD anarchists accept them at face value, and in doing so, legitimize them from within the antiwar movement. They take the line of least resistance. Accept the propaganda against the intended victim holus bolus (because the victim is a state and it must, by the very definition of a state in the anarchist lexicon, be as corrupt and horrible as the press and State Department say it is.) Whereas the formalists ignore the aggressors’ informal case for war, the CPD anarchists buttress it.

Recently, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy issued a petition to rally opposition to both Washington and Tehran. The government in Tehran, the CPD anarchists argued, is hardly a government leftists should want to support. This confuses support for a government in its struggle against predation by imperialist powers with support for a regime’s political content. It’s true that leftists shouldn’t want to support the political content of the Islamic regime, but it’s untrue that leftists wouldn’t want to support a state that is resisting imperialist aggression. The Stalin government was the kind of government capitalists wouldn’t want to support, but Churchill and Roosevelt did support it, because, from the perspective of US and British capital at the time, it made sense to do so. Should Churchill and Roosevelt have abandoned the Soviets in their struggle against the invading Nazis and called instead for solidarity with anti-Soviet dissidents in Russia (i.e., a fifth column) simply because the Stalin government was not one a capitalist should want to support? If the goal were to allow the Nazis to swallow up the Soviet Union, no better advice could have been given. But neither Churchill nor Roosevelt were stupid enough to follow for their class the kind of fatuous reasoning the CPD anarchists advance for the rest of us.

The CPD calls on leftists to abandon the Iranian government in its struggle against the predations of the United States and Israel and support anti-regime dissidents within the country instead. If the objective is to allow Iran to be brought once again under the US heel, this is, indeed, sound advice. Were CPD principal Joanne Landy and her allies around at the time we can be sure they would have condemned German fascism and Soviet socialism equally, waiting until the Nazis had launched their invasion to wish a pox on both their houses, at which point they would have called for solidarity with anti-Soviet dissidents in Moscow. If the result was that the Nazis swallowed up the Soviet Union, Landy et al would have washed their hands of responsibility for their actions, as they must have done when Solidarity helped return Poland to its place on the periphery of European capitalism, and anti-Soviet dissidents helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union and along with it a collapse in living standards and the demise of guaranteed employment, free health care, a robust social wage and substantial equality.

The CPD anarchists say they’re standing in solidarity with democracy activists in Iran who are challenging the illegitimate, electoral fraud-tainted Ahmadinejad government. But their solidarity is legitimate only to the degree the “democracy” activists challenge a real breach of democracy, and are not upholding a fiction spun to further US efforts at destabilization. As mentioned above, the evidence for electoral theft is pathetically thin, amounting to little more than assertion. On the other hand, substantial polling backs the counterclaim that the outcome of the election truly reflected the way Iranians voted. The balance of evidence, then, lies on Ahmadinejad’s side. What can be said of a campaign for democracy whose solidarity is with forces on the ground that are against the side backed by the majority? What can be said of a campaign for peace that reinforces the distortions and misinformation that make up the informal case for war by accepting it at face value and then seeking endorsement of it within the antiwar movement itself?

Needless to say, the CPD anarchists have little good to say about the challengers. They accuse them of falsely seeing the enemy of their enemy as their friend. The aim is to discredit the challengers’ work of exposing the distortions and fabrications that make up the aggressor states’ demonization campaigns. For how can the outcome of their work be sound if it is based on a logical error? What’s more, the demonization must be accepted at face value, for in keeping with anarchist principles, the state and its leaders must be opposed. How much easier to oppose demons. If Washington and The New York Times say that Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is a dictator who clings to power for power’s-sake, then he is everything they say he is, for he is the leader of a state. If the State Department and Wall Street Journal say north Korea’s Kim Jong Il is a dangerously unpredictable tyrant who has an itch for war, the CPD anarchists will shy away from critical examination of the claim. Why risk undermining a depiction so favorable to the anarchist penchant for reviling heads of state? In fact, the CPD anarchists themselves practice the very same enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend thinking they accuse the challengers of practicing. Who are the heroes of the CPD anarchists? The Soviet, Eastern European and Cuban anti-socialist dissidents who sought to overthrow socialist states; the “pro-democracy” dissidents in the former Yugoslavia who sought to overthrow the government of Slobodan Milosevic (and did with US assistance) and in Iraq who sought to overthrow the Ba’athist regime (and later came to power with US assistance) and in Iran who seek to overthrow the Islamic state. These are the CPD anarchists’ friends. Why? Because they are the enemies of the CPD’s enemy (the state). The enemy of their enemy is their friend. For the CPD anarchists, it is all right to pledge solidarity with the enemies of a state, but not all right to pledge solidarity with a state the US is about to attack.

Conclusion

Of the three groups, the challengers would appear to have the best chance of success in countering Washington’s and the mass media’s efforts to build popular support, or at least, foster acquiescence to, wars of aggression. The formalists’ failure to challenge the informal campaign of demonization leaves the field open to pro-war forces, who are free to create popular revulsion to the targeted regime. Their attack on the legal basis for war, is too cerebral, and at the end of the day, is no match for the emotional hot buttons skilled politicians, public relations experts, and mass media manipulators are left free to push. Finally, there is no chance the CPD anarchists will counter Washington and the mass media’s war mongering in any effective way. On the contrary, their efforts only strengthen them, and one wonders how sincerely opposed to war are people who, on the eve of an attack, endorse the informal campaign of lies, distortions and exaggeration the aggressors use to garner popular support for their imminent predations.

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House of Latin America (HOLA), an Iranian NGO dedicated to solidarity and defense of the peoples of Latin America and the people of Iran, has initiated the following appeal to individuals and organizations worldwide to join with them in a campaign of solidarity with Iran in light of U.S. escalating threats and continuing sanctions.

Whereas, the escalating sanctions and threats of military intervention against Iran are intended to deprive the Iranian people of their internationally recognized right to live as an independent and free nation;

Whereas, the sanctions and threats are clear violations of Article 2 of the UN Charter, according to which member states must “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”;

Whereas, the United States is unequivocally obligated under the bilateral 1981 Algiers Treaty to refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Iran;

Whereas, sanctions often pave the way to war;

Whereas, Iran, as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has an “inalienable right” to develop and use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes;

Whereas, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there is no evidence to back up the charge that Iran is “planning to produce nuclear weapons”;

Whereas, the hegemonic lobbies that portray Iran as a threat to peace today also lied about imaginary weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to convince the public that war was necessary;

The people of the world cannot allow such a crime against humanity.

Therefore, I (we) join with all who stand for justice, peace, sovereignty and self determination in raising my (our) voice to demand:

* Lift economic sanctions against Iran.
* Recognize the right of Iran to develop and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
* Stop military threats against Iran.

Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: November 13, 2010

WASHINGTON — A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.

Arthur Rudolph, in 1990, was a rocket scientist for Nazi Germany and NASA.

The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

It describes the government’s posthumous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, part of whose scalp was kept in a Justice Department official’s drawer; the vigilante killing of a former Waffen SS soldier in New Jersey; and the government’s mistaken identification of the Treblinka concentration camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible.

The report catalogs both the successes and failures of the band of lawyers, historians and investigators at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis.

Perhaps the report’s most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.

The Justice Department report, describing what it calls “the government’s collaboration with persecutors,” says that O.S.I investigators learned that some of the Nazis “were indeed knowingly granted entry” to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts. “America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well,” it said.

Dr. Josef Mengele in 1956.

The report also documents divisions within the government over the effort and the legal pitfalls in relying on testimony from Holocaust survivors that was decades old. The report also concluded that the number of Nazis who made it into the United States was almost certainly much smaller than 10,000, the figure widely cited by government officials.

The Justice Department has resisted making the report public since 2006. Under the threat of a lawsuit, it turned over a heavily redacted version last month to a private research group, the National Security Archive, but even then many of the most legally and diplomatically sensitive portions were omitted. A complete version was obtained by The New York Times.

The Justice Department said the report, the product of six years of work, was never formally completed and did not represent its official findings. It cited “numerous factual errors and omissions,” but declined to say what they were.

More than 300 Nazi persecutors have been deported, stripped of citizenship or blocked from entering the United States since the creation of the O.S.I., which was merged with another unit this year.

John Demjanjuk in 2006.

In chronicling the cases of Nazis who were aided by American intelligence officials, the report cites help that C.I.A. officials provided in 1954 to Otto Von Bolschwing, an associate of Adolph Eichmann who had helped develop the initial plans “to purge Germany of the Jews” and who later worked for the C.I.A. in the United States. In a chain of memos, C.I.A. officials debated what to do if Von Bolschwing were confronted about his past — whether to deny any Nazi affiliation or “explain it away on the basis of extenuating circumstances,” the report said.

The Justice Department, after learning of Von Bolschwing’s Nazi ties, sought to deport him in 1981. He died that year at age 72.

The report also examines the case of Arthur L. Rudolph, a Nazi scientist who ran the Mittelwerk munitions factory. He was brought to the United States in 1945 for his rocket-making expertise under Operation Paperclip, an American program that recruited scientists who had worked in Nazi Germany. (Rudolph has been honored by NASA and is credited as the father of the Saturn V rocket.)

The report cites a 1949 memo from the Justice Department’s No. 2 official urging immigration officers to let Rudolph back in the country after a stay in Mexico, saying that a failure to do so “would be to the detriment of the national interest.”

Justice Department investigators later found evidence that Rudolph was much more actively involved in exploiting slave laborers at Mittelwerk than he or American intelligence officials had acknowledged, the report says.

Some intelligence officials objected when the Justice Department sought to deport him in 1983, but the O.S.I. considered the deportation of someone of Rudolph’s prominence as an affirmation of “the depth of the government’s commitment to the Nazi prosecution program,” according to internal memos.

The Justice Department itself sometimes concealed what American officials knew about Nazis in this country, the report found.

In 1980, prosecutors filed a motion that “misstated the facts” in asserting that checks of C.I.A. and F.B.I. records revealed no information on the Nazi past of Tscherim Soobzokov, a former Waffen SS soldier. In fact, the report said, the Justice Department “knew that Soobzokov had advised the C.I.A. of his SS connection after he arrived in the United States.”

(After the case was dismissed, radical Jewish groups urged violence against Mr. Soobzokov, and he was killed in 1985 by a bomb at his home in Paterson, N.J. )

The secrecy surrounding the Justice Department’s handling of the report could pose a political dilemma for President Obama because of his pledge to run the most transparent administration in history. Mr. Obama chose the Justice Department to coordinate the opening of government records.

The Nazi-hunting report was the brainchild of Mark Richard, a senior Justice Department lawyer. In 1999, he persuaded Attorney General Janet Reno to begin a detailed look at what he saw as a critical piece of history, and he assigned a career prosecutor, Judith Feigin, to the job. After Mr. Richard edited the final version in 2006, he urged senior officials to make it public but was rebuffed, colleagues said.

When Mr. Richard became ill with cancer, he told a gathering of friends and family that the report’s publication was one of three things he hoped to see before he died, the colleagues said. He died in June 2009, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. spoke at his funeral.

“I spoke to him the week before he died, and he was still trying to get it released,” Ms. Feigin said. “It broke his heart.”

After Mr. Richard’s death, David Sobel, a Washington lawyer, and the National Security Archive sued for the report’s release under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Justice Department initially fought the lawsuit, but finally gave Mr. Sobel a partial copy — with more than 1,000 passages and references deleted based on exemptions for privacy and internal deliberations.

Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the department is committed to transparency, and that redactions are made by experienced lawyers.

The full report disclosed that the Justice Department found “a smoking gun” in 1997 establishing with “definitive proof” that Switzerland had bought gold from the Nazis that had been taken from Jewish victims of the Holocaust. But these references are deleted, as are disputes between the Justice and State Departments over Switzerland’s culpability in the months leading up to a major report on the issue.

Another section describes as “a hideous failure” a series of meetings in 2000 that United States officials held with Latvian officials to pressure them to pursue suspected Nazis. That passage is also deleted.

So too are references to macabre but little-known bits of history, including how a director of the O.S.I. kept a piece of scalp that was thought to belong to Dr. Mengele in his desk in hopes that it would help establish whether he was dead.

The chapter on Dr. Mengele, one of the most notorious Nazis to escape prosecution, details the O.S.I.’s elaborate efforts in the mid-1980s to determine whether he had fled to the United States and might still be alive.

It describes how investigators used letters and diaries apparently written by Dr. Mengele in the 1970s, along with German dental records and Munich phone books, to follow his trail.

After the development of DNA tests, the piece of scalp, which had been turned over by the Brazilian authorities, proved to be a critical piece of evidence in establishing that Dr. Mengele had fled to Brazil and had died there in about 1979 without ever entering the United States, the report said. The edited report deletes references to Dr. Mengele’s scalp on privacy grounds.

Even documents that have long been available to the public are omitted, including court decisions, Congressional testimony and front-page newspaper articles from the 1970s.

A chapter on the O.S.I.’s most publicized failure — the case against John Demjanjuk, a retired American autoworker who was mistakenly identified as Treblinka’s Ivan the Terrible — deletes dozens of details, including part of a 1993 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that raised ethics accusations against Justice Department officials.

That section also omits a passage disclosing that Latvian émigrés sympathetic to Mr. Demjanjuk secretly arranged for the O.S.I.’s trash to be delivered to them each day from 1985 to 1987. The émigrés rifled through the garbage to find classified documents that could help Mr. Demjanjuk, who is currently standing trial in Munich on separate war crimes charges.

Ms. Feigin said she was baffled by the Justice Department’s attempt to keep a central part of its history secret for so long. “It’s an amazing story,” she said, “that needs to be told.”

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