tionary moyements of twentieth-century Europe are Their leaders memorated, the streets which flowed the revelutionary crowds have disappeared, and the history books recording them are seldom read.
Everyone knows that in the 1930s Hitler re-armed Germany and annexed Austria and parts of Poland and So Second World War. But few people know that the first of Hitler's many victims were German socialists, sent in their thousands to camps that later held the Jews. And few why he put them there.
One November morning in 1918, tens of thousands of workers, many of them armed. streamed into the centre of Berlin, persuaded soldiers on the bridges to lower their rifles and opened the arsenals jails. By nightfall the insurgents had overthrown the Kaiser goverancie and had socialists into power.
Insurrection This was the beginning of Germany's socialist revolution. The new govermical was mistrucica to end tic war, socialise all German industry, and run system of • workers' and councils which sprang up during the insurrection. Germany was to Socialist Republic.
so everyone thought. The right-wing socialists revolution, turning on their followers the bayonets and armoured cars of monarchist troops known Freikorps. In the civil war of 1919,. 20,000 workers gave their lives for the German Socialist Republic.
Haunted Although it was unsuccessful, the revolution haunted Hitler lic nungry. workers and war-weary soldiers had joined the revolution of 1918 to end a war and expropriate those responsible for it. In the 1930s Hitler was planning a new war: he foresaw another 1918! Here was one of the main reasons for destroying the communists and the socialists.
Hitler erased the memory of the revolution from the German people. The books recording it were burnt on great public bonfires The revolutionists took their recollections to the graves ordered them to dig. workers' councils of 1918 are known. only to a handful of historians, many of whom praise them for the wrong.
The civil war of 1919 has vanished, even from the histories.
In 1917 or 1918 revolutionary uprisings also took place in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, and of course Russia. Their purpose same: to end the war and the social order that brought it forth. The First World War ended only when revolution knocked the baton from the officer's hand. The German November was one of these; and if it had not been betrayed it would have saved the world from Hitler and the Second World War.
Resistance that in 1944 and America liberated Europe from Nazi occupation. This is a half-truth. The leading cities of Europe were freed by of Communist-led workers In 1944, for example, the French resistance, three-quarters of a million fighters in the field, liberated Marseilles, Nantes and means of a popular insurrection. April 1945 the Italian resistance rose in the cities and towns of northern Italy, sweeping away both the Nazi occupiers and the Mussolini. The war against fascism on the Italian peninsula took the lives of partisans than soldiers.
With no direct help from Allied forces, the resistance expelled- the Socialist Challenge 17 July 1980 Page 10 will know the and and lifted the through the • soldiers' be a betrayed the as always. minds of the the SS Now. the the believe 1945 Britain and armies on their soil.
partisans, by claimed heroes the day before. In fascists of more. national Led their factories and bridges, Allied only from the Nazis those,who had failed to catastrophe The German workers showed their hatred for the Kaiser the socialists into when they overthrew him and his general staff and lifted Nazis from Greece and Yugoslavia by armed uprising in October 1944. The Yugoslavs refused to allow the Allied British troops went to Greece in 1944, after the Germans had gone to attack the Comthe and Churchill had. proEurope still commemorates the resistance, but regards it as a struggle liberation 4110. little Yet, when the resisters polishcaptured. rifles or blew up most of them dreamed of freeing their country not but also avert the of 1939. Most of German people.
Europe's capitalists collaborated with the Nazi conqueror or fled to London and New York (a privilege not available to the people). Socialist them from the Cold War and the fear of World War Three. future.
ot. we The strong start. Loreats tion (Germany, France) or a revolutionary uprising (Austria, Portugal, Mos people today know nothing about them. The civil war in remembered like the STUCTIC chiefly Its socialist objecEasy Way For the peoples of Europe the years between 1914 and 1945 wer with hellish catastrophes to r they responded a revol. democrats and Eurocommunists have helped to conceal the rich revolutionary history of the European working class. But to forget the past is to imperil the For the past thirty-five years most Huropeans have had peace prosperity and democracy. These are inestimable advantages for socialists.
workers? parties can enter They can loWery chose legislat chose, , legislate socialism with four or five strokes of the pen. With industry intact, with no famine, and with no foreign army to appease, socialism could be off to a No doubt, if the workers' parties in power seemed eager to take things that far, the ruling classes would rep. of militar disruption and miltar But legitimate government with popular support always has a powerful mora and material advantage over rebels. By mobilising the people how easily the opposition could be crushed!