Solidarity with the German workers – workers of all lands unite!

Wellred

Core Argument

This chapter issues a polemical call for international working-class solidarity in the immediate aftermath of Germany’s defeat, arguing that the British ruling class is deliberately stoking hatred of the German people to pre-empt sympathy for a potential communist revolution there. The core narrative thrust is that the British capitalist class, having aided and condoned the Nazis’ destruction of the German labour movement, now hypocritically poses as the righteous avenger of Nazi crimes. The author insists that the German working class was itself the primary victim of fascism, and that British workers have more in common with their German counterparts than with Churchill and his class.

Key claims are advanced through a series of sharp comparisons. The atrocities of British imperialism in India—concentration camps, mass starvation, flogging, collective fines—are equated directly with Nazi crimes in Europe. Race hatred in British colonies and the American South against Black people is presented as no less vicious than Nazi antisemitism. The author recalls the officially admitted lies of atrocity propaganda from the First World War to warn against a repeat. The most striking piece of evidence is a direct quotation from Churchill’s book Great Contemporaries, in which he expressed admiration for Hitler’s “courage, perseverance and vital force” in overcoming opposition. This is deployed to demonstrate that the British ruling class was never fundamentally opposed to fascism, only to Germany as a rival imperial power.

The chapter draws on the historical context of the Second World War’s end, the exposure of Nazi genocide, and the onset of the Cold War. It invokes the pre-war record of British and American capital financing and arming Hitler’s rise, positioning the destruction of the German labour movement as fascism’s principal mission. The theoretical foundation is Marx’s slogan “Workers of the world unite,” presented as the only alternative to the ruling-class policy of national hatred.

The polemic is directed against “Vansittartism”—the doctrine, associated with British diplomat Lord Vansittart, that held the entire German nation collectively responsible for Nazi crimes—and against the coalition policy of the Labour leaders, who are accused of subordinating class interests to the capitalist state. The chapter’s blunt conclusion is that British workers must fight race hatred and support German workers’ resurgence, not their “re-education” by the capitalist class.