Allied plans after Hitler’s fall¶
Core Argument¶
In this chapter, the author argues that the impending collapse of Hitler’s regime, whether through military defeat or internal uprising, will not resolve the fundamental class contradictions of German society but will instead present the working class with the necessity of socialist revolution. The core narrative thrust is that the Allied powers, far from liberating Germany, intend to preserve the existing capitalist and bureaucratic structures of Nazi rule, merely replacing the Nazi Party with an occupation regime that will continue to suppress the German workers. The chapter insists that the German proletariat, numerically the strongest in Europe and possessing a deep tradition of Marxist education spanning two generations, will inevitably revive these ideas after the trauma of fascism. Hitler has drained the social reserves of German capitalism, and the middle class, reduced to a shadow, can no longer provide a stable basis for reaction; the pendulum must swing toward revolution.
The author draws on contemporary examples to substantiate this claim, noting that in France, Italy, and other countries, workers have already taken to mass expropriations, arrests of employers, and the formation of soviets and workers’ committees. If such movements arise under Allied occupation, the chapter warns, the imperialists will respond with repression, as foreshadowed by Churchill’s parliamentary statement that Germans could not escape responsibility by turning to communism. The author also points to the Allied destruction of the town of Wallendorf as a deliberate act of terror, modelled on the Nazi destruction of Lidice, intended to create a gulf between German civilians and Allied soldiers. However, the chapter predicts that such efforts will break down on the disgust of the Allied soldiers at being used for reprisals.
The polemical target is twofold. First, the author attacks the Stalinists and the bourgeoisie for their “pathological campaign” against the German people, which is motivated by fear of the German workers’ revolutionary tradition. Second, the chapter refutes the notion that the Nazis could successfully go “underground” after defeat, dismissing this as a fabrication of the bourgeois press designed to justify future repression. The real danger, the author contends, is that the Allies will label every strike or protest as “Nazi-inspired,” using Stalin’s technique to kill sympathy among Allied workers. The chapter concludes that a foreign totalitarian repression is unbearable, and the German masses, having endured Nazi terror, will resist Allied oppression in the most desperate fashion.