Prepare for the socialist revolution¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter argues that the defeat of Nazism will not restore bourgeois democracy in Germany but will instead unleash a revolutionary crisis, with the German working class—steeled by repression—emerging as a vanguard force for socialist revolution across Europe. The core narrative thrust is that the Allied powers, particularly through their propaganda against German youth, reveal their fear not of lingering Nazi ideology but of the revolutionary potential that has been forged under fascist terror. The chapter draws on the example of Italy to demonstrate how youth, chafing under fascist suppression of initiative, rapidly assimilate revolutionary ideas at the first opportunity. It claims that the old workers’ organisations—social democratic and Stalinist—which capitulated to Hitler in 1933, will find little support in the early stages of revolution, as any collaboration with Allied conquerors would brand them traitors. The Stalinist programme of Vansittartite repression and reparations is singled out as a policy that would strip these bureaucrats of any remaining credibility.
The chapter presents evidence from reports of anti-Nazi opposition among German youth, including working-class and middle-class student recruits. It asserts that the conditions of Nazi terror forced the best militants in factories and opposition groups to think independently of Stalinist and social democratic bureaucrats, making them resistant to class-collaborationist policies. The bitterness of German workers, who conflate their employers with the Nazi regime, is invoked as a psychological basis for revolutionary consciousness. The chapter insists that Germany’s fate is inseparable from Europe’s: the millions of foreign slave labourers imported by Hitler have established fraternal relations with German workers, and their return home will spread memories of working-class solidarity.
A notable polemic targets Stalinism directly, using the example of the Red Army’s entry into Sofia. The chapter cites a News Chronicle report—suppressed in later editions—of Red Army soldiers fraternising with Bulgarian civilians, the Bulgarian army, and even German soldiers, exchanging the Red Front salute. The correspondent’s observation that the Communist Party could have taken power without opposition but did not want to is presented as damning evidence of Stalinism’s perfidious, counter-revolutionary role. The chapter concludes by calling on revolutionary communists in Germany and the Fourth International to build strong parties capable of seizing the coming epoch of class battle, aiming for the socialist united states of Europe.