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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 18, 4 May 1940, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
When crooks fall out, most of the dope they begin to spill about each other is usually true. The same goes for the imperialist war, which is a falling out of crooks on a grand scale.
The Nazis issued on April 27 a series of documents which they said they had seized in Norway. These documents included detailed British army orders and naval intelligence reports which showed that the Allies had planned to invade Norway on April 6 and 7 and were only forestalled by the speedier moves of the Nazis themselves.
According to these documents, British troops were actually already en route to Norway on April 6. It is claimed that the Nazis, moving in, bombed and sank a number of British transports which had got word too late to turn back on April 8.
The documents detail espionage work carried out over a period of months by the British preliminary to invasion. In view of what actually happened, von Ribbentrop was probably being ironic when he said the British “had prepared every detail of the landing and deployment of troops in an astonishingly systematic way through an espionage organization ...”
It was the Nazis who showed the way to the British in methods of being “astonishingly systematic” in matters of espionage and preparing an invasion. This is a case of the kettle calling the pot black. The Nazis simply proved themselves better spies, better organizers of an invasion. And they moved faster. The Norwegians were simply sacrificed to the necessities of the belligerent imperialist general staffs.
From out of the maze of charges, counter-charges, denials, and counter-denials, one thing emerges pretty plainly. Both sides had detailed and long-prepared plans for fighting their battle across Noway. When the strategic moment arrived both sides tried to put their plans into operation. The Nazis got there first. The Allies are still trying to catch up and from all accounts so far aren’t doing too well.
And it is probably because they are not doing so well that ominous talk is beginning to come out of London about starting the war in the air. Augur, who puts out most of the British government feelers in this country, sent a dispatch to the New York Times on April 29 which contained a strong hint that Chamberlain and Churchill might try to ward off criticism of the Norwegian setbacks by opening up an aerial offensive against Germany itself.
The Allies have so far wanted Hitler to take upon himself the onus of “starting” the war in the air against the big cities and industrial centers. Like Hitler, they have been willing to accept a tacit live-and-let-live policy in this dangerous domain.
They may be trying now to goad Hitler into starting for, as Augur cynically puts it, “that would clarify the internal position here ... Of course the first German raid on London or Paris or any other British or French civilian center would abruptly end humanitarian inhibitions. The Chamberlain doubts and ministerial troubles would disappear.”
In this, as in the invasion of Norway or the war as a whole, it is not a question of who “starts” it. The war, and all the invasions and barbarities, all the slaughter and hunger, is an eruption of capitalist society itself. Nobody ever thinks of asking who “starts” the convulsions far below the earth’s surface which hit us in the form of earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. We know they are “started” by deep-lying and deep-moving processes within the earth itself.
So with the war. To the workers of the world all the rulers of all the powers are equally responsible for this boss war. Who starts this or that is a matter of chance. What we have to get at is the root of war itself – and that is the capitalist system of private property and profit. Destroy that and you’ll put out the fires of war. The world will be a safer, saner place only when the capitalist volcano is extinguished forever.
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