The 8th of May was Victory in Europe Day - known as VE Day - when the Second World War ended in Europe with Germany’s unconditional surrender. In “After the Reich” writer Giles MacDonogh describes how three million Germans died unnecessarily after the official end of hostilities. The two million German civilians who died were largely the old, women and children: victims of disease, cold, hunger, suicide - and mass murder. Largely forgotten was the slaughter of a quarter of a million Sudeten Germans by vengeful Czechs. The survivors were forced across the border, never to return to their homes. Similar ethnic cleansing scenes were witnessed across Poland, Silesia and East Prussia as age-old German communities were brutally deported.
The real roots of the war are in the class system of society. Every modern war has had its root in exploitation. The narrow interests of each “national” capitalist class conflict one with the other. It was not love of democracy that impelled British capitalism to declare war on Hitler but the defence of the capitalist interests of the British ruling class against an expansionist Germany that pushed them into declaring war.
The history of the world is written in the blood of the men, women and children our lords and masters have murdered in wars which they have waged for conquest and plunder. The ruling class has always declared the wars; we, their subject class, has always fought the battles. The rich had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the poor had nothing to gain and all to lose—particularly their lives.
Today it is the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the ultimate sacrifice, shedding their blood and providing the corpses. They have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. The wealthy tell you it is your patriotic duty to fight for your country. Yet their patriotic duty never takes them to the front lines or the trenches. Whenever blood is to be shed, the rulers of this country see to it that the workers shed theirs. That is a privilege and an honour of which they never deprive the working class.
The only way to end the possibility of war is to destroy the system which inevitably leads to it. When war breaks out there are those who say “Now that there is a war we must be patriotic and make sacrifices for victory.” But we should refuse to accept this and continue to fight the best we can for the advancement of the workers' cause during the war as before it. That is the way to fight against war.
Socialists seek to build the new society, in which all men and women, irrespective of nationality, will be able to live and work in security and peace, and with the full enjoyment of the good things of life.
The real roots of the war are in the class system of society. Every modern war has had its root in exploitation. The narrow interests of each “national” capitalist class conflict one with the other. It was not love of democracy that impelled British capitalism to declare war on Hitler but the defence of the capitalist interests of the British ruling class against an expansionist Germany that pushed them into declaring war.
The history of the world is written in the blood of the men, women and children our lords and masters have murdered in wars which they have waged for conquest and plunder. The ruling class has always declared the wars; we, their subject class, has always fought the battles. The rich had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the poor had nothing to gain and all to lose—particularly their lives.
Today it is the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the ultimate sacrifice, shedding their blood and providing the corpses. They have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. The wealthy tell you it is your patriotic duty to fight for your country. Yet their patriotic duty never takes them to the front lines or the trenches. Whenever blood is to be shed, the rulers of this country see to it that the workers shed theirs. That is a privilege and an honour of which they never deprive the working class.
The only way to end the possibility of war is to destroy the system which inevitably leads to it. When war breaks out there are those who say “Now that there is a war we must be patriotic and make sacrifices for victory.” But we should refuse to accept this and continue to fight the best we can for the advancement of the workers' cause during the war as before it. That is the way to fight against war.
Socialists seek to build the new society, in which all men and women, irrespective of nationality, will be able to live and work in security and peace, and with the full enjoyment of the good things of life.
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