Another view of Stalin (50 page)

`In guiding the armed struggle as a whole, Stalin was assisted by his natural intelligence and profound intuition. He had a knack of grasping the main link in the strategic situation so as to organize opposition to the enemy and conduct a major offensive operation. He was certainly a worthy Supreme Commander.'

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Ibid. , pp. 284--285.

From Stalin to Khrushchev

On February 9, 1946, Stalin presented to his electors a summary of the anti-fascist war:

`The war was a great school in which all of the people's forces were successfully put to the test.'

Stalin indirectly attacked the militarist conceptions that pretended that the Red Army was the main factor in the victory. The idea that the Army was above the Party, popular during Tukhachevsky's  time, had resurfaced in Zhukov's  circle at the end of the war. Stalin, of course, recognized the enormous achievements of the Army but, `above all, it was our Soviet social system that triumphed .... The war showed that our Soviet social system is a truly popular system.' Second, victory is due to `our Soviet political system .... Our multinational state resisted all the war's tests and proved its vitality.'

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Staline, Discours 9 fйvrier 1946,  uvres (Йditions NBE, 1975), vol. XIV, pp. 189--191.

It would be a mistake, Stalin continued, to think `that we owe our triumph uniquely to the courage of our troops'. The army's heroism would have been in vain without the huge numbers of tanks, canons and munitions that the people made for the soldiers. And this incredible production could not have taken place without industrialization, `accomplished in the excessively short period of thirteen years', and without collectivization, which ended, `in a short period, the permanent state of backwardness of our agriculture'. Stalin also recalled the struggle led by the Trotskyists  and the Bukharinists  against industrialization and collectivization:

`Many important members of our Party systematically pulled the Party backwards and tried in every way to push it on to the ``ordinary'' road of capitalist development.'

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Ibid. , pp. 193--196.

Stalin therefore focused, correctly, on the key rфle played by the Party and by the working masses in the preparation for defence and for war.

In February 1946, the new Five Year Plan was approved.

During its retreat, the German Army had deliberately destroyed and burned anything that could be of use to the Soviets: 2,000 cities, 70,000 villages and factories employing four million workers were totally or partially destroyed.

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Maurice Dobb, Soviet Economic Development (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966. 6th edition, p. 301.

In the invaded regions, the destruction incurred meant 40 to 60 per cent of the potential coal, electricity, steel, metals and machinery production. Some estimated that the Soviet Union would need several decades before it could recover from the wounds the Nazis had inflicted on its industrial apparatus. Yet, after three incredible years, the 1948 industrial production surpassed that of 1940.

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Ibid. , p. 313.

With respect to the base year 1940, coal production reached an index of 123, electricity 130, laminates 102, cars and trucks 161, machine tools 154 and cement 114.

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Bettelheim,  op. cit. , pp. 148, 151.

In 1950, at the end of the Fourth Five-Year Plan, industrial production was 73 per cent above that of 1940. Capital goods production had doubled, while consumer goods production had increased by 23 per cent.

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Dobb, op. cit. , p. 316.

The Fifth Plan, for the period 1951--1955, sought yearly industrial growth of 12 per cent. A new twist was that consumer goods production was to see a remarkable increase, of 65 per cent; capital goods were to increase by 80 per cent in five years.

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Ibid.

This change in economic policy had already been announced in Stalin's 1946 summary speech:

`We will pay particular attention to increasing production of consumer goods, to raising the standard of living of workers, by progressively reducing the cost of goods and by creating all sorts of scientific research institutes.'

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Staline, op. cit. , p. 198.

The U.S. takes up where Nazi Germany left off

Even before the anti-fascist war was finished, a number of U.S. generals dreamed of a shift in alliances so that they could attack the Soviet Union. For this adventure, they intended to use the Nazi army, purged of Hitler  and his close entourage. The former secret servant Cookridge  recalled some of the discussions in the summer of 1945:

`General Patton  was dreaming of rearming a couple of Waffen SS divisions to incorporate them into his US Third Army ``and lead them against the Reds''.

`Patton  had put this plan quite seriously to General Joseph T. McNarney,  deputy US military governor in Germany .... ``What do you care what those goddam bolshies think?'' said Patton.  ``We're going to have to fight them sooner or later. Why not now while our army is intact and we can kick the Red Army back into Russia? We can do it with my Germans ... they hate those red bastards.''

` ``He inquired ...'', Murphy  later wrote, ``whether there was any chance of going on to Moscow, which he said he could reach in thirty days, instead of waiting for the Russians to attack the United States.'' '

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E. H. Cookridge,  op. cit. , pp. 127--128.

Gehlen, the Nazi, and the CIA

General Gehlen  had been the Nazi head of intelligence in the Soviet Union. In May 1945, he surrendered, along with his archives, to the U.S. He was presented to Major-General Luther Sibert,  head of intelligence for General Bradley's  armies. At Sibert's  request, Gehlen  the Nazi wrote a 129-page report. Thereafter, Gehlen  `developed his great scheme of a secret organisation engaged on intelligence work against the Soviet Union under American aegis.'

Ibid. , p. 122.

Gehlen  was introduced to the highest U.S. military authorities and, when Soviet representatives asked about the whereabouts of Gehlen  and Schellenberg,  two war criminals who should have been returned to them, the U.S. replied that they had no news of them. On August 22, 1945, they clandestinely brought Gehlen  to the U.S.

Ibid. , p. 125.

Gehlen  the Nazi `negotiated' with the leaders of U.S. intelligence, including Allen Dulles,  and they came up with an `agreeement': Gehlen's  spy organization would continue to serve in the Soviet Union, autonomously, and `Liaison with American Intelligence would be maintained by US officers'. Furthermore, the `Gehlen  Organisation would be used solely to procure intelligence on the Soviet Union and satellite countries of the communist bloc.'

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Ibid. , p. 135.

On July 9, 1946, Gehlen  was back in Germany to reactivate his Nazi spy service, under U.S. leadership. He hired dozens of upper Gestapo and SS officers, to whom he furnished false identities.

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Ibid. , pp. 144--145.

John Loftus,  former U.S. intelligence officer responsible for the tracking down of former Nazis at the end of the war, noted that thousands of Ukrainian, Croatian and Hungarian fascists were snuck into the U.S. by a `rival' intelligence service. Loftus  writes:

`According to one estimate, some 10,000 Nazi war criminals entered the United States after World War II.'

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Mark Aarons  and John Loftus,  Ratlines: How the Vatican's Nazi networks betrayed Western intelligence to the Soviets (London: Heinemann, 1991), pp. 269--270.

Right from 1947, when the U.S. started up the Cold War, these `former' Nazis played an important rфle in the anti-Communist propaganda. So we can correctly claim that U.S. imperialism was the direct continuation of Nazi expansionism.

The nuclear bomb against the Soviet Union

On July 21, 1945, during the Potsdam conference, Truman  received a report on the first U.S. nuclear test.

Margaret Truman  wrote:

`This freed my father to negotiate (with Stalin) with far more boldness and bluntness.'

Margaret Truman,  Harry S. Truman  (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1973), p. 273.

She continued:

`(M)y father now tackled the sticky question of how and what to tell Stalin about the atomic bomb .... Dad strolled over to the Russian leader and told him that the United States had created a new weapon ``of unusual destructive force.'' Prime Minister Churchill  and Secretary of State Byrnes  stood only a few yards away, studying Stalin's reaction. He was remarkably cool.'

Ibid. , pp. 275--276.

Zhukov  recalled the conversation held between Stalin and Molotov  upon their return to their residence:

`Molotov  reacted immediately. ``They are trying to bid up.''

`Stalin laughed:

` ``Let them. I'll have to talk it over with Kurchatov  today and get him to speed things up.''

`I understood they were talking about the development of the atomic bomb.'

G. Zhukov,  Reminiscences and Reflections (Moscow: Progress, 1985), vol. 2, p. 449.

Stalin was a determined and cool man who never allowed himself to be intimidated, not even by nuclear blackmail.

Truman,  right from the production of the first atomic weapon, perceived it as a weapon of mass terror that would ensure U.S. world hegemony. He wrote in his memoirs:

`I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used .... when I talked to Churchill  he unhesitatingly told me he favored the use of the atomic bomb.'

Harry S. Truman,  Memoirs (New York: Signet Book, 1965), vol. 1, p. 462.

In the end of July, the Soviet Union decided to attack Japan, which was headed for inevitable military defeat. However, without the slightest military necessity, the U.S. decided to `experiment' their nuclear weapons on human beings. They wanted to terrorize their adversaries to an extent that even the Nazis had not done. The main purpose of imperialism, when it massively killed Japanese, was to create terror among the Soviets: the main message was for Stalin. As soon as Churchill  learned of the atomic bomb's existence, he wanted to use it against the Soviet Union! Professor Gabriel Kolko  writes:

`Field Marshal Alan Brooke  thought the Prime Minister's infantile enthusiasm bordered on the dangerous: ``He was already seeing himself capable of eliminating all the Russian centres of industry''.'

Gabriel Kolko,  The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy 1943--1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1990), p. 559.

At Potsdam, Churchill  `urged that they consider it as a diplomatic lever on the Russians'.

Ibid. , p. 560.

On August 6, 1945, having learned that Hiroshima was destroyed by the bomb, Truman  declared to the people around him that it was the `greatest achievement of organized science in history'. Truman  dared to write that in his memoirs! The decision of U.S. imperialism to indiscrimately exterminate hundreds of millions of Japanese civilians shows its inhuman and barbaric nature; it had taken up the torch from the fascist powers. In his official declaration, the same day, Truman  said:

`If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.'

Truman,  Ibid. , p. 466.

On August 9, a second city, Nagasaki, was destroyed by Truman's  promised atomic rain. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 443,000 civilians were massacred.

Dйborine,  op. cit. , p. 265.

The only potential world hegemonic power, the U.S. virulently opposed any anti-imperialist movement, fighting for independence, popular democracy or socialism. This is the meaning of the `Truman  Doctrine', a doctrine of unlimited interventionism with the slogan of defending `freedom' (of the market, of exploitation) from `Communist tyranny'. Here is how Truman  phrased it on March 12, 1947: `it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.'

Truman,  op. cit. , vol. 2, p. 128--129.

This policy of interventionism was principally `justified' by the `threat of Russian totalitarianism'. Truman  declared that `the new menace facing us seemed every bit as grave as Nazy Germany.'

Ibid. , p. 124.

Having eliminated Hitler,  his rival for world hegemony, Truman  took up all the Nazi anti-Communist slanders. Here is how Truman  spoke of the Soviet Union:

`(A) group of cruel but skillful fanatics who set up a dictatorship with all the trappings of a state religion .... The individual became the subject of the state in perpetual enslavement'.

Ibid. , p. 314.

So, as soon as the Nazis had been defeated, Truman  took up their main direction, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism. In fact, it was Hitler  himself who proposed this opening to the U.S. on August 31, 1944.