MARXIST-LENINIST Part of Alliance 2004: Issue 2: September
CORRESPONDENCE: MORE ON GEORGII DIMITROV
Being A Response From Undergraduates Expelled From Academic History
Preface
Recently, a
correspondence was posted onto the list-web-pages of "International
Struggle Marxist-Leninist" (ISML), which was of interest.
Alliance gives a
reply to this correspondence, which follows on immediately from the
above exchange between GG and Gazza.
The reply concentrates on the question of Georgii Dimitrov and the
Reichstag Trial.
We do not here address the other matters raised, such as that of the
behaviours of the Italian section of the ISML, these have
been adequately dealt with on our web-pages (Via subject index via www.allianceML.com).
One other point is raised, the claim by Gazza that the legacy of Bill
Bland rests in the hands of the Communist Party Alliance (CPA).
It is not for us to deny the wish to associate their organisation with
Bland's legacy - Far from it!
However we must point out that the CPA refused explictly to join with
Bland and the Communist League in the formation of a
new party, rather than an alliance to create one in the future.
As to who might
legitimately call themselves Bland's inheritors, this is no doubt a
question for future generations and we do not need to waste
time on this.
Editors, Alliance Marxist-Leninist
SEPTEMBER 2004
Bland, William B An Initial Assessment of His Legacy
Bland Memorial Interview with Communist League
Bland Correspondences Debate Within the MLOB
Some Correspondences on Dimitrov
Bland Reply To a Reader On Dimitrov & Hoxha Reply To A Reader
Blum, Leon Betrayal of the Popular Front
Bulgaria, The Revolution and History Dimitrov
Balkan Federation; Stalin's opposition to Dimitrov
'Marxist Study Group" Birmingham - critiques Critique of Compass 112
Comintern and Take-over of by Revisionism Stalin & Comintern
Comintern, Dissolution of & Revisionist Take-Over of
& also see Stalin Society
Comintern Betrayal of the Popular Front
Communist Information Bureau Established to fight revisionism
Cominform Documents & Commentary by NS
CPG Fight against fascism 1928-1940 Debate Within the MLOB
Dimitrov & Subversion of United Front Tactics United Front
Dimitrov & Bulgaria, Revolution & History of Dimitrov
PART
ONE:
CORRESPONDENCE RECEIVED REGARDING
AN ARTICLE OF THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE (UK).
From GG: Tue Aug 31, 2004: Message One:
Subject:
On Georgi Dimitrov
While
perusing the Alliance M-L page, I came across a 1994
article from 'Compass' which attempts, quite poorly,
to slander the name and legacy of Georgi
Dimitrov.
In connection with the 1933 Reichstag Trial, during
which Dimitrov made Hermann Goering and the entire
National Socialist regime appear foolish before
the
entire world, the reader is to believe that:
IMPERIALISTS IN ORDER TO PROVIDE CREDENTIALS FOR GEORGI DIMITROV, A CONCEALED REVISIONIST WITH A
HISTORY OF RIGHT-REVISIONISM, TO TAKE OVER THE LEADERSHIP OF THE COMINTERN AND DIVERT IT ALONG THE
PATH OF RIGHT OPPORTUNIST APPEASEMENT OF NAZI GERMANY IN ORDER TO SERVE THE NEEDS OF WEST EUROPREAN
IMPERIALISTS IN THE NEW INTERNATIONAL SITUATION WHICH FOLLOWED THE NAZI COUP OF 1933."
Seven
points are made to support this outrageous conclusion,
namely:
1. Dimitrov received comparatively favorable treatment at the hands of the Nazis.
2. Dimitrov and the other Bulgarians received a public trial, while other Communists simply disappeared.
3. The German prosecutors asked the court to acquit the Bulgarians.
4. The defendants were in fact found not guilty.
5. Newspapers in capitalist countries supported Dimitrov's innocence.
6. The Bulgarian defendants were flown to Moscow while the acquitted German defendant was imprisoned in a concentration camp.
7. "[I]n the years that followed the Reichstag fire...international revisionism continue[d] to extol Dimitrov as a 'heroic Marxist-Leninist' whiledenouncing...Stalin."
First,
when the so-called Reichstag Trial took place, German
judiciary had yet to fall under the complete sway
of Hitler's government. The loyalty oaths and purges
of government officials which were to characterize
the National Socialist regime had yet to occur.
Hitler had yet to consolidate his position as Fuehrer;
he did not do so until the death of Hindenburg
several months later. Many non-Nazis remained
in high positions within the government bureaucracy;
indeed, some of these men kept their positions
until the end of the regime. That most barbaric
feature of National Socialist jurisprudence, "The
People's Court", had yet to make its appearance.
Second,
and in relation to the fifth point, the opinion
of Western newspapers is frankly irrelevant to the
author's thesis. Indeed, this statement weakens
the
entire article, since if it were true one assumes that
more than one newspaper editorial could be found to
support it.
Dimitrov's
relatively favorable treatment may be accounted
for in the fact that he was not only a foreign
citizen but a rather prominent foreign citizen as
well. His arrest may well have been a kind of afterthought
in the whole Reichstag affair, while the arrest
of German Communists was not:
Overy, Richard."Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945." [New York, 2001.] p. 150)
Rather
than apply Occam's Razor, which explains the Reichstag
Trial simply and without need of mysterious theories
and leaps of logic, the author of this
article
relies on bizarre conjecture and logical leaps worthy
of an Olympic gymnast.
The
Communist League's 'Dimitrov Thesis' has had no small
effect on it and Alliance's international reputation,
resulting in its being labeled as
'neo-Trotskyite'
by some and, along with other issues, provoking
the departure of the Italian Lenin Committee from
ISM-L. This ahistorical piece of slander is an embarrassment
that any undergraduate student of history
would be ashamed of.
Hello
Comrade,
I
agree with you that the late Bill Bland's hypothesis on Dimitrov is not
convincing. As the late Carl Sagan said ' Extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence', something that is not provided by Bill's
analysis.
When
Bill died in March 2001, the Communist League effectively ceased to
exist, its
work being carried on in Britain by Communist Party Alliance
(www.oneparty.org.uk), and in North America by Alliance.
Now, I have one or two disagreements with the Communist League and Alliance's stance, on Dimitrov, as I said and also on the nature of Cuba; but I haven't felt the need to label CL & Alliance as 'neo-trotskyist', not have I felt the need to split on those issues.
Marxism-Leninism is a science not a sum total of dogmas, and, if the late Sir Karl Popper is right, it (science) develops through a series of conjectures and refutations. Nothing in Marxism-Leninism should be regarded as "eternal truth"; even the principles of our science have the status they have due to being continuously put to the test of practice, just as the theory of gravity is corroborated every day of the week in innumerable ways by practical activity.
Bill was very much of this opinion. If he could be shown and convinced that his hypothesis was wrong then he would not have hesitated to admit that his hypothesis was wrong and he would have drawn the necessary conclusions from it, just as a good Marxist-Lenninist does, or should do.
Therefore, to label him as a neo-Trotskyist as some people have done is just the kindergarten antics of individuals who are stuck too far up their own self importance.
As for the Lenin Committee in Italy splitting from the ISML, my reaction is - poor them!
Before certain comrades condemn the CL and Alliance and ISML, please judge them on the entire corpus of work, not on individual hypotheses that they have put forward.
Bill Bland took a stand against Khruschevite revisionism right from the very start and the vast majority of his work was spot on – why don't you take the time to study his "the Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union" and other works - then you will be better able to judge the man.
Greetings from Gazza
GG: Date:
Fri Sep 3, 2004; Message 3: Subject: Re: ISML, GG
and Communist League thesis on
Dimitrov
Gazza:
cut-and-paste style of the Dimitrov piece I cited, I assumed it was written by Bill Bland, but since it wasn't signed I didn't mention him by name. (I should
mention that while I find his writing style to be annoying -- it seems he was never introduced to the concept of footnotes --I find much of his scholarship
to be quite good.)
The 'neo-Trotskyist' label is not one which I applied, but rather was applied to Alliance and the late Bill Bland by, if I recall correctly, the journal
Revolutionary Democracy. I hardly agree with their sentiment, but it does indicate how one bad piece of scholarship/reasoning can cause far-reaching damage or
provide ammunition to those who, as you indicated, are already inclined to indulge in name-calling.
GG
From: Gazza: Date: Sat Sep 4, 2004 Message 4: Subject: isml and Dimitrov
Hello
George,
Yes, I
think you are right about those who indulge in name calling, as for
writing style, well, Bill had a certain style that worked for him,
Klo
has a style that works for him - those styles are not the way I work,
but "to each their own" I say; I don't have any problem with it
personally.
I
think that we have more pressing problems to sort out nowadays, what
with
the alphabet soup proliferation of parties, organisations and
groups
splitting off and the splits establishing themselves, the latest
example in the case of Britain being the creation of the CPGB(M-L) in
July this
year from those
who were expelled and resigned from
Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party...It is issues like this,
i.e., the fencing off of the class
conscious
workers into innumerable
little groups and the ways and means to overcome this - this
is what is important, whether Dimitrov was a
revisionist or
as I think
a good marxist-leninist can only be a secondary issue at best,
otherwise
we will spend forever trying to reslove the less important,
secondary
issues instead of getting on and solving the really important
problems that the movement must overcome in order for the
cause
of Marxism-Leninism to advance, in our countries.
Greetings
from Gazza
PART TWO:
ALLIANCE REPLY: DATED 12TH SEPTEMBER 2004
CORRESPONDENCE: MORE ON GEORGII DIMITROV: Being A Response From Undergraduates Expelled From Academic History
(i) Bland’s Role in Uncovering Hidden Revisionism
If our movement is to regain the vigor and strength it once possessed; if our movement is to have legitimacy in the eyes of the class conscious workers
and peasants it claims to the vanguard of, then we must provide a cogent and comprehensive answer to the question those self-same class conscious
workers ask: "What went wrong?" This is not a secondary issue, nor is it mere academic curiosity. It is a vital problem which must be taken up for solution.
It is a problem which strikes at the heart of the entire revolutionary experience of the twentieth century.
To take on this task means to address the core issue
of the
crisis of Communism: 'Why did the great
achievements of the October Revolution and the
apparent spread of Socialism
around the globe end, not in a triumphant victory of world revolution,
but in
an ignominious defeat and the restoration of
capitalism?' This crisis cannot be rectified by catering
to the vanity of some would-be "Great Leader;" nor yet by mass
producing t-shirts bearing the
image of one or another past icon. The only way the crisis of the
World
Communist Movement may be overcome is by applying the tools given us by
the
science of Marxism-Leninism and placing the history of our movement
under its
relentless scientific gaze. Only
through a "ruthless criticism," as Marx
would phrase it, would the
errors and mistakes of the past become clear and the path towards the
future
evident. Thus, rigorous scientific
objectivity must
be maintained. No
preconceived notions, no unassailable heroes, no sacred icons.
This is the only possible way forward. It is the rational,
scientific way.
It is the Marxist-Leninist way. As Bland put
it in an old dispute with Vijay Singh, the leader of ‘Revolutionary
Democracy’,
history makes sense.
Eschewing the formulaic simplicities inherent in the
"Stalin good/Khrushchev bad/end-of-story" view that many
Marxist-Leninist organizations adopted,
Bland realized an essential truth. That is, that the spread of
revisionism
started while Stalin was still alive and involved many highly placed
(and
hitherto
respected) figures in the Soviet and Comintern leadership. Hence
Bland's insistence that the
documentary truth speak for itself and that no one be above
scrutiny and
critical examination.
It is to this
proposition, that the solution to the crisis
of the World Communist Movement lay in uncovering the roots of
revisionism
through a
thorough-going and meticulous examination of our history, that
Comrade Bill Bland devoted his life.
From thoughtful, comradely critiques to vicious character assassination. Alliance Marxist-Leninist, in upholding and modestly seeking to continue
Comrade Bland's work has come in for the same. Some of these "criticisms," such as the one that we are "Neo-Trotskyists” - are so [in plain English]
stupid as to not merit addressing, save to point out their stupidity.
The present criticism of Bill Bland's article on
Dimitrov's
revisionism put forward by GG, does parrot
unquestioningly charges of some
like
‘Revolutionary Democracy’. Surprisingly it is also rather naïve in the
simple acceptance of ‘facts’, for example, that the parting of the ways
between
the Italian
section of the ISML and the remainder of ISML hinged upon the
assessment of Dimitrov.
This is especially surprising in such an accomplished
lecturer to failed undergraduates, and writer of political history as
GG. We
have already written on these
matters in some detail and go into them no
further here.
GG takes issue with Bland's conclusion that Georgi
Dimitrov
was a conscious, hidden-revisionist who, once placed into a position of
high
authority within the
Communist International, strove to steer that organization
and the World Communist Movement as a whole in right-revisionist
direction. In voicing his
disagreement,
GG accuses Bland of producing an "ahistorical piece of slander [that]
is
an embarrassment any undergraduate student of history would be
ashamed
of." While we carefully refrain
from any comment on the sensibilities of college freshman, we would
point
out that Bill Bland, self-taught as he
was,
always displayed a rigorous concern for documentation and scholar
standards, and displayed a respect for historical proofs that many
university
trained
'professionals' would envy.
GG misses that the return to an unchallenged
capitalist
world domination, depended upon the growth of revisionism world-wide.
To
successfully achieve this
meant the cultivation of both conscious and
unconscious agents of capitalism world-wide.
The uncovering of the path whereby revisionism grew
in the
USSR to the point that it could over-turn the socialist development,
was very
largely a unique
viewpoint developed by Bland in isolation. Nonetheless
uncovering the path of such as Vosnosenksy was at that time quite
novel, and
required both intellectual
courage, and determination to withstand isolation
and opprobrium. Since that time, many including ‘Revolutionary
Democracy’, have
learnt from Bland’s work
and have done some useful further economic critiques.
However it must be stressed that these have only built upon the key
foundations
of Bland’s insights.
On what historical insights does GG pillory Bland and Alliance, as:
would be ashamed of.”
E-Mail to Stalinist GG: Aug 31, 2004 Subject: On Georgi Dimitrov
(ii) GG’s Critique of Bland’s Criticism of
Dimitrov –
The
‘Independence’ of the German Ruling Class and the Judiciary From
Fascist Aims
The core of GG’s comments merit a reply. We leave
aside for
now, naïve assertions that prominent members of the communist pantheon,
are
above reproach.
We will return to his breathless admiration later, as it
betokens a continued failure of the anti-revisionist movement
world-wide. Here
we focus on his central
assertions.
It is, perhaps, worth noting that GG criticisms
focus on a
relatively short section of a 23 page article.
Namely, that section dealing with the Reichstag Fire of
1933 and the
subsequent trial of Dimitrov. The remainder of the piece,
examining
Dimitrov's politics in depth, goes un-commented on by GG.
GG challenges Bland's assertion that
Dimitrov received favorable treatment at the hands of the Nazis.
GG states that:
oaths and purges of government officials which were to characterize the National Socialist regime had yet to occur. Hitler had yet to consolidate
his position as Fuehrer; he did not do so until the death of Hindenburg several months later. Many non-Nazis remained in high positions within
the government bureaucracy; indeed, some of these men kept their positions until the end of the regime. That most barbaric feature of
National Socialist jurisprudence, "The People's Court," had yet to make it's appearance."
E-Mail to Stalinist GG: Aug 31, 2004 Subject: On Georgi Dimitrov
Here, GG combines a
handful of truisms with a large dose of decontextualization, a touch of
mistaken chronology, and a smattering of simple ignorance.
Although his approach is designed to give a
semblance of “independence” to the judiciary, he enters a world of
mystery,
where Hitler’s accession to power
is somehow “happen-stance”. This perpetuates
a bourgeois falsehood.
(a) The Links of Fascism to the German Ruling Class
As Marx put it:
"I
paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose. But
here individuals are dealt with
only in so far as they are the
personifications of economic categories,
embodiments of particular class relations and class
interests.";
"We shall find that the characters who appear on the economic stage are
but the personifications of the economic relations that exist
between
them".
Karl Marx; ‘Capital - Volume 1”; in Preface to the 1st German Edition;
Collected Works; Volume
35;p. 10; &
Chapter 2: Exchange"; Collected Works; Volume
35; p.95; Moscow; 1996.
GG ignores the fundamental fact that Hitler came to
power at
the head of a coalition of radical right parties whose stated purpose
was the destruction
of German Communism. GG ignores the fact that there was a large
and substantial common interest between the Nazis and
Nationalists-Conservatives.
In fact, Hitler's later full consolidation
of Nazi rule may be viewed as merely the final act of a faction fight
within
the reactionary camp. However, the
point
is that the self-same reactionary camp had many points in common.
The economic crisis within the German state had by
the
early1930’s split the ruling class into two main ruling groups:
The Harzburg
Front and the Bruning Front.
One was usually summed up under the name of the ‘export industries’, the other liked to think of itself as ‘autarchists’, those who aimed at self-sufficiency by basing the national economy on the home market. .. In reality they both had international economic struggle in mind”;
Sohn-Rethell A; “Economy and Class structure of German Fascism”; London; 1978; p. 31.
might put out to tender for the construction of power stations, the electrifications of a railway network or for the building of electric tram systems and so on…
For comprehensive orders of this kind there existed the Siemens Building Union in which Siemens had gone into partnership with other large firms…….
Germany’s defeat in the war had dire consequences with the loss of her foreign capital assets of around 25-30 billion marks in gold. The governments
inviting tenders for such giant ‘modernisation’ projects were dependant on loans .. in London New York or Paris and sponsored by a consortium of banks. ..
After (1914 ) Germany , that is her banks and industry would have no further influence on the financing of investment contracts in China or in any other of
the ‘third world’ countries reneged in modernisation’. … under such conditions a firm like Siemens with a vital interest in the competitive struggle for the
world market required a conciliatory relationship with the victor powers……… It was precisely because of this that they released their dependence on
the path of international cooperation , and thus on Stresemann’s policy of ‘conciliation’ with the other major powers…”
Sohn-Rethell Ibid; p. 35-37.
Gustav Streseman was the German Foreign Minister who strived to fulfill the full reparations demanded under the Versailles Plan, as a point of:
John Weitz; Hitler’s Banker; New York; p. 97.
It was the iron and steel conglomerates which signaled a break from Streseman’s ‘conciliationism’ and recrudescence of German imperialism, when they split away from the Deutsches Volkspartei in 1929 [Sohn-Rethel; Ibid; p. 17]. They first tried to engineer a new imperialism by forming a German-Austrian Customs Union, but the International Court of the Hague ruled this unacceptable in September 1931, as:
Sohn-Rethel; Ibid; p. 17.
They re-grouped under the name of an association called the ‘Langnam-Verein’ – in English the Association with the Long Name. [It had been once the Verein zur Wharung der gemeinsamen wirtschaftlichen Interessen in Reheinland und Westfalen’ or the Association for the Protection of the Common Economic Interests in the Rhinelands & Westphalia” [Sohn-Rethell Ibid p. 18].
The Harzburg Front was composed largely of the iron and steel magnates, but in close alliance with the banking finance capitalists, led by the former head of the Reich Bank, Hjalamar Schacht. This section was most concerned to prevent further financial inflation and erosion of its own profits. This had come on the heels of the international monetary crises of the late 1920’s, and been latterly exacerbated by the Bank of England’s departure from the gold standard. It was largely Schacht who engineered the anti-inflation policy of the rentenemark – a new currency that was exchanged for the inflated mark. As Scahcht put it, he had:
Cited Weitz; Ibid; p. 71.
The Harzburg Front quickly came into support of Hitler:
and Borsig [owner of a heavy locomotive & heavy machinery company-Editor ]. And it is not merely incidental to the political climate that among them were
the principal financiers of Hitler. In fact seen symptomatically, the financing of Hitler from this source indicates very precisely the deeper economic
forces whose compulsive dynamic gave the Harzburg Front its fascist perspective… (it) coincided with the hard core within the modern forces of production,
which in their qualitative development towards large-scale combine and flow methods was preeminently suited to undermine the finance capitalist network
of world economy. It was due to this economic dynamic embodied in the Steel Trust and other members of the Düsseldorf ‘Stahlhof’ that the Harzburg Front
was pitted against the Bruinng camp with an alternative which transcended the market standards of a capitalist economy… the Krupp concern.. owed its
special status to a unique vertical concentration of its plant extending form a base in mining and heavy industry right up to large-scale manufacturing production.. what made the firm so supremely dominant in the (economic) crisis was above all, its vast economic independence… ”;
Sohn-Rethel. Ibid; p. 45; p. 47.
Even by August 29 1932, Schacht had already written
to
Hitler:
your reliable helper”.
Weitz; Ibid; p. 127.
On February 25th 1933, Goering held a meeting with members of the Harzburg Group, who then under Shacht’s invocation of:
“All right gentlemen. Now to the cash register!”
Weitz; Ibid; p. 139
promptly pledged 3 million marks to finance Hitler’s re-election, following his dissolution of the Reichstag on March 5th 1933
Of course this division in the ranks of the ruling
class was
only temporary. The vision of an internal safe economic market that
would be
built by the relation of
a Europe under German sway was adequate to assuage
either minor moral scruples about the methods of the Nazis, or minor
economic differences.
But
this was not Hitler’s idea. Already Schacht had confronted the Allies
from
the First World War, at the Young Conference to discuss German
reparations,
over the Polish
Corridor:
delegates. The memorandum claimed that Germany could no meet the payments outlined earlier in Paris, unless its colonies were restored, because
German industry needed colonial raw materials to produce good s for export. An even more startling demand involved the important East Prussian
area that had been taken from Germany by the Versailles Treaty and made into landlocked Poland’s passage to the Baltic Sea. This so-called
Polish Corridor separated Germany from its East Prussian area. According to Schacht it would have to be restored to Germany so that needed
agricultural products could once more flow directly from East Germany into the country”;
Weitz; Ibid; p. 99.
And the Langnam-Verein had already re-grouped after
their
earlier disappointment. In 1932 they had proposed a policy that united
the
split industrial ruling
class. It proposed an alliance with the remnants of the
Junker landed aristocracy, a drive East:
between industry and agriculture had not been fully bridged, it has at least accessible to manipulation. The programme for Central Europe had taken
on such a tangible form that now even the large secondary manufacturing and export firms could begin to align themselves with heavy industry ….
Using agrarian cartelization… trade policies could now be introduced in East and South East Europe, in fact right across the continent, by which
other countries could now become the prime objects for exploitation by German monopoly capital since Germany could offer to import a large part
of their excess diary products and at alluring prices”.
Sohn-Rethel Ibid; p. 58.
These plans were blocked by British and French
capital.
However they had arisen. What was
needed to effect them became ever clearer, it was “brute force” (Sohn-Rethell
Ibid; p.61). As shown above, the most rapacious sections of the German
ruling
class had already arrived at this conclusion and were greasing
Hitler’s path to
power.
GG’s narrative omits to place adequate attention to this.
True, many non-Nazis remained in public life.
Indeed, there are some extreme examples that
GG neglects to point out, such as Heinrich Muller, a
professional police
office who, under the Weimar Republic headed the Berlin Police
Department's
"Political Desk." Not only
was Muller, initially not a
Nazi, he often rounded up Nazis. Muller would, with Hitler and
Himmler's
blessing, later become head of the Gestapo. Muller's career is
illuminating,
and helps
defeat GG's assertion. It under-scores the truth that many non-Nazis
came to
loyally serve the Nazi regime – even in its most bestial aspects
– out of
simple careerist motives.
(b) The German judiciary
With respect to the German judiciary, even this type
of self-interested sail trimming was unnecessary. The Germany
judiciary was and had been, heavily
biased towards
the far right for years. As a
recent study points out:
"After years, indeed decades, of treating
Social-Democratic and left-liberal critics of the Kaiser's government
as
criminals, judges were unwilling to
readjust their attitudes when the political
situation changed. Their loyalty was
given, not to the new Republic, but to the same abstract ideals of the
Reich
which their counterparts in the officer corps continued to serve; an
ideal
built largely on memories of the authoritarian system of the
Bismarckian
Reich. Inevitably, perhaps, in the
numerous political trials which arose from the deep political conflicts
of the
Weimar years, they sided overwhelmingly
with those right-wing offenders who
claimed also to be acting in the name of this ideal, and cheered on the
prosecution
of those on the left who did not.
from late 1919 to mid-1922 led to 38 convictions, including 10 executions and prison sentences averaging 15 years apiece. By contrast, the 354
political murders committed by right-wing offenders in the same period led to 24 convictions, no executions at all, and prison sentences averaging
a mere 4 months apiece.; 23 right-wing murderers who confessed to their crimes were actually acquitted by the courts. . . The right-wing and
anti-Republican bias of the judiciary was shared by state prosecutors as well. In considering what charges to bring against right-wing offenders,
in dealing with pleas, in examining witnesses, even in framing their opening and closing speeches, prosecutors routinely treated nationalist beliefs
and intentions as mitigating factors."
Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin: New York, 2004, pp. 135-38.
That these men were not card-carrying pin-wearing Nazis is irrelevant. They shared the Nazis' reactionary world view and served fascism loyally.
It is quite correct that the process of fascist
take-over
was not necessarily complete as soon as Hitler acceded to power as
Chancellor
in January 30 1933,
sworn in by
President von Hindenburg.
Dimitrov was taken into custody 6 days after the
arrest of Ernst
Thaelmann – on March 9 1933. Thaelmann was, as the Official
Bulgarian revisionist
biography of Dimitrov states:
“The true and tried leader of the German Communist Party”;
Hadjinikolov V, Elzar, Michev D, Panayotov L, Radenkova P.
“Georgii Dimitrov 1882-1949’; Sofia Press; nd; p. 115.
Yet by February 1933, already there had been drastic
changes
in the legal climate. An acknowledged historian (not an undergraduate
by the by
– but a
full professor) of the communist resistance to Hitler, Allan Merson,
writes in “Communist Resistance in Nazi
Germany”; London; 1985, the following:
holding political opponents in so-called 'protective custody' (later, and more accurately, termed 'preventive detention') without charge or trial
for an indefinite period of time. They made extensive use of this power from that time onwards, holding in concentration camps thousands of
Communists who had been arrested after the Reichstag Fire but could not plausibly be charged with breaking any law then in force. After the
first disorderly months, however, the Gestapo usually preferred, or was expected, to bring arrested political opponents before the courts for trial.
Under laws hitherto in force, a suspect arrested by the police could not be held in custody for longer than twenty-four hours unless an examining
magistrate issued a warrant and undertook a preliminary enquiry, which itself must culminate within a definite time in a decision either to drop the
case for lack of prima facie evidence or to proceed on a specific charge to a formal judicial enquiry. This procedure was drastically modified by
successive changes after February 1933. Police arrest ceased to be limited to twenty-four hours, and the preliminary judicial investigation was
soon dispensed with, an indictment now being drawn up by the state prosecutor, largely on the basis of reports, depositions and other material
supplied by the police, without prior judicial sifting. The choice of charge to be brought, and therefore, of the court before which the accused would
be tried, rested with the State Prosecutor's branch. An almost infinitely extendable range of political offences involving violence or instigation to
violence, infringement of government decrees, or even 'malicious criticism' of the government, could be made the subject of charges under the
Reichstag Fire decree of 28 February 1933 and the 'malicious opposition' (Heimtucke) decree of 21 March 1933. Such charges would be
brought before one of the Special Courts which had been set up by another emergency decree of 21 March specifically to try political offences
by a summary procedure.”
Merson A; “Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany”; London; 1985; p. 55-56.
While these changes took
time, the courts on occasion were slow in carrying out the Nazi
objectives at
times. But “the courts were soon brought into line”
well before the Peoples’
Courts were struck in April 1934
“Although
the law
itself was made increasingly elastic, and although the standard of
proof was
progressively lowered by changes in court procedure,
it was still necessary, in
1933-35, for judges to adduce some grounds for finding accused persons
guilty
of an infringement of the law. At first sight
the simplest way of dealing with
Communist Party activities might seem to have been to apply the law of
14 July
1933, which had forbidden the
formation or continuation of any political party
other than the National Socialist Party, on pain of up to three years
hard
labour, and, indeed, this
was occasionally used. ….
The state prosecutors
therefore chose in most cases to try to persuade the judges that
membership of
the Communist Party had been treasonable
before 14 July 1933. This doctrine was
accepted by the courts and embodied in judgments which stand today as
monuments
of tortuous and
dishonest reasoning. ….
In course of time the judges
increasingly adopted the simple doctrine that the Communist Party could
be
taken, without need of proof, to have
become illegal at the time of the
'transfer of power' of 30 January 1933. …. In the assessment of
sentences, too,
legal considerations were
increasingly outweighed by political arguments.
…..
Old liberal standards of fairness and impartiality in the conduct of
the
proceedings and the assessment of evidence - never very conspicuous
in
political trials - were now still further debased, though not without
some
protests from a tiny minority of liberal lawyers. …..
While it is true that in
the early years the Gestapo was sometimes irritated by the lingering
scruples
of judges and their concern with legal
technicalities, the courts were soon
brought into line…”
Merson Ibid; pp 56-59.
In
any case, the court treatment meted out to
Dimitrov, from the start of the trial in September 1933, was done
so not by any judges that had any
‘lingering’ bourgeois misconceptions of judicial fairness. If the
reports of
the Dimitrov trial given in his official biography (Ibid; pp 114-144)
are read,
it will be seen that Dimitrov was faced by an examining magistrate Vogt
who:
“was
an
anti-communist”;
Hadjinikolov V et al: Ibid;
p118;
and a Trial Court President, Dr Buenger, who was manifestly hostile to him according to the Official Bulgarian account.
Yet, despite numerous demonstrations of the line that Dimitrov would put in public, he was given repeated stages to put his line, with:
“Flood-lights,
microphones, phonograph recordings, film cameras… foreign
correspondents..
given free access to the trial”.
Hadjinikolov V et al:
Ibid; p124
We contend that this was neither stupidity on the parts of the judges and state prosecutors, nor was it an accident. After all:
Merson ibid; p. 59.
GG goes on to say that:
as well. His arrest may well have been a kind of afterthought in the whole Reichstag affair, while the arrest of German Communists was not”
Email; Ibid.
To buttress this he quotes Goering’s speech displaying prior intent to pin blame for the Reichstag Fire on German communists (Citing R.Overy).
However, that the Nazis had no great respect for
foreign
citizens is evidenced by their treatment of Poles forcibly marched to
the
Polish border and
long standing foreign residents being summarily
deported. A foreign passport served not
as protection against the Brown Shirts, but rather drew their
violent
attention. Moreover, why would they
have any reason to respect this particular foreign citizen? It's
not as though Tsar Boris' pro-German
government in Sofia would have raised a hue-and-cry over the treatment
metted
out to Bulgarian 'communist.'
Also, Dimitrov was a ranking figure in the
Comintern, but
that hardly made him a celebrity. In
fact, he was unknown to the German public as whole.
Which raises the question that, if the Reichstag Trial was to
have been a show trial to discredit the KPD in the eyes of the German
public,
why choose
three unknown foreign communists (and a mentally defective Dutch
anarchist) to be the 'stars' of the show?
It would have been easy enough for the Nazis
to have pulled Ernst
Thaelmann or any of a number of very
well-known German Communist political, intellectual and cultural
figures
from out of detention –
perhaps after having secured a confession through
torture – and put them on trial. This
would have made a lot more sense from a propagandistic point of
view. Again, why these three specifically?
(iii) A Footnote
We notice that GG urges footnotes upon undergraduate writers.
In an effort to comply, we must ask – purely as a footnote – since he himself does not raise the matters – what explains the strange other facts on Dimitrov? These have been included in our various articles.
For example, the traitorous policy of the United Front applied in France?
For example the omission of Dimitrov from the work of the Communist Information Bureau?
For example his curious reluctance to move beyond the first stage of the revolution in Bulgaria?
Finally, a matter we have not raised before – what role did he have in the adoption of the ultra-left strategy of the KPD that in effect, destroyed the opposition to the Nazi rise to power, that disrupted a potential meaningful United Front in Germany?
After all, he was known to have a marked
ultra-leftist
approach in Bulgaria, and he was present in Germany in a leading
capacity for
the West European Bureau of the Executive Committee of the Communist
International (WEB):
Hadjinikolov V: Ibid; p. 107.
To Conclude
Regrettably, we must return to GG his compliments,
and state
that we find his rebuttal weak – especially given the very high
standards that
he insists upon.
It is necessary to re-state, that we have asked for factual
rebuttals on these related matters and thus far have not received any.
We would
be very glad
to see GG’s, and if we are proven wrong we will be the first to
state a firm self-criticism.
Nonetheless, we ask for a proper critique rather
than righteous indignation.
Righteous indignation at leveling accusations against a well-known and beloved figure in the Communist world, is a noble sentiment.
But it would be better placed if it were coupled
with a
post-graduate – nay a professorial – full and appropriate analysis, of
why the
charges
are “false” and “slander”.
Editors For Alliance Marxist-Leninist (North America)