Hitler won

by MILAN RAI

<*> US president Franklin D Roosevelt announced in 1941 that the Second World War was a war for the "Four Freedoms"--freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Later that year, Churchill and Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter, which promised all peoples the right to choose their own form of government after the war, among other things. Noble sentiments.

Perhaps, 50 years after it ended, it is time for a re-evaluation of the Second World War. Perhaps it is time we tested the lofty rhetoric of the wartime leaders against their behaviour. Particularly interesting will be their behaviour in those areas liberated from fascism, where the Allies presumably had a completely free hand.

>>> Indifference to evil

Even in the middle of the war, the Western Allies displayed some indifference to fascist rule. In 1942 a deal was struck between general Dwight D Eisenhower and admiral Jean Darlan, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Vichy France. Darlan ordered the French forces in North Africa to lay down their arms. In return he was made governor-general of all French North Africa by the Allies. Darlan was bitterly anti-British, author of Vichy's anti-Semitic laws, and had been a willing collaborator with the Germans. Stephen Ambrose, the noted US historian, comments:

The result, was that in its first major foreign-policy venture in the Second World War, the United States gave its support to a man who stood against everything Roosevelt and Churchill had spoken out against. As much as Goering or Goebbels, Darlan was the antithesis of the principles the Allies were defending.

In 1944, the sudden withdrawal of German forces from Greece-- before Allied troops landed--created the opportunity for the largest anti-fascist resistance group EAM to establish a provisional administration. This was dissolved, and EAM disarmed, by the British occupation forces. The royal family was restored, despite its links with fascism, and collaborators reinstated in positions of power and influence. The anti-fascist resistance was subjected to a brutal counter-insurgency war.

>>> Colonialism strikes back

The Greek scenario was followed quite closely in Malaya, the most important of the British colonies after the war. The Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) was forced to disarm and to dissolve the network of popular committees which it had set up to administer the country. The newly-returned colonial regime reimposed the pre-war system, and adopted an increasingly violent approach to the trade union movement. One grievance of the workers was the use of Japanese prisoners awaiting repatriation to replace strikers. The cycle of violence mounted until June 1948, when an "Emergency" was declared and a brutal counter-insurgency war was launched against the former anti-fascist resistance.

Edward Behr, now an eminent foreign correspondent, once recalled his time as a British officer in Indonesia immediately after the Japanese surrender: "Japanese troops, still formidable-looking without their arms, were pressed into service as dockers, drivers, and hospital orderlies. One unit even found itself assigned a Japanese doctor in the field, and on at least one occasion, deplored and hushed up at Mountbatten's express command, Japanese artillery went into action alongside Indian Army troops against the Indonesian rebels."

The British were taking up where the Japanese left off; it was only natural for them to work alongside the fascists in suppressing the Indonesian nationalist movement. Behr also recalls that after the killing of four British people by local people, "There followed a series of reprisals--burned villages, deportations, arrests, and even summary executions--which would have branded us as war criminals had any publicity been forthcoming."

In Korea, the Japanese police were reinstated as the USA "liberated" the southern zone from the anti-fascist organisations which had set up a popular government before the US troops reached Korean shores. The south Korean nationalist movement was dismembered with great brutality by the US-imposed regime. In Indochina, British forces had been entrusted with accepting the surrender of the Japanese in southern Vietnam and Cambodia; Britain permitted French forces to re-enter the country and begin the attempt to re-conquer their former colony. The USA lent crucial support to the war against the Vietnamese nationalist movement which only a few months earlier had been a valued partner in the struggle against the Axis--like MPAJA in Malaya and EAM in Greece.

In Thailand, the military elite had collaborated with the Japanese to the extent that they had declared war on the United States and Britain. After the war, the United States refused to break the power of the military or institute de-nazification. Washington's support for the Thai military faction ensured that within a few years Phibun Songkhram was able to became the first pro-Axis dictator to regain power after the war. In 1955, Phibun was given the Legion of Merit award by Eisenhower for his services in the cause of freedom.

>>> Death camps to death squads

From Greece to Malaya, the principle of national self-determination was smashed to pieces by Britain and the US. So much for the Atlantic Charter, or the Four Freedoms. Noam Chomsky describes this as the "postwar pattern of marginalising or if necessary destroying the anti-fascist resistance, often in favour of fascist sympathisers and collaborators".

In the core fascist countries themselves, the picture is no less ugly. We have already referred to Italy. In Germany, as well as the famous Nazi scientists, the Western powers also hired torturers and mass murderers, often taken to Latin America to do their delicate work. Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyons", was smuggled to Bolivia, where he introduced the fully-developed concentration camp and lectured on the use of electrodes in extracting confessions. There is a link between the death camps and the death squads.

Not all of the war criminals had to be smuggled away. General Richard Gehlen, formerly the head of Nazi military intelligence on the Eastern Front, where a lot of the worst atrocities were committed, was appointed head of the espionage and counter-espionage service of the new West German state, under CIA supervision.

In Japan, the early de-nazification and de-militarisation efforts of the occupation forces were nullified in the notorious "reverse course" of 1947 which re-established the industrial and financial conglomerates that had fostered Japanese fascism. Gehlen's Japanese counterpart was also immediately put back to work under US control. Other leading figures of the fascist era returned to prominent positions.

>>> Resuming the crusade

British foreign secretary Anthony Eden minuted in 1943: "I assume that the aim of British policy must be, first, that we should continue to exercise the functions and to bear the responsibilities of a world Power; and, secondly, that we should seek not only to free Europe, but to preserve her freedom ... We cannot afford a Europe unfriendly to our interests..."

First the empire, second the war against Nazism--and even that only to secure "our interests". The historical record after the war bears out these priorities. Throughout the world, the British and US governments installed those willing to cater to their "interests", even when these were fascists or collaborators who the war had supposedly been against. Throughout the world, Britain and the USA destroyed those who stood in the way of their plans for control, even when these resisters were the democrats and anti-fascists who had fought alongside the Anglo-American forces.

It is true that the Western powers failed to obtain all their objectives--France could not re-conquer Indochina, Britain lost its hold on India, and so on. But these failures were due to financial and military weaknesses, not to benevolence or moral strength. The Second World War broke the mould of traditional colonialism, but it did not recast the societies of the West, and it did not shatter the imperialist impulse. In many parts of the world, people still live with fear and want and oppression and injustice as a direct result of the fact that the victors of the Second World War had no intention of honouring their cynical ledges, and were determined to secure their interests, by shooting former friends and allies if necessary.

As Juan Jose Arevalo, the democratically-elected president of Guatemala, left office in 1951, he recalled Roosevelt's noble wartime rhetoric and commented sadly, "Roosevelt lost the war. The real winner was Hitler". As we wade through the swamp of self-congratulation that surrounds V-E Day, we could do worse than to reflect on this observation. Millions of people around the globe had their illusions about Western promises cruelly shattered by the behaviour of the Western powers; by their resumption of the fascists' crusade against independence and democracy.