Rudolf Hoess - Commandant of Auschwitz

This is, in everyway possible an utterly repugnant book. I must start out by saying two things. Firstly none of the proceeds from this publication go to Hoess' family. The publishers say that royalties go the "help the few survivors from the Auschwitz camps". Secondly, reading this book is an insight into the minds of the figures who made the Holocaust happen. Written as it while under arrest and facing trial for crimes against humanity, it is naturally distorted and with much self-justification. The shocking thing is that Hoess is surprisingly unashamed of his actions.

Hoess starts his book with his childhood, in a strictly Catholic family. He was himself expected to become a priest, and his parents seem strict, but highly moral. He says, without any sense of self-irony, that "I was taught that my highest duty was to help those in need". From his early life he believed in the importance of service, duty and obeyance of orders from those in superior positions. He eventually served in the First World War in Iraq, and like many Nazis, he saw action in the Freikorps. This led to his imprisonment for his role in the murder of a far-right figure who was believed to have betrayed another nationalist to the authorities. Following his imprisonment, Hoess who was already a Nazi member, lived in a far-right rural commune, until the new Nazi regime found him a position in the Concentration Camp system. Hoess' knowledge and contact with leading Nazis in the aftermath of WW1 say him rise quickly - as did his commitment to the cause, and his organisational skills.

This background is important. Partly because it is important to understand the trajectory that Hoess took to get his position runing Auschwitz. Mostly however it ensures that the reader understands that Hoess was a committed Nazi. He wasn't in charge of the world's most appalling death camp because he was good at organisation. He was in charge because he was committed to Nazi ideology and to following the orders of the regime's leaders. 

According to the Auschwitz museum, about 1.1 million people died in the camp. Most of these died while Hoess was in charge. It is impossible then for the reader to be anything but shocked by Hoess' comments. He says, for instance, of his work in Auschwitz:

I though that the construction and completion of the camp itself were more than enough to keep me occupied, but this first progress report served only to set in motion an endless and unbroken chain of fresh tasks and further projects. From the very beginning I was so absorbed, I mist say obsessed, with my task that every fresh difficulty only increased my zeal. I was determined that nothing should get me down. My pride would not allow it. I lived only for my work.

"I lived only for my work" in the death machine that was Auschwitz is such an extraordinary statement that it takes the readers breath away. With paragraph's like the above, it can seem that Hoess is trying to depict himself as a technical functionary, obsessed with the details of the "machine" but unconnected to the wider murder of the camp. Indeed, Hoess's anger at the extreme Nazism of the Der Stürmer newspaper, the newspaper that was avidly read by SS staff in the camp for its extreme antisemitism, is because it undermined the proper functioning of the camp and "far from serving serious anti-Semitism, it did a great deal of harm". This is a theme for Hoess. His frustrations at problems in the camp are because he is frustrated at being unable to properly carry out his order. Hoess himself explains.

When in the summer of 1941 [Himmler] gave me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz where mass exterminations could take place, and personally to carry out these exterminations, I did not have the slightest idea of their scale or consequences. It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless the reasons behind the extermination programme seemed to me right. I did not reflect on it at the time: i had been given an order, and I had to carry it out. Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not was something on which I could not allow myself to form an opinion, for I lacked the necessary breadth of view.

While he says that he did not form an opinion at the time. He does not allow himself to argue that it was wrong after the event. Indeed, much of his criticism of the extermination policy comes, not from a moral outrage, but because he thinks it was a waste of labour. Thus the millions of Jews and others who died in the camps are dismissed by Hoess.

Indeed Hoess "watching the killing" himself. The sections of the book where he describes this, and the individual tragedies his witnessed are some of the most difficult pieces of writing I have ever read. Time and again he says things like "the killing of these Russian prisoners-of-war did not cause me much concern at the time". Hoess is more focused on describing the technical solutions, and supply problems that hampered the extermination programme. In fact, at times, the book reads most as a tract written to prove that Hoess was good at his job. Hoess was happy in his work, "In Auschwitz I truly had no reason to complain that I was bored". He continues by explaining that when he was "deeply affected by some incident" he was able to go riding, or see his family, until the "terrible pictures" had been "chased away". Homelife was idylic:

My family... were well provided for inAuschwitz. Every wish that my wife or children expressed was granted them. The children could live a free and untrammelled life. My wife's garden was a paradise of flowers. The prisoners never missed an opportunity for doing some little act of kindness to my wife or children, and thus attracting their attention.

I will spare the reader here by not quoting the passages were Hoess indifferently describes the murder of people, or watching their deaths through the windows of the gas chambers, or his efforts to make the process more efficient. In his introduction Primo Levi says that the book is "filled with evil, and this evil is narrated with a disturbing bureaucratic obtuseness; it has no literary quality, and reading it is agony". He continues that Hoess comes across as "a coarse, stupid, arrogant, long-winded scoundrel, who sometimes blatantly lies".

The "bureaucratic obtuseness" that Levi refers to is accurate. But we have to be careful at simply seeing Hoess' actions as just reflecting the "banality of evil". What Hoess did and describes in this book reflects that he was more than just a functionary. He was committed to Nazism. His strict obeyance of orders flowed not from having a personality that enjoyed organisational work, but because he saw in Himmler and Hitler leaders who he was personally and politically commited to. He was a Nazi through and through, and his last paragraph statement that he was "unknowingly a cog in the wheel of the great extermination machine created by the Third Reich" is exposed as a lie by every preceeding paragraph. Hoess was not a cog in an office far away from the camps. He was looking in through the glass observation panels as trainload after trainload of Jewish people died. He was also happy to kill himself. To those SS men whose moral was sapped he could only offer inspiration by reminding them of the Nazis' plan. 

My interest in Rudolf Hoess came from seeing the recent film Zone of Interest. If anything this book exposes Hoess as a far nastier and brutal person than the film does. I don't think I have previously read a book by a Nazi. It has left me feeling sick and angry. But also committed to making sure that the 21st century fascists never get a chance at power again.

Related Reviews

Evans - Hitler's People: The faces of the Third Reich
Evans - Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial
Roseman - The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution
Mazower - Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe
Browning - The Origins of the Final Solution

James W. Loewen - Lies Across America: What our historic sites get wrong

When Donald Trump became President for the second time, among the batch of plans issued in the first few days, were two that raised eyebrows for their seeming ridiculousness. The first was the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The other, less commented on, was a plan to rename of Denali mountain in Alsaka, to Mount McKinley. Trump called this a chance to "restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs". 

Ironically, Denali gets the opening chapter in James W. Loewen's classic book Lies Across America: What our historic sites get wrong. In it, Loewen explains that Denali "the great one" is a ridiculous choice in the first place that caused nearly thirty years of debate when it first happened and doesn't actually name the President. That's not to say that Denali wasn't renamed Mount McKinley after William McKinley who became President and was subsequently assassinated. It's just that the renaming took place before McKinley was elected. The mountain was called after him because the namer "favored conservative fical policies, while most people in the West wanted to expand the amount of money in circulation by minting more silver coins". 

It was "little more than a joke" according to one historian. Once the name did get up, it became a battle ground for left and right - for those defending actual history and indigenous culture, and those who prefer to celebrate the history of white European settlers. "It's an insult to the former President" cry those who want to keep the McKinley name, but as Loewen point out, "most Americans don't rank William McKinley very high... They remember him if at all as a creation of political boss Mark Hanna, beholden to big business, and addicted to high tariffs". This is a case of the invention of tradition.

This discussion sets the tone for Loewen's fascinating book which discusses how history is remembered in the United States, and indeed why it is remembered. Sweeping West to East, and down through the American South, Loewen explores countless sites and shows how a particular view of US history is portrayed - one that expresses the dominance of European settler culture, celebrates imperialism, and downplays or ignores events and individuals that challenge this narrative. 

There are some shocking things. There are the monuments to slave owners and the "docile slaves". The celebrations of Confederate defeats that make them look like victories, and the lauding of vile, violent, racist individuals who are portrayed as their opposite. There are monuments and statues that mark the defeat of "savage" indigenous people, lie about massacres (even one marker that commerates a "massacre" that never happened) and portray non-white people as subservient and stupid. There are also booster monuments, designed to attract tourists to the places such as the location were the first car drove, even though it didn't. Lies indeed.

Loewen gives an interesting view into the debate about whether statues should "fall". He argues, convincingly, that statues should not necessarily be destroyed. They could be removed, or replaced with information plaques that celebrate real history, or give a truer account and explain why the original statue was there. However he also notes that some statues were placed as deliberate acts of intimidation and provocation. These should be removed. But how should they be recorded?

One statue, known for many years by the racist term "The Good Darky" shows how this can be the case. It was erected in downtown Natchitoches, Louisiana. It was "from the start, intended to beuseful only to the cause of white supremacy". It markes, as the inscription says, the "grateful recognition of the Arduous and faithful service of the Good Darkies of Louisiana". This "service" was the alleged support of some slaves for the South's war to defend slavery. It ignores the many slaves who escaped to fight with the Union, as well as those who didn't flee from fear of violent punishment - but certainly did not support the South. The statue was also designed to remind black people after the war of their place, and their subservient position during segregation. Jokes about the statue by local whites suggested that it was a place were drunk black people could find their way home. But the statue really showed the position that black people were supposed to have to white people - subservient, bowed, secondary. It was not a depiction of the past, but a demonstration of the present.

Loewen writes of the subservient posture of the person depicted on the statue that, "the servile pose of the statue was no myth but a rational response by African Americans to an untenable situation. The response, like the statue, was nevertheless a white creation."  Loewen continues about what should happen to monuments like this:

American rejoinced when Poles and East Germans toppled their statues of Lenin. Within our shored... we are not so sure. When statues become controversial... civic leaders sometimes suggest that they be carted off to a museum. The statue of 'The Good Darky' shows what can go wrong with that solution. Although run by a university, the Rural Life Museum [where the statue was moved to] has not used 'The Good Darky' to 'provide insight into the largely forgotten lifestyles and cultures of pre-industrial Louisiana,' the museum's avoed purpose. Instead it situated the statue in a place of honor. No plaque gives any information about it history of symbolic meaning.

I read the second edition of this book, is that Loewen explains how the book has changed since its first edition. The updates reflect real change since 1999, as the 2000s saw an enormous blacklash against monuments that depicted problematic things and a growing interested in how history was marked. This, Loewen argues, was the result of two events. The first was the murder of nine blcakc churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, by a "neo-Confederate". Almost overnight many Confederate monuments that had been subject of long campaigns for removal, where taken down. The second was Black Lives Matter, which physically confronted statues as well as forcing a global reappraisel about how the history of slavery and racism were depicted and understood. As such, some of the monuments in the first edition have been moved, changed or destroyed. Others remain. But it is fascinating to see that while Loewen's book's first edition certainly did make a difference and forced some places to reconsider their monuments. It was the mass movements and the revulsion at racist violence, that made the real difference.

This is important for today. Because Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali mountain is not a random act of stupidity. It is a calculated attempt to reshift how history and geography are used to understand and shape people's knowledge of the world. It is an attempt to reverse the gains of our movements, and it is an attempt to reconsolidate and empower white supremacy and racism. It should be resisted and reversed. Lies Across American remains a powerful tool in that struggle.

Related Reviews

Kuhn & Gill - Topple the Mighty
Blackburn - The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights
Rediker - The Amistrad Rebellion
Nerburn - Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce
Corbin - Gun Thugs, Rednecks & Radicals: A Documentary History of the West Virginia Mine Wars

Jenny Erpenbeck - Go Went Gone

Jenny Erpenbeck's Go Went Gone was first published in German and deals with the important political issue of Europe and refugees. It's central character is a retired, and widowed, professor of literature, Richard, who finding himself at a loose end after retirement, discovers a community of African refugees who have set up a tent city in Oranienplatz, central Berlin. From late 2012, Oranienplatz was the site of such an encampement and Erpenbeck's book clearly draws on this political protest movement and its consequences, as well as individuals who were part of it. 

Richard is drawn to the refugees, his personal isolation, and his feeling that his life lacks direction in retirement, lead him to think about documenting the lives of the refugees. Quickly however he finds himself helping, encouraging and teaching them. 

I was initially skeptical about the book, worried it was going to turn into a "white saviour" trope as Richard solves all the individual issues that the refugees suffer. Instead it is quite the opposite. Richard finds himself unable to push through the legal barriers erected by a racist German state that provent refugees finding sanctuary or work. He is frustrated that the skills of these men are not utilised by a country desperate for young and experienced workers. He is trapped by the logic of a charity based system of refugee support that only treats the men as passive victims. And finally he is poleaxed by the horrors that he has seen.

Erpenbeck depicts all of this with sympathy, nuance and anger. One of the refugees, Rufu, is medically treated for psychiatric issues. Yet it turns out his fundamental problem is not mental health, but a agonising dental issue that no one has diagnosed, because no one has treated him as a human being and tried to communicate properly. Instead they assume he is having some sort of psychotic episode. Osarobo would like to learn the piano so Richard offers him the use of his own instrument. Richard buys Karon land in Ghana, not because he is a white saviour (he is...) but because the barrier has broken down between them. Richard sees the refugees not as numberless refugees who survived the perilous crossing, but as humans like him.

Since its publication racism directed towards immigrants and refugees in Germany has only increased. State support has been reduced, the lives of refugees have become harder, and the growth of fascist and far-right organisations has fuelled animosity and hatred towards the communities who are desperately seeking a new life and assistance. This book is not a political polemic. There's pages denouncing the European Union whose racist policies have led to thousands drowning in the Mediteranean and fuelled the far-right. But implicit in the book is a sense that liberal politics, when scratched, are really not that liberal - but quite racist.

There's a clever plot line in the book when Richard's middle class, intellectual and academic friends gradually realise that one of their own group is actually quite racist. The shock to them is real. The refugees and their situation, as well as their resistance as they protest the government's plan to displace them once again, has forced the liberal intelligensia to see things differently. The refugees here are not a backdrop - they are humans who want to live their lives, but are forced to fight back because the system itself won't let them have lives.

The ending is, well, ambiguous. Just as the refugee problem under capitalism with its borders, barbed wire and nation states will always be. But there is hope, on an individual level, for Richard and his friends. Their is sympathy, mutual learning and the sharing of meals. But if Jenny Erpenbeck's novel tells us anything - its that this is no solution to the fundamental problem. But that does not mean we shouldn't fight to make people, and governments, see refugees as humans who can help us build the future we want.

Kay Dick - They

Kay Dick's They is a forgotten classic of the dystopian fiction that is perhaps more relevant today than when it was first written. Despite Dick's popularity, when They came out in 1977 it sold badly. It was republished in 2022 after being rediscovered in the early 2020s. 

They is an unusual novel, seemingly more a series of interconnected short accounts, which defy easy classification. There is little "story" here, so to speak, rather a series of experiences in a future Britain, mostly set in a buccolic countryside to where dissidents have been banished, or escaped. They roam the country, hunting down culture and cultural producers. Artists, poets, singers and composers are imprisoned and punished, sometimes in the most barbaric ways. The punishment often fits the "crime". A poet has her writing hand held over a flame for eight minutes. Painters loose their eyesight. Others are taken away, and return, their bodies whole but their minds broken. They are mere cyphers, obeying and meekly watching TV.

Resistance is seemingly futile, but, resistance there is. People learn songs, books and poems by heart. Protecting the vanishing culture inside themselves. Books disappear, their absence noticed the next morning, because They come in the night, or when they are unobserved. Their vessels moored off shore, constantly monitoring and watching. In the face of the repression, many opt to collaborate, or hope it blows over, or even to shop those who are fighting to stay human and keep their art. Spies are everywhere, so are those who would, stasi-like, inform on their neighbours for singing or reading. Nonconformity is the only way to be safe.

Those who do not fit the standards deemed fit are also persecuted. Those who live alone, or don't watch TV, or behave unusually are singled out. It's not difficult here to see parallels for the persecution that Dick herself might have experienced as a gay person in mid-century Britain.

To me though the book is mostly about resistance, and how the act of resistance keeps you human. The central characters hold onto their humanity and their culture, not just to survive, but because doing so speaks hopefully of a better future. As Carmen Maria Machado notes in their introduction, the poet whose hand is burnt so badly for daring to write poetry is writing again. Having learnt to use their left hand. It is a powerful declaration of humanity and rebellion. While They might not follow normal patterns of writing it is, nonetheless a book that speaks to a time when having the wrong opinion or failing to conform, can, in many parts of the world have severe consequences.

Christopher S. Mackay - False Prophets and Preachers: Henry Gresbeck's Account of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster

This is a remarkable account of a remarkable series of events. From February 1534 until the early summer of 1535, the German city of Münster came under the rule of the Anabaptists. Then, Anabaptists were at the forefront of the most radical interpretation of the Reformation, and had developed a significantly radical vision of how society should be run. The Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster began as a radical utopian experiment in living, including the redistribution of wealth and resources. But for a number of reasons, particularly the appaling conditions caused by the siege of the city by the region's hostile bishop and lord, the experiment collapsed into a vicious theocratic state. 

The Anabaptists were inspired by a specific reading of sections of the bible, which drove their actions:

Acts 4 seemed to validate direct inspiration of men through the Holy Spirit; verses 32 through 37 were taken to mean that the followers of Christ should share their goods communally, and the radicals’ confiscation of the property of the faithful in Münster was one of the more shocking events to sixteenth-century (and later) sensibilities.

But until Henry Gresbeck's account became available, we've only had second hand sources as to what happened. Gresbeck was the only eyewitness to events within Münster who survived to write down his experiences. His survival was due to his escape from the siege toward its end and his betrayal of the city. This allowed the bishop's forces into the city where they began the most henious repression and pillaging. Hundreds of Anabaptists were killed and their leaders tortured and executed. 

Gresbeck's account is, as Christopher S. Mackay explains, extremely important. It is the only first hand account of Anabaptist Münster, and it provides important evidence to collaborate other sources. Mackay has done an amazing job of bringing together and translating the surviving copies of the original documents and creating a readable whole. But as Mackay warns, "Gresbeck’s retrospective account is not without its own difficulties". Principaly Gresbeck is silent on his own role during the period of the siege, and he is writing for a hostile ruler, intending to justify his own role in the capture of the city, and hoping to get back his own wealth and freedom.

Nonetheless, by reading criticially, and with the Mackay's superb annotations and footnotes we can learn alot about those strange and amazing times. Mackay also provides one of the best introductory accounts of the development of Anabaptist thinking, and the background to the Münster events. As he says:

The events of Münster are incomprehensible without a clear understanding that the main driving force behind the radical leaders was the belief that the events portrayed in the book of Apocalypse were about to come to pass and that they would play a prominent role as the 144,000 who would do battle with the forces of the Antichrist.

Gresbeck himself may, or may not have believed this. But it is notable that he did stay a lengthy time in Münster, not availing himself of opportunities to leave until absolutely necessary. Though, given that the besieging forces usuaully behaved appalling to those who did escape, and that punishment for those who were captured trying to get out was equally vicious, it's possible this was discretion being better than valour on Gresbeck's part. Mackay suggests however that while "abstract theological doctrines were not an issue of great concern to him. One is left with the impression that Gresbeck was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea that a community of socially and economically equal Christians was to be established in Münster."

That said, in his writing for the bishop, Gresbeck certainly hedges his bets. Here are some of his comments written after the defeat of Münster, about the redistribution of wealth:

The preacher Stutenberent continued, “It’s not appropriate for a Christian to have any money. Be it silver or gold, it’s unclean for a Christian. Everything that the Christian brothers and sisters have belongs to one person as much as to the next. You shall lack nothing, be it food or clothing, house and hearth. What you need you shall get, God will not let you lack anything. One thing should be just as common as the next, it belongs to us all. It’s mine as much as yours, and yours as much as mine.” This is how they convinced the people, so that they (some of them) brought their money, silver and gold, and all that they had. But in the city of Münster, the idea that the one person was to have as much as the next turned out unfairly.

Gresbeck's final caution here reads much like those who admonish 21st century revolutionaries that "it will never work". Nonetheless socialists today might be interested in reading about how the redistribution took place:

After the property became common in this way, they appointed three deacons in each parish who were to guard the property consisting of produce, grain, and meat, and any sort of foodstuffs that there were in the city. These deacons entered all the houses and examined what in the way of food, grain, and meat each person had in his house, and they wrote a list of everything that each person had in his house. These deacons went through the city. Each group of deacons went around their parish and were to examine what sort of poor people there were in the city and not let them lack anything. At first, they did this two or three times, but this practice was eventually forgotten because they still had provisions enough in the city. It was with a good appearance that they carried out this procedure in Münster. After they drew up the list for each house, no one had control over his possessions. But if they’d hidden on the side something that wasn’t listed, they were able to retain it. 

This redistribution of wealth was popular, and people did flock to Münster - no surprise given the prevailing poverty in wider society. But I am wary of those who suggest (as writers like Ernest Belfort Bax did) that Anabaptist Münster was some sort of precursor of the revolutionary Paris Commune. One reason for this was there was no democracy. As the siege progressed and deprivation increased power in Münster was concentrated in the hands of the self-declared king, John of Leiden. Gresbeck details how John of Leiden put himself at the top of a hierarchy of power that used violence to ensure his bidding was followed. While Gresbeck gives some account of events for laughs, he does give us an insight into how the "king" created a new, military, state that allowed him to enjoy wealth and food, while the masses inside the besieged town were reduced to eating cats, dogs and rats to survive. Hardly a socialist utopia. Instead this was a theocratic terror state that ruled by fear and murder.

One aspect of the Münster events that has led to much commentary was the institution of polygamy. This makes for some of the most distressing parts of Gresbeck's account. The rulers allowed men in Münster to take multiple wives, against the will of those women. This was justified on the basis of Old Testament scripture, suggesting that the men should have multiple wives and produce multiple offspring to spread Christianity. Whatever the ideological justification, it is clear that this was an incredibly oppressive experience for almost every women, and led to violence and rape, even of children. In fact this situation caused a small uprising against the Anabaptist rule, which John of Leiden stopped with brutal force. Gresbeck does detail other examples of hidden resistance, and people did escape and try to get messages out. But this was not the majority experience. It begs the question, why did Münster hold out so long? In part this is because of the threat of violence - both from the besiegers and from internally. It also was because people seemed to genuinelly believe, or were led to believe, that relief from outside was on its way - and there's so credibility to this. We know that sympathetic Anabaptists did try to rise up and come to the city's aid. But by the time it was desperately needed this was now just fantasy from King John, desperate to offer some hope to hold onto power.

By the time that Gresbeck escaped and led in Münster's enemies, it is clear from his account that the city was on its knees. That does not, however, justify the pillaging and mass murder of civilians by the invading forces. One of the reasons that Gresbeck's is the only account from an eyewitness, is that nearly everyone else was murdered. Münster's enemies wanted to end the rebellion. They also wanted to rub out any other idea that radicals should try and redistribute wealth elsewhere. One might speculate how things could have been different had the bishop not moved to isolate and break the rebellion immediately the Anabaptists were elected to power.

Henry Gresbeck's account of Münster is remarkable, if at times hard to read. It does however repay reading and Christopher S. Mackay has done a superb job of framing and producing Gresbeck's work in a format that is easily accessible to the contempoary reader. For those interested in the Radical Reformation and its consequences, it is a must read. Highly recommended.

Related Reviews

Bax - The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists
Stayer - The German Peasants' War and the Anabaptist Community of Goods
Stayer - Anabaptists and the Sword
Kautsky - Communism in Central Europe in the time of the Reformation

Leon Trotsky - The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany

The recent election results in Germany should have left everyone on the left thinking about the rise of fascism and how it can be averted. While the situation is not the same as the 1930s, emboldened by the second election of Donald Trump there is nonetheless a terrifying rise in confidence for far-right and the fascist movements globally, especially in Europe. 

In the 1930s the Russian revolutionary Marxist Leon Trotsky led a battle within the international Communist movement over the direction of the Communist Parties. This battle was principly over revolutionary strategy and at the heart of his argument was the question of Germany. Germany had a big Commuist Party, and a recent revolutioanry experience. It also had a mass Nazi party, and discussions over tactics to challenge and defeat Hitler were key to the differing visions of Trotsky and the Stalinist left. Trotsky was isolated within the Communist movement, exiled from Russia, he relied on newspapers and letters from small numbers of supporters, who kept him informed. Nonetheless, despite his isolation, he kept up a steady stream of letters, articles, pamphlets and polemics that desperately urged a shift in the course of the German Communist Party (KPD) to enable it to defeat fascism.

The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany is a collection of these writing by Trotsky published by Pathfinder with an introduction from the Belgium Marxist Ernest Mandel. There is a wealth of material here, though readers without some knowledge of the period and the Communist Left, as well as Trotsky's isolation from the revolutionary movement could do well to read some background material. This is in part because Mandel's introduction and some of the introductionary material in this edition is either too brief, or, in the case of Mandel, aimed at a different audience of the 1960s when fascism was not an immediate threat.

The articles represent a number of different approaches of Trotsky to the immediate tasks of the left. The first is understanding the nature of fascism in the 1930s, the second tactics to defeat it, and finally, understanding fascism in the context of Marxist ideas of "bonapartism". There is, out of necessity, repetition. But there are some important conclusions worth noting. Firstly Trotsky's analysis of fascism as a counter-revolutionary force:

Fascism is a product of two conditions: a sharp social crisis on the one hand; the revolutioanry weakness of the German proletariat on the other. The weakness of the proletariat is in turn made up of two leements: the particularly historical role of the Social Democracy, this still powerful capitalist agency in the ranks of the proletariat, and the inability of the centrist leadership of the Communist Party to unite the workers under the banner of the revolution.

Trostky here is clearly writing of fascism in the 1930s, in a period of prolonged economic turmoil and an era when there was an urgent desire of the capitalist class to see the workers' movement blunted and weakened. Its not strictly true today, as fascism has grown in slightly different circumstances. Nonetheless Trotsky's repeated point that "fascism would actually fall to pieces if the CP were able to unite the working class, transforming it into a powerful revolutionary magnet for all the oppressed masses of the people" holds true. What does also remain true today is the way that fascist forces and the far-right in general are growing in the context of general despair at the way mainstream parties have failed to deliver anything for ordinary people. It is also true that in many parts of the world the left, an the trade union leadership have failed to lead the stort of struggles that could win gains for working people and begin to rebuild the movements that can challenge facism. 

Trotsky rages against the analysis of the KPD and the Communist International under Stalin that sees imminient failure for Hitler after each successive election. Trotsky's writings become increasingly desperate and you can feel his frustration at missed opportunities by the KPD fail to undermine the Nazis. The election results, with the Nazis share of the vote declining slightly, that that of the KPD increasing lead to ridculously optimistic positions. In the same piece that was the source of the quotes above, Germany, the Key to the International Situation, Trotsky writes a brilliant piece of analysis that is directly relevent to today. He points out that in the fight to stop fascism "votes are not decisive" the struggle is key:

The main strength of the fascists is their strength in numbers. Yes, they have received many votes. But in the social struggle, votes are not decisive. The main army of fascism still consists of the petty ourgeoisie and the new middle class: the small artisans and shopkeepers of the cities, the petty officials, the employees, the technical personnel, the intelligentsia, the impoverished peasantry. On the scales of election statistics a thousand fascist votes weigh as much as a thousand Commnuist votes. But on the scales of the revolutionary struggle a throusand workers in a one big factory represent a force a hundred times greater than a thousand petty officials, clerks, their wives and their mother-in-law. The great bulk of the fsascists consists of human dust.

How to mobilise this force? The KPD was convinced that it simply needed to declare itself the inheritors of the Russian Revolution and win people to abstract ideas of socialism. Their "third period", in which they labelled the Social Democrats, "social fascists", was designed to tell workers that reformists were the same as Nazis and draw people to the genuine socialists. It had the opposite effect. It prevented the left from uniting over a common programme of stopping the Nazis. The millions of voters for the KPD and the Social Democrats could have been a power to stop Hitler, but were wasted because of the KPD's sectarianism, a sectarianism that as Trotsky repeatedly points out, came directly from Stalin in Moscow.

Some of the most powerful, and tragic parts of this collection are the sections when Trotsky seeks to win people to this vision of a United Front. He draws on his experiences in the Russian Revolution, particularly that during the attempted Kornilov Coup, as well as the early experiences of the Communist International which drew out these ideas for how revolutionaries could relate to workers in a non-revolutionary period. Some of these arguments are surprisingly practical, and provide some of the most interesting and useful parts of the book for today's socialist movement. For instance, in For a Workers' United Front Against Fascism Trotsky writes:

Election agreements, parliamentary compromises concluded between the revolutionary party and the Social Democracy serve, as a rule, to the advanage of the SOcial Democracy. Practical agreements for mass action, for purposes of struggle, are always useful to the revolutionary party... No common platform with the Social Democracy, or with the leaders of the German trade unions, no common publications, banners, placards! March separately, but strike together! Agree only how to strike, whome to strike, and when to strike! Such an agreement can be conluded even with the devil himself, with his grandmother and event with Noske and Grzesinsky. One one condition, not to bind one's hands.

Predicitably, Trotsky's enemies seized on the last polemical idea to unite with the enemies of the workers, to defeat the immideate threat. Their criticisms ignored the body of the argument - a clear strategy to defeat fascism through unity of action by the left and a united workers movement. Trotsky also polemicises against those in the Communist movement who attack Trotskyism, and points out the hypocrisy and the failings. But Trotsky has no mass movement to win the argument and the German working class is defeated. The final chapters in this collection show Trotsky drawing his conclusion that the Communist International has failed and that a new International is needed. 

One surprising thing about this book is that Trotsky doesn't analyse fascism mcuh in terms of its racism and antisemitism. He is mostly concerned with the tactical needs of the movement, and fascism as a force that has "raised itself to power on thew backs of the petty bourgeoisie, which it turned into a battering ram against the organisations of the working class and the institutions of democracy".

He continues, "but fascism in power is least of all the rule of the petty bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it is the most ruthless dictatorship of monopoly capital". But Trotsky is well aware that fascism is a reactionary ideology based on "darkness, ignorance and savagery". Writing as he does from 1930 onward he doesn't need to highlight its antisemitism and racism - it is everywhere evident. He does point out that:

Everything that should have been eliminated from the national oranism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the physiology of National Socialism.

But while it is true that fascism was the rule of monopoly capital. The Nazis did demand their blood payment and that's what led to the Holocaust and the murder of six million Jewish people as well as four million others, plus a global war that killed millions more. Trotsky did not live to see that, though he had a clear understanding that Hitler in power would lead to mass murder. It is, however, a bit unforgiveable that Mandel's introduction doesn't in attempt analyse in any way the Holocaust and events after the Nazis came to power. It is a strange omission on any level.

While much of this book is a polemic by Trotsky at a crisis moment for the European working class, there is much here of interest and importance to the revolutionary left today, trying to build against the growth of the far-right and understanding the role of figures like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. Trotsky's writings cannot be directly applied to 2024. This sort of crude Marxism that takes positions from the past and superimposes them on the present was exactly what he was attacking Stalin for. But that doesn't mean that Trotsky's analysis is dated or irrelevant. Far from it. It'd encourage socialists today to read, or re-read these essays, and think about "how to strike, whome to strike, and when to strike".

Related Reviews

Trotsky - The History of the Russian Revolution
Trotsky - 1905
Trotsky - On Britain
Trotsky - An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe
Cliff - Trotsky 1: Towards October
Cliff - Trotsky 2: Sword of the Revolution
Cliff - Trotsky 3: Fighting the Rising Stalinist Bureaucracy
Dunn & Hugo Radice (eds) - 100 Years of Permanent Revolution: Results & Prospects

Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel - Waiting for the Revolution: A Montana Memoir

In 1932 an extraordinary funeral took place in Plentywood, in the north-eastern corner of Montana, in the United States. Janis Salisbury, the fourteen year old daughter of Rodney Salisbury, was buried in a "Communist funeral". The room, drapped in red flags, saw a service culminating in the audience singing radical and revolutionary songs. It was a shocking moment for many in Montana, but Plentywood, alongside much of Sheridan County, had many radical and socialist activists and voters. They, angered by poverty, economic turmoil and unemployment repeatedly supported socialist candidates and organisations.

The story of Sheridan County's radicalism has been well told by Verlaine Stoner McDonald in her book The Red Corner: The Rise & Fall of Communism in Northeastern Montana. Waiting for the Revolution, is a deeply touching and often inspiring memoir of those times and the aftermath by Janis Salisbury's half-sister by Rodney Salisbury, Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel. She tells the complicated and often stormy account of her parents with the radicalism of the 1920s and 1930s as the backdrop to her life. Jo was born to Rodney and his lover Marie Chapman, who was his partner for thirteen years until Rodney's untimely death in 1938. At the same time though Rodney was married to his wife Emma and, Jo's mother was also married. Despite their clear love for each other Rodney and Emma could not marry, as Emma would not divorce. Rodney was not just a socialist sheriff in his Plentywood days, he had been a Communist candidate for governor, an agricultural workers' union organiser and a revolutionary organiser.

These complicated relationships are emblematic of the wider conservatism of the years. Despite the radicalism of the era, and Rodney and Marie's on socialism, they were trapped by the logic of the system. Jo's memoir tells the story of them and their wider families, placing it in the context of their activism, but in many ways telling a story that is really about the impoverishment and unemployment of the 1930s in the US rural hinterlands. It is not surprise that Marie is an alcoholic, and her and Rodney's children have a different relationship with the adults around them. 

These conditions aside, it is remarkable to read about the radicalism. Rodney and Marie carry their politics through their lives, and it was imbibed by Jo, who maintains a radical set of principles to this day. But her parents, isolated as they must have been in Montana, were principled socialists - siding with Trotsky against Stalin, and working to build the earliest Trotskyist groupings in the US. Readers might like to read the obituary for Rodney that was published in Socialist Appeal on his death in 1938 to a get a sense of the radicalism that existed in 1930s Montana. Sadly it does not mention Marie, though it does talk about Emma a "good wife, companion and teacher, who sympathized with and joined him in his revolutionary outlook".

But most of Jo's account is not about this history - it forms the backdrop to her own story, and that of her family. Shaped by poverty and economicly difficult times, it reminds us that Montana is not just a state of beautiful National Parks, but of class struggle, trade unionism, and the fight for a decent life. Waiting for the Revolution is characteristic of much of American local history, often a little overburdened by complex family trees, these books are nonetheless immeasurably important insights into a history that is fast disappearing. 

Related Reviews

McDonald - The Red Corner: The Rise & Fall of Communism in Northeastern Montana
Doig - Bucking the Sun

Louise Erdrich - The Mighty Red

Set in the lonely east of North Dakota, The Mighty Red is an impressive novel that draws out the isolation of small town, rural America and casts it against the swirling realities of capitalist agriculture, ecological degradation and loneliness. Alongside this Louise Erdrich draws out a story of a local tragedy that has left the town's population scarred and desperate for love to heal their collective wounds.

The novel opens with Kismet Poe, named by a whimsical mother, who hopes that hear daughter will escape that confines of small town America. But Kismet is in love with the bookish romantic Hugo, while being heavily courted by the high school sports star, aspirant farmer Gary. Kismet is too kind to refuse Gary's marriage proposal, and the confines of American culture to restrictive for anyone, even the adults, to understand that youngsters don't need to get married to enjoy sex and love for their early years. As Kismet falls into a marriage she knows she doesn't want but cannot say no to, their wedding day is nearly ruined as Kismet's father absconds with the church renovation funds.

Kismet is now trapped, literally, by Gary's family. Stuck on a farm whose topsoil is vanishing before everyone's eyes. The neighbours are trying out new-fangled organic, no drill farming, but they're the weird ones. Preferring to grow food instead of the local sugar beet cash crop. Hugo leaves his bookshop (Erdrich's novels often seem to feature bookshops, presumably like her own in Minnesota) and heads to Williston to make his fortune in ND's gas fields. Fracking is booming.

Kismet has to escape, but doing so means learning what really happened at that town tragedy, whose participants seem to have sworn some sort of pact of silence. The cover-up needs to be uncovered - not for legal reasons, but so that everyone can move on.

Erdrich has constructed a lovely novel of humanity, youngster's trapped by their circumstances and isolation, and the inward looking life of the adults. The drugs, drink, poisoned air and rapacious capitalism that undermine any effort to be different - or indeed normal. Kismet's at the heart of this, her steely character surviving the twin buffeting of her father's betrayal, her new family life and a soulless marriage. Her escape is wonderful, as is her steadfastness. It's a beautiful book. Louise Erdrich has her finger very firmly on the pulse of America. It will be interesting to see what she writes in the coming years.

Related Reviews

Erdrich - The Sentence