Chapter Six – ‘Priorities of Colonial Imperialism’
Regarding the Economic and Political Priorities of the World’s Major Colonial Powers, the British and French Empires, the other European Empires and the Imperialist United States of America During the Rise of Fascism
At this point in our narrative regarding the very purposeful arming of Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany for war, it would seem useful to keep in mind the colonially exploitive nature of the world’s ruling racist capitalist empires of the time, which included the United State of America.[59] Secondly, to keep in mind as well that in the early 1930’s the relatively recent post-WWI revolutionary period would have still been fresh in the memories of the most influential citizens within those financial empires that had survived war and revolution. Otherwise, the unwary reader might fall into the trap of believing the current widespread criminal media inculcated view that colonial power politicians chose to appease Hitler in order to avoid war, whereas their behavior all along followed a consistent pattern of promoting fascism and fascist preparations for war against the revolutionary socialist government of the Soviet Union and revolutionary socialist movements elsewhere.
Quoting from the International Encyclopedia of the First World War
The two world wide colonial empires of France and Britain had emerged from the First World War battered but victorious. The settlements imposed upon the defeated powers enshrined a new form of colonial regime, one that was mediated through the oversight of the League of Nations and which injected the concept of trusteeship into imperial discourse. This, however, made little difference to the ways in which the British and French chose to manage their empires. Repressive force, often in excess of what could be applied in the metropole to recalcitrant workers or political opponents, remained the defining element of the colonial state. (Thomas, Martin: Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918-1940, Cambridge University Press 2012) [59]
The readiness to resort to violent militarized policing methods in order to deal with the crises that followed the war only demonstrated the limits to the legitimacy of colonial rule. The colonial empires had reached a tipping point in the early 1920s. Mass nationalist movements, then stood as the main opponents to colonial rule across numerous territories. The mobilization of the colonial empires to fight a “total war” in 1914-1918, especially the recruitment of combatants and laborers, was the crucial dynamic that drove the development of this anti-colonial upsurge.
The First World War unleashed internationalist and ethno-nationalist ideas alongside demands from subject populations which could not be met without significant concessions over sovereignty and political control… It would take the defeats of 1940-42, with France crushed in Europe by Germany and Britain humiliated by Japan in South-East Asia, to finally seal the fate of the colonial empires and accelerate moves towards decolonization. Battlefield defeat for the Ottomans, Russians and Germans in 1917-18, as well as ensuing revolutions and internal political collapse, ensured that their pre-war imperial territories would undergo a form of decolonization in the conflict’s aftermath. Victory for the Allies produced a contrasting experience, with the Belgian, French, Italian, British, Portuguese and Japanese Empires all secured or enhanced by the war. (Kitchen, James E.: “Colonial Empires after the War/Decolonization,” International Encyclopedia of the First World War,)[60]
At the First World War’s conclusion, however, the situation in defeated Germany had to be somewhat unnerving for those governing the victorious colonial powers. The front page of The New York Times, November 11, 1918, read:
ARMISTICE SIGNED, END OF THE WAR!
BERLIN SEIZED BY REVOLUTIONISTS;
NEW CHANCELLOR BEGS FOR ORDER;
OUSTED KAISER FLEES TO HOLLAND
MORE WARSHIPS JOIN THE REDS, above articles had subtitles
‘Berlin Troops Join Revolt’ and
‘Reds Shell Building in Which Officers Vainly Resist’
German sailors had led a revolt in the naval ports of Wilhelmshaven on 29 October 1918, followed by the Kiel mutiny in the first days of November. These disturbances spread the spirit of civil unrest across Germany and ultimately led to the proclamation of a republic on 9 November 1918. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated his throne and fled the country.
After the outbreak of the Russian February Revolution in 1917, the first organized strikes erupted in German armament factories in March and April, with about 300,000 workers going on strike. The strike was organized by a group called the Revolutionary Stewards (Revolutionäre Obleute). The communism of Marx and Engels had had a sizable following among German workers for decades.
In October 1918, another series of strikes had swept through Germany with the participation of over 1 million workers. For the first time during these strikes, the so-called Revolutionary Stewards took action. They called themselves “Councils” (Räte) after the Russian “Soviets”.
(The spread of revolution to the entire German Empire!)
Around 4 November, delegations of the sailors dispersed to all of the major cities in Germany. By 7 November, the revolution had seized all large coastal cities as well as Hanover, Brunswick, Frankfurt on Main, and Munich. In Munich, a “Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council” forced the last King of Bavaria, Ludwig III, to issue the Anif declaration. Bavaria was the first member state of the German Empire to be declared a Volksstaat, the People’s State of Bavaria. In the following days, the dynastic rulers of all the other German states abdicated. By the time the 1918 revolution was over, all 21 German monarchs had been dethroned.
In Leipzig, Hamburg, Bremen, Chemnitz, and Gotha, the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils took the city administrations under their control. In addition, in Brunswick, Düsseldorf, Mülheim/Ruhr, and Zwickau, all civil servants loyal to the emperor were arrested. In Hamburg and Bremen, “Red Guards” were formed that were to protect the revolution.
Back on August 4, 1914, the German Social Democratic Party (German: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD;(SPD) large majority party in the German parliament, its strict Marxist platform notwithstanding, had voted in favor of war credits enabling German imperialism to go to war. In early January of 1919, The concern for the future of European colonial power status quo was allayed when these same SPD parliamentarian leftists sought an alliance with the German Supreme Command.
This allowed the army and the Freikorps (nationalist militias) to quell the communist Spartacist uprising of 4–15 January 1919 by force. The same alliance of political forces succeeded in suppressing uprisings of the left in other parts of Germany, with the result that the country was completely pacified by late 1919. (Ralf Hoffrugge, (2014) Richard Müller, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement)[61]
The Punitive Versailles Treaty Forced On a Weak German Anti-revolutionary Government
There was a duality and a contradiction in the policy of the Western Powers after 1918. On the one hand, they wanted to eliminate the danger to themselves from German militarism, which had developed through three Prussian wars — against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1871) — into the Hohenzollern Empire of 1871-1918, equipped with all the means of modem warfare by an alliance of the landowners, big banks and industrial monopolies. Ergo, the tough Versailles Treaty imposed.
On the other hand, by keeping a section of the Kaiser’s army for use against Soviet Russia, and by encouraging the building up of the most reactionary fragments of the rest into a new army expressly for the purpose of stamping out working-class revolution in Germany, [61a] the Allies were placing at the disposal of those very same classes the reliable nucleus of a revived militarism, which could expand as and when circumstances permitted. In fact, as was recognized in later years, the Allied Governments for the same reasons turned a blind eye at the “secret” rearmament of Germany beyond the limits fixed by the Versailles Treaty — by building artillery, planes, a skeleton General Staff, and above all by organizing secret military formations under various disguises like for instance, “Black Reichswehr.”[61b] (Andrew Rothstein The Munich Conspiracy) [61c]
In the United States, these reports of revolution in Germany after the First World War were read in the context of the first ‘Red Scare’, which was promoted in the powerful capitalist press as a perceived threat of revolutionary agitation within the American labor movement, of anarchist, socialist and communist organizing and political radicalism. For America’s uneasy wealthy, it is obvious enough to imagine the appeal of the fascist movements that were born in Italy, Germany, Portugal and Spain in immediate reaction to the Russian revolution, even before the desperate scenario of the world depression had brought serious violence into streets of the USA
Mussolini Fascism Born As An Alternative to Socialist Revolution, Became an Attractive Model for the American Business Oligarchs
In the fall of 1922, Fascist Party leaders planned an insurrection, to take place on 28 October. When fascist blackshirt paramilitaries entered Rome, Prime Minister Luigi Facta wanted to declare a state of siege, but was overruled by King Victor Emmanuel III. Instead the King appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister, transferring political power to the fascists without armed conflict.[62]
With Benito Mussolini’s ‘March on Rome,’ Italy had gone fascist [63] and almost immediately received the approval of right wing business tycoons in America, who held great influence, probably tantamount to control, over the government in the US. Pro-fascist publisher Henry Luce put Mussolini on the cover of his Time magazine several times, beginning in 1923. In 1934, Luce devoted an entire issue of his Fortune magazine to Italy’s social and economic “miracle,” and praising it’s corporatist government as a model that could be adopted in the U.S.
Duluth New Tribune, 12 November 1922
“Middle Class Takes Fascism to Gain Rights—Revolt in Italy Projected by Underpaid ‘White Collar’ Folk, Says Writer”
By J. W. T. Mason. (Written for the United Press)
‘The Fascisti success in Italy marks Europe’s turning toward the middle classes. If the young and untried men Premier Mussolini has taken into his cabinet show an ability to handle the technical machinery of government, there will be a full recovery of the economic ground lost by the middle classes during the war. As Bolshevism was an attack against all classes by the Russian workingmen, so the Fascisti movement is an attack against both the idle rich and overpaid laboring classes by the white collar men.”
Portland Morning Oregonian, 6 November 1922,
‘Revolt Against Socialism.’ “Both the accession to power of the fascisti in Italy and the defeat of the labor party in the British municipal elections point the same way—revolt against socialism and return to individualism as the way to bring cost of government within revenue and to reduce it further in order to reduce taxes…National ownership of railroads, telegraphs and telephones, municipal ownership of public utilities and government monopolies of such commodities as tobacco are common in Europe…Fascism began in Italy as a revolt against socialism, and Mussolini evidently intends to go the whole way in restoring the public services and monopolies to private enterprise.”
San Jose (CA) Mercury Herald, 25 November 1922,
‘The Cure for Bolshevism’ “Fascism is not far removed from normalcy; it is the existing order reduced to the terms of the small merchant and wage‐ earner who does not believe in millenniums but clings pathetically to the practical need of three meals a day. Bolshevism in Italy brought starvation and chaos, fascism drove out communism, which is in hiding, and reasserts popular authority.”
Mussolini’s fascists had formed squads of war veterans known as “Black Shirts,” who would clash with the members of other political parties, particularly communists and socialists. The government harbored deep fears of a communist revolution and rarely interfered, giving Mussolini’s forces relatively free rein. [64]
In mid-1926, a coup d’état in Portugal brought António de Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo corporatist authoritarian government to power over its world wide Portuguese Empire. After the Army’s overthrow of the Republic in July of 1940, America’s Life magazine featured an article on Portugal praising Salazar’s rule. During the Spanish Civil War Portugal played a critical role in supplying General Franco fascists with ammunition and logistical resources.[65] The Spanish Nationalists in the beginning had no access to seaports, so Salazar’s Portugal helped them receive armaments shipments from abroad.[66]
US Foreign Policy Vis-a-vis Japanese Imperialism
Not only did the American press and US government diplomacy tend to backhandedly support fascism as it arose in Europe in response to revolutionary anti-capitalism in Soviet Union, US diplomacy at first also tended to allow Japan, fast becoming fascistic and racist, [67] a free hand in Asia.
The Washington Naval Conference, was a disarmament conference called by the United States and held in Washington, DC from November 12, 1921 to February 6, 1922. It was conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations. It was attended by nine nations (the United States, Japan, China, France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Portugal) and regarded their interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. Soviet Russia was not invited to the conference. Germany was not invited to the conference, as it had already been disarmed under the terms of the Versailles Treaty. It was the first arms control conference in history. The resulting US managed agreement solidified Japan’s position as a great power; it was allowed to maintain a larger naval force than France and Italy and was treated as a colonial power with equal diplomatic interests. The Nine-Power Treaty after the Washington Conference in February of 1922, had reaffirmed the US ‘Open Door’ principle of equal trading opportunity for itself in China, but it had strengthened Japan, which would in the spring of 1934 declare all China to be a Japanese preserve in which no power could take important action without its consent. [69]
A London Naval Conference was held in 1930, to extend the Washington Treaty System. Although Japan came away with a 5:4 “advantage” in heavy cruisers, there was much dissatisfaction in Japan, which was gradually falling under the spell of the various ultra-nationalist groups agitating throughout the country. In November of 1930, the Prime Minister of Japan was assassinated by a member of an ultra-nationalist secret society over the outcome of the London Naval Treaty. In the summer of 1931, the army, acting independently of a weak government in Japan, took the opportunity to invade and occupy the whole of Manchuria. [70]
The Japanese renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 set up a puppet government, with Pu Yi, the former emperor of China, as its executive head. This new entity was recognized only by the governments of Italy, Spain and Nazi Germany. The League of Nations appointed an investigation team led by a British Earl however, during the length of time the investigation took, Japan was able to firmly secure its control over Manchuria and able to reject the condemnation of the League with impunity. The only reaction from the United States was a note to the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China, of non-recognition of international territorial changes that were executed by force.
At the outset, U.S. officials viewed developments in China with ambivalence. On the one hand, they opposed Japanese incursions into northeast China and the rise of Japanese militarism in the area, in part because of their sense of a longstanding friendship with China. On the other hand, most U.S. officials believed that it had no vital interests in China worth going to war over with Japan. Moreover, the domestic conflict between Chinese Nationalists and Communists left U.S. policymakers uncertain of success in aiding such an internally divided nation. As a result, few U.S. officials recommended taking a strong stance prior to 1937, and so the United States did little to help China for fear of provoking Japan.
(“Japan, China, the United States and the Road to Pearl Harbor, 1937-41,” U.S. Department of State Archive)
In July 1937, the Japanese invaded China, starting the Second Sino-Japanese War. Mikhail Kalinin, the Soviet head of state, told the American ambassador in Moscow that same month that his country was prepared for an attack by Nazi Germany in the west and Japan in the east.[71] From October 1937 to September 1939, the Soviets supplied the Chinese with 82 tanks, over 1,300 pieces of artillery, over 14,000 machine guns, 50,000 rifles, 1,550 trucks and tractors, and also ammunition, equipment and supplies. They also provided 3,665 military advisors and volunteers as part of the Soviet Volunteer Group. 195 of these men, almost all officers, died in battle against Japanese forces. Large-scale Soviet aid ceased by the end of the Soviet-Japanese border conflicts.[72
U.S. likelihood of providing aid to China increased after July 7, 1937, when the Japanese Army bombed the U.S.S. Panay as it evacuated American citizens from Nanjing, killing three. The U.S. Government, however, continued to avoid conflict and accepted an apology and indemnity from the Japanese. An uneasy truce held between the two nations into 1940. [72a]
Anti-democratic US Foreign Policy in the Americas
Though there was no outright threat of fascism in America’s Caribbean and Central American backyard, there too, US diplomacy was not disposed to confront the brutal anti-democratic gangster-style strongmen who ruled largely to the benefit of US commercial and trading interests.
‘Harvest of Empire’ by journalist Juan González, explores the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America.
By using foreign lands and labor to expand American business, financing the overthrow of democratically elected leaders, and training the leaders of oppressive military leaders, the U.S. has contributed to the poverty and civil unrest that has fostered conflict and violence.
A good example was US occupation of Haiti. Expecting the emergence of a new government led by the anti-American Haitian politician Rosalvo Bobo, President Woodrow Wilson Wilson using possible foreign intervention concern as a pretext , sent U.S. Marines into Haiti in July 1915. Within weeks, a new pro-U.S. Haitian president was installed and a new constitution written that was favorable to the interests of the United States. The constitution (written by future US President Franklin D. Roosevelt) included a clause that allowed, for the first time, foreign ownership of land in Haiti, which was bitterly opposed by the Haitian legislature and citizenry.(“Harvest of Empire” by Juan González) [73]
The United States had invaded Haiti in July 1915 for the eighth time. American rule in Haiti began during World War I and continued through 1942. The United States secured control and integrated the country into the international capitalist economy, while preventing Haiti from practicing self-governance or democracy. [73]
President Wilson ordered armed interventions and occupations in seven Caribbean and Central American countries. General Smedley Butler, then the highest-decorated Marine ever, in a 1933 speech stated:“I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it…I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street.” I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.
In 1933, incoming US President Franklin Roosevelt announced during his inauguration speech his “Good Neighbor Policy” for Latin America at the same time as indigenous peoples in El Salvador were being exterminated. They were targeted by appearance, dress, or language of the Pipil population in a continuation of the massacre of 30,000 during a peasant rebellion, led in part by communists, against the brutal government of coup leader General Hernández Martínez the year before.[74]
Another ‘good neighbor’ was Venezuelan military general Juan Vicente Gómez Chacón, for thirty years de facto ruler of Venezuela until his death in 1935. He is one of the prominent examples of alleged brutal U.S. domination in Latin America.[75]
Also later in 1933, the ’Day by Day’ history project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library’s reads, “On September 12, 1933, Colonel Fulgencio Batista, seized power in Cuba. … At the time, the U.S. Navy had 23 war vessels in Cuban waters, including 8 destroyers.” [76] The Internet features photos of Batista and FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt on Batista’s arm, and Batista with Sec. of State Hull at the Pan-American Union in December of 1942.
During the second year of FDR’s ‘Good Neighbor Policy,’ Augusto César Sandino a Nicaraguan revolutionary and leader of a rebellion between 1927 and 1933 against the United States occupation of Nicaragua was assassinated by National Guard forces of General Anastasio Somoza García, who went on to seize power in a coup d’état and establish a dictatorship and a Somoza family dynasty that ruled Nicaragua for more than 40 years. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first US president to use the phrase “he might be a bastard, but he’s our bastard” when he was talking about the Nicaraguan military dictator Anastasio Somoza, who was a West Point graduate. There are two 1929 photo ops of FDR and Somoza on the Internet.
The well reported 1937 horrific massacre of some 25,000 Haitians in the Dominican Republic by FDR’s apparent good friend dictator Rafael Trujillo threatened to damage the Roosevelt administration’s Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America by calling attention to dictatorships in the Caribbean area. Trujillo was a legacy of the U.S. Marine occupation of the Dominican Republic, 1916–1924. The Internet still features 1934 photos of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt with the Trujillos at San Pedro de Macoris, DR and various photos of Trujillo sitting alongside of FDR in presidential automobiles.
Other ‘Good Neighbors’ included Jorge Ubico, who had established a strong dictatorship in Guatemala 1931-44, and Tiburcio Carías Andino dictator of Honduras, From 1932-48. [77]