By Conor Gallagher, Naked Capitalism, 10/31/24
The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 shook the elites of Europe. They likely hadn’t been that uneasy since the guillotines were getting worn out in France in 1794. In the 2021 book “The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II” Jonathan Haslam makes the case that the fear of Communism was a significant driver behind WWII.
Haslam has another book, “Hubris,” just recently out in which he argues “a gross and systemic lack of understanding by Britian and its allies concerning Russia’s intentions and likely actions is ultimately to blame for the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War.”
There’s another telling of that story in which the US and UK knew exactly what they were doing, but that gives you an idea of where Haslam’s coming from. He takes a similar stance on the UK elite in “The Spectre of War”: that it was British misconceptions about Hitler that led them to pursue a pact with the Nazis or at least use Hitler against Russia.
On one hand Haslam argues that the British view of fascism as the only force standing between the Communist overthrow of the existing order was understandable; on the other he faults the British rich for politically misreading Hitler’s Germany in courting it to battle communism.
The logical conclusion, which he never quite nails down, is that it’s unfortunate Hitler didn’t play ball. In attempting steer clear of that point, however, he does (unintentionally I think) make the case that the elites in our supposedly democratic societies vastly prefer fascism to losing any of their wealth. That’s because while the book is primarily concerned with the communist menace, it’s hard to provide convincing evidence of it being such an existential threat without referring to that fact.
From his telling of history, Haslam issues warnings for today, including that “today’s great state of balance will not last” and that Bolshevism or fascism could soon re-emerge.
What could lead to their re-emergence? Haslam offers a smorgasbord of threats, including that “the confidence to invest is being undermined by revolutionary extremism,” which sounds oddly like a call for fascism in order to preserve the existing order and wealth. Other threats include runaway inflation, a lack of economic freedom in China, crime in the US, and Iran’s “bid for hegemony in the Middle East.” Okay, then.
Nowhere does our elites’ attraction to fascism in order to protect their wealth factor in, which is probably understandable considering the point of view Haslam is writing from is as a member of that elite. He is George F. Kennan Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Professor of the History of International Relations at the University of Cambridge and is widely considered a Soviet Union expert in the West.
Haslam relied on whatever documents — British, French, Russian, etc. — he could get his hands on from the time period, which is still limited (one can only guess as to why):
Not all of those [diplomatic documents] for the interwar period are declassified, even now. For instance, annual reports written by British diplomats stationed in foreign capitals such as Paris are still unaccountably closed…We still have no access to the files of Britain’s secret service, MI6, for the interwar period.
I wonder what a book based on the same documents but solely focused on Western elites’ attraction to fascism would read like. Maybe that book is still to be written (or I’ve missed it).
Nonetheless, while Haslam wrote a book about the threat of communism, what jumped out to me were the periodic details of UK plutocrats’ love of fascism and how it lay bare the true nature of the British ragion di stato. That’s what I’ll detail here, and in doing so, hopefully shed some light on how the Soviets and Russians have so long been a thorn in the wealthy Brit’s sides that they now hate them today the same as their dads and granddads.
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Following the Bolshevik Revolution the consensus among the UK establishment was that the Soviets must be defeated at all costs. That thinking was put into practice almost immediately when British troops landed in Murmansk eight months after the Bolsheviks seized power. The UK bombed Petrograd and even enlisted German troops to fight the Soviets in the Baltics.
It continued in the late 1920s when the British tried to embrace the Kremlin’s only ally Weimar Germany, which was still practicing former Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s late 19th century strategy of counting on the natural trading relationship of Russian raw materials for German industry to neutralize any rivalry. As Haslam writes, “…the massive [British] army that had been rapidly mobilized in 1914 was no more. The only means of containing Bolshevism was through diplomacy. By undermining the Soviet-German entente, the British were securing Europe.”
Those efforts continued when Hitler was in power, and despite a few brief pauses, they never really ended to this day despite Communism’s defeat.
Why? If we go back to the beginning, while Britain wasn’t overcome with class struggle, there was widespread fear of it among the wealthy. And the Bolsheviks did cause major problems for the empire, such as in China where they provided early support for the Chinese Communist Party. Haslam can go on for pages about the Japanese running amok, committing endless atrocities in Manchuria and then turn around and write something like this:
In the Far East as in Europe, the Western powers feared that undoing the status quo would unleash the forces of disorder.
Which of course were the communists and why the UK and US supported Japan despite the horrors they were unleashing on civilians.That’s because the true victims were traumatized British bourgeois in Haslam’s telling:
The customary forms of international relations were thus systematically overturned by Moscow’s messianic commitment to overturning the established international order at all costs and as soon as practicable. At the receiving end throughout Europe, the bureaucratic elite, dressed for the day in detachable collars and morning suits, sitting down to work despatching and receiving deciphered telegrams to and from the embassies of Europe, found their customary conduct of diplomacy repeatedly frustrated by Comintern subversion across the globe.
That’s all fine and good, but there are two problems with Haslam’s apologia:
- He frequently depicts the Communist International (Comintern) as ineffective.
- According to Haslam, it was the British who didn’t take diplomacy with the Russians seriously as the Nazi storm clouds gathered over Europe. They instead wanted a deal with Hitler to form a united front against Communism. Here’s one such example from the book:
Moscow, faced with German enmity, was actually working hard to make friends across Europe. It wanted to avoid unexpected crises arising from Comintern operations and was willing to make concessions to appease potential partners. …the problem for Soviet diplomacy was that the core objective of Comintern’s Popular Front strategy was…aimed, of course, not merely at isolating German fascism but at combating fascism in general.
Let’s look at what the UK, in comparison, was up to in the interwar years:
Alberto de Stefani, italy’s finance minister, reported to the prime minster (and foreign minister) Benito Mussolini from Paris on 7 January 1925 that “[I]n a discussion that I had today with [Winston] Churchill [then chancellor of the exchequer]…the latter expressed his sympathy for Your Excellency and his esteem for the energetic work carried out by Your Excellency in suppressing Bolshevism.”
At that point Mussolini had murdered hundreds and imprisoned thousands of Italians in those suppression efforts. Haslam goes on to quote a 1927 piece from the British newspaper Morning Post entitled “The Fascist Ideal”:
When Mussolini took hold of Italy, democracy, delirious with Communism, was swiftly and bloodily ruining the country. And because every other nation is menaced by the same disaster, the example of Italy is peculiarly illuminating, as a ‘contribution to civilisation.’
In London on 19 October 1930 Churchill, now on the back benches, told Prince Otto von Bismarck, the counsellor at the German embassy in London, that “the burgeoning industrialization of the Soviet state presents a great danger to the whole of Europe that can be dealt with only through the establishment of an alliance with the whole of the rest of Europe and America against Russia.”
Here’s the US ambassador to Germany echoing that sentiment:
[President] Hindenburg backs Bruening on the question that Germany is facing a Russian menace,” reported the US ambassador to Germany Frederic Sackett, a solid Republican businessman. “They believe that eventually Russia will be compelled by public opinion to take back Bessarabia and that this will reopen the whole question of the spread of Bolshevism throughout Europe. In this maelstrom Germany will be the buffer state and must be ready to defend itself and the rest of Europe against Bolshevism.
Here is former British Prime Minister Lloyd George in September 1933 explaining that Hitler was the only alternative to communism:
If the Powers succeed in overthrowing Nazism in Germany, what would follow? Not a Conservative, Socialist or Liberal regime, but extreme Communism. Surely that could not be their objective. A Communist Germany would be infinitely more formidable than a Communist Russia.
This belief was widespread at the British Foreign Office:
The red-headed young Robert Hadow, then first secretary of the embassy in Vienna, argued that weakening Hitler would lead towards a Communist Germany “led by utterly unreasonable men — which I do not consider Hitler to be.”
Haslam has harsher words for the Germans like Hindenburg and Schleicher who “arrogantly deluded themselves that they could simultaneously use, contain and control a populist agitator [?] like Hitler to their own ends.” It would appear they were not the only ones, however:
The British were utterly unavailable and had no intention of taking any initiative…tending towards the containment of Nazi Germany. France was thus on its own. Worse than that, the British, with no illusions about French motives, exerted their utmost influence “to prevent the Franco-Russian alliance.”
…No one could deny that the British knew exactly what they were doing, though they had as yet no clear idea as to the longer-term consequences of their actions.
Did they not though? Haslam cites the following examples, which show they did know:
A junior minister at the Foreign Office, Anthony Eden, had begun to shift from the consensus that Germany was much misunderstood and deserved the benefit of the doubt to a more realistic assessment of where the Nazis were heading. His superior Sir John Simon, however, was of a different mould. He held out to Hitler the prospect of a deal on Air Force limitation in return for a more general European settlement. When Hitler showed himself willing to take the deal without the quid pro quo, Eden of course protested. But Simon characteristically gave way.
“Simon toys with [the] idea of letting [Germany] expand eastwards,” Eden surmised…”Apart from its dishonesty…it would be our turn next.” Simon nonetheless drew consolation from Hitler’s obsession with marching to Eastern Europe.
British diplomat Sir Orme Sargent saw a war by Germany against the Soviet Union as welcome inevitable:
“The need of expansion will force Germany towards the East a being the only field open to her, and as long as the Bolshevist regime exists in Russia it is impossible for this expansion to take merely the form of peaceful penetration.”
And here’s Ambassador Phipps in Berlin:
He proffered the tactical objection that by “erect[ing too much barbed wire, whether along Hitler’s southern or eastern frontier, we will head the beast back to the west.” Sargent commented with respect to this that a “great deal” could be said for Britain making no commitments to defend Eastern Europe.
How about Lord Londonderry, “one of Churchill’s innumerable cousins”?
He was an extraordinarily wealthy man, with more than most to lose were genuine socialism to take power. Londonderry was of the view that Germany was the lesser evil.
Here is Colonel Rogers of British intelligence to his counterparts in France:
The liquidation of the growing danger [the Soviet Union] is entirely in the interests of Britain. The British will in no way attempt to do this with their own hands and will not take part openly in any anti-Soviet combinations…But should there be emerge the possibility of defeating the Bolsheviks by any combination of forces, then the British will look upon it with sympathy and will at the decisive moment themselves take part in it. If another government forms in Russia, then the possibility is not to be excluded that Britain will support it, thereby finally re-establishing the balance of power in Europe.
France signed a pact with the Soviets nonetheless, and the Brits replied by breaching part five of the Versailles Treaty with an agreement with Berlin that legitimized German naval rearmament at 35% of the British level. The UK would go on to pressure Paris to abandon the treaty as the foreign office saw it as the greatest obstacle to “any attempt at collaboration in Europe.” France had to choose between Russia and the Western European Great Powers.” Here’s Sargent again:
Sargent in late 1936 sought to revive a Concert of Europe…What he foresaw, as did The Economist, was the division of the continent into ideologically opposing camps. Spain was the catalyst, but France, as he saw it, was the real problem…As to the two fascist powers, however, the task lay in removing their “feeling” of being isolated.
Here’s Oliver Harvey, private secretary to foreign secretary Lord Halifax in June of 1938:
…the British were “praying for Franco’s victory and bringing all the influence they can bear on France to stop the inflow of munitions to Barcelona.” Halifax was no exception. He believed the civil war made it easier to find common ground with Germany, because the Communist role would cause the British to see Germany “as an ally of ours and of all order-loving folk.” The pressure from London under Chamberlain was unremitting. On 13 June French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier finally closed the frontier to arms traffic heading into Spain. Thereafter the Republic was doomed.
Somewhat unexpectedly British public opinion was staunchly against Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and demanded action. The government, which looked favorably upon Mussolini’s efforts against communism, was unmoved.
“That was what was at the back of their minds,” recalled [British historian] A.L. Rowse: “the anti-Red theme that confused their minds when they should have been thinking in terms of their country’s interests and safety.”
Were they not though? As Haslam admits at one point, “This was, after all, a society run by a homogeneous caste who had, with very few exceptions, attended the leading private schools and university at Oxford and Cambridge.” If their idea of country is their caste, then they were looking out for their interests by offering tacit support for Mussolini and Hitler. And that leads to the prime ministership of Neville Chamberlain.
Chamberlain as Appeaser?
The simple story told in the history books is that Chamberlain’s run as prime minister (1937-40) was one of naivety and weakness. He was an appeaser who failed to stand up to dictators and prevent WWII. In reality he was representing the interests of much of the British upper class, which preferred a pact with Nazi Germany.
In 1938 the British politician and diplomat Sir Harold Nicholson wrote in his diary the following:
“People of the governing classes think only of their own fortunes, which means hatred of the Reds. This creates a perfectly artificial but at present most effective secret bond between ourselves and Hitler. Our class interests, on both sides.”
Or consider Lord Privy Seal Viscount Halifax on a trip to Germany in 1937 on the Chamberlain government’s behalf:
Halifax was hosted by Goring and visited Hitler at Berchtesgaden, where he thought it appropriate to congratulate the dictator on performing what he described as “great services in Germany.” Halifax added that Hitler “also, as he would no doubt feel, had been able, by preventing the entry of communism into his own country, to bar its passage further west.”
Halifax…”liked all the Nazi leaders, even Goebbels! Whom no one likes”…He believed it vital that Britain “get on with them.”
When Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 Britain exerted maximum pressure on Prague to bow to the Germans. In July of that year Head of the Home Civil Service Horace Wilson met with the German ambassador and proposed that Britain and Germany divide Europe into “economic spheres of influence, which involved directing the Germans towards eastern and south-eastern Europe…”
Ahead of the Munich Conference, ‘Chamberlain, confident of royal support, said he would outline “the prospect of Germany and England as the two pillars of European peace and buttresses against Communism.”’
There was a reason he was confident of royal support. Here’s King Edward VIII’s hand-picked equerry, Dudley Forwood:
“We were not averse to Hitler politically. We felt that the Nazi regime was a more appropriate government than the Weimar Republic, which had been extremely socialist.”
The Duke of Windsor was “very pro-German.” As were the Duke and Duchess of Kent and Queen Mary. Moscow, slowly but surely, was beginning to figure out what was going on. Here’s a Kremlin memo following the capitulation of Czechoslovakia:
“From an analysis of the current military-political situation in Europe it follows that the main organiser and inspiration for war against the Soviet Union in the West is Fascist Germany evidently under the patronage of England and France.”
Moscow had a different word for Chamberlain’s “appeasement.” They called it “pro-fascist.”
Even as 1939 was drawing to a close Britain was making preparations for war with the Soviets, and it wasn’t so much that Chamberlain’s successor Churchill was anti-fascist, but he was worried about the German threat to the British empire. Or the view from Comintern: “The war is turning out to be between two groups of capitalist countries for the domination of the world.”
After Churchill’s rise to prime minister he refuted rumors of peace talks with Germany and declared that Britain would fight to the end as it was “a matter of life or death for England and the British empire.”
There were, however, repeated attempts still to come to terms with Berlin. Here’s one such example involving the Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII), according to the foreign department of Soviet state security:
“…Edward, together with his wife Simpson, are currently in Madrid where they are in contact with Hitler. Edward is conducting negotiations with Hitler on the question of forming a new English government, the conclusion of peace with Germany conditional upon establishing a military alliance against the USSR.”
Hitler was coming to similar conclusions about the UK that the communists were. According to Rudolf Hess’s personal adjutant, Hitler believed “that after the fall of France, Britain was more likely to come to terms if Germany attacked the Soviet Union.” Hard to blame him for thinking so.
Lessons
The lesson, we are told repeatedly, learned from WWII is to never appease dictators. This is used to sell so many of the US and friends’ interventions today.
Maybe that lesson is apt for the plutocrats and their court jesters who rued (still rue?) the fact that Hitler wouldn’t play along. Maybe they still have a lingering sense of a missed opportunity to conquer Russia.
For the rest of us the lesson from WWII might be very different: that the concentration of wealth and its stranglehold on politics and government are preludes to fascism. As Haslam writes:
Fascism in Germany, as in Italy and then in Spain, was viewed as a necessary antidote to revolutionary excesses. In some senses the official British interpretation was justifiable.
While the Western plutocrats might have missed their WWII opportunity to defeat Russia due to infighting over empire, they are on the same page this go-round. As Diana Johnstone wrote shortly after the official beginning of the war in Ukraine:
When Western leaders speak of “economic war against Russia,” or “ruining Russia” by arming and supporting Ukraine, one wonders whether they are consciously preparing World War III, or trying to provide a new ending to World War II. Or will the two merge?
As it shapes up, with NATO openly trying to “overextend” and thus defeat Russia with a war of attrition in Ukraine, it is somewhat as if Britain and the United States, some 80 years later, switched sides and joined German-dominated Europe to wage war against Russia, alongside the heirs to Eastern European anticommunism, some of whom were allied to Nazi Germany.
Unfortunately for this new alliance, the Nazis appear to be on the losing end against Russia yet again.
Another topical lesson that didn’t get learned is that the UK and other Western powers shouldn’t try to control and steer Nazis. If we want to imagine a real nightmare for Europe (as opposed to the imagined one of Putin conquering the continent), how about if Ukraine, feeling betrayed by Europe, turns its still-large army and all its toys westwards while the Americans and Russians look away? As Anthony Eden told Russian Ambassador to the UK Ivan Maisky in 1940:
“You know the greatest difficulty for me at this time was to convince my friends that Hitler and Mussolini were not quite similar to in psychology, in motive and methods, in their entire cast of mind anything like English ‘business men or country gentlemen.’ This they could never get themselves to believe. They though that I was ‘biased’ against the ‘dictators’ and that I didn’t wish to understand them…Some of our statesmen even after me attempted to communicate with ‘dictators’ as with ‘business men.’