[Marxism] Socialist Policy in World War Two

[G K Milner]

Dear Tom,
                I'm sorry about the delay in responding to your post.   I 
understand that you are writing from Australia, as I am, so I must say at 
the outset that it is in my opinion a healthy situation that socialists 
should be critical of their 'own' countries' roles in wartime.

I'm not sure that I agree with you that the Japanese were prepared to leave 
the southern Pacific region 'neutral' at the outset of the war.   I'd have 
to check the facts, but didn't Australia declare war separately on Japan in 
December 1941?   The Japanese armed forces attacked British possessions in 
Malaya and then Singapore simultaneously with the attack on the US base at 
Pearl Harbour.   It's difficult to know how much autonomy Australian foreign 
and defence policy had during World War Two, but the Australian government 
responded in the same way as it had in September 1939.   Once Britain was 
involved, then Australia more or less automatically became involved as well.

Was Australia an imperialist country in 1941?   It's an interesting 
question.   I do believe that strategically Australia was very important in 
the war.   To hold the Pacific it was really necessary to hold Australia. 
I think both the Japanese and the USA knew that.   The margin for manouevre 
of the Australian government, as it switched its primary allegiance from 
Britain to the USA during the course of the war, was really rather narrow. 
I believe that Australia's war effort in the Asia/Pacific theatre was mainly 
a defensive one.   Conscription for overseas service was introduced in 
Australia, but a geographical limitation was placed on the deployment of 
troops to a perimeter around Australia's near north.   I think that 
Australia's role in this war was rather different to its role in World War 
One.   In the First World War Australia participated first as a close ally 
of Britain, and to a lesser extent for its own interests in the Pacific 
region (the former German colonies in this region, including German New 
Guinea,  were placed under Australian control at the Paris Peace 
Conference).     I would see World War Two, from an Australian perspective, 
as primarily a war to defend the country from invasion, and then to take the 
war to the enemy (the point is underlined by the recall of the two 
Australian divisions from the Middle East in 1942, and the dispute between 
Curtin's government and Churchill over this decision).   But Australia is a 
'small country', and that category does have some resonance.

Was Japan fascist?   Well, as you might know there is one historian named 
Allardyce who has a completely nominalist position on the definition of 
fascism.   One can narrow down the parameters of one's definition to the 
point where there is no pristine fascist movement or state to fit it.   The 
paradigm fascist state, Italy, still maintained structures of civil society 
into the 1930s, and did not persecute Jews until the exigencies of the 
alliance with Nazi Germany impelled this political programme in the late 
1930s.      Right-wing authoritarianism, even of a fascist type, would 
inevitably take on idiosyncratic features in an Asian culture and polity 
like Japan.   I happened to read a book about Japanese war crimes when I was 
18 years old, and I must say that the account left an indelible impression 
on me.   When I read it, I was already a socialist and an anti-war activist, 
and I absorbed the book not so much as an indictment of the Japanese nation 
but more as an indictment of the crimes of imperialism in general.   I 
cannot agree with your expressed view, however, that Japanese war crimes 
were matched by those of the Allies, in the Asia/Pacific theatre, during 
World War Two.   I acknowledge that the use of nuclear weapons against 
Japanese cities in 1945 was a great crime, but the systematic barbarity 
shown by the Japanese occupying forces throughout Asia and the Pacific, 
against Allied prisoners of war and Asian civilians alike, was on the same 
level in my opinion as the barbarism demonstrated throughout Europe by the 
Nazis and by the Italian fascist regime in Africa and the Balkans.  The 
Allied forces did not behave in the same barbarous fashion.    It might just 
be a matter of degree, but the Japanese ruling class, the military cabal, 
and the circle around the Emperor, although they might not fit the precise 
definition of a fascist regime, nevertheless knew where their allegiances 
lay, and were quite prepared, for example, to send a government delegation 
to the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, not long after the accession to power of the 
Nazi party in Germany.   And of course the Japanese joined the Axis, and 
thereby sealed their bond with the fascist powers.

In solidarity,

Graham Milner


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom O'Lincoln" <suarsos at alphalink.com.au>
To: "Graham Milner" <gkmilner at eftel.net.au>
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 10:46 AM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Socialist Policy in World War Two


There is a very strong case for opposing WW2 in the Pacific. This was
clearly an inter-imperialist war, in many ways the fault of the United
States. And in smaller ways the fault of Australia, for example Australia's
December 1941 invasion of East Timor, which brought the war to an area which
the Japanese were prepared to leave neutral. There was nothing progressive
like the French resistance to point to on the allied side. The era of
Japanese victories had a huge long-term impact in advancing anti-colonial
struggles, and the later stage of western victories was mainly about
restoring what Anthony Eden had called "white  man authority". The USSR 
wasn't
involved  until the final days, for those who think this matters.

Japanese and western war crimes are hard to weigh up against each other, but
there is a reasonable case to say they were of similar dimensions. Here is
article I wrote touching on some of these points, from the Australian
perspective:
http://web.overland.org.au/?page_id=933

Neither was this an "anti-fascist" war. Regarding which, here is something
else I wrote::

***
Was Japan fascist?

No it wasn't. The Japanese state was fairly fragmented, with four main
forces in play: the military; the zaibatsu (cartels); the bureaucracy; and
the emperor and palace. These forces jostled for power before, during and
after the war, leaving some major political ambiguities.   For example,
there is considerable debate about Emperor Hirohito's responsibility for the
war, and just how much he shaped policy compared to other players. Whatever
you think about this, it indicates a very different power structure than a
fascist regime. There are no debates about Hitler or Mussolini's war guilt.

W McMahon Ball, who represented Canberra in Tokyo during the postwar
occupation, wrote:

"In the political life of Japan, from the Restoration of 1868 until the
surrender of 1945, power was never the monopoly of a single group or
organization. There was nothing, even in the war years, to parallel the
one-party rule that existed in Germany under the Nazis or Italy under the
fascists."