[Marxism] Socialist Policy in World War Two

[Tom O'Lincoln]

Mark asked how we can separate the European and Pacific Wars.  Well, the 
Soviet Union kept out of the Pacific War till it was all but over, and as I 
pointed out in my last post, Japanese and German coordination was  minimal 
during the war. In fact a German Nazi general was leading Chinese armies 
against Japan in the late 30s. Naturally the two theatres are 
interconnected. But then everything is interconnected.

Theanks to Graham for  a detailed reply. I have interspersed some replies of 
my own below:

>>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.<<

No, they were prepared (even keen) to leave EAST TIMOR neutral, in order to 
keep Portugal out of the war. Australia however violated Portuguese 
neutrality, after which Japan moved in and a terrible war ensued on East 
Timorese soil. See Frei, Henry (1996) 'Japan's Reluctant Decision to Occupy 
Portuguese Timor, 1 January 1942-20 February 1942', Australian Historical 
Studies, vol. 27, no. 107, October.

>>Was Australia an imperialist country in 1941?<<

Well what else do you call its control of Papua New Guinea? It is true that 
Australian imperialism emerged gradually out of Australia's role as a 
frontier of British imperialism. Here is something I've written about the 
latter process:

http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/interventions/empire.htm

>>I believe that Australia's war effort in the Asia/Pacific theatre was 
>>mainly
a defensive one.<<

Defending what? Japan had no plans to invade Australia. See Peter Stanley's 
recent book which the publishers have stupidly called "Invading Australia". 
In fact he documents the opposite. Stanley was for a long time the historian 
at the War Memorial, he is a top notch expert. I can also provide many other 
sources.

The Australian war effort was "defensive" in the sense that Australia was 
defending "Australian territories" in Papua and New Guinea. I hopefully don't 
need to tell you how cruel and racist Australian rule in PNG was. Though you 
may not be aware of the terrible forced  labour and vicious punishments 
meted out to the "fuzzy wuzzy angels" on the Kokoda trail.

>>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.<<

Yes, the near north where direct Australian imperial  interests lay. Cynical 
use of the invasion fear allowed the  Australian ruling class to build 
public support for conscription to secure these interests.

>>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). <<

Here you seem to recognise there was an Australian imperialism. What you 
miss is that Australia's "own interests" included preparing for eventual war 
with Japan, for which purpose Australia needed to ensure British backing. 
Prime Minister Billy Hughes apparently told a closed parliamentary session 
that conscription was necessary because 'Japan would challenge the White 
Australia policy after the war.Australia would need the help of the rest of 
the Empire, and...if she wishes to be sure of getting it she must now throw 
her full strength into the war in Europe.'

>>I would see World War Two, from an Australian perspective,
as primarily a war to defend the country from invasion<<

See above. The Japanese  had no capability to invade, and no plans to do so. 
What's more, because the Japanese codes had been cracked, the Australian 
government knew there was no invasion threat  -- they knew this by late 
April 1942. Yet for about a year after this, the government pushed austerity 
drives, using the supposed invasion threat to impose sacrifices on the 
working class. GDP spiked upwards.

>>I acknowledge that the use of nuclear weapons against  Japanese cities in 
>>1945 was a great crime,<<

What of the allied fire-bombing, in which Japanese civilians 'literally 
caught fire and burned like sticks of wood. Women carrying infants on their 
backs suddenly realised their babies were on fire.streets became carpeted 
with charred bodies.  Rivers grew choked with corpses.'  An aide to General 
Macarthur described the firebombings as 'one of the most barbaric killings 
of non-combatants in all history.'   The overall death toll was larger than 
at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. BTW you may have seen in the Australian press the 
other day that the British considered gas attacks on Tokyo. So did the 
Americans. There is an Australian angle to that, too, but space precludes...

But  let's  look at a few other cases. In India, British measures to 
forestall a Japanese invasion included withdrawing boats and rice from the 
Bengali rural population, leading to an aggravation of the Bengali famine. 
It's impossible to say how many deaths this caused directly, but I would be 
surprised if the numbers weren't comparable to the worst Japanese 
atrocities. An additional  motivation was probably to demoralise the 
independence movement through hunger.

Then there is Chiang Kai-shek's 1938 decision to breach the Yellow River 
dykes. To temporarily stall the Japanese advance, up to a million Chinese 
died. That's such a gigantic death toll I'd better give a source: Lary, 
Diana (2004) 'The Waters Covered the Earth: China's War-Induced Natural 
Disasters', in Mark Selden and Alvin So, War and State Terrorism: The United 
States, Japan and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century, Rowman and 
Littlefield, Oxford.

Speaking of Chiang, let me quote from my own book manuscript:

"Japanese atrocities continued in the countryside on a vast scale, but at 
the same time, the Chinese Nationalist movement's 'notorious corruption 
resulted in hoarding and profiteering while millions of peasants starved.' 
In addition, the Nationalist armies - Australia's allies from 1941 onwards - 
extracted annihilating taxes from the peasants. An eyewitness described how

"peasants who were eating elm bark and dried leaves had to haul their last 
sack of seed grain to the tax collector's office. Peasants who were so weak 
they could barely walk had to collect fodder for the army's horses, fodder 
that was more nourishing than the filth they were cramming into their own 
mouths. "

Nor was this the end of it. The Nationalist army forces rampaged out of 
control, pillaging and raping; they were so hated that peasants often killed 
nationalist soldiers who fell into their hands.  Gabriel Kolko says of 
Chiang Kai-shek's military conscription system: 'As a system of direct and 
indirect physical liquidation only the Nazi terror surpassed it during the 
war.'  Those who support the Pacific war on anti-fascist grounds might be 
startled to learn of the fascist tendencies in the Chinese Nationalist 
movement which

"presented an ugly face to the world.and among its own more rightwing 
elements Fascist proclivities soon appeared.the Blue Shirts.soon became 
identified in the public mind with kidnappings, beatings, shootings and all 
the thuggery of fascism.'  "

Moreover, 'Chiang's New life Movement, like the Blue Shirt movement, was 
soon drawn into.Chinese Fascism, providing it with the necessary historical 
myth.'

We also need to remember that the Japanese forces were desperately 
over-stretched, many starving (there was malnutrition in Japan itself by the 
time of Pearl Harbour). They had to live off the land so they plundered. The 
conditions under which they fought generated hysterical behaviour. That 
Japan was making this desperate attempt at conquest was in turn caused by 
American attempts to strangle Japan before 1941. So in a sense you can blame 
the Americans!

But blaming particular nations is really rather pointless. This was an 
imperialist war on all sides.