THE
WAR IN EUROPE
What really happened?
VI. THE AXIS BREAKS, 1943
Nazi Germany's control of its Eurasian empire was
incoherent at best, and rapidly descended into barbarism. The racial ideology
that the Nazi ascent to power had formalised assumed ever more brutal forms as
applied to rule over subject peoples. Franz Neumann understood at the outset
that 'anti-Semitism provides a justification for eastern expansion':
'The theory of German racial
superiority and Jewish racial inferiority permits the complete enslavement of
the eastern Jews …It actually establishes a hierarchy of races - giving no
rights to Jews, a few to Poles, a few more to the Ukrainians and full rights to
the Germans.' (Neumann, 1966: 126)
Ruling through military commanders (Gauleiters) the Nazis
had no interest in extending rights to the subjected. Instead they ruled by
dividing populations against each other. Some, like the Ukrainians, Croats and
Hungarians were granted a specious authority over the more despised,
particularly Jews. 'The anti-Semitic bacilli exist naturally everywhere in
Europe', thought Goebbels, 'we must merely make them virulent' (Goebbels, 1948:
287). Throughout Europe, the occupying army had learned the trick of teaching
the defeated obedience by demanding the imposition of anti-Jewish laws. This
policy reached its height in Poland, where three million Jews were driven first
into the cities, and then into camps. But as long as the Reich was expanding,
the ghettoisation and brutalisation of the Jews fell short of a singular policy
of extermination. As late as March 1942 Goebbels' still paid lip-service to the
policy of deportation: 'to begin with, they will have to be concentrated in the
East; possibly an island, such as Madagascar, can be assigned to them after the
war.' At the same time, he is 'of
the opinion that the greater the number of Jews liquidated, the more
consolidated will the situation in Europe be after the war' (Goebbels, 1948: 75,
74).
Throughout, the occupations and annexations subordinated
other territories to Germany's economic needs. The strains began to show first
in the Balkans, especially Greece and Serbia, where German demands took no
account of existing shortages, or the consumption needs of the population. The
German army appropriated its own consumption needs from local farmers, in
exchange for worthless paper marks. German businessmen were seconded to the
Economics Staff of the Wehrmacht High Command from firms such as Krupps and I.G.
Farben, seizing the entire output of Greek mines of pyrites, iron ore, chrome,
nickel, magnesite, manganese, bauxite and gold (Mazower, 2001: 24). In Russia
and the Balkans, peasants reacted to expropriation by giving up producing for
the market, 'the surplus vanished and city dwellers in these regions faced
starvation' (Mazower, 1998: 156). In Greece, 100 000 starved over the winter of
1941-42.
The toll of the war effort on the German workforce made the
Reich dependent on captive labour from its subject nations. French and Dutch
workers, but even more Poles and Russians were set to work. By 1944 there were a
staggering eight million civilian workers in the Reich, making up a third of all
armaments workers, and a quarter of machine-building and chemical workers (Mazower,
1998: 159). Practicality forced the importation of slave labour, but still the
Nazi mind recoiled in horror from the growth of an alien workforce in its midst:
'there is of course the danger that as long as there are any Jews left in Berlin
that the Semitic intellectuals may combine with the foreign workers' (Goebbels,
1948: 220).
By 1943 the Italian ruling class could see that the war was lost - Rommel's Afrika Korps had been defeated and von Paulus had surrendered the 6th army at Stalingrad. But Italy's working classes, too, could sense the weakened state of Mussolini's regime. On 5 March 1943, workers at the Rasetti Factory in Turin struck for higher wages, starting a general strike of 100 000 workers throughout the northern cities - and won (Ginsborg, 1990: 10). On 25 July the fascist Grand Council deposed Mussolini, and the King formed a government under Marshall Badoglio, former Viceroy of Abyssinia. Workers in Milan and Genoa demonstrated for an end to the war. Badoglio and the King tried to negotiate an armistice with the allies, but failed to deceive Hitler, who successfully invaded northern Italy to forestall the allied advance. Escaping, Mussolini was briefly the figurehead of the Republic of Salo. Industrialist Giovanni Agnelli sent his vice president to meet America's Allen Dulles and tell him that the geographical position and low labour costs made an 'interesting opportunity' for the United States (Ginsborg, 1990: 23). As preparation for the invasion of mainland Italy, the US Office of Naval Intelligence made contacts with Charles 'Lucky' Luciano in prison. Luciano, who was himself released in 1946 to return to Italy, put them in touch with Don Calogero, who helped the allied landing in Sicily, and Vito Genovese, who was put in charge of supplies around Naples, until his criminal activities forced the American Government in Italy (AMGOT) to send him back to Brooklyn to face trial on an outstanding murder charge (McCoy, 1991: 31-40; Ginsborg, 1990: 36). The former Popular Party leader Alcide de Gasperi, who, despite having been briefly imprisoned by Mussolini in 1927, had applauded the Fascist struggle against Communism throughout the thirties, re-positioned himself as leader of a new Christian Democrat party that was formed in September 1942 at the home of the steel magnate Enrico Falck (Ginsborg, 1990: 48).
Next Chapter VII. Partisan Warfare
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