[Marxism] Noam Chomsky on US govt and business community support for Fascism

["Clinton Fernandes" <cfer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On the U.S. government and business community's support for Hitler and
Mussolini before World War II, see for example, Christopher Simpson, The
Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century,
Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, especially pp. 46-64; David F. Schmitz,
Thank God They're On Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing
Dictatorships, 1921-1965, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1999, chs. 1 and 3; David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy,
1922-1940, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988; John P.
Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: the View from America, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972.

The reasons for the warm American response to Fascism and Nazism that are
detailed in these books are explained quite openly in the internal U.S.
government planning record.

For instance, a 1937 Report of the State Department's European Division
described the rise of Fascism as the natural reaction of "the rich and
middle classes, in self-defense" when the "dissatisfied masses, with the
example of the Russian revolution before them, swing to the Left."  Fascism
therefore "must succeed or the masses, this time reinforced by the
disillusioned middle classes, will again turn to the Left."  The Report also
noted that "if Fascism cannot succeed by persuasion [in Germany], it must
succeed by force."  It concluded that "economic appeasement should prove the
surest route to world peace," a conclusion based on the belief that Fascism
as a system was compatible with U.S. interests.  See Schmitz, The United
States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, p. 140; see also, Daniel Yergin,
Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security
State, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1977, p. 26 (U.S. Ambassador to Russia
William Bullitt "believed that only Nazi Germany could stay the advance of
Soviet Bolshevism in Europe").

At the same time, Britain's special emissary to Germany, Lord Halifax,
praised Hitler for blocking the spread of Communism, an achievement that
brought England to "a much greater degree of understanding of all his [i.e.
Hitler's] work" than heretofore, as Halifax recorded his words to the German
Chancellor while Hitler was conducting his reign of terror in the late
1930s.  See Lloyd Gardner, Spheres of Influence: The Great Powers Partition
Europe, From Munich to Yalta, Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1993, p. 13.  See also,
Clement Leibovitz, The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal, Edmonton, Canada: Les
Éditions Duval, 1993 (fascinating 533-page study reproducing vast
documentation, largely from recently-declassified British government
sources, of the secret British deal allowing Hitler free rein to expand in
Eastern Europe; this deal was "motivated by anti-communism" and was "not a
sudden policy quirk but was the crowning of incessant efforts to encourage
Japan and Germany 'to take their fill' of the Soviet Union" [p. 6].
Leibovitz's study also establishes conclusively, from a wide variety of
sources, that there was great sympathy for Hitler's and Mussolini's policies
among the British establishment).

Furthermore, although Hitler's rhetorical commitments and actions were
completely public, internal U.S. government documents from the 1930s refer
to him as a "moderate."  For example, the American chargé d'affaires in
Berlin wrote to Washington in 1933 that the hope for Germany lay in "the
more moderate section of the [Nazi] party, headed by Hitler himself . . .
which appeal[s] to all civilized and reasonable people," and seems to have
"the upper hand" over the violent fringe.  "From the standpoint of stable
political conditions, it is perhaps well that Hitler is now in a position to
wield unprecedented power," noted the American Ambassador, Frederic Sackett.
See Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, pp. 140, 174,
133, and ch. 9; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1933, Vol. II
("British Commonwealth, Europe, Near East and Africa"), Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1949, pp. 329, 209.

The U.S. reaction to Fascist Italy before the war was similar.  A high-level
inquiry of the Wilson administration determined in December 1917 that with
rising labor militancy, Italy posed "the obvious danger of social revolution
and disorganization."  A State Department official noted privately that "If
we are not careful we will have a second Russia on our hands," adding: "The
Italians are like children" and "must be [led] and assisted more than almost
any other nation."  Mussolini's Blackshirts solved the problem by violence.
They carried out "a fine young revolution," the American Ambassador to Italy
observed approvingly, referring to Mussolini's March on Rome in October
1922, which brought Italian democracy to an end.  Racist goons effectively
ended labor agitation with government help, and the democratic deviation was
terminated; the United States watched with approval.  The Fascists are
"perhaps the most potent factor in the suppression of Bolshevism in Italy"
and have much improved the situation generally, the Embassy reported to
Washington, while voicing some residual anxiety about the "enthusiastic and
violent young men" who have brought about these developments.  The Embassy
continued to report the appeal of Fascism to "all patriotic Italians,"
simple-minded folk who "hunger for strong leadership and enjoy . . . being
dramatically governed."  See Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy,
1922-1940, pp. 14, 36, 44, 52; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919,
Vol. I ("Paris Peace Conference"), Washington: United States Government
Printing Office, 1942, p. 47.

As time went on, the American Embassy was well aware of Mussolini's
totalitarian measures.  Fascism had "effectively stifled hostile elements in
restricting the right of free assembly, in abolishing freedom of the press
and in having at its command a large military organization," the Embassy
reported in a message of February 1925, after a major Fascist crackdown.
But Mussolini remained a "moderate," manfully confronting the fearsome
Bolsheviks while fending off the extremist fringe on the right.  His
qualifications as a moderate were implicit in the judgment expressed by
Ambassador Henry Fletcher: the choice in Italy is "between Mussolini and
Fascism and Giolitti and Socialism, between strong methods of internal peace
and prosperity and a return to free speech, loose administration and general
disorganization.  Peace and Prosperity were preferred."  (Giolitti was the
liberal Prime Minister, who had collaborated with Mussolini in the
repression of labor but now found himself a target as well.)  See Schmitz,
The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, pp. 76-77f.



On the views of U.S. corporations towards Fascism, including details of
participation in the plunder of Jewish assets under Hitler's Aryanization
programs -- notably, the Ford Motor Company -- see for example, Christopher
Simpson, The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth
Century, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, especially ch. 5 (on Ford's role
in Aryanization of Jewish property, see pp. 62-63).  An excerpt (p. 64):

Many U.S. companies bought substantial interests in established German
companies, which in turn plowed that new money into Aryanizations or into
arms production banned under the Versailles Treaty.  According to a 1936
report from Ambassador William Dodd to President Roosevelt, a half-dozen key
U.S. companies -- International Harvester, Ford, General Motors, Standard
Oil of New Jersey, and du Pont -- had become deeply involved in German
weapons production. . . .

U.S. investment in Germany accelerated rapidly after Hitler came to power,
despite the Depression and Germany's default on virtually all of its
government and commercial loans.  Commerce Department reports show that U.S.
investment in Germany increased some 48.5 percent between 1929 and 1940,
while declining sharply everywhere else in continental Europe.  U.S.
investment in Great Britain . . . barely held steady over the decade,
increasing only 2.6 percent.

Bradford C. Snell, American Ground Transport: A Proposal for Restructuring
the Automobile, Truck, Bus, and Rail Industries, Hearings Before the U.S.
Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly,
93rd Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1974, pp. 16-23 (discussing the major role that General Motors, Ford, and to
a lesser extent Chrysler, played in the Nazi war effort); Edwin Black,
I.B.M. and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and
America's Most Powerful Corporation, New York: Crown, 2001; Reinhold
Billstein et al., Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors, and Forced
Labor in Germany during the Second World War, New York: Berghahn, 2000;
Gerard Colby Zilg, Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain, Englewood Cliffs (NJ):
Prentice-Hall, 1974, especially pp. 292-314, 353-354 (on corporate leaders'
plans for a fascist coup in the U.S. in 1934, and on the Du Pont Company's
arming of the rising Axis powers in the 1930s).  For more on the fascist
coup plot -- discussed in Zilg's outstanding study -- see Union Calendar No.
44, Report No. 153, "Investigation of Nazi and Other Propaganda," February
15, 1935, House of Representatives, 74th Congress, 1st Session, Washington:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1935 (C.I.S. Serial Set #9890, pp. 9-10);
Dickstein-McCormick Special Committee on Un-American Activities,
"Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain
Other Propaganda Activities," beginning June 5, 1934, House of
Representatives, 73rd Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1935 (C.I.S.#688-3-B), especially Testimony of
Major-General Smedley D. Butler (Ret.) on November 20, 1934, pp. 8-20, and
following testimony, pp. 20-128 (microfiche cards 7 and 8 of 15).

For a sample of the U.S. business press's attitudes, see "The State: Fascist
and Total," Fortune, July 1934 [special issue devoted to Italian Fascism],
pp. 47-48.  This issue comments approvingly that "the purpose and effect of
Fascism" is "to unwop the wops," and that the idea that the Italians ought
to resent Fascism "is a confusion, and we can only get over it if we
anesthetize for the moment our ingrained idea that democracy is the only
right and just conception of government."  See also, John P. Diggins,
Mussolini and Fascism: the View from America, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972; John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is
Good For You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Monroe,
ME: Common Courage, 1995, p. 149.

On the U.S. government's refusal to admit into the United States most Jewish
and other refugees fleeing from the Holocaust, see for example, Arthur D.
Morse, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy, New York:
Random House, 1967; David S. Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee
Crisis, 1938-1941, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973; Saul S.
Friedman, No Haven for the Oppressed: United States Policy toward Jewish
Refugees, 1938-1945, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973; Alfred M.
Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection: What Price Israel?, New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1978 (on the unwillingness of American Zionists to support plans for
bringing European Jews to the United States in 1942; instead, they wanted
them to go to Palestine).

On operations in French North Africa, the first area liberated by U.S.
forces in World War II, see for example, Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise to
Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, Baltimore: Penguin, 1971, ch.
2, especially pp. 54-66.  An excerpt (pp. 55-59):

The United States took the view that one could do business with Vichy [the
pro-Nazi government in southern France during World War II].  Much in
Pétain's [the Vichy chief of state] program appeared to Roosevelt and Hull
[the British Prime Minister] to represent the best hope for France,
especially those parts that stood for work, patriotism, and stability. . . .
The President did everything in his power to stop de Gaulle's rise,
primarily because of his fear that the French people upon liberation would,
as they had in the past, run to an extreme. . . .  What made [de Gaulle]
even more dangerous was the way that he flirted with the forces of the left,
especially the communists in the Resistance.  "France faces a revolution
when the Germans have been driven out," the President once said, and he
feared that the man most likely to profit from it would be de Gaulle.

Roosevelt spent much time searching for an alternative to de Gaulle.  He
might have wanted to turn to Vichy, but Pétain was too thoroughly brushed
with the tar of the collaborationist.  Roosevelt's best hope was the French
Army, which represented the forces of stability and conservatism without
appearing to be pro-Nazi. . . .  By accident, Admiral Jean Darlan was in
Algiers when the [Allied] invasion hit.  Darlan was bitterly anti-British,
author of Vichy's anti-semitic laws, and a willing collaborationist, but he
was also the Commander-in-Chief of Vichy's armed forces and he was ready to
double-cross Pétain.  He agreed to a deal proposed by Clark and Murphy,
which required him to order the French to lay down their arms, in return for
which the Allies made him the Governor General of all French North Africa.
Within a few days the French officers obeyed Darlan's order to cease fire,
and a week after the invasion Eisenhower flew to Algiers and approved the
deal. . . .  The result was that in its first major foreign-policy venture
in World War II, the United States gave its support to a man who stood for
everything Roosevelt and Churchill had spoken out against in the Atlantic
Charter.  As much as Goering or Goebbels, Darlan was the antithesis of the
principles the Allies said they were struggling to establish.

~

~

On U.S. fears about the 1948 Italian election and the U.S. operation to sway
it, see for example, James E. Miller, "Taking Off the Gloves: The United
States and the Italian Elections of 1948," Diplomatic History, Vol. 7, No.
1, Winter 1983, pp. 35-55 (on U.S. use of covert funding and military
supplies, sponsorship of massive propaganda efforts, and employment of the
threat of cutting off aid, in order to sway the 1948 Italian election);
Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its
Effects on the Cold War, New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988, pp. 89-95
(on the C.I.A.'s use of former Nazi collaborators for postwar operations to
help avert an Italian Communist electoral victory); John Lamberton Harper,
America and the Reconstruction of Italy, 1945-1948, Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1986, especially ch. 9; William Blum, Killing
Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, ME:
Common Courage, 1995, ch. 2.

On the destruction of the anti-Nazi resistance and restoration of Nazi
collaborators in Greece by Britain and the U.S., see for example, Lawrence
S. Wittner, American Intervention in Greece, 1943-1949, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1982.  This study describes the rise of the anti-fascist
resistance during and after the Nazi occupation (pp. 2-3), and the
British -- followed by the U.S. -- campaign of violent suppression of the
Greek popular movement and reinstitution of the traditional order, once the
Nazis were forced from Greece.  An excerpt (pp. 31, 33-35, 80, 88, 154,
149):

Britain's defeat of E.A.M. [National Liberation Front, the main anti-fascist
resistance organization] in December 1944 shattered the hegemony of the
left, emboldened the right, and opened the way for a royalist takeover of
the organs of state power: the police, the army, and the administration. . .
.  Throughout the countryside, right-wing mobs brutalized or killed
leftists, republicans, and their families.  National guardsmen attacked
left-wing editors and smashed their printshops. . . .  As usual, the
Russians accepted such developments with a cynical equanimity.  "This war is
not as in the past," Stalin . . . [said] in the spring of 1945.  "Whoever
occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. . . ."  By
the end of World War II, then, American policymakers were ready for the
counterrevolutionary initiatives of subsequent years. . . .

Behind American policy, as behind that of Britain and Russia, lay the goal
of containing the Greek left. . . .  "It is necessary only to glance at a
map," Truman declared [in his March 12, 1947, speech announcing the Truman
Doctrine], to see that if Greece should fall to the rebels, "confusion and
disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East. . . ."
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr . . . protested that "this fascist government
through which we have to work is incidental. . . ."

[K]ey American officials, particularly in the U.S. embassy, agreed with the
Greek authorities on the necessity of harsh measures. . . .  American
officials initially provided undeviating support for political executions. .
. .  Although "some of those persons imprisoned and sentenced to death after
the December 1944 rebellion may not have been at that time hardened
Communists, it is unlikely that they have been able to resist the influence
of Communist indoctrination organizations existing within most prisons,"
[said the U.S. chargé d'affaires in Athens, Karl Rankin]. . . .  In May
[1947], the British ambassador reported that members of the U.S. embassy had
been discussing "the necessity" of outlawing the K.K.E. [the Greek Communist
Party]. . . .  That December, with the rebellion in full sway, the Athens
government passed a law formally dissolving the K.K.E., E.A.M., and all
groups associated with them; seizing their assets; and making the expression
of revolutionary ideas a crime subject to imprisonment.  From the standpoint
of American officials, this was a struggle to the death.

The study concludes that during the Greek civil war, "an estimated 158,000
of Greece's 7.5 million people [were] killed"; 800,000 were made refugees;
and untold others were wounded or imprisoned (p. 283).

U.S. leaders' disregard for Greek self-determination and democracy continued
long after the war, evidenced for example by the following incident (p.
303):

In 1964, when [Greek Prime Minister] George Papandreou met with Lyndon
Johnson in Washington, the atmosphere could hardly have been chillier.  To
make possible the establishment of N.A.T.O. bases on Cyprus, now independent
and nonaligned, the President demanded the adoption of the "Acheson plan,"
which entailed the partition of Cyprus between Greece and Turkey.  Moreover,
he threatened to withdraw N.A.T.O. aid if Greece did not accept the plan.
When Papandreou responded that, "in that case, Greece might have to rethink
the advisability of belonging to N.A.T.O.," Johnson retorted that "maybe
Greece should rethink the value of a parliament which could not take the
right decision."  Later, the Greek ambassador remonstrated that "no Greek
parliament could accept such a plan," only to have the American President
explode: "Fuck your parliament and your constitution.  America is an
elephant, Cyprus is a flea.  Greece is a flea.  If these two fellows
continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant's
trunk, whacked good. . . .  If your Prime Minister gives me talk about
democracy, parliament and constitution, he, his parliament and his
constitution may not last very long."

See also, Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States
Foreign Policy, 1943-1945, New York: Pantheon, 1968 (updated edition 1990),
ch. 8 and pp. 428-436; Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko, The Limits of Power:
The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954, New York: Harper &
Row, 1972, chs. 8 and 15; William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and
C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995,
ch. 3.

~

On the protection and employment of Nazi war criminals by the U.S. and
British governments and the Vatican, see for example, Christopher Simpson,
Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War,
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988 (on Rauff, the inventor and
administrator of the gas truck execution program which murdered
approximately 250,000 people in unspeakable filth and agony, see pp. 92-94;
on Gehlen, Hitler's most senior intelligence officer on the brutal Eastern
Front, see pp. 40-72, 248-263, 279-283; on Barbie, the Gestapo's "Butcher of
Lyons," see pp. 185-195; on the Vatican's role, see pp. 175-198).  An
excerpt from the book's introduction (pp. xii-xiv):

In a nutshell, the Justice Department's study [in 1983] acknowledged that a
U.S. intelligence agency known as the Army Counterintelligence Corps
(C.I.C.) had recruited Schutzstaffel (S.S.) and Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie
for espionage work in early 1947; that the C.I.C. had hidden him from French
war crimes investigators; and that it had then spirited him out of Europe
through a clandestine "ratline" -- escape route -- run by a priest who was
himself a fugitive from war crimes charges. . . .  Since the Barbie case
broke open, however, there has been a chain of new discoveries of Nazis and
S.S. men protected by and, in some cases, brought to the United States by
U.S. intelligence agencies.  One, for example, was S.S. officer Otto von
Bolschwing, who once instigated a bloody pogrom in Bucharest and served as a
senior aide to Adolf Eichmann.  According to von Bolschwing's own statement
in a secret interview with U.S. Air Force investigators, in 1945 he
volunteered his services to the Army C.I.C., which used him for
interrogation and recruitment of other former Nazi intelligence officers.
Later he was transferred to the C.I.A., which employed him as a contract
agent inside the Gehlen Organization, a group of German intelligence
officers that was being financed by the agency for covert operations and
intelligence gathering inside Soviet-held territory.  The C.I.A. brought the
S.S. man to the United States in 1954.

Following the revelation of the von Bolschwing affair, new evidence turned
up concerning U.S. recruitment of still other former S.S. men, Nazis, and
collaborators.  According to army records obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act (F.O.I.A.), S.S. Obersturmführer Robert Verbelen admitted
that he had once been sentenced to death in absentia for war crimes,
including the torture of two U.S. Air Force pilots.  And, he said, he had
long served in Vienna as a contract spy for the U.S. Army, which was aware
of his background.  Other new information has been uncovered concerning Dr.
Kurt Blome, who admitted in 1945 that he had been a leader of Nazi
biological warfare research, a program known to have included
experimentation on prisoners in concentration camps.  Blome, however, was
acquitted of crimes against humanity at a trial in 1947 and hired a few
years later by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps to conduct a new round of
biological weapons research.  Then there is the business of Blome's
colleague Dr. Arthur Rudolph, who was accused in sworn testimony at
Nuremberg of committing atrocities at the Nazis' underground rocket works
near Nordhausen but was later given U.S. citizenship and a major role in the
U.S. missile program in spite of that record.  Each of these instances --
and there were others as well -- casts substantial doubt on the Justice
Department's assertion that what happened to Barbie was an "exception. . .
."  The fact is, U.S. intelligence agencies did know -- or had good reason
to suspect -- that many contract agents that they hired during the cold war
had committed crimes against humanity on behalf of the Nazis.

For other studies discussing the U.S. operations to protect and employ Nazi
war criminals, see for example, Mary Ellen Reese, General Reinhard Gehlen:
the C.I.A. Connection, Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 1990;
Erhard Dubringhaus, Klaus Barbie: The Shocking Story Of How The U.S. Used
This Nazi War Criminal As An Intelligence Agent -- A First Hand Account,
Washington: Acropolis, 1984; John Loftus, The Belarus Secret, New York:
Knopf, 1982, ch. 5; Tom Bower, Klaus Barbie: The "Butcher of Lyons," New
York: Pantheon, 1984; Magnus Linklater, Isabel Hinton and Neal Ascherson,
The Nazi Legacy: Klaus Barbie and the Rise of International Fascism, New
York: Holt, Rinehart, 1984; Kai Hermann, "A Killer's Career," Stern
(Germany), May 10 and following, 1984 (six-part series based upon
declassified U.S. government documents and interviews conducted in Bolivia);
Tom Bower, The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi Scientists,
Boston: Little, Brown, 1987; Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States
Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945-1990, New York: St.
Martin's, 1991; John Gimbel, Science, Technology, and Reparations:
Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1990; E.H. Cookridge, Gehlen: Spy of the Century, New York: Random
House, 1971; Charles Higham, Trading With the Enemy: An Exposé of the
Nazi-American Money Plot, New York: Delacorte, 1983; Ladislas Farago,
Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich, New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1974; Christopher Simpson, The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law,
and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, pp.
236-239 (on the protection of Walter Rauff); Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey
St. Clair, Whiteout: The C.I.A., Drugs and the Press, London: Verso, 1998,
chs. 6 and 7.

See also, Eugene J. Kolb [former U.S. counterintelligence corps officer and
Chief of Operations in the Augsburg region of Germany], "Army
Counterintelligence's Dealings With Klaus Barbie," Letter, New York Times,
July 26, 1983, p. A20 (defending the employment of Barbie on the ground that
"To our knowledge, his activities had been directed against the underground
French Communist Party and Resistance, just as we in the postwar era were
concerned with the German Communist Party and activities inimical to
American policies in Germany").  And see Michael McClintock, Instruments of
Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counter-insurgency and
Counter-terrorism, 1940-1990, New York: Pantheon, 1992, especially ch. 3
(important study of U.S. intelligence's absorption after World War II of
Nazi methods and practitioners into U.S. special warfare doctrine).

UNDERSTANDING POWER, edited by Peter Mitchell and John Schoeffel


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism