History (3 page)

". .. procure me a catalogue, a pamphlet, because out here, Mother, news of the great world does not arrive

( from Siberian Letters )

. . . . . 19 00- 19 05

The latest scientifi discoveries concerning the structure of matter mark the beginning of the a tomic century.

19 06- 19 13

Nothing very new, in the great world. Like all the centuries and the millennia that have preceded it on earth, the new century also observes the well-known, immobile principle of historical dynamics: power to some, serv tude to the others. And on this rule are based, in agreement, both the internal order of society (at present dominated by the "Powerful," known as the capitalists ) and the international order (known as imperialism ) dominated by certain Nations also known as "Powers," which have virtually divided the entire surface of the globe into their respective properties, or Empires. Among them, the latest arrival is Italy, which aspires to the rank of Great Power, and to reach it has already taken armed possession of some foreign countries-weaker than she-forming a little colonial property, but not yet an Empire.

Though always in menacing and armed competition among themselves, the Powers from time to time join in blocs, for common defense of their interests (which are also, on the domestic side, the interest of the "power ful. " For the others, those in serv who have no share of the gain but still must serve, sucl1 interests are presented in terms of ideal abstractions, varying with the variations of advertising methods. In these fi decades of the century the favorite term is Fatherland ).

At present, supremacy in Europe is disputed by two blocs: the Triple Entente of France, Great Britain, and czarist Russia; and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (Italy will later shift to the Entente ).

At the center of all social and political movements are the big indus tries, promoted, for some time now, with their enormous and increasing development, to systems of mass industry ( reducing the worker to "a simple accessory of the machine" ). The industries need the masses as workers and, conversely, as consumers. And since labor in industry is always at the serv

of the Powerful and the Powers, among its products prime importance is naturally given to arms ( the armament race ), which in a mass-consumption economy, fi their outlet in mass warfare.

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1914

Outbreak of the First World War, between the two opposing blocs of Powers, later joined by other allies or satellites. The new ( or perfected) products of the armament industry go into action, among them tanks and gases.

1915-191 7

Though most of the country's citizens are opposed to the war (and are therefore called defeatists ), the King, the nationalists, and the various powerful interests prevail. Italy enters the war on the side of the Entente. Among others, the United States, a Super-Power, also sides with the Entente.

In Russia, end of the war against the great Powers, following the Marxist revolution for international social-communism, led by Lenin and Trotsky ( "Workers have no Fatherland" "Make war on war" "Transform the imperialist war into civil war").

191 8

The First World War ends with the victory of the Entente and its present allies (tw y-seven victorious nations, including the Japanese Em pire ). Ten million dead.

1919 -192 0

Representing the victorious Powers and their allies, seventy people are seated at the peace table, to establish among themselves the new division of the world and to draw the new map of Europe. With the end and dismem berment of the defeated Central Empires, the ownership of their colonies is transferred to the victorious Powers, and new independent European states are defi on the basis of nationality (Albania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Poland) . Among other things, Germany is obliged to cede the Danzig corri or ( valuable as an access to the sea for Poland), cutting its national territory in two.

The peace terms are contested as being unsatisfactory and temporary by some of the parties, among them Italy ( the mutilated peace); and they prove unbearable for the peoples of the defeated countries, condemned to hunger and desperation (punitive peace).

Absent from the peace table is Russia, now surrounded and reduced to an international battlefi with the military intervention of the major Powers ( France, Great Britain, Japan, and the United States ) in the civil war against the Red Army. In this crucial test, and amid massacres, epidem ics, and poverty the Comintern ( the Communist International ) is founded in Moscow. It summons all the world's proletariat, with no distinction of

4 H I S T O R Y 1 9 - ·

race, language, or nationality, to the common goal of revolutionary unity, striving towards the International Republic of the proletariat.

1922

After years of ci vil war in Russia, ending wi th the victory of the revolu tionari es, the new state, the USSR, has been formed. It is to represent the symbol of hope for all the "wretched of tl1e earth," who from the war-lost or won-have gained nothing but a worsening of their trials; whereas it is to represent the famous "Specter of Communism," now menacing Europe, for the Powers and for the landowners and industrialists, for whom the war has been, mostly, a great speculation.

In Italy (headquarters of one of their most sordi d branches ) they join their serv s and some ill-assorted objectors to the mutil ated peace in a desperate fi to save their own interests. And they are not long in fi

a champion and suitable instrument in Benito Mussolini, a mediocre op portunist, a "compound of all the fl of the worst Italy. After having tried to launch his career under the banner of socialism, he has found it more advantageous to shift to the opposi te side of the Powerful established fi ( property owners, the King, and later also the Pope ). Wi th a plat form consisting only of a guaranteed anti-Communism, truculent and vulgar, he has founded his fasci, a collection of vassals and assassi ns of the bourgeois revolution. And in such company, he defends his employers' in terests wi th the terrorist violence of poor action sq uads of bewildered mercenaries. The King of Italy (a man wi th no title to distinction except the inheri ted ti tle of king) gladly turns over the government of the country to Mussolini.

1924-1925

In Russia, death of Lenin. Under his successor, who has taken the name of Stalin (steel ), the internal requirements of the country ( collec tivi zation, industrialization, defense against the Powers who have made a coalition in anti-Communism, etc. ) cause an inevi table shelving of the ideals of the Comintern and of Trotsky (permanent revolution) in favor of Stalin's thesis (socialism in a single country). The dictatorship of the prol etariat, predicted by Marx, after being reduced to the hierarchic dicta torship of a party, will eventually be degraded to the personal dictatorship of Stali n alone.

In Italy: totalitarian dictatorship of the Fascist Mussolini, who in the meanwhile has conceived a style of demagogy meant to strengthen his power at its roots. It is especially eff tive wi th the middle classes, who ( through their pathetic ineptitude for true ideals ) seek in his false ideals a justifica tion of their own mediocrity: this demagogy consists of the appeal to

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the glorious race of the Italians, legitimate heirs of history greatest Power, the Imperial Rome of the Caesars. Thanks to this, and to other similar na tional directives, Mussolini will be exalted as a "mass idol" and will assume the title of Duce.

192 7-1929

In China, the guerrilla war of the Communist revolu tionaries begins, led by Mao Tse-tung, against the nationalist central government.

In the USSR, defeat of the opposition. Trotsky is expelled from the Party, and then from the Soviet Union.

In Rome, the Lateran Treaty between the Papacy and Fascism.

1933

In a situation analogous to Italy's, in Germany the established Power ful men turn over the government of the country to the founder of German fascism (Nazism ), Adolf Hitler, a poor maniac, viciously obsessed by death ("The aim is the elimination of living forces" ), who in turn is exalted to mass idol, with the title of Fuhrer, adopting as his Super-Power formula the superiority of the German race over all human races. In consequence, the already-conceived program of the great Reich requires total subjugation and extermination of all the inferior races, beginning with tl1e Jews. Systematic persecution of the Jews begins in Germany.

1934-193 6

The Long March of Mao Tse-tung across China ( 7,500 miles ) to elude the preponderant forces of the nationalist government (Kuomintang). Of the 130,000 men of the Red Army, 30,000 survive.

In the USSR, Stalin (also, by now, "mass idol" ) begins the "Great Purge," with the progressive liquidation of tl1e old revolutionaries of the Party and the Army.

In accordance with the Duce's imperial formula, Italy employs armed violence to seize Abyssinia (an independent African state), and is promoted to the rank of Empire.

Civil war in Spain, provoked by the Catholic-Fascist Franco (called the Generalissimo and El Caudillo) for the benefi of the usual powerful forces, under the threat of the "Specter." After three years of devastation and massacre (among other things, in Europe for the fi time whole cities, with their inhabitants, are destroyed from the air ), the Fascists ( Falangists ) pre vail, thanks to the solid assistance of the Duce and the Fuhrer and the con nivance of all the world Powers.

Fuhrer and Duce form the Rome-Berlin Axis consolidated later in the military treaty known as the Pact of Steel.

6 H I S T O R Y
. . . . . .
1 9 - -

193 7

Having signed an
anti-Comintern
pact with the Axis countries, Imperial Japan invades China, where the civil war is temporarily halted so that both sides can make common cause against the invader.

In the USSR (politicaliy isolated in a world of interests hostile to Com munism ), Stalin intensifi his system of terror at home, while in his foreign relations with the Powers increasingly adopts an objective
Realpolitik
stra tegy.

1 93 8

In the USSR, the Stalin system of terror is extended from the higher echelons of the bureaucracy to the masses of the people (millions and mil lions of arrests, deportations to labor camps, indiscriminate and arbitrary death sentences in a convulsive multiplication, etc. ). Still, the earth's op pressed multitudes-for that matter, ill-informed and deliberately deceived still look to the USSR as the only homeland of their hope (hope diffi

to give up, when there are no others).

Munich agreement between the Axis leaders and the Western democ racies.

In Germany, after the bloody night known as the
Kristallnacht,
Ger man citizens are virtuaJiy authorized to carry out unhindered genocide of the Jews.

Following the dictates of its aliy Germany, Italy proclaims her own racial laws.

1939

Despite the conciliatory pledges given recently in Munich to the West ern Powers, Hitler is determined to carry out his program, which demands fi of all the satisfaction of German imperial claims against the
punitive
peace of twenty years earlier. So, after the annexation of Austria, the Fiihrer proceeds to the invasion of Czechoslovakia ( immediately imita ted by the Duce, who annexes Albania ) and then begins diploma tic negotiations with the Soviet Power of Stalin.

The result of the negotiations is a non-aggressiOn pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union-which allows the two parties to carry out double aggression on Poland, dividing the country between themselves. Hitler's immediate action against western Poland provokes response from the West; France and Britain declare war on Germany, initiating the Second World War.

This will be supplied by the tireless, incessant activity of the war indus tries, which, putting miliions of human organisms to the machine, are

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already turning out new products (among the fi super-tanks and super armored cars known as Panzers, as well as fi planes and long-range bomber planes, etc. ).

Meanwhile, carrying out his own strategic plans (which already foresee an inevitable clash with Imperial Germany), Stalin, after the agreed invasion of Poland from the East, ha$ proceeded to subdue tl1e Bal tic States by force, responding to Finland's incredibl e resistance, which will fi be quelled by Soviet arms. The Soviet industries also, in a totalitarian commitment, go into mass war-production, concentrating especially on new techniques of rocketry for carrying higher quantities of explosive, etc.

SPRING-SUMMER 1940

The fi pl1ase of the Second Worl d War is marked by the Fiiluer's rapid advance. Having occupied Denmark, Norway, the Netl1erlands, Bel gium, and Luxemburg, he overw lms France and reaches the gates of Paris. Convinced of the imminent victory, the Duce, who has remained more or less neutral till now, decides, at the last minute, to live up to his part of the Pact of Steel ( "a few thousand dead will be worth it, for a seat at the peace table" ); and he makes his decl aration of war against Great Britain and France, four days before the Germans enter Paris. But neither Hitler's triumphant successes nor l1is peace overtures succeed in acl1ieving the with drawal of Great Britain, which instead engages in a desperate resistance. Elsewhere, Italian intervention causes the opening of a new front in the Mediterranean and in Africa. The Blitzkrieg, or lightning-war, of the Axis is extended and prolonged beyond all expectation.