Arnolt Bronnen: Entre o Communismo e o Nacional-Socialismo

Arnolt Bronnen: Entre o Comunismo e o Nacional-Socialismo

 

por Werner Olles

Ex: http://legio-victrix.blogspot.com/

Arnolt Bronnen nasceu em 19 de agosto de 1895 em Viena. Desde muito jovem decidiu mudar seu nome verdadeiro (Arnold Bronner) pelo que anos mais tarde conhecerá a celebridade no mundo das letras. Esta tendência a maquiar a realidade acompanhar-lhe-á ao longo de sua existência. Assim é como converteu-se de judeu vienense em ário-germânico; de cidadão alemão em cidadão austríaco, para voltar à cidadania alemã; de comunista a nacional-revolucionário, mais tarde nacional-socialista, para regressar anos mais tarde ao comunismo.

Após a Grande Guerra, na qual participou como Kaiserjäger (Caçador Imperial) no front do Tirol, onde foi ferido gravemente no pescoço, iniciou sua carreira literária em 1922 com a publicação de uma obra teatral entitulada Vatermord (Parricida), que havia começado a escrever sendo prisioneiro dos italianos. Naquela época Bronnen pertencia a um grupo de dramaturgos, escritores e atores vanguardistas comprometidos com o expressionismo e vinculados a Bertold Brecht, com quem mantinha estreitos laços de amizade. Brecht havia encarregado-se da montagem de dita obra porém, desgraçadamente, abandonou esta iniciativa depois de haver escrito inclusive os arranjos para a encenação.

Após sua estréia em Frankfurt, representou-se em Berlim pela primeira vez em 14 de maio de 1922, a cargo da companhia "Deutscher Theater", convertendo-se em um autêntico escândalo. Sua segunda obra, Anarchie in Sillian (Anarquia em Sillian), levou à maioria dos críticos a considerar que o dramaturgo do futuro não era Brecht, senão Bronnen.

Em 1924 estreou-se sua obra Katalaunische Schlacht (A batalha dos Campos Catalaúnicos) no Grande Teatro de Frankfurt. Um ano mais tarde, Bronnen escreveu Die Rheinischen Rebellen (Os rebeldes renanos), obra que suscitou profundas polêmicas entre a crítica: o autor, conhecido até esse momento com um simpatizante das correntes marxistas, havia passado ao campo do nacionalismo. Bronnen, porém, todavia não havia dado esse passo.

Mais tarde escreveu Ostpolzug (Campanha ao Polo Leste), drama no qual explorava a personalidade de Alexandre o Grande. Em 1925 estreou Exzesse (Excesso) obra com a qual, uma vez mais, provocou um grande alvoroço como consequência de suas cenas e diálogos eróticos Um ano mais tarde estreou Reparationen (Reparações), obra dedicada à resistência nacional contra a ocupação francesa da Renânia e contra o pagamento de reparações de guerra.

Do marxismo ao nacionalismo-revolucionário

Em 1929, Bronnen publicou um romance sobra a Alta Silésia entitulado O.S., onde recria a luta dos Freikorps contra os insurgentes polacos antes de iniciar-se a Primeira Guerra Mundial e do significativo e sangrento assalto dos voluntários alemães contra Annaberg. Tucholsky repreende-o por ter feito um "biscate insensato" e de propagar "mentiras próprias de fascistas de salão". Pelo contrário, Joseph Goebbels, escreveu: "O.S. de Bronnen é o livro que todos gostaríamos de ter escrito." Ernst Jünger considerou este romance como "um primeiro sinal, que indica que nos ambientes de Bronnen, cabe a responsabilidade". Em Der Tag e no Münchener Neueste Nachrichten podia ler-se: "É algo mais que um romance, é uma profissão de fé política de altos voos", enquanto que Alfred Rosenberg, no Völkischer Beobachter chama a atenção sobre Bronnen, porém isso sim, sem deixar de considerá-lo um "bon vivant" e um autor "perigoso".

Politicamente, Bronnen já havia convertido-se em um nacional-revolucionário, próximo ao grupo de intelectuais que expressavam-se em revistas como Die Standarte, Deutsches Volkstum, Arminius, Deutsche Front, Das Dritte Reich, Gewissen, Die Kommanden, Nationalsozialistische Briefe, Der Vormarsch, Der Wehrwolf e Widerstand, as quais pertenciam os irmãos Ernst e Friedrich-Georg Jünger, Friedrich Hielscher, Franz Schauwecker, Ernst von Salomon, Herbert Blank, Otto Strasser, Ernst Niekisch e A.Paul Weber. Como antigo intelectual da esquerda marxista, partidário de uma sorte de socialismo popular e combativo, Bronnen sentiu-se atraído por tais círculos.

No plano profissional, Bronnen começou sua carreira na UFA e na Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft (Sociedade Radiofônica do Reich), ao tempo que rompe os laços que ainda o uniam com os extremistas de esquerda. Após um congresso sob o título "Literatura e Rádio", produz-se uma azeda polêmica com seus colegas, os escritores Alfred Döblin, Walter von Molo, Börries von Münchhausen, Alfons Paquet, Ludwig Fulda, Herbert Euleberg e Arnold Zweig, na medida em que ele era partidário de pôr a rádio "a serviço do povo", "não estava ali para servir aos literatos, senão ao povo", e, em qualquer caso, não devia converter-se em "uma instituição beneficente para escritores aposentados". Para Bronnen, o escritor é tão somente "o instrumento da expressão das idéias da nação".

Em janeiro de 1930 organiza um debate que, com os anos, converter-se-á em emblemático frente aos microfones da Radio Berlim, com Kurt Hiller, dirigende do Grupo de Pacifistas Revolucionários, e Franz Schauwecker, conhecido escritor nacional-revolucionário. Bronnen escreve uma biografia de Von Rossbach, chefe dos Freikorps, e pouco depois, conhece Goebbels, com cuja personalidade fica fascinado. Bronnen converte-se desta maneira no provocador número um da Alemanha. Quando Thomas Mann sustenta em um ato público que a burguesia alemã defende, lado a lado com os social-democratas, as instituições da República de Weimar, Bronnen abandona a sala flanqueado por vinte SA pedindo a dissolução da reunião. Por ocasião da estréia do filme Nada de novo no front, baseada no romance do mesmo nome de Erich Maria Remarque, Bronnen, com sua mulher Olga, uma amiga de Goebbels - que dar-lhe-á uma filha em 1938, Bárbara, que, anos mais tarde, como seu pai, converter-se-á em escritora - e vários camaradas, provocarão um grande alvoroço soltando ratos brancos na sala. Goebbels conhecia a ascendência judia de Bronnen, razão pela qual o responsável da propaganda nazi dar-lhe-á seu apoio diante das denúncias de alguns colegaso que desprezavam-no e de não poucos artigos publicados na imprensa.

A partir da tomada de poder pelos nacional-socialistas em 1933, Bronnen conheceu algumas dificuldades como consequência de sua origem racial. Em um princípio, disse ser filho natural, depois fez-se um estudo antropométrico do crânio para provar seu caráter "ariano". Não participava das idéias de resistência antinazi de alguns de seus antigos amigos nacional-revolucionários e nacional-bolcheviques. Antes de 1933, por exemplo, Bronnen havia protegido Ernst Niekisch contra as injúrias lançadas por Goebbels, porém quando os nazis subiram ao poder Bronnen cuidou-se muito de dar a conhecer sua posição contra o anti-hitlerismo de Niekisch.

Stalingrad: a estrela de Bronnen apaga-se

Bronnen teve muito poder através daso ndas da Radio Berlim. Depurou os profissionais de esquerda, liberais e judeus. Escreveu um romance sobre o ambiente radiofônico, Der Kampf in Äther (Combate pelas ondas), que Alfred Rosenberg chegou inclusive a censurar, por entender que criticava subliminalmente a política cultural nacional-socialista. Meses mais tarde, Bronnen converter-se-á em um pioneiro da televisão, à cabeça de uma pequena equipe que filma os Jogos Olímpicos de Berlim de 1936.

A estrela de Bronnen, não obstante, começa a apagar-se após a tragédia de Stalingrad. Alfred Rosenberg, inimigo das vanguardas nas artes e na literatura, a quem nunca havia gostado o dandy Bronnen e a quem, definitivamente, considerava um produto da boêmia literária, começa a maquinar. Em uma conversação entre Hitler e aquele, Rosenberg ataca aos literatos "bolcheviques culturais" entocados na retaguarda, enquanto que os jovens soldados alemães regavam com seu sangue o front russo ou congelavam no inverno das estepes. Rosenberg cita dois nomes: Erich Kästner e Arnolt Bronnen. Depois de um processo de intenções e da proibição de toda atividade literária, Bronnen é expulso da Câmara de Escritores do Reich. Quando Bronnen pede explicações por esta sanção, é-lhe respondido que é como consequência de suas antigas atividades e "escandalosas" atividades vanguardistas. Meses mais tarde, por conta de escutas por parte da Gestapo, Bronnen é inclusive detido, como anos mais tarde explicará em sua autobiografia.

Em 1944 Bronnen saiu da Alemanha e instalou-se em Goisern im Salzkammergut, onde reúne-se com um grupo da resistência antinazi, não sem antes vestir o uniforme da Wehrmacht, chegando à Áustra em 8 de maio de 1945. Até 1959, trabalhou como jornalista do diário Neue Zeit de Linz.

Na República Democrática Alemã

A princípios da década de 50 Bronnen traslada-se a Berlim Oriental. Afilia-se ao SED social-comunista e escreve sua autobiografia em 1954, Arnolt Bronnen gibt zu Protokoll, que embelezará a seu gosto. Mais tarde aparecem Deutschland Kein Wintermärchen (Alemanha, não és um pequeno conto de inverno), em 1956, e Tage mit Bert Brecht (Dias junto a Bert Brecht), em 1959. Em 1957, reeditou um de seus velhos livros, o romance Film und Leben der Barbara La Marr (Filme e vida de Bárbara La Marr). A imprensa da República Democrática ataca-o duramente acusando-o de "antissemitismo e pornografia". Fala-se inclusive de "atitude fundamentalmente anti-humana de sua consciência", faz-se alusão a "seus vícios desagradáveis de juventude", de seu "estilo amaneirado", e suas "posturas cínicas e insolentes" nos "baixos estádios da pirâmide literária da época". A nova edição de dito romance foi proibida, o que supôs o imprevisto final da carreira como dramaturgo de Bronnen. Brecht interveio apelando à bondade intrínseca de Bronnen e em memória de sua velha amizade. Brecht oferece a Bronnen a possibilidade de converter-se em crítico teatral, o que permite ao inconformista visceral escapar do muro de silêncio que a exclusão definitiva do mundo cultural representa. Bronnen, não obstante, já não poderá jogar papel político nenhum na República Democrática comunista.

Em 12 de outubro de 1959, Bronnen morreu à idade de 64 anos em Berlim. Durante toda sua vida foi um personagem controvertido: de dramaturgo esquerdista a romancista nacional-revolucionário e nacional-socialista. Arnolt Bronnen encarnou essa mistura de inconformismo, oportunismo e dandismo. Jamais foi um renegado, senão um eterno convertido, responsabilidade, sem dúvida alguma, de sua vocação e seu secreto talento.

Storia della cultura fascista

Storia della cultura fascista

di Luca Leonello Rimbotti

Fonte: mirorenzaglia [scheda fonte]

È appena uscito un libro eccellente sul Fascismo e la sua importanza come moderno movimento rivoluzionario: non esitiamo a considerarlo un vero e proprio manuale di base, in grado di rompere gli steccati del conformismo vetero-ideologico e di porsi come strumento di contro-cultura di qualità: su di esso può essere ricostruita pezzo a pezzo tutta la storiografia del nuovo Millennio sul Fascismo. E con esso si può finalmente buttarsi alle spalle la lunga e avvilente stagione in cui a dominare la scena erano gli intellettuali codardi e opportunisti, i gestori della menzogna storica, i grandi camaleonti allevati in gioventù dal Regime, da questo messi in pista e poi, alla prova dei fatti, rivoltatiglisi contro come un groviglio di serpi rancorose, subito asservite ai nuovi padroni del dopoguerra. L’eccezionale uscita editoriale si chiama Storia della cultura fascista (il Mulino) di Alessandra Tarquini, una giovane ricercatrice di scuola defeliciana che già conoscevamo come ottima storica di Gentile e del gentilianesimo. Di questo libro bisogna parlare alto e forte. Deve essere da tutti conosciuto, studiato, divulgato. Non foss’altro per quella compostezza ed equanimità che, a distanza di quasi settant’anni dalla fine del Fascismo, è il minimo che si possa richiedere ad uno studioso di oggi.

Fatti i conti con i vecchi rottami della faida ideologica, appartenenti a una stagione ingloriosamente trapassata, la Tarquini passa in rassegna tutte le componenti che hanno costituito l’anima del movimento e del Regime fascisti: l’uno e l’altro sono da lei giudicati essenzialmente come soggetti politici rivoluzionari portatori di modernità e di cultura innovatrice. Viene così rovesciato l’assunto propagandistico di quanti avevano per decenni irriso il Fascismo, dicendolo privo di una sua originale ideologia, di una sua peculiare cultura, di una sua spinta modernizzatrice. La studiosa – in questa che è propriamente una storia della storiografia sul Fascismo – precisa che, per la verità, negli ultimi decenni già si erano avuti i sintomi di un generale ripensamento degli storici in materia. I tempi dei Quazza, dei Bobbio, dei Santarelli, dei Tranfaglia e compagni, una volta crollato il comunismo sovietico e prontamente liquidata la sbornia marxista che aveva dettato legge soprattutto negli anni Settanta, ha lasciato campo a posizionamenti più seri. Le boutade sul Fascismo reazionario e sul Mussolini pagato dai padroni capitalisti, le pedestri generalizzazioni sugli incolti picchiatori, tutte cose che comunque rimangono a testimonianza di un’atmosfera italiana popolata da studiosi sovente di rara bassezza qualitativa, vengono sostituite con l’analisi che oggi «gli storici hanno capovolto i loro giudizi e sono passati dal negare l’esistenza della cultura fascista al ricostruire i suoi diversi e molteplici aspetti considerandoli non solo importanti, ma addirittura decisivi per capire il fascismo».

Quando, negli anni Sessanta, uscirono gli studi capitali di Mosse e De Felice, la canèa antifascista fece di tutto per spingerli ai margini. Poi, mano a mano, si aprivano spiragli, si notavano marce indietro. Poterono così aversi i libri, per dire, di Isnenghi, Turi, Zunino, che, pur non rinunciando alla polemica ideologica anche fuori posto, tuttavia dimostravano che la repubblica delle lettere si stava rendendo conto che il Fascismo era stato un fenomeno ben più complesso che non “l’orda degli Hyksos” immaginata da Croce e sulla cui traccia si era gettata la muta degli storici marxisti o di scuola azionista. Poi, soprattutto dall’estero, arrivarono in successione un Gregor, uno Sternhell, un Cannistraro, ma specialmente poi un Griffin, e su questa scia si è potuta avere in Italia la densa produzione soprattutto di Emilio Gentile, ma anche di tutta una serie di nuovi storici, che nell’insieme hanno prodotto con risultati notevoli indagini anche minute sul Fascismo come combinazione di mito e organizzazione, di totalitarismo e modernità.

Intendiamoci, il rigurgito passatista è sempre dietro l’angolo: e ogni tanto ancora escono libri che sembrano scritti, e male, quarant’anni fa, e pur sempre i vecchi Tasca o Salvatorelli continuano qua e là a far pessima scuola. Ma, in generale, le nebbie si stanno diradando e il Fascismo comincia a vedersi riconosciuti alcuni tratti fondamentali. Che, come la Tarquini ben precisa, furono essenzialmente la modernità, la centralità del popolo e la cultura. Il tutto, incardinato sul principio del primato della politica, dette vita ad una autentica rivoluzione. Anzi, come la storica puntualizza, si trattò proprio di una sorta di rivoluzione conservatrice, che se da un lato proteggeva quanto di buono vi era nel tessuto sociale tradizionale, dall’altro si presentava con un massimo di proiezione sul futuro. Ciò che la Tarquini, riferendosi ad esempio a Sternhell, ha sottolineato nel senso che il Fascismo fu un fenomeno politico «dotato di una propria ideologia rivoluzionaria non meno coerente del liberalismo e del marxismo, che aveva espresso la volontà di creare una nuova civiltà e un uomo nuovo». Fu infatti anche una rivoluzione antropologica, un tentativo di rifare l’uomo accentuandone le disposizioni alla socialità e al solidarismo, infrangendo così sia l’individualismo liberale che la massificazione collettivista marxista.

La Tarquini riassume gli ambienti che erano alla base della concezione politica fascista: i “revisionisti” (guidati da Bottai, con elementi di spicco come Pellizzi);  gli “intransigenti” (con Soffici, Maccari, Ricci come punte di lancia); e i “gentiliani” (Cantimori, Spirito, Carlini, Volpicelli, Saitta fra gli altri). Tra queste posizioni si muovevano uomini ai limiti dell’una o dell’altra cerchia e talvolta si avevano passaggi non contraddittori, trasversali, come ad es. un Malaparte o un Longanesi, vicini sia a “Strapaese” che a “900″ di Bontempelli.

Grazie a questi gruppi venne assicurata la centralità del popolo nella visione del mondo fascista, il popolo come “pura forza”, cioè «un soggetto depositario di valori positivi», per il quale, come scrive la Tarquini, gli scrittori politici «si impegnavano nella società del loro tempo sostenendo la costruzione di un nuovo Stato nazionale e popolare». Qualcosa che accendeva la modernità. Le veloci pagine della studiosa ricordano che il Fascismo fu cultura, e anzi alta cultura, sin dagli inizi del Regime vero e proprio, con il “Manifesto degli intellettuali fascisti” voluto da Gentile nel 1925 e che vedeva schierati alcuni pesi massimi della cultura italiana del Novecento, fra i quali Pirandello, Volpe, Codignola, Ungaretti, Soffici, che si andavano ad affiancare ai D’Annunzio, il “primo Duce del Fascismo”, ai Marinetti, ai Cardarelli, ai Papini, etc. E siamo in attesa di qualcuno che ci dica quale altro regime si sia mai avvalso di una così potente schiera di aperti sostenitori.

Ma la Tarquini è anche originale, laddove traccia percorsi nuovi: ricordando l’influenza che il filosofo Giuseppe Rensi (in anni recenti al centro di un processo di rivalutazione, dopo un lungo oblìo) ebbe sul Fascismo e sulla sua idea di autorità; oppure sulla figura di Emilio Bodrero, storico della filosofia e docente alla Scuola di Mistica Fascista, secondo il quale, sin dal 1921, il Fascismo doveva «mobilitarsi come forza rivoluzionaria, per conquistare il potere e dare vita a un nuovo ordine politico».

La Tarquini ricorda anche l’avanguardismo giovanile, fulcro incandescente di elaborazione ideologica e di spinta rivoluzionaria il cui programma, sin dagli esordi del 1920, esprimeva un massimo di moderna socialità, dato che proponeva di «adeguare i programmi scolastici alle esigenze professionali dei ragazzi» e di «abolire il voto in condotta, di sostenere gli studenti più poveri e di rendere obbligatorio l’insegnamento dell’educazione fisica». E poi c’erano le donne. E che donne…da Ada Negri (prima donna nominata all’Accademia d’Italia, nel 1940), alla Deledda (che partecipò alla stesura del testo unico per le scuole medie), fino alla Sarfatti, regina incontrastata del modernismo fascista in politica, in letteratura e nelle arti.

E, a proposito dell’arte e della sostanza del Fascismo come «politicizzazione dell’estetica» e volontà di «socializzazione degli intellettuali» (e in campo artistico basti ricordare la passione fascista di un Sironi, di un Severini, di un Primo Conti, di un Piacentini, di un Terragni, etc.), l’autrice rammenta la presenza massiccia di artisti e letterati di primo piano nello squadrismo (Rosai, Maccari, Malaparte-Suckert, ma potremmo aggiungere lo stesso Marinetti, oppure Lorenzo Viani, Gallian, etc.), così come non manca di scrivere che l’enorme fermento ideologico e culturale messo in moto e catalizzato dal Fascismo si presentò, come avevano già indicato i vari Nolte, Mosse e Del Noce, come «un fenomeno politico figlio della modernità», così da «esprimere una forte spinta alla modernizzazione dell’economia, della società e della cultura». Il senso della missione dei giovani, il progetto di un destino comune, l’esaltante prospettiva di un popolo unito e socialmente avanzato furono il cuore dello sforzo culturale messo in campo dal Fascismo, che poté usufruire di un vero e proprio esercito di intellettuali d’alto e non di rado altissimo livello: ad un impietoso confronto, l’odierna incolta e rozza liberaldemocrazia mondiale – priva di intellettuali che superino il quarto d’ora di celebrità mediatica – ne esce distrutta.

Tante altre notizie su www.ariannaeditrice.it

J. P. Arteault / F. Sainz: les racines anglo-saxonnes du mondialisme

J. P. Arteault / F. Sainz: Les racines anglo-saxonnes du mondialisme

1.

2.

3.

History and Biology

History & Biology

By Revilo Oliver

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

American Opinion, December 1963 (part 4 of 4 of History and the Historians)

History is the record of what men do. Scientific discoveries and technological applications of them are often events of historical importance, but do not affect our understanding of the historical process since they shed no light on the behavior of men in civilized societies.

For example, the recent use of atomic fission to produce a more powerful explosive has no significance for a philosophy of history. Like the many changes in the technology of war that have occurred throughout history, this one will call for changes in tactics and strategy, alters to some extent the balance of power in the world, and may well occasion the fall and extinction of a world power so fat-headed that it does not understand the importance of technological superiority in warfare. But all this is merely history repeating itself. It is true that the improved weapons set bands of addle-pated neurotics throughout the country shrieking as wildly as a tribe of banshees out on a week-end spree; but that is merely another instance of the rather puzzling phenomenon of mass hysteria. It is also true that Communist agents have been scurrying about the country to brandish the phrase “nuclear holocaust” as a kind of up-to-date Jack-o’-Lantern to scare children. But while it is the historian’s task to understand the International Conspiracy in the light of such partial precedents as are available, the new weapon will not help him in that. He will merely marvel that a large part of our population is not only ignorant of history in general, but evidently has not read even the Old Testament, from which it would have learned that atomic bombs, as instruments of extermination, are much less efficient that a tribe of Israelites armed with the simplest weapons (see Joshua vi. 20 et passim).

As an exception to the general rule, however, our century has brought one new area of knowledge in the natural sciences that must profoundly affect our understanding of history both past and present–that is as relevant to the rise and fall of the Mitanni and the Hittites as it is to our future. Distressingly enough, the new science of genetics raises for the historian many more questions than it answers, but it discloses the existence of a force that must be taken into account in any philosophy of history.

Multiplex Man

Civilized human beings have long been puzzled by the mysterious diversity of human beings. It is possible, indeed, that mystery was part of the process by which some people were able to rise from barbarism to civilization. The perception requires mental powers that are by no means universal. The aborigines of Australia, for example, who are probably the lowest from of human life still extant, have a consciousness so dim and rudimentary that they multiplied on that continent for fifty thousand years without ever suspecting that sexual intercourse had anything to do with reproduction. Most savages, to be sure, are somewhat above that level, but no tribe appears to have been aware of its own diversity, let alone capable of thinking about it.

Human beings capable of reflective thought, however, must have begun early to marvel, as we still do, at the great differences obvious among the offspring of one man by one woman. Of two brothers, one may be tall and the other short; one stolid and the other alert; one seemingly born with a talent for mathematics and the other with a love of music.

Many were the theories that men excogitated to explain so strange a phenomenon. One of the principal grounds for the once widespread and persistent belief in astrology was the possibility of explaining the differences between two brothers by noting that, although engendered by the same parents, they were conceived and born under different configurations of the planets. In the Seventeenth Century, indeed, Campanella, whose plan for a Welfare State is the source of many of our modern “Liberal” crotchets and crazes, devised a whole system of eugenics to be enforced by bureaucrats who would see to it that human beings were engendered only at moments fixed by expert astrologers.

Again, the doctrine of metempsychosis, once almost universally held over a wide belt of the earth from India to Scandinavia, seemed to be confirmed by the same observations; for the differences between brothers were understandable, if their bodies were animated by souls that had had far different experiences in earlier incarnations.

There were also some theoretical explanations, such as the one that you may remember having read in the stately verse of Lucretius, that were sound bases for scientific inquiry, but they were not followed up. Until the last third of the Nineteenth Century, men learned nothing of the basic laws of heredity. Darwin’s knowledge of the subject was no better than Aristotle’s, and Galton’s enthusiasm for eugenics was no more firmly founded than was Plato’s. It remained for a humble and too modest priest, Father Johann Gregor Mendel, to make one of the most important scientific discoveries ever made by man.

Father Mendel’s Versuche über Pflanzen hybriden was published in 1886, but the famous professors in the great universities could not take a mere priest seriously–certainly not a priest so impudent as to contradict Darwin–and so they went on for decades pawing over problems that father Mendel had made obsolete as the epicycles of Ptolemaic astronomy. He was simply ignored and forgotten until 1900, when three distinguished biologists discovered independently and almost simultaneously some of the laws that he had ascertained and formulated.

It required some time for systematic study of genetics to get under way, and research has been greatly impeded by two catastrophic World Wars and by the obscurantism of Communists and “Liberal intellectuals.”

In Russia and other territories controlled by the Conspiracy, Marx’s idiotic mumbo-jumbo is official doctrine and the study of genetics is therefore prohibited. There are, however, some indications that research may be going on secretly, and it is even possible that, so far as human genetics are concerned, the knowledge thus obtained may exceed our own; for the Soviet, though usually inept in scientific work, has facilities for experiments that civilized men cannot perform. In the mid-1930′s, for example, there were reports that experiment stations in Asiatic Russia had pens of human women whom the research workers were trying to breed with male apes in the hope of producing a species better adapted to life under Socialism than human beings. It was reported a few years ago that the Soviet is now trying to create subhuman mutations by exposing their human breeding stock to various forms of irradiation. One cannot exclude the possibility that the monsters who conduct such experiments may incidentally find some significant data.

In the United States, the situation differs somewhat from that in Russia. Geneticists are permitted to continue their studies in peace so long as they communicate only with one another and do not disclose to the public facts of which the American boobs must be kept ignorant. Since it requires rare courage to provoke a nest of “Liberal intellectuals” or rattlesnakes, the taboo thus imposed is generally observed.

Grim Genetics

Despite the restraints placed on scientific investigation, and despite the awesome complexity of genetic factors in so complicated a creature as man, it is now virtually certain that all of the physiological structure of human beings, including such details as color of eyes, acuity of vision, stature, susceptibility to specific diseases, and formation of the brain are genetically determined beyond possibility of modification or alteration except by physical injury or chemical damage. Some of the processes involved have been well ascertained; others remain unknown. No one knows, for example, why the introduction of minute quantities of fluorine into drinking water will prevent development of the brain in some children and so roughly double the number of mongolian idiots born in a given area.

It is far more difficult to investigate intellectual capacities, since these must involve a large number of distinct elements, no one of which can be physically observed; but all of the evidence thus far available indicates that intelligence is as completely and unalterable determined by genetic inheritance as physical traits.

Moral qualities are even more elusive than intellectual capacity. There is evidence which makes it seem extremely probable that criminal instincts, at least, are inherited, but beyond this we can only speculate by drawing an analogy between moral and intellectual potentialities.

Many persons find the conclusions thus suggested unpleasant, just as all of us, I am sure, would be much happier if the earth were the immobile center of the universe and the heavens revolved about it. But although vast areas in the new science of genetics remain unexplored, and although the complexity of many problems is such that we cannot hope to know in our lifetime many of the things that we most urgently need to know, the principles of heredity have been determined with a fairly high degree of scientific probability. They are, furthermore, in accord with what common sense has always told us and also with the rational perception of our place in the universe that underlies religion.

We can blind children, but we cannot give them sight. We can stunt their minds in “progressive” schools, but we cannot give them an intelligence they did not inherit at birth. It is likely that we can make criminals of them by putting them (like the somewhat improbable Oliver Twist) in Fagin’s gang or its equivalent, but we cannot induce a moral sense in one who was born without it. We have always known that it is easy for man to destroy what he can never create.

One Certainty

The Mendelian laws and hence the finding that human beings, physically and intellectually, at least, are absolutely limited to the potentialities they have inherited — which may be impaired by external action but cannot be increased — are the accepted basis of all serious biological study today. From the standpoint of scientific opinion, to deny heredity is about equivalent to insisting that the earth is flat or that tadpoles spring from the hair of horses.

The point is worth noting, for even if you choose to reject the findings of genetics, that science will enable you to demonstrate one very important truth.

Our “liberal intellectuals,” who have done all in their power to deride, defile, and destroy all religion, are now sidling about us with hypocritical whimpers that the facts of genetics ain’t “Christian.” This argument does work with those whose religion is based on the strange faith that God wouldn’t have dared to create a universe without consulting their wishes. But if you inquire of the “intellectual,” as though you did not know, concerning scientific evidence in these matters, the chances are that he will assure you, with a very straight face, that he is, as always, the Voice of Science. Thus you will know that he still is what he has always been: a sneak and a liar.

The Warp of Culture

Given the facts that all men are born unequal; that the inequality, apparent even among children of the same parents, increases with differences in genetic strains; that civilization, by the very fact of social organization and the variety of human activity thus made possible, accentuates such differences; and that the continuity of a culture depends on a more or less instinctive acceptance of the common values of that culture — given those facts, it becomes clear that historians who try to account for the rise and fall of civilizations by describing political, economic, philosophic, and religious changes without reference to genetic changes in the population are simply excluding what must have been a very important factor, however little we may be able to measure it in the past or the present.

Whatever should be true of statutory and often ephemeral enactments in human jurisprudence, it is undoubtedly true of all the laws of nature that ignorance of the law excuses no-one from the consequences of violating it. And it may be unjust, as it is certainly exasperating, that we must often act with only a partial and inaccurate knowledge of such laws. But that is a condition of life. Societies are like individuals in that they must make decisions as best they can on the basis of such information as is available to them. You may have stock in a corporation whose future you may find it very difficult to estimate, but you must decide either (a) to sell, or (b) to buy more, or (c) to hold what you have. What you cannot do is nothing.

The scope of genetic forces in the continuity of a civilization, and, more particularly, of Western civilization, and, especially, of that civilization in the United States was illustrated by one of the most brilliant of American writers, Dr. Lothrop Stoddard, in The Revolt Against Civilization (Scribner’s, New York, 1922). The book was out of print for many years, for our “liberal intellectuals” promptly decided that the subject was one that American boobs should not be permitted to think about, and accordingly shovelled their malodorous muck on both book and author, in the hope of burying both forever. Copies of it disappeared from many libraries, and the book became hard to find on the secondhand market (I obtained my copy from a dealer in Italy).

I commend The Revolt Against Civilization, not as a revelation of ultimate truth, but as a cogent and illuminating discussion of some very grim problems that we must face, if we intend to have a future. The book, you must remember, was written when problems in genetics seemed much simpler than they do now in the light of later research, and when Americans felt a confidence and an optimism that we of a later generation can scarcely reconstruct in imagination. Some parts of the book will seem quaint and old-fashioned. Dr. Stoddard assumes, for example, that the graduates of Harvard are a group intellectually and morally above the average: That probably was true when he was an undergraduate and when he took his doctorate; he did not foresee what loathesome and reptilian creatures would slither out of Harvard to infest the Dismal Swamp in Washington. And when he urged complete toleration of Communist talk (as distinct from violence), he was thinking of soap-box oratory in Bug-House Square and the shrill chatter of parlor-pinks over their teacups; he did not foresee penetration and capture of schools, churches, newspapers, and political organizations by criminals who disseminate Communist propaganda perfunctorily disguised as “progressive education,” “social gospel,” and “economic democracy.”

But the book remains timely. What were sins of omission in 1922, when we were, with feckless euphoria, repeating the blunders that destroyed past civilization, are now sins of commission, committed with deliberate and malicious calculation by the enemies whom we have given power over us. And we should especially perpend Dr. Stoddard’s distinction between the ignorant or overly-emotional persons who “blindly take Bolshevism’s false promises at their face value,” and the real Bolshevik, who “are mostly born and not made.” That dictum is as unimpeachable as the poeta nascitur, non fit, that it echoes.

The Optimistic Pessimist

Since Stoddard wrote, the horizons have darkened around us. A recent and stimulating book is Dr. Elmer Pendell’s The Next Civilization. The title may remind you of an article that Arthur Koestler published in the New York Times on November 7, 1943 — an article whose bleak pessimism startled all but the very few readers who were in a position to surmise, form the hints which Koestler was able to smuggle into the pages of the Times, that he, an ex-Communist, was able to estimate the extent to which the Communist Conspiracy had already taken control of the government of the United States. Koestler, stating flatly that we would soon be engulfed in a Dark Age of barbarism and indescribable horror, called for the establishment of monasteries that, like the monasteries of the early Middle Ages, would preserve some part of human culture as seed for a new Renaissance in some distant future. Dr. Pendell, although he does not entirely deny us hope for ourselves, is primarily concerned with preserving the better part of our genetic heritage as seed for a future civilization that may have the intelligence to avoid the follies by which we are decreeing our own doom.

Dr. Pendell very quickly reviews the historical theories of Brook Adams, Spengler, Toynbee, and others to show that they all disregard the fact that decline in a civilization is always accompanied by a change in the composition, and deterioration in the quality, of the population.

We know that such changes took place in every civilization of which we have record. The majority of Roman citizens in 100 A.D. were not related at all to the Roman citizens in 100 B.C. We know that the great Roman families died out from sheer failure to have enough children to reproduce themselves, and we have reason to believe that all classes of responsible Romans, regardless of social or economic position, followed the fashion of race suicide.

Since the Romans had the preposterous notion that any person of any race imported from any part of the world could be transformed into a Roman by some magic in the legal phrases by which he was made a Roman citizen, the children that the Romans did not have were replaced by a mass of very diverse origins. Some of the importations undoubtedly brought with them fresh vigor and talent; some were incapable of assimilating civilization at all and could only imitate its outer forms without understanding its meaning; and some, while by no mens inferior in intelligence and energy, had a temperament which, although eminently suited to some other civilization, was incompatible with the Roman. For some estimates of the deterioration of the population of the empire that the Romans founded, see the late Tenny Frank’s History of Rome (Holt, New York) and Martin P. Nilsson’s Imperial Rome (Schocken, New York).

When Dr. Stoddard wrote, we were merely behaving as thoughtlessly as the Romans: Carpe diem and let tomorrow take care of itself. But now, as Dr. Pendell hints and could have stated more emphatically, the power of government over us is being used, with a consistency and efficiency that must be intentional, to accelerate our deterioration and hasten our disappearance as a people by every means short of mass massacre that geneticists could suggest. To mention but one small example, many states now pick the pockets of their taxpayers to subsidize and promote the breeding of bastards, who, with only negligible exceptions, are the product of the lowest dregs of our population, the morally irresponsible and mentally feeble. An attorney informs me that in his state and others the rewards for such activity are so low that a female of this species has to produce about a dozen bastards before it can afford a Cadillac, and will have to go on producing to take care of the maintenance. Intensive breeding is therefore going on, and the legislation that was designed to stimulate it may therefore be said to be highly successful.

The United States is now engaged in an insane, but terribly effective, effort to destroy the American people and Western civilization by subsidizing, both at home and abroad, the breeding of the intellectually, physically, and morally unfit; while at the same time inhibiting, by taxation and in many other ways, the reproduction of the valuable parts of the population — those with the stamina and the will to bear the burden of high civilization. We, in our fatuity, but under the control of persons who must know that they are doing, are working to create a future in which our children, if we have any, will curse us for having given them birth.

When Dr. Pendell tells us what we must do, if we are to survive or even if we limit ourselves to the more modest hope that human civilization may survive on our planet, is to reverse the process — to encourage the reproduction of the superior stock and to check the multiplication of the inferior — he is unquestionably right. He may also be right when he urges that we must do more than desist from interfering with nature for the purpose of producing biological deterioration — that we must, instead, interfere with nature to ameliorate and improve our race. But here, I fear, Dr. Pendell, although he almost despairs of our civilization and looks to the next one, is yet too optimistic. There are two practical difficulties.

Our Coup d’Etat

Dr. Pendell proposes voluntary eugenic associations and “heredity corporations,” which, no doubt, would help a little, as he argues, but which, as he is aware, would not have much more effect than a few buckets of water thrown into the crater of Mauna Loa. At this late date, to accomplish much for ourselves or even for our putative successors, we must use at least the taxing power of government, if not its powers of physical coercion, to induce or compel the superior to have children and to prevent the inferior from proliferating. So here enters on the stage that most unlovely product of human evolution, the bureaucrat, whom we shall need to apply whatever rules we may devise. And –if you can stand a moment of sheer nightmare, dear reader — imagine, just for five seconds or so, what mankind would be like, if the power to decide who was or was not to have children fell into the hands of a Senator Fulbright, a Walt Rostow, and Adam Yarmolinsky, a Jack Kennedy, or a Jack The Ripper.

For that dilemma, of course, there is an obvious solution — but, so far as I can see, only one. You, my dear reader, Dr. Pendell, and I must form a triumvirate and seize absolute power over the United States. Unfortunately, I can’t at the moment think of a way of carrying out our coup d’etat, but let’s leave such details until later. Assume that we have that power, which we, certainly, are determined to use wisely and well. What shall we do with it?

Dr. Pendell is certainly right. We must breed for brain-power: We must see to it that the most intelligent men and women mate with one another and have many children. And we can identify the intelligent by testing their “I.Q.” and by their grades in honest college courses (as distinguished from the childish or fraudulent drivel that forms so large a part of the college curriculum today).

Let us not digress from the subject by questioning the relative validity of the various tests used to determine an “intelligence quotient.” And we shall ignore the exceptions which, as every teacher knows, sometimes make the most conscientious grading misleading. Father Mendel, to whom we owe the greatest discovery ever made in biology, failed to pass the examination for a teacher’s license in that field. A.E. Houseman, one of the greatest classical scholars in the world, failed to obtain even second-class honors at Oxford, and was given a mere “pass.” But such exceptions are rare. Let us assume that we can test intelligence infallibly. Is that enough?

It is always helpful to reduce generalizations to specific examples. Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the great English poets; Albert Einstein, although fantastically over-advertised by yellow journalism, was a great mathematician. Both were brilliant men in more than one field of intellectual activity (Shelley is said to have exhibited a considerable talent for chemistry, among other things, and Einstein is said to have done well in courses on the Classics). Both, I am sure, would have placed themselves in the very highest bracket of any intelligence test, and (if so minded) could have been graduated summa cum laude from any college curriculum that you may advise. Both were, in their judgement of social and political problems, virtually morons. Merely a deficiency of practical common sense, you say? Yes, no doubt, but both acted on the basis of that deficiency and used their intellectual powers to exert a highly pernicious influence. One need not underestimate either the beauty of Shelley’s poems or the importance of the two theories of relativity to conclude that the world would be better off, had neither man existed.

But we must go farther than that. It is odd that most of the persons who urge us to foster “superior intellect” and “genius,” whether they recommend eugenics or educational subsidies or other means, simply ignore the phenomenon of the mattoid (see Lothrop Stoddard, op. cit., pp. 102-106, and the article by Max Nordau there cited).

A mattoid is a person possessed of a mentality that is, in the strict sense of the word, unbalanced. He is a Shelley or Einstein tilted just a few more degrees. He exhibits an extremely high talent, often amounting to genius, in one kind of mental activity, such as poetry or mathematics, while the other parts of his mind are depressed to the level of imbecility or insanity. Nordau, who was an acutely observant physician, noted that such unbalanced beings are usually, if not invariably, “full of organic feelings of dislike” and tend to generalize their subjective state of resentment against the civilized world into some cleverly devised pseudo-philosophic or pseudo-aesthetic system that will erode the very foundations of civilized society. Since civilized people necessarily set a high value on intellect, but are apt to venerate “genius” uncritically and without discrimination, the mattoid’s influence can be simply deadly. Nordau, indeed, saw in the activity of mattoids the principal reason why “people [as a whole] lose the power of moral indignation, and accustom themselves to despise it as something banal, unadvanced, and unintelligent.”

Nordau’s explanation may be satisfactory so far as it goes, but moral insanity is not by any means confined to minds that show an extraordinary disproportion among the faculties that can properly be called intellectual and can be measured by such things as intelligence tests, academic records, proficiency in a profession, and outstanding research. The two young degenerates, Loev and Leopold, whose crime shocked the nation some decades ago although the more revolting details could not be reported in the Press, were reputed to be not only among the most brilliant undergraduates ever enroled in the University of Chicago, but to be almost equally proficient in every branch of study. One could cite hundreds of comparable examples.

Most monsters that become notorious have to be highly intelligent to gain and retain power. Lenin and Trotsky must have had very active minds, and the latter, at least, according to persons who knew him, was able on occasion to pass as a cultivated man. Both probably had a very high “I.Q.” All reports from China indicate that Mao Tse-tung is not only extremely astute, but even learned in the Chinese culture that he is zealously extirpating. A few Communists or crypto-Communists who have been put in prominent positions may be mere stooges, but the directors of the Conspiracy and their responsible subordinates must be persons of phenomenally high intelligence.

It is clear that there is in the human species some biological strain of either atavism or degeneracy that manifests itself in a hatred of mankind and a list for evil for its own sake. It produced the Thugs in India and the Bolsheviks in Russia (cf. Louis Zoul, Thugs and Communists, Public Opinion, Long Island City). It appears in such distinguished persons as Giles de Rais, who was second only to the king of France, and in such vulgar specimens as Fritz Haarmann, a homosexual who attracted some attention in Germany in 1924, when it was discovered that for many years he had been disposing of his boy-friends, as soon as he became tired of them, by tearing their throats open with his teeth and then reducing them to sausage, which he sold in a delicatessen. And it animates the many crypto-Communist who hold positions of power or influence in the United States.

It is probable that this appalling viciousness is transmitted by the organic mechanisms of heredity, and although no geneticist would now even speculate about what genes or lack of genes produce such biped terrors, I think it quite likely that the science of genetics, if study and research are permitted to continue, may identify the factors involved eventually — say in two or three hundred years. I know that we most urgently and desperately need to know now. But it will do no good to kick geneticists: The most infinite complexity of human heredity makes it impossible to make such determinations more quickly by the normal techniques of research. (Of course, a brilliant discovery that would transcend those methods is always possible, but we can’t count on it.)

It is quite likely that at the present rate, as eugenicists predict, civilization is going to collapse from sheer lack of brains to carry it on. But it is now collapsing faster and harder from a super-abundance of brains of the wrong kind. Granting that we can test intelligence, we must remember that at or near the top of the list, by any test that we can devise, will be a flock of diabolically ingenious degenerates. And even if we could find a way to identify and eliminate the spawn of Satan, we should still have problems.

What causes genuine “liberal intellectuals”? Many are pure Pragmatists. They have no lust for evil for its own sake; they wouldn’t betray their country or their own parents for less than fifty dollars — and not for that, if they thought they could get more by bargaining. Others are superannuated children who want to go on playing with fairies and pixies, and are ready to kick and bite when disturbed at play; but they have the combination of lachrymose sentimentality and thoughtless cruelty that one so often finds in children before they become capable of the rational morality of adults. But all of our “liberal intellectuals” were graduated from a college of some sort, and many of them, I am sure, have a fairly high “intelligence quotient” by modern tests. I do not claim or suggest that they are the result of hereditary defects; I merely point out that we do not know and have no means of finding out. We can’t be sure of anything except that our society now has as many of those dubious luxuries as it can endure. And yet we are going to encourage them to raise the intellectual level.

Come to think of it, my friends, I guess we’d better postpone our coup d’etat for a couple of centuries.

The Shape of Things to Come

For a neat antithesis to Dr. Pendell’s book and, at the same time, a very significant application of genetics, I suggest Roderick Seidenberg’s Anatomy of the Future (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill; 175 pages). Mr. Seidenberg — I call him that because I haven’t been able to find out whether or not it should be “Dr.” — told us what our future was going to be in an earlier book, Posthistoric Man (same publisher; 256 pages), which, according to the “liberal” reviewers, made him a gigantic “philosopher of history.” In the present volume, however, he has condescended to tell us again and in fewer pages — which may make this one the better bargain.

Mr. Seidenberg, according to Mr. Seidenberg, has surveyed with his eagle eye the whole course of human history and, what is more, the whole course of biological evolution since life first appeared on this planet. That is how he knows about the “ineluctable determinism” that is going to put us in our places.

The Prophet takes his departure from the now familiar phenomenon called the “population explosion” (see American Opinion, April 1960, pp. 33 f.). He says that an increase in the number of human beings automatically increases the “complexity” of society.

Of course, we have been hearing about this “complexity” for years. I am sure that you, poor harried reader, have reflected, every time that you leap into your automobile, how much simpler life would be, if you had to worry about the health of your horses, the condition of your stable, the quality of your oats and hay, the disposition and sobriety of your coachman, the efficiency of your ostlers, and the reliability of the scavengers whom you have hired to keep clean your mews. And I know that whenever you, in Chicago, pick up the telephone to call your aunt in Miami, you remark, with may a bitter oath, how much less complex everything would be, if all that you had to do was find and hire a reliable messenger who would ride express to her house and deliver your hand-written note in a month or so — if he was not waylaid on the road, and if his horse did not break a leg or cast a shoe, and if he did not decide to pause at some bowsing-ken en route for an invigorating touch of delirium tremens. Sure, life’s gettin’ awfully complicated these days; ain’t it a fact?

Well, as we all know, life’s getting complexer every minute ’cause there are more Chinese and Congolese and Sudanese than there were a minute ago; and that means, according to Mr. Seidenberg, that we have just got to become more and more organized by the minute. And the proof of this is that, if you want to resist the ever increasing organization and socialization of society, you have to join some organization, such — I interpolate, for I need not tell you that Mr. Seidenberg would never mention anything so horrid — such as The John Birch Society. The need to join organizations to resist the organization of society proves the point, for, as is obvious, if you in 1776 had wished to resist the rule of George III, you would not have needed to join the patriots of your colony. And if, in 490 B.C., you had wished to resist the Persian invasion of Europe, you would have had no need to join, or cooperate with, your fellow Athenians who marched to Marathon. In those days of greater individualism, you, as an individual, could have stood up alone on your hind legs and stuck out your tongue — and that, presumably, would have scared Darius and his armies right into the middle of the Hellespont. But alas, no more! So, you see, History proves that the day of the individual has passed forever, and the day of Organization has come.

You must not smile, for Mr. Seidenberg is in earnest, and even if he is a bit weak in knowledge of past and present, his projection of the future has seemed cogent not merely to “liberals,” but even to thoughtful readers.

Forward to Irkalla!

Mr. Seidenberg bases his argument on inferences that he draws with apparent logic from three indisputably correct statements about the contemporary world and from a widely accepted biological theory.

1) We have all observed that we are being more and more subjected to a Welfare State, which, with Fabian patience, takes away each year some part of our power to make decisions for ourselves regarding our own lives. It is perfectly obvious that if this process continues for a few more decades (as our masters’ power to take our money to bribe and bamboozle the masses may make inevitable), we shall have lost the right to decide anything at all, and shall have become mere human livestock managed by a ruthless and inhuman bureaucracy at the orders of an even more inhuman master.

2) Our Big Brains agree with Mr. Seidenberg in believing, or pretending to believe, that “the kernel of marxism…consists in elaborating…the social message of Christ.” They assure us, therefore, that it is simply unthinkable that Americans could ever be so wicked as to fight to survive. Thus we have got to be scared or beaten into One World of universal socialism in which, as Walt Rostow, Jack Kennedy, and others now gloatingly and openly tell us, not only our nation but our race must be liquidated and dissolved in a vast and mongrel mass of pullulating bipeds.

3) The number of human beings — anatomically human, at least — is undoubtedly increasing at an appalling rate. The United States is already overpopulated for optimum life, although no critical reduction in our standard of living would be necessary for the better part of a century, if our masters permitted us to remain an independent nation. But our increase is nothing compared to the terrible multiplication of the populations of Asia and Africa, caused, for the most part, by our export to those regions of our medical knowledge, medicines, food, and money. Although we Westerners might stave off a crisis for a few decades by working harder and ever harder to support our betters and to speed up the rate at which they are breeding, it is clear that we (unless we do something unthinkable) must soon be drowned in the flood that we, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, started but did not know how to stop. So, even if we did not have Master Jack and his accomplices or employers to arrange for our liquidation, the sheer multiplication of the human species would produce the same result anyway.

One has but to glance at a graph of the world’s population to see that it is rapidly approaching the point at which the vast human swarm can be kept alive, even on the level of barest animal subsistence, only by the most expert management of every square inch of earth’s arable surface plus expert harvest of the very oceans themselves. In that monstrous human swarm jammed together on our planet, like a swarm of bees hanging from a limb, there can be no privacy, no individuality, no slightest deviation from the routine that must be maintained just to keep alive the maximum number that can subsist at all.

Now the theory of biological evolution, as usually stated, provides that species must adapt themselves to the conditions of survival. Men, having bred themselves into a maximum swarm, become mere units of the species, and will obviously be most efficient when they perform every action of the routine by an automatic reflex. This means that thought and even consciousness will become not only unnecessary but intolerable impediments to the efficient functioning of the human animals. Obviously, the human minds must disappear in order to permit billions of human ants to make the globe an ant-hill in which they can all live in perfect socialism.

That is what “ineluctable determinism” makes ineluctable, but Mr. Seidenberg, who is as adroit in twisting words as any editor of the New York Times, shows you how nice that will be. The Revelations of Freud have shown that we are now just bundles of instincts. Mankind will necessarily evolve to the higher state of what Mr. Seidenberg calls “pure reason.” As he explains, “pure reason” is now found only among the forms of life that are biologically superior to us because better adapted to environment. The examples which he gives are “ants, bees, and termites,” whose “essentially unchanged survival during sixty million years testifies to the perfection of their adjustment…to the conditions of life.” We must strive to become like them — nay, the “ineluctable determinism” inherent in the “population explosion” and the need for a “more advanced society” will make us, willy nilly, just like ants and termites — intellectually and spiritually, that is, for Mr. Seidenberg does not seem to entertain a hope that human beings will ever be able to crawl about on six legs.

In this perfected socialist world there can be no change and hence no history: That is why the perfect man of the near future will be, in Seidenbergian terminology, “post-historic.” Everybody will be happy, because there will be no individuals — only organisms that are part of a species and have no separate consciousness. To see how attractive the inevitable future is, you have only to reflect, dear reader, how much happier you would be, if you were an ant or a cockroach in your basement. You could operate by what Mr. Seidenberg calls “pure reason.” You could not possibly be affected by religion, art, literature, philosophy, science, capitalism, racial discrimination, or any of the other horrid things that will have to be blotted out anyway in the interests of Equality and Social Justice. You could never have a thought to trouble you. You would have no consciousness; hence you would not know that you exist, and would have no organ that could feel pain when somebody steps on you. What more could you want?

If you are so reactionary as to prefer to be conscious, even at the cost of being unhappy from time to time, you may be amused by the similarity of Mr. Seidenberg’s vision of the future to the scene described in one of the oldest of the Babylonian tablets, on which the cuneiform characters represent an oddly sibilant and staccato language: a-na maat la tari kak-ka-rifi-ti-e ila istar marat ilu sin u-zu-un-sa is- kun, etc.

“To the land whence none return, the place of darkness, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin, her ear inclined.”Then inclined the daughter of Sin her ear to the house of darkness, the domain of Irkalla; to the prison from which he that enters comes not forth; to the road whose path does not return; …to the land where filth is their bread and their food is mud. The light they behold not; in unseeingness they dwell, and are clothed, like winged things, in a garment of scales…”

Of all of mankind’s nightmarish visions of a future existence, that Babylonian conception of the dead as crawling forever, like mindless insects, in a fetid and eternal night has always seemed to me the most gruesome.

Joy is not Around the Corner

Mr. Seidenberg’s ecstatic vision of the New Jerusalem has, I am sorry to say, imposed on a least two men of scientific eminence who should have known better. They permitted themselves to be confused by the theory of biological evolution. If man evolved, over a period of 500,000 years or more, from an ape (Australopithecus) that discovered that by picking up and wielding a long bone it could increase its efficiency in killing other apes, is it not possible that our species can go on evolving and become, in another 500,000 years or less, the perfectly adjusted biped termites that Mr. Seidenberg predicts? Heavens to Betsy, I’m not going to argue that point. Granted!

And isn’t the “population explosion” a fact? Sure it is, but don’t overlook one detail — the time factor. At the present rate, the globe, sometime between 2000 and 2005 A.D. — that is to say within forty years — will be infested by 5,000,000,000 anatomically human creatures, the maximum number for which food can be supplied by even the most intensive cultivation. And then, to keep the globe inhabitable at that bare subsistence level, it will be necessary to kill every year more people than now live in the whole United States — kill them with atomic bombs or clubs, as may be more convenient.

I shall not argue about what human beings could or could not become by biological evolution in half a million years: We all know, at least, that there is going to be no biological evolution in fifty years. And, if we stop a moment to think about it, we also know that the world is not going to have a population of five billion. Not ever.

The population of the world is going to be drastically reduced before the year 2000. [See Oliver's later revision of his prediction in his article "What Hath Man Wrought? ^[2]" -- Editor]

The reduction could come through natural causes. It is always possible — far more possible than you imagine, if you have not investigated the relevant areas of scientific knowledge — that next week or next year may bring the onset of a new pestilence that will have a proportional mortality as great as that of the epidemic in the time of the Antonines or the Black Plaque of the Middle Ages. Alternatively, the events described in John Christopher’s brilliant novel, No Blade of Grass, could become fact, instead of fiction, at any time. And there are at least three other ways, all scientifically possible, in which the world could be partly depopulated in short order by strictly natural forces beyond our control.

But if Nature does not act, men will. When things became a bit crowded in east Asia, for example, the Huns and, at a later time, the Mongols, swept a wide swath through the world as locusts sweep through a wheat field. And wherever they felt the inspiration, they were every bit as efficient as any quantity of hydrogen bombs you may care to imagine. In the natural course of human events, we shall see in the near future wars of extermination on scale and of an intensity that your mind will, at present, refuse to contemplate. The only question will be what peoples will be among the exterminated.

If the minority of the earth’s inhabitants that is capable of creating and continuing (as distinct from aping) a high civilization is exterminated (as it now seems resolved to be), or if for some reason wars of extermination fail to solve the problem, civilization will collapse from sheer lack of brains to keep it going, and the consequent reversion to global savagery will speedily take care of the excess in numbers. In a world of savages, not only would the intricate and hated technology of our civilization be abolished, but even the simplest arts might be forgotten. (Every anthropologist knows of tribes in Polynesia and Melanesia that forgot how to make canoes, although without them it became almost impossible to obtain the fish that they regard as the most delicious food, or how to make bows and arrows, although they needed them for more effective hunting and fighting.) A world of savages in 2100 probably would not have a population more numerous than the world had in 4000 B.C.

The ordinary course of nature and human events (separately or in combination) will, in one way or another, take care of the much-touted “population explosion,” and Mr. Seidenberg knows it. You have only to read him carefully to see that all his talk about history, biological evolution, and “ineluctable determinism” is strictly for the birds — or, at least, bird-brains.

Do-It-Yourself for Socialists

Like all internationalists, Mr. Seidenberg envisages a One World of universal socialism.

Every student of history and mankind (as distinct from the ignorant theorists who prefer to chirrup while hopping from cloud to cloud in Nephelococcygia) well knows what is needed for a successful and stable socialism. And our intelligent socialists know it, too. There are two essentials, viz.: (1) a mass of undifferentiated human livestock, sufficiently intelligent to be trained to perform routine and often complicated tasks, but too stupid to take thought for their own future; and (2) a small caste of highly intelligent planners, preferably of an entirely different race, who will direct the livestock and, with the aid of overseers who need be but little more intelligent than the overseen, make sure that the livestock work hard and breed properly and do not have unsocial thoughts. The owners must be so superior to the owned that the latter will not regard themselves as of the same species. The owners must be hedged about with a quasi-divinity, and their chief, therefore, must be represented as an incarnate god.

Mr. Seidenberg knows that and tells us so. Our blissful future, he says, is assured by the emergence of “administrators [whose] special talents place them above other men.” The most important of these special talents is enough intelligence to understand that “moral restraints and compassions [and] …the attitudes and values upon which they were based have become obsolete.” On the basis of such progressive thinking, “the relatively small elite of the organizers” will manipulate the “overwhelming social mass” and guide it toward its destiny, “the mute status of unconscious organisms.”

The Chosen Few will do this by promoting “the spiritual and psychological dehumanization of man” and “a vast organizational transmutation of life.” For this glorious purpose, various techniques are available; for example, as Mr. Seidenberg tells us, “there is, plainly, more than a nihilistic meaning in the challenging ambiguities of modern art.” And, in a masterfully managed society, “the gradually inculcated feeling of helplessness…will make the mass of humanity ever more malleable and dependent upon the complex functioning of society, with its ensuing regimentation under organized patterns of behavior.” But the Supermen will use, above all, “a scientific program of genetic control to assure the complete adjustment of the human mass to its destiny” and Reactionaries and other American swine, whose “anachronistic stance” and silly efforts to avoid “the mute status of unconscious organisms” show that they “belong essentially to the past.”

As for the Supermen, who form “the nucleus of an elite of administrative functionaries and organizers ruling over the vast mass of men,” you can bet your bottom dollar (so long as Master Jack permits you to have one) that that Master Race has no intention of becoming like the bipeds that it will supervise and selectively breed for more and better mindlessness until it has attained its “historic” goal, “the settling of the human race [as distinct from its owners] into an ecologic niche of permanent and static adjustment,” which, as Mr. Seidenberg says in a moment of candor, in simply “living death.” Obviously, when this goal has been achieved, human beings, deprived of mind and even consciousness, will differ from the Master Race as much as ants and bees now differ in intelligence from human beings. Glory be!

To any attentive reader of the book, it is clear that the author, under the guise of a transparently inconsistent prophecy about a distant future, is presenting a plan for a near future that is to be created, in spite of history, in spite of nature, and in spite of mankind, by the purposeful and concerted action of a small band of “elite” conspirators, comparable to, if not identical with, the directors of the International Communist Conspiracy.

To publish such a plan in a book sold to the general public seems a fantastic indiscretion, even when one allows for the breath-taking effrontery that our Internationalists are now showing in their confidence that Americans have already been so disarmed and entrapped in the “United Nations” that, for practical purposes, it’s all over except for the butchering. When I first read these books, therefore, I was inclined to believe that the author was trying to warn us.

The Veiled Prophet of Doylestown

My inquiries, necessarily hasty and perfunctory as I write this article to meet a deadline, have elicited almost no information about Mr. Seidenberg. I do not know what region on earth was blessed with his nativity, what academic institutions bestowed the benison of their degrees upon him, or even what may be his liaison with the University of North Carolina. He is said to be an architect, but he is not listed in the 1962 edition of the American Architects’ Directory. He is said to practice that art in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, but an informant in that town reports that he is not listed in the telephone directory as an architect, although there is listed under his name, without indication of profession or occupation, a telephone which did not answer, when called on successive days.

I do not have the facilities of the FBI, so all that I really know about Mr. Seidenberg, apart from his books, is that he surfaced momentarily on February 22, 1962, in the pages of the New York Times, to emit a yip for the abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. (And if you wonder why anyone should now yip against a Committee that appears to have been virtually silenced by the concerted howling of our enemies after the release of Operation Abolition, I can only tell you that, according to persons who should know, the Committee has amassed in Executive Sessions testimony which, if published, would expose some of the most powerful anti-humans in Washington.)

Mrs. Sarah Watson Emery, in her excellent book, Blood on the Old Well (prospect House, Dallas, cf. American Opinion, October, 1963, pp. 67 ff.), reports that the elusive Seidenberg, in a conversation with her, “clearly implied that he wrote the books in order to bring about the ghastly future” that he “so confidently predicts.” If Mrs. Emery is right, Mr. Seidenberg’s books are inspirational literature for the Master Race of “administrators,” who are now taking over the whole world. They can own and operate the world forever in perfect Peace, if, by a scientific application of genetics, they reduce human beings to the status of mindless insects.

Is One World Feasible?

You, my patient reader, may be a member of the Radical Right and hence unenthusiastic about the happiness that is being planned for you. If so, I confess that I, whom a learned colleague recently described as a “filthy Fascist swine,” share your misgivings. But let us here consider the Seidenbergian ideal exclusively as a problem in genetics. Is it possible?

Probably not, by the hit-and-miss methods that the Conspiracy has thus far employed.

As Mr. Seidenberg carefully points out, “Russia [under Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev] and America [under Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Kennedy] are basically akin by reason of the dominance of their organizational trends,” but — hélas! — even today “the collectivization of society is only in its incipient stages in Russia.” And the reason is obvious. Although Ulyanov (alias Lenin) and Bronstein (alias Trotsky) butchered millions of reactionary Russians who wanted to be individual human beings, and although Dzhugashvili (alias Stalin) butchered millions more, and although Saint Nick (formerly Khrushchev) shot, hacked to pieces, or starved seven million in the Ukraine alone when he as just a local manager for the Communist Conspiracy, the nasty Russians are still unregenerate. Although the world’s vermin have had absolute control of Russia for almost half a century and have certainly worked hard to exterminate every Russian who had in himself a spark of self-respect, human decency, or even the will to live, observers agree that the recent failure of crops would have precipitated a crisis and possibly even a revolt of blind desperation, if Master Jack had not ordered his American cattle to provide the wheat that Comrade Nick needed to keep his own restive cattle fairly quiet. And it is quite likely that if the Conspiracy were to lose control of the United States and so be forced to retreat somewhere in the world, the Russian people would revolt anyway. The most systematic butchery has not destroyed the genetic transmission of human instincts. And it is unlikely to do so for centuries, at least.

Americans are apt to be even more refractory, and I am sure that One Worlders, now that they think their final victory almost achieved, must be giving thought to the problem of what to do with them. (And I need not remind you that advanced minds are not troubled by “moral restraints” and the other “attitudes and values.”) The American kulaks were useful and even necessary to fight wars “to make the world safe for democracy” and to finance with “foreign aid” the Communist conquest of the world, but when that goal has been achieved, they are likely to be a real nuisance.

There are rumors, for example, that Master Jack is planning to send the U.S. Army — which, as purged by Yarmolinsky and his stooges, will presumably be a docile instrument for the abolition of the nation it was established to defend — to seal off one area of the country after another, drive the white swine from their homes, and search them to confiscate such firearms or other weapons as they may have in their possession. It may be necessary to beat a few hundred of the white pigs so that their squealing will teach the other livestock to obey their owner, but, according to the rumors, nothing more than that is contemplated. But even if the operation is successful, one can foresee endless trouble. Human instincts are more or less fixed by heredity.

It is no wonder, therefore, that Mr. Seidenberg foresees “long-range genetic manipulation designed not only to improve the human stock according to the social dictates of [the proprietors of] a collectivized humanity, but above all to eliminate, in one manner or another, any traces of anti-social deviation.”

Those are, doubtless, sound general principles, but what, specifically, is to be done with the Americans when the “United Nations” takes them over? One could, as Mr. Seidenberg delicately hints in one passage, just castrate all the males. (If this idea seems shocking to you, remember that that’s just your “anachronistic stance.”) Or one could adopt the policy which the Soviet, according to a report that was leaked “from U.N. official sources” and reported in the now defunct Northlander (September, 1958), uses in Lithuania, where all potentially troublesome males were rounded up and shipped to Siberia and then replaced in their own homes by public-spirited Mongolian males eager to improve the quality of the Lithuanian population. A Baluba or a Bakongo thus installed in every American home would not only effectively end “discrimination” and promote the “World Unity” desiderated by Internationalists, but would also — according to a “scientific” study made by a Professor Of Sociology in a tax-supported American university and reported both in his class-room lectures and in his broadcasts over a radio-station entirely owned by that university — fulfill the secret yearnings of all American womanhood.

This may seem a perfect solution (if you have a “One World” viewpoint), but it has, I fear, its drawbacks. Balubas and such are just fine for exterminating white men in Africa and creating chaos under direction from Washington and Moscow, but I suspect that anyone who tries to regiment them to do work is in for a powerful lot of trouble. After they have served their purpose, it will be necessary to exterminate them, too. And the Masters, after they have blotted out the civilization they hate, are going to need workers, not cannibals and other savages, if, in keeping with the Seidenbergian vision, they are to rule the world forever.

Now Americans and Europeans are excellent workers. What is needed, obviously, is not to destroy them but to convert them, as Mr. Seidenberg predicts, into true zombies, that is to say, creatures that have no will or personality of their own and therefore do whatever they are told. But that transformation, so far as I can learn from geneticists whom I have consulted, is genetically impossible by any process of selective breeding within any reasonable length of time — say a thousand years or less. This, I am sure, our author realizes, for after admitting that “the art of brainwashing and, even more so, the science of controlling society by pharmaceutical manipulation, are in their infancy,” he places his hope for the future in “the ever increasing techniques and the ever more refined arts of mental coercion.” Presumably, the human mind and will can be destroyed by drugs, or perhaps by an improved technique of lobotomy, to produce the kind of “mental health” requisite in the zombies who, like mindless insects, are to work to support the Master Race of the future. But this is not genetics, and the qualities thus induced in individuals cannot be transmitted genetically. The Masters, therefore, will be put to the trouble of operating on each generation of biped insects as it is produced — and, what is even worse, there is some reason to doubt that the zombies would or could reproduce themselves.

So, you see, the New Dispensation of which Internationalists dream is by no means assured, either historically or biologically. For that matter, it is even possible that enough Americans may object in time to frustrate the “determinism” that only their ignorance, apathy, or cowardice could make “ineluctable.” But I cannot speculate about that possibility here. I have sought only to show you, as dispassionately as possible, what kind of thoughts very advanced minds are thinking about you these days.

Source: http://www.revilo-oliver.com/news/1963/12/history-and-biology/ ^[3]

---

Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/07/history-biology/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/schwabe-deathofthegravedigger.jpeg

[2] What Hath Man Wrought?: http://revilo-oliver.com/rpo/What_Hath_Man_Wrought.html

[3] http://www.revilo-oliver.com/news/1963/12/history-and-biology/: http://www.revilo-oliver.com/news/1963/12/history-and-biology/

1940: l'autre uchronie

1940 : l’autre uchronie

par Noël RIVIÈRE

L’uchronie est l’histoire fictive de possibilités historiques non advenues. Elle aide à comprendre ce qui a réellement eu lieu en poussant les logiques des autres scénarios envisageables tout en respectant une certaine vraisemblance. Les uchronies sont de plus en plus l’objet de travaux. L’un des derniers en date est celui de Jacques Sapir sur le thème « Et si la France n’avait pas signé l’armistice de 1940 et avait continué la guerre ? » C’est le What if : que se serait-il passé si… Les uchronies nécessitent de tenir compte des informations dont disposaient les protagonistes au moment des faits.

Il est en ce moment à la mode de dérouler un scénario à propos de la guerre de 39-45 : Et si la France avait continué la guerre ? (Jacques Sapir et aa, Taillandier, 2010).

Pierre Clostermann lui-même avait défendu l’idée que les forces français en Afrique du nord, en 1940 auraient permis de continuer la guerre. Reste à savoir pour quel résultat. Un résultat qui aurait peut-être au final été particulièrement favorable à l’Allemagne. Explications.

Supposons donc une absence d’armistice le 22 juin 1940.

Fin juin, les Allemands sont à Marseille, Nice, Perpignan et sur la côte basque. Compte tenu de leur maîtrise de l’air, ils investissent la Corse sans grande difficulté et obligent bien avant cela la flotte française à se replier en Algérie, sauf destruction totale ou partielle comme celle qu’a connue la flotte italienne face aux Anglais dans le golfe de Tarente, en 1940, voire au cap Matapan, en 1941, toujours face à l’aviation anglaise. À partir de là, les Français continuant la guerre, les Allemands n’eussent eu d’autres choix que de les poursuivre en Afrique du Nord. On lit parfois le propos comme quoi les Allemands n’ont même pas pu franchir la Manche ou le Pas de Calais et que donc ils auraient été bien en peine de franchir la Méditerranée. Cela n’a rien à voir. Derrière la Manche, il y a avait une nation industrielle de cinquante millions d’habitants. En Algérie – l’A.F.N., c’était essentiellement l’Algérie – il y avait sept millions d’habitants dont moins d’un million de Pieds-Noirs. Peu d’industrie et presque pas de pièces de rechanges pour les armes. Autant dire que les Allemands auraient pu débarquer sans se heurter à une résistance comparable à celle de la Royal Air Force au-dessus de la côte anglaise en août-septembre 1940.

Mais surtout ils avaient l’alliance italienne. Un débarquement à Tunis aurait été à une extrême proximité de la Sicile – et les Allemands ont réussi ce débarquement alors qu’étaient proches les flottes américaines et anglaises, en novembre 1942, et alors qu’ils avaient d’autres priorités sur le front de l’Est. Quand bien même ce débarquement eut présenté des difficultés qu’ils eussent voulu contourner, il leur suffisait de faire, dès juillet 1940, ce qu’ils ont fait en février 41 pour soutenir l’Italie, à savoir débarquer quelques divisions à Tripoli. De là, ils pouvaient rapidement gagner la Tunisie et la conquérir (elle aurait fait l’objet d’un « don » à l’Italie qui n’avait cessé de la revendiquer depuis 1936). La question du ravitaillement de leurs troupes aurait été considérablement simplifiée, puisque Malte tenue par les Anglais se trouvait sur la route Sicile – Libye mais pas sur la route Sicile – Tunisie.

En outre le contrôle de la Tunisie et de la Libye aurait tellement isolé Malte que sa conquête serait devenue possible, bien que sans doute coûteuse. Avec cinq ou six divisions, les Allemands auraient pu, de Tunis conquérir l’Algérie jusqu’à la frontière du Maroc espagnol sans grandes difficultés. La flotte française n’aurait eu comme possibilité d’échapper à la destruction, compte tenu de l’impossibilité pour les forces aériennes françaises en A.F.N. de la protéger, que de se replier vers Dakar. Compte tenu de l’étirement des lignes de communication des Allemands, il est bien possible que le Maroc aurait représenté le point ultime de leur expansion à l’Ouest de l’Afrique. L’A.O.F. et l’A.E.F. serait restés à la France résistante, avec l’appui de la flotte britannique, d’une partie de son aviation, et aussi sans doute avec un gros appui matériel américain, sinon un appui directement militaire impliquant la belligérance. Mais cet appui n’aurait pas été instantané compte tenu des délais de la montée en charge de l’industrie américaine (plutôt 1941 que 1940).

À partir de la conquête du Maroc français, la position britannique de Gibraltar aurait été isolée. Elle serait restée tenable si l’Espagne était restée neutre mais facilement neutralisée par l’aviation allemande. Quant à l’Espagne justement, qu’aurait-elle fait ? Franco était très prudent mais l’Allemagne installée militairement au Maroc, grande aurait été sa tentation d’entrer en guerre du côté de l’Axe, avec comme condition l’acquisition par l’Espagne du Maroc français. En tout cas, même restée neutre, l’Espagne aurait dû (comment les refuser sans le risque que l’Allemagne fomente un coup d’État à Madrid, appuyé sur les plus pro-allemands des phalangistes ?) accorder des facilités militaires à l’Allemagne et peut-être le passage vers Gibraltar (via Perpignan ou tout simplement via le Maroc espagnol) pour son démantèlement comme base anglaise. En tout état de cause, l’Allemagne aurait pu disposer de bases navales utiles pour ses sous-marins sur la côte Atlantique du Maroc.

Et pendant ce temps-là en Égypte ? Il n’y a pas de raison de changer quelque chose à l’histoire réelle ici, à savoir que les Anglais, supérieurs aux Italiens en organisation, en matériel, voire en moral des troupes auraient mis en difficulté les troupes de Mussolini, d’autant plus que une fois les Allemands engagés contre la France en Afrique du Nord, l’enjeu de celle-ci aurait été plus fort encore et que les Anglais auraient été sans doute offensifs en Libye et d’abord en Cyrénaïque pour soulager le mieux possible les Français face à l’attaque allemande en Tunisie et en Algérie. Mais là encore, il eut suffit de quelques divisions (l’Africa Korps n’en avait que trois début 41) pour arrêter les Anglais, voire pour les rejeter sur le canal de Suez. Et dans la réalité, rappelons que la contre-offensive anglaise face aux Italiens n’intervient qu’en décembre 1940. Mettons que six divisions eussent été nécessaires pour, dès le dernier trimestre 1940, conquérir l’Égypte et lui donner une indépendance confiée bien sûr à des pro-allemands. Nous sommes à six divisions allemandes donc en Afrique du Nord à l’Est, et autant à l’Ouest, voire dix divisions à l’Ouest (face aux Français). Ce n’était pas au-dessus des moyens des Allemands.

Dans ces conditions, que pouvait-il advenir de Malte ?

Malte, loin de toute position alliée après une poussée allemande sauvant la Cyrénaïque des Anglais – au minimum – voire conquérant l’Égypte, et à l’Ouest, après la conquête allemande de la Tunisie et de l’Algérie, Malte, bien que solidement défendue, pouvait être conquise, comme l’a été la Crête dans des conditions plus difficiles, car la Crête était à proximité de l’Égypte où se trouvait les forces aériennes et navales britanniques. Une fois l’Égypte conquise et là encore quelles que soient les qualités militaires des Anglais, ils n’étaient pas en position de faire face à six divisions allemandes et à une forte aviation (qui bien entendu n’aurait pas été engagée dans une inutile bataille d’Angleterre), les Allemands pouvaient avancer vers la Palestine et conquérir la Syrie. Ils se trouvaient alors à proximité de l’Irak et de ses activistes indépendantistes et pro-allemands (voir la tentative de Rachid Ali en avril 1941) et pouvaient les soutenir. En complément, ils isolaient Chypre et pouvaient y débarquer (là encore peut-on douter de leur capacité à ce genre d’opération quand on voit, dans un contexte très dégradé pour eux, leur conquête-éclair du Dodécanèse en octobre-novembre 43 ?). C’est alors toute la Méditerranée orientale qui eut été entre les  mains des Allemands ainsi que la Méditerranée occidentale si l’Algérie avait aussi été conquise (et comment aurait elle pu ne pas l’être compte tenu de la faiblesse des Français en A.F.N., non ravitaillés par la Métropole ?)

Les Allemands pouvaient aussi, après ou en même temps,  avec trois ou quatre divisions supplémentaires (il faut tenir compte des forces d’occupation et de contrôle des territoires déjà occupés même si les populations y auraient été plutôt pro-allemandes) descendre la vallée du Nil, prendre Khartoum et Port-Soudan et ainsi, en établissant la liaison avec l’Afrique orientale italienne, empêcher sa conquête par les Britanniques qui a commencé en mars 1941. Le premier problème des Allemands aurait été le manque de camions, mais ils auraient pu réquisitionner tous les camions français sans entraves en l’absence d’armistice.

Une chronologie uchronienne

• 30 juin 1940 : fin de l’occupation de toute la France métropolitaine.

• 7 juillet : occupation de la Corse à partir de l’Italie et de Nice.

• 1er août : débarquement à Tunis (à partir du sud de l’Italie) avec l’appui des Italiens ou débarquement à Tripoli de cinq ou six divisions allemandes marchant vers Tunis.

• 10 août : jonction avec les Italiens de Tripolitaine dans l’hypothèse de débarquement direct à Tunis ou prise de Tunis dans l’autre cas.

• 15 août : prise du port de Bône.

• 20 août : prise d’Alger.

• 25 août : prise d’Oran et de Mers El-Kebir.

• 27 août : arrivée à la frontière du Maroc espagnol.

• 1er septembre : prise de Fès au Maroc.

• 5 septembre : prise de Rabat et de Casablanca.

On peut supposer au mieux que les Français réussissent à résister au sud du Maroc, vers Marrakech. L’armée et surtout l’aviation allemande atteint ses limites logistiques, pour l’instant les Allemands ne poussent pas plus loin.

• 6 septembre : début de l’offensive allemande pour la conquête de l’Égypte.

• 20 septembre : prise du Caire.

• 30 septembre : achèvement de la conquête de l’Égypte.

• 30 octobre : attaque du Soudan.

• 25 novembre : jonction avec les Italiens d’Érythrée et d’Éthiopie. Installation de bases de sous-marins dans l’océan Indien, notamment en Somalie.

Un tel scénario eut nécessité quelques vingt-cinq divisions engagées hors d’Europe. L’effort n’impliquait donc nullement de dégarnir le continent européen. Mais, par contre, il eut amené un changement complet de vision et eut nécessité même ce changement de vision. Il s’agissait alors de rompre avec les ambitions néo-coloniales en Europe même : espace vital au détriment des Russes et des Ukrainiens, réduction des Slaves en esclavage. À l’inverse, cela eut été l’adoption d’une véritable politique mondiale. Objectif : non pas la conquête totale du monde, mais un contrepoids réel aux puissances thalassocratiques. Non pas s’enfermer dans une forteresse Europe mais lui donner de l’air par des débouchés vers les grands océans (Maroc pour l’Atlantique, Somalie pour l’océan Indien, voire Madagascar plus tard…), liaisons avec le Japon, contrôle complet de la Méditerranée et éviction de la Grande-Bretagne de ce grand lac où elle n’a rien à faire du point de vue continental européen, politique pro-arabe et post-coloniale de transition des peuples vers l’indépendance dans la coopération avec l’Europe.

Au-delà des perspectives ouvertes par cette histoire virtuelle, il reste une quasi-certitude : l’Allemagne a beaucoup perdu à l’Armistice de juin 40, elle s’est enfermée dans une victoire strictement continentale en s’interdisant une politique réellement mondiale, anticipant sur les risques futurs d’entrée en guerre des États-Unis en prenant des gages en Afrique du Nord, au Moyen-Orient, vers la Mésopotamie, et jusqu’au Soudan et l’océan Indien. Quelle chance pour l’Allemagne si… la France avait voulu continuer la guerre en 1940 !

Noël Rivière

---

Article printed from Europe Maxima: http://www.europemaxima.com

URL to article: http://www.europemaxima.com/?p=1948

The Fascist Past of Scotland

The Fascist Past of Scotland

Ex: http://xtremerightcorporate.blogspot.com/

Today, Scottish nationalism is associated mostly with the left. Traditional, conservative nationalism such as produced the Jacobite wars was long in going but seems gone for good at this point. However, Scottish fascists have long been involved in the troubled life of what goes under the blanket-term of ‘British fascism’. Nonetheless, it is important to note the history of nationalism in modern Scotland, which of course existed when Scotland was an independent nation but which survived after the union with England and was never seen in a more pure form than in the Jacobite uprisings that are so famous. Although not often considered, the Jacobite restoration efforts were actually very corporatist at heart. Just to refresh, at its core, corporatism is nothing more than the organization of society based on corporate bodies and the use of those corporate bodies in exercising power for the nation as a whole. This was, in a real sense, what the Jacobite risings were all about and in a very traditional way, upholding the ancient values of western civilization.

It was, from the beginning, the intention of the Jacobites to maintain the distinct nationalism of the three kingdoms individually. We saw this with the declaration of independence following the landing of King James II in Ireland. It was a principle reiterated by King James III in 1715 and Prince Charles III in 1745. The system they were fighting for, that they intended to restore, was very traditional and very corporatist. That was for a union of the distinct kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland under one Crown. Furthermore, particularly concerning Scotland, it was also a fight to maintain the established, traditional clan structure. Power in Scotland had always been very corporatist in nature, based on the power of the chieftains of the various clans, united by their common loyalty to the House of Stuart and a divinely based monarchy. For Scotland, the clans were the basic corporate bodies of society.

 

Of course, the Jacobites were ultimately unsuccessful and it was, of course, no coincidence, that the Hanoverians (English or Scottish) who sought to wipe out Scottish nationalism specifically by destroying the clan system (which was most significant) as well as all of the outward signs of Scottish nationalism such as the Gaelic language, kilts and all the rest. A sad event to be sure, but it happened and one must move on. Fortunately, some of this was to be restored in time as the Jacobite threat to the government in London faded into history and Scotland came to see itself fully as a part, as a partner, of the glorious achievements of the British Empire and these were certainly considerable. Even as early as the late 18th Century the Scots dominated in the high command of the British army and the highland regiments became among the most feared and fearsome in the world on battlefields from North America to India. The Scots were, very early on, just as committed to British greatness as anyone and this is seen in the number of Jacobite exiles to America who fought for the British Crown against the American revolutionaries who were set to partition British North America.

In modern times, however, liberalism began to creep in and ever since as far back as the 1830’s Scotland has tended to be dominated by the leftist party (Whig, Labour, etc). In 1934 the Scottish National Party was founded, bent on the division of Great Britain and at least some degree of independence for Scotland. Socialist parties also sprang up. These, of course, had an influence on what was considered far-right politics as it would anywhere else but nonetheless, those Scots labeled as “fascists” tended almost to a man to support the union, the British Empire and British power and greatness, seeing the nations of the British Isles as stronger together than apart. Of course the most famous such organization was the British Union of Fascists and there were a number of prominent Scots aligned with or associated with that movement, and a few should be mentioned.

 

Few embodied these values as much as Sir Louis Greig, a decorated naval surgeon, accomplished rugby player and longtime friend of King George VI, going back to his days as the Duke of York when Greig took the young prince under his wing and even helped encourage his marriage to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. This match worked out so well that the future queen displaced Greig as the closest confidant of George VI, but he did not seem to mind much. He was an ardent supporter of the British Empire and a staunch monarchist, absolutely loyal to his King and Country. This was a firm matter of principle for him, not something based on his own friendship with the Duke of York as his support for the Crown did not falter in the least during the short reign of King Edward VIII with whom he did not get along well. It was also around this time that Sir Oswald Mosley left the Tory party for Labour and then left the Labour Party to form the British Union of Fascists. While trying to strengthen his grouping of blackshirts Mosley formed the January Club, an elite circle of the nationalist community in an effort to attract upper class support for the BUF and put a more respectable face on the fascist movement. Greig was a prominent member of the January Club (he was also by then a Wing Commander in the RAF) and his support, along with others, helped the BUF become more mainstream and it was shortly thereafter that the Daily Mail openly supported the fascist cause. As for Sir Louis Greig, he did not suffer for his fascist associations and continued to serve in the armed forces until his death in 1953. His grandson was even a page of honor to Queen Elizabeth II.

 

Another prominent Scotsman in the BUF, and one of impeccable ‘blue blood’ if not impeccable reputation was Lord Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll. Born in London, son of Lord Kilmarnock, he carried the coronet of his grandfather, the then Earl of Erroll, at the coronation of King George V in 1911. He dropped out of Eton and began working in the diplomatic service with his father to earn a living (contrary to what many think, having a title does not automatically mean having vast wealth). It is interesting, if not significant to note the extensive he spent in Berlin at this time. However, despite passing his civil service examination he did not go to work for the Foreign Office but instead caused society tongues to wag by marrying Lady Idina Sackville. Her father was an earl, her former husband a politician, who she had divorced, and she was married again when she began her affair with Hay before divorcing that husband to marry him. It was all very scandalous but the two felt ‘unencumbered’ by social norms and traditional values and married in 1923. Moving to the colonies they set up housekeeping in Kenya where they lived a life of libertine debauchery. In 1934, while visiting England, Hay joined the British Union of Fascists. As Earl of Erroll he attended the 1936 coronation of King George VI, joined the military in World War II and began an affair with a married woman which, most believe, led to his murder in 1941 in Kenya.

Less colorful than Hay, but probably an even more staunch fascist Scotsman was Robert Forgan. The son of a minister in the Church of Scotland, he was educated in Aberdeen, became a doctor and served in World War I, later becoming an STD expert. While working in Glasgow he became a socialist, out of concern for the urban poor of course, and also entered politics as a member of the Independent Labor Party. He supported the very socialistic “Mosley Memorandum” which resulted in his break with mainstream leftists and his formation of the New Party. Mosley and Forgan were almost inseparable. He was one of the most successful politicians of the New Party, a key player in organizing and fleshing out the movement and even stood as godfather to Mosley’s son Michael. He was less visible but no less important when Mosley dropped the New Party idea and went on, instead, to found the British Union of Fascists. It was Forgan who worked behind the scenes to enlist more legitimate, acceptable supporters for the BUF, obtain funding for the movement and he was largely responsible to setting up the January Club.

 

This, however, eventually led to problems between Mosley and Forgan, though not initially. Forgan was adamant that, despite parallels being drawn with the Nazis in Germany, the BUF was not anti-Semitic. Originally, this was true as Mosley took more inspiration from Mussolini and his National Fascist Party (which was not anti-Semitic) rather than Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Working through the January Club and his connections in government, Forgan even tried to bring some prominent Jews on board, appealing to their liberal views of economic and social issues and assuring them that the hatred of Jews was simply a ‘German thing’ rather than a ‘fascist thing’. However, he had little success in getting anyone to take a chance and as the “star” of Hitler continued to rise Mosley became more enraptured with him and increasingly anti-Semitic in his rhetoric. Forgan had become deputy-leader of the BUF next to Mosley himself but this trend was taking the group down a path he refused to follow. In 1934 the BUF became pretty openly anti-Semitic and a disgruntled Forgan left the party, convinced Mosley was making a mistake. He was thoroughly done with politics and stayed out of the fray, finally passing away in 1976 as a largely forgotten figure.

La rivolta di Maritz e De Wet nel 1914

La rivolta di Maritz e De Wet nel 1914, preannuncio della rivincita boera sull’Inghilterra

Autore: Francesco Lamendola

Ex: http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/

La Repubblica Sudafricana, come è noto, era uscita dal Commonwealth britannico nel 1949 e vi è stata riammessa solo nel 1994, dopo che era stato rimosso l’oggetto del contendere, ossia dopo che fu smantellata la legislazione sull’Apartheid.

A volere fortemente la politica della “separazione” fra bianchi e neri era stata la componente di origine boera della comunità europea, insediatasi al Capo di Buona Speranza nel XVII secolo e poi, durante le guerre napoleoniche (1797), respinta verso l’interno dagli Inglesi, ove, nel XIX secolo, aveva dato vita alle due fiere Repubbliche indipendenti del Transvaal e dell’Orange.

Poiché la Grande Migrazione dei Boeri al di là del fiume Orange, o Grande Trek, come è nota nei libri di storia sudafricani, ebbe luogo all’incirca nella stessa epoca in cui, da settentrione, giunsero le tribù bantu che, originarie della regione dei laghi dell’Africa orientale, a loro volta respingevano Boscimani e Ottentotti, i Boeri e, in generale, i bianchi sudafricani hanno sempre negato validità all’affermazione secondo cui, nel loro Paese, una minoranza bianca si sarebbe imposta su di una maggioranza nera, sostenendo, al contrario, che essi avevano raggiunto e colonizzato le regioni dell’interno prima dei Bantu, e non dopo.

Sia come sia, i Boeri sostennero due guerre contro l’imperialismo britannico: una, vittoriosa, nel 1880-81, ed una, assai più dura, nel 1899-1902, terminata con la piena sconfitta della pur coraggiosa resistenza boera, guidata dal leggendario presidente Krüger. Il conflitto era stato reso inevitabile non solo dai grandiosi progetti espansionistici dell’imperialismo inglese, impersonato in Africa da uomini come il finanziere Cecil Rhodes e dal celebre slogan “dal Cairo al Capo” (di Buona Speranza), ma anche e soprattutto dalla scoperta di ricchi giacimenti auriferi e di miniere di diamanti nel territorio delle due Repubbliche boere.

Non fu, quest’ultima, una vittoria di cui l’immenso Impero Britannico poté andar fiero: esso riuscì a piegare la resistenza di quel piccolo e tenace popolo di contadini-allevatori solo dopo che ebbe messo in campo tutte le risorse umane, materiali e finanziarie di cui poteva disporre nei cinque continenti e solo dopo che i suoi comandanti ebbero fatto ricorso alla tattica della terra bruciata, distruggendo fattorie e raccolti, e soprattutto trasferendo ed internando la popolazione boera nei campi di concentramento, ove a migliaia morirono di stenti e di malattie.

È pur vero che la pace, firmata a Pretoria il 31 maggio 1902, ed il successivo trattato di Veereniging, che sanciva la sovranità britannica sulle due Repubbliche, accordarono ai vinti delle condizioni relativamente miti, se non addirittura generose. In particolare, il governo inglese si accollò l’onere del debito di guerra contratto dal governo del presidente Krüger, che ammontava alla bellezza di 3 milioni di lire dell’epoca, ed accordò uno statuto giuridico speciale alla lingua neerlandese, non riconoscendo ancora la specificità della lingua afrikaans.

È degno di rilievo il fatto che nel trattato di stabiliva esplicitamente la clausola che ai neri non sarebbe stato concesso il diritto di voto, ad eccezione di quelli residenti nella Colonia del Capo, in cui i coloni inglesi costituivano la maggioranza bianca; perché, nell’Orange e nel Transvaal, i Boeri non avrebbero mai accettato una eventualità del genere, e sia pure in prospettiva futura.

L’intenzione del governo britannico era quella di integrare progressivamente i Boeri nella propria cultura, a cominciare dall’educazione e dalla lingua; ma il progetto di anglicizzare i Boeri attraverso la scuola si rivelò fallimentare e nel 1906, con l’avvento al governo di Londra del Partito Liberale, esso venne abbandonato. Non solo: le autorità britanniche dovettero riconoscere l’afrikaans come lingua distinta dal neerlandese e questo rappresentò un primo passo verso il rovesciamento dei rapporti di forza, all’interno della comunità bianca sudafricana, tra i coloni di origine britannica e quelli di origine boera.

Picture: Manie Maritz

Un altro passo fu la nascita, il 31 maggio 1910, dell’Unione Sudafricana, grazie alla riunione delle quattro colonie del Capo, del Natal, dell’Orange e del Transvaal: a soli otto anni dalla conclusione di una guerra straordinariamente sanguinosa e crudele, caratterizzata da pratiche inumane tipicamente “moderne”, quali la distruzione dei raccolti, il trasferimento forzato di intere popolazioni ed il loro internamento in veri e propri lager, il Sudafrica diventava un Dominion autonomo nell’ambito dell’Impero britannico, con una maggioranza afrikaner; processo che sarebbe culminato nel 1931 con la conquista della piena indipendenza, votata dal Parlamento di Londra con il cosiddetto Statuto di Westminster.

Un episodio poco noto al pubblico occidentale è quello della rivolta anti-britannica scoppiata nell’Unione Sudafricana nel 1914, sotto la guida dei generali boeri Manie Maritz e De Wet, in coincidenza con lo scoppio della prima guerra mondiale, cui l’Unione medesima partecipò al fianco della Gran Bretagna, soprattutto per il deciso appoggio dato alla causa britannica da uomini prestigiosi della comunità afrikaner come Louis Botha e Jan Smuts.

In effetti, non tutte le ferite dell’ultimo conflitto erano state sanate e una parte della popolazione afrikaner, animata da forti sentimenti nazionalisti, non immemore della simpatia (sia pure solamente verbale) mostrata dal kaiser Wilhelm II Hohenzollern per la causa boera, ritenne giunto il momento della riscossa e si dissociò dal governo di Pretoria, invocando, anzi, la lotta aperta contro gli Inglesi al fianco della Germania.

Al di là del corso inferiore dell’Orange, dal 1884, si era costituita la colonia tedesca dell’Africa Sudoccidentale (oggi Namibia) e i capi afrikaner insorti speravano che da lì – o, più verosimilmente, da una rapida vittoria degli eserciti tedeschi in Europa – sarebbero giunti gli aiuti necessari per sconfiggere le forze britanniche e per rialzare la bandiera dell’indipendenza boera sulle terre dell’Orange e del Transvaal.

Così ha rievocato quella vicenda lo storico francese Bernard Lugan, “Maître de Conferences” all’Università di Lione III, specialista di storia dell’Africa e per dieci anni professore all’Università del Ruanda, nel suo libro Storia del Sudafrica dall’antichità a oggi (titolo originale: Histoire de l’Afrique du Sud de l’Antiquité a nos jours, Paris, Librairie Académique Perrin, 1986; traduzione italiana di L. A. Martinelli, Milano, Garzanti, 1989, pp. 195-99):

«Quando, il 4 agosto 1914, scoppi la guerra, l’Unione Sudafricana si trovò automaticamente impegnata, in quanto Dominion britannico, a fianco degli Inglesi, ossia nel campo dell’Intesa. Ne risentì immediatamente la coesione fra le due componenti bianche della popolazione. Gli anglofoni accettarono l’entrata in guerra come un dovere verso la madrepatria, mentre gli Afrikaner si divisero in due gruppi: il primo, uniformandosi alle vedute di Botha e di Smuts, proclamò la propria solidarietà con la Gran Bretagna, il secondo, con alla testa Hertzog, propose che l’Unione rimanesse neutrale fino a quando non avesse a subire un attacco diretto. Il fondatore del Partito nazionalista rifiutava ogni obbligo diretto, ed affermava il diritto del Sudafrica di decidere liberamente, in situazioni drammatiche come quella presente. Quando, nel settembre 1914, il Parlamento di Città del Capo accolse la richiesta di Londra di arruolare nell’Unione un corpo militare per l’occupazione dell’Africa sud-occidentale tedesca, in una larga parte dell’opinione pubblica afrikaner le reazioni furono violente. Scoppiò un’insurrezione, capeggiata dagli antichi generali boeri Manie Maritz e De Wet, che si diffuse rapidamente fra gli ufficiali superiori dell’esercito sudafricano: dodicimila uomini, per lo più originari dell’Orange, presero le armi contro il loro governo. Sembrava imminente una guerra civile fra Afrikaner, e il rischio era grande perché i ribelli avevano proclamato la Repubblica sudafricana:

“PROCLAMA

DELLA RESTAURAZINE

DELLA REPUBBLICA SUDAFRICANA

Al popolo del Sudafrica:

Il giorno della liberazione è giunto. Il popolo boero del Sudafrica è già insorto ed ha iniziato la guerra contro

LA DOMINAZIONE BRITANNICA, DETESTATA ED IMPOSTA.

Le truppe della Nuova Repubblica Sudafricana hanno già ingaggiato la lotta contro le truppe governative britanniche.

Il governo della Repubblica Sudafricana è provvisoriamente rappresentato dai signori

Generale MARITZ

maggiore DE VILLIERS

maggiore JAN DE WAAL-CALVINIA

Il Governo restituirà al popolo sudafricano l’indipendenza che l’Inghilterra gli ha sottratto dodici anni or sono.

Cittadini, compatrioti, voi tutti che desiderate vedere libero il Sudafrica,

NON MANCATE DI COMPIRE IL VOSTRO DOVERE VERSO L’AMATA

E BELLA BANDIERA “VIERKLEUR”!

Unitevi sino all’ultimo uomo per ristabilire la vostra libertà e il vostro diritto!

IL GOVERNO GERMANICO,LA CUI VITTORIA È GIÀ SICURA, HA PER PRIMO RICONOSCIUTO ALLA REPUBBLICA SUDAFRICANA IL DIRITTO DI ESISTERE, ed ha con ciò stesso mostrato di non avere alcuna intenzione di intraprendere la conquista del Sudafrica come hanno preteso i signori Botha e Smuts al Parlamento dell’Unione.

Kakamas, Repubblica Sudafricana, ottobre 1914.

IL GOVERNO DELLA REPUBBLICA SUDAFRICANA

(Firmato) MARITZ, DE VILLIERS, JAN DE WAAL”.

Botha decise di proclamare la legge marziale il 12 ottobre, due giorni dopo che Maritz, alla testa di un reggimento sudafricano, aveva disertato per raggiungere le truppe germaniche proclamando la propria intenzione di invadere la provincia del Capo. I sostenitori più irriducibili della causa boera giudicavano la Germania capace di infliggere all’Inghilterra una sconfitta definitiva, e che quindi si presentasse loro un’occasione unica per prendersi la rivincita sui vincitori del 1902, e restituire il Sudafrica agli Afrikaner. Ma il movimento fu disordinato: i “kommando”, organizzati frettolosamente, male armati, malvisti da una parte della popolazione che aveva appena finito di medicare le ferite del 1899-1902, non furono in grado di affrontare le unità dell’esercito regolare. Gli ultimi ribelli si arresero il 2 febbraio 1915.

Poté così cominciare la campagna contro l’Africa sud-occidentale tedesca. Londra aveva fatto sapere che essa sarebbe stata considerata come un servizio reso all’Impero, e di conseguenza l’Impero ne avrebbe tratto dei vantaggi politici al momento del trattato di pace.

La sproporzione delle forze era tale che i Tedeschi non potevano far altro che cercar di ritardare una sconfitta inevitabile. Disponevano di 1.600 effettivi, rinforzati da 6.000 riservisti mobilitabili su di una popolazione bianca di 6.000 persone. Il colonnello Heydebreck non poté impedire la manovra sudafricana: Botha sbarcò a Swakompund cin 12.000 uomini, Smuts a Lüderitz con 6.000, ed oltre 30.000 uomini passarono il fiume Orange. Il 5 maggio 1915 venne occupata Windhoek, la capitale della colonia tedesca; una sporadica resistenza continuò ancora, favorita dalla vastità della steppa, fino al 9 luglio 1915, quando ad Otavi fu sottoscritta la resa delle truppe del Reich. La campagna era stata breve e le perdite umane limitate: con essa Botha diede all’Unione il protettorato sull’Africa sud-occidentale.

Alle elezioni generali dell’ottobre 1915 Botha dovette affrontare l’opposizione sempre più forte del Partito nazionale di Hertzog. I nazionalisti afrikaner respingevano nuove forme di partecipazione del Sudafrica alla guerra, e in particolare si opponevano all’invio di contingenti in Africa orientale. Per esprimere e difendere gli interessi afrikaner durante la campagna elettorale il Partito nazionale diede vita a un proprio giornale, “Die Burger”.

Botha conservò la maggioranza in Parlamento con 54 seggi, ai quali si aggiunsero i 40 seggi ottenuti dagli Unionisti che appoggiavano la politica militare del primo ministro. Tuttavia il Partito nazionale, con 27 seggi, poté far sentire la propria voce: da quel momento si sarebbero dovuti fare i conti anche con esso.

Nel 1916 fu inviato in Tanganica un corpo di 15.000 Sudafricani in rinforzo al’armata inglese che, quantunque numerosa, non riusciva ad aver ragione delle truppe tedesche del generale Lettow-Vorbeck. Nell’agosto del 1914 quest’ultimo – allora colonnello – aveva a disposizione aveva a disposizione solo 3.000 europei e 16.000 ascari per la difesa dell’intera Africa orientale tedesca: ma con queste scarsissime forze e senza ricevere rifornimenti alla madrepatria resistette fino al novembre 1918 ad oltre 250.000 soldati britannici, belgi, sudafricani e portoghesi. Nella guerra di imboscate con la quale Alleati e Tedeschi si affrontarono nel Tanganica meridionale, il contingente sudafricano, comandato prima del generale Smuts e in seguito dal generale Van Deventer, ebbe una parte di primo piano.

La 1a Brigata sudafricana sbarcò a Marsiglia il 15 aprile 1916. Incorporata nella 9a Divisione scozzese fu inviata nel giugno sul fronte della Somme, ove fra il 14 e il 19 giugno i volontari si distinsero nei combattimenti del bosco di Delville, mantenendo le loro posizioni a prezzo di fortissime perdite: 121 ufficiali su 126 e 3.032 soldati su 3.782. Ricostituita con l’arrivo di altri volontari, la brigata prese parte nel 1917 alla battaglia di Vimy e di Ypres, e nel 1918 alla battaglia di Amiens, nel corso della quale perdette 1.300 uomini su 1.800 impegnati nel combattimento. Fu ricostituita per la terza volta e poté partecipare alle ultime fasi della guerra.

In complesso l’Unione Sudafricana fornì agli Alleati un contingente di 200.000 uomini, dei quali 12.452 caddero in guerra. Sempre più numerosi divennero gli Afrikaner che non vollero più esere chiamati obbligatoriamente a combattere per la Gran Bretagna, ben decisi a conquistarsi un autonomia maggiore e magari una totale indipendenza. Su questo punto Hertzog non ottenne a Versailles alcuna soddisfazione, perché gli Alleati confermarono la situazione esistente pur offrendo all’Unione un mandato sull’Africa sud-occidentale».

 

Paradossalmente, proprio la presenza di un protettorato germanico sulla sponda settentrionale del fiume Orange, ai confini della Provincia del Capo, aveva svolto una funzione importante nel rafforzare i legami fra l’Unione Sudafricana e la madrepatria britannica, dal momento che la componente inglese della popolazione bianca sudafricana aveva vissuto con disagio quella vicinanza, se non con un vero e proprio senso di pericolo.

Nel 1878, la Colonia del Capo aveva ottenuto da Londra un tiepido consenso ad occupare la Baia della Balena, enclave strategica in quella che ancora non era la colonia tedesca dell’Africa sud-occidentale; ma quando, nel 1884, quasi da un giorno all’altro, il cancelliere Bismarck aveva proclamato il protettorato del Reich, cogliendo del tutto alla sprovvista il Foreign Office, quella sensazione di minaccia si era concretizzata quasi dal nulla e certamente svolse un ruolo importante nel rinsaldare il legame di fedeltà del Dominion con l’Inghilterra, prima e durante la guerra mondiale del 1914-18.

Una situazione analoga si era verificata, in quegli stessi anni, con il Dominion dell’Australia (e, in minor misura, della Nuova Zelanda): la presenza tedesca nell’Oceano Pacifico, specialmente nella Nuova Guinea nord-orientale, nell’Arcipelago di Bismarck e nelle isole Marshall, Marianne, Palau e Caroline, oltre che in una parte delle Samoa, abilmente sfruttata dalla propaganda inglese, generò una sorta di psicosi nell’opinione pubblica australiana che, in cerca di protezione da una possibile minaccia germanica, fu spinta a cercare nel rafforzamento dei legami morali e ideali con la madrepatria uno scudo contro i Tedeschi (la stessa cosa si sarebbe ripetuta nel 1941, questa volta nei confronti della minaccia giapponese, ben più concreta e immediata).

Per quel che riguarda la rivolta boera di Maritz e De Wet, il suo rapido fallimento fu dovuto alla scarsa adesione della popolazione boera: scarsa adesione che fu l’effetto non già di un sentimento di solidarietà o di una problematica “riconoscenza” verso la Gran Bretagna, entrambe impossibili e per varie ragioni, quanto piuttosto, come evidenzia Bernard Lugan, per la stanchezza dovuta alla prova durissima del 1899-1902 e per il desiderio di non riaprire troppo presto quelle ferite e di non mettere a repentaglio, e in circostanze a dir poco incerte, quei margini di autonomia che, bene o male, il governo inglese a aveva riconosciuto ai Boeri.

Si trattava, come abbiamo visto, di margini di autonomia che essi, specie attraverso l’azione politica dei nazionalisti di Hertzog e Malan, erano decisi ad allargare per via pacifica, ma con estrema determinazione, fino alle ultime conseguenze, stando però attenti a giocare bene le loro carte e a non esporsi, con una mossa imprudente, ad una nuova sconfitta, con tutti gli effetti politici negativi che ciò avrebbe inevitabilmente comportato.

In questo senso, il fatto che solo con estrema fatica, e solo dopo due anni dall’inizio della guerra, l’Unione Sudafricana accettasse di inviare un consistente corpo di spedizione contro l’Africa Orientale Tedesca (la breve campagna contro l’Africa Sud-occidentale tedesca del 1915 era stata solo il naturale corollario del fallimento della rivolta boera); e che, nel 1917-18, una sola brigata venisse inviata a combattere fuori del continente africano, mentre forze canadesi, australiane e neozelandesi ben più consistenti stavano combattendo o avevano già combattuto al fianco della Gran Bretagna, in Europa e nel Medio Oriente (campagna di Gallipoli), sta a testimoniare quanto poco l’opinione pubblica sudafricana fosse giudicata “sicura” all’interno del sistema imperiale e quanto poco affidabili le truppe sudafricane, soprattutto boere, in una campagna militare che si svolgesse lontano dai confini dell’Unione e che, quindi, non presentasse un carattere chiaramente difensivo.

Anche il “mandato” sulla ex Africa Sud-occidentale tedesca, in effetti, si deve leggere soprattutto come un palliativo ideato dal governo di Londra che, tramite i suoi buoni uffici presso la Società delle Nazioni, intendeva dare un contentino al nazionalismo afrikaner, sempre illudendosi di poter allontanare la resa dei conti con il partito di Hertzog e Malan e la perdita di ogni effettiva sovranità sul Sudafrica e sulle sue immense ricchezze minerarie.

Si trattò, invece, di un calcolo miope, che non servì a distrarre l’attenzione dei nazionalisti afrikaner dal perseguimento della piena indipendenza e che, viceversa, creò i presupposti per una ulteriore complicazione internazionale: perché, come è noto, il governo sudafricano considerò il mandato sull’Africa Sud-occidentale come una semplice finzione giuridica e il Parlamento sudafricano legiferò nel senso di una vera e propria annessione di quel territorio e non certo nella prospettiva di avviarlo all’indipendenza.

Non bisogna mai dimenticare che l’Impero britannico, nel 1914, comprendeva un quarto delle terre emerse e un complesso di territori, come l’India, abitati da centinaia di milioni di persone, con ricchezze materiali incalcolabili. Lo storico del Novecento e, in particolare, lo storico delle due guerre mondiali, non dovrebbe mai prescindere dalla ferma, tenace volontà dei governi inglesi, specialmente conservatori, di difendere in ogni modo quell’immenso patrimonio, nella convinzione di poter trovare la formula politica per allentare, forse, la stretta, ma di conservare la sostanza di quella situazione, estremamente invidiabile per la madrepatria.

I governanti britannici erano talmente convinti di poter riuscire nell’impresa che perfino Churchill, firmando, nel 1941, la Carta Atlantica insieme a Roosevelt, nella quale si sanciva il solenne impegno anglo-americano in favore della libertà e dell’autodecisione dei popoli, era lontanissimo dal supporre che solo sei anni dopo l’Inghilterra avrebbe dovuto riconoscere l’indipendenza dell’India e del Pakistan, cuore e vanto di quell’Impero.

Essi temevano l’effetto domino di qualunque rinuncia coloniale sul resto dell’Impero ed è per questo che repressero con tanta ferocia l’insurrezione di Pasqua del 1916, a Dublino, salvo poi concedere all’Irlanda, ma solo a guerra finita, una indipendenza mutilata, conservando quell’Ulster in cui, fra nazionalisti protestanti e indipendentisti cattolici, si sarebbero riprodotte, ma a parti rovesciate, le stesse dinamiche distruttive del Sudafrica, diviso fra bianchi di origine inglese e bianchi di origine boera, dopo la vittoria militare inglese del 1902.

La storia ci mostra che non sempre chi vince sul piano militare vince anche, nel medio e nel lungo periodo, sul piano politico.

Tale fu anche il caso del Sudafrica, dopo la conquista britannica del 1902; e, in questo senso, anche la fallita insurrezione boera del 1914, forse, deve essere valutata più come il primo annuncio della futura indipendenza del Sudafrica dall’Inghilterra, che come l’ultimo sussulto della precedente guerra anglo-boera.

Francesco Lamendola

South African Nationalist Manie Maritz

South African Nationalist Manie Maritz

Ex: http://xtremerightcorporate.blogspot.com/

Salomon Gerhardus Maritz was undoubtedly the most troublesome Boer nationalist for Great Britain for the longest time. He might not have been the best at what he did but long after more able Boer leaders embraced the British Empire he continued to resist. Maritz was to oppose the British in the Boer War, in his own rebellion in World War I and even leading up to World War II by becoming something of an Afrikaner Nazi. Few could be said to be as devoted a defender of Boer nationhood than General Maritz and he spent his life in the service of Boer independence. He was born on July 26, 1876 into an old and illustrious Boer family and as a young man he served in the Jameson Raid which sparked the Second Boer War in which he served with distinction. Maritz was one of the irreconcilables but nonetheless when British rule prevailed and many Boers began collaborating and even running South Africa again to a large extent he went with the times and eventually became the governor of a military district based at Upington.

Yet, the Boer Wars were hard for the Afrikaners to overcome. Truth be told the British had been magnanimous conquerors and South Africa had prospered under British rule but bitter memories still remained. For many, such as Maritz, it did not matter how gentle the British had been after the war it did not erase their memories of the succession of British invasions, the wars of conquest or the British concentration camps where Boer women and children died horribly of disease and starvation. Men like Maritz were simply biding their time for yet another opportunity to take their revenge and drive out the British and with the coming of World War I it seemed that their chance had come. Making common cause with the Germans only seemed natural. During the Boer War the Germans were openly sympathetic to the Afrikaners and Kaiser Wilhelm II had got into some controversy with his British cousins over his words to Boer leader Paul Kruger. German colonial forces in Africa were very weak compared to the surrounding Allied powers and the colony of German Southwest Africa in particular knew they would soon come under attack by the British in South Africa. Their only hope for survival was for a Boer rebellion which would throw the British off balance and allow the Germans and the Afrikaners to unite against them.

The British themselves were rather worried about how the Boers would respond to the outbreak of war with Germany and with good reason. Of the three preeminent Boer leaders from the freedom wars; Louis Botha, Christiaan De Wet and Jacobus Hercules (Koos) De la Rey only Botha was considered reliably loyal to the British. Many Afrikaners took divergent positions based on different motives but a sizeable minority at least were not prepared to fight against a nation that had sympathized with them in their own struggle for freedom in the service of those who had conquered them. The First World War was their opportunity to take revenge and the Germans counted on this, stockpiling a great deal of weapons and ammunition to equip the rebel Boer army they hoped would soon emerge. The Germans had been spreading the word for some time that with their help the Boers could drive out the British and establish a greater empire for themselves in Africa more to their own liking. As war erupted in Europe both sides began to form up in South Africa.

Louis Botha, newly elected Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, pledged his loyalty to the British Empire and agreed with London to launch the conquest of German Southwest Africa which many Boers opposed. Christiaan De Wet was advocating opposition to Britain and alliance with Germany and General Koos De la Rey, who was believed to be on the side of rebellion, was gunned down by British police before his influence could have effect. Likewise, Christiaan Frederik Beyers, commandant-general of the Union of South Africa Defense Force, resigned his position to join the rebel faction as did General Jap Christoffel Greyling Kemp who was in charge of the training post at Potchefstroom. However, the most dangerous of them all was Colonel Salomon Gerhardus (Manie) Maritz who was to have been on the front lines of the invasion of German territory. Maritz was sent orders to report to Pretoria in the hopes of neutralizing him but he smelled the trap and ignored the order. War might have been headed for German Southwest Africa but it was to hit South Africa first.

British intelligence reported that Maritz and his officers were openly speaking of joining the Germans. True enough, Maritz announced his intention to ally with the Germans to his commandos and his allegiance to the provisional rebel government of the former Boer republics. He proclaimed the independence of South Africa, the Orange Free State, Cape Province and Natal and called upon the White population to join him and their German comrades in revolt against the British. It was October, 1914, and Maritz gave his men one minute to decide whether they were on the side of the Boer-German alliance or the British. Most followed their commander but about 60 remained loyal to Britain and were duly handed over to the Germans as prisoners of war. Rallies were held, speeches were given, and passionate appeals on behalf of Afrikaner nationalism were voiced as the rebellion seemed to be catching on. Beyers, De Wet, Maritz, Kemp and Bezuidenhout were chosen to lead the provisional Boer government and newly promoted General Manie Maritz occupied Keimos around Upington which had been his previous area of operations. Fighting broke out in local clashes between rebel and loyalist factions.

 

On October 26, 1914 the British side made the state of war clear when Louis Botha personally took command of the forces assembling to crush the Boer rebellion. It was the first and so far only time that a British Empire/Commonwealth prime minister led troops into battle while in office. Moreover, this was especially difficult for old Boer soldiers like Botha and Jan Smuts who would be fighting against their own people, many of them their own comrades from the previous wars against the British. However, Botha and Smuts were truly committed to the Allied cause and when Australian troops on their way to Europe were offered to help crush the rebellion Botha refused and preferred to use loyalist Afrikaners to suppress the rebel Afrikaners so as not to exacerbate the Boer-British ethnic tensions which were obviously already running high. Volunteers, reserves, support personnel and the like were all mobilized in this massive effort by the Union government to stamp out the uprising before the Boer rebels spread their influence and forged a coordinating strategy with the Germans which would have been disastrous.

The Boer rebels were busy as well. General De Wet took his Lydenburg commandos and seized Heilbron and captured a British train which provided a wealth of supplies and ammunition. Soon De Wet had 3,000 men under arms while General Beyers mobilized more in the Magaliesberg in addition to those already assembled around Upington under General Maritz. On the loyalist side, Botha took command of 6,000 cavalry and some field guns assembled at Vereeniging in the Transvaal with the aim of destroying De Wet. Martial law was declared and overwhelming government force was brought down on the rebels. General Maritz was defeated on October 24 but escaped into German Southwest Africa where he continued his own resistance. Botha caught General De Wet at a farmhouse in Mushroom Valley and broke the Boer rebels on November 12. General De Wet and a remnant of his men retreated into the unassuming but brutal Kalahari Desert. General Beyers and his commandos met with an initial defeat at Commissioners Drift after which he joined forces with General Kemp. However, they too were beaten and Beyers drowned while trying to escape across the Vaal River. Kemp led the rest of his men to safety in German territory to join up with General Maritz but only after a long and brutal march across the Kalahari. Kemp was eventually captured in 1915 though by his former comrade General Jaap van Deventer after which he served time in prison and went on to become minister of agriculture in 1924.

The potential Boer rebellion had been crushed in its infancy and Prime Minister Botha went ahead with his invasion of German Southwest Africa. On hand to oppose him was Manie Maritz who had no intention of giving up so easily. He was aided by the fact that the Germans had probably the best colonial army in Africa and although hopelessly outnumbered they fought with considerable skill and tenacity. Early German victories hurled the British invasion back and forced Botha to take a more careful approach. He heard of General Maritz again when the rebel Afrikaner took his Boer troops and with German assistance attacked his former base at Upington, inflicting quite a bloody nose before General van Deventer beat them back. The Union troops faced stiff German resistance, harassing artillery fire, poisoned water wells and land mines in their march into the interior of Southwest Africa. The Germans won a number of stunning victories but eventually the strength of British numbers, some 60,000 troops, proved impossible to overcome and German Southwest Africa was conquered. The British also liberated the loyalists Maritz had turned over to the Germans when they took Tsumeb where the Germans had also been keeping their weapons stockpile for the Boer rebellion.

However, the rebellious General Manie Maritz was not to be captured having escaped yet again, this time to the safety of then neutral Portuguese West Africa (Angola). For the rest of the war years he traveled to Portugal itself and later Spain before returning to his native South Africa in 1923. Once back he proved just as troublesome for the British as he ever had and still somewhat attached to Germany as time would tell. In 1936 he organized a South African Nazi type party with typical anti-Semitic rhetoric thrown into the mix. Of course, in reality, Jews were hardly a presence in South Africa, but it was part of an overall Afrikaner nationalist program and to the disgust of the British and pro-Union South Africans he continued his agitation even after the start of World War II. He did not live to see the final defeat of Nazi Germany though as he died in a car wreck on December 19, 1940 in Pretoria. A lifelong Afrikaner nationalist and enemy of Great Britain he certainly regretted nothing. It would be easy to say (and many have) that the entire Maritz rebellion and the German defeat in Namibia were an exercise in futility and a complete waste of time. However, although the Boers remained subject to Britain and the Germans lost what was arguably their most profitable colony, in a way the German and Boer campaigns were a success for the Central Powers in that they delayed considerably the mobilization of South African troops for use against the more formidable German colonial army in German East Africa (which went on a rampage) and they prevented any transfer of South African troops to the western front during the vital battles fought in 1914. That being said, the evaluation of these actions still depends a great deal on the point of view of the observer. To the British and loyalists General Maritz was a traitor of the blackest sort, a collaborator and ranked at the top of the list of enemies of the British Empire. However, General Maritz is still revered by some Afrikaner nationalists for his dogged defiance and by modern day neo-Nazi Boers who think he was on the right side in World War II as well.

Lépante et sa signification actuelle

Lépante et sa signification actuelle

par Jean-Gilles MALLIARAKIS

Ex: http://www.insolent.fr/

Comme tous les événements historiques, comme tous les anniversaires, la bataille de Lépante peut prêter à des discours extrêmement contradictoires. La victoire navale de la flotte commandée par Don Juan d'Autriche remonte au 7 octobre 1571. Certains commémoreront donc cet automne son 440e anniversaire. Sur le fond, on doit leur donner, par avance, raison. Rien ne se révèle pire que l'oubli, pas même les contresens d'un soir, d'une manifestation ou d'un discours. Oswald Spengler considérait, et il écrivit un jour "qu'au dernier moment c'est toujours un peloton de soldats qui sauve la civilisation". On a bien oublié de nos jours ce représentant de la révolution conservatrice. Et cette conception héroïque disconvient à notre époque où on se préoccupe plus de sécurité alimentaire que de défense des frontières.

Un petit mot quand même sur ce premier défi lancé à l'empire ottoman. Depuis le salutaire coup d'arrêt donné, sur l'Adriatique, par Skanderbeg (1405-1468) au XVe siècle (1), les armées de la Sublime Porte semblaient aux Européens pratiquement invincibles. Si l'on accorde la première place à l'action militaire, on ne peut que saluer cette expédition partie de Messine. Elle infligea une défaite matériellement considérable à la marine turque. Sur une flotte de 300 bâtiments, celle-ci subit la destruction de 50 navires et la capture de 100 par les chrétiens coalisés. 15 000 captifs européens furent libérés. Au nombre des 8 000 blessés occidentaux on doit rappeler au moins le nom de Cervantès.

On a présenté cette opération comme une sorte de 13e croisade. Et feu Oussama bin Laden la qualifierait certainement ainsi. Honnêtement toutefois, cette numérotation ne veut pas dire grand-chose, à moins de s'en tenir à la définition faussement stricte qu'on donne classiquement : Urbain II au concile de Clermont en 1095 aurait donné le signal de la première, oublions la quatrième et l'abomination de 1204 (2), retenons que le pontificat romain de saint Pie V (1567-1572) préconisa celle-ci, effectivement aboutie à Lépante. Soulignons que la résistance chrétienne à l'expansion de l'islam et aux persécutions des califes et de émirs avait commencé beaucoup plus tôt. Et elle reprendra.

En l'occurrence cette victoire de l'occident appartient à la gloire de l'Espagne. Le règne de Philippe II est ordinairement présenté aujourd'hui sous le jour le plus négatif. Lorsque le réalisateur indien Shekhar Kapur consacra en 2007 un [excellent] film à la gloire d'Elizabeth Ire et à son "Âge d'or" on doit déplorer qu'il présente, à l'inverse, la Cour de Madrid et tous les catholiques comme un ramassis de benêts obscurantistes. Une telle impression mensongère s'impose efficacement au spectateur mal informét. Or, s'il importe, par ailleurs, de cerner la provenance des mythes mémoriels, et si la tâche des historiens consiste à leur tordre le cou, la question la plus urgente porte sur leurs conséquences actuelles. Les pays protestants de l'Europe du nord ont été confrontés aux mêmes périls, et ils le seront plus encore dans les temps à venir.

Au moment où le Pape appelait à la lutte contre la menace islamique qui pesait au XVIe siècle sur l'Empire vénitien, d'autres croyaient nécessaire d'attiser les guerres de religion qui dévastaient la France et qui, deux générations plus tard, ruineront l'Allemagne. Le "roi très chrétien", en l'occurrence les trois derniers Valois, quoique le royaume des Lys ait atteint les rives de la Méditerranée, s'abstint de participer à une ligue, où s'impliquèrent au contraire toutes les nationalités de l'Europe du sud. Celle-ci se constitua solennellement en mai, on ne l'a pas célébré. Elle assemblait Venise et Gênes, le duché de Savoie et le royaume de Naples, le roi d'Espagne, les États pontificaux, et les chevaliers de Malte. Cette coalition manqua de cohésion au-delà de la bataille. Elle renonça même après sa victoire à l'objet qui l'avait vu naître : la menace ottomane sur Chypre. La Sérénissime république de Vénitiens, dont la préoccupation commerciale dominait la politique, céda en 1573 l'île d'Aphrodite aux sultans de Constantinople. Le trône d'Osman était occupé par le fort médiocre Sélim II l'Ivrogne. Son empire ne fut sauvé que par un Slave de Bosnie le grand vizir Mehmed-pacha Sokolli. (3)

Tout ceci peut paraître bien lointain. J'avoue la faiblesse de considérer qu'il s'agit d'un scénario parfaitement cohérent et actuel. Chypre resta captive entre les mains de son conquérant pendant 300 ans, comme l'Espagne avait subi 800 ans le joug islamique. (4) Il vaut mieux ne jamais perdre les guerres, et même quand on l'emporte il faut savoir consolider sa victoire et gagner la paix.

Au-delà de tels truismes eux-mêmes oubliés, les souvenirs événementiels demeurent également indispensables. La résistance chrétienne que représente Lépante sera continuée, plus tard, par l'Autriche des Habsbourg en Europe centrale et dans les Balkans, puis par la Russie des tsars.

Aujourd'hui où l'on nous berce de "l'union pour la Méditerranée", autre nom du projet "Eurabia", on veut nous faire oublier au-delà même des batailles la vraie menace d'autodestruction, pire encore que de conquête, qui pèse sur tous les Européens. Baisser la garde face au choc des civilisations, forme un seul et même projet avec celui d'effacer nos racines et de renoncer à nos libertés.

JG Malliarakis

Apostilles

1. Sur ce héros [oublié] de la chrétienté, vainqueur des Turcs, on lira avec plaisir le livre de Camille Paganel, "Histoire de Skanderbeg".
2. On se reportera utilement à la petite "Histoire de l'empire Byzantin" de Charles Diehl.
3. Issu du cruel mais efficace système appelé "devichirmé" – la cueillette – cet enfant arraché à sa famille, islamisé de force et formé pour servir de cadre à l'État, sera grand vizir de trois sultans successifs. Sur 26 grands vizirs dont on connaît l'origine, 11 semblent avoir été albanais, 6 grecs, 5 turcs, les autres tcherkesses, italiens, caucasiens ou serbes. C'est cela qui a permis à cet empire de durer.
4. cf. "La Conquête de l'Espagne par les Arabes" par Jules de Marlès.

Si cet article vous a intéressé ...
vous aimerez certainement "La Question turque et l'Europe" par JG Malliarakis
Du même auteur, vient de paraître "L'Alliance Staline Hitler".

Puisque vous appréciez l'Insolent
Adressez-lui votre libre contribution financière !

Präventivschlag Barbarossa

Stefan Scheil Präventivkrieg Barbarossa Fragen, Fakten, Antworten                  Band 26 der Reihe Kaplaken. 96 Seiten, kartoniert, fadengeheftet, 8.50 € ISBN: 978-3-935063-96-8 8,50 EUR incl. 7 % UST exkl. Versandkosten

Der Historiker Stefan Scheil ist einer der besten Kenner der Diplomatiegeschichte zwischen 1918 und 1945. In mehreren Büchern hat er Entfesselung und Eskalation des II. Weltkriegs analysiert und der platten These widersprochen, Deutschland sei alleinverantwortlich für dessen Ausbruch und Ausweitung. Im vorliegenden kaplaken faßt Scheil seine Studien zum deutschen Angriff auf die Sowjetunion im Jahr 1941 zusammen. Er stellt und beantwortet die Frage, ob es sich um einen Überfall oder einen Präventivkrieg gehandelt habe. Scheil geht in seiner Argumentation von vier Bedingungen aus, die jeden Präventivkrieg grundsätzlich kennzeichnen, und legt sie als Maßstab an das „Unternehmen Barbarossa“ an.     Scheils Untersuchung mündet in über 50 Fragen, die jeder aufmerksame Leser selbst beantworten kann, bevor Scheil die Antwort gibt. Wer die Argumentation nachvollzieht, wer die Äußerungen und Planungen von sowjetischer Seite liest und den geheimen Aufmarsch der Roten Armee an der Westgrenze Rußlands zur Kenntnis nimmt, kann zuletzt Scheils Fazit nur zustimmen: „Wenn das Unternehmen Barbarossa nicht als Präventivkrieg eingestuft werden kann, hat der Begriff Präventivkrieg seinen Sinn überhaupt verloren.“

François Mitterrand & the French Mystery

François Mitterrand & the French Mystery

Dominique Venner

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Translated by Greg Johnson

In the center of all the questions raised by the sinuous and contradictory path of François Mitterrand is the famous photograph of the interview granted to a young unknown, the future socialist president of the Republic, by Marshall Philippe Pétain in Vichy, on October 15th, 1942.

This document was known to some initiates, but it was verified by the interested party only in 1994, when he saw that his life was ending. Thirty years earlier, the day before the presidential election of 1965, the then Minister of the Interior, Roger Frey, had received a copy of it. He demanded an investigation which went back to a former local head of the prisoners’ association, to which François Mitterrand belonged. Present at the time of the famous interview, he had several negatives. In agreement with General de Gaulle, Roger Frey decided not to make them public.

Another member of the same movement of prisoners, Jean-Albert Roussel, also had a print. It is he who gave the copy to Pierre Péan for the cover of his book Une jeunesse française (A French youth), published by Fayard in September 1994 with the endorsement of the president.

Why did Mitterrand suddenly decide to make public his enthusiastic Pétainism in 1942–1943, which he had denied and dissimulated up to that point? It is not a trivial question.

Under the Fourth Republic, in December 1954, from the platform of the National Assembly, Raymond Dronne, former captain of the 2nd DB, now a Gaullist deputy, had challenged François Mitterrand, then Minister of the Interior: “I do not reproach you for having successively worn the fleur de lys and the francisque d’honneur [honors created by the Third Republic and Marhsall Pétain’s French State respectively – Trans.] . . .” “All that is false,” retorted Mitterrand. But Dronne replied without obtaining a response: “All that is true, and you know very well . . .”

The same subject was tackled again in the National Assembly, on February 1st, 1984, in the middle of a debate on freedom of the press. We were now under the Fifth Republic and François Mitterrand was the president. Three deputies of the opposition put a question. Since the past of Mr. Hersant (owner of Figaro) during the war had been discussed, why not speak about that of Mr. Mitterrand? The question was judged sacrilege. The socialist majority was indignant, and its president, Pierre Joxe, believed that the president of the Republic had been insulted. The three deputies were sanctioned, while Mr. Joxe declared loud and clear Mr. Mitterrand’s role in the Résistance.

This role is not contestable and is not disputed. But, according to the concrete legend imposed after 1945, a résistant past is incompatible with a Pétainist past. And then at the end of his life, Mr. Mitterrand suddenly decided to break with the official lie that he had endorsed. Why?

To be precise, before slowly becoming a résistant, Mr. Mitterrand had first been an enthusiastic Pétainist, like millions of French. First in his prison camp, then after his escape, in 1942, in Vichy where he was employed by the Légion des combattants, a large, inert society of war veterans. As Mitterrand found this Pétainisme too soft, he sought out some “pure and hard” (and very anti-German) Pétainists like Gabriel Jeantet, an old member of the Cagoule [the right-wing movement of the late 1930s dedicated to overthrowing the Third Republic – Trans.], chargé in the cabinet of the Marshal, one of his future patrons in the Ordre de la francisque.

On April 22nd, 1942, Mitterrand wrote to one his correspondents: “How will we manage to get France on her feet? For me, I believe only in this: the union of men linked by a common faith. It is the error of the Legion to have taken in masses whose only bond was chance: the fact of having fought does not create solidarity. Something along the lines of the SOL,[1] carefully selected and bound together by an oath based on the same core convictions. We need to organize a militia in France that would allow us to await the end of the German-Russian war without fear of its consequences . . .” This is a good summary of the muscular Pétainism of his time. Quite naturally, in the course of events — in particular after the American landing in North Africa of November 8th, 1942 — Mitterand’s Pétainism evolved into resistance.

The famous photograph published by Péan with the agreement of the president caused a political and media storm. On September 12th, 1994, the president, sapped by his cancer, had to explain himself on television under the somber gaze of Jean-Pierre Elkabbach. But against all expectation, the solitude of the accused, as well as his obvious physical distress, made the interrogation seem unjust, causing a feeling of sympathy: “Why are they picking on him?” It was an important factor that reconciled the French to their president. It was not an endorsement of a politician’s career. It was Mitterrand the man who had suddenly became interesting. He had acquired an unexpected depth, a tragic history that stirred an echo in the secret of the French mystery.

Note

1. The SOL (Service d’ordre légionnaire) was constituted in 1941 by Joseph Darnand, a former member of the Cagoule and hero of the two World Wars. This formation, by no means collaborationist, was made official on January 12th, 1942. In the new context of the civil war which is then spread, the SOL was transformed into the French Militia on January 31st, 1943. See the Nouvelle Revue d’Histoire, no. 47, p. 30, and my Histoire de la Collaboration (History of collaboration) (Pygmalion, 2002).

Source: http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/#/edito-nrh-54-mitterrand/3845286 ^[3]

---

Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/05/francois-mitterrand-and-the-french-mystery/

Croatie 1945: une nation décapitée

Christophe Dolbeau:

 

Croatie 1945: une nation décapitée

 

Particulièrement impitoyable, la guerre à laquelle fut confronté l’État Indépendant Croate entre 1941 et 1945 s’est achevée, en mai 1945, par l’ignoble massacre de Bleiburg (1). Tueries massives de prisonniers civils et militaires, marches de la mort, camps de concentration (2), tortures, pillages, tout est alors mis en œuvre pour écraser la nation croate et la terroriser durablement. La victoire militaire étant acquise (3), les communistes entreprennent, en effet, d’annihiler le nationalisme croate : pour cela, il leur faut supprimer les gens qui pourraient prendre ou reprendre les armes contre eux, mais aussi éliminer les « éléments socialement dangereux », c’est à dire la bourgeoisie et son élite intellectuelle « réactionnaire ». Pour Tito et les siens, rétablir la Yougoslavie et y installer définitivement le marxisme-léninisme implique d’anéantir tous ceux qui pourraient un jour s’opposer à leurs plans (4). L’Épuration répond à cet impératif : au nom du commode alibi antifasciste, elle a clairement pour objectif de décapiter l’adversaire. Le plus souvent d’ailleurs, on ne punit pas des fautes ou des crimes réels mais on invente toutes sortes de pseudo délits pour se débarrasser de qui l’on veut. Ainsi accuse-t-on, une fois sur deux, les Croates de trahison alors que personne n’ayant jamais (démocratiquement) demandé au peuple croate s’il souhaitait appartenir à la Yougoslavie, rien n’obligeait ce dernier à lui être fidèle ! Parallèlement, on châtie sévèrement ceux qui ont loyalement défendu leur terre natale, la Croatie.   De nouvelles lois permettent de s’affranchir des habituelles lenteurs judiciaires : lorsqu’on n’assassine pas carrément les gens au coin d’un bois, on les défère devant des cours martiales qui sont d’autant plus expéditives que les accusés y sont généralement privés de défense et contraints de plaider coupable…

 

Émanant d’un pouvoir révolutionnaire, aussi illégal qu’illégitime, cette gigantesque purge n’est pas seulement une parodie de justice mais c’est aussi une véritable monstruosité : en fait, on liquide des milliers d’innocents, uniquement parce qu’ils sont croates ou parce qu’on les tient pour idéologiquement irrécupérables et politiquement gênants. Au démocide (5) aveugle et massif qu’incarnent bien Bleiburg et les Marches de la Mort s’ajoute un crime encore plus pervers, celui que le professeur Nathaniel Weyl a baptisé aristocide et qui consiste à délibérément priver une nation de son potentiel intellectuel, spirituel, technique et culturel (« J’ai utilisé ce terme (aristocide) », écrit l’universitaire américain, « pour évoquer l’extermination de ce que Thomas Jefferson appelait ‘l’aristocratie naturelle des hommes’, celle qui repose sur ‘la vertu et le talent’ et qui constitue ‘le bien le plus précieux de la nature pour l’instruction, l’exercice des responsabilités et le gouvernement d’une société’. Jefferson estimait que la conservation de cette élite était d’une importance capitale »)-(6). Dans cette perspective, les nouvelles autorités ont quatre cibles prioritaires, à savoir les chefs militaires, les leaders politiques, le clergé et les intellectuels.

 

 

Delenda est Croatia

 

            Au plan militaire et contrairement à toutes les traditions de l’Europe civilisée, les communistes yougoslaves procèdent à l’élimination physique de leurs prisonniers, surtout s’ils sont officiers. Pour la plupart des cadres des Forces Armées Croates, il n’est pas question de détention dans des camps réservés aux captifs de leur rang, comme cela se fait un peu partout dans le monde (et comme le faisait le III^e Reich…). Pour eux, ce sont des cachots sordides, des violences et des injures, des procédures sommaires et au bout du compte, le gibet ou le poteau d’exécution. Il n’y a pas de circonstances atténuantes, aucun rachat n’est offert et aucune réinsertion n’est envisagée. Près de 36 généraux (7) sont ainsi « officiellement » liquidés et une vingtaine d’autres disparaissent dans des circonstances encore plus obscures. Colonels, commandants, capitaines, lieutenants et même aspirants – soit des gens d’un niveau culturel plutôt plus élevé que la moyenne – font l’objet d’un traitement spécialement dur et le plus souvent funeste. De cette façon, plusieurs générations de gens robustes et éduqués sont purement et simplement supprimées. Leur dynamisme, leur courage et leurs capacités feront cruellement défaut…

 

            Vis-à-vis du personnel politique non-communiste, les méthodes d’élimination sont tout aussi radicales. Les anciens ministres ou secrétaires d’État de la Croatie indépendante, tout au moins ceux que les Anglo-Saxons veulent bien extrader (8), sont tous rapidement condamnés à mort et exécutés (9). Les « tribunaux » yougoslaves n’établissent pas d’échelle des responsabilités et n’appliquent qu’une seule peine. Disparaissent dans cette hécatombe de nombreux hommes cultivés et expérimentés, certains réputés brillants (comme les jeunes docteurs Julije Makanec, Mehmed Alajbegović et Vladimir Košak), et dont beaucoup, il faut bien le dire, n’ont pas grand-chose à se reprocher. Leur honneur est piétiné et la nation ne bénéficiera plus jamais de leur savoir-faire. (Remarquons, à titre de comparaison, qu’en France, la plupart des ministres du maréchal Pétain seront vite amnistiés ou dispensés de peine). La même vindicte frappe la haute fonction publique : 80% des maires, des préfets et des directeurs des grands services de l’État sont assassinés, ce qui prive ex abrupto le pays de compétences et de dévouements éprouvés. On les remplacera au pied levé par quelques partisans ignares et l’incurie s’installera pour longtemps.  Moins brutalement traités (encore que plusieurs d’entre eux se retrouvent derrière les barreaux, à l’instar d’August Košutić ou d’Ivan Bernardic) mais tenus pour de dangereux rivaux, les dirigeants du Parti Paysan sont eux aussi irrémédiablement exclus de la scène politique ; leur formation politique, la plus importante du pays, est dissoute, tout comme les dizaines de coopératives et d’associations, sociales, culturelles, syndicales ou professionnelles, qui en dépendent… Coupé de ses repères traditionnels, le monde rural est désormais mûr pour la socialisation des terres et pour les calamiteuses « zadrougas » que lui impose l’omnipotente bureaucratie titiste.

 

Mort aux « superstitions »   

 

            Convaincus en bons marxistes que la religion est une superstition et que c’est bien « l’opium du peuple », les nouveaux dirigeants yougoslaves témoignent à l’égard des églises d’une hargne morbide. Les deux chefs de l’Église Orthodoxe Croate, le métropolite Germogen et l’éparque Spiridon Mifka sont exécutés ; âgé de 84 ans, le premier paie peut-être le fait d’avoir été, autrefois, le grand aumônier des armées russes blanches du Don… Du côté des évangélistes, l’évêque Filip Popp est lui aussi assassiné ; proche des Souabes, il était devenu encombrant… Vis-à-vis des musulmans, la purge n’est pas moins implacable : le mufti de Zagreb, Ismet Muftić, est publiquement pendu devant la mosquée (10) de la ville, tandis que dans les villages de Bosnie-Herzégovine, de nombreux imams et hafiz subissent un sort tout aussi tragique. Mais le grand ennemi des communistes demeure sans conteste l’Église Catholique contre laquelle ils s’acharnent tout particulièrement (11). Au cours de la guerre, le clergé catholique avait déjà fait l’objet d’une campagne haineuse, tant de la part des tchetniks orthodoxes que des partisans athées. Des dizaines de prêtres avaient été tués, souvent dans des conditions atroces comme les Pères Juraj Gospodnetić et Pavao Gvozdanić, tous deux empalés et rôtis sur un feu, ou les Pères Josip Brajnović et Jakov Barišić qui furent écorchés vifs (12). À la « Libération », cette entreprise d’extermination se poursuit : désignés comme « ennemis du peuple » et « agents de la réaction étrangère », des centaines de religieux sont emprisonnés et liquidés (13), les biens de l’Église sont confisqués et la presse confessionnelle interdite. « Dieu n’existe pas » (Nema Boga) récitent désormais les écoliers tandis que de son côté, l’académicien Marko Konstrenčić proclame fièrement que « Dieu est mort » (14). Au cœur de cette tempête anticléricale, la haute hiérarchie n’échappe pas aux persécutions : deux évêques (NN.SS. Josip Marija Carević et Janko Šimrak) meurent aux mains de leurs geôliers ; deux autres (NN.SS. Ivan Šarić et Josip Garić) doivent se réfugier à l’étranger ; l’archevêque de Zagreb (Mgr Stepinac) est condamné à 16 ans de travaux forcés et l’évêque de Mostar (Mgr Petar Čule) à 11 ans de détention. D’autres prélats (NN.SS. Frane Franić, Lajčo Budanović, Josip Srebrnić, Ćiril Banić, Josip Pavlišić, Dragutin Čelik et Josip Lach) sont victimes de violentes agressions (coups et blessures, lapidation) et confrontés à un harcèlement administratif constant (15). En ordonnant ou en couvrant de son autorité ces dénis de justice et ces crimes, le régime communiste entend visiblement abolir la religion et anéantir le patrimoine spirituel du peuple croate. Odieuse en soi, cette démarche totalitaire n’agresse pas seulement les consciences mais elle participe en outre de l’aristocide que nous évoquions plus haut car elle prive, parfois définitivement, le pays de très nombreux talents et de beaucoup d’intelligence. Au nombre des prêtres sacrifiés sur l’autel de l’athéisme militant, beaucoup sont, en effet, des gens dont la contribution à la culture nationale est précieuse, voire irremplaçable (16).

 

Terreur culturelle

 

            Un quatrième groupe fait l’objet de toutes les « attentions » des épurateurs, celui des intellectuels. Pour avoir une idée de ce que les communistes purs et durs pensent alors de cette catégorie de citoyens, il suffit de se rappeler ce que Lénine lui-même en disait. À Maxime Gorki qui lui demandait, en 1919, de se montrer clément envers quelques savants, Vladimir Oulianov répondait brutalement que « ces petits intellectuels minables, laquais du capitalisme (…) se veulent le cerveau de la nation » mais « en réalité, ce n’est pas le cerveau, c’est de la merde » (17). Sur de tels présupposés, il est évident que les Croates qui n’ont pas fait le bon choix peuvent s’attendre au pire. Dès le 18 mai 1944, le poète Vladimir Nazor (un marxiste de très fraîche date)-(18) a d’ailleurs annoncé que ceux qui ont collaboré avec l’ennemi et fait de la propagande par la parole, le geste ou l’écrit, surtout en art en en littérature, seront désignés comme ennemis du peuple et punis de mort ou, pour quelques cas exceptionnels, de travaux forcés (19). La promesse a le mérite d’être claire et l’on comprend pourquoi le consul de France à Zagreb, M. André Gaillard, va bientôt qualifier la situation de « Terreur Rouge » (20)…

 

            Les intentions purificatoires du Conseil Antifasciste de Libération ne tardent pas à se concrétiser et leurs effets sont dévastateurs. À Bleiburg comme aux quatre coins de la Croatie, la chasse aux intellectuels mal-pensants est ouverte. Dans la tourmente disparaissent les écrivains Mile Budak, Ivan Softa, Jerko Skračić, Mustafa Busuladžić, Vladimir Jurčić, Gabrijel Cvitan, Marijan Matijašević, Albert Haller et Zdenka Smrekar, ainsi que les poètes Branko Klarić, Vinko Kos, Stanko Vitković et Ismet Žunić. Échappant à la mort, d’autres écopent de lourdes peines de prison à l’instar de Zvonimir Remeta (perpétuité), Petar Grgec (7 ans), Edhem Mulabdić, Alija Nametak (15 ans) ou Enver Čolaković. Bénéficiant d’une relative mansuétude, quelques-uns s’en sortent mieux comme les poètes Tin Ujević et Abdurezak Bjelevac ou encore l’historien Rudolf Horvat qui se voient simplement interdire de publier. Tenus pour spécialement nocifs, les journalistes subissent quant à eux une hécatombe : Josip Belošević, Franjo Bubanić, Boris Berković, Josip Baljkas, Mijo Bzik, Stjepan Frauenheim, Mijo Hans, Antun Jedvaj, Vjekoslav Kirin, Milivoj Magdić, Ivan Maronić, Tias Mortigjija, Vilim Peroš, Đuro Teufel, Danijel Uvanović et Vladimir Židovec sont assassinés, leur collègue Stanislav Polonijo disparaît à Bleiburg, tandis que Mladen Bošnjak, Krešimir Devčić, Milivoj Kern-Mačković, Antun Šenda, Savić-Marković Štedimlija, le Père Čedomil Čekada et Theodor Uzorinac sont incarcérés, parfois pour très longtemps (21).

 

            La répression frappe très largement et les gens de presse ou les écrivains sont loin d’être les seuls à passer au tamis de la Commission d’enquête sur les crimes de collaboration culturelle avec l’ennemi (Anketna komisija za utvrdjivanje zločina kulturnom suradnjom s neprijateljem). Une « grande peur », pour reprendre l’expression de Bogdan Radica (22), règne sur la Croatie où des milliers de citoyens sont contraints de répondre à un questionnaire inquisitorial (le fameux Upitni arak). Artistes, universitaires, magistrats, médecins, personnels des hôpitaux, membres des institutions scientifiques ou sportives, tous sont visés et pour ceux qui ne satisfont pas aux nouvelles normes, la sanction est immédiate. Au nombre des plus sévèrement « punis », citons l’architecte Lovro Celio-Cega, le diplomate Zvonko Cihlar, le banquier Emil Dinter, l’ingénieur naval Đuro Stipetić ou les médecins Šime Cvitanović et Ljudevit Jurak (23), tous assassinés. Chez les musiciens, les peines sont plus légères : le compositeur (et franciscain) Kamilo Kob se voit tout de même infliger 6 ans de prison et son collègue Zlatko Grgošević 6 mois de travaux forcés, tandis que le célèbre maestro Lovro Matačić passe 10 mois derrière les barbelés et que son confrère Rado degl’Ivellio est chassé du Théâtre National. Le peintre (et prêtre) Marko Ćosić est condamné à 10 ans d’incarcération et le sculpteur Rudolf Švagel-Lešić à 5 ans de la même peine ; plus chanceux, les peintres Oto Antonini, Ljubo Babić et Rudolf Marčić sont simplement interdits d’exposition. Le ratissage entrepris par la police politique est très systématique et des gens très divers, souvent peu politisés, se retrouvent au bagne comme le chansonnier Viki Glovački, le photographe Ljudevit Kowalsky, le géographe Oto Oppitz, le financier Branko Pliverić ou l’orientaliste Hazim Šabanović.

 

            D’une brutalité inouie, cette grande purge cause dans la société croate un traumatisme profond, d’autant qu’elle s’accompagne de l’émigration massive et définitive de ceux qui parviennent à passer au travers des mailles du filet. Notons que pour parachever leur travail de déculturation, les communistes procèdent dans le même temps au nettoyage des bibliothèques publics et privées afin d’en extraire les « mauvaises » références. Sont ainsi pilonnés les ouvrages « oustachis » (y compris des éditions de Racine, Hugo ou Dostoïevski dont la seule « tare » est d’avoir eu recours à l’orthographe en vigueur sous l’État Indépendant Croate) et les « livres de l’ennemi », c’est à dire tous ceux qui sont rédigés en italien ou en allemand. On jette par exemple les textes de Nietzsche, Kant ou Dante ainsi que des traductions d’Eschyle, Homère, Sophocle, Euripide et Tacite (24)… Chef de l’Agitprop, Milovan Đilas (la future coqueluche des libéraux de Saint-Germain-des-Prés) recommande, en janvier 1947, de se débarrasser des livres de Roald Amundsen mais aussi des œuvres toxiques de Bernard Shaw et Gustave Flaubert (25). Restent toutefois, pour ceux qui veulent se cultiver, les ouvrages édifiants de Marx, Lénine et Dietzgen ( ! ) ou ceux des nouveaux maîtres à penser que sont Đilas, Kardelj et « Čiča Janko » (Moša Pijade)…

 

            Au terme de ce bref et sinistre panorama, il semble bien que l’on puisse, sans exagération, considérer l’épuration communiste de la Croatie comme un aristocide. Cruelle et imbécile, cette « chasse aux sorcières » n’a jamais eu pour but de châtier de quelconques « criminels fascistes » (il n’y en avait guère) mais bien de se débarrasser d’une intelligentsia supposément hostile et de priver la Croatie d’une grande partie de ses moyens afin de faire place nette aux apparatchiks du nouveau régime. L’opération a, hélas, parfaitement atteint ses objectifs et la Croatie mettra près de 25 ans à se doter d’une nouvelle élite digne de ce nom, puis encore 20 ans à émerger définitivement du cauchemar yougo-communiste !                                      

 

Christophe Dolbeau 

 

Notes

 

(1) Voir C. Dolbeau, « Bleiburg, démocide yougoslave », in Tabou, vol. 17, Akribeia, Saint-Genis-Laval, 2010, 7-26.

 

(2) À propos de ces camps, le témoin britannique Frank Waddams (qui résidait en Yougoslavie à la fin de la guerre) affirme que « la famine, la surpopulation, la brutalité et la mortalité en faisaient des endroits bien pires que Dachau ou Buchenwald » – cf. N. Beloff, Tito’s flawed legacy, London, Victor Gollancz, 1985, p. 134.

 

(3) Grâce, il faut bien le dire, à une aide massive des Alliés comme en atteste par exemple l’ampleur exceptionnelle de l’ « Opération Audrey » – voir Louis Huot, Guns for Tito, New York, L. B. Fischer, 1945 et Kirk Ford Jr, OSS and the Yugoslav Resistance, 1943-1945, College Station, TAMU Press, 2000.

 

(4) « Après la fondation de l’État, l’objectif suivant fut d’amener la nation à accepter à 100% le Parti Communiste et son monopole idéologique, ce qui fut d’abord obtenu par la persécution et en compromettant les adversaires de diverses manières, puis en veillant à éradiquer toute pensée hétérodoxe, c’est à dire divergeant ne serait-ce que de façon minime du point de vue du Comité Central du Parti Communiste » – D. Vukelić, « Censorship in Yugoslavia between 1945 and 1952 – Halfway between Stalin and West », Forum de Faenza, IECOB, 27-29 septembre 2010, p. 6.

 

(5) Voir R. J. Rummel, Death by Government, chapitre 2 (Definition of Democide), New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1994.

 

(6) cf. N. Weyl, « Envy and Aristocide », in The Eugenics Bulletin, hiver 1984. Voir également T. Sunić, « Sociobiologija Bleiburga », in Hrvatski List du 3 mars 2009 (repris dans The Occidental Observer du 15 mars 2009, sous le titre de « Dysgenics of a Communist Killing Field : the Croatian Bleiburg »).

 

(7) Junuz Ajanović, Edgar Angeli, Oton Ćuš, Franjo Dolački, Stjepan Dollezil, Julije Fritz, Mirko Gregorić, Đuro Grujić (Gruić), August Gustović, Muharem Hromić, Vladimir Kren, Slavko Kvaternik, Vladimir Laxa, Rudolf Lukanc, Bogdan Majetić, Ivan Markulj, Vladimir Metikoš, Josip Metzger, Stjepan Mifek, Ante Moškov, Antun Nardelli, Miroslav Navratil, Franjo Nikolić, Ivan Perčević, Makso Petanjek, Viktor Prebeg, Antun Prohaska, Adolf Sabljak, Tomislav Sertić, Vjekoslav Servatzy, Slavko Skolibar, Nikola Steinfl, Josip Šolc, Slavko Štancer, Ivan Tomašević, Mirko Vučković.

 

(8) Voir J. Jareb, « Sudbina posljednje hrvatske državne vlade i hrvatskih ministara iz drugog svjetskog rata », in Hrvatska Revija, N°2 (110), juin 1978, 218-224.

 

(9) Tel est le cas de M.M. Mehmed Alajbegović, Mile Budak, Pavao Canki, Vladimir Košak, Osman Kulenović, Živan Kuveždić, Slavko Kvaternik, Julije Makanec, Nikola Mandić, Miroslav Navratil, Mirko Puk et Nikola Steinfl.

 

(10) Le bâtiment sera fermé et ses minarets abattus en 1948.

 

(11) Au sujet de la querelle entre l’Église Catholique et l’État communiste yougoslave, voir l’article de B. Jandrić [« Croatian totalitarian communist government’s press in the preparation of the staged trial against the archbishop of Zagreb Alojzije Stepinac (1946) », in Review of Croatian History, vol. I, N°1 (décembre 2005)] et l’ouvrage de M. Akmadža (Katolička crkva u Hrvatskoj i komunistički režim 1945.-1966., Rijeka, Otokar Keršovani, 2004). 

 

(12) cf. Ante Čuvalo, « Croatian Catholic Priests, Theology Students and Religious Brothers killed by Communists and Serbian Chetniks in the Former Yugoslavia during and after World War II » – http://www.cuvalo.net/?p=46

 

(13) Signée par les évêques croates, une lettre pastorale du 20 septembre 1945 fait état de 243 prêtres assassinés, 169 emprisonnés et 89 disparus ; en septembre 1952, un autre document épiscopal parle de 371 religieux tués, 96 disparus, 200 emprisonnés et 500 réfugiés – cf. Th. Dragoun, Le dossier du cardinal Stepinac, Paris, NEL, 1958. Voir aussi I. Omrčanin, Martyrologe croate. Prêtres et religieux assassinés en haine de la foi de 1940 à 1951, Paris, NEL, 1962.

 

(14) Th. Dragoun, op. cité, p. 239.

 

(15) Ibid, p. 67, 213, 219, 248-254.

 

(16) On pense notamment au philosophe Bonaventura Radonić, à l’historien Kerubin Šegvić, au compositeur Petar Perica, au sociologue Dominik Barac, au byzantologue Ivo Guberina, à l’écrivain et distingué polyglotte Fran Binički et au biologiste Marijan Blažić, tous assassinés.

 

(17) cf. Le livre noir du communisme, sous la direction de S. Courtois, Paris, R. Laffont, 1998, p. 864.

 

(18) Avant la guerre, Vladimir Nazor (1876-1949) avait soutenu le royaliste serbe Bogoljub Jevtić puis le Parti Paysan Croate de V. Maček et en décembre 1941, il avait été nommé membre de l’Académie de Croatie (HAZU) par Ante Pavelić…

 

(19) cf. D. Vukelić, op. cité, p. 1.

 

(20) cf. G. Troude, Yougoslavie, un pari impossible ? : la question nationale de 1944 à 1960, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1998, p. 69.

 

(21) Sur 332 titulaires de la carte de presse, seuls 27 seront autorisés à poursuivre l’exercice de leur métier. Pour une étude exhaustive sur la répression dans le milieu journalistique, voir J. Grbelja, Uništeni naraštaj : tragične sudbine novinara NDH, Zagreb, Regoč, 2000, ainsi que l’article de D. Vukelić mentionné en note 4.

 

(22) Voir B. Radica, « Veliki strah : Zagreb 1945 », in Hrvatska Revija, vol. 4 (20), 1955.

 

(23) Expert de renommée internationale, il avait fait partie, en juillet 1943, de la commission chargée d’enquêter en Ukraine sur le massacre communiste de Vinnytsia.

 

(24) cf. D. Vukelić, op. cité, pp. 21, 23/24.

 

(25) Dans la liste des auteurs prohibés figurent aussi Maurice Dekobra, Gaston Leroux (pour Chéri Bibi !) et Henri Massis (il est vrai que ce dernier prônait la création d’un « parti de l’intelligence » ce qui n’était pas vraiment à la mode dans la Yougoslavie de 1945…).       

 

 

Revista de Historia del Fascismo - III

Revista de Historia del Fascismo - III

Sumario número III correspondiente a Marzo 2011:

TENDENCIAS
Henri De Man y el “socialismo ético”

Capítulo de Nè destra nè sinistra. La nascita dell’ideologia fascista, Zeev Sternhell, Akropolis, Nápoles 1984, págs. 119-139.
En España no existe ninguna obra relevante sobre Henri de Man y su “neosocialismo” o “planismo” que influyó ampliamente en los “no conformistas de los años 30”. De ahí que hayamos decidido presentar esta traducción de profesor Sternhell que ilustra la vida y la obra de este socialista que abandonó el marxismo hacia ese espacio gris que existió con el fascismo.

BIOGRAFIAS
Hugo Wast, de oficio escritor, de vocación nacionalista y antisemita

La conspiración del silencio no siempre alcanza sus objetivos. Los detractores de Hugo Wast no han podido evitar que en Argentina muchas calles lleven su nombre y que, sistemáticamente, bibliotecas públicas de las grandes ciudades recuerden en sus rótulos al que fuera uno de los mejores escritores argentinos del siglo XX. No en vano, cuando murió, Wast había vendido tres millones de ejemplares de sus obras. Incluso hoy, después de sesenta años de muro de silencio, sus obras son reeditadas con cierta frecuencia y en Google aparecen 18.000 referencias a su vida y obra. En buena medida, los grandes escritores argentinos del siglo XX se nutrieron de las obras de Wast. Sin embargo, lo más habitual cuando acudimos a biografías o historias de la literatura argentina poíticamente correctas se limitan a definir a Wast como “escritor antisemita”. Y lo era, pero era bastante más que eso: católico, conservador, dotado de una pluma ágil y vigorosa que se movía bien tanto en relato cortos como en novelas de gran calado, alguien, en definitiva, que merece ser recordado. Para quien esto escribe constituye un honor recordar la pluma de Hugo Wast y recomendar su lectura para los amantes de la literatura de expresión castellana.

DOSSIER: FASCISMO UNO Y TRINO
Tres orígenes para el mismo movimiento, tres concepciones de un mismo fascismo

Entre las distintas interpretaciones del fascismo se tiende a considerar a este movimiento político del siglo XX como algo homogéneo o, al menos, algo a lo que se reconocen solamente variedades nacionales. Parece una obviedad, pero no está de más recordar que el fascismo es un “producto de síntesis” entre “lo nacional” y “lo social”. Y si esto es así parece lógico que existan tres variedades de fascismo: aquel que es “más nacional que social”, aquel otro que es “más social de nacional” y, finalmente, aquel que intenta mantener el equilibrio entre “lo nacional y lo social”. Esto nos permite hablar de un “fascismo de derechas”, de un “fascismo de izquierdas” y de un “fascismo centrista”. Este esquema es fácilmente aplicable en todas aquellas naciones en las que el fascismo alcanzó el nivel de fuerza política pujante: Italia, Alemania, Francia, España…

FASCISMO Y SECTAS
Logia Thule: el ancestro inmediato del NSDAP. Mito y realidad.

Este artículo debería ser consultado tras la lectura de otro dos publicados anteriormente en la RHF: el dedicado al estudio de las sectas ariosóficas y el dedicado a la revista Ostara. Se ha escrito que la “Logia Thule” era la “rama bávara de la Orden de los Germanos” y esto es sólo cierto a medias y el matiz no deja de tener interés. El impacto de la Logia Thule sobre el NSDAP fue real… pero mínimo y no fue más allá de lo que se ha llamado “la prehistoria del nacionalsocialismo”.

SECTAS
La vertiente ocultista del peronismo (III de III)
Perón, masón y miembro de la Logia Propaganda 2

Es fácil divisar las dos vertientes de estas notas sobre la Logia Anael y el papel de López Rega. Una e ellas afecta al General Juan Domingo Perón, dirigente y fundador del justiciaismo argentino y seguramente el político mejor valorado y que despertó más entusiasmos en aquel país durante el siglo XX. La obra tiene que ver con López Rega. Ambas se refieren a su vinculación con el ocultismo. Las preguntas a formular son, pues, tres: ¿Hasta qué punto el general Perón, Eva Perón e Isabel Martínez de Perón creían en el espiritismo? ¿Se afilió Perón a la masonería? ¿Cuáles eran las fuentes doctrinales de López Rega?

COMENTARIOS
“La derecha radical y Europa”, respuesta a la revista Sistemas (III de III)

Llegamos al tercer y último jalón de nuestra respuesta a la revista Sistemas, considerada como “científica” a la vista de los errores de bulto contenidos… Seguramente se nos escapará alguna puntualización, pero estamos convencidos de que, al menos en sus líneas generales, habremos ayudado a plantear la cuestión de fondo: la necesidad de un debate profundo y vinculante sobre Europa en el seno de la “derecha radical”.

DERECHA FASCISTA
II PARTE: EL CAMPO MONÁRQUICO DURANTE LA REPÚBLICA

Continuando con la serie de artículos y comentarios sobre la “derecha fascista española”, añadimos hoy la tercera parte titulada: “El campo monárquico durante la República” y “Acción Española”, faltando la última parte sobre Renovación Española que publicaremos en el número 4 de la RHF.

TERRORISMO
LA OAS EN ESPAÑA. Notas sobre el libro A la sombra de Franco.

La lectura de la obra del villenero Gastón Segura Valero, A la sombra de Franco, subtitulada El refugio de los activistas franceses de la OAS, nos ha inspirado algunos comentarios que amplían el contenido de este libro –que no parece extremadamente aceptable y bien documentado- pero al que le hemos observado algunas carencias y huecos que intentaremos compensar en las páginas que siguen.

NEOFASCISMO
El nacimiento de Ordre Nouveau

Les mouvement d’extreme droite en France aprés 1944. François Duprat. Editions Albatros, París 1972, págs. 192-200

François Duprat, asesinado por un comando izquierdista en una carretera de Bretaña mediante la colocación de un artefacto explosivo bajo s vehículo en marzo de 1978 pertenecía a la dirección de Ordre Nouvea y es el autor de estas líneas incluidas como capítulo final de su obra Les Mouvements d’extreme droite. Vale la pena añadir que dos años después de que fueran publicadas estas páginas, Ordre Nouveau resultó prohibido por las autoridades, sin embargo impulsó la creación del Front National que hasta el pasado 15 de enero de 2011 ha sido dirigido por Jean Marie Le Pen. En torno a ese eje ha fructivado en los últimos 30 años el movimiento de oposición nacional en Francia, cuya semilla inicial fue Ordre Nouveau. Estos fueron sus primeros pasos.

 

Características:

Formato libro 150 x 210 mm
Páginas 216Tapas en cuatricomía con solapas

Pedidos: [e-mail]

Precio venta al público: 18,00 euros + 3,00 euros de gastos de envío (precios para España, resto mundo, consultar)

Forma e pago: ingreso en cuenta corriente BBVA (al hacer el pedido indicamos el número)

Bijna 180 jaar contrarevolutie in Spanje

Bijna 180 jaar contrarevolutie in Spanje

Ex: http://www.kasper-gent.org/

Het Carlisme is een Spaanse contrarevolutionaire en traditionalistische beweging ontstaan in 1833 als reactie tegen het verlichtingsdenken en de Franse revolutie. Directe aanleiding voor het ontstaan van de beweging was een Koningskwestie. De Carlisten zet zich af tegen ideeën als laïcisme, egalitarisme, rationalisme en individualisme. In deze zin is het Carlisme terug te vinden in de traditie van Joseph de Maistre.

De beweging had een grote invloed in de Spaanse politiek tot het einde van het regime van Francisco Franco in 1975. Het verdedigde het katholicisme en de monarchie in reactie tegen het liberalisme en het modernisme. Thans is het een buitenparlementaire beweging geworden.

Ontstaan en korte geschiedenis

Het Carlisme ontstond ten tijde van de Pragmatieke Sanctie van Ferdinand VII. Deze maakte hierin bekend dat zijn vader de Salische wet had afgeschaft. Deze oude wet stipuleerde een mannelijke erfopvolging van de Koningen. Omdat Ferdinand VII alleen dochters had wou hij deze wet zien verdwijnen, waardoor hij opgevolgd kon worden door zijn dochter (Isabella II) in plaats van zijn broer (Carlos). De laatstgenoemde accepteerde dit echter niet en riep zich in 1833, na de dood van Ferdinand VII, uit tot Koning van Spanje (Carlos V). Door deze koninklijke kwestie ontstond ook de naam ‘de Carlisten’: de reactionaire en katholieke aanhang van Carlos.

Hierna volgde een eerste periode in de Carlistische geschiedenis, een periode waarin men de macht voornamelijk langs militaire weg wou grijpen. Tijdens drie Carlistenoorlogen zouden de zonen van Carlos V de macht proberen grijpen. Na de derde Carlistenoorlog zou Carlos VII heel Noord-Spanje onder zijn Kroon verenigen. In 1874 zouden ze echter het onderspit delven tegen Alfons XII, de zoon van Isabella II. Hierbij werd de laatste afstammeling in mannelijk lijn van Carlos V vermoord, wat veel Carlisten er toe aanzette om Alfons XIII voortaan als legitiem koning van Spanje te erkennen.

Een ander deel van de beweging zette de strijd echter (niet-militair) verder, waarmee een tweede periode voor de beweging aanbrak. In deze periode (tot 1936) zouden ze zich omvormen tot een vreedzame politieke beweging. Xavier I was door de laatste afstammeling van Carlos V aangewezen als Koning en dus de rechtmatige troonsopvolger van Spanje. Zijn zoon Karel Hugo (I) trok zich politiek terug in 1979 en de huidige troonpretendent van Spanje is Sixtus Hendrik (I).

Een derde periode in de geschiedenis van de Carlisten begon in 1936 met de Spaanse burgeroorlog. De Carlisten streden aan de zijde van de overwinnende Falange en Francisco Franco. Op deze manier bleven ze tot het einde van het Franco-tijdperk een zeer significante rol spelen in de Spaanse politiek. Sinds het einde het regime in 1975 verloor de Carlistische beweging veel van zijn invloed en thans is het een buitenparlementaire groep worden.

Ideologie

Zoals reeds in de inleiding aangehaald is het Carlisme een contrarevolutionaire en traditionalistische beweging. Het zet zich af tegen de verlichtingsidee en de Franse revolutie met zijn vele uitwassen.

Het is echter moeilijk om een duidelijk ideologisch beeld te krijgen van de Carlisten. Als traditionalisten en monarchisten zetten ze zich immers af tegen het concept van ideologie als een drijvende politieke kracht. Tevens is er door de lange geschiedenis en het diverse publiek van volgelingen nooit echt een duidelijk ideologische lijn geweest.

Er zijn echter 4 begrippen die doorheen de geschiedenis van het Carlisme steeds terugkeren en duidelijk op de voorgrond staan: Dios, Patria, Fueros, Rey.

1) Dios (God). Carlisten zijn katholiek en zien het katholicisme als een fundamentele hoeksteen van Spanje, iets wat men ten allen tijde moet verdedigen (ook politiek). De Carlisten streven naar de verwezenlijking van de slogan ‘Christus Rex’, Christus Koning.

2)Patria (Vaderland).

3) Fueros (~subsidiariteit). Carlisten streven naar regionale autonomie en men ziet Spanje als een amalgaan van regionale gemeenschappen verenigd onder 1 Kroon.

4) Rey (Koning). Carlisten verwerpen het idee van nationale soevereiniteit en stellen dat alle soevereiniteit de Koning toebehoord. Deze macht is beperkt door de doctrine van de Kerk.

 

Op ideologische vlak vertonen de Carlisten veel overeenkomst met de Falangisten (bijvoorbeeld: sociaal conservatief en katholiek), maar toch zijn er aanzienlijke verschillen. Zo streven Falangisten naar sterke centralisatie binnen de staat, terwijl Carlisten voorstander zijn van regionale autonomie.

Tot de dag van vandaag inspireren Carlistische denkwijzen mensen in (voornamelijk Noord-) Spanje. Het regionalisme (niet te verwarren met separatisme!) blijft een belangrijk denkbeeld in het land. Een van de stichters van het Baskisch nationalisme had een Carlistische achtergrond. Op 7 mei 2007 zei Mgr. Fernando Sebastián Aguilar, Aartsbisschop van Pamplona en Tudela, dat het Carlisme waardig was om publiek en electoraal ondersteund te worden.

 

Symboliek

De Carlisten gebruiken als vlag het Bourgondisch Kruis. Hun uniform bestaat uit een rode baret en hun (nationaal) lied is het Oriamendi.

Por Dios, por la Patria y el Rey
Lucharon nuestros padres.
Por Dios, por la Patria y el Rey
Lucharemos nosotros también.

Lucharemos todos juntos
Todos juntos en unión
Defendiendo la bandera
De la Santa Tradición. (bis)

Cueste lo que cueste
Se ha de conseguir
Venga el Rey de España
A la corte de Madrid. (bis)

Por Dios, por la Patria y el Rey
Lucharon nuestros padres.
Por Dios, por la Patria y el Rey
Lucharemos nosotros también.

 

Mitterrand et le mystère français

 

Mitterrand et le mystère français

par Dominique VENNER

Ex: http://metapoinfos.hautetfort.com/

Au centre de toutes les interrogations que soulève l’itinéraire sinueux et contradictoire de François Mitterrand, sujet de notre dossier, figure en première place la photo devenue fameuse de l’entrevue accordée à un jeune inconnu, futur président socialiste de la République, par le maréchal Pétain, à Vichy, le 15 octobre 1942.

Ce document était connu de quelques initiés, mais il n’a été cautionné par l’intéressé qu’en 1994, alors qu’il voyait venir la fin de sa vie. Trente ans plus tôt, à la veille de l’élection présidentielle de 1965, le ministre de l’Intérieur du moment, Roger Frey, en avait reçu un exemplaire. Il demanda une enquête qui remonta jusqu’à un ancien responsable local de l’association des prisonniers, dont faisait partie François Mitterrand. Présent lors de la fameuse entrevue, il en possédait plusieurs clichés. En accord avec le général De Gaulle, Roger Frey décida de ne pas les rendre publics.

Un autre membre du même mouvement de prisonniers, Jean-Albert Roussel, en possédait également un tirage. C’est lui qui donna à Pierre Péan le cliché qui fit la couverture de son livre, Une jeunesse française, publié par Fayard en septembre 1994 avec l’aval du président.
Pourquoi, Mitterrand a-t-il soudain décidé de rendre public son pétainisme fervent des années 1942-1943, qu’il avait nié et dissimulé jusque-là ? Ce n’est pas une question anodine.

Sous la IVe République, en décembre 1954, à la tribune de l’Assemblée nationale, Raymond Dronne, ancien capitaine de la 2e DB, devenu député gaulliste, avait interpelé François Mitterrand, alors ministre de l’Intérieur : « Je ne vous reproche pas d’avoir arboré successivement la fleur de lys et la francisque d’honneur… » « Tout cela est faux », répliqua Mitterrand. Mais Dronne riposta sans obtenir de réponse : « Tout cela est vrai et vous le savez bien… »

 

Le même sujet fut abordé de nouveau à l’Assemblée nationale, le 1er février 1984, en plein débat sur la liberté de la presse. On était maintenant sous la Ve République et François Mitterrand en était le président. Trois députés de l’opposition de l’époque posèrent une question. Puisque l’on parlait du passé de M. Hersant (propriétaire du Figaro) pendant la guerre, pourquoi ne parlerait-on pas de celui de M. Mitterrand ? La question fut jugée sacrilège. La majorité socialiste s’indigna et son président, Pierre Joxe, estima que le président de la République était insulté. Les trois députés furent sanctionnés, tandis que M. Joxe rappelait haut et fort le passé de résistant de M. Mitterrand.

Ce passé n’est pas contestable et pas contesté. Mais, au regard de la légende bétonnée imposée après 1945, ce passé de résistant était incompatible avec un passé pétainiste. Et voilà donc qu’à la fin de sa vie, M. Mitterrand décida soudain de rompre avec le mensonge officiel qu’il avait fait sien. Pourquoi ?
Pour être précis, avant de devenir peu à peu résistant, M. Mitterrand avait d’abord été un pétainiste fervent comme des millions de Français. D’abord dans son camp de prisonnier, puis après son évasion, en 1942, à Vichy où il fut employé par la Légion des combattants, grand rassemblement mollasson d’anciens combattants. Comme il trouvait ce pétainisme-là beaucoup trop endormi, il se lia à quelques pétainistes « purs et durs » (et très anti-allemands), tel Gabriel Jeantet, ancien cagoulard, chargé de mission au cabinet du Maréchal, l’un de ses futurs parrains dans l’ordre de la Francisque.

Le 22 avril 1942, il écrivait à l’un de ses correspondants : « Comment arriverons-nous à remettre la France sur pied ? Pour moi, je ne crois qu’à ceci : la réunion d’hommes unis par la même foi. C’est l’erreur de la Légion que d’avoir reçu des masses dont le seul lien était le hasard : le fait d’avoir combattu ne crée pas une solidarité. Je comprends davantage les SOL (1), soigneusement choisis et qu’un serment fondé sur les mêmes convictions du cœur lie. Il faudrait qu’en France on puisse organiser des milices qui nous permettraient d’attendre la fin de la lutte germano-russe sans crainte de ses conséquences… » C’est un bon résumé du pétainisme musclé de cette époque. Tout naturellement, au fil des événements, notamment après le débarquement américain en Afrique du Nord du 8 novembre 1942, ce pétainisme évolua vers la résistance.

La fameuse photo publiée par Péan avec l’accord du président provoqua un ouragan politique et médiatique. Le 12 septembre 1994, le président, miné par son cancer, dut s’expliquer à la télévision sous l’œil noir de Jean-Pierre Elkabbach. Mais contre toute attente, sa solitude d’accusé, doublée d’une détresse physique évidente, parut injustes, provoquant un élan de sympathie. L’interrogatoire d’Elkabbach avait suscité une réaction : « Mais pour qui se prend-il, celui-là ? » Ce fut un élément capital du rapprochement des Français avec leur président. Non que le bilan politique du personnage ait été approuvé. Mais l’homme, soudain, était devenait intéressant. Il avait acquis une épaisseur inattendue, celle d’une histoire tragique qui éveillait un écho dans le secret du mystère français.

Dominique Venner (La Nouvelle Revue d'Histoire, mai-juin 2011)

 

Note

(1). Le SOL (Service d’ordre légionnaire) fut constitué en 1941 par Joseph Darnand, ancien cagoulard et héros des deux guerres. Cette formation nullement collaborationniste fut officialisée le 12 janvier 1942. Dans le contexte nouveau de la guerre civile qui se déploie alors, le SOL sera transformé en Milice française le 31 janvier 1943. On se reportera à La NRH n° 47, p. 30 et à mon Histoire de la Collaboration, Pygmalion, 2002.

Revista de Historia del Fascismo - Julius Evola en Alemania

 

Revista de Historia del Fascismo

Sumario

REVISIONES

Hitler [no] me ha dicho: Rauschning, un falsario desenmascarado

Durante décadas el libro de Hermann Rauschning Hitler me ha dicho se ha considerado como un pieza fundamental del Caso Hitler. Desde obras “ligeras” como El retorno de los brujos de Louis Pauwels y Jacques Bergier hasta las  sesudas  obras  de  historiadores  académicos  como Trevor-Roper, era frecuente entre los años 50 hasta finales del milenio, recurrir a esta obra para dirimir cómo era la verdadera personalidad del führer. Aun hoy algunos siguen considerando a esta obra como “fuente primaria”… lamentablemente  para  ellos,  desde  hace  20  años,  está demostrado ad nauseam que la obra de Rauschning no tiene credibilidad sino que es uno de tantos ejemplos de propaganda de guerra.

BIOGRAFIAS

Abate Barruel: el padre de todas las conspiranoias

A  finales  del  siglo  XVIII  al  abate  Augustin  Barruel  consiguió una fama extraordinaria con la publicación de su obra Memorias para servir a la historia del jacobinismo en  donde  daba  una  explicación  teleológica  a  todos  los episodios que se habían sucedido en Francia a partir de 1780 y que se desencadenaron aquella orgía de sangre que  fue  la  Revolución  Francesa.  El  éxito  de  Barruel  fue tan rutilante como efímero, sin embargo, todavía hoy se le considera como el introductor de la visión conspirativa de la historia y su obra como el “padre” de todas las conspiraciones. Esta es la vida y la obra del abate Barruel…

NEOFASCISMO

L’Uomo Qualunque: un producto de postguerra

En la confusión de la Italia de la postguerra, durante un corto  ciclo  de  apenas  tres  años,  un  partido  político  de nuevo cuño llamó particularmente la atención: el Fronte dell’Uomo Qualunque, literalmente el Frente del Hombre Cualquiera (aunque otra traducción alternativa sería “del Pobre Diablo”) entendiendo como tal al ciudadano sin expectativas  que  sufre  las  consecuencias  de  las  situaciones  adversas  generadas  por  otros.  El Uomo  Qualunque fue  un  grito  de  desesperados  que  se  extinguió  pronto ingresando una parte sustancial de sus miembros en el Movimiento  Social  Italiano  que  heredó  también  buena parte de sus votos. 

MÍSTICA FASCISTA

Codreanu y su mística guerrera

Nuestro colaborador Eduardo Basurto nos envía este artículo sobre la mística guerrera de Codreanu que supone el primer estudio publicado en la Revista de Historia del Fascismo  sobre  esta  corriente  en  Rumania.  Además  de hacer honor al título, el estudio de Eduardo Basurto realiza un repaso a la historia de la varidad rumana del fascismo singularmente preciso.

CINEMATOGRAFÍA

Forces Occultes… El cine francés bajo la ocupación

Hasta hace poco inencontrable y desde que se han puesto en marcha las plataformas de intercambio de archivos Peer to Peer y youTube fácilmente accesibles en la red, Forces Occultes es un película extraña que responde en primer lugar a las exigencias antimasónicas del gobierno francés de Vichy y de la propaganda alemana. Pero nos equivocaríamos si considerásemos que Forces Occultes solamente  es  “propaganda”.  Es  mucho  más:  refleja  por primera vez en la historia del cine cómo es una iniciación masónica de la que hasta ese momento el “gran público” no tenía conciencia exacta en qué consistía. Y no hay en ella absolutamente ninguna falsificación. La pesquisa en torno  a Forces  Occultes  nos  llevará,  por  extensión  lógica, en la segunda parte de este artículo, a examinar el panorama del cine “colaboracionista” realizado durante la ocupación y terminará con una referencia a la figura de Claude Autant-Lara, fallecido en 2000 después de ser durante un período diputado europeo del Front National.

DOSSIER:

Julius Evola y el III Reich
Las relaciones y los proyectos de Julius Evola en Alemania 1930-1945.

I. Introduccion

II. Julius Evola y la cultura alemanas

III. Contactos en el Reich 

          - La Comunidad de  Trabajo de los nacionalistas

          - Con la “revolución conservadora”

          - La red del príncipe KarlAnton von Rohan

          - Gottfried Benn y el Rivolta  

          - Del Herrenklub a las SS

          - La “defensa de la raza” en Alemania e Italia

          - Los objetivos del período 1938-1943

          - Evola en el Cuartel General del Führer

 

Características: 

Formato libro 150 x 210 mm

Páginas 216

Tapas en cuatricomía con solapas 

Pedidos: [e-mail] 

Precio venta al público: 18,00 euros + 3,00 euros de gastos de envío (precios para España, resto mundo, consultar) 

Forma e pago: ingreso en cuenta corriente BBVA (al hacer el pedido indicamos el número) o pago a través de pay-pal (ver columna de la derecha)

 

Suscripción: 

6 números: 100 euros

12 números: 200 euros

D. Venner's "Le siècle de 1914"

Foundations of the Twenty-First Century: Dominique Venner's Le Siècle de 1914.

by Michael O'Meara

Ex: http://www.wermodandwermod.com/ 

A White Nationalist Reading of . . .

Dominique Venner
Le Siècle de 1914: Utopies, guerres et révolutions en Europe au XXe siècle
Paris: Pygmalion, 2006

“To recreate a new aristocracy is the eternal task of every revolutionary project.” –Guillaume Faye

At the beginning of twentieth century, peoples of European descent ruled the world. They made up a third of its population, occupied half its landmass, controlled Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and parts of coastal China; their industry and technology, along with their philosophy, science, and art, had no rival; the world was theirs and theirs alone.

A century later, all was changed: Peoples of European descent had fallen to less than 9 percent of the world’s population; their lands were everywhere inundated by non-Whites; their industry and technology outsourced to potential enemies; their state, social system, and media taken over by parasitic aliens; and, in the deepest demographic sense, they faced the not-too-distant prospect of biological extinction.

To understand this catastrophic inversion requires some understanding of the period responsible for it. We’re fortunate that after a lifetime studying its key movements, Dominique Venner, our greatest identitarian historian, has set out to chart its biopolitical contours.

Before the Deluge

As a historical (rather than a chronological) period, the twentieth century begins in 1914, with the onset of the First World War, whose devastating assault on European existence shook the continent in every one of its foundations, destroying not just its ancien régime, but ushering in what Ernst Nolte calls the “European Civil War” of 1917-45 or what some call the “Thirty Years War” of 1914-45. For amidst its storms of fire and steel, there emerged four rival ideologies — American liberalism, Russian Communism, Italian Fascism, and German National Socialism — each of whose ambition was to reshape the postwar order according to its own scheme for collective salvation. Our world, Venner argues, is a product of these contentious ambitions and of the ideological system — liberalism — that prevailed over its rivals.

Before the war of 1914 political ideologies lacked the “religious” fervor of their twentieth-century counterparts. Europe then was more than a geographic assortment of different peoples and states identified with different political creeds. It constituted a single biocivilization (a Race-Nation), whose ethnonational variants embodied alternative facets of the genetic-spiritual legacy bequeathed by the Greeks, the Aryans, and the Cro Magnons. Not a single great phenomenon experienced by any one European people, it followed, was not also experienced by the others: From the megalithic culture of the stone age, to medieval chivalry, to the rise of nationalism. In the modern period, the ties of blood and spirit linking the different European nations took institutional form in the Westphalian state system of 1648, which, with the exception of the revolutionary period (1789-1815), limited their numerous wars and conflicts to family disputes.

The greatest casualty of what contemporaries called the Great War would be the destruction of this system — and of the aristocratic elites who were its incarnation.

On the war’s eve, the aristocracy still represented that historic body whose function was to command, to fight, and to defend. In fact, in one form or another, it had always dominated European life — at least since the Aryans, that offshoot of the White race whose existence was premised on the rule of the “noble.” Though property-based and attached to the permanences of family, tradition, and rank, the pre-war aristocracy bore little resemblance to the decadent hereditary ruling class of liberal historiography. For Venner, it was, as an ideal type, an ever-renewing estate infused with the spirit of honor, duty, and loyalty to what was highest in White existence. As such, it typified its people’s essence, associating nobility with those who put their people’s interests before their own.

Except for republican France and Switzerland, all of Europe’s pre-war monarchical and imperial states were governed by aristocrats, whose Prussian spirit exalted simplicity, austerity, duty, and political incorruptibility. Against the leveling aspersions cast by liberals and democrats, Venner emphasizes the aristocracy’s dynamic, modernist, and genial character — opposed in essence to bourgeois democratic societies, which subordinate everyone to money (the realm of the Jews).

Cataclysm

No one in 1914 quite understood the type of the war they had gotten into. All the general staffs anticipated a short, decisive engagement like the “cabinet wars” of the eighteenth and ninteenth centuries — not realizing it might resemble the American War of Succession, whose closing stages anticipated the “Second-Generation War” of 1914 (a generation of war based on massed firepower, where “artillery conquers, infantry occupies”).

Though a traditional conflict between rival states at the start, by 1917, once the United States entered it, the war had been transformed not just into an industrial and social mobilization of unprecedented scope, but into an ideological crusade between democratic and authoritarian regimes. Worse, the democratic crusaders wouldn’t let the war end the way previous European wars had ended, when the jus publicum europaeum of the Westphalian system mitigated White strife and ensured the integrity of rival states. In the absence of this noble restraint, Europe was mutilated at its core: Nine million combatants were killed, the Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, and Romanov empires shattered, and an even greater hecatomb prepared for the next generation.

In the glow of this holocaust, Woodrow Wilson, the American champion of an anti-aristocratic, anti-European “democratism,” stepped upon the Old World’s stage to proclaim a new order based on liberal governance, free markets, and the egalitarian principle that the sovereign individual takes precedence over community, culture, history, and (in time) race — an order whose underlying principle rested on the rule of money — and, though Venner doesn’t say it, on money’s Chosen Ones.

The untenable Wilsonian settlement of 1918-19 collapsed soon enough, but it was hastened, in some cases provoked, by its ideological rivals. For Wilson’s plutocratic democracy did not go unopposed. In Russia, Communists proposed a more radically egalitarian version of his liberal utopia, a version whose methods differed from America’s market principles, but nevertheless upheld the same raceless materialist commitments born of Enlightenment liberalism. In Germany and Italy, a defensive Europeanism gave rise to more forthrightly anti-liberal ideologies to challenge the anti-Aryan or Jewish ethic of American capitalism and Russian Communism.

In this spirit, Mussolini’s Fascists called for a strong state exalting “authority, order, and justice” to unite Italian producers and soldiers in a national destiny free of the community-killing forces of liberal individualism and Communist collectivism. In a different way, Hitler’s National Socialists fought for a racial order, a Volksgemeinschaft, to overturn the Diktat of the Wilsonian peace, beat back the liberals’ assault on the body and spirit of the nation, and return Germany to its rightful place on the world stage. Both these movements opposing the anti-White subversions of the Wilsonians and Leninists did so, despite their plebeian-Caesarian politics, in a spirit akin to Europe’s ancient warrior aristocracies, whose tradition exalted personal power and regalian purpose.

Wilson’s Democratism

The focus of Venner’s history is the interwar struggle between liberalism, Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism. The focus in this reading is Wilson’s liberal democratism, whose “mission” it was to champion the plutocratic democracy of American capitalist enterprise, as it endeavored to wipe the historical slate clean of its European (especially its German and Catholic) accouterments.

Wilson’s crusading democratism stemmed from the dominant Puritan strain of America’s national tradition. Having settled their New Israel far from the morally compromised Europe they had fled and having identified their election with economic success, the Puritans defined themselves not in terms of their ancestor’s blood and heritage, but (once the spirit of capitalism overwhelmed their Protestant ethic) in terms of the Lockean “pursuit of happiness” — the very notion of which was alien to any sense of history and destiny. Such a Hebraic form of Christianity imbued the Wilsonians with the belief that their system was not only more virtuous than that of other peoples, but that it made them immune to their failings. (Though formally a Southerner, Wilson’s approach to Europe followed in the steps of earlier Northeastern Yankee elites, whose secularized Puritanism, in the form of Unitarian/Social Gospel humanism, motivated their century long assault on the religious and racial practices of the American South.)

The clash between aristocratic and democratic values — between Europe and America — reflected, of course, a more profound clash. Venner explains it in terms of Oswald Spengler’s Prussianism and Socialism (1919), which argues that the sixteenth-century Reformation produced two opposed visions of Protestant Christianity — the Calvinism of the English and the Lutheran Pietism of the Germans. The German vision rejected the primacy of wealth, comfort, and happiness, exalting the soldier’s aristocratic spirit and the probity this spirit nurtured in Prussian officialdom. English Protestants, by contrast, privileged wealth (a sign of election) and the external freedoms necessary to its pursuit. This made it a secularizing, individualistic, and above all economic “religion,” with each individual having the right to interpret the Book in his own light and thus to justify whatever it took to succeed.

Given England’s influence on America’s formation, Venner sees an analogous process at work in the United States. In the twentieth century, this process took the form of a money-driven variant of Calvinism, whose impetus has been to enfranchise those Puritan/Jewish/liberal/New Class projects that have been such a bane to white existence in the twentieth century: Those projects proposing a rupture with the past, the destruction of historic identities, and the creation of a new world where everything was possible — a new world where Jerusalem takes precedent over Athens, where the Brotherhood of Man is proclaimed with ethnocidal conviction, and America is celebrated as an anti-Europe.

So armed, the Wilsonians set out to destroy Europe’s ancient empires and aristocracies.

The New World

The war’s Wilsonian settlement (premised on the lie of German war guilt) left the traditional order in ruins, but, of even greater consequence, it prepared Europeans for future catastrophes, preeminently the Second World War (1939-45) — which would subject them to Soviet and American occupation and to a Judeo-corporate system intent on de-Europeanizing them by re-programming their morals and mentalities, deconstructing their thought and art, decolonizing their Asian and African empires, and eventually opening their gates to the Third World. The destruction of Europe’s aristocratic heritage had, in effect, been prelude to the ensuing assault on its blood and spirit.

Before the US entered the new world war set off by the failures of the Wilsonian peace, the promulgation of the Atlantic Charter (August 1941) called for another liberal crusade. In this spirit, the Charter’s democratic principles envisioned a postwar order based on monied interests, Anglo-American commerce, and liberal democracy — the foundations of which have become the present anti-White system. As an alliance combining the democratists’ most starry-eyed ideals and hard-headed interests, the US led coalition (the “United Nations”) aimed at destroying not just German Nazism, but the German nation, whose Prussian spirit rebuked everything the Wilsonians represented.

Eisenhower’s “Crusade in Europe” was accordingly waged with a ferocity unknown in European history. The two extra-European powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were thus each ideologically committed to uprooting whatever remained of Europe’s living heritage. Their “anti-fascist” crusade was especially intent on criminalizing the Entente powers and the European values they embodied. The Nuremberg trials following the war would be the most conspicuous example of this crusading anti-Europeanism, but so too was the Allies’ effort to hunt down, silence, or kill their wartime opponents and to level Europe’s inherently anti-egalitarian order. (In France alone, 600,000 people were imprisoned following the “Liberation” and more than 40,000 summarily executed.)

Broken, demoralized, occupied, Europe in 1945 was ripe for re-education. The occupying powers’ culpablizing crusade would be especially effective in overcoming resistance to the new liberal utopia, even after the former allies embarked on their so-called Cold War (1947-89). Revealingly, American democratists were qualitatively more subversive than their more racially-conscious Russian counterparts. In the western half of the postwar’s US-SU Condominium, the culpabilitization of defeated Germany was extended to all of Western and Central Europe. (In the language of our little black brothers and sisters, original sin now became “a white thing.”) Europeans were henceforth expected to do penance for having once been powerful and creative, for having founded empires, for privileging rank, nobility, and valor, but above all for having been White and favored their own interests at the expense of Jews and other non-Europeans. The very idea of a White or European identity would, in fact, be treated hereafter as a pathology.

Japan, by contrast, suffered no such culpabilitization — not only because it experienced less of it, but also because Japanese culture refused to accept the victors’ image of itself. The culpabilitization of Europeans was so effective not simply because of the occupiers’ unchallenged power, but because it converged with a secularizing Christianity (a Judeo-Christianity?), whose Concordant with Caesar’s realm now sought to turn Europe’s former self-confidence into a form of self-loathing. The “irony” of this culpability (if irony is the word) was that the Europeans’ alleged guilt was a fraud: They had had no monopoly on so-called “crimes against humanity.” (The Anglo-American carpet bombing of civilians and the indiscriminate destruction of Europe’s great cities, the mass population transfers, the organized starvation campaigns, the unprecedented horrors associated with Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki — nothing of this affected the anti-European balance of Allied justice or brought Russian, English, or American war criminals into the dockets).

The Iron Cage

Following the Cold War, in which Europeans were mere spectators, a new view of history was programmed for popular consumption: The view that saw the history of twentieth-century Europe in terms of its struggle for the cause of Holy Democracy, with its market utopia of general prosperity, the limitless liberties of its private life, the glories of its occupiers’ Semitically fabricated mass culture, and its rainbow mixture of diverse races and cultures.

Accordingly, the Soviets’ command economy and totalitarian controlled society gave way after 1989 not to utopia, but to a system animated by the forces of consumption, bureaucracy, spectacle, and sex. For though the democratists’ methods differed from those of the Communists, they too aspired to a raceless economic paradise and, to that end, now resort to totalitarian measures to criminalize, demonize, or pathologize whoever opposes their subversions.

In 1920, in his most famous book, Max Weber pointed out that a modernity subject solely to the market’s economic criteria engenders a ruthless rationalization of human life — what he called “the iron cage.” Venner argues that since 1945 Washington has imposed its version of the iron cage on Europe.

This has especially been the case in the European Union (EU). Though the idea of unification was an old one, Wilson’s heirs favored a model geared not just to Europe’s democratic re-education, but to its transformation into a US economic protectorate, closely integrated into the transnational super-structures which Washington and New York set in place during the course of the Cold War. The Marshall Plan, for example, dictated greater economic cooperation and integration centered on US regulated international trade, while Jean Monnet, the principal architect of the “common market,” was a Wall Street insider, friend to New York Jewish banking interests. Then, after America’s cat paw, Britain, entered the EU in 1972, Europe’s homegrown democratists (”the American Party” which has governed Europe since 1945) gave themselves over entirely to the liberal project, turning Europe into a free-trade zone subject to purely economic consideration. In this spirit, they now define Europe in anti-political (i.e., liberal) terms indifferent to all those historic, traditionalist, and national barriers obstructing the race-mixing imperatives of their monetary reign.

Venner calls the global order born of post-1945 Wilsonianism a “cosmocracy.” The cosmopolitan plutocracy of this cosmocracy, which became globally hegemonic after Communism’s collapse, makes the nation state obsolete, denationalizes its elites, and racially mixes incompatible peoples and cultures in the name of an abstract, quantitatively-defined Humanity indifferent to the survival of European peoples. Heir to liberalism’s inherent cosmopolitanism, as well as to Communist internationalism and the Judeo-Christian distortion of White identity, the collective culpabilitization that has been used since 1945 to manipulate the European conscience remains one of the cosmocracy’s most important supports. For to deflect criticism and squelch resistance, liberals and ex-Communists (whose chief distinction is their indifference to race, breeding, and every qualitative ascriptions resistant to the Judeo-liberal conception of democracy) need only appeal to their “anti-hate” laws and “human rights” to silence whoever challenges their inquisitional reign.

 

 

Having been guilty of the Holocaust, colonialism, and other so-called forms of racism, Europeans are now expected to open their arms to the refuse of the overpopulated Third World. The colored invasion now transforming Europe is gradually compelling Europeans to awake to what is happening to them and to take steps, however tentative at this point, toward the Reconquest of their imperiled homeland. But no one in their “democratic” ruling elites — these bloodless executors of that transnational super structure whose Hebraic spirit champions the interests of the Bilderbergers and Trilaterals, the established parties, the MSM, the NGOs, and the universities, whose guiding arm is the Jewish dominated banking system headquartered in New York, and whose principal geopolitical orientation is the Washington-London-Tel Aviv axis — no one in these elites has the slightest understanding of what is happening under their very noses, seemingly oblivious or indifferent to what the importation of millions of Africans and Asians means to Europe.

Fortunately for Europe’s scattered remnant (and it was a remnant that reconquered Spain), the cosmocracy is creating a crisis of such massive proportion that it is likely to provoke a catastrophic collapse that will give Whites one last chance to regain control of their destiny.

The Beginning that Stands Before Us

Europeans after 1945 fell into dormition, losing all consciousness of who they were as a people. Like Germans after the original Thirty Years Wars (1618-48), their thirty-year blood expenditure left them totally depleted, forcing them off the historical stage and into the arms of everything that today threatens their existence.

Dormition, though, is not death. This seems especially the case in that the democratists’ utopia has come to rest on increasingly uncertain foundations. Its objective failures, I think it is fair to argue, are more and more imposing themselves on the collective consciousness, while, subjectively, Europe’s once cowed and beaten nations are gradually beginning to reject the democratists’ cosmopolitan agenda, as national-populist parties snip away at the authority of the established regime. The rebellion of May 2005, in which the French, then the Dutch electorates, rejected the proposed EU constitution — and did so against all the concerted forces of the existing system — was a revenge of sorts on May 1945 and on the Judeo-liberal vision of a Europe indifferent to its own genetic-cultural heritage. Other, more meaningful rebellions have also begun to stir.

Bad as things have become, there is thus still reason for hope. Venner stresses that history never ends — wars are never decisively won. Fukuyama had no sooner proclaimed “the end of history” — the undisputed triumph of Wilson’s market model of world order — than Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations predicted that the end of the Cold War’s ideological strife would lead to even more apocalyptic conflicts.

Few defeats, then, are irredeemable, but only as long as the defeated remain heroic: For our vision of the past (our vision of who we were) inevitably shapes what we are to become. Venner’s study is cause, though, not for optimism, but for caution and circumspection. Every European of good stock, he claims, cannot but admire the reckless heroism of Homer’s Achilles, but the greatest Homeric hero is Ulysses — Ulysses of the thousand guises, who used all his patience and cunning to regain his home.

Historically, resistance, reconquest, and renaissance are the Ulyssean work of small groups bound by the asceticism of ancient military orders and inspired by a will for action, thought, and decision. Not coincidentally, the struggles such groups wage create new aristocracies, for war is the most merciless of the selective forces. Only this, Venner believes, will enable us to regain our lands and all that we once were.

As Europeans enter the twenty-first century, one thing alone seems clear: The future will not resemble the present. The unimaginable is already waiting in the wings. But though history is full of the unforeseeable, the forces of culture, race, and history never cease to weight on a people’s destiny, as they intersect with present circumstance to affect the future’s course. In this Venner finds hope. For his Europe (which has existed for 30,000 years) is the Europe whose spirit struggles for all that is noble.

Source: VNN, 21 June 2007.

Poids de la mémoire, nécessité de l'Histoire

Poids de la mémoire, nécessité de l'Histoire

par Jean-Gilles Malliarakis

Ex: http://www.insolent.fr/

On a fêté hier en France l'armistice de 1945. Dans l'ancienne Moscovie on commémore cela le 9 mai, en considération de l'entrée victorieuse des troupes staliniennes dans la vieille capitale prussienne. Il existe ainsi, de manière inévitable, plusieurs versions de l'Histoire. Ce qui tient lieu d'occident gagnerait par conséquent à sortir, au moins, de la Mémoire formatée, dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle par la propagande soviétique.

On pourrait donc commencer par le commencement.

La seconde guerre mondiale a été mise en route le 23 août 1939 à Moscou. Joachim von Ribbentrop et Viatcheslav Molotov, respectivement ministre des Affaires étrangères du Reich et commissaire du peuple de l'Union soviétique paraphèrent ce jour-là deux documents. Le premier, rendu public, se présentait comme un pacte de non-agression entre les deux États. Personne ne s'y trompait. Un second accord le complète sous forme d'un protocole secret délimitant à l'avance les zones d'influence respective en Europe centrale et orientale qui résulteront du conflit immédiatement à venir. Un troisième interviendra le 28 septembre pour le partage des dépouilles.

Les choses s'enchaîneront dès lors irrémédiablement. Hitler attaquera la Pologne une semaine plus tard, le 1er septembre. Son compère Staline le suivra, frappant dans le dos le frère slave, le 17. Un conflit monstrueux allait embraser le monde pour 6 années, provoquant la mort de 50 à 60 millions de victimes. Il ne se terminera qu'en août 1945, avec la conférence de Potsdam. Le dictateur soviétique avait entre-temps changé de camp, le 22 juin 1941. Il le fit involontairement, et sans l'avoir lui-même prévu. Il fera cependant avaliser de manière définitive par ses nouveaux partenaires de l'ouest, ses conquêtes territoriales. En Europe, tous ses agrandissements remontaient à la période de son appartenance au camp adverse entre 1939 et 1941.

Ses interlocuteurs d'alors venaient d'accéder au pouvoir. Ils s'appelaient Harry Truman, ayant succédé en avril à Roosevelt comme président des États-Unis, et Clement Attlee chef du parti travailliste, vainqueur des élections législatives remplaçant Churchill le 26 juillet 1944. À Yalta, l'Amérique et la Grande Bretagne avaient avalisé les bases de cette consolidation des acquis territoriaux. Les deux grands alliés occidentaux avaient en effet cosigné le 11 février 1945 la "déclaration sur l'Europe libérée" considérant qu'en Europe de l'est, "la libération par l'armée rouge crée une situation politique nouvelle".

Guère novatrice pourtant, celle-ci reprenait presque exactement la position redessinée le 28 septembre 1939 par le maître du Kremlin en accord avec Ribbentrop.

Les destructions immenses, les pertes humaines, les bouleversements politiques et sociaux résultant de la déflagration, mirent au second plan les charcutages territoriaux.

Pas d'histoire sans géographie, par de géographie sans cartes, nous enseignait-on pourtant autrefois.

Les Français, absents des deux conférences de Potsdam et de Yalta, libérés par les Américains et peu soucieux de géographie ont longtemps considéré comme points de détails les modifications apportées à la carte de l'Europe orientale. Aux yeux de beaucoup de décideurs nombre de frontières sont tenues pour justes dès lors que, résultant de l'histoire militaire, elles ont été fixées au moment de la signature des armistices.

Observons cependant que ces transferts de souverainetés territoriales, au centre de l'Europe, imposées en 1940 et pérennisées en 1945 répondaient à trois caractéristiques.

Premièrement, aucune d'entre elles ne correspondait ni à la volonté exprimée démocratiquement et pacifiquement par les populations, entre les deux guerres, ni à la plus élémentaire des cartes linguistiques.

Deuxièmement, du nord au sud, de la Carélie finnoise à la Bessarabie roumaine, elles permettaient toutes, aux forces armées soviétiques, de pénétrer directement dans chacun des pays satellisés et incorporés de force dans l'Empire communiste.

Et enfin toutes ces conquêtes, soit 9 territoires totalisant 435 000 km2, soit la superficie de 75 départements français, avaient été opérés pendant la période 1939-1941. (1)

À noter aussi que si 4 de ces 9 pays ont recouvré en 1991 leurs indépendances étatiques, et si 3 d'entre eux appartiennent désormais à l'Otan et à l'Union européenne, aucune frontière n'a fait l'objet ni d'un réexamen, ce qui peut être considéré désormais comme un moindre mal, ni même d'un assouplissement.

On doit donc constater que l'alliance entre Staline et Hitler, n'est pas seulement demeurée impunie. Initiée par le dictateur soviétique (2) elle se traduisit diplomatiquement par trois accords logiquement inséparables.

Le crime dont Katyn est devenu la métaphore sanglante, commis au détriment des victimes polonaises, ne doit être tenu ni pour isolé, ni pour accidentel, ni même pour spécifique au martyre d'une seule nation. Le massacre des élites réputées bourgeoises fut ainsi perpétré par l'occupant rouge. Avec ou sans la complicité de ses alliés du moment, elle laissa des traces profondes dans toute l'Europe de l'est.

Elle aura profité pendant un demi-siècle au partenaire communiste.

Elle a été transférée sans doute, de manière artificielle au second rang de la "mémoire".

Mais elle ne doit pas, elle ne peut pas être oubliée par l'Histoire

JG Malliarakis

Apostilles

1. La carte et le tableau de ces territoires figurent dans le livre "L'Alliance Staline Hitler" (chapitre Ier "Cartes sur tables"), dont la parution se trouve reportée de quelques jours. Il parviendra chez les souscripteurs fin mai. Je les prie de bien vouloir m'excuser de ce petit retard et j'en profite pour proposer aux autres de bénéficier encore jusqu'au 25 mai des conditions de souscription, au prix de 20 euros, payables soit par chèque adressé aux Éditions du Trident, 39 rue du Cherche Midi, 75006 Paris tel [phone], soit par carte bancaire en utilisant la page dédiée du site des Éditions du Trident.

    

2. ce que démontrent les 250 pages de documents publiés dans "L'Alliance Staline Hitler".

"L'Alliance Staline Hitler"

Sous ce titre paraîtra un ouvrage de l'auteur de ces lignes retraçant le contexte de la politique soviétique pendant toute l'entre deux guerres. Il comprend en annexe, et expliquant, plus de 80 documents diplomatiques, caractéristiques de cette alliance. Il sera en vente à partir du 25 mai au prix de 29 euros. Les lecteurs de L'Insolent peuvent y souscrire jusqu'au 25 mai au prix de 20 euros, soit en passant par la page spéciale sur le site des Éditions du Trident, soit en adressant directement un chèque de 20 euros aux Éditions du Trident 39 rue du Cherche Midi 75006 Paris. Tel [phone].

Puisque vous appréciez l'Insolent
Adressez-lui votre libre contribution financière !

Anatolia: Una indoeuropeizacion frustrada

Anatolia: Una indoeuropeización frustrada

por Olegario de las Eras

 

Ex: http://identidadytradicion.blogia.com/

La herencia indoeuropea, concretada en una jerarquía de valores y principios y en un tipo humano determinado que desde la Prehistoria han dado forma a ciclos de civilización análogos, conforma el nervio de la comunidad constituida por los pueblos europeos, comunidad sentida y vivida más allá de las contingentes «fronteras nacionales». En efecto, es un hecho que las sucesivas oleadas de pueblos septentrionales, migrando en grupos masivos y compactos, de celtas a eslavos de helenos a germanos, fueron los materiales sobre los que en el transcurso de milenios cristalizaron la práctica totalidad de pueblos de nuestro continente. Siendo esto así, resulta aparentemente contradictorio que un territorio como el de la península de Anatolia en el que se documenta una presencia indoeuropea desde fines del III milenio a. n. e. y que ha visto sobre su suelo a hititas, luvitas, helenos, tracios, frigios, persas, gálatas o latinos entre otros, se perciba por parte de los europeos como algo ajeno. Pero la realidad es que los indoeuropeos no pudieron permanecer en todas partes donde llegaron: «Los indoeuropeos no siempre han vencido»: no tenemos más remedio que dar la razón, aunque sea por una vez, a J. P. Mallory.

     La llegada a las costas del Mediterráneo de grupos indoeuropeos produjo siempre necesariamente enfrentamientos con las poblaciones autóctonas: de la derrota y sometimiento de éstas dependió la posibilidad de supervivencia de aquellos. En realidad, la historia de las civilizaciones indoeuropeas del Mediterráneo (Hélade, Roma, la Céltica...) es la historia de una incesante lucha contra el elemento humano y espiritual aborigen1. Éste fue el caso también de los pueblos que hablaban las lenguas indoeuropeas del grupo anatolio, pueblos que conservaban firmemente su tradición religiosa y jurídico-política indoeuropea en el momento de asentarse en sus sedes históricas2. A su llegada la península se encontraba densamente poblada por gentes pertenecientes al complejo racial mediterráneo, su cultura calcolítica, cuyas raíces se encuentran en el creciente fértil,  se estructuraba en esos momentos alrededor de centros urbanos que dominaban amplios espacios y su religión, omnipresente en el registro, estaba determinada por los cultos ctónios y de fecundidad. Con toda probabilidad la lengua hablada fue la que posteriormente será conocida como hático. Si bien los resultados de su inmigración fueron devastadores3, el impacto demográfico no alteró el predominio del substrato neolítico como han demostrado los trabajos de M. Senyürek: el impacto numérico del elemento indoeuropeo, étnicamente nórdico4, fue demasiado pequeño como para perdurar física y espiritualmente por demasiado tiempo. Con el transcurso de los siglos, la dünne Herrenschicht, el delgado estrato señorial hitita, resultó fatalmente «hurritizado», «mesopotamizado» y «haticizado» y la destrucción del Imperio a fines del II milenio por obra de grupos frigios procedentes de más allá del Helesponto signará la desaparición de la propia lengua hitita. Los llamados reinos neohititas surgidos tras el desastre en el borde meridional del antiguo Imperio utilizarán el luvita en sus textos. Esta lengua, hablada en las zonas occidental y meridional de la península por comunidades en las que el elemento indoeuropeo parece haber presentado una mayor densidad,  resistió el embate, sobreviviendo en el licio5.

    A ojos del observador contemporáneo podría parecer que la presencia de los helenos en  áreas de la franja costera occidental, de los grupos licios y lidios y los aportes indoeuropeos de las invasiones del 1200 acabaría por vincular el Asia Menor a Europa. Sin embargo, tanto los propios testimonios lingüísticos, que nos hablan de la profunda acción del sustrato no indoeuropeo en las lenguas del grupo anatolio, tanto antiguas como recientes, como las influencias no helénicas que podemos descubrir cada vez con mayor peso en toda la Jonia nos demuestran que el destino de los hititas volvía a repetirse en el occidente y el sur peninsular: en ambos ámbitos los cultos de naturaleza telúrica, enraizados en el neolítico anatolio, van recobrando fuerza mostrando la abrumadora presencia de una población «no receptiva» a las concepciones espirituales indoeuropeas6.

     Tras el periodo de dominio persa, las conquistas de Alejandro y de Roma son los últimos empujes en la historia de Anatolia de raíz occidental7. Empujes políticos que tienen como efecto la integración de este territorio en la ecúmene helenística y en el Imperio pero una escasa relevancia en términos étnicos8. Y es en época romana cuando se constata un fenómeno ciertamente revelador: la muy temprana y fácil cristianización del ámbito anatolio que contrasta con el carácter de secta y muy minoritario de los seguidores del Galileo en la parte occidental del Imperio y la misma Grecia9, fenómeno paralelo al resto de áreas no europeas del Imperio.

     El fracaso de la renovatio imperii de Justiniano y las posteriores concepciones teocráticas de lejanas raíces próximo-orientales preludian el destino «no europeo» de Anatolia: Bizancio se percibe por los occidentales romano-germánicos como algo profundamente ajeno: la matanza de latinos de 1182 y las conquistas cruzadas jalonan este desencuentro. Pero este destino quedará sellado a partir de 1071 cuando los selyúcidas ocupen la mitad oriental de Anatolia. Tres siglos después toda Anatolia pertenece a los otomanos. Los procesos de «turquización» étnica y lingüística y de islamización comenzados en el siglo XI, que culminan con las masivas deportaciones contemporáneas de griegos y armenios, borrarán todo resto lingüístico (excepción hecha del pueblo kurdo, cuya lengua pertenece al grupo iranio, que está padeciendo un etnocidio por parte del estado turco del cual no es este lugar para hablar) e ideológico indoeuropeo de la península. Sólo los rasgos nórdicos que muy de tarde en tarde se pueden observar en algún campesino de Capadocia, probablemente de sangre gálata, dan testimonio de aquellos antiguos ciclos de civilización hoy completamente agotados.    

 

---

1 Véase J. Evola, Rebelión contra el mundo moderno, Buenos Aires 1994, especialmente la Parte II capítulos V-X y la recopilación de textos del mismo autor sobre esta cuestión publicada por Ed. di Ar bajo el título La Tradizione Romana.

2 Véase, por ejemplo, E. Masson, Le combat pour L’inmortalité. Héritage indo-europeen dans la mytologie anatolienne, París 1991 y O. J. Gurney, Los hititas, Barcelona 1995, especialmente pp. 72 y ss.

3 P. Garelli, El Próximo oriente asiático, Barcelona 1982, pp. 27 y A. Romualdi, Los indoeuropeos. Orígenes y migraciones, Barcelona 2002, p. 173 n. 50.

4 V. Christian, «Die frühesten Spuren der Indogermanen in Vorderasien», en Rasse 1935 2ª año, nº 4, p. 121 y ss. y H.F.K. Günther, Rassenkunde des Jüdischen Volkes, Munich 1930, pp. 50-54. La extensión del rito de incineración ha dificultado enormemente el diagnóstico tipológico de los grupos conquistadores indoeuropeos: Gurney (op. cit., pp. 160 y ss.) llama la atención sobre las semejanzas entre los ritos de incineración descritos en las tablillas hititas y los homéricos. Entre las nuevas poblaciones que no incineran a sus muertos también se documentan tipos alpinos, inexistentes en Anatolia con anterioridad. Por otro lado, el proceso de «hurritización» del Imperio hitita se ve acompañado por una difusión desde el este del tipo armenoide o pre-asiático, actualmente muy bien representado entre la población turca (H.F.K. Günther op. cit., pp. 20-40).

5 Para una breve visión de conjunto de la problemática de las lenguas indoeuropeas del grupo anatolio véase F. Villar, Los indoeuropeos y los orígenes de Europa, Madrid 1996, pp.289 y ss. 

6 Baste recordar el culto de Ártemis Efesia como diosa de la fertilidad, el de Attys o el de la «frigia» Cibeles. 

7 Es preciso mencionar la aventura gálata que se inicia con los movimientos de diferentes grupos célticos en el siglo IV a. n. e. Algunos de estos grupos, apenas unos 20.000 individuos en su conjunto, de los cuales unos 10.000 guerreros, tras numerosas vicisitudes fueron asentados por Antíoco Soter en las llanuras frigias y sobre el Halys, tierras que desde entonces recibirán el nombre de Galacia. Derrotados por Atalo I, a cuyo sepulcro pertenecen las impresionantes estatuas helenísticas del guerrero gálata moribundo y de su caudillo quitándose la vida, fueron concentrados en su territorio donde dominarán a una población anatolia mucho más densa. Se helenizarán progresivamente pero conservarán su lengua hasta la cristianización. Sobre los gálatas véase H. Hubert, Los celtas y la civilización céltica, Madrid 1988, pp. 297-307.

8 Una aproximación muy interesante a los estados helenísticos en el que se aplican las categorías interpretativas de G. Dumézil puede verse en C. Preaux, El mundo helenístico, Barcelona 1984, 2 volúmenes.

9 Véase, por ejemplo, M. Simon y A. Benoit, El judaísmo y le cristianismo antiguo, Barcelona 1972, pp. 54.

O Barao "Sangrento" von Ungern-Sternberg - Louco ou Mistico?

 

O Barão "Sangrento" von Ungern-Sternberg - Louco ou Místico?

 

por Dr. Richard Spence

 

Ex: http://legio-victrix.blogspot.com/

 

"Meu nome está cercado por tamanho ódio e medo que ninguém pode julgar o que é verdade e o que é mentira, o que é história, e o que é mito."

(Barão Roman Fedorovich von Ungern-Sternberg, 1921)

Na Mongólia, havia uma lenda do príncipe guerreiro, Beltis-Van. Notável por sua ferocidade e crueldade, ele derramou "enormes quantidades de sangue humano antes de ter encontrado sua morte nas montanhas de Uliasutay." Seus assassinos enterraram os corpos do Príncipe e de seus seguidores bem fundo na terra, cobriram as tumbas com pedras pesadas, e adicionaram "encantamentos e exorcismo para que seus espíritos não irrompessem novamente, carregando morte e destruição." Essas medidas, foi profetizado, prenderia os terríveis espíritos até que sangue humano se derramasse novamente sobre o local.

No início de 1921, prossegue a história, "russos vieram e cometeram assassinatos perto das temíveis tumbas, manchando-as com sangue." Para alguns, isso explicava o que se seguiu.

Quase no mesmo instante, um novo chefe guerreiro apareceu em cena, e pelos próximos seis meses ele espalhou terror e morte pelas estepes e montanhas da Mongólia e mesmo nas regiões adjacentes da Sibéria. Entre os mongóis ele ficou conhecido como o Tsagan Burkhan, o "Deus da Guerra" encarnado.

Posteriormente, o Dalai Lama XIII proclamou-o uma manifestação da "divindade furiosa" Mahakala, defensor da fé budista. Historicamente, o mesmo indivíduo é mais conhecido como o "Barão Louco" ou o "Barão Sangrento". Seus detratores não se encabulam de chamá-lo um bandido homicida ou de psicopata.

O homem em questão é o Barão Roman Fedorovich von Ungern-Sternberg. Seus feitos podem apenas ser esboçados aqui. Com a eclosão da Revolução Russa, Barão Ungern achou-se na Sibéria oriental onde ele se alinou com o movimento anti-bolchevique "Branco". Porém, seus sentimentos monarquistas extremos e modos independentes o tornaram um perigo nessa facção.

Em 1920, ele liderou sua "Divisão Asiática Montada", uma coleção heterogênea de russos, mongóis, tártaros e outras tropas, para os ermos da Mongólia, uma terra efervescendo com resistência contra a ocupação chinesa. Reunindo mongóis sob sua bandeira, no início de fevereiro de 1921 Ungern conquistou uma aparentemente miraculosa vitória tomando o controle da capital mongol, Urga (hoje Ulan Bator), de uma grande guarnição chinesa. Ele então restaurou o líder temporal e espiritual dos mongóis, o "Buda Vivo" Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu Bogdo Gegen, ou, mais simplesmente, Bogdo Khan e se estabeleceu como chefe guerreiro sobre a Mongólia Exterior e os destacamentos russos Brancos que haviam se refugiado ali.

Cercando-se com um círculo interno de bajuladores homicidas e videntes, ele instituiu um reino de terror que clamou como vítimas judeus, comunistas autênticos ou suspeitos, e centenas de outros que, de algum modo, despertaram a ira ou suspeita do Barão. Em junho do mesmo ano, ele lançou uma mal-fadada invasão à Sibéria soviética que terminou com sua captura pelo Exército Vermelho e seu subsequente julgamento e execução em 17 de setembro.

Esse artigo foca no misticismo real e alegado do Barão Ungern e sua influência sobre suas ações. Uma questão chave é se sua suposta "loucura", em todo ou em parte, era uma interpretação equivocada de sua devoção ao budismo esotérico e outras crenças.

Background e Primeiros Anos

Enquanto o Barão passou a maior parte de sua vida no serviço dos Romanov, ele era quase completamente alemão por sangue. Ele veio ao mundo como Robert Nicholaus Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg em 10 de janeiro de 1886 em Graz, Áustria. Na Estônia governada pela Rússia, seu pai, Teodor Leonard Rudolf von Ungern-Sternberg, introduziu seu filho na nobreza tzarista como Roman Fedorovich. Os Ungern-Sternbergs eram uma antiga e ilustre família. O Barão datava sua linhagem pelo menos em mil anos e se vangloriava com seus captores bolcheviques de que 72 de seus ancestrais haviam dado suas vidas pela Rússia em muitas guerras.

Existe a sugestão de instabilidade mental, mesmo loucura, em sua linhagem próxima. Por exemplo, um ancestral do fim do século XVIII, Freiherr Otto Reinhold Ludwig von Ungern-Sternberg, ganhou infâmia como pirata e assassino que morreu no exílio siberiano. O próprio pai de Roman tinha uma reputação de "homem mau" cuja violência e crueldade levou ao seu divórcio e a uma proibição de que ele tivesse qualquer "influência" sobre seus filhos.

No que concerne o estado mental de Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, obviamente um diagnóstico de insanidade só pode ser feito após um exame por um psiquiatra, algo impossível nesse caso. Porém, Dmitry Pershin, uma testemunha que tinha uma visão razoavelmente positiva do Barão, ainda sentia que Ungern sofria de alguma "anormalidade psicótica" que fazia com que ele perdesse a cabeça sob a mais "mínima provocação", usualmente com resultados terríveis.

História posteriores afirmaram que o comportamento aberrante de Roman era o resultado de um corte de sabre em sua cabeça, mas ele manifestava tendências violentas e rebeldes desde muito antes. Seus dias escolares foram marcados por constantes problemas; no Corpo de Cadetes Navais, ele recebeu não menos que 25 punições disciplinares antes de se retirar antes de uma expulsão garantida. Sua educação o deuxou com uma aversão permanente pelo "pensamento" que ele equiparava a "covardia."

Como oficial júnior antes e durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial, ele estabeleceu uma reputação como um encrenqueiro violento com uma tendência para a embriaguez. Porém, ele também recebeu medalhas por feridas e bravura inconsequente. Nas palavras de um superior, o jovem Barão era um "guerreiro por temperamento," que "vivia para a guerra" e aderia a seu próprio conjunto de "leis elementais." Essas últimas eram influenciadas por um interesse no misticismo e no ocultismo, principalmente da variedade oriental.

O Barão como Guerreiro Místico

Exatamente quando e onde esse interesse começou é incerto. A variedade pessoal de fé de Ungern, se é que era Budismo, aderia à seita mística tibetana Vajrayana ou Tântrica. O jovem Roman ganhou seu primeiro gosto do Oriente como parte da infantaria durante a Guerra Russo-Japonesa, e ele passou de 1908 a 1914 como um oficial cossaco na Sibéria e na Mongólia. Foi então, ele afirmou depois, que ele formou uma "Ordem de Budistas Militares" para servir ao Czar e lutar contra os males da revolução. As regras dessa Ordem incluíam o celibato e o "uso ilimitado de álcool, haxixe e ópio." Esse último era para ajudar os iniciados a superarem sua própria "natureza física" através dos excessos, mas como o Barão confessou, isso não funcionou como ele tinha planejado. Posteriormente, na Mongólia, ele impôs uma proibição rígida sobre a bebida. Ainda assim, ele afirmou, ele reuniu "três centenas de homens, ousados e ferozes," e alguns que não pereceram durante a luta contra a Alemanha e os Bolcheviques ainda estavam com ele em 1921.

Ungern abandonou sua comissão regular no fim de 1913. Sozinho, ele partiu para a vastidão da Mongólia Exterior que havia proclamado independência da China. Segundo um relato, ele ergueu-se como comandante das forças de cavalaria do inexperiente Exército Mongol, enquanto outro mantém que ele uniu-se a um bando de saqueadores do sanguinário rebelde anti-chinês, Ja Lama. Em algum ponto, Ungern acabou na cidade de Kobdo (Khovd) na Mongólia ocidental como um membro da guarda do consulado russo local.

Um de seus camaradas lembra que "quando se observava Ungern, sentia-se levado de volta à Idade Média...; ele era um retrocesso aos seus ancestrais cruzados, com a mesma sede por guerra e a mesma crença no sobrenatural." Outro lembra-se que ele demonstrava "um grande interesse pelo Budismo," aprendeu mongol e passou a frequentar lamas videntes. Segundo Dmitri Aloishin, um tardio e involuntário membro do exército do Barão, os "professores budistas de Ungern o ensinaram sobre a reencarnação, e ele firmemente acreditava que em matar pessoas fracas ele apenas fazia a elas um bem, já que elas poderiam ser criaturas mais fortes na próxima vida."

Os paralelos entre o anteriormente mencionado Ja Lama e o Barão parecem bem próximos para serem mera coincidência. Também conhecido como o "Lama com uma Mauser", Ja Lama brevemente tornou-se mestre da Mongólia ocidental. Outro "budista militante," ele ganhou uma temível reputação por arrancar o coração de seus infelizes prisioneiros e oferecê-los em taças em forma de crânio humano como bali (sacrifício) aos "deuses tibetanos do terror." Um desses rituais "tântricos" de execução ocorreu em Kobdo no verão de 1912, pouco antes de Ungern aparecer no local. Em fevereiro de 1914, o cônsul russo em Kobdo prendeu Ja Lama e algumas tropas cossacas, possivelmente incluindo Ungern, e escoltou os cativos ao exílio na Rússia. Teria Ja Lama se tornado um modelo para o Barão, ou mesmo uma inspiração religiosa?

Um ângulo tibetano figura proeminentemente na subsequente fuga mongol de Ungern. O Buda Vivo era ele mesmo um filho da Terra das Neves Perpétuas, e existia uma pequena comunidade tibetana em Urga. Uma centena, aproximadamente, desses homens formaram uma sotnia (esquadrão) especial nas forças do Barão e tiveram um papel crítico no ataque sobre Urga, tendo resgatado o Bogdo de sob os narizes de seus guardas chineses. Os chineses e mongois estavam convencidos de que o feito havia sido realizado através de feitiçaria. Esses tibetanos mantinham uma distância do resto do exército do Barão; aparentemente outros eram afastados por seu hábito de jantar em tijelas feitas com crânios humanos, talvez o mesmo tipo de vasilhames usados nos ritos de sacrifício de Ja Lama.

O nexo tibetano também garantiu para o Barão um elo com Lhasa e o Dalai Lama, a quem ele enviou cartas pessoais. Após se poder na Mongólia ter entrado em colapso, Ungern sonhou com liderar os remanescentes de sua diversão até o Tibet para se colocar a serviço do santo budista. O prospecto dessa missão extenuante e potencialmente suicida foi a gota d'água em provocar motim contra o Barão.

Também servindo sob Ungern em sua aventura mongol estava aproximadamente 50 soldados japoneses. Isso alimentou acusações de que ele seria um instrumento do imperialismo japonês. Enquanto está claro que as Forças Armadas japonesas monitoravam as atividades do Barão e achavam que ele poderia ser útil, é igualmente evidente que eles não tinham qualquer controle sobre ele. Ainda assim, esse minúsculo contingente japonês recebia rações melhores e o privilégio único de consumir álcool. Registros militares japoneses sugerem que os homens eram em sua maioria "pequenos aventureiros" atuando por conta própria, mas isso não está muito claro. Seu comandando, um Major ou Capitão Suzuki, havia conhecido o Barão em 1919 em um "Congresso Pan-Mongol" e a dupla mantinha uma amizade especial e secreta.

Uma possibilidade intrigante é que Suzuki não era um emissário do Exército de Mikado, mas de uma das sociedades secretas que o permeava, como a Sociedade do Dragão Negro, ou a ainda mais secreta Sociedade do Dragão Verde. Essa última era baseada em uma seita de Budismo esotérico, e sua agenda Pan-Asiática e Pan-Budista se confundia com as próprias crenças de Ungern. O Barão sentia que o Ocidente havia perdido seu ancoradouro espiritual e havia entrado em uma fase de desintegração moral e cultural. A Revolução Russa não era mais que uma manifestação dessa corrupção avançada. Apenas no Oriente, especificamente no Budismo, ele via uma força capaz de resistir a essa decadência e de restaurar uma ordem espiritual no Ocidente.

Os Lamas e Videntes do Barão

Ungern era fascinado por todas as formas de advinhação. Ele supostamente carregava consigo um baralho de cartas de Tarô, mesmo no calor da batalha. Como notado, em Kobdo ele se reunía com lamas advinhos e em Urga ele se cercava com um pequeno exército de videntes (tsurikhaichi), feiticeiros e xamãs. Aloishin recorda que os advinhos do Barão estavam sempre consultando as omoplatas assadas de ovelhas, se debruçando nas linhas "para determinar onde as tropas devem ser estacionadas, e como avançar contra o inimigo." Em outras ocasiões, Ungern ordenou que suas tropas parassem "em vários locais segundo velhas profecias mongois."

O médico do Barão, Dr. N. M. Riabukhin, maldisse os advinhos como "insolentes, sujos, ignorantes e mancos" e lamentou o fato de que Ungern "nunca dava um passo importante" sem consultá-lo. Os advinhos o convenceram de que ele era a encernação de Tsagan Burkhan, o Deus da Guerra. Para o oficial Branco Boris Volkov, a dependência do Barão nesses tipos parecia prova da "mentalidade imbecil do degenerado que se imaginava o salvador da Rússia."

Antes de sua investida contra a Sibéria Vermelha, Ungern gastou 20.000 preciosos dólares mexicanos para contratar milhares de lamas para "realizar para ele elaborados serviços nos templos e para convocar para seu auxílio todos os seus poderes místicos." A previsão de uma feiticeira drogada de que o fim do Barão se aproximava provou-se sombriamente precisa, e ajudou a convencê-lo de realizar a desastrosa invasão. Os lamas videntes falharam com ele quando eles o aconselharam a atrasar em dois dias o ataque contra Troitskosavsk, uma cidade fronteiriça chave. Isso deu aos vermelhos a oportunidade de trazer reforços e repelir o ataque. Posteriormente, oficiais subornaram um advinho buriat para mudar as previsões, o que levou Ungern a cancelar outros ataques e ordenar uma retirada para a Mongólia.

Mas se Ungern foi influenciado - e ludibriado - pelo sobrenatural, ele também sabia como usá-lo para sua vantagem. Antes de seu último ataque contra Urga, ele enviou advinhos para a cidade onde eles "encheran os soldados chineses com medo supersticioso" pela previsão de sua iminente chegada e espalhando rumores de que o Barão Branco era imune a balas e podia aparecer e desaparecer à vontade. Ele também ordenou que fossem acesas fogueiras noturnas nas colinas circundantes. Seus agentes mongois disseram aos crédulos chineses que as fogueiras eram Ungern oferecendo sacrifícios aos espíritos que se vingariam contra os filhos da China.

Uma pessoa impressionada desde cedo pela natureza peculiar do Barão foi o filósofo místico Conde Hermann Keyserling que conhecia Roman e seu irmão Constantin desde a infância. Keyserling depois considerou o Barão como "a pessoa mais impressionante que eu já tive a sorte de conhecer," mas também como uma massa de contradições. Ele via Ungern como alguém cuja "natureza havia sido suspensa...no vácuo entre o céu e o inferno," alguém "capaz das mais altas intuições e gentis amabilidades" junto com "a mais profunda aptidão para a metafísica da crueldade." As idéias metafísicas do Barão, acreditava Keyserling, estavam "fortemente relacionadas àquelas dos tibetanos e hindus." Keyserling estava convicto de que Roman possuía o poder oculto da "segunda visão" e "a faculdade da profecia".

Keyserling não foi o único que chegou a essas conclusões. Anos depois, o filósofo fascista e ocultista Julius Evola opinou que o Barão Ungern possuía "faculdades supranormais" incluindo clarividência e a habilidade de "olhar dentro das almas" dos outros. Ferdynand Ossendowski afirmou que ele fez exatamente isso em seu encontro inicial: "Eu estive em sua alma e sei tudo," afirmou o Barão, e a vida de Ossendowski estava garantida.

Muito do mesmo é repetido nos testemunhos de outros que conheceram Ungern. Aloishin achava que o Barão era patentemente insano, mas também sentia que ele "possuía um poder perigoso de ler os pensamentos das pessoas." Ele relembra como Ungern inspecionava recrutas olhando no rosto de cada homem, "sustentava aquele olhar por alguns momentos, e então rosnava: 'Para o Exército; 'De volta para o gado'; 'Liquidar'." Riabukhin menciona que em seu primeiro encontro "era como se o Barão quisesse saltar na minha alma." Outro oficial anônimo relembra que "Ungern olhava para todo mundo com os olhos de um predador," e isso instilava medo em todos os que o encontravam. Um soldado polonês em serviço mongol, Alexandre Alexandrowicz, aceita a "segunda visão" do Barão, mas acreditava que era seu intelecto "superior" que o ajudava a "avaliar qualquer homem em alguns minutos."

O Misterioso Ferdynand Ossendowski

 

 

Aparentemente, ninguém fez mais para criar a imagem recorrente do Barão Ungern do que o acima mencionado escritor polonês Ferdynand Ossendowski. Porém, ele é longe de ser uma fonte impecável. Antes de seu encontro com o Barão, Ossendowski tinha uma longa história como espião, criador de intrigas e fornecedor de documentos falsos. Ele quase certamente foi um agente da polícia secreta czarista, a Okhrana. Em 1917-1918 ele estava envolvido com os infamens Documentos Sissons, um dossiê fraudulento (ainda que acertado) sobre as intrigas germano-bolcheviques. Posteriormente, na Sibéria, Ossendowski serviu ao "Supremo Governante" Branco Almirante Kolchak como conselheiro econômico e, provavelmente, um espião. Ossendowski chegou na Mongólia como refugiado da maré Vermelha. Em seu muito lido livro de 1922, "Feras, Homens e Deuses", o polonês descreve seu encontro com o "Barão Sangrento" em detalhes vívidos, e não sem alguma simpatia pelo indivíduo. Não obstante, Ossendowski sabia que "diante de mim estava um homem perigoso," e que "eu senti alguma tragédia, algum horror em cada movimento do Barão Ungern." Nem Ossendowski mediu palavras sobre o clima de medo que assolava Urga sob o Barão. Ele descreve o suporte de subalternos homicidas de Ungern tais como o "estrangulador" psicótico Leonid Sipailov, o igualmente repelente Evgeny Burdukovsky e o sádico Dr. Klingenberg. O que Ossendowski convenientemente se esquiva de explicar é o mistério de sua própria sobrevivência nesse ambiente precário.

Nas opiniões de outros que testemunharam o governo do Barão, Ossendowski não era apenas sortudo e observador inocente. Konstantin Noskov observa que do momento de sua chegada na Mongólia, o "Professor" Ossendowski teve um "estranho papel compreendido por ninguém." "Ele interferia em tudo," afirma Noskov, "brigava muito habilmente e tecia complicadas intrigas políticas..." Pershin acusa que Ossendowski era outro que explorava a obsessão de Ungern com o sobrenatural, uma opinião ecoada por outro dos oficiais do Barão, K.I. Lavrent'ev. Ao encorajar "a fé do Barão no ocultismo e em outras coisas do além," Ossendowski tornou-se "conselheiro" do Barão, o que pod explicar uma afirmação posterior de que o polonês tornou-se o "Chefe de Inteligência" de Ungern.

Ossendowski, segundo Pershin, "cavou um caminho até uma posição próxima ao Barão" e então "extraiu todas as vantagens que ele queria." Essas incluíam dinheiro e passagem segura para a Manchúria "em conforto e, talvez, com algo mais que isso." Dr. Riabukhin e Noskov, ambos se lembram que Ossendowski foi inexplicavelmente o único sobrevivente entre um grupo de refugiados cujos outros membros foram assassinados sob as ordens de Ungern. Boris Volkov afirma ainda que Ossendowski teve um papel chave na formulação da infame e "mística" Ordem do Barão, e assim garantiu sua vida e uma grande soma de dinheiro. Noskov claramente declara que Ossendowski foi o autor da Ordem.

A "Ordem #15", o mais perto que Ungern chegou de definir uma filosofia ou missão, merece um exame mais atento. Como o Barão não estava no hábito de pronunciar ordens numeradas, a #15 é desprovida de sentido nesse contexto. Segundo Aloishin, esse número e a data de seu pronunciamento eram mais a obra de "lamas eruditos" que os escolheram como números da sorte. Basicamente, a Ordem define um esquema grandioso de iniciar uma onda expansiva de Contra-Revolução que limparia a Rússia de seu contágio radical e restauraria o trono Romanov sob o irmão do czar Nicolau, Mikhail Alexandrovich. O Barão, como muitos outros, não sabia que Mikhail já estava morto desde junho de 1918. A Ordem proclamava que "o mal que veio à Terra para destruir o princípio divino da alma humana deve ser destruído em sua raiz," e que "a punição só pode ser uma: a pena de morte, em vários graus."

O artigo mais notório, porém, era o #9 que declara que "Comissários, comunistas e judeus, junto com suas famílias, devem ser destruídos." O Barão possuía um ódio patológico dos judeus, e onde quer que seu poder alcançasse preponderância havia um impiedoso extermínio dessa comunidade. Até mesmo Pershin, que sentia que "as histórias acerca da impiedade de Ungern tem sido muito exageradas," admitiu que os assassinatos em massa dos judeus eram infelizmente verdadeiros e que o Barão era implacável nessa questão. Volkov sentia que Ungern usava pogroms como um instrumento para explorar o anti-semitismo entre os emigrados e as tropas, mas havia um zelo quase religioso em seu ódio. Em uma carta a um associado russo Branco em Pequim, o Barão alertou contra o "Judaísmo Internacional" e mesmo contra a influência insidiosa dos "Capitalistas Judeus" que eram um "onipresente, ainda que normalmente não percebido, inimigo." Em seu julgamento, o Barão garantiu a seu promotor judeu-bolchevique, Emelian Yaroslavsky, que "a Internacional Comunista foi organizada 3.000 anos atrás na Babilônia." Em seus sentimentos em relação aos judeus, Ungern certamente prefigura a mentalidade nazista, e muito do mesmo poderia ser dito a respeito de toda sua mistura estranha de anti-modernismo místico.

Em agosto de 1921, o reino despótico do Barão chegou a um fim quando oficiais desesperados da Divisão Asiática Montada ensaiou um golpe contra ele e sua pequena elite de lealistas. Quase miraculosamente, Ungern escapou o massacre geral e encontrou um refúgio final breve entre seus soldados mongóis. Eles também logo o abandonaram aos Vermelhos que se aproximavam, mas sim arrancar um fio de seu cabelo; eles ainda estavam convencidos de que ele era o Tsagan Burkhan e não podia ser morto.

Os soviéticos não sofriam dessas ilusões. Em seu julgamento em Novo-Nikolaevsk, ele foi um prisioneiro calmo, até mesmo digno. Ele havia previsto seu destino e o aceitado. A promotoria estava mais interessada em retratá-lo como um agente dos japoneses, o que ele negou. Porém, o Barão imediatamente admitiu os massacres e outras atrocidades. No que concerne sua disciplina brutal, ele se proclamou um crente em um sistema que havia existido "desde Frederico o Grande." Ele foi diante do pelotão de fuzilamento muito convicto de que eventualmente ele retornaria.

Um último ponto nos traz de volta a Ossendowski, que afirmou que o Barão buscava contato com o reino subterrâneo místico de Agarthu e seu governante misterioso, o "Rei do Mundo." Agarthi, é claro, é idêntica com Agarttha ou Shambhala, uma terra mística exaltada na mitologia hindu e budista. No início do século XX, a história foi pega e elaborada por escritores esotéricos ocidentais como Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre e Nikolai Roerich que acreditavam que ela descrevia um reino realmente oculto em algum lugar no norte do Tibet ou na Ásia Central. Por uma interessante coincidência, outro oficial da Divisão de Ungern foi Vladimir Konstantinovich Roerich, o irmão mais novo de Nikolai. Então novamente, talvez isso não seja nenhuma coincidência. Mas isso nos leva a outra história que é melhor guardada para outro artigo: "Estrela Vermelha sobre Shambhala: Inteligência Soviética, Britânica e Americana e a Busca pela Civilização Perdida na Ásia."

Le plan de Staline pour conquérir l'Europe

Le plan de Staline pour conquérir l’Europe:
Comment l’Union Soviétique «perdit» la 2ème Guerre Mondiale

Daniel W. Michaels

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun)
Poslednyaya Respublika («La dernière république»)
Moscou : TKO ACT, 1996.

English original here ^[2]

Il y a maintenant plusieurs années de cela, un ancien officier du renseignement militaire soviétique nommé Vladimir Rezun provoqua de vives discussions en Russie à cause de son affirmation sensationnelle, selon laquelle Hitler a attaqué la Russie soviétique en juin 1941, au moment exact où Staline se préparait à submerger l’Allemagne et l’Europe de l’Ouest, en prélude à une opération bien préparée, visant à «libérer» toute l’Europe en la mettant sous domination communiste.

Ecrivant sous le nom de plume de Viktor Suvorov, Rezun a développé cette thèse dans trois livres. Le Brise-glace (qui a été traduit en anglais et en français [1989] ) et Dni M («M-Day») ont été présentés dans le Journal of Historical Review, nov-déc. 1997. Le troisième livre, présenté ici, est un ouvrage de 470 pages, «La dernière république : pourquoi l’Union Soviétique perdit la Seconde Guerre Mondiale», publié à Moscou en 1996.

Suvorov présente une abondance de preuves, montrant que quand Hitler déclencha son «Opération Barbarossa» contre la Russie Soviétique le 22 juin 1941, les forces allemandes purent infliger d’énormes pertes aux Soviétiques précisément parce que les troupes russes étaient très bien préparées pour la guerre — mais pour une guerre d’agression qui fut programmée pour le début de juillet — et pas pour la guerre défensive qui leur fut imposée par l’attaque préventive de Hitler.

Dans le Brise-glace, Suvorov détaille le déploiement des forces soviétiques en juin 1941, décrivant exactement de quelle manière Staline amassa de vastes quantités de troupes et de stocks d’armements le long de la frontière européenne, pas pour défendre la patrie soviétique, mais en préparation d’une attaque vers l’ouest et de batailles décisives en territoire ennemi.

Ainsi, quand les forces allemandes frappèrent, le gros des forces russes, terrestres et aériennes, étaient concentrées le long des frontières ouest de l’URSS, en face des pays européens contigus, particulièrement le Reich allemand et la Roumanie, prêtes pour l’assaut final contre l’Europe.

Dans son second livre sur les origines de la guerre, M-Day («Jour de mobilisation»), Suvorov décrit comment, entre la fin de 1939 et l’été de 1941, Staline construisit méthodiquement et systématiquement la force militaire la mieux armée, la plus puissante dans le monde — véritablement la première superpuissance du monde — pour sa future conquête de l’Europe. Suvorov explique comment la conversion drastique de l’économie du pays pour la guerre, voulue par Staline, rendait la guerre réellement inévitable.

Une Union Soviétique Mondiale

Dans La dernière république, Suvorov ajoute d’autres preuves à celles présentées dans ses deux livres précédents, pour appuyer son affirmation selon laquelle Staline se préparait à une guerre d’agression, en soulignant les motivations idéologiques des actions du dirigeant soviétique. Le titre fait allusion au malheureux pays qui devait être incorporé en tant que «République finale» dans «l’Union des Républiques Socialistes Soviétiques» mondiale, complétant ainsi le révolution prolétarienne mondiale.

Comme l’explique Suvorov, ce plan était entièrement en accord avec la doctrine marxiste-léniniste, ainsi qu’avec la politique de Lénine dans les premières années du régime soviétique. L’historien russe argue de manière convaincante que ce ne fut pas Léon Trotsky (Bronstein), mais plutôt Staline, son moins flamboyant rival, qui fut réellement le fidèle disciple de Lénine pour la poursuite de la Révolution Communiste Mondiale. Trotsky insistait sur la doctrine de la «révolution permanente», par laquelle le jeune Etat soviétique aiderait à fomenter des soulèvements et des révolutions ouvrières à l’intérieur des pays capitalistes.

A la place de cela, Staline voulait que le régime soviétique tire avantage «d’armistices» occasionnels dans la lutte mondiale pour consolider la force militaire soviétique, afin qu’au bon moment des forces soviétiques plus importantes et mieux armées puissent frapper en Europe du Centre et de l’Ouest, ajoutant de nouvelles républiques soviétiques quand cette force écrasante se mettrait en marche à travers le continent. Après la consolidation réussie et la soviétisation de toute l’Europe, l’URSS renforcée serait prête à imposer le pouvoir soviétique à tout le globe.

Comme le montre Suvorov, Staline comprit très bien que s’ils avaient le choix, les peuples des pays avancés de l’Occident ne choisiraient jamais volontairement le communisme. Il serait donc nécessaire de l’imposer par la force. Staline décida alors que son plan audacieux ne pouvait être réalisé que par une guerre mondiale.

Une preuve d’importance décisive à cet égard est le discours de Staline du 19 août 1939, récemment retrouvé dans les archives soviétiques (cité en partie dans Journal of Historical Review de nov-déc. 1997, p. 32-33). Dans ce discours, l’héritier de Lénine déclare:

L’expérience des vingt dernières années a montré qu’en temps de paix le mouvement communiste n’est jamais suffisamment fort pour prendre le pouvoir. La dictature d’un tel parti deviendra possible seulement en résultat d’une guerre majeure

Plus tard, tous les pays qui avaient accepté la protection de l’Allemagne renaissante deviendront aussi nos alliés. Nous aurons un large champ d’action pour développer la révolution mondiale.

De plus, et comme les théoriciens soviétiques l’ont toujours affirmé, le communisme ne pourrait jamais coexister pacifiquement sur le long terme avec d’autres systèmes socio-politiques. En conséquence, la domination communiste devrait inévitablement être imposée au monde. Ce but de «révolution mondiale» était tellement consubstantiel à la nature et au développement du «premier Etat des travailleurs» qu’il fut un trait cardinal du programme soviétique, même avant que Hitler et son mouvement national-socialiste arrive au pouvoir en Allemagne en 1933.

Staline voulait frapper au moment et à l’endroit de son choix. A cette fin, le développement soviétique des systèmes d’armes offensives les plus avancées, principalement les blindés, les avions, et les forces aéroportées, avait déjà commencé au début des années 30. Pour assurer le succès de son audacieuse entreprise, Staline ordonna à la fin de 1939 de construire une puissante machine de guerre qui serait supérieure en quantité et en qualité à toutes les forces d’opposition possibles. Son premier ordre secret pour la mobilisation militaro-industrielle totale du pays fut émis en août 1939. Un second ordre de mobilisation totale, cette fois-ci pour la mobilisation militaire, devait être émis le jour où la guerre commencerait.

Déception

L’attaque allemande «Barbarossa» anéantit le plan bien établi de Staline pour «libérer» toute l’Europe. Dans ce sens, affirme Suvorov, Staline «perdit» la 2ème Guerre Mondiale. Le dirigeant soviétique ne pouvait considérer que comme une déception d’avoir «seulement» vaincu l’Allemagne et conquis l’Europe de l’Est et du Centre.

14 jours qui sauvèrent l’Occident

«Nombre d’indices tendent à prouver que la date fixée par Staline pour l’opération «Orage» était le 6 juillet 1941.» (Viktor Suvorov, Le Brise-glace)

«Le commandement fasciste allemand réussit, deux semaines avant la guerre, à devancer nos troupes.» (Général S.P. Ivanov)

«Hitler ne savait pas tout, mais il en savait assez: s’il n’attaquait pas, l’autre attaquerait. (…) Hitler reniflait ce danger. (…) C’était une question de vie ou de mort.» (Léon Degrelle, Persiste et signe)

«Ma conviction profonde est que si le Führer ne nous avait pas donné l’ordre d’attaquer à ce moment-là, les Etats européens et la plupart des sociétés humaines seraient à présent bolchevisés.» (Otto Skorzeny, La guerre inconnue)

«… la puissance russe menaçante, ayant ses têtes de pont préparées sur la Baltique et sur la mer Noire, n’attendait qu’une occasion, c’est-à-dire le moment où l’armée allemande serait suffisament occupée par les puissances occidentales, pour que le front oriental soit ouvert à une attaque massive à laquelle l’Allemagne ne serait pas en mesure de résister.» (Sven Hedin, L’Amérique dans la lutte des continents)

«Staline préparait la guerre dans tous les domaines, en partant de délais qu’il avait fixé lui-même. Hitler déjoua ses calculs.» (Amiral N. G. Kouznetsov)

Selon Suvorov, Staline trahit sa déception de plusieurs manières après la fin de la guerre. D’abord, il laissa le maréchal Joukov conduire le défilé de la victoire en 1945, au lieu de le faire lui-même — lui, le Commandant suprême. Deuxièmement, aucun défilé officiel de la victoire du 9 mai ne fut même autorisé jusqu’à la mort de Staline en 1953. Troisièmement, Staline ne porta jamais aucune des médailles qu’il avait obtenues après la fin de la 2ème Guerre Mondiale. Quatrièmement, un jour, dans un moment de dépression, il exprima aux membres de son entourage proche son désir de se retirer [du pouvoir] maintenant que la guerre était finie. Cinquièmement, et c’est peut-être le plus révélateur, Staline abandonna le projet, prévu de longue date, du Palais des Soviets.

Un monument inachevé

L’énorme Palais des Soviets, approuvé par le gouvernement soviétique au début des années 30, devait faire 418 mètres de haut, surmonté par une statue de Lénine de 100 mètres de hauteur — plus haut que l’Empire State Building de New York. Il devait être construit sur le site de l’ancienne Cathédrale du Christ Sauveur. Sur l’ordre de Staline, ce magnifique symbole de la vieille Russie fut rasé en 1931 — un acte par lequel les dirigeants communistes voulaient effacer symboliquement l’âme de la vieille Russie pour faire place au monument central de l’URSS mondiale.

Toutes les «républiques socialistes» du monde, y compris la «dernière république», devaient être représentées dans le Palais. Le hall principal de ce sanctuaire séculier devait être décoré avec le texte du serment que Staline avait fait en termes quasi-religieux lors des funérailles de Lénine. Il comportait ces paroles : «Lorsqu’il nous quitta, le Camarade Lénine nous légua la responsabilité de renforcer et de développer l’Union des Républiques Socialistes. Nous te jurons, Camarade Lénine, que nous nous acquitterons honorablement de tes commandements sacrés.»

Cependant, seules les premières fondations de ce grandiose monument furent achevées, et pendant les années 90, après l’effondrement de l’URSS, la Cathédrale du Christ Sauveur fut soigneusement reconstruite sur le site.

La version officielle

Pendant des décennies, la version officielle du conflit germano-soviétique de 1941-45, soutenue par les historiens de l’establishment, à la fois en Russie et en Occident, fut à peu près cela:

Hitler déclencha une attaque «éclair» par surprise contre l’Union Soviétique tristement mal-préparée, ridiculisant son chef, le naïf et confiant Staline. Le Führer allemand fut conduit vers l’Orient primitif par la convoitise pour «l’espace vital» et les ressources naturelles, et par sa détermination longuement remâchée de détruire le «communisme juif» une fois pour toutes. Dans son attaque traîtresse, qui était une étape importante de la folle campagne de Hitler pour la «conquête du monde», les agresseurs «nazis» ou «fascistes» submergèrent d’abord toute résistance grâce à leur prépondérance en chars et en avions modernes.

Cette vison des choses, qui fut affirmée par les juges Alliés au Tribunal de Nuremberg après la guerre, est encore largement acceptée, à la fois en Russie et aux Etats-Unis. En Russie aujourd’hui, la plus grande partie du public (et pas seulement ceux qui sont nostalgiques de l’ancien régime soviétique) accepte cette version «politiquement correcte». En effet, elle «explique» les énormes pertes de l’Union Soviétique en hommes et en matériel pendant la 2ème Guerre Mondiale.

Condamné depuis le début

Contrairement à la version officielle selon laquelle l’Union Soviétique n’était pas préparée pour la guerre en juin 1941, en réalité, souligne Suvorov, c’était les Allemands qui n’étaient pas vraiment préparés. Le plan allemand «Barbarossa», hâtivement mis au point, qui visait à une victoire éclair en cinq ou six mois avec des forces numériquement inférieures, avançant en trois larges poussées, était condamné depuis le début.

De plus, note Suvorov, l’Allemagne manquait des matières premières (incluant le pétrole) essentielles pour soutenir une guerre prolongée d’une telle dimension.

Une autre raison du manque de préparation de l’Allemagne, affirme Suvorov, était que ses chefs militaires avaient sérieusement sous-estimé la performance des forces soviétiques pendant la «Guerre d’Hiver» contre la Finlande en 1939-40. Elles combattirent, il faut le souligner, dans des conditions extrêmement sévères d’hiver — températures de -40 et des épaisseurs de neige de plus d’un mètre — contre les fortifications et les installations enterrées, bien conçues et renforcées de la «Ligne Mannerheim» de la Finlande. En dépit de cela, on l’oublie souvent, l’Armée Rouge contraignit finalement les Finlandais à un humiliant armistice.

C’est toujours une erreur, souligne Suvorov, de sous-estimer son ennemi. Mais Hitler fit cette faute de calcul décisive. En 1943, après que le cours de la guerre ait tourné contre l’Allemagne, il reconnut son jugement erroné des forces soviétiques, deux années plus tôt.

Disparité des chars

Pour prouver que c’était Staline, et pas Hitler, qui était réellement préparé pour la guerre, Suvorov compare l’armement allemand et soviétique au milieu de 1941, avec une attention particulière pour les systèmes d’armes offensifs, d’importance décisive: les chars et les forces aéroportées. C’est un axiome généralement accepté en science militaire, que les forces attaquantes doivent avoir une supériorité numérique de trois contre un. Cependant, comme l’explique Suvorov, quand les Allemands frappèrent au matin du 22 juin 1941, ils attaquèrent avec un total de 3 350 chars, alors que les défenseurs soviétiques avaient un total de 24 000 chars — ce qui veut dire que Staline avait sept fois plus de chars que Hitler, ou vingt et une fois plus de chars que ce qui aurait été considéré comme suffisant pour une défense adéquate. De plus, souligne Suvorov, les chars soviétiques étaient supérieurs dans tous les aspects techniques, incluant la puissance de feu, l’autonomie et le blindage.

Tel qu’il était, le développement soviétique de la production de chars lourds avait déjà commencé au début des années 30. Par exemple, dès 1933 les Soviétiques étaient déjà passés à la production en série, et livraient à leurs forces le modèle T-35, un char lourd de 45 tonnes avec 3 canons, 6 mitrailleuses, et 30mm de blindage. Par contre, les Allemands commencèrent le développement et la production d’un char de 45 tonnes comparable [ce furent le «Tiger» et le «Panther», NDT] seulement après que la guerre ait commencé à la mi-1941.

En 1939 les Soviétiques avaient déjà ajouté trois modèles de chars lourds à leur arsenal. De plus, les Soviétiques concevaient leurs chars avec de plus larges chenilles, et les équipaient avec des moteurs Diesel (qui étaient moins inflammables que ceux utilisant des carburateurs conventionnels). En outre, les chars soviétiques étaient construits avec le moteur et la direction à l’arrière, améliorant ainsi l’efficacité générale et la vision de l’équipage. Les chars allemands avaient une conception moins efficace, avec le moteur à l’arrière et la direction dans la partie avant.

Quand le conflit commença en juin 1941, montre Suvorov, l’Allemagne n’avait pas du tout de chars lourds, seulement 309 chars moyens, et juste 2 668 chars légers, inférieurs. Pour leur part, les Soviétiques au début de la guerre avaient à leur disposition des chars qui n’étaient pas seulement plus lourds mais de meilleure qualité.

A ce sujet, Suvorov cite les souvenirs du général allemand des blindés Heinz Guderian, qui écrivit dans ses mémoires Chef de Panzers (1952/1996, p. 143) :

Au printemps de 1941, Hitler avait spécialement ordonné qu’une commission militaire russe puisse visiter nos usines et nos écoles de blindés; dans cet ordre il avait insisté pour que rien ne leur soit caché. Les officiers russes en question refusèrent toujours de croire que le Panzer IV était en fait notre char le plus lourd. Ils dirent toujours que nous devions leur cacher nos nouveaux modèles, et se plaignirent en disant que nous n’appliquions pas l’ordre d’Hitler de tout leur montrer. La commission militaire insista tellement sur ce point que finalement nos responsables des services concernés conclurent: «Il semble que les Russes possèdent déjà des chars meilleurs et plus lourds que les nôtres». Ce fut à la fin de juillet 1941 que le T-34 apparut sur le front et l’énigme du nouveau modèle de char russe fut résolue.

Suvorov cite un autre fait révélateur extrait de l’Almanach de la 2ème Guerre Mondiale de Robert Goralski (1982, p. 164). Le 24 juin 1941, juste deux jours après le début de la guerre germano-soviétique:

Les Russes mirent en action leurs chars géants Klim Vorochilov près de Raseiniai [Lithanie]. Des modèles pesant 43 et 52 tonnes surprirent les Allemands, qui trouvèrent les KV presque inarrêtables. L’un de ces chars russes reçut 70 coups directs, mais aucun ne perça son blindage.

Bref, l’Allemagne attaqua le colosse soviétique avec des chars qui étaient trop légers, trop peu nombreux, et inférieurs en performances et en puissance de feu. Et cette disparité perdura pendant toute la guerre. Pendant le seule année 1942, les usines soviétiques produisirent 2 553 chars lourds, pendant que les Allemands en produisaient juste 89. Même à la fin de la guerre, le meilleur char au combat était le modèle soviétique IS («Iosif Staline»).

Suvorov encourage sarcastiquement les historiens militaires de l’establishment à étudier un livre sur les chars soviétiques, par Igor P. Schmelev, publié en 1993 par la «Hobby Book Publishing Company» à Moscou. Le travail d’un honnête analyste militaire amateur tel que Schmelev, qui est sincèrement intéressé et qui aime son travail et la vérité, dit Suvorov, est souvent supérieur à celui d’un employé payé par le gouvernement.

Disparité des Forces Aériennes

La supériorité soviétique en forces aéroportées était encore plus disproportionnée. Avant la guerre, les bombardiers soviétiques DB-3f et SB ainsi que les TB-1 et TB-3 (dont Staline possédait environ un millier) avaient été modifiés pour transporter aussi bien des parachutistes que des bombes. Vers la mi-1941, les Soviétiques avaient entraîné des centaines de milliers de parachutistes (Suvorov dit presque un million) en vue de l’attaque planifiée contre l’Allemagne et l’Occident. Ces troupes aéroportées devaient être déployées et lâchées derrière les lignes ennemies en plusieurs vagues, chaque vague étant formée de cinq corps d’armée aéroportés (VDKs), chaque corps comptant 10 419 hommes incluant un état-major et des services, une division d’artillerie, et un bataillon de chars autonome (50 chars). Suvorov donne la liste des commandants et des bases des deux premières vagues, ou dix corps. Les secondes et troisièmes vagues comportaient des troupes parlant français et espagnol.

Comme l’attaque allemande empêcha ces troupes hautement entraînées d’être utilisées comme prévu, Staline les convertit en «Divisions de la Garde», qu’il utilisa comme des réserves et des «pompiers» pour les situations d’urgence, tout comme Hitler utilisa souvent les unités de Waffen SS.

Cartes et manuels

Pour appuyer sa thèse principale, Suvorov cite des données supplémentaires qui n’étaient pas mentionnées dans ses deux premiers ouvrages sur ce sujet. Premièrement, à la veille du début de la guerre de 1941, les forces soviétiques avaient reçu des cartes topographiques seulement pour les zones de la frontière et pour l’Europe; elles ne reçurent pas de cartes du territoire ou des villes soviétiques, parce que la guerre ne devait pas être menée sur le territoire national. Le Chef du Service Topographique militaire de l’époque, et donc responsable de la distribution des cartes militaires, le major-général Kudryatsev, ne fut pas sanctionné ni même limogé pour avoir manqué à fournir des cartes du territoire national, mais continua à mener une longue et brillante carrière militaire. De même, le Chef d’Etat-major, le général Joukov, ne fut jamais tenu pour responsable de la débâcle des premiers mois de la guerre. Aucun des principaux commandants militaires ne pouvait être tenu pour responsable, souligne Suvorov, parce qu’ils avaient tous suivi à la lettre les ordres de Staline.

Deuxièmement, au début de juin 1941, les forces soviétiques reçurent des milliers d’exemplaires d’un manuel russo-allemand, avec des sections consacrées à des opérations militaires offensives, telles que s’emparer de gares de chemin de fer, orienter des parachutistes, et ainsi de suite, et des expressions [en langues étrangères] utiles comme «arrêtez de transmettre ou je tire». Ce manuel fut imprimé en grand nombre par les imprimeries militaires de Léningrad et de Moscou. Cependant, ils n’atteignirent jamais les troupes sur les lignes de front, et on dit qu’elles furent détruites pendant la phase du début de la guerre.

L’aide des Etats-Unis «neutres»

Comme le note Suvorov, les Etats-Unis avaient fourni du matériel militaire depuis les années 30. Il cite l’étude de A.C. Sutton, National Suicide (Arlington House, 1973), qui relate qu’en 1938 le président Roosevelt conclut un accord secret avec l’URSS pour échanger des informations militaires. Pour le public américain, cependant, Roosevelt annonça la mise en place d’un «embargo moral» contre la Russie soviétique.

Pendant les mois précédent l’entrée en guerre formelle de l’Amérique dans la guerre (décembre 1941), les navires de guerre des Etats-Unis, officiellement neutres, étaient déjà en guerre dans l’Atlantique contre les forces navales allemandes (Voir La Flotte de Mr Roosevelt: la guerre privée de la Flotte US de l’Atlantique, 1939-42 par Patrick Abbazia [Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975] ). Et deux jours après le déclenchement de «Barbarossa», Roosevelt annonça une aide des Etats-Unis à la Russie Soviétique dans sa guerre de survie contre l’Axe. Ainsi, au début de l’opération «Barbarossa», Hitler écrivit une lettre à Mussolini: «En ce moment cela ne fait aucune différence si l’Amérique entre officiellement en guerre ou pas, elle soutient déjà nos ennemis à fond, avec des livraisons massives de matériel de guerre.»

De même, W. Churchill faisait tout ce qui était en son pouvoir pendant les mois précédent juin 1941 — alors que les forces britanniques subissaient défaite sur défaite — pour faire entrer à la fois les Etats-Unis et l’URSS dans la guerre du côté britannique. En vérité, la coalition anti-Hitler des «Trois Grands» (Staline, Roosevelt, Churchill) était effectivement en place avant que l’Allemagne attaque la Russie, et fut une raison majeure pour que Hitler se sentit obligé de frapper la Russie soviétique, et de déclarer la guerre aux Etats-Unis cinq mois plus tard. (Voir le discours d’Hitler du 11 décembre 1941, publié dans le Journal of Historical Review, hiver 1988-89, p. 394-396, 402-412)

Les raisons de l’appui de F. Roosevelt à Staline sont difficiles à établir. Le président Roosevelt lui-même expliqua un jour à William Bullitt, son premier ambassadeur en Russie soviétique: «Je pense que si je lui donne [à Staline] tout ce que je peux, et que je ne demande rien en retour, noblesse oblige, il ne tentera pas d’annexer quoi que ce soit, et travaillera avec moi pour un monde de paix et de démocratie.» (Cité dans Robert Nisbet, Roosevelt et Staline: l’idylle manquée, 1989, p. 6). Peut-être l’explication la plus exacte (et la plus gentille) de l’attitude de Roosevelt est-elle une ignorance profonde, une auto-intoxication ou de la naïveté. Selon l’opinion digne de considération de George Kennan, historien et ancien diplomate américain de haut rang, en politique étrangère Roosevelt était «un homme superficiel, ignorant, dilettante, avec un horizon intellectuel sévèrement limité.»

Un pari désespéré

Suvorov admet être fasciné par Staline, l’appelant «un animal, un monstre sauvage et sanglant, mais un génie de tous les temps et de tous les peuples». Il dirigea la plus grande puissance militaire de la 2ème Guerre Mondiale, la force qui, plus que toute autre, vainquit l’Allemagne. En particulier, dans les années finales du conflit, il domina l’alliance militaire des Alliés. Il dut considérer Roosevelt et Churchill avec mépris, comme des «idiots utiles».

Au début de 1941, chacun admettait que comme l’Allemagne était déjà engagée contre la Grande-Bretagne en Afrique du Nord, en Méditerranée, et dans l’Atlantique, Hitler ne pourrait jamais se permettre l’ouverture d’un second front à l’Est (se rappelant la désastreuse expérience de la 1ère Guerre Mondiale, il avait mis en garde dans Mein Kampf contre le danger mortel d’une guerre sur deux fronts). C’est précisément parce qu’il était sûr que Staline pensait que Hitler n’ouvrirait pas un second front, soutient Suvorov, que le dirigeant allemand se sentit libre de déclencher «Barbarossa». Cette attaque, insiste Suvorov, fut un pari énorme et désespéré. Mais menacé par des forces soviétiques supérieures, prêtes à submerger l’Allemagne et l’Europe, Hitler n’avait guère d’autre choix que de déclencher cette attaque préventive. [Toutes proportions gardées, on peut faire une intéressante comparaison avec l'attaque israélienne de la Guerre des Six Jours en 1967. Dans ce dernier cas, le caractère préventif de l'attaque est admis sans difficulté par les historiens «officiels», alors que dans le cas de «Barbarossa», il est «politiquement incorrect» de le reconnaître, malgré l'évidence de l'immense menace soviétique, imminente ou pas, NDT.]

Reichstag, 1945

Mais c’était trop peu, trop tard. En dépit de l’avantage de frapper le premier, ce furent les Soviétiques qui finalement l’emportèrent. Au printemps de 1945, les troupes de l’Armée Rouge réussirent à hisser le drapeau rouge sur le bâtiment du Reichstag à Berlin. C’est seulement grâce aux sacrifices des forces allemandes et des forces de l’Axe que les troupes soviétiques ne parvinrent pas à hisser le drapeau rouge sur Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhague, Rome, Stockholm, et peut-être, Londres.

Le débat devient plus âpre

En dépit de la résistance des historiens de «l’establishment» (qui en Russie sont souvent d’anciens communistes), l’appui à la thèse de «l’attaque préventive» de Suvorov est allé croissant, à la fois en Russie et en Europe de l’Ouest. Parmi ceux qui sympathisent avec les vues de Suvorov figurent de jeunes historiens russes comme Yuri L. Dyakov, Tatiana S. Bushuyeva, et I. Pavlova (voir le JHR, nov-déc. 1997, p. 32-34).

Concernant l’histoire du 20ème siècle, les historiens américains ont généralement l’esprit plus fermé que leurs collègues d’Europe et de Russie. Mais même aux Etats-Unis, il y a eu quelques voix pour appuyer la thèse de la «guerre préventive» — ce qui est du plus haut intérêt, sachant que les livres de Suvorov sur la 2ème Guerre Mondiale, à l’exception du «Brise-glace», n’ont pas été traduits en anglais (l’une de ces voix est celle de l’historien Russell Stolfi, professeur d’Histoire Européenne Moderne à la Naval Postgraduate School à Monterey, Californie. Voir le compte-rendu de son livre Hitler’s Panzer East dans le JHR de nov-déc. 1995).

Toutes les réactions au travail de Suvorov n’ont pas été positives, cependant. Il a aussi provoqué des critiques et des répétitions des thèses officielles vieilles de plusieurs décennies. Parmi les nouveaux défenseurs les plus représentatifs de la ligne «orthodoxe», figurent les historiens Gabriel Gorodetsky de l’Université de Tel-Aviv, et John Ericson de l’Université d’Edinburgh.

Rejetant tous les arguments qui pourraient justifier l’attaque allemande, Gorodetsky en particulier critique et ridiculise les travaux de Suvorov, spécialement dans un livre proprement intitulé «Le Mythe du Brise-glace». En fait, Gorodetsky (et Ericson) attribue les pertes soviétiques à la supposée impréparation de l’Armée Rouge pour la guerre. «Il est absurde», écrit Gorodetsky, «de prétendre que Staline aurait jamais conçu l’idée d’attaquer l’Allemagne, comme quelques historiens allemands aiment aujourd’hui à le suggérer, pour pouvoir au moyen d’une attaque-surprise, désorganiser l’attaque préventive planifiée par l’Allemagne.»

Il n’est pas surprenant que Gorodetsky ait reçu l’éloge des autorités du Kremlin et des chefs militaires russes. De même, «l’establishment» allemand soutient l’historien israélien. Aux frais des contribuables allemands, Gorodetsky a travaillé et enseigné au Service de Recherche d’Histoire Militaire (MGFA) allemand, semi-officiel, qui a publié en avril 1991 le livre de Gorodetsky, Zwei Wege nach Moskau (Deux chemins pour Moscou).

Dans la «Dernière République», Suvorov répond à Gorodetsky et aux autres critiques de ses deux premiers livres sur l’histoire de la 2ème Guerre Mondiale. Il est particulièrement cinglant dans ses critiques du travail de Gorodetsky, spécialement le «Mythe du Brise-glace».

Quelques critiques

Suvorov écrit de manière caustique, sarcastique, et avec une grande acidité. Mais s’il a raison sur le fond, comme le pense l’auteur de cet article, il a — et nous aussi — parfaitement le droit d’être acerbe, ayant été trompé et désinformé pendant des décennies.

Bien que Suvorov mérite notre gratitude pour son importante dissection d’une légende historique, son travail n’est pas sans défauts. D’une part, son éloge des réalisations du complexe militaro-industriel soviétique, et de la qualité des armements et de l’équipement militaire soviétique est exagéré, voire dithyrambique. Il omet de signaler l’origine occidentale d’une grande partie de l’armement et du matériel soviétique. Les ingénieurs soviétiques ont eu un talent particulier pour modifier avec succès, simplifier, et souvent améliorer les modèles et les conceptions occidentaux. Par exemple, le robuste moteur Diesel utilisé par les chars soviétiques était basé sur un moteur d’avion allemand de BMW.

Une critique qui ne peut pas décemment être faite à Suvorov serait son manque de patriotisme. Se rappelant que les premières victimes du communisme furent les Russes, il fait à juste titre une nette distinction entre le peuple russe et le régime communiste qui le dominait. Il n’écrit pas seulement avec la compétence d’un historien capable, mais en mémoire des millions de Russes dont les vies furent gaspillées pour les plans malsains de «révolution mondiale» de Lénine et de Staline.

Original article: Journal of Historical Review, 17/4 (Juillet-Août 1998), 30-37. Online source of translation: http://library.flawlesslogic.com/suvorov_fr.htm ^[3]

---

Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/04/le-plan-de-staline-pour-conquerir-leurope-comment-lunion-sovietique-%c2%abperdit%c2%bb-la-2eme-guerre-mondiale/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/stalin_victory.jpg

[2] here: http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/04/exposing-stalins-plan-to-conquer-europe/

[3] http://library.flawlesslogic.com/suvorov_fr.htm: http://library.flawlesslogic.com/suvorov_fr.htm

Exposing Stalin's Plan to Conquer Europe

Exposing Stalin’s Plan to Conquer Europe:
How the Soviet Union ‘Lost’ the Second World War

Daniel W. Michaels

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Editor’s Note:

Since the publication of his review, Viktor Suvorov’s definitive statement of his research has been published as The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II ^[2] (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2008).

French translation here ^[3]

Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun)
Poslednyaya Respublika (“The Last Republic”)
Moscow: TKO ACT, 1996

For several years now, a former Soviet military intelligence officer named Vladimir Rezun has provoked heated discussion in Russia for his startling view that Hitler attacked Soviet Russia in June 1941 just as Stalin was preparing to overwhelm Germany and western Europe as part of a well-planned operation to “liberate” all of Europe by bringing it under Communist rule.

Writing under the pen name of Viktor Suvorov, Rezun has developed this thesis in three books. Icebreaker (which has been published in an English-language edition) and Dni M (“M Day”) were reviewed in the Nov.–Dec. 1997 Journal of Historical Review. The third book, reviewed here, is a 470-page work, “The Last Republic: Why the Soviet Union Lost the Second World War,” published in Russian in Moscow in 1996.

Suvorov presents a mass of evidence to show that when Hitler launched his “Operation Barbarossa” attack against Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941, German forces were able to inflict enormous losses against the Soviets precisely because the Red troops were much better prepared for war — but for an aggressive war that was scheduled for early July — not the defensive war forced on them by Hitler’s preemptive strike.

In Icebreaker, Suvorov details the deployment of Soviet forces in June 1941, describing just how Stalin amassed vast numbers of troops and stores of weapons along the European frontier, not to defend the Soviet homeland but in preparation for a westward attack and decisive battles on enemy territory.

Thus, when German forces struck, the bulk of Red ground and air forces were concentrated along the Soviet western borders facing contiguous European countries, especially the German Reich and Romania, in final readiness for an assault on Europe.

In his second book on the origins of the war, “M Day” (for “Mobilization Day”), Suvorov details how, between late 1939 and the summer of 1941, Stalin methodically and systematically built up the best armed, most powerful military force in the world — actually the world’s first superpower — for his planned conquest of Europe. Suvorov explains how Stalin’s drastic conversion of the country’s economy for war actually made war inevitable.

A Global Soviet Union

In “The Last Republic,” Suvorov adds to the evidence presented in his two earlier books to strengthen his argument that Stalin was preparing for an aggressive war, in particular emphasizing the ideological motivation for the Soviet leader’s actions. The title refers to the unlucky country that would be incorporated as the “final republic” into the globe-encompassing “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” thereby completing the world proletarian revolution.

As Suvorov explains, this plan was entirely consistent with Marxist-Leninist doctrine, as well as with Lenin’s policies in the earlier years of the Soviet regime. The Russian historian argues convincingly that it was not Leon Trotsky (Bronstein), but rather Stalin, his less flamboyant rival, who was really the faithful disciple of Lenin in promoting world Communist revolution. Trotsky insisted on his doctrine of “permanent revolution,” whereby the young Soviet state would help foment home-grown workers’ uprisings and revolution in the capitalist countries.

Stalin instead wanted the Soviet regime to take advantage of occasional “armistices” in the global struggle to consolidate Red military strength for the right moment when larger and better armed Soviet forces would strike into central and western Europe, adding new Soviet republics as this overwhelming force rolled across the continent. After the successful consolidation and Sovietization of all of Europe, the expanded USSR would be poised to impose Soviet power over the entire globe.

As Suvorov shows, Stalin realized quite well that, given a free choice, the people of the advanced Western countries would never voluntarily choose Communism. It would therefore have to be imposed by force. His bold plan, Stalin further decided, could be realized only through a world war.

A critical piece of evidence in this regard is his speech of August 19, 1939, recently uncovered in Soviet archives (quoted in part in the Nov.–Dec. 1997 Journal, pp. 32–33). In it, Lenin’s heir states:

The experience of the last 20 years has shown that in peacetime the Communist movement is never strong enough to seize power. The dictatorship of such a party will only become possible as the result of a major war . . .

Later on, all the countries who had accepted protection from resurgent Germany would also become our allies. We shall have a wide field to develop the world revolution.

Furthermore, and as Soviet theoreticians had always insisted, Communism could never peacefully coexist over the long run with other socio-political systems. Accordingly, Communist rule inevitably would have to be imposed throughout the world. So integral was this goal of “world revolution” to the nature and development of the “first workers’ state” that it was a cardinal feature of the Soviet agenda even before Hitler and his National Socialist movement came to power in Germany in 1933.

Stalin elected to strike at a time and place of his choosing. To this end, Soviet development of the most advanced offensive weapons systems, primarily tanks, aircraft, and airborne forces, had already begun in the early 1930s. To ensure the success of his bold undertaking, in late 1939 Stalin ordered the build up a powerful war machine that would be superior in quantity and quality to all possible opposing forces. His first secret order for the total military-industrial mobilization of the country was issued in August 1939. A second total mobilization order, this one for military mobilization, would be issued on the day the war was to begin.

Disappointment

The German “Barbarossa” attack shattered Stalin’s well-laid plan to “liberate” all of Europe. In this sense, Suvorov contends, Stalin “lost” the Second World War. The Soviet premier could regard “merely” defeating Germany and conquering eastern and central Europe only as a disappointment.

According to Suvorov, Stalin revealed his disappointment over the war’s outcome in several ways. First, he had Marshal Georgi Zhukov, not himself, the supreme commander, lead the victory parade in 1945. Second, no official May 9 victory parade was even authorized until after Stalin’s death. Third, Stalin never wore any of the medals he was awarded after the end of the Second World War. Fourth, once, in a depressed mood, he expressed to members of his close circle his desire to retire now that the war was over. Fifth, and perhaps most telling, Stalin abandoned work on the long-planned Palace of Soviets.

An Unfinished Monument

The enormous Palace of Soviets, approved by the Soviet government in the early 1930s, was to be 1,250 feet tall, surmounted with a statue of Lenin 300 feet in height — taller than New York’s Empire State Building. It was to be built on the site of the former Cathedral of Christ the Savior. On Stalin’s order, this magnificent symbol of old Russia was blown up in 1931 — an act whereby the nation’s Communist rulers symbolically erased the soul of old Russia to make room for the centerpiece of the world USSR.

All the world’s “socialist republics,” including the “last republic,” would ultimately be represented in the Palace. The main hall of this secular shrine was to be inscribed with the oath that Stalin had delivered in quasi-religious cadences at Lenin’s burial. It included the words: “When he left us, Comrade Lenin bequeathed to us the responsibility to strengthen and expand the Union of Socialist Republics. We vow to you, Comrade Lenin, that we shall honorably carry out this, your sacred commandment.”

However, only the bowl-shaped foundation for this grandiose monument was ever completed, and during the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, the Christ the Savior Cathedral was painstakingly rebuilt on the site.

The Official View

For decades the official version of the 1941–1945 German-Soviet conflict, supported by establishment historians in both Russia and the West, has been something like this:

Hitler launched a surprise “Blitzkrieg” attack against the woefully unprepared Soviet Union, fooling its leader, the unsuspecting and trusting Stalin. The German Führer was driven by lust for “living space” and natural resources in the primitive East, and by his long-simmering determination to smash “Jewish Communism” once and for all. In this treacherous attack, which was an important part of Hitler’s mad drive for “world conquest,” the “Nazi” or “fascist” aggressors initially overwhelmed all resistance with their preponderance of modern tanks and aircraft.

This view, which was affirmed by the Allied judges at the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal, is still widely accepted in both Russia and the United States. In Russia today, most of the general public (and not merely those who are nostalgic for the old Soviet regime), accepts this “politically correct” line. For one thing, it “explains” the Soviet Union’s enormous World War II losses in men and materiel.

Doomed from the Start

Contrary to the official view that the Soviet Union was not prepared for war in June 1941, in fact, Suvorov stresses, it was the Germans who were not really prepared. Germany’s hastily drawn up “Operation Barbarossa” plan, which called for a “Blitzkrieg” victory in four or five months by numerically inferior forces advancing in three broad military thrusts, was doomed from the outset.

Moreover, Suvorov goes on to note, Germany lacked the raw materials (including petroleum) essential in sustaining a drawn out war of such dimensions.

Another reason for Germany’s lack of preparedness, Suvorov contends, was that her military leaders seriously under-estimated the performance of Soviet forces in the Winter War against Finland, 1939–40. They fought, it must be stressed, under extremely severe winter conditions — temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius and snow depths of several feet — against the well-designed reinforced concrete fortifications and underground facilities of Finland’s “Mannerheim Line.” In spite of that, it is often forgotten, the Red Army did, after all, force the Finns into a humiliating armistice.

It is always a mistake, Suvorov emphasizes, to underestimate your enemy. But Hitler made this critical miscalculation. In 1943, after the tide of war had shifted against Germany, he admitted his mistaken evaluation of Soviet forces two years earlier.

Tank Disparity Compared

To prove that it was Stalin, and not Hitler, who was really prepared for war, Suvorov compares German and Soviet weaponry in mid-1941, especially with respect to the all-important offensive weapons systems — tanks and airborne forces. It is a generally accepted axiom in military science that attacking forces should have a numerical superiority of three to one over the defenders. Yet, as Suvorov explains, when the Germans struck on the morning of June 22, 1941, they attacked with a total of 3,350 tanks, while the Soviet defenders had a total of 24,000 tanks — that is, Stalin had seven times more tanks than Hitler, or 21 times more tanks than would have been considered sufficient for an adequate defense. Moreover, Suvorov stresses, the Soviet tanks were superior in all technical respects, including firepower, range, and armor plating.

As it was, Soviet development of heavy tank production had already begun in the early 1930s. For example, as early as 1933 the Soviets were already turning out in series production, and distributing to their forces, the T-35 model, a 45-ton heavy tank with three cannons, six machine guns, and 30-mm armor plating. By contrast, the Germans began development and production of a comparable 45-ton tank only after the war had begun in mid-1941.

By 1939 the Soviets had already added three heavy tank models to their inventory. Moreover, the Soviets designed their tanks with wider tracks, and to operate with diesel engines (which were less flammable than those using conventional carburetor mix fuels). Furthermore, Soviet tanks were built with both the engine and the drive in the rear, thereby improving general efficiency and operator viewing. German tanks had a less efficient arrangement, with the engine in the rear and the drive in the forward area.

When the conflict began in June 1941, Suvorov shows, Germany had no heavy tanks at all, only 309 medium tanks, and just 2,668 light, inferior tanks. For their part, the Soviets at the outbreak of the war had at their disposal tanks that were not only heavier but of higher quality.

In this regard, Suvorov cites the recollection of German tank general Heinz Guderian, who wrote in his memoir Panzer Leader (1952/1996, p. 143):

In the spring of 1941, Hitler had specifically ordered that a Russian military commission be shown over our tank schools and factories; in this order he had insisted that nothing be concealed from them. The Russian officers in question firmly refused to believe that the Panzer IV was in fact our heaviest tank. They said repeatedly that we must be hiding our newest models from them, and complained that we were not carrying out Hitler’s order to show them everything. The military commission was so insistent on this point that eventually our manufacturers and Ordnance Office officials concluded: “It seems that the Russians must already possess better and heavier tanks than we do.” It was at the end of July 1941 that the T34 tank appeared on the front and the riddle of the new Russian model was solved.

Suvorov cites another revealing fact from Robert Goralski’s World War II Almanac (1982, p. 164). On June 24, 1941 — just two days after the outbreak of the German-Soviet war:

The Russians introduced their giant Klim Voroshilov tanks into action near Raseiniai [Lithuania]. Models weighing 43 and 52 tons surprised the Germans, who found the KVs nearly unstoppable. One of these Russian tanks took 70 direct hits, but none penetrated its armor.

In short, Germany took on the Soviet colossus with tanks that were too light, too few in number, and inferior in performance and fire power. And this disparity continued as the war progressed. In 1942 alone, Soviet factories produced 2,553 heavy tanks, while the Germans produced just 89. Even at the end of the war, the best-quality tank in combat was the Soviet IS (“Iosef Stalin”) model.

Suvorov sarcastically urges establishment military historians to study a book on Soviet tanks by Igor P. Shmelev, published in 1993 by, of all things, the Hobby Book Publishing Company in Moscow. The work of an honest amateur military analyst such as Shmelev, one who is sincerely interested in and loves his hobby and the truth, says Suvorov, is often superior to that of a paid government employee.

Airborne Forces Disparity

Even more lopsided was the Soviet superiority in airborne forces. Before the war, Soviet DB-3f and SB bombers as well as the TB-1 and TB-3 bombers (of which Stalin had about a thousand had been modified to carry airborne troops as well as bomb loads. By mid-1941 the Soviet military had trained hundreds of thousands of paratroopers (Suvorov says almost a million) for the planned attack against Germany and the West. These airborne troops were to be deployed and dropped behind enemy lines in several waves, each wave consisting of five airborne assault corps (VDKs), each corps consisting of 10,419 men, staff and service personnel, an artillery division, and a separate tank battalion (50 tanks). Suvorov lists the commanding officers and home bases of the first two waves or ten corps. The second and third wave corps included troops who spoke French and Spanish.

Because the German attack prevented these highly trained troops from being used as originally planned, Stalin converted them to “guards divisions,” which he used as reserves and “fire brigades” in emergency situations, much as Hitler often deployed Waffen SS forces.

Maps and Phrase Books

In support of his main thesis, Suvorov cites additional data that were not mentioned in his two earlier works on this subject. First, on the eve of the outbreak of the 1941 war Soviet forces had been provided topographical maps only of frontier and European areas; they were not issued maps to defend Soviet territory or cities, because the war was not to be fought in the homeland. The head of the Military Topographic Service at the time, and therefore responsible for military map distribution, Major General M. K. Kudryavtsev, was not punished or even dismissed for failing to provide maps of the homeland, but went on to enjoy a lengthy and successful military career. Likewise, the chief of the General Staff, General Zhukov, was never held responsible for the debacle of the first months of the war. None of the top military commanders could be held accountable, Suvorov points out, because they had all followed Stalin’s orders to the letter.

Second, in early June 1941 the Soviet armed forces began receiving thousands of copies of a Russian-German phrase book, with sections dedicated to such offensive military operations as seizing railroad stations, orienting parachutists, and so forth, and such useful expressions as “Stop transmitting or I’ll shoot.” This phrase book was produced in great numbers by the military printing houses in both Leningrad and Moscow. However, they never reached the troops on the front lines, and are said to have been destroyed in the opening phase of the war.

Aid from the ‘Neutral’ United States

As Suvorov notes, the United States had been supplying Soviet Russia with military hardware since the late 1930s. He cites Antony C. Sutton’s study, National Suicide (Arlington House, 1973), which reports that in 1938 President Roosevelt entered into a secret agreement with the USSR to exchange military information. For American public consumption, though, Roosevelt announced the imposition of a “moral embargo” on Soviet Russia.

In the months prior to America’s formal entry into war (December 1941), Atlantic naval vessels of the ostensibly neutral United States were already at war against German naval forces. (See Mr. Roosevelt’s Navy: The Private War of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1939–1942 by Patrick Abbazia [Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975]). And two days after the “Barbarossa” strike, Roosevelt announced US aid to Soviet Russia in its war for survival against the Axis. Thus, at the outbreak of the “Barbarossa” attack, Hitler wrote in a letter to Mussolini: “At this point it makes no difference whether America officially enters the war or not, it is already supporting our enemies in full measure with mass deliveries of war materials.”

Similarly, Winston Churchill was doing everything in his power during the months prior to June 1941 — when British forces were suffering one military defeat after another — to bring both the United States and the Soviet Union into the war on Britain’s side. In truth, the “Big Three” anti-Hitler coalition (Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill) was effectively in place even before Germany attacked Russia, and was a major reason why Hitler felt compelled to strike against Soviet Russia, and to declare war on the United States five months later. (See Hitler’s speech of December 11, 1941, published in the Winter 1988–89 Journal, pp. 394–96, 402–12.)

The reasons for Franklin Roosevelt’s support for Stalin are difficult to pin down. President Roosevelt himself once explained to William Bullitt, his first ambassador to Soviet Russia: “I think that if I give him [Stalin] everything I possibly can, and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything, and will work with me for a world of peace and democracy.” (Cited in: Robert Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin: The Failed Courtship [1989], p. 6.) Perhaps the most accurate (and kindest) explanation for Roosevelt’s attitude is a profound ignorance, self-deception or naiveté. In the considered view of George Kennan, historian and former high-ranking US diplomat, in foreign policy Roosevelt was “a very superficial man, ignorant, dilettantish, with a severely limited intellectual horizon.”

A Desperate Gamble

Suvorov admits to being fascinated with Stalin, calling him “an animal, a wild, bloody monster, but a genius of all times and peoples.” He commanded the greatest military power in the Second World War, the force that more than any other defeated Germany. Especially in the final years of the conflict, he dominated the Allied military alliance. He must have regarded Roosevelt and Churchill contemptuously as useful idiots.

In early 1941 everyone assumed that because Germany was still militarily engaged against Britain in north Africa, in the Mediterranean, and in the Atlantic, Hitler would never permit entanglement in a second front in the East. (Mindful of the disastrous experience of the First World War, he had warned in Mein Kampf of the mortal danger of a two front war.) It was precisely because he was confident that Stalin assumed Hitler would not open a second front, contends Suvorov, that the German leader felt free to launch “Barbarossa.” This attack, insists Suvorov, was an enormous and desperate gamble. But threatened by superior Soviet forces poised to overwhelm Germany and Europe, Hitler had little choice but to launch this preventive strike.

But it was too little, too late. In spite of the advantage of striking first, it was the Soviets who finally prevailed. In the spring of 1945, Red army troops succeeded in raising the red banner over the Reichstag building in Berlin. It was due only to the immense sacrifices of German and other Axis forces that Soviet troops did not similarly succeed in raising the Red flag over Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Rome, Stockholm, and, perhaps, London.

The Debate Sharpens

In spite of resistance from “establishment” historians (who in Russia are often former Communists), support for Suvorov’s “preventive strike” thesis has been growing both in Russia and in western Europe. Among those who sympathize with Suvorov’s views are younger Russian historians such as Yuri L. Dyakov, Tatyana S. Bushuyeva, and I. V. Pavlova. (See the Nov.–Dec. 1997 Journal, pp. 32–34.)

With regard to 20th-century history, American historians are generally more close-minded than their counterparts in Europe or Russia. But even in the United States there have been a few voices of support for the “preventive war” thesis — which is all the more noteworthy considering that Suvorov’s books on World War II, with the exception of Icebreaker, have not been available in English. (One such voice is that of historian Russell Stolfi, a professor of Modern European History at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. See the review of his book Hitler’s Panzers East in the Nov.–Dec. 1995 Journal of Historical Review.) Not all the response to Suvorov’s work has been positive, though. It has also prompted criticism and renewed affirmations of the decades-old orthodox view. Among the most prominent new defenders of the orthodox “line” are historians Gabriel Gorodetsky of Tel Aviv University, and John Ericson of Edinburgh University.

Rejecting all arguments that might justify Germany’s attack, Gorodetsky in particular castigates and ridicules Suvorov’s works, most notably in a book titled, appropriately, “The Icebreaker Myth.” In effect, Gorodetsky (and Ericson) attribute Soviet war losses to the supposed unpreparedness of the Red Army for war. “It is absurd,” Gorodetsky writes, “to claim that Stalin would ever entertain any idea of attacking Germany, as some German historians now like to suggest, in order, by means of a surprise attack, to upset Germany’s planned preventive strike.”

Not surprisingly, Gorodetsky has been praised by Kremlin authorities and Russian military leaders. Germany’s “establishment” similarly embraces the Israeli historian. At German taxpayers expense, he has worked and taught at Germany’s semi-official Military History Research Office (MGFA), which in April 1991 published Gorodetsky’s Zwei Wege nach Moskau (“Two Paths to Moscow”).

In the “Last Republic,” Suvorov responds to Gorodetsky and other critics of his first two books on Second World War history. He is particularly scathing in his criticisms of Gorodetsky’s work, especially “The Icebreaker Myth.”

Some Criticisms

Suvorov writes caustically, sarcastically, and with great bitterness. But if he is essentially correct, as this reviewer believes, he — and we — have a perfect right to be bitter for having been misled and misinformed for decades.

Although Suvorov deserves our gratitude for his important dissection of historical legend, his work is not without defects. For one thing, his praise of the achievements of the Soviet military industrial complex, and the quality of Soviet weaponry and military equipment, is exaggerated, perhaps even panegyric. He fails to acknowledge the Western origins of much of Soviet weaponry and hardware. Soviet engineers developed a knack for successfully modifying, simplifying and, often, improving, Western models and designs. For example, the rugged diesel engine used in Soviet tanks was based on a German BMW aircraft diesel.

One criticism that cannot in fairness be made of Suvorov is a lack of patriotism. Mindful that the first victims of Communism were the Russians, he rightly draws a sharp distinction between the Russian people and the Communist regime that ruled them. He writes not only with the skill of an able historian, but with reverence for the millions of Russians whose lives were wasted in the insane plans of Lenin and Stalin for “world revolution.”

Originally published in the Journal of Historical Review 17, no. 4 (July–August 1998), 30–37. Online source: http://library.flawlesslogic.com/suvorov.htm ^[4]

See also the National Vanguard review of Icebreaker here ^[5] and Hitler’s Reichstag speech of December 11, 1941 here ^[6].

---

Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/04/exposing-stalins-plan-to-conquer-europe/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/stalin_victory.jpg

[2] The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591148383/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=countecurrenp-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=1591148383

[3] here: http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/04/le-plan-de-staline-pour-conquerir-leurope-comment-lunion-sovietique-%C2%ABperdit%C2%BB-la-2eme-guerre-mondiale/

[4] http://library.flawlesslogic.com/suvorov.htm: http://library.flawlesslogic.com/suvorov.htm

[5] here: http://www.natvan.com/national-vanguard/115/icebreak.html

[6] here: http://ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p389_Hitler.html

El misterio de los chinos rubios

Ex: http://www.idpress.org/

Si nos pusiésemos a pensar cuáles son los rasgos físicos y/o característicos de los chinos, coincidiríamos en decir que suelen ser más bajos, ojos rasgados y oscuros, pelo moreno y nariz pequeña. Ahora, imaginaos a un grupo de chinos cuyos rasgos son todo lo contrario: altos, rubios, ojos azules y nariz grande.

Liqian, una población al noroeste de China y a 300 kilómetros del Desierto del Gobi, cuenta entre sus habitantes con un nutrido grupo de personas que responden a estas últimas características.

Pruebas realizadas han demostrado que poseen un 56% de ADN caucásico, y aunque no se descarta ni asegura ninguna hipótesis, las conclusiones apuntan a que estas personas podrían ser herederos genéticos de un grupo de legionarios romanos que, muy posiblemente, llegaros hasta China dos mil años antes…

En el año 53 AC, siete legiones de soldados romanos, comandados por el general Marco Licinio Craso, fueron masacrados en la Batalla de Carrhae, la que debía de ser la gran conquista hacia la Ruta de la Seda del Imperio Romano.

Todo parece indicar que un centenar de legionarios pudieron escapar y huir en dirección a Oriente.

Tras miles de kilómetros y 17 años de peregrinación, llegaron al noroeste de China y allí se asentaron, prestando servicios como mercenarios y ayudando al ejército local en la Batalla de Zhizhi entre chinos y hunos.

Llamó especialmente la atención la forma de luchar de los recién llegados mercenarios. Su perfecta formación y disciplina hicieron que fuesen bien recibidos allí. Tras la batalla, los supervivientes de ese grupo se instalaron en la población de Liqian.

Hoy en día, dos mil años después, se tiene cierto convencimiento de que aquellos legionarios romanos son los antepasados de este grupo de chinos con aspecto europeo.

Esta teoría fue presentada por primera vez en la década de 1950 por Homer Dubs, profesor de Historia China en la Universidad de Oxford.

En el año 2007, se llevaron a cabo una serie de pruebas las cuales detectaron dos tercios de ADN caucásico entre ese grupo de habitantes.

Nadie se atreve a asegurar la ascendencia de esos chinos con rasgos occidentales, y lo atribuyen al continuo paso de diferentes etnias por la ruta de la seda.

Hay que recordar que un porcentaje alto de hunos eran caucásicos, lo cual también podría ser el origen de esta incógnita.

De momento, las diferentes excavaciones llevadas a cabo en la zona no han aportado ningún elemento proveniente de soldados romanos, como monedas, armas o cascos, por ejemplo. Si este hecho se produjese, podría ser esclarecedor para revelar si realmente aquel grupo de legionarios romanos que pudieron huir de la Batalla de Carrhae, llegaron a establecerse en China.


http://es.noticias.yahoo.com/blogs/ciencia_cultura/los-chinos-rubios-descendientes-de-los-romanos-p14121.html

 

Ernst Moritz Arndt, jacobin romantique

Ernest Moritz Arndt, jacobin romantique

 

par Guy CLAES

 

Ernst Moritz Arndt est la figure essen­tielle du nationalisme romantique allemand. « Je suis né dans le petit peuple proche de la glèbe », écrivait-il en 1819. À son propos, l'éminent historien Diwald (Cf. Vouloir n°8) disait : « Au contraire de presque tous les autres romantiques, le romantique Arndt est issu de ce terreau populaire, de cette glèbe que les ruraux travaillent ; il s'est hissé à l'esprit du romantisme et n'a pas suivi la voie inverse comme les Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis qui sont, eux, partis de l'intellect et de l'esprit pour découvrir les merveilles de la forêt et la joie des fêtes de la moisson ». Arndt est effecti­vement né d'une famille de paysans poméra­niens de l'Ile de Rügen, en 1769, la même année que Napoléon.

 

Aucun de ses ancêtres n'était libre. Son père fut affranchi par son seigneur puis devint inspecteur de ses terres et, enfin, métayer. Son père acquiert suffisamment de moyens pour lui payer un précepteur et l'envoyer au gymnasium de Stralsund. Après avoir quitté cet établissement sur un coup de tête et par dégoût pour l'étroitesse d'esprit petite-bourgeoise rencontrée chez ses condisciples, il étudie la théologie aux universités de Greifswald et d'Iéna. Après cette pose studieuse, il reprend sa vie errante, traverse et visite toute l'Europe, poussé par une soif de connaître la diversité des peuples et des mœurs. Cette vie vagabonde lui donne conscience de son identité d'Alle­mand et le récit de ses expériences vécues sera codifié dans son Geist der Zeit (= L'es­prit du temps) dont l'impact, dans la société, fut finalement plus important que le Discours à la Nation Allemande du philosophe Fichte. Dans cet ouvrage fait de plusieurs volumes, sans prétention philosophique, il y a "flammes et enthou­siasme".

 

Sa prise de conscience identitaire l'oblige à choisir son camp : il sera pour la Prusse de Gneisenau et de Clausewitz et Napoléon sera l'ennemi, le "Satan à la tête de ses troupes de bandits". Il sera l'ennemi mais aussi le modèle à suivre : il faudra faire de l'Allemagne une nation aussi solide que la France, et lui donner une constitution moderne calquée sur les acquis positifs de la Révolu­tion française, acquis revus et corrigés par le Baron von Stein. Arndt sera un "jacobin allemand", un "jacobin romanti­que", les deux termes n'étant pas antinomi­ques dans le contexte de son époque et de sa patrie.

 

En 1818, Arndt, le paysan voyageur, devient professeur d'histoire à Bonn. Son esprit farouchement contestataire lui cause ennui sur ennui. Accusé de "démagogie", il est emprisonné, chassé de sa chaire, relâché sans explications, jamais jugé. À partir de 1822, il ne cessera d'écrire, notamment sur le problème de l'indépendance belge (nous y revien­drons). En 1848, il siège à l'Assemblée Nationale de Francfort pour en être chassé en mai 1849. En 1860, il meurt âgé de 90 ans et un mois.

 

Ces 90 années d'une vie dûment remplie et mise entièrement au service de la cause de son peuple, ont permis à Arndt d'élaborer, avec un vocabulaire clair et limpide que les Français croient rare en Allemagne, la théorie du "jacobinisme romantique". L'anthologie que nous offre la Faksimile-Verlag nous permet de saisir les piliers de cette vision (c'est à coup sûr davantage une vision qu'une théorie sèche et ardue) et de comprendre les racines du nationalisme populaire, non seulement allemand mais propre à tous les pays continentaux de langue germani­que. Le Mouvement Flamand en a été fortement influencé et, dans l'élaboration de son corpus culturel, a tenu compte des écrits enthousiastes d'Arndt à propos de nos provinces, écrits qui ont précédé ceux de Hoffmann von Fallersleben (ajoutons ici qu'Arndt distinguait Wallons, Flamands et Luxembourgeois par la langue mais englobait les trois ethnies dans la sphère des mœurs sociales germani­ques).

 

Né sujet du roi de Suède, Arndt a voulu favoriser l'union des Allemands au sein d'un même État. Son modèle initial fut le modèle suédois. Les Suédois consti­tuaient, disait-il, un vrai peuple ("ein echtes Volk"), conscient, depuis Gustav Adolf, de la valeur des vertus politiques et de la nécessité de protéger le peuple par une structure étatique solide. L'antholo­gie de la Faksimile-Verlag nous dévoile le système d’Arndt : les rouages de sa conception du "Volk", les lois vitales du peuple, le peuple et l'État dans la perspective d'un double combat contre la réaction féodale et le révolutionna­risme de 1789 et les projets pour la consti­tution d'un État "völkisch".

 

L'idée de "Volk" repose sur trois batte­ries de définitions : empiriques, métaphy­siques et politiques. Sur le plan empiri­que, tout observateur décèlera l'existen­ce tangible et concrète de spécificités ethno-culturelles, de folklores immémo­riaux, de réseaux de liens communautai­res, d'us et de coutumes ancestrales. Sur le plan métaphysique, le "Volk" est le réceptacle d'une unicité idéelle, d'une religiosité particulière que rien ni personne ne saurait rendre interchangeable. Sur le plan politique, le "Volk" est une volon­té. La volonté de demeurer dans l'histoi­re est une force redoutable : les Anglais et les Suédois ont tenu tête ou se sont imposés à des voisins plus puissants quanti­tativement parce qu'ils avaient une con­science très nette de leur identité et refusaient de se laisser guider par l'arbi­traire de leurs gouvernants. Les peuples libres (et Arndt regrette ici que le peuple allemand n'en fasse pas partie) ont une claire conscience de leur honneur (Ehre) et de leur honte (Schande).

 

Arndt distingue la notion de "Volk" de celles de "Menge" (= masse, foule) et "Pöbel" (= populace). "Menge" est la masse "neutre", sans opinions clairement définies ; elle est cette "majorité silencieu­se" que tous réclament comme clientèle. Le "Pöbel" est l'ensemble des éléments déracinés, incapables de discipliner leurs comportements parce que dépouillés de toute norme ancestrale, de toute pesan­teur stabilisatrice. La Révolution françai­se, par son individualisme (manifeste notamment dans les lois qu'elle édicte contre les corporations et contre le droit de coalition), a hissé au pouvoir le "Pöbel" qui a mené la "Menge" dans l'aventure révolutionnaire et napoléonienne. Le "Pöbel" s'est imposé en "maître", en despote sur une "Menge" d'esclaves. La collusion des "despotes" et des "esclaves" ne donne pas un "Volk". Pour que "Volk" il y ait, il faut une circulation des élites, une égalité des chances et une adhésion spontanée et non contrainte à un même ensemble de valeurs et à une même vision de l'histoire.

 

Pour Arndt, le peuple est un tout organi­que d'où jaillit une Urkraft (force originelle) qu'il convient de reconnaître, de canaliser et de faire fructifier. Sans ce travail d'attention constant, le "Volk" dégénère, subit l'aliénation (qui deviendra concept-clef du socialisme), sort de l'histoi­re. Arndt, poète, compare le "Volk" à un volcan, à un Vésuve que les despotes veulent maintenir éteint. Les éruptions sont pourtant inévitables.

 

Pour accéder à l'idée d'État, le peuple doit mener une double lutte contre la "réaction" et la "révolution". Cette lutte doit d'abord se concentrer contre la concep­tion mécaniste de l'État, issue à la fois de l'absolutisme et de la Révolution fran­çaise. L'enthousiasme créatif part d'un enracinement, d'une terre (Heidegger nous systématisera cette vision) où vit encore une dimension historique et non des belles et vibrantes rhétoriques abstrai­tes que les premières heures de la Révolu­tion française avaient connues et diffusées par la presse à travers l'Europe. Arndt, dès les séminaires de Stralsund, ressent un malaise inexplicable à l'écoute des discours parisiens contre l'absolutisme et la monarchie. Son "bon sens" paysan perçoit et dénonce la mascarade lexicale des clubs jacobins. Ce sentiment confus d'antipathie, Arndt le retrouvera lors d'une conversation en Haute-Italie en 1799 avec un officier républicain français qui s'enivrait de trop belles paroles à propos de la liberté (au nom de laquelle, expliquait-il, on venait de fusiller deux députés plus ou moins responsables de l'assassinat d'un tribun). Ces paroles sonnaient faux dans l'oreille d'Arndt et la légèreté avec laquelle beaucoup d'adeptes de la terreur envisageaient fusillades et "guillotinades" l'effrayait. La "force tranquille" de l'organicité se passait de tels débordements.

 

L'idée d'État née lors de la Révolution de 1789 est inorganique. Elle est "con­structiviste" et néglige l'évolution lente qui a germé dans les inconscients collec­tifs. Malgré ce jugement sévère, partagé par Burke, par certains contre-révolu­tionnaires français ou par les romanti­ques traditionalistes (dits parfois réaction­naires) allemands, Arndt reconnaît les aspects, les éléments positifs de la Révolution. Les Allemands doivent beau­coup à cette Révolution : elle a permis leur prise de conscience nationale. Elle a accéléré le processus de décomposition amorcé déjà sous l'Ancien Régime. Elle nous a appris que les peuples ne commet­taient, ni en intention ni en pratique, de crime contre les rois en voulant être gouvernés par des lois qu'ils connaissent et reconnaissent, qui sont le fruit d'une sagesse trempée dans l'expérience des générations antérieures. Il a manqué à la France révolutionnaire cette sagesse organique et le torrent révolutionnai­re a débouché sur la Terreur puis sur un nouvel absolutisme ; ce qui fermait la boucle et ne résolvait rien. Les Princes allemands ont trahi leur peuple en se comportant comme des "grands mogols" ou des "khans tatars". C'est à cela que mène l'irrespect des liens organiques et de la faculté d'écouter qu'ils impli­quent.

 

Arndt critique le droit romain, destruc­teur du droit coutumier (il préfigure ici von Savigny) et voit dans une paysan­nerie sainement politisée, le fondement de l'État völkisch (cette idée, Spengler, Spann et bien d'autres la reprendront à leur compte). Enfin, il nous expose les raisons pour lesquelles il ne croit pas en une Pan-Europe qui se ferait au-­delà, par-delà les peuples. Cette Europe ne serait qu'une panacée insipide dépour­vue de cette organicité stabilisante que cherchent, au fond, tous les peuples depuis l'effondrement de l'Ancien Régime. Cette anthologie est une lecture impérative pour tous ceux qui veulent comprendre l'Allemagne du XIXème siècle, la genèse des socialismes et les idéaux des acteurs du 1848 allemand.

 

G.C.

 

Ernst Moritz ARNDT, Deutsche Volks­werdung : Arndts politisches Vermächtnis an die Gegenwart, Bremen, Faksimile­ Verlag (Adresse : Postfach 10 14 20, D­2800 Bremen 1, RFA), 160 pages avec un portrait d'Arndt et une courte biogra­phie, DM 15.

Indoeuropeos y no indoeuropeos en la Hispania preromana

Recensión de Francisco Villar, Indoeuropeos y no indoeuropeos en la Hispania preromana.

Las poblaciones y las lenguas prerromanas de Andalucía, Cataluña y Aragón según la información que nos proporciona la toponimia. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. Salamanca 2000

El proceso de indoeuropeización de la Península Ibérica es uno de los problemas más complejos a los que, desde hace ya muchos años, se enfrentan tanto la Prehistoria como la Lingüística. Es tal la cantidad de elementos en juego y de cuestiones a resolver que no resulta difícil augurar que serán muchas las generaciones de arqueólogos, filólogos, historiadores de la religión y antropólogos que investigarán y debatirán sobre este campo.  El camino por recorrer es largo y, como es sabido, son pocos los puntos que han  sido firmemente establecidos y, en consecuencia,  aceptados por todos. No es este lugar para hacer balance de la cuestión: un muy breve resumen se podrá encontrar en un artículo que publicamos en un número anterior de Terra Nostra o una exposición mucho más detallada en la Parte V de otra obra del autor del que nos ocupamos aquí, Francisco Villar, Los Indoeuropeos y los orígenes de Europa, 2ª ed., Madrid 1996. Brevemente, recordaremos que parece clara la existencia de tres estratos lingüísticos indoeuropeos prerromanos: por un lado, el  correspondiente al Alteuropäisch, por otro, el de la lengua de las inscripciones lusitanas y, por último, el celtibérico, existiendo posiciones encontradas sobre la naturaleza de cada una y el tipo de relaciones que pudieran haber existido entre ellas.

Este ya de por sí complejo panorama se ha visto más complicado, si cabe, por la hipótesis que presenta F. Villar en esta obra. En efecto, a lo largo de sus casi 500 páginas el autor intenta demostrar, a través del análisis de una ingente cantidad de material lingüístico, la presencia en la Península Ibérica de un estrato lingüístico indoeuropeo diferente a cualquiera de los otros tres detectados hasta el momento, un estrato de rasgos muy arcaicos que de confirmarse atestiguaría que el proceso de indoeuropeización de la Península fue mucho más complejo y profundo de lo que  se había supuesto.

La obra comienza haciendo repaso de una serie cuestiones relativas a la Lingüística Comparada, en especial un alegato de la validez de su método y una descripción de sus características, para continuar con un amplio comentario de la historia de la investigación paleolingüística en España, desde los dislates del padre Astarloa hasta los autores contemporáneos como Gorrochategui o de Hoz, haciendo especial hincapié en la progresiva complejidad de las concepciones del substrato, desde el vasco-iberismo originario, tesis que no se cansa durante toda la obra de denostar, y con razón, hasta la identificación de los diferentes niveles actualmente admitidos: los ya mencionados indoeuropeos junto al vasco, tartesio, ibérico, etc.

Tras estos dos capítulos a guisa de introducción, se adentra en el examen del material recogido: topónimos, hidrónimos, antropónimos y etnónimos, material organizado en series en función de un componente principal que es estudiado en todos los aspectos filológicos posibles, tanto fonéticos como morfológicos, y del que ofrece su correspondiente distribución geográfica, tanto en la Península como en Europa, norte de África u Oriente Próximo. Así, uno a uno, van siendo analizados todos los elementos susceptibles de formar parte de este estrato, proponiendo el carácter indoeuropeo, entre otros, de los siguientes: uba-, relacionado con las raíces indoeuropeas para agua *ap, *ab, *up; ur, relacionado con el ide *(a)wer- / (a)ûr, agua, río, corriente; urc- con el ide *war- / *ur- más el sufijo ko; uc-, en el que se habrían reunido tres componentes diferentes: uko (diminutivo), uko (sufijo hidronímico que aparece en lituano) y un apelativo relacionado con ûkis (lugar de habitación) también presente en lituano, bai-, relacionado con el ide *gwhêi, brillar, etc. Al estudio de los elementos susceptibles de ser agrupados en series que califica de mayores sigue el de las series menores (tur-, turc- y murc-) y de aquellos, muy numerosos, que por su escasa aparición en las fuentes no pueden ser seriados, pero que responden a unas mismas características lingüísticas, así como el análisis de la antroponimia susceptible de ser relacionada con este estrato.

Una vez analizado el material, Villar se adentra en la caracterización de la lengua o lenguas responsables de esta hidronimia,  toponimia y antroponimia, llegando a la conclusión de que no corresponde a ninguna de las lenguas indoeuropeas conocidas, siendo imposible su identificación con ninguno de los tres estratos indoeuropeos conocidos en la Península por diferentes razones (aquí no podemos dejar de mencionar que en su obra mencionada anteriormente relaciona el elemento tur-, presente en nuestro Turia, con el Alteuropäisch pp. 507-509), y sosteniendo que este estrato presenta fuertes relaciones con las lenguas itálicas y con las bálticas, generalmente, aunque no siempre, en las innovaciones con las primeras y en los arcaísmos con las segundas.

Durante toda la obra, y mediante el estudio de la distribución geográfica de los testimonios de este estrato se va evidenciando una concentración de estos elementos en dos áreas principales: la meridional y la ibérico-pirenaica, como el autor las denomina, que se corresponden con el área que hasta ahora se consideraba no indoeuropea (baste recordar la famosa frontera de los briga-). Resulta evidente que las consecuencias de las propuestas de Villar pueden resultar revolucionarias para nuestra protohistoria. El autor es consciente de ello y en un último capítulo analiza algunos de los etnóminos del área ibérica (ilérgetes, indicetes, volciani, etc.) atribuyéndoles etimologías indoeuropeas relacionadas con el estrato objeto del libro (seguras para dieciséis entre veintitrés, aunque posiblemente sean más todavía), lo que implica un masivo substrato indoeuropeo en todo esta área (Aragón, Cataluña y norte de Valencia), pero, sin embargo, renuncia explícitamente a intentar explicar el mecanismo de entrada de estas lenguas, emplazando a arqueólogos y prehistoriadores a abordar esta cuestión. Lo que sí sostiene es la imposibilidad de relacionar los Campos de Urnas con esta toponimia debido a motivos distribucionales (son prácticamente inexistentes en Andalucía) y cronológicos (relaciona el topónimo Alube de la Ilíada con el Guadalquivir y con los hallazgos micénicos allí efectuados, lo que dataría este estrato con anterioridad a las penetraciones de esta cultura. Por otro lado, considera que la densidad de este estrato casa mal con unos «recién llegados» como los Urnenfelder). No obstante, no parecen argumentos excesivamente fuertes: Infiltración y transformación de la cultura material son fenómenos que a menudo van parejos y aunque en la actualidad se tiende a ver en las transformaciones del bronce final tartésico influencias mediterráneas, algunos de los nuevos elementos no dejan de estar relacionados con el ambiente de las urnas, aunque tampoco podemos dejar de señalar que se ha hecho responsable a influencias del Mediterráneo los elementos indoeuropeos presentes en el tartesio. Por otra parte, la relación del Alube homérico con la Península no deja de ser una conjetura toponímica, apoyada sobre conjeturas cronológicas y arqueológicas, y en cuanto a la excesiva densidad que pueda presentar un substrato depende más bien de la profundidad de la «limpieza étnica» que de la antigüedad del proceso. Todo esto, no obstante, no deja de ser un mero comentario ante la superposición de esta toponimia y los Campos de Urnas en el área nordoriental peninsular, que resulta bastante sugerente y ante la propia naturaleza lingüística del substrato (sobre todo la presencia de elementos compartidos con diferentes grupos del «indoeuropeo nordoccidental») que no deja de evocar constantemente las ideas de H. Krahe sobre el «estado líquido» (flüssige Zustand) del complejo de las urnas desde el punto de vista lingüístico. No obstante, evidentemente es todavía muy pronto para intentar elaborar hipótesis arqueológicas sobre esta cuestión.

Un punto que quizá llame la atención a quienes han seguido la labor de Villar es el escaso espacio dedicado al paleoeuropeo y a sus presuntas relaciones con este estrato recién descubierto. Ya que ambas son lenguas ciertamente arcaicas y siguen un modelo distribucional diferente, aunque muy determinado en ambas por los cursos de agua, cabría esperar un análisis comparativo de ambas lenguas que nadie mejor que Villar está en condiciones de realizar. Estamos convencidos de que no tardará en abordar este problema.

En definitiva se trata de una obra destinada a tener un gran eco entre los especialistas no sólo en paleohispanística sino también en indoeuropeística y que abre nuevos caminos para el conocimiento del pasado de nuestros pueblos.                                                                                                                          

 

Olegario de las Eras.