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Pierre Schoendoerffer

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http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00274/103805071_Schoendoe_274285c.jpg



French director whose army service in Indochina inspired him to make one of the finest modern war films

There is a striking circularity to the story of Pierre Schoendoerffer, the French director of one of the finest war films ever made. It was his frustrated passion for cinema that led him to sign up for the French Army in the hope of becoming a professional film-maker. And it was the French Army that gave him his greatest subject as a director: war in the tropical jungle of Vietnam. His La 317è Section (1965) is one of the defining evocations of modern combat on screen.

Schoendoerffer was born in 1928 at Chamalières in the Auvergne, to a family of Alsatian origin who had chosen French citizenship over German after the Franco-Prussian War. He was raised on adventure stories: while at school in Annecy, where his father ran a hospital, he read Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad and Jack London. A novel by Joseph Kessel, Fortune Carrée, inspired him to volunteer for life on a trawler at the end the war.

That shift was followed by a stint on a Swedish cargo ship the next summer. But the young man longed to recount adventures as well as live them. Film was another passion, and he began trying to get into the world of cinema, only to find that he lacked the necessary contacts to be admitted into a world that he would always liken to “Kafka’s castle”. For all his success, Schoendoerffer would always be something of an outsider in the world of French cinema.

There was one possibility left: the army. Encouraged by a newspaper article about official filmmakers covering France’s campaign to hang on to its empire in Indochina — and undaunted by the high mortality rates — he joined up in 1951. After a period of training he was sent out to Cambodia to film military operations in 1952. There he befriended the photographer Jean Péraud, who would be his close companion and guide throughout these intense years.

In 1954 he received a wire from Péraud at Dien Bien Phu, telling him to come as soon as he could. Schoendoerffer hurried out to witness what would prove the last stand of the French regime. Parachuted in during the 57-day siege, he kept on filming until the French positions were overrun, then destroyed all but six canisters of film, which he hid for later retrieval. They are thought to have fallen into the hands of a Soviet cameraman working alongside the Vietnamese forces. Schoendoerffer was taken prisoner and beaten, enduring four months of hardship with untended wounds, until his release could be negotiated. (Péraud, who had escaped into the jungle, was never heard of again.) Back in civilian life, Schoendoerffer became a journalist, first covering cinema and then moving on to the more violent events of Morocco and, above all, Algeria, where France was slowly sliding into its most traumatic colonial war of all. But he still burned to make films. Not long after his liberation, he had met his literary hero, Joseph Kessel, on an assignment to photograph the writer in Hong Kong: the setting, naturally, was an opium den. The upshot of which was a first documentary, based on Kessel’s book about the Afghan game of Buzkashi, La Passe du diable.

As important as the film was its producer, Georges de Beauregard, the future impresario of the Nouvelle Vague who would soon be giving Jean-Luc Godard his big break. Beauregard enabled him to make two more literary adaptations, both of stories by Pierre Loti and, undeterred by their lack of success, encouraged the budding director to adapt a story he had just written, La 317è section, for precisely that purpose. It recounts the experience of a group of local soldiers stationed on the border with Laos, led by a callow young officer and an experienced adjutant. They are ordered to double back 100 miles to the south to the nearest French outpost, just as the Viet Minh are closing in on the French Army at Dien Bien Phu. Their trek becomes a journey of self-discovery, an ordeal in which ideological and political causes are all but absent, the enemy all but invisible. This was war as an existential experience, its drama intensely human.

Much of the film’s authenticity and intensity comes from the way it was made. As Schoendoerffer recalled: “I made everyone live like soldiers. You cannot make a war film if you are comfortable. Every morning we got up at 5 o’clock and struck out into the jungle. An aeroplane came with supplies once a week. The film was sent to Paris the same way, and they got back to us by telegraph: “Good” or “No good”. La 317è section won the award for best screenplay at Cannes in 1965. It has stood as a classic ever since.

Schoendoerffer’s own career continued to be defined by the war. After a relatively unsuccessful stab at a heist movie, Objectif, 500 Millions, in 1966, he turned his attention to American soldiers in Vietnam, taking much the same approach as for their French predecessors. The result, The Anderson Platoon, won him the Oscar for best documentary in 1967. Two novels followed, L’Adieu du Roi (1969), set in Borneo during the Second World War, and Le Crabe tambour (1977), which tied together three key experiences: Indochina, Algeria and the sea. Both won important French literary prizes (the Prix Interallié and Prix de l’Académie Française, respectively), which was rare indeed for a film director, and both made it onto the screen: the first in an adaptation by John Milius (Farewell to the King, 1989), the second directed by Schoendoerffer himself (1976).

In 1994 he returned to Vietnam, this time to film the decisive battle itself in Dien Bien Phu (1994). While this account of a siege is on a larger scale, the emphasis is once again on confinement and isolation. Schoendoerffer’s heroes are men cut off and at the mercy of hazy forces but also their own inner demons. He was a director and writer whose exploration of dramatic historical events was always infused with a sense of melancholy and loss, and who brought to them a sense of a “mission ... to bear witness”.

He is survived by his wife, Patricia, whom he married in 1958, and by two sons and a daughter.

Pierre Schoendoerffer, film director, was born on May 5, 1928. He died on March 14, 2012, aged 83


Lieutenant-Commander Michael Wallrock

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http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00274/103789857_Wallrock_274284c.jpg



Wartime destroyer officer who survived being torpedoed and bombed in the Mediterranean and was decorated for his actions in the Normandy landings

In a career in the Royal Naval Reserve which was nothing if not perilous, Michael Wallrock took part in many of the most famous actions of the Second World War and was sunk three times.

In 1937 he enrolled in the Thames Nautical Training College, the square-rigged HMS Worcester, where his athletic and leadership qualities earned him the post of Chief Cadet Captain and places in the boxing, rugby and cricket teams.

At the outbreak of war he was a cadet in the four-masted barque Abraham Rydberg which landed him at Barbados to return home and join the destroyer Jackal, one of Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten’s 5th Flotilla. Jackal was employed in convoy protection until November 28 when, with others of the flotilla, she fought German destroyers making a tip-and-run raid in the Channel. Javelin, with Mountbatten on board, was torpedoed but survived an engagement for which Mountbatten was criticised for impetuosity but which persuaded the German naval staff that destroyer actions in the Channel were not worth the risk.

At the end of April 1941 the flotilla, now six strong, arrived at Malta to attack enemy supply convoys. On May 2, the Jersey was mined on entry to Valletta, split in two and sank. Using Jackal’s whaler, Wallrock picked up many of her oil-soaked survivors.

After escorting the vital “Tiger” convoy with tanks for the Eighth Army to Alexandria and bombarding Benghazi, the flotilla took part in the campaigns to prevent Crete falling into German hands and the subsequent evacuation, both operations costly in ships and lives, but which rescued more than 16,000 troops. On May 23 they were heavily attacked by Stuka dive- bombers from the efficient Fliegerkorps X and Mountbatten’s ship the Kelly was sunk with the Kashmir. At the end of May, Wallrock took ship’s boats ashore to Sphakia and rescued nearly 700 soldiers.

Thereafter, for the remainder of 1941 Jackal fought against Vichy French naval forces off Lebanon, escorted or provided diversions for three Malta convoys and in November was torpedoed by an aircraft off Derna in North Africa. She emerged from repairs in Alexandria in May 1942 and, during operations to interdict Axis convoys to Benghazi, was bombed and set on fire. The destroyers Kipling and Lively were sunk. Jervis took Jackal in tow, but the fires proved uncontrollable so Jervis sank her with a torpedo and made Alexandria crammed with the survivors of three ships.

Wallrock was appointed to the Hunt-class destroyer Eridge as navigator and in July, with four other Hunts, bombarded Mersa Matruh and sank an ammunition ship. On August 29, while bombarding an airfield, Eridge was torpedoed by an E-boat. Wallrock was in the charthouse laying off the course for home when there was a large explosion. “I thought she was going to roll right over but she stalled at about 20 degrees list,” he said. Without electrical power Eridge was towed to Alexandria by the Aldenham — “supremely unpleasant, what with the shore batteries and the Junkers”.

Eridge was assessed as beyond worthwhile repair. Wallrock was lucky to survive his next operation, the misconceived and disastrous assault on Tobruk in September 1942 which, as a result of bad planning and loss of surprise, resulted in the sinking of the cruiser Coventry, the destroyers Sikh and Zulu, six MTBs and MLs and the loss of about 700 soldiers, Royal Marines and sailors. Wallrock had his doubts on his first sight of MTB309: “To get to Tobruk we needed a deck full of 100 octane petrol cans stowed between the torpedo tubes.”

A brief period in the Clydebank-built drifter Romeo — “a rotten little coal-burner” — was followed by appointment as navigator to the destroyer Pakenham in February 1943, proceeding to Malta for escort duties. On April 16, in company with Paladin, she attacked a convoy southwest of Marsala protected by four Italian torpedo boats, one of which she sank. But Pakenham was damaged and taken in tow. The tow was abandoned because of the threat of air attack and Pakenham was sunk by torpedo from Paladin.

Wallrock returned home aboard the destroyer Javelin and received yet another destroyer appointment — this time to the newly built Hunt-class Talybont in July 1943. Operating in the Channel, Talybont fought several engagements of varying success against German torpedo boats and survived a collision with a merchant ship until, in June 1944, she supported the Normandy invasion, being assigned to the American sector off Omaha Beach. With the USS Saterlee, Talybont provided gunfire support to the celebrated assault up the cliff face of Pointe du Hoc by 2nd Rangers, who found that the emplaced guns had been removed days before. They were found elsewhere and destroyed.

Talybont continued to support the invasion, suffering slight damage from shore batteries off Cherbourg in late June and taking part in a successful battle off Le Havre in July. Wallrock was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French and was twice mentioned in dispatches for these actions.

After a period of shore duty, he was assigned to the “lease-lend” Captain-class diesel-electric frigate Rupert in which he recalled accepting the surrender of six U-boats in Loch Eriboll on the Scottish northeast coast.

Wallrock became engaged to Joan Younger on VE-Day and they were married on VJ-Day. Rupert was returned to the United States in March 1946, and her crew repatriated in the Queen Mary.

After qualifying as a square-rig master mariner in late 1947, Wallrock helped to run the Outward Bound Sea School, operating the Prince Louis sail training vessel. He then ran a boatyard on the Stour near Christchurch, Hampshire, for ten years. Recovering from a period of ill-health, he excavated and set up the Little Avon Marina, later running charters out of Antibes on the Côte d’Azur in his yacht Cardigrae VI. In later life, while living in Beaulieu, Hampshire, he took up tennis, competing at veterans’ national level into his eighties.

He is survived by his wife Joan and their five children.

Lieutenant-Commander Michael Wallrock, master mariner and destroyer officer, was born on July 15, 1921. He died on February 17, 2012, aged 90


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Îò Chestnut
Ê Chestnut (16.03.2012 17:12:42)
Äàòà 19.03.2012 21:18:40

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John Demjanjuk

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/law-obituaries/9151796/John-Demjanjuk.html

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Ê Chestnut (19.03.2012 21:18:40)
Äàòà 21.03.2012 17:19:23

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ìåñòàìè çàáàâíî, òèïà îäíî èç ïîñëåäíèõ ïðåäëîæåíèé

MARSHAL JOSEPH STALIN

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/viewArticle.arc?articleId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1953-03-06-07-001&pageId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1953-03-06-07

Marshal Joseph Stalin

THE death of Stalin, like the death of Lenin 29 years ago, marks an epoch in Russian history. Rarely have two successive rulers of a great country responded so absolutely to its changing needs and piloted it so successfully through periods of crisis. Lenin was at the helm through five- years of revolution, civil war, and pre- carious recovery. Stalin, coming to power in the aftermath of revolution, took up the task of organizing and disciplining the revolutionary state, and putting into execu- tion the revolutionary programmes of planned industry and collectivized agri- culture. He thus equipped the country to meet the gravest external peril which had threatened it since Napoleon, and brought it triumphantly through a four years' ordeal of invasion and devastation. The characters of the two men present a contrast which corresponds to the dif- ferent tasks confronting them. Lenin was an original thinker, an idealist, a superb revolutionary agitator. Stalin neither possessed, nor required, these quali- ties. He was essentially an administrator, an organizer and a politician. Both were ruthless in the pursuit of policies which they regarded as vital to the cause they had at heart. But Stalin appeared to lack a certain element of humanity which Lenin generally maintained in personal relations, though allied statesmen who dealt with him during the war were unanimous in finding him approachable, sympathetic, and readily disposed to moderate the in- transigence of his subordinates. As the war drew to its close Stalin, whether for reasons of health or for reasons of policy, .became less and less accessible to repre- sentatives of the western Powers and so the rift began which was to widen in the counsels of the United Nations and in the policies towards the west of Russia's satellites, until the open warfare broke out in Korea which still festers and poisons the whole international scene.

A MAN OF AUTHORITY
PUBLIC ENTHUSIASM

In Russia and the adjacent Communist States Marshal Stalin at the time of his death ocupied a position of personal eminence almost without parallel in the history of the world. His rare public appearances provoked scenes of tre- mendous enthusiasm; his speeches and writings on any subject-linguistics, the art of war, biology and history, as well as on the theory of Communism-were treated as virtually inspired texts and analysed in meticulous detail by hundreds of commentators. A quotation from the works of Stalin was the irrefutable end to any argument. The mere mention of his name at a political conference in any of the satellite States was sufficient to bring all present to their feet by a pro- longed ovation. The Stalin legend became an integral part of the chain which united orthodox Communists all over the world. In appearaffce Stalin was grey; his hair grey and stiff as a badger's; his nostrils and lower cheeks greyish white; his moustache, too, though in youth it had been richly brown and still showed some traces of that colour, was grey. He spoke softly, moved slowly, but his expression was quizzical, like a man enjoying a hidden joke, at times softening into a broad smile. Often as he spoke his look was oddly remote and withdrawn, the look of a man thinking through two or three processes at once. His expression was above all confident, without a trace of nerves; strong, calm or suddenly watchful in an amused kind of way. Tough, yet unathletic, dignified yet self- conscious, he dominated any group of which he formed a part for all his small stature. Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvlli, known to the world as Stalin, one of his many revo- lutionary noms de guerre, was born at Gori, in Georgia, on December 21, 1879. His father, a cobbler of peasant origin, died when he was 11. Joseph waS sent to the church school in his native town, where he remained until 1893. It was here that he learned to use Russian as an instrument of expression, since all ecclesiastical schools in Georgia at that time were the implements of the Tsarist policy of Russification. He emerged from the school at Gori sharply conscious of the suppression of Georgian nationalism and not unaware of the social inequalities and injustices prevailing in his native Georgia. Such feelings were never revealed however to the school staff, and in view of the fact that be was invariably the best pupil in his form, the head master and the local priest had no hesitation in recommending him for a scholarship at the seminary in Tiflis following upon his matricu- lation there in the autumn of 1894.

"A MODEL PUPIL "
CLANDESTINE SOCIALIST

In his early period at the seminary Dzhugasbvili was a model pupil, able and diligent at his work, but towards the q&d of his first year, unbeknown to his tutors. he was already in contact with opposition groups in Tiflis and published some patriotic radical verses in the Liberal newspaper Iberya. His contact with radical groups in Tiflis, headed by former seminarists, continued to develop until finally in August, 1898, he joined the clandestine Socialist organization known as Mesame-Dasi. Thenceforward he began to lead a kind of dual existence. His few leisure hours were spent in lecturing on Socialism to smail groups of working men in Tiflis; discus- sion in a secret debating society, formed by himself inside the seminary, and the reading of radical books. This state of affairs eventually came to the notice of the seminary authorities and in May, 1899, the 20-year-old Dzhugash- vili was expelled. He then mbarked on a revolutionary career, but was faced with the immediate problem of employment. For a few months he made a little money giving lessons to the children of mniddle class families and at the end of 1899 found a job as a clerk in the observatory at Tiflis-an occupation which, seems to have afforded him much free time for political activity. He remained in this employment until March, 1901, when his political activities forced him to go under- ground completely. In November, 1901, he was elected to membership of the Social Democratic com- mittee of Tiflis and a few weeks later was sent to Batum, where he proceeded with the establishment of a vigorous clandestine organition and an illegal printing press. The influence of this organization, under his leadership, on the oil workers of Batum was so rernarkable in its manifestations that Koba (as Dzhugashvili was then known) was arrested. and imprisoned in the spring of 1902 as a dangerous agitator. From his exile in Siberia he escaped a few weeks later and reappeared in Tiflis to find that the great schism which divided the Social Democratic Party in 1903 had left the Mensheviks in virtual control of the Caucasian party. A few. months after his return, with some hesita- tion, " Koba " took the side of Lenin and the Bolsheviks and proceeded to agitate energetically against the Mensheviks and other political groupings.

FIRST MEETING WITH LENIN

Koba's" role during the "general rehearsal " of 1905 was a local rather than a national one. Apart from organizing the " fighting squads " (later to be a subject of considerable controversy within the party) and the editing of the newspaper Kavkaski Rabochl Listok (Caucasian Workers' News- sheet), which enjoyed temporary legality, he continued to conduct a vigorous onslaught against the Mensheviks. When he attended the party conierence in Tammerfors in Decem- ber, 1905, as a delegate of the Caucasian Bolsheviks (a group of uncertain credentials, since most of the local leaders were Men- sheviks), " Koba " emerged for the first time from the provincial arena of Caucasian politics into the atmosphere of a truly natidhal gather- ing. Here, too, he first met Lenin. In the following year he attended the Stockholm Congress and in 1907 the London Party Con- gress as a Caucasian delegate, where he encountered Trotsky. Soon after his return from the Londori Congress he was elected to membership of the Baku Committee, and it was in the oil wells of Baku that Stalin, on his testimony, first learned to lead great masses of workers. He was arrested in November, 1908, and deported to Vologda province. A few months later, however, he escaped and appeared again in the south, under the name of Melikyants. His period of freedom was brief, for he was re-arrested in March, 1910, and sent back to Vologda to complete his sentence of 1908. Released in June, 1911, he settled in Petersburg at the home of his future father-in-law, Alliluyev, although he had been forbidden to live in most large towns. In consequence, he was again arrested. Reaction was now at its height and the party fortunes at their lowest ebb. A small con- ference of Bolshevik stalwarts in Prague in January, 1912, coopted Stalin as a member of the central executive committee of the party; and on his escape a few weeks later he helped to found the new party journal Pravda in Petersburg.

A TURNING-POINT
LENIN'S " WONDERFUL GEORGIAN "

It was in the winter of 1912-13 that Stalin made his only extended visit abroad, spending some months with Lenin in Cracow and some time in Vienna. This was a turning-point in his career. Ten years earlier Lenin, in his famous pamphlet What is to be Done? had first stated the case, on which he never ceased to insist, for a centrally directed party of professional revolutionaries, organized and disciplined in thought and deed, as the essential instrument of social revolution. Stahn had all the marks of Lenin's ideal pro- fessional revolutionary: he was intrepid, orderly and orthodox. It was a further asset that though born a Georgian and a member ot one of the " subject races" Stalin had had no truck with separatist or federalist " ideas within the party and was an out-and-out centralist." Not for nothing therefore did Lenin at this time refer to Stalin in a letter to Maxim Gorky as " a wonderful Georgian " who was writing an essay on the national ques- tion. The essay, eventually published under the title " Marxism and the National Ques- tion" in a party journal, was an attack on the "national " heresies of the Austrian Marxists Bauer and Renner and a statement ot accepted Bolshevik doctrine, steering a cautious middle course between those who re- garded any kind of nationalism as incompatible with international socialism and those who re- garded nationalism as an essential element iii it. It was the first of his writings to be signed by the name under which he was to become famous. Back in Russia, Stalin underwent in Febru- ary. 1913, his sixth and last imprisonment and exile. The revolution of February, 1917, released him, and he was probably the first member of the central com- nnittee of the party to reach Petersburg. In this capacity he temporarily took over the editorship of Pravda. This was the occasion of a short-lived deviation to which Stalin after- wards frankly confessed. In common with the other leading Bolsheviks then in the capital- excluding Molotov and Shlyapnikov-Stalin believed that the right tactics for the Bolsheviks were to support the provisional Government and rally to the defence of the fatherland; and this line, which would have assimilated the policy of the Bolsheviks to that of the Social-Democratic parties of the Second International, was taken editorially in Pravda. Lenin, chafing inactively in Switzerland, denounced in his Letters from Afar the weak-kneed Bolsheviks of the capital. When later he reached Petrograd in the sealed train and propounded his famous ' April theses " of no cooperation with the provisional Government or with any policy that would keep Russia in the war, he quickly rallied his faltering party, and geared it for the second revolution. Thereafer Stalin remained a faithful and undeviating disciple. 1917

REVOLUTION ENHANCED.
STATUS IN THE PARTY

The difficulty for the biographer of this as of the earlier period of Stalin's life is to dis- entangkl the authentic contemporary evidence from the mass of more recent and largely apocryphal accretions. It seems that he first became a figure familiar to party cadres, at the time of his election to a new central com- mittee of nine members in April, 1917, and after the difficult July days, when Lenin and Zinoviev were compelled to retreat to Fin- land and Kamenev, Trotsky and others were arrested, Stalin emerged to lead the party. On their return to the political scene, he retired again into the shadows. While there is but little information relating to any participation by him in the work of the Revolutionary MiiLtary Committee during the actual rising, he nevertheless undoubtedly performed an i nportant function in the editorial office of Prav4da. He supported Lenin against Zinoviev and Kamenev in the contro- versy over the preparation and timing of the October revolution and against Trotsky over Brest-Litovsk ; and though his interventions recorded in the minutes of the central com- mittee were on both occasions brief and incon- spicuous, his fidelity to Lenin in these troubled times must have won the gratitude of the leader and greatly enbanced his status in the party. He was appointed People's- Commissar for Nationalities in October, 1917, and in this capacity one of his first measures was to pro- claim Finland's .ndependence from Russia, at a conference in Helsinki. In spite of the opposition of elements within the party, who regarded this as an unwarranted concession to bourgeois nationalism, the decree was officially signed by Lenin and Stalin in December. He also played an active part in the drafting of the 1918 constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic and he was still more closely concerned four years later in framing the federal constitution of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

BREACH WITH TROTSKY

The civil war provided fresh scope for Stalin's unflagging energy and undoubted administrative talents. That the civil war pro- vided the occasion of Stalin's first open breach with Trotsky; that Stalin and Voroshilov intrigued busily against rrotsky, criticizing both his disposition of his armies and his use of former Tsarist officers; that recriminations flared up to a dangerous point over the defence of Tsaritsin (renamed Stalingrad some years later) against Denikin; that Lenin tried to smooth over these aninosities and to retain the services of two invaluable though quarrel- some lieutenants-so much is clear. But the historian of the future may weD find it a super- human task to extract the grain of truth from the chaff of subsequent controversy and the haystack of misrepresentation beneath which Trotsky's achievements have been hidden. For the rest Stalin's name figures little in the literature of the period. At any time up to 1922 the general inpression which he made on his colleagues was apparently one of un- distinguished competence; though admitted to the first rank of Bolshevik leaders he seemed the least remarkable of them, the most lacking in personality. But his capacity for hard and regular work more than balanced the more spectacular talents of his rivals, and indeed it could not have escaped the notice of a few that Stalin's influence in the state and his hold on the party machine had grown enormously. At the end of the civil war he filled three significant posts: membership of the Polit- buro, Commissar of Nationalities, and Com- missar for Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (Rabkrin). N In March, 1922 he was appointed Secretary-General or the party-a newly created post obviously suited to his rather pedestrian gifts. Though not regarded by any- one as a potential stepping-stone to supreme power, nevertheless this post, considered in conjunction with his other spheres of influence, rendered his personal position most formid- able. Although Lenin still held the reins, Stalin's influence was becoming comparable to that of Lenin. In May of the same year Lenin had a first stroke from which he recovered, temporarily and incompletely, to be finally stricken by a second in March, 1923. From this moment, though Lenin lingered on, totally incapacitated, till January, 1924, the succession was open. Had anyone seriously canvassed Stalin's chances, a letter from Lenin to the central committee of the party-commonly, though unwarrantably, 4nown as Lenin's testament- might have seeme6d a decisive obstacle. Writing at theend of December; 1922, with a postscript of January 4, 1923, Lenin who evidently knew chat his days- were numbered, passed in re- gress elected a new Politburo of nine and in the new line-up Stalin had a majority of votes among them Kaganovich and Mikoyan. The Aaring up of contlcting forces inside the Politburo did not come until 1928, when in view of the grain famine " emergency mea- sures " were instituted by the Politburo, result- ing in Stalin's call for " the elimination of the kulaks as a class." Although in the councils of the Politburo these measures were opposed by Bukharin and his group, it was not until April, 1929, that Stalin openly de- nounced Bukharin as the leader of the " right " opposition to his policy in the countryside. Soon after, Bukharin Rykov, and Tomsky were excluded from the Politburo and other significant posts. Stalin's ascendancy in the Politburo was now complete, and from this moment he was recognized as the virtual ruler of the Soviet Union-a position consecrated by the unusual demonstrations with which his fiftieth birthday was celebrated in December, 1929. At the very moment of Trotsky's expulsion Stalin was preparing a powerful swing-over towards indus- trialization. The first Five-year Plan was launched by him in 1928. Its inevitahle con- comitant, the collectivization of agriculture, though not seriously taken in hand till 1931, had been on the party agenda since the end of 1927. Throughout this period, though mis- takes were made (notably in the estimate of the pace at which collectivization could be carried out), Stalin's sense of timing was on the whole superb. Few, if any, of the policies which he applied were original to himself; but view the principal party leaders. He noted that Stalin since he had become Secretary- General had "concentrated in his hands an tmmense power," and expressed the fear that he might not always use it prudently. He de- scribed Stalin as " too rough," and proposed that he should'be replaced by someone " more patient, more loyal, more polite, more atten- tve to the comrades, less capricious, &c." Fortunately for Stalin, the letter also treated Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin with scant respect, so that there was a powerful interest in lmiting its 'circulation. Though it was familiar to all members of the central com- mittee, and its authenticity has never been contested. But Stalin must be credited with extraordinary skill in surmounting so formid-1 able an obstacle. When the twelfth party con- gress met in April, 1923, Lenin was known, though not yet publicly admitted, to be past recovery. The talk was of a group of three (" troika ") to take over his authority; and the names of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin were freely mentioned. Stalin, with consum- mate tact, defended Zinoviev and Kamenev rather than himself from attacks made jointly on aU three of them. Trotsky was gradually edged on one side. Attacks on him for under- mming the unity of the party began in the autumn of that year. The year 1924 was decisive for Stalin's ascent to power. During this year he for the first time exhibited to the full that amazing political dexterity which made all his rivals look like bunglers and amateurs. In the'first place he brought about what may not unfairly be called the "canonization" of Lenin. From the moment of Lenin's death, and almost entirely as the result of Stalin's initiative, every word that Lenin had uttered or written came to be treated as sacrosanct-as Lenin himself had treated the works of Marx and Engels; and everyone who had differed from him was now suspect not merely as a heretic in the past, but as a potential heretic in the future. This weapon was aimed primarily at Trotsky, whose impetuous character and long record of past 'ickerings vith Lenin made him highly vul- nerable. But it could also serve against Zinoviev and Kamenev, who had more than once been severely castigated by Lenin for their backslidings. Stalin had been too prudeut or not conspicuous enough to come under the lash-except in the unofficial " testament " now being gradually consigned to oblivion. This was a negative asset. But immense pains were taken, both at this time and afterwards, to build up a positive picture of Stalin as Lenin's ablest coadjytor, most faithful disciple, and chosen political executor.

CONTROL OF PARTY MACHINE
POWER STRENGTHENED

Secondly, Stalin, well aware of the prestige attaching in the party to the master of Marxist theory, set out to establish his-credentials in that field. In the spring of 1924 he delivered at the Sverdlov University in Moscow a course of lectures on " The Foundations of Leninism "-a competent exposition of the development and application by Lenin of Marxist doctrine. ie went on to take the offensive against Trotsky. In the lectures themselves he had followed the usual view that the ultimate success of the Russian revo- lution depended on the spread of revolution elsewhere in Europe. But the revolutionary! failures of 1923 in Germany suggested that this consummation was remote; and the new international status of the Soviet Union, which had been recognized in 1924 by all the princi- pal Powers except the United States, made the encouragement of world revolution an increas- ingly inconvenient policy. At the end of 1924 Stalin issued a revised edition of his lectures in which he proclaimed the doctrine of " Socialism in one country." Trotsky could thus be branded as an internationalist, a cham- pion of the outmoded slogan of " permanent revolution." Thirdly, Stalin strengthened his control of the party machine and discovered how to use it for the discomfiture of his enemies. As Secretary-General he was already master of all promotions and appointments to key positions in the party. Lenin's memory was now honoured by the admission of a large number of new members; and this admission, managed by Stalin and his supporters, brought a mass of recruits to the new orthodoxy. Whatever opinions were held among the leaders the weight of numbers must begin to tell. Before long Trotsky was being shouted down at party meetings by enthusiastic young Stalinists.

TROTSKY'S EXPULSION

By January, 1925, the campaign against Trotsky had gathered sufficient momentum to permit of his deposition from his office as People's Commnissar for War. Before the end of the year Zinoviev and Kamenev, taking fight at Stalin's growing power, were seeking a rapprochement with Trotsky. But the move came too late to save them. In 1926 Stalin secured a condemnation of Trotskyites and Zinovievites alike both by a party conference and by the Comintem; and in November, 1927, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev were formally expelled from the party. Two months later Trotsky was forcibly removed from Moscow and sent to Alma-Ata in central Asia. He was finally expelled from Russia in January, 1929. In the struggle thus concluded personal rivalries had been intertwined not only with the issue of foreign policy already referred to but with internal political controversies. Trotsky had always been an advocate of industrializa- tion and planning. Stalin opened the cam- paign against him with the NEP slogans of conciliating the peasant and with the charge, repeated and illustrated ad. nauseamn,, that Trotsky was guilty of " underestimating the peasant." -But Stalin soon saw the dan ers of going too far, and from the end or 1925 onwards cleverly steered a mniddle course be- tween the " left " opposition of Trotsky and Zinoviev, who were accused of ignoring the peasant, and the " right " opposition of Rykov and Bukharin, who exaggerated the policy of appeasing the peasant. I After the rout of Tyotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, Stalin's position was not yet supreme in the Politburo. He 'still had to deal with the " right " opposition of Bukharin, Rykov, and Tornsky. Contrary to the pro- phecies of the recently defeated opposition, the influence of the Bukharin group did not overshadow that of Stalin. The fifteenth Con- he was unique in his sense of when to act and when to wait. In the middle thirties, with industrialization well on the way and collectivization a fait accompli, the Soviet Union may well have seemed to be sailing out into smoother waters. The second Five-year Plan promised an increased output of consumer goods. Stalin's "ub"L pronouncements assumed a more optimistic tone, and he may well have originally conceived the " Stalin constitution," pro- mulgated in 1936, as the crown of his work. Socialism had been achieved; the road to Communism, however distant the goal, lay open; increased material prospenty and broader constitutional hberties were a vision of the immediate future. These expectations, if they were entertained, were not fulfilled. In the middle thirties the Soviet Union entered a new period of storm and stress. The murder of Kirov at the end of 1934 was the symptom or starting-point of a grave internal crisis; and in international affairs Germany regained her power in a form particularly menacing to the Soviet Union. The internal crisis was obscure, the evidence relating to it contentious, and it was dealt with by methods which left a lasting cloud on Stalin's name. The growing-pains of collective farming, the liquidation of the kulaks, the need-in face of the Nazi menace-to increase the pace of industrialization had all imposed severe strains on the population and bred discontent, sometimes in high places. Stalin decided to strike hard. In the panic which followed old scores were paid off and new grudges indulged, and things probably went a good deal farther than Stahn or anyone else intended at the start. TREASON TRIALS In 1935 and 1936 successiv^ trials were held in which all those prominent Bolsheviks who had at one time or another been implicated in " Trotskyism " or other forms of opposi- tion to the regime-Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin among them-were condemned and shot for self-confessed treason. In 1937 a number of the leading generals were shot on similar charges without public trial. Of the leading Bolsheviks of the first generation hardly any survived except Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov. In 1938 the purge was at last stayed. Yagoda, long the head of the G.P.U. and its successor the N.K.V.D.. who had been removed from office at the end of 1936, was now himself executed; and Yezhov, his successor, formerly an influential party leader, d>isappeared from the scene about the same time. Judgment on the purge will depend partly on rue amount of credence given to reports and confessions of active treason on the part of the accused; and it has to be admitted that the Soviet polity afterwards survived the almost intolerable strains of war with fewer breaks and fissures than most observers haa been prepared to predict. Nevertheless it is certain that the damage done by the purges to Soviet prestige in the west was a fatal handicap to the foreign policy of a common defensive front with the western Powers to which Soviet diplomacy was at that time committed. This was probably the gravest and most disastrous miscalculation of that period.

MUNICH AND AFTER
TREATY WITH THE NAZIS

Soviet foreign policy in the thirties, as much as Soviet domestic policy, was clearly Stalin's creation. He had long been by in- clination a Soviet nationalist rather than an internationalist; and now that he was firmly established in the seat of power he was un- likely to shrink from any of the implications of " Socialism in one country." Faced by the German menace, he executed without embar- rassment the ideological change of front necessary to bring the Soviet Union into the League of Nations and to conclude treaties of alliance with France and Czechoslovakia. In the end it was not lack of Soviet good will that defeated this project, but the weakness of France and what appeared to Soviet eyes as a dual policy on the part of Great Britain. So long as Great Britain could be suspected of hesitating between a deal with Germany and a common front against her, Stalin on his side would equally keep both doors open. Munich, though a severe shock to prospects of co- operation, was partly offset by Bntish rearma- ment, and the riddle of British policy was un- solved throughout the winter. On March 10, 1939, at the eighteenth party congress Stalin gave what was doubtless intended as a note of warning that Soviet policy was " not to allow our country to be drawn into conflicts by war- mongers." But his speech was overtaken by the march of events. It was Hitler's seizure of Prague in the middle of March which fired the train. Great Britain now prepared feverishly for war and sought for allhes in the east. Two alternatives were still open to her. Sh could have an alhianc with the Soviet Uriloti at tho priC4 of accepting Soviet policy in castem Europe-in Poland, in Rumania, in the Baltic States; or she could have alliances with the anti-Soviet Governments of these countries at the price of driving the Soviet Union into the hostile camp. British diplomacy was too simple- minded, and too ignorant of eastern Europe, to understand the hard choice before it. It plunged impetuously into the pacts of guarantee with Poland and Rumania; and within a few days, on May 3, 1939, the resigna- tion of Litvinov and his replacement by Molotov signalled a vital change in Soviet foreign policy. The British mission which had been sent to Moscow found itself unable to make any progress. Negotiations continued; but unless Great Britain was prepared to abandon the Polish alliance, or put severe pressure on her new ally, their eventual break- down was certain. When Hitler decided to wait no longer, Stalin for his part did not hesitate. Ribbentrop came to Moscow and the German-Soviet treaty was signed. It is fair to infer that Stalin regarded it as a pis aller. He would have preferred alliance with the western Powers, but could not have it on any terms which he would have found tolerable.

UNEASY NEUTRALITy

Twenty-two months of most uneasy neutrality followed. The German advance in Poland was answered by a corresponding Soviet move to reoccupy the White Russian territories ceded to Poland by the treaty of Riga in 1921. Thus, by the autumn of 1939 Soviet and German power already confronted each other in Poland, on the Danube, and on the Baltic. The war against Finland in the winter of 1939-40 was designed to strengthen the de- fences of Leningrad by pushing forward the frontier in a westerly direction. It eventually achieved this object, but at the cost of much discredit to Soviet prestige and the formal ex- pulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations. After the fall of France, Soviet fears of Ger- man victory and German predominance grew apace0; and military and industrial preparations were pressed forward. Stalin now probably foresaw the inevitability of conflict, but was determined not to provoke or hasten it. In November, 1940, he sent Molotov on a visit to Berlin without being able to mitigate the palpable clash of interests. On the other hand, Japanese neutrality was assured when Matsuoka was effusively received in Moscow in April, 1941. In the following month Stalin, hitherto only secretary-general of the party and without official rank, became President of the Council of People's Commissars-the Soviet Prime Minister. The appointment sounded a note of alarm at home and of warning abroad.

RUSSIA AT WAR
HEAVY BURDEN OF RESPONSIBILITY

The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and the almost immediate threat to the capital placed on Stalin's shoulders an enormous weight of anxiety and responsibility. From the outset, the supreme direction of the war effort and defence organi- zation became vested in the State Defence Committee consisting of five members-Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Beria. and Malenkov, with Stalin as chairman, though it was not till March, 1943, that he assumed the rank of marshal, and later of generalissimo. During the war his customary public speeches on May I and on the eve of November 7 took the form of large-scale reviews of military operations and war policy. He was also active in a diplomatic role. Before the war Stalin had been almost entirely inaccessible to foreigners. Now, apart from regular conversations with the allied Am- bassadors, he received a constant flow of dis- tinguished visitors. Lord Beaverbrook and Mr. Harriman were in Moscow in August, 1941, to organize supplies from the west; Mr. Churchill came m August, 1942, and again, with Mr. Eden, in October, 1944. In December, 1943. Stalin met President Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill at Teheran, and in February, 1945, at Yalta. The last meeting of the Big Three, with Mr. Truman succeeding Roosevelt and Mr. 'Attlce replacing. Mr. -Churchill in- the middle 'of .the 'proceedings, took 'place at Potsdam in July, 1945. Among his.diplomatic activities Stalin was particularly concerned with the perennial problem of Soviet-Polish relations. By dint of much patience he eventually secured the recognition of the. new Polish Government by his allies,.and the acceptance by them as the frontier, between the Soviet Union and Poland of the so-called " Curzon line " originally drawn by the Allied and Associated Powers at the Paris peace conference of 1919. He worked untiringly to secure for his country'that place of undisputed equality, with the other Great Powers to which its achievements and sacrifices in the war entitled it.

DOMESTIC POLICY
COMINTERN AND CHURCH

Two striking decisions of domestic policy during the war-the disbandment of Comm- tern and the renewed recognition of the Orthodox Church-were undoubtedly taken by Stalin out of deference for allied opinion; but they were in line with this long-standing in- clination, accentuated by the war, to give precedence to national over ideological considerations. The reforms of 1944 which accorded separate armies and separate rights of diplomatic representation abroad' to the major constituent republics of the Soviet Union were perhaps partly designed to secure to the Ukraine and White Russia independent membership and voting power in the United Nations. When the war ended Stalin -was in his sixty-sixth year. A holiday of two-and-a- half months in the autumn of 1945 at Sochi on the Black Sea produced the usual crop of rumours, but was no more than a merited and necessary respite from the burden of pubEc affairs. In December he was back in Moscow for the visit of Mr. Bevin and Mr. Byrnes. Thenceforward there were few personal contacts between Stalin and representatives of the western Powers. In February, 1946, he took part in the elections to the Supreme Soviet, making the principal campaign speech, in which he forecast an early end of bread rationing-a hope which was defeated by the bad harvest. He also declared that it was the intention of the Soviet Com- munist Party to organize a new effort in the economic field, the aim of which would be to treble pre-war production figures. Although advanced in years, Stalin still continued to hold the reins of power and in March, 1946, he was again confirmed as Secretary of the central committee of the party. In the same year the State Publishing House began pub-, lication of a collected edition of his works.

GROWING MISTRUST

The unparalleled popularity in the non- C~ommunist world with which the Russian people in general, and Marshal Stalin in particular, had emerged from the war thus early gave place to mistrust. It had been hoped that the pre-war doctrine which was associated with Stalin's name, of " socialism in one country," would provide the basis for peaceful coexistence in the post-war period. Stalin's own comments on inter- national affairs sometimes tended to con- firm, and sometimes to deny, this prospect. Thus in answer to questions put to him by the M4oscow correspondent of the Sunday Times in September, 1946, Stalin declared that, in spite of ideological differences, he believed in the possibility of lasting cooperation between the Soviet Union and the western democracies, and that Comnmunism in one country was perfectly possible. This p)rovoked world-wide interest and was regarded as a welcome state- ment, contributing much to the teasing of growing international tension. A month later, however, in reply to questions sent to him by the United Press of America, he asserted that in his opinion " the incendiaries of a new war," naming several prominent British and American statesmen, constituted the most serious threat to world peace, and thus destroyed the earlier good impression. .Russia's post-war policy towards her neigh- bours did nothing to confirm Stalin's peaceful protestations. The independent Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, had already been incorporated in Russia in 1940. Finland Iand Bulgaria were compelled to surrender Iterritory to Russia as the price of defeat, and IPoland suffered even greater- amputations as Ithe reward of victory. In the Far East Russia Iclaimed North Sakha'an and the Kurilles Islands as her price for taking part in the war lagainst Japan. In all the countries which had been overrun by the Red Army it was only a question of time before a Communist regime had been set up and its opponents liquidated. By the- middle of 1948 the borders of Com- munism stretched from the Elbe to the Adriatic. A year later Communism had triumphed in China. Stalin controlled the destinies of an empire far larger than any Tsar had ever dreamed of. It was the coup d'Etat in Prague in February, 1948, which finally forced westem Europe and North America-into action for their common defence. The North-Atlantic Treaty was signed in April,4.949. But even before then the west had successfully met another outward thrust by Russia. It was in June, 1948 that the air-lift began which nulli- fied the effects of the blockade of Berlin. Stalin-remained, as always, in the back- ground during this period of dynamic Russian expansion. It was only rarely that he received a foreign diplomat, though leaders of the satellite States naturally had readier access to him. From time to time the sqggestion was made for a new conference between Stalin, the American President and the British Prime Minister, but none of them came to anything. It was in 1946 that President Truman disclosed thai he had invited Stalin to Washington. for a social visit, but that Stalin had found it necessary to decline for reasons of health. In the last interview which he gave, to a foreign correspondent (to the representative of the New York Times in December last year) he indicated that he held a favourable view of proposals for talks between himself and the ead of the new American Administration, President Eisenhower, and that he was inter- ested in any -new diplomatic move to end hostilties in Korea. President Eisenhower declared his willingness last month to hold a meeting with Stalin in certain circumstances, and Mr. Churchill subsequently told the House of Commons that he did not rule out the possibility of three-cornered discussions.

STALIN'S NEW ROLE
ECONOMIC THEORIST

It was in the last year of his life that Stalin appeared in a role which would have sur- prised former colleagues, such as Lenin and Trotsky, but which therefore may well have given him most pride-as an economic theorist in the tradition of (and not less important than) Marx, Engels and Lenin. Shortly before the nineteenth congress of the Russian Com- munist Party, which was held in Moscow in October, 1952-the first congress since 1939- Stalin published his Economic Problems of Socialism in thwe USS.R.. which has since become the definitive text-book for Commun- ists in all countries. In this work he wamed his readers that, for all Russia's successes in building a new society, it was wrong to think that the natural economic laws did noL. apply as much in Russia as else- where. He also forecast a deepening crisis of capitalism, that west European countries would dissociate themselves from the United States, and that war between these capitalist countries was inevtable. He also outlined a programme of basic preliminary conditions necessary for the transition to Com- munism in the Soviet Union. At the Congress there was a reorganization of party organs- the Politburo and the Orgburo being brought together in a single body, the .Praesidium of the Central Committee, of which Stain became chairman. On the occasion of his seventieth birthday in December, 1949, there were widespread celebra- tions throughout the Soviet Union and busts of Stalin were erected on 38 of the highest peaks in the Soviet Union. It marked, too, the inauguration of intemational Stalin peace prizes, to be awarded each year on his birth- day. On March 3, 1953, it was announced by Moscow radio that Stalin was gravely ill as the result of a haemorrhage, that he had lost consciousness and speech, and that he would take no part in leading activity for a prolonged period. Only a few-details are known of Stalin's personal life. In 1903 he married Yekaterina Svanidze, a profoundly religious woman and the sister of a Georgian comrade, who left him a son Yasha vhen she died in 1907 of ppeumonia. His second wife, whom he married in 1918-Nadezhda Alhluyeva-was 20 years younger than himself and was the daughter of a Bolshevik worker, with whom Stalin had contacts in both the Caucasus and St. Petersburg. She was formerly one of Lenin's secretaries and later studied at a tech- nical college in Moscow. This marriage, too, ended with the death of his wife in November, 1932. She left him two children-a daughter, Svetlana, and a son, Vassili, now a high ranking officer in the Soviet Air Force. Late in life he married Rosa Kaganovich, tho sister of lazar Kaganovich; a" member of the Politburo.

MARSHAL JOSEPH STALIN - I I .~~~~~~~~~~ DICTATOR OF RUSSIA FOR 29 YEARS



'Á³é â³äëóíàâ. Æîâòî-ñèí³ çíàìåíà çàòð³ïîò³ëè íà ñòàíö³¿ çíîâ'
Îò Booker
Ê Chestnut (21.03.2012 17:19:23)
Äàòà 21.03.2012 20:22:07

Ñïàñèáî! Ëþáîïûòíî, åù¸ áû ÷óòü è ïðî ñîõó ñ ÿäåðíîé áîìáîé íàïèñàëè áû. )))

Âîò çäåñü:

He thus equipped the country to meet the gravest external peril which had threatened it since Napoleon, and brought it triumphantly through a four years ordeal of invasion and devastation.

Ñ óâàæåíèåì.
Îò Chestnut
Ê Chestnut (21.03.2012 17:19:23)
Äàòà 21.03.2012 18:03:10

Re: íåêðîëîã äàâíèé,...

Lenin

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/viewArticle.arc?articleId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1924-01-23-08-001&pageId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1924-01-23-08

LENIN. DICTATOR OF SOVIET RUSSIA. WORLD-REVOLUTION AS GOAL

Nikolai Lenin, wlhose death is an- nounced on another page, wvas the pseudonym of Yladimir Ilyich Ulianov, the dictator of Soviet Rlussia. His real name has almost passed into oblivion. It was under his ,7o)n de querre that he becamo famous. It is as Lenin that he will pass into history. Tlhis extraordinary figure was first and foremost a professional revolutionary and conspirator. He had no other oecu- pation; in and by revolution he lived. Authorslhip and the social and economic studies to which he devoted his time were to him but the means for collecting fuel for a world-conflagration. The hope of that calamity haunted this cold dreamer from his schooldays. His is a striking instance of a purpose that fiom early youxth nmarched unflinchingly iowards a ehosan goal, iundisturbed by wyeariness or intellectual doubt, never halting at crime, lInowing no compunction. The goal was the universal social revolution. Lenin was born on April 10, 1870, at 3imbirsk,na little town set on a hill that overlooks the middle Volga and the east- ward rolling steppes. His father, born of a hIumble family in Astrakhan, had risen to the position of district director of selhool5 under the MIinistry of Education. T'hs atmosphere of the home was that of the middle-class urban intelligentsia, wvhich ardently eiltivated book-learning, was keenly interested in abstract ideas, but had little care for the arts and was, at best, indifferent to the Russian national tradition. Of Lenin's early life little is k;nown. 3-10 attended the local high selhool, the hcadynaster of which was Feodor Keren- sky, father of Alexander Kerensky, whom Lenin was one day to overthrow from political power. The boy appears to have been diligent in his studies, but re- tiring and morose. In 1887 his elder brother was executed for taking part in an attempt on the life of Alexander III. This event may possibly have intensified Lenin's revolutionary sentiments, though emotion never played a great part in his )prsonal life. He was guided by cold logic, though he well knew how to work on tho feelings of others and to transform them into the motive power he required for his own purposes. From the hiigh school he passed on into thle University of Kazan, where he became a student in the faculty of law. Ilere he came under the suspicion of the authorities, and was expelled frbrm the university on account of his " unsound political views." He continued his studies privately, and finally took his degree at the University of St. Petersburg. MARXISM IN ACTION. In the early 'nineties the radical intellectual circles in St. Petersburg were stirred by a new development of the Socialist movement. From the 'forties on- ward Socialism had been the accepted creed of a large proportion of Russian in- tellectuals, butitwas aromantic Socialism, mzainly of an agrarian character, and based on an extraordinary sympathy for an idealized peasantry. At the beginning of the 'nineties a small group of young men became enthusiastic advocates of what was known as the scientific S9ocialism of Karl Marx, and, in articles in reviews and in the theoretical public debates on economic subjects that the autocracy permitted at that time, they raised a revolt against the " Populist " Socialisrn that had become traditional in tbe intelligentsia. Peter Struve, whov later became a Liberal, and even developed Conservativo leanings, and Michael Tugann-Baranovskv, who in thle ead became a popular and l higlhly re- spected Professor of Political Economy, were the leaders of the Marxian, group.' Lenin joined them and wxas greatlyassisted' by them in his early literary efforts, which consisted of polemicai- articles on the aspects of Socialism that were then in debate. At that time he Wr6te under the pseudonym of Ilyin. Lfenin never wrote'ia first-class sciea4- tific work. He was not .'primarily a theorist or a writer, but a propagandist. For him articles and books werem-but means to an end. It was when 'the Marxists turned from theoretical dis- cussioIn to the organization, of ,party. effort that Lenin found his true vocation. In 1898 the Ruissian Social Democratic Party came into being. It was, of course, a conspirative organization. Political activities were under the ban. No political parties, whether Liberal, 'Con- servative, or Socialist, wero permitted publicly to exist. The secret parties, or rather clubs, organized by the revolu- t ionaries, recruited their adherents among the intelligentsia, and only to a very small e-xtent among the woikmen and peasants. The 'Marxists organized among the workmen of St. Petersbarg and other towns clandestine classes for instruction in Socialist doctrine. 0 It was dangerous work, but Russian revolutionaries were never deterred by the fear of imprisonmnent or exile. Lenin began his career as an active revolu- tionary in this comparatively innocuous form of effort. Ho was catught by the police, as many others were, imprisoned, and sent to Siberia. As compared with many others, his experience of police persecution was brief indeed, but it is significant that during his banishment in Siberia his character as a deliberate fomenter of discord among tho revo- lutionary parties was already sharply revealed. The older exiles, who held fast to the " Populist " tradition, were for the most part gentle, humane, and easy- going. They formed a class apart, with a strong esprit de corps, with fixed habits of comradely intercourse. Wllhen Lenin and the other MIarxists came, the peace was broken, a new aggressive tone was introduced, and perpetual intrigue led to perpetual dissension and suspicion. HOW BOLSHEVISM BEGAN. Lenin escaped from Siberia to Western Europe in 1900, and took up his abode in Switzerland. Here he became one of tlle leaders in the revolutionary activities of the band of refugees organized under the name of the Russian Social Democratic Party, and in 1901 he joined the editorial staff of their review, IAra (the Spark). The party retained until the Bolshevist ltevolution the title of "lhe One (or l'nited) Russian Social Democratic Party." As a matter of fact it was not long before Lenin himself split tte party into two warring sections. At the second congress of the party, held in London in 1003, a fierce discussion arose over questions of tactics,and ended in a vote which yielded a majority (bolshinstvo) for the view advocated by Lenin. The supporters of the majority view came to be known as Bolsheviki, whrle the ad. herents of the minority (men shin8two) were called Mensheviki. Lenin stood at this conference for an extreme centraliza. tion of the party organization and for the adoption of direct revolutionary methods, as opposed to the educational and evolutionary tactics advocated by the other side. He displayed then the temperament that moulded' his career. A man of iron will and inflexible arbition, he hadUlo sorupler dbbilt mea -eat6d human beings as mere material for his purpose. Trotsky, then Lenin's oppo- nent on the question of tactics, and later his chief colleaguo in the Council of Pcople's Commissaries, has given a vivid description of Lenin's ;conduct on this occasion. At the second congress of the Rlussian Social Democratic Party (he vrote), this man, with his habitual talent and enetgy pxlayed the part o? disof.anizer of the party. . .- . Comrade Lenin made.a-mental review of the membership of the party, and came to tho concltlsioi that.the iro6n baud needed for organization belonged to him. He was right. The leadership of f4ocial Democrac. in the stnig.gle for liberty inegnt- in reality the leadership of Lenin over Social Democracy.- DICTATORSHIP AS A PRINCIPLE. . It is innecessary to dwell at length on the theoretical side of the coitroversy between Lenin and the MeniAievists. Both sides published in support of their views a large number of fiercely polemical articles and pamphlets, which' for the uninitiated mako extrenmely dull reading, though for the patient historian they may provide a- vivid illustration of revolutionary mentality. Lenin's idea was that the Central Committee should absolutely dominate every iidividual and every local group in the party.. He was opposed to any. sort of demnocratic equality or local autonomy in the party organization. Dictatorship by a compact central group was the principle on which he 'worked. "Give ug an organization consisting of true revolutionaries," he wrote, " and we will tura Russia upside. down." He regarded his opponents in the party as opportunists, and no true revolutionaries. He was for direct action, for cutting loose from all. entanihg compromise with Liberals and more cautious Socialists. The Social Democrats argued vehe- mently and incessantly, bhut this did not prevent them from agtating, organizing, and conspiring in Russia. While the rival party, the Socialist Revolutionaries, agitated among the peasantry and. planned and carried out. a series of terrorist acts, of which several Minister&. Governors, and the Grand Duke Serge were the victims,. the Social Democrats developed their propaganda among the factory workmen, with but slight success until 1905,.when the discontent caused by the Japanese War and the shooting of workmen in St. Petersburg on Red Sunday, January 22, provoked an opeailv revolutionary movement throughout Russia. The movement culminated in the granting of a Constitution on O6tober 30, 1905. During the months imme- diately preceding and following this event the Socialist agitation was at its height. Then, for the first time, the masses of the Russian people, became acquainted with Socialist principles, and the agitators gained experience in dealiug with the masses. PROPAGANDA WORK. Lenin's name was not prominent during the firsX Revolution. He was very active behind the scenes. organizing, directing, pushing things in his own direction, noting the readiness of the masses to respond to extreme and demoralizing watchwords, sneering at all hints of compromise, at every stage forcing a disruption between the Social Democrats and the bourgeai8 parties. It is curious' that he refused to become a member'of the first short-lived St. Petersburg Council of Workmen's Deputies, formed after the promulgation of the Constitu- tion. Trotsky played a prominent part in this Soviet. It is characteristic of Lenin that he only adopted the Soviet idea at the moment-twelve years later- when it suited his own purposes. - From 1905 to 1907 Lenin lived in Russia under an assumed name, en- deavouring to keep alive and to organize the revolitionary moverment, which, in, the end, the Stolypin Government ruth-' lessly supprcssed. His, name, is . con-. nected with severial cases bf " expropria- tion." Apparently he did not personally organize these armed raids;on banks and post-offlces, but 'c6nsider'abl& sums seized ini such robberis 'were h'anded over to the Bolshevists':and use'd by Lenin to developi his propaganda at home and abroad. He. left Russia 'when the collapse of the 190.5 Revolution bec~me alaparent, and resuined his activities 'in Geneva` On the "whole,' his' positiofi amolg the revolutiianaries had been g&4ly strengthened, and among the mnixed crow'd of new exiles who iis4 b;een thrown out of Russia by the' failure .of the first'4raolutioriary offensive he foundL in#ny instrumnents suitable&fbr his un-- scapulous piurpose. In W12 he moved.'to Caeoow so as to be in clsEer toueh With his agents iu Russia. A singular episode, characteristic of his contempt for bourgeois morality, was his hintrigue; in&;cqpllpsion with the Secret Police, to split the small Social Democratic Party in the Duma through a certain Malinovsky, who visited him in Cracow with the 'knowledge of the Head of the Dcpartment of Police. In 1914, at the outbreak of war, Lenin was in Galicia. As a Russian subject he was arrested by the Austrian. authori- ties, but he was released when it was discovered tl at he would be a useful agent in the task of weakening Russia. He returned to Switzerland, where he carried on defeatist propaganda with -the object of transforming the war between the nations into a revolutionary civil war within each nation. He was joined by defeatist Socialists from various countries. The funds for these opera- tions were perhaps provided by Germany, since the sums Lenin had received from expropriations during the first revo- lution were exhausted. The activities of this little group of Socialists were hardly noticed amid the great events of the war. The conferences of Zimmerwald and Kienthal in 1915 had'the appearance of insignificant gatherings of crazy fana- tics. Yet they 'drafted the defeatist revolutionary programme and framed the watchwords which later acquired enor- mous power in Russia and inffuenced.the working classes throughout Europe. Lonia regarded the vicissitudes of the war purely from the standpoint of. revolutionary tactics. He noted the lessons of war, industry, and State-control, and the effects of war on mass-psychology. THE REVOLUTION OF 1917. The revolution that suddenly broke out in Russia in March, 1917, gave Leain his long-souight-for opportunity. The Provisional Goverrnent formed after the. abdication of the Emperor Nicholas proclaimed unrestricted liberty and encouraged the return of the poli- tical' exiles, who came flocking back in thousands. Thlere was sorme .difference of opinion in the'Government about per- mitting the return of such a notorious defeatist as Lenin. He came asverthe. less, transported through Germany-with the help of the German General Staff. Ludendorff considered that he was likely to be a mOst effective agent in disorganiz- ing the Russian Army; and wrecking the Russian front. In this he was not mis- taken; what he. did not foresee wa3 that Lenin wbuld provole a violent re: volutionary niovement that was later to react on Germany herself.. Lenin was received in Petrograd with all revolutionary honours. Searchlights from armoured cars lighted up the Finland railway station, whliih was. thronged with people.; Socialists of all parties made speeches, but Lenin was not to b' led away by any external success. He wanted real power. On April 14, the -day'' ' ' ' -aft6r * ' 'his "''".rrl ' -h& 'laid MASTER OF THE TERROR. Lenin took up his 'residence in the Kremlin, and from that ancient citadel of autocracy and. orthodoxy launched his propaganda of world-revolution. Out- n4rdly he lived as modestly, as when he had been an obscure 'political "refugee. Both'he and-his wife-he had married late in the 'nineties Nadiezhda Krups- kaya-had the scorn of sectarians for bourgeois inventions and comforts. Short and sturdy, with a bald head, small beard, and keen, bright, deep-set eyes,' Lenin looked like 'a small tradesman. When he spoke at meetings his ill-fitting suit, his crooked-tie, his generally nonde- script appearance, disposed the crowd in his favour. " lie is not one'of the gentle- folk," they would say, ",he is one of us." This is not the place to describe in detail the terrible achievements of Bol- shevism-the shamieful peace 'with Ger- many, the plundering of the educated and propertied classes, the long-continued terror with its thousands of innocent vic- tims, the Communist experiment carried to the point of suppressing private trade, and making practically all the adult, population of the towns servants and slaves of the Soviet Government;' the civil war, the creation and strengthening of the -Red Army, the' fights with the border peoples, the Ukraine, with Koltchak and Donikir and with Poland, culminat- ing in 1920 in the defeat of the White Armies and the conclusion of peace with Poland. Never in modern times has'any great country passed thirough sueh a con- 'vulsion as that brought about by Lenin's xmplacable effort to establish Communism -in Russia, and thence to spread it throughout the world. . In the'. light of these world-shaking events'- Lenin's personality acquired ana immense significance.. He. retained control. He was the- directive force. He was in effect Bolshevism. His associates were pygmies compared with him. Even Trotsky, 'who dis- played great energy and ability in organizing the Red Army, deferred to Lenin. Both the Communist Party and the Council of People's Commissaries were compleiely' under Lenin's ' control. It happened sometimes that after listening to a discussion of two conflicting. motions in some meeting under his chairmanship. Lenin 'would 'dictate to the secretary, without troubling to argue his point some third resolution entirely his own. ite had an uncanny skill in detecting the weak- nesses of his adversaries, and his asso- ciates regarded him with awe as a supreme tactician. His judgment was final. his programme before the Social Democratio Conference, a programme which sib months afterwards he carried ouq to the letter in his decrees. At the tinre his 'speech was ridiculed- by the moderate Socialistsi Only a, smAll group of: Bolshevists applauded' their leader when he declared that peace with the Germnans must be concluded. at once,. a Solviet, Republic founded, the. banks closed, that all 'pover 'must' be given to the workers, and that' the Social- Democrats must henceforth -call them- sclvcs Communists. lis motion was re- 'ieted bv 115 to 20. _. Lenin had at his back a compact .organization well equipped with money. Tlhe Bolshevists displayed ectraordinary a:etivity in demoralizing tho Army and the workmen and in provoking riots among the peasantry. There was no power to restrain them. In Petrograd Lenin took up his quarters in the house of the dancer Kaszesinska,. and from the balcony addressed large crowds day after day. In July 'he attempted a coUp d'Etat,'but failcd. He went into h.iding, Oqttcontinued to diiect his. subversive movement. The Provisional Government .under Kerensky shrank from coercive measures. The Socialist Revolutionaries and Social- Democrits who controlled the Petrograd Soviet partly sympathize.d with the Bol- shevists, partly feared them, but in their appeals to the masses they were always outbid by Lenin's followers, and speedily thleylost ground. After the failure of Korniloff's attempt in August to re-establish law and prder the general -demoralization increased. The Army went to pieces, and, taking advan- tage of this disorganized host of armed men,' to. whom he promised immediate peace, Lenin effected a coup d'Etat on November 7, 1917, this time Avithout any difficulty. Lenin appeared . with 'his followers in a Congress of Soviets, and was aeclaimed as Dictator. The members of tlie Pi6visional Governmenf'were im- prisoned,.all but Kerensky, who escaped. There was a. sharp, struggle in Moscow, where for several days boys from officers' training schools defended the Kre'mlin, but they finally succumbed. He was ultirnmtely responsible for the terror as for all the other main lines of Bolshevist policy. He presided over the meeting of the Council of People's Corm- missaries which, in July, 1918, approved the foul murder of Nicholas II. and his family by the Ekaterinburg Soviet. The Communist experiment brought Russia to economic ruin, famine, and barbarism. Under Soviet rule the Rus- sian people suffered unheard-of calamity. To Lenin this mattered little. Wheni the famine came in 1921 he remarked, with a scornful smile,.." It's a. trifle if twenty millions or so die." He did realize, however, that the effort to maintain undiluted Communism was endangering the existence of his Govern- ment. . In March, 1921, he called a halt. Against the wishes of the majority of his followers he. proclaimed a new econoinic policy, consisting in a temporary com- promise between Socialism and Capi- talism, with the CoXnmunist movement in complete control. His hope was that this policy Nvould secure a breathing space during Nvhich the Comrmunists iniRht rally for a new attackl on world capitalism. The fainine raged. Russia sank deeper and deeper into the mire. The iresources of the Soviet Government, the gold reserve of the Imperial Government which they had squandered in their wild propaganda and in .their feeble pretence of foreign trade,-Nwere almost exhausted. Their one hope lay in bluffing Europe, and to this task they set themselves- with great zest and incompairable skill. LAST ILLNESS. In the midst of the rapid crumbling of all his plans, Lenin fell ill towards the end of' 1921, and for many veeks was mnable to take any public part in affairs. The nafure of his ,complaint was obscure. Experts were summohed from Germany, and a bullet was extracted that had been fired 6o Lenini when an attempt was made on his life by the_Jewish Socialist- revolu- tionary, Dora Kaplan, in 1918. There ivas a brief interval, during iwhich Lenin's health was apparently ,rst6rcd, and he made, speeches declaring that* the flew economic ,policy, would go no farther, and that concessions to capitalists,were at an end. He was ulnable to attend the Genoa Conference, and shortly after the con- clusion of the Conference the reports as to his health became more alaiming. Ger- man specialists wc-re again summoned, and his condition became.so grave that steps were taken by his associates to establish a directorate to' earry on his functions. One paralytic stroke was followed by another, and it became clear that Lenin would never return to affairs, that his days were nunibered;' He was remnoved' to a coun,try house near Moscow, where, under tha' care of nurses, he lingered on till his naane grew shadowy and his party was divided by an-open dispute for the succession. ' ' : - - - LEON TROTSKY

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THE BOLSHEVIST REVOLUTION Leon Trotsky, Lenin's principal asso- ciate in the Bolshevist Revolution, and the organizer of the Red Army, died at Mexico City on Wednesday night, tele- graphs our New York Correspondent, of the effects of the murderous attack made on him on Tuesday. Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, later known as Trotsky, was born in a small town in South Russia in 1879-and educated in Odessa. At the age of 19 he was arrested as a member of a Marxist group. and sent to Siberia. He escaped in 1902, joined Lenin in London, worked-and then broke-with him, and in the famous split in the party adhered'; to the Menshevik wing. He returned to Russia in the 1905 revolution, became President of the first Soviet in St. Petersburg, and was once more im- prisoned and exiled to Siberia. Escaping a second time, he led the wandering life of a revolutionary refugee in Austria, Switzerland, and France, editing mnore than one revolu- tionary journal and contributing to many others, besidcs being the author of numerous pamphlets. When war broke out in 1914 Trotskv. who had by this time broken with the Mensheviks, moved to Paris, and conducted a vigorous anti-war campaign. At the Zimmerwald Con- ference he once more drew ncarer to Lenin, and was expelled from France in 1916. From Spain he went-to New York, where he won popularity among the Russian Jews and the International Workers of the World. After the March Revolution in 1917 he started off for Russia, breathing out threats to the American Government. On his way he was arrested by the British authorities at Halifax, Nova Scotia, as a dangerous revolutionary, but was ultimately released at the request of the Russian Provisional Goveinment and allowed to con- tinue his journey. On his return to Russia he was made a member of the Petrograd Soviet. He now joined the Bolshevist Party, took part in the abortive July revolt. and with Lenin was mainly responsible for organzing the successful revolution of November 7. As Commissar for Foreign Affairs in Lenin's Government it fell to Trotsky to conduct ihe negotiations with the Germans that culminated in the peace of Brest-Litovsk. He tried to .evade the crushing demands of the Germans, but his sneeches and-his revolutionary procla- mations availed nothing against the mailed fist. The Bolshevists had to accept humiliating terms, and Tchitcherin was sent to conclude the negotiations. The war with Germany was over and the civil war began. Trotsky was appointed Commissar for War, and he brouglht a new Red Army into being. Communist dis- cipline was enforced by propaganda and by that system of universal political espionage and terror on which the Bolshevist Government relied. Since Trotsky's fall, official historians have done everything to belittle his role. But at the time his name was coupled everywhere with that of Lenin. His resource and driving power were made' use of to the full by the inner circle of Communists, but, as a late-comer.to the party, he was never com- pletely trusted. In 1923 rumours spread that he was suffer- ing from some illness. The death of Lenin was a fatal blow to his influence. For -ears d long and obscure struggle had raged between Stalin,whohadunder his control the machinery of the Communist Party, and Trotsky, wlho had a much greater personal prestige inside and outside Russia. Step by step Trotsky was ejected from all his posts. In January, 1925, he ceased to be Commissai for War; and Stalin steadily and skilfully contrived to remove all Trotsky's adherents from prominent posts in the Government. In 'October, 1926, Stalin even ventured to eject Trotsky himself from the Politbureau. In the surnmer of 1927. the three Soviet diplomats- Krestinsky, Rakovsky, and Kameneff-joined the Opposition, and at the Party Congress in November, 1927, Trotsky and his followers were expelled from the party. Trotsky was sent into exile to Central Asia. He was under a strict surveillance by the Ogpu, and any communication with the outer world became very difficult. But Trotsky could not be silent. A violent attack on Stalin, published in Germany under the title The True Situation in Russia and containing letters in which Lenin foresaw the Stalin-Trotsky feud and warned his colleagues against Stalin's autocratic ambition, caused a rift in the party abroad and determined Stalin to expel his rival from Russia. In 1929 Trotsky was sent to Constantinople, where for some years he dwelt on Prinkino Island. He con- tinued to agitate and intrigue, and vainlv asked permission to repair to England. His" iiistory of the Russian Revolution did not endear him the more to his rival, and he finally left Turkey for France. But Stalin's hostility, his own inability to refrain from political activities, and his dangerous interest in' world revolu- tion made no country willing to keep him for long. Hc was requested to'leave France in 1935, after being accuse4 by Moscow of complicity in the Kiroff murder. His old associates were " liquidated," and in the following year the Russian Government asked for his expulsion from Norway, where he bad taken refuge. Early in 1937 he found asylum in Mexico. There, after he had been con- demned to dcath in ab.ence bv a Soviet Court, he figured in an " unofficial inquiry " into his alleged guilt, conducted by a committee of prominent Americans, and disposed of somc of the circumstantial evidence produced at the Moscow trials. He was in constant danger from-Russian agents, and last May he narrowly escaped from an armed band who attacked his villa near Mexico City. Trotsky was emotional and vain, energetic and ruthless, capable of raoid decision in moments of danger, but far inferior to Lenin in judgment and foresight. Of medium height, with a high forehead, from which was brushed back a big mane of black liair, with stronzly marked Jewish features and grey eyes that peered sharply through pince- nez, he was not an attractive mersonality. In his later ycars he became the natural focus of those Communists who opposed the oppor- tunistic policy of Stalin. But he remained a name rather than the leader of a party and had little gift for inspirinc the loyalty and devotion of his disciples. His literary abilities.were outstanding: and his autobiography and his "History of the Russian Revolution," both of which have appeared in.En'lish .transhations, are the most readable writings of any of the Russian' revolutionaries.

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Äàòà 21.03.2012 17:52:42

Re: íåêðîëîã äàâíèé,...

>ìåñòàìè çàáàâíî, òèïà îäíî èç ïîñëåäíèõ ïðåäëîæåíèé

ñìåõ ñìåõîì, à îíî âîíà êàê îêàçûâàåòñÿ )))

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Îò Chestnut
Ê Chestnut (21.03.2012 17:19:23)
Äàòà 21.03.2012 17:48:43

íó è íàäî æå îïðàâäûâàòü ðåïóòàöèþ

Simon Petlura

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Simon Petlura, whlo was murdered in Paris yesterday afternoon, was a man of modest origin who becamo identified at first vaguely, and in the end definitely and aggressively, witlh a speculative cause. In bis later years he was one of the most prominent representatives of Ukramian nationalism in the general confusion of Russia. In the year of his birth, 1879, the Ukrainian movement in Russia was hardly perceptible. T'he peasants around Poltava, his birthplace, spoke a dialect sharply distinguished from tliat of Northern Russia, but nearer to the Russian literary language than is Provenqal to the French of Paris. T'he writer wulo brought fame to Poltava ald thle neighbouring region was Ciogol, who wvrote his novels and stories in Russian. One South Russian poet of distinction, Shev- chenko, had written in the present tongue, Little Russian, or, as it is now called, Ukrainian. Petlura grew up in a distinctively Russlau atmosphere, but he was attracted by the dim memories of a separate South Russian tradition preserved in the local dialect and reinforced by new aspirations stimulated from Galicia. Ho was educated in a theological seminary in w-hich a ferment of conflsed revolutionar y ideas obscured the priestly vocation. By the time he had come to maturity, mn t.he early nineties, Russia was in the throes of the first revolution, and Petlura became at once a Socialist and a Ukrainian nationalist. For a short time he was editor in 1906 of a Ukrainian Social D)emocratic paper called the Slvro, and contributed to thie Rada, which during the period of the first Duma was the organ of the Ukrainian Nationallsts. With his turbulent youthful enthusiasms, he .was typical of the awakiening provincial iattelligentse'a in Russia. lnevitably he had some experience of the police, as a semi-revolu- tionary. By 1911, when things were quieter, he had become editor in Moscow of a review in Russian called Urjainuskaji Zhizn (The Life of the Ukraine), devoted to a very moderate and cautious propaganda of the idea of language rights for the Ukrainian peasantry. During the war Petlura found employment in the All-Russian Zemstvo organization, which supplemented the work of the Red Cross. When the Revolution broke out in March, 1917, he found greater scope for his restless energy. The Arny was breaking up under the influence of German and Bolshevist propaganda. Russia, too, began to break up. Kerensky, as War Minister, accepted the idea that the various nationalities of Russia should form regiments of their own at the front. Petlura took the lead in forming Ukrainian regiments. When the Bolshevists seized power in Petrograd and Moscow in November an independent Ukrainian Government was proclaimed at Kieff, with Knitchenko as Prime Minister and Petlura as Minister of War. The Allies assumed that the Ukrainian Army under Petlura might hold the front for a little while. The BoLshevists declared war on the 'Ukraine in December, 1917. The Ukrainian Army broke up. Kieff was taken, and the Ukrainians were represented at the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Petlura made three more unisuccessful attempts to secure ascendancy in the Ukraine ; the first after the retirement of the Germans at the end of 1918 ; the second, in 1919, while the Russian Volunteer Army under Denikin was advancing against the Bolshevists; and the third in connexion with the Polish offensive against Moscow. Ile never quite succeeded. Uis miscellaneous troops were ill- disciplined, and he himself, though an ardent Ukrainian nationalist, was certainly not a professional soldier, while as a political leader he showed mediocre capacity. After the final triumph of the Bolshevists in Kieff he retired from Poland to Czecho- slovakia, and of late years has resided in Paris, where he tried to keep alive, through the publication of a Ukrainian weekly, Tryzub, or "The Trident," the idea of a democratic Ukraine opposed to Bolshevism. PETLURA. 'APOSTLE OF UKRAINIAN I NATIONALISM


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Äàòà 21.03.2012 17:27:34

åù¸ îäèí äàâíèé íåêðîëîã

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

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Marshal Zhukov, who pre- pared and carried out the final Soviet offensive against the Ger- man armies on the Eastern front and later commanded the Russian armies of occupation in Germany, has died at the age of 77. Zhukov w.as perhaps the most brilliant of the Soviet soldiers who fought in the Second World War. Although, like Rokos- sorsky, he was not an. outstand- ing veteran of the Russian Civil War, his victories over the Ger- mans at Moscow, on the Don, in the:Ukraine, and finally in Berlin have guaranteed him a significant place in military history. A great popular hero he bulked too large on the politi- cal scene to suit either Stalin's autocracy or Mr Khrushchev's brand of personal rule. At the end of the wvar Stalin moved him into a comparatively minor post and in 1957 in highlv dramatic circumstances Mr Khrushchev removed him from the party praesidium and the Ministry of Defence. He was accused of resisting party control of the armed forces, of " adventurism " in foreign affairs, promoting the cult of his own personality and was even blamed for the unpre- paredness of the Soviet forces when the Nazis invaded in 1941. It was not until May, 1965, on the occasion of a large military parade to mark the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, that lie again made a public appearance standing with other leading commanders and beinn greeted with a special burst of applause. Georgi Konstantinovitch Zhukov was born in 1896 in the village of Strelkova, near the spot where Kutozov defeated Napoleon. Of peasant stock, his early education was neglected and at the age of 11 lie was apprenticed to a furrier in Moscow. During the 1914-18 War he served with the 10th Nov- gorod Dragoons as an nco and was twice awarded the Russian George Cross for gallantry and daring. He was an ardent sup- porter of the October Revolu- tion, and in the newly formed Red Army, he was elected to his regimental council and became the chairman of his squadron comnmittpe. Tn 1919 he joined the Com- munist Party. During the civil war, as a young cavalryman, he took part in the defence of Tsaritsyn, under Voroshilov, where he was wounded. Whlien internal peace was at last re- stored to Russia. he continued to serve in the Red Army, rising to command a cavalry corps. Retween the wars he comman- ded the Stalin Cossack Corps and and for his work in the field of military training he wvas decorated with the Order of Lenin, In 1939 he saw fighting at Khalingol, Mongolia, against the Japanese Sixth Army and his abilities as a general on this occasion won him the title of 'Hero of the Soviet Union ". In February, 1941, Stalin appointed Zhukov Chief of the General Staff, in which post he was responsible for working out the Soviet defence plan in the spring of 1941, completed in outline by May: in this post Zhukov began his wartime ser- vice when Germany invaded the Soviet Union: he was dis- patched almost at once to assist with the defence of the Ukranian frontiers, and when in August Shaposhnikov was in- stalled once more as Chief of the General Staff, Zhukov was assigned to command of the Reserve Front, the main cover- ing force for Moscow. On Sep. tember 12 he was flown to Leningrad to organize the last- ditch defence of the city against Army Group North, and he was recalled from Leningrad on October 8 to take command of the Western Front when Army Group Centre broke through the centre of the Soviet forces and drove for Moscow. In this post he was respon- sible for the defence, of the capital, before which Army Group Centre was finally halted. Having taken part in planning the Soviet conmnter-blow, Zhukov commanded the Western Front armies until February 1, 1942, when he was appointed " Commander of the Western Axis " to supervise the encirclement and destruction of Army Group Centre. This, how- ever, wvas not accomplished and Zhukov remained in command at' the centre before M\Ioscow throughout the summer of 1942. The crisis developed not at the centre but in the south- vest and in the-autumn of 1942 Zhukov was dispatched to Stalingrad as "Stavka (G.H.Q.) representative " to supervise the defence of the city and to take part in planning and super- vising the counter-offensive where he coordinated the opera- tions of the South-western and Don Fronts (while Vasilevski of the General Staff controlled the Stalingrad Front proper). In January, 1943, he wvas appointed a Marshal of the Soviet Union and once again in the spring and summer of 1943 acted as planner and "Stavka co-ordinator " of the giant battles at Kursk in 1943. Zhukov was also Stalin's " deputy ", a post later forma- lized as First Deputy or Deputy Supreme Commander. During the third winter campaign, 1943-44, Zhukov planned and coordinated the operations of the 1st and 2nd Ukrainiar, Fronts, but when General Vatutin was killed by anti-Soviet guerrillas in February, 1944, Zhukov assumed personal com- mand of the 1st Ukrainian Front, which, in spite of con- siderable successes, failed to accomplish the total inner and outer encirclement of the Ger- man forces in the south-west. Zhukov was also at this time associated with the planning of the major offensive operations in Belorussia. Operation Bag. ration, in which Zhukov and Vasilevskii again collaborated in planning and coordination. Zhukov assuming responsibility for the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts, which expelled German forces from Soviet territory, and which reached into Poland. After the planning conference on operations in Germany (October, 1944), Stalin appointed his "First Deputy" Zhukov on November 16 to command the 1st Belorussian Front, to which Stalin assigned the task of tak- ing Berlin. On January 26, 1945, Zhukov presented his plans for the offensive, while a certain delay was imposed by clearing the Soviet flanks, principally in Pomerania. At the end of March, after the conclusion of the first stage of operations in Germany, the General Staff worked out the final version of the Berlin attack plans; on April 16 Zhukov's 1st Belorussian and Koniev's 1st Ukrainian Fronts began their offensive on the Oder and Neisse respectively, Zhukov being held up for three days by the German defences. With Koniev moving on Berlin from the south-east, Zhukov's troops struck from the east and north-east, and the final battle for Berlin began on April 25, the encirclement of Berlin having been completed on April 21-22. On May 2 the Beilin garrison under General Weid- ling capitulated to Zhukov, whose troops had stormed the Reichstag and raised the Soviet flag over it. Soon aftervards he was appointed C-in-C of the Soviet occupation forces in Germany; he also became a member of Allied Control Com- mission. In The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov, which he published in 1971, he recounts bow Stalin became hesitant, fearful and near despair when the German invasion became a certainty. and how the Russians grew sus- picious after the fall of Nazi Germany that the western allies were plotting against them. He also graphically described his early life in poverty when his family had to live for a while in a shed and his father, a cobbler, had to journey to Moscow in search of work. MARSHAL GEORGI ZHUKOV Led Soviet attack against Nazi Germany



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http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/viewArticle.arc?articleId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1945-05-02-02-001&pageId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1945-05-02-02

Adolf Hitler

Few men in the whole of histoly and none in modern times have been the cause of human suffering on so large a scale as Hitler, who died in Berlin yesterday. If history judges to be greatest those who fill nmost of her pages, Hitler was a very great man; and the house-painter who became for a while master of Europe cannot be denied the most remarkable talents. He found Germans depressed, bewildered, aimless. After five years in office he had united the German race in a single Reich, abolished regional diversities of admini- stration, and got rid of unemployment. But these achievements were merely instru- ments of an overwhelming lust for power. Nazi domination over Germany was a stepping stone towards the domination of Nazi Germany over the world. The pro- cess was continuous, and the methods were the same. Hitler effected the triumph of the Nazi Party in Germany bv a mixture of deceit and violence; he then employed the same devices to destroy other nations. From the time he became master of Germany he made lies, cruelty, and terror his principal nmeans to achieve his ends; and he becanme in the eyes of virtually the whole world an incarnation of absolute evil. Hitler was unimpressive to meet on informal occasions, but became transformed when he was face to face with a crowd, especially if it was an audience of his followers. He would speak to tihem like a man pwssessed and give the appearance of utter exhaustion when his speech was over. His speeches betrayed few if any original ideas, and cven his belief in the sugestive power of reiteration scarcely justificd the repetitions of past history with which most of his public orations were over- laden. He was, however, a propagandist of the first order, and his uncannily subtle and acute understanding of the mind of his own people was the ultimate source of his power lor evil.

EARLY YEARS

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, at Braunau-am-lnn, on the frontier, as he said himself, of the two German States, the reunion of wvhich he regarded as a work worthy to be accomplished by any and every means. His parents were of Bavarian, and peerhaps Bohemian, peasant descent, and his father- wlho until his fortieth year was known as Schicklgruber-was a Customs officer in the Austrian service and married three times-Adolf being the only son of his young thir d wife. Adolf was sent to the best school available, being intended for the Government service, though he himself had artistic inclinations. In 1902 his father died suddenly, leaving no resources available for the continued cducation of his son. From 1904 to 1909 the young Hitlcr lived a life of hardship. He moved after the loss of his mother to Viennia where he had dreams of Pecoming an architect, but could earn only a hazardous livelihood as assistant to a house- painter and by selling sketches. For three years he lived the life of the poorest man in Vienna, sleeping in a men's hostel, eating the bread of charity at a monastery, occasionally I reduced to begging. The food for thought also presented gratuitously by life in a great city, to such as care to receive it) was not left untasted by him. Hazy legends like the Nordic saga jostled in his mind with illusions regarding the ennobling effect of war and with more rational dreams of German national unity. He saw and hated the growing Slav ascendancy and the enfeeblement of the German elements in the racially mixed Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. He drank in the pan-Germanism of Luege. in wihich all the original elements of " Hitlerism " arc to be found. He read assiduously the works of Marx and his disciples, and thoroughly disagreed with their conclusions. i-c discovered the Jews and acquired a fanatical aversion to them. By 1910 he had so far improved his professional posi- tion as to be able to set up as an independent draughtsman; and, still hoping to become an architect, removed to Mtinich thinking to find wider scope in the Bavarian capital. A year or two later the 1914-18 war broke out, and Hitler preferring to enrol himself in the German national army rather than in the polyglot forces of the Hapsburgs, although he was an Austrian subject, joined the 16th Bayarian Reserve Regiment as a volunteer. His war service was meritorious, but not distinguished. He won the Iron Cross, and rose to the rank of corporal. He was wounded in the battle of the Somme in 1916, and badly gassed in the later stages of the war. It was while lying in a Berlin h6spital, temporarily blinded, that lie learned of the events known as the November Revolution of 1918.

POLITICAL CAREER BEGUN

On leaving hospital he returned to Munich. That pleasant city soon became the prey of his enemies the Marxists. The reactionl against thicir rdgime made a breeding-ground for Fascism. It was at that moment that Hitler began his political career. Thousands of bewildered and workless young Germans were meeting and talking and propounding every sort of theory and scheme. Hitler possessed what most of these fumblers lacked, a few definite ideas and a knowledge of the value and of the art of propaganida. One nighlt he attended in Munich a meeting of a newly formed German Workers' Party, and decided to join it. He was its seventh member, and wvas not long in making himself its leader and his nationalist and anti-Marxist-creed its pro- gramme. The movement soon took hold in Bavaria. Hitler discovered his remarkable oratorical powers and proved himself an adept in the management of large meetings. He realized to the ftill the value of repetition and of reiterat- ing a single theme over and over again in a slightly different form. " All propaganda," lie said, " should adapt its intellectual level to the receptive ability of the least intellectual of those whom it is desired to address." A pillar of strength in these days wag Captain Rohm, a staff officer at Munich and a valued organizer in the councils of his military superiors. He won for Hitler tie tacit approval of the local high command and certain financial resources without which two-foid help little progrcss could have been achieved. Thus supported and encouraged, Hitler, in conjunction with Rohm, Gbring, General Ludendorff, and others, made his first attempt to seize power in the notorious Munich Pursch/ of November 10, 1923. They were met out- side the Feldherrnhalle by police, who -fired upon them, killing Hitler's nearest companion and 15 others. Hitler lay flat on his face. Only. Ludendorft marched straiglht on. As soon as the firing slackened Hitler, with a dislocated shoulder, fled in a motor-car, buit was arrested two days later and imprisoned in the fortress of Landsberg. During the nine months he spent there lie wrote the greater part of " Mein Kampf," that turgid, rambling, re- markable book of nearly 1,000 pages, which became the Bible of the Nazi movement. Hitler's authority declined after the fiasco of Munich, and for a while Gregor Strasser, the creator of the Nazi Party in North Ger- many, counted for more than he in the party ranks, whose strength in the Berlin Reichstag was no more than 12. Hitler gradually reasserted himself, however, and in the elections of 1930, when Dr. Briining was Chancellor, and when the economic crisis was already creating widespread un- employment and distress, .tbe nimber of National-Socialist Deputies jumped to 107. Ihe political situation rapidly deteriorated. Faced by the growth of the extremist vote and the chaotic state of the party system, the Chancellor was forced increasingly to govern by decree, and thoughi his, intentions were most geinuinely liberal, he k6-ad Germany far along the road to dictatorship. On May 30, 1932, lie fell after dealing Hitler two shrewd blows-the dissolution of the Brown Army and the r c-election of Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg as Reichspriisident in face of the fully mobilized Nazi vote in support of [litler's own candidature. Hitler regarded himself as heir to the Chancellbrship. But he had still 10 months to wait, 10 months of crisis during which he was thwarted, not by the now impotent Liberal and Socialist vote, not even by the vociferous Communists, who by their threats to the bourgeoisie were in- directly a help, but by the veiled resistance of the Right Wing of the old rTgiine, with its backing of Junkers, trade magnates, MIonarch- ists, and the enltoulrage of the now senile Reichsprasident. The appointment of the shifty von Papen as Chancelor to succeed Brtuning was followed by the rescinding of the latter's ban on the Brown Army as a bait to catch the Nazi support, and by a general election. At the polls Hitler more than doubled his vote, being returned with 230 followers, the largest party in the Reichstag. Hc demanded the Chancellor- ship, but Papen manoeuvred him into an inter- view with the Field-Marshal, hvbere Hitler, who was nervous and showed to little advant- age, received a pre-arranged rebuff. His prestige suffered considerably thereby, but worse was to follow. After three months of hopeless struggle in a hostile Reichstag Papen held another election. The Nazis lost 2,000,000 votes. A feeling of defeat spread throughoult .the party. Some of the leaders were in despair. In Germany and abroad it was thought that Hitler had passed his zenith. In the meantime the affairs of Germany prospered little better than those of the Bavarian ex-corporal. Papen had to resign in November, 1932, and was followed by General Kurt von Schleicher, the last Chancellor of the old regime, a clever man, who came near to destroying Hitler and paid the forfeit on June 30, 1934. Schleicher had the confidence of the Army, and, as far as anyone could, that of 1'resident von Hindenburg,' but he had no Parliamentary support, and was threatened by Papen, who regarded him as the cause of his own fall from power. Schleicher in December made a bid for independence. He thought to propitiate the Nazi strength by attracting to himself in a semi-Socialist admipistration Gregor Strasser.

CHANCELLOR AT LAST
REICHSTAG FIRE

It w as a critical moment. Hitler, who had borne the recent setbacks with surprising calm. now lost heart. " lf the party breaks up," he confided to Goebbels, "i 'll end matters with my pistol in three minutes." Schism indeed seemed imminent. But Strasser himself spoilt the scheme. He dallied and hesitated. The discussions were deferred, and before they could be resumed Schleicher had fallen. The tablcs hlad been suddenly turned by 'von Papen, who in January made an alliance with Hitler in order to overthrow Schleicher. The Nazi leader, whom he regarded as humbled by recent ill-fortune, was to be Chancellor and he himself Vice-Chancellor, with a majority of non-Nazi colleagues, the good will of the Presi- dent, and, he confidently hoped, the real power. The plan took shape, and on January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was formally invested with the seals of office as Reichskanzlcr. The new Government was a minority one, and decided to dissolve the Reichstag and hold another election, the third in nine months. In an unparalleled propaganda campaign, in which the opposition parties had to remain passive observers, voters were belaboured with the Communist menace. Yet the voting gave an absolute majority only to the combined Nazi and Nationalist Parties, and the uneasy alliance between IHitler and Hugenberg, the Nationalist leader, would perhaps have continued but for an event of the first importance, the Reichstag lire. Whoever lit the match, it was the Nazis who arranged and profited by- this act of incendiarism. Interpreted by them as a Com- munist act of terrorism, it was made the pre- text for the suspension of all constitutional liberties and the setting up of the Nazi dictator- ship under Hitler. The seizure of power by the Nazis.in March, 1933, brought to an end the hollow alliance w,ith the Nationalists under .Hugenbetg, who was forced to resign shortly afterwards. At the same lime the German Press was muzzled and put tinder the control of Goebbels. Unhampered by Parliamentary restrictions or Press criticism, Hitler and his licutenants pushed on with the Nazi revolu- tion. Force and unity were the guiding ideals, and every element within or outside Germany which witlhstood the overriding claims of German nationalism was marked down for destruction. The long struggle for power was now ended. The National-Socialist Party was faced with the task of consolidation, and this was set about with more zeal than unity of concep- tion or purpose. The .position of R6hm's Brown Army in the State and its relation to the Reichswehr and the position of the Stahlhelm, the armed organization of the Nationalists, were among the most thorny problems and involved much bitterness and heart-burning.

THE "BLOOD BATH"
SHOOTING OF ROHM

On July 1, 1934, the civilized wo.rld learnt with horror of the killings that had taken place the day before andi have since been known as the purge or the " blood bath." How many people lost their lives will never be known. The outstanding vktimsi were -Rnhm, Schleicher, and Strasser. On the night of June 29 Hitler flew from the Rhine- land to Munich and on to the place where Rohm was staying. Rohm was taken from his bed to Munich and shot. All over Germany similar scenes were being enacted. Leading officials of the party and comparative nonentities alike lost their lives. Many an act of private revenge was carried out that night. Hitler, in his statement to the Reichstag, said he had saved Germany from a plot of reactionaries, dissolute members of the Brown Army and the agents of a foreign Power. The reason for the massacre of June 30 may never be exactlv known, but apart from private rancours and rivalries it is generally believed that Rbhm aimed at having the Reichswehr embodied in his S.A. organization-which Hitler had the sense to ref use. The " blood bath " was officially approved by Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, who probably understood nothing of it. A month later, on August 2. the old man died, and withiln an hour Adolf Hitler was declared his successor. fle abjured the title of Reichs- priisident and elected to be known as Fuhrer and Kanzler. The poor man of Vienna was now the master of Germany, absolute lord cf 60,000,000 Europeans.

ARMAMENTS

Hitlc's advent heralded a series of in- creasingly grave breaches, of treaty obliga-l tions and challonges to European opinion Dr. Bruning had already claimcd cqualityl in arrimaments. This claim was vigorously re- peated by Hitler, and it was on the pretext that it had been too tardily admitted by the Powers that he abruptly left the League of Nations in October, 1933. Franco-British dis- cussions in London in February, 1935, for a general settlement wvere brusquely forestalled by Hitler's announcement of conscription for an army of lialf a million and thc creation of an Air Force. The British Government joined 'the French and Italian Governments in con- demning the unilateral repudiation of treat obligations, but a few Weeks later, in June, 1935, it concluded a naval agreement with I-litler granting him 35 per cent. of the naval strength of Great Britain and equality in sub- marines. To " his people," as he now called the Germans, it looked as though their Fthrer's tactics paid, while Europe could no longer ignore the fact that Germany was again a great Power. In March, 1936, Adolf Hitler, taking advan- tage of the embroilment of Great Britain and France with Italy over Abyssinia, suddenly occupied the demilitarized zone of the Rhine- land, at the same time denouncing the Treaty of Locarno, which he claimed had already been abrogated by the formation of the Franco- Russian Alliance. The military occupation of the Rhineland was the most serious as well as the most spectacular breach made so far in the facade of the Versailles Treaty. In conjunc- tion with the introduction of conscription it transformed the military situation. It deprived the Western Powers in one moment of the strongest weapon in their armoury, one that had been used in early post-war years, the free- dom of 'entry into German territorv. Hence- forward Hitler could hope to hold off an attack on his western front with one hand, while the other was free elsewhere. Thfe occupation of the Rhineland was accom- panied by a series of proposals addressed by Hitler to the world at large, and for the special attention of the French and British peoples -He offered a 25-year non-aggression pact, an' air pact for Western Europe, non-aggression pacts with his eastern -neighbours, and he even announced his readiness to return to the League of Nations under certain conditions. None of these proposals was taken seriously enough by the outside world for any concrete result to follow. Suspicion of Hitler was now growing, tlhough the world did not yet grasp the full b'aseness of Nazi technique, with its deliberate use of the lie as an instrument of policy whereby to hIlt futiure victims into a sense of security while some nefarious scheme was being developed elsewhere' Yet the FGhrer and Chancellor himself had asserted that the bigger the lie the better the chance of its being believed. The Rhineland cotip was followed by two years of digestion and consolidation, during which time German military preparations were pushed forward with increasing activity, and an economic reorganization aiming at self- sufficiency was undertaken. Events outside Germany in 1936 and 1937 increased the nervous tension in Europe and did much to strengthen Hitler's position. The policy of sanctions against Italy incompletely carried out through the machinery of the League of Nations made the worst of both worlds. It fell short of what was needed to save Ethiopia, but served_ to turn Mussolini from friendship and collaboration with the WVestem Powers to an increasingly close con- nexion -with Hitler, the foremost critic in Etirope of the League of Nations. This under- standing was given substantive form by the support accorded by the two totalitarian States to General Franco's cause in Spain, and was finally registered by the official establishment in September, 1937, of the Rome-Berlin Axis. By this diplomatic revolution Hitler won an im- portant European ally at the expense of the Powers of the Versailles " Diktat," whose prestige, both moral and material, had as a resuilt of these various events suffered a con- sifierable diminution.

SEIZURE OF AUSTRIA
ENTRY INTO VIENNA

In the early weeks of 1938 the storm centre of Europe shifted back to Berlin. Hitler engineered an abrupt crisis in Austro- German relations, which ended on March 11 by the violation of the frontier by the German Army and- the forcible incorpora- tion of Austria in the Reich. Mussolini, who in 1934, on the murder of Herr Dollfuss, had massed troops on the Brenner frontier, madc no move, and received the effusive thanks of the Fuhrer:-" Musso- lini: Ichz soll es Ilmen nie vergessen." Hitler's dramatic entry into Vienna a.few days later, after nearly a quarter of a century's absence, during which he had experienced every vicissitude of hope, despair, and triumph, was watched with curiosity and even sympathy by millions of people outside the Reich, whose Governments had in the past resoundingly refused to the constitutional requests of both Berlin and Vienna the tnion which the German Dictator had now achieved by force. The union of the Reich and the Ostmark, as Austria was now called, immediately raised the problem of Czechoslovakia, which con- tained a minority of some 3,500,000 Germans and was now surrounded by German territory on three sides. The question asked all over Europe was how soon would Bohemia share the fate of Austria. Hitler's assurance to the Czech Government that it had nothing to fear did not allay suspicion. A series of communal elections throughout Czechoslovakia in May raised to fever-pitch the excitement created in the German miority by the inclusion in the Reich of their Austrian co-racialists. At the annual meeting in September of the National- Socialist Party at Nuremberg Hitler stood as the avowed champion of the Sude- ten Germans, and their. demands imme- diately precipitated an acute European crisis involving the imminent risk of general war.. Hitler, with the German Army mobilized, Iis western front approaching a state of impregnability, faced by potential opponents who were mentally bewildered and militarily unprepared, and divided both geo- graphically and ideologically, was in a position to dictate his terms. In conferences at Berchtesgaden and Godesberg with Mr. Neville Chamberlain, and then at Munich, where M. Daladier and Mussolini, as well as Mr. Cham- berlain, were present, he put forward demands that France and Britain were not in a position to refuse. To save the peace of the world and to avoid their own destruction the Czechs were told that they must submit to the arrangements made by the four Great Powers at Munich, whereby all the German districts of Bohemia, together with the immense fortifi- cations of the Erzgebirge, were handed over absolutely to Germany. In eight months Hitler had added 10,000,000 of Germans to the Third Reich, had broken the only formidable bastion to German expansion south-eastwards, and had made himself the most powerful individual in Europe since Napoleon 1.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA
A " PROTECrORATE "

In the course of his conversations with MvJr. Chamberlain Hitler had assured him that he had no more territorial claims to make in Europe-a phrase he had also used after the seizure of Austria. On March 15, 1939, the world was, however, startled to hear that the German Army was invading and overwhelming Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia, all that re- mained of the independent Republic. Presi- dent Hacha, who under German pressure had succeeded Dr. Benesh in the autumn, was sum- moned to Berlin and forced to. accept terms which made his country a " Protectorate " of the Reich. Hitler went to Prague to proclaim there another bloodless victory and then while the going was good travelled to Memel, which had been ceded under the Versailles Treaty to Litihuania, ardd announced its annexation on March 23. Poland had profited from the dismember- ment of Czechoslovakia by being allowed to annex the disputed region of Teschen. But she was marked down as the next victim. While German troops were still moving into Slovakia Hitler proposed to the Polish Government that' Danzig should be returned to Germany and that Germany should build and own a road connecting East Prussia witll the rest of the Reichi, in return for which Germany would gtiarantee the Polislh frontiers for 25 years- though a 10-year treaty of non-aggression already existed between the two countries, of whIch five years had stllI to 'run. Poland rejected the proposals and appealed to Great Britain and France for support. These countries at once gave Poland pledges to defend her independence, if necessary by war. The action of the Western Powers came as a shock to Hitler, who was further alarmed by negotiations shortly afterwards set on foot in Moscow by the French and British with the Soviet Government. The spectre of war on two fronts again arose to damp the German ardour for acquisition. Hitler, faced with the prospect of a clieck and a rebuff, fatal con- tingencies for an aspiring dictator, made his decision. Rather than give up his cherished, and indeed loudly proclaimed design of seizing Danzig arid the Polish Corridor. he was pre- pared to eat every word he had uttered in condemnation, derision, and defiance of the Bolshevist regime, and tO invite the Russians to agree to a non-aggression pact. Stalin on his side, finding the danger of a German attack suddenly exorcized, and distrusting the constancy of the Western Powers, was not unwilling to accept Hitlers overtures, and the Pact was signed on August 23.

HITLER STARTS WAR

With the disappearance of any likelihood of Russian assistance being given to the western allies IHitler saw no further obstacle in the way of an immediate attack on Pdland, and on August 31, 1939, he ordered the German Armies tdocross the frontier. The second world war had begun. With typical falsity Hitler and Ribbentrop-now his intimate and most per- nicious adviser-had offered the Polish Ambassador terms of settlement, and broad- cast them to the world, a few hours before the soldiers began the invasion, without, however, allowing the Ambassador time or mneans to convey them to his Government. The attack on Poland gave the world its first tast. of the horrors of a German Bli:zkrieg. Hitler went East to superintend the slaughter in person. It was a swift and terrible war which he waged in bitter hatred and, when the issue was clear, with crude boastings and gross lies at the expense of a broken nation. In a speec~h at Danzig on Scptembcr 19 he had the effrontery to declare that:-" Poland has worked for this war " and " peace was pre- vented bv a handful of (British) warmongers." On the same occasion he took up what he called the British " challenge " to a three years' conflict and announced that Germany possessed a new weapon. The grim business was over in a few weeks. Warsaw surrendered on September 24 and on October 5 Hitler visited it and swaggered among the ruins which were garlanded for the occasion. The next day, speaking in the Reichstag, he made what he called his last offer to the allies. It was a. remarkable rbetorical performance, though, obyiously nervous, he hurried through the phrases in which he described his new . friendship with the Russians. As a plea for peace it could, if only one of its premises had been sound and one of its promises could have been believed, scarcely have been bettered; but he had by that time to pay the price of his habitual contempt for truth. In early November he made a speech at Munich, on the anniversary of the Pwtsch of 1923, in which he said that he had given Goring orders to prepare for a five years' war. He ended earlier than had been expected and left the Burgerbrau beer cellar in which he made it for Berlin. Shortly after. wards there was an explosion in wlhich six people were killed and over 60 injured. The official German News Agency claimed that the attempt had been inspired by foreign agents and offered a reward of half a miUlion marks for. the discovery of the instigators. One George Elsen was arrested. Official Germans were infuriated with The Times for suggesting that the explosion was no surprise to the Fiihrer and that he had left early to avoid it.

FRANCE CRUSHED

On New Year's Day, 1940, Hitler declared that he was fighting for " a new Europe." On March IS he met Mussolini on the Brenner, a presage, as it was later recog- nized to be, of great events. In April came the invasions of Norway and Denmark, and in early May he was congratulating his troops on their sticcess and authorizing decora- tions for them. On May 10 his armies invaded Belgitm, Holland, and Luxembotirg, and on the same day he went to the Western Front. On the morrow he proclaimed that the lsoui' for the decisive battle for the future of the German nation had come. In less than a month the bells wverc rung in Germany to celebrate the victorious conclusion of what he called " the greatest battle of all time." A few days later lie congratulated Mussolini on the entry of Italy into the wdr. On June 22 the Armistice with France was signed. At that moment Hitler stood at the zenith of his success and power. Western Europe was his and there remained no one there to crush except Great Britain, weakened by her losses on the Continent and without an effective ally. As usual Goebbels was turned on to prepare the way.

BAITLE OF BRITAIN
VICTORY PROMISED FOR 1941

On July 19, speaking in the Reichstag, Hitler " as a victor " made his final appeal to " common sense " before proceeding with his campaign against her. He spoke with an un- usual sobriety, but there was no mistaking his threats. He had his answer from a united and determined Empire. On September 4 he reiterated his menaces. Then he unleashed the Lujiv'afc and the Battle of Britain began in earnest. On October 4 after a month of it he was back at thc Brenner to talk things over with Mussolini. In a few days his troops entered Rumania. A little later he went to the Spanish frontier for a discussion with General Franco with a view, it was thought, to tighten- ing the blockade of Great Britain. Before the end of the month he was back with Mussolini in Florence. He seemed about this time to understand that Great Britain could not be conquered from the air and to think increas- ingly in terms of U-boats. He described him- self as the " hardest man the German people have had for decades and, perhaps, for centuiries.". d ehp,fr [t his New Year's proclamation to the armv Hitler promised victory over Great Britain in 194! and added that every Power which ate of l democracy should die of it. He continued, for| he always seemed uneasy on this score, to place~ the blame for unrestricted air warfare on Mr. Churchill;, and he kept on expressing his confidence in the U-boat. All that spring, indeed, he seemed particularly eager to en- courage his followers. In April he invaded Yugoslavia and Greece and went to join his advancing armies. And all the time he kept hammering at Great Britain from the air and striking under water at her supply lines. On June 3, 1941, there was another meeting of the dictators on thc Brenner Pass, and it was suggested that there would be an imme- diate start in the organization of a Continental peace; but on June 22 he cast aside his mask and struck at Russia. Once again the Soviet Government became the " Jewish- Bolshevist clique," and once again he was free to indulge his inherent hatred of the Slav. There were the usual lengthy and disingenuous explanations; but they were not calculated to deceive close readers of " Mein Kampf." For at least five years, indeed, he had contem- plated this particular volte face, for in 1934 he had taken Dr. Rauschning into his con- fidence in regard to his intention if necessary to employ a Russian alliance as a trump card. In August he and Mussolini visited the Eastern Front. As a gage of affection he presented his brother-in-arms with a great astronomnical observatory. After a long silence. he spoke on October 4 at the opening meeting of the Winter Help Campaign and announced a " gigantic operation " which would help to defeat Russia. A few days later he was boasting that he had smashed her.

THE SUPREME COMMAND
BRAUCHrTSCH DISMSSED

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour of December 7 most of the world was in the conflict. In announcing his declaration of war on the United States to the Reichstag Hitler abused President Roosevelt and said that America had planned to attack Germany hi 1943. Just before Christmas he dismissed Field-Marshal von Brauchitsch, his Com- mander-in-Chief, and took supreme commard himself. A promise which he had made two months before to capture Moscow had not been fulfilled, and his own troops were retiring before the Red Army. He felt, perhaps, that he had to find a culprit for the failure and also to put heart into his own troops. He spent Christmas at his headquarters in Eastern Europe, not as previously, among his front line troops. Hitler's New Year message for 1942 was far less confident than that of 1941. " Let us all," he said, " pray to God that the year 1942 will bring a decision." There were rumours of disagreement with his generals and of pressure from the radicals within' the Nazi ranks. In March he appointed Bormann to keep the party and the State authorities in close cooperation. He was making strenuous efforts to build up the home front, to increase the number of foreign workers in Germany, and to procure the forces for a spring offensive. In April he received from the obedient Reichstag the title of " Supreme War Lord " and measured the duration of the Reich by the mystical number of a thousand years. The tremendous eastwvard thrust of the summei of 1942 was delivered, reached the Volga, and went deep into the Caucasus. In September he claimed that Germany had vastly extended the living space of the people of Europe and called on his own to do their duty in the fourth winter of the war. On October 1, at the Sportspalast, he taunted, boasted, and prornised the capture of Stalingrad. His effort to make good his word in the end cost Germany a tremendous loss of lives and material. He seemed, however, at this period to be more inclined to talk about the inability of the allies to defeat him than to prophesy a German victory. In November, after the allied land- ings. in North Africa,' his- troops overran un- occupied France and seized Toulon.

A CHASTENED MAN

In the New Year order of the day for 1943 he prophesied that the year would perhaps be difficult but not harder than the one before. He was certainly a much chastened Fiuhrer. The industrial effort of Germany was being seriously disrupted by air attack, and Russia wvas pressing perilously hard. On the tenth anniversary of his acces- sion to power he did not speak, but entrusted Goebbels with a proclamation to read for him. His silence gave rise to rumours, some to the effect that he was giving up his command of the army, others that he was dead. On February 25, instead of speaking, he issued another proclamation to celebrate the birthday of the party. It added fresh fuel to the rumours. On March 21 Hitler at last broke silence. The manner of his speech was lifeless and almost perfunctory. The matter, even for one as prone as he to endless reiteration, was all too familiar. His only news was that he had started to rearrn not in 1936 but in 1933.

MUSSOLINI'S FALL
THE ITALIAN CAPITULATION

Hitler, in his appeal on the anniversary of the Winter Help scheme on May 20, told the German people that the army had faced a crisis during the winter in Russia-a crisis, he said, which would have broken any other army in the world. Soon another crisis faced the Germans. On Jtily 25 Mussolini fell froni power, four days after it had been announced that Hitler and Mussolini had met in northern Italy where it was believed, Mussolini had demanded more help from Germany in the defence of Italy. But Italy was not to be kept at Germany's side, and on September 8 Marshal Badoglio, who had, succeeded Mussolini, announced in a broadcast that his Government had requested an armistice from the allies. Hitler reacted in characteristic manner. He told the; Germans that the collapse of Italy had been foreseen for a long time, not because Italy had not the necessary means of defending herself effec- tively, or because the necessary German support was not forthcoming but rather as a result of the failure or the absence of will of those elements in Italy who, to crown their systematic sabotage, had now brought about the capitulation. Though Hitler was able to claim this foreknowledge of events in Italy, it was clear from his speech, which was direct and effective, that he did not underestimate the [seriousness of his new problem. Hitler seemed still to have the collapse of [Italy in mind when he emerged from jiis head- quarters on November 8 to spend a few hours with, the " Old Comrades " of the National- Socialist Party at Munich. He spoke delibe- rately and forcefully. He was loudly cheered wvhen he declared that the hour of retaliation would come. He said that everything was possible in the war but that he should lose his nerve, and he assured his audience that how- c er long the war lasted Germany would never capitulate. She would not give in at the eleventh hour; she would go on fighting past 12 o'clock. At the beginning of his twelfth year in power-on January 20-Hitler spoke of the danger from Russia. " There will be only one victor in this war, and that will be either Germany or Soviet Russia." In the late afternoon of July 20 it was announced that an attempt had been made on Hitler's life. The attempt was a deep and well- laid plan by a group of generals and officers to end Hitler's regime and the military command. General Beck, who was Chief of the General Staff until November, 1938, when lie was dis- missed, was declared to have been the chief con- spirator. It was added thiat he was " no longer among the living." On August 5 a purge of the Army was announced from Hitler's head- quarters. " At the request of the 'Army," the announcement said, Hitler had set tip a court of honour to inquire into the antecedents of field- marshals and generals and to find out who took part in the attempt on his life. It was dis- closed that several officers had already been executed. Fuyther executions were announced on August 8. In a proclamation issued on November 12 as part of the annual commemoration of the Nazis who fell in the P.tschi of 1923 Hitier declared that Germany was fighting for her life. Throughout the proclaniation therc were references to his own life and to its unimpo.t- ance compared with -the achievement of German aims. ''If, in these days," Hitler said,' " I have but few and rare words for you,- the German people, that is only because I am working unremittingly towards the fulfilment of the tasks imposed upon me, tasks which must be fulfilled if we arc to overcome fate." In the spring the gravity of Germany's crisis became clear. The Russians reached the Oder; the British and Americans crossed the, Rhine. On April 23 Mlarshal Stalin confirmed that the Russians had broken through the defences covering Berlin from the east. The battle for Berlin had begun, and Hiter, the man who brought ruin to so many of Europe's cities, was, according to Hamburg radio, facing the cneney in his own capital, and therc he canie to' his end.

ADOLF hTLER DICTATOR OF GERMANY 12 YEARS OF FORCE AND TYRANNY



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Arthur Neville Chamberlain

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/viewArticle.arc?articleId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1940-11-11-07-011&pageId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1940-11-11-07

CHAMBERLAIN
SOCIAL REFORM AND FOREIGN POLICY
THE STRUGGLE FOR PEACE

Mr. Arthur Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister from 1937 until this year, whose death we-announce on another page with the deepest regret, was born at. Edgbaston, Birmingham, on March 20, 1869, the son of Joseph Chamberlain by the second of his three marriages. The late Sir Austen Chamberlain wAs the son pf the first marriage. Their father deliberately planned that the two sides of his lifes work should be separately carried opt by his two sons. Austen was to be the states- man, Neville the captain of ind stry. Accordingly, after leavipg Rugby, Neville was sent to Mason College, Birmingham, a technical training school for commerce, which has since been' absorbed into Birrningham University. On. completion of this training he entered the office of a firm of acccountants. Meanwhile Joseph Chamberlain had lost'much of his capital in South American investments, and now, in 1890, was looking for recouppment to speculation. Hearing glowing accounts of the prospects of the sisal industry in the Bahamas, he bought a plantation and put his younger son in charge. Neville stuck to his task for seven years. By the end of the fifth year it was apparent that the enterprise was a failure. Nevertheless' Chamberlain, with a perseverance in the face'of disappointment of which he was to- give examples in the high places of statesmanship long afterwards, continued for twg years to try to retrieve the position. After his return to Birmingham in 1897 he was iMmersed for 20 years in com- mercial r.outine. Bpt he kept up an interest in public affairs through the Birmingham and Edgbaston Debating Society, and, as prosperity came to him, began to show. himself the heir of his father's enthusiasm for social bstterment in Birmingham. He rapidly impressed his personality on municipal governnient, and in 1915 was elected Lord Mayor. Social reform is a function of peace, and the Lord Mayoralty fell in times of war. Chamberlain, however, "plunged with energy into the special tasks of war-time administration, and showed a special talent for finance. In furtherance of the war savings movement he obtained from the Legislature the necessary statutory powers for the creation of a Corporation Savings Bank, which is still a thriving concerti. THE LAST WAR Efliciency, in the stress of the " man- power" agitation that followed the heavy casualties of the Battle of the Somme, was the watchword of the hour; and the name of the Lord Mayor of Birmingham as a possible ally soon occurred to the Prime Minister, who offered him the newly created office of Minister of National Service. Chamberlain acceptecl, and began his new work in Janiary, 1917. 'Iis dtity was to manipulate the available supply of lab our in order to supply the de- mands of thc War industries ; and that had to be done on a voluntary basis, against the ba7ckgrournd of compulsory combatarnt service, recently instituted for men of inilitary age. Not having a seat in Parliament, he could do little to influence the form of this legislation, and throughout his tenure of office he found himself attempting to execute a plan of whici the foundation wifs uncongenial to him. In 1917, after seven months of fuitility, and considering himself inadequtately sup- ported by the Cabinet, lie resigined, and went hack to commercial and mlilicipall life in Birmingham. Hc felt, however, tilat he had a political reputation to retrieve, and in the ' khaki " election of 1918 he was elected for Ihe Ladywood Division of Birmingham as a supporter of the Coalition Government. Dur-ing the four year-s of the life of this lParliament Neville Chamberlain, thotigh no great orator, hadl made his mark as an eitiiicnt representative of his father's policy. Boniar Law had taken note of lNim, and, when ilte ,.revolt of the Under-Secretaries " broke up thie coalition, wished to have him in the new Goverinment. Neville Chamberlain was not present at the famous Carlton Club nweting, being away on a holiday in Canada. fHis friends of the Birmingham protectionist groip, wlio were seceding with the Under-Secretaries and Mr. Bonar Law, attached great impor-tance to his adhesion, but feared that he wouldl feel it his duty to follow his brother into the wilderness withi Mr. Lloyd George. A poli- tical friend cabled to the ship imploring Neville Chamberlain not to commit himself before they met, arranged with Bonar Law to keep the office of Postmaster-General open, and went down to the port to meet the ship. After a long private discussion Chamberlain was persuaded that it was his dutiy to join the new Administration. That was the true turning poinlt of his career.

MINISTER OF HEALTH

Chamber lain was quickly promoted to the Cabinet in the highly congenial post of Minister of Health. But he was soon inter- rupted by the resignation of the Prime Minister on Whitsunday, 1923. Mr. Baldwin succeeded to the office, and not without considerable relictance the Minister of flealth transferred himself to the Treasury as Cliancellor of the Exchequer. He did not survive to introduce a Budget. Behind the scenes of the administra- tion a great controversy had been raging, and resulted in the conversion of the new Prime Minister to the view that the national economy, now settling into the doldrums after the illu- sive post.War prosperity, could no longer be satisfactorily carried on on the historic basis of free trade. The protectionists were con- fident that they could win over the con- stituencies, provided that they could first devote the autumn and winter to a campaign of propaganda. Their plan was that the Prime Minister should immediately declare his opinion, but not ask the House of Commons for more than a resolution in favour of the general protectionist principle, and should go to the country in the spring. Meanwhile the question'could be fully ventilated. To the consternation of Chamberlain and his friends, however, Mr. Baldwin insisted that his pronouncement in favour of the new liscal policy should be imnediately followed by a General Election. They predicted disaster and their prophecy was fulfilled, the Conservative Party coming h)ack in a minority to the com- bined Oppositions, and Mr. Baldwin's Admini- stration faliling to an amendment of cenisure to the Addiess. A year later Mr. Baldwini was back, but pledged not to interfere witil the system of free trade. Cliamberlain would have been inconifortatle at the Treasury now that the Cabinet had bound thiemselves to a fiscal policy its which htc had little faith; and at 'Iis own request tie rcttiurned to his old place at the Ministry of -Health. Durinig his live ycars at the Ministry of Hlealth Chamberlain passed 28 Bills through Parliament. Untler thie Chamberlain Housing Act of 1923 hotises were now going up in expanding numbers, financed by a judiciotis conbilhation of private enterprise and public assistance. and greatly helped by the grow'I of the btuilding societies, whicii owe more to Chamberlain than to any other states- man. He took up on a national scale his father's policy of slum clearance. He was closely involved with the passage of the Widows', Orphasns', and Old 'Age Pensions Act, whbic brought to fruition another of Joseph Chamberlain's favourite projects. But the most laborious tasks of his administration were 'the drafting and passage of two voluminous and highly technical measures, the Rating and Valuation Act of 1925 and the Local Govern- nment Act of 1929. These two Acts reforned root and branch and codified the whole body of municipa1 law in its administrative and financial aspects. On the defeat of the Conservative Party at the General Election of 1929 Mr. Baldwin en- trusted to Chamberlain the task of reconstruct- ing the Central Office. The process was drastic, and in the course of it Chamberlain created, under his own chairmanship, a research de- partment, charged with the duty of studying and framing party policy for the future. In that was involved the whole internal con- troversy over Protection. By the time of the Imperial Conference of 1930, however, Cham- beslain bad so far reconciled the differences that the party could once more show a :united front. Plans for a complete rariff system were ready. Meanwhile the publication of the May Committee's report was followed in August, 1931, by 'the collapse of the Socialist Government. The complex nego- tiations that followed were governed by the necessity for an assurance that ' the Budget would be immediately..balanced. It fell to Chamberlain who was in London while Mr. Baldwin was on holiday, to con- dpct most of the fin-ancial discussions, and it was largely due to-'him' that the first National Government was formed under Mr. Ramsay MacDonald with a programme of drastic retrenchment and increased taxatiotn while the tariff isspe was' eft updecided. In that temporary coalition Chamberlain returned to the Ministry of Health; but all offices were known'to be provisional. After Snowden's second Budget of 1931 had staved off the threat'of imniediate financial-chaos, MacDonald went to the country with the appeal for what, in the political jargon of the day, was called a " doctor's mandate." The Coalition remained pincornmitted on the question of protection or free trade; and when it came back from the polls with the prodigious majority of over 500 the con- troversy remained to be settiled within its own raniks. Free-traders and protectionists re- mained colleagues in the Cabmet; but Snowden left the Treasury on elevation to the peerage, and Chamberlain took his'place.

WORK AT TREASURY
STERN AND GRIM

Chamberlain's administration of the Treasury was stern and grim, in reflection of the harsh necessitie4 of the situation; but it ranks among the great administrations of modern times. Very early in its course he was able to gain from the Cahinet, which still included the free-traders Snowden and Sir Herbert Samuel, its consent to a compromise, whereby a general tariff should be adopted, but regulated at a level that should make it clear thfat it was imposed for revenue rather than protection. That did not satisfy the protec- tionists outside the Cabinet, bilt to Chamber- lain at least it seemed an earnest of the ful- lilment of his father's hopes. For the re- niainder of the year the Chancellor of the Exchequer was cngaged in carrying finan- cial reconstruction on' a vast scale. In the early summer lie gained a great proof of the extent to which confidence had been restored by his success in conyerting the ?2,000,000,000 of the Five per Cent. War Loan to a Three-and-a-lHalf per Cent. stock. Thtereby Chamsberlain was enabled to appro;tch the deli- cate question of the debt to the United States, which was threatening to wreckc the Lausanne Conference, With renewedl authority, and to arrange with President Roosevelt that, in con- sideration of a "' token " payment, Great Britain shoild not be branded with default. In the same year he le(d the English delega- tion to the Ottawa Conference. For the next live years Chamberlain was absorbed in the highly technical task of work- ing out the details of a new financial system.- The free trade Ministers left the Cabinet after the passage of the Ottawa Agreements Act at the end of 1932, and the five later Budgets that he introduced represented the fiscal policy of a united Administration. His speeches on those occasions were models of lucid exposition and marked hinm out for the succession to Mr. Baldwin, whose retirement from the office of Prime Minister was expected to take place immediately after the Corona- tion. When the time came there was no rival whom the King needed to consider. Cham- berlain accepted his Majesty's invitation at noon on May 28f, 1937. IBe was then the sole Parliamentary representative of the family tradition, for Sir Austen had died on March 16.

FOREIGN POLICY

Ilitlierto he had held the reputation of a dis- tingitished domestic administrator. Now, how- ever, all the most urgent problems before the country were in the foreign field, and the Prime Minister took them into hiis own special sphere of influence and ininiediately showed hIis mastery. lie had long been convinced that a radical change in foreign policy niust he accepted: that the failuire of the lIeague of Nations in practice to prevent or check the wars ii Abyssinia and ManciliLria listist he acknowledged, arid sonse new peace-makinig force called into existence to supply its place. I Ic set liimself the task of softerning iiiter- natioial aninmosities by direct approach to thse riulers of States with whicih relations were strained. lie began by a31 exchlange of letters withi Mussolini, ir which tIhe two statesnieli assured onse another-of the desire of their peoples for nittiual t'riendslsip. anid prepared the way for formal negotiations in the following February. But tfiere were still hitter nmenories in the counstry of the campalign of' aggression against Ahyssinia, andstrongfeeling against the breaches by Italy of the non-inter-vention agree- ment, and to some the proposal to negotiate withi the Duce before he 'iad given final satis- faction oni this scented a betrayal both of the League and of political principle. The repre- sentative of this view in the Cabinet was the Foreign Secretary himself, Mr. Eden: and a sharp clash in the council chansber between the old policy and the new brought about his resignation and that of his Under-Secretary, Lord Cranborne. Lord Halifax took his place, and, with a Foreign Secretary in the Upper House, the Prime Minister himself undertook to represent the Department in the House of -Commons.

"APPEASEMENT"
FAILURE OF SYSTEM

The system of " appeasement," as it came to be called, was launched directly into the storms in which it presently foundered. In April, indeed, an agreement was reacied witlt Italy on the insany subiects in disputc; bttt its opera- tion was postponed to the withdlrawal of Italian troops from Spain. It did not in fact conie into force until November, and in the meanwhile Chamberlain had been subjected to bitter attack by the Labour Party, botls for moving the League of Nations to recognize the Italian dominion over Ethiopia and for appearing to condone the Italian military action against what they close to call democracy " in Spain. But while these older animosities smouldered on, new and greater threats to world peace had manifested themselves in Central Europe. The German-Austrian Ansclulrss was con- summated in March by movements too swift and violent to allow Great Britain to make her influence felt. Chamberlain protested strongly, and refuted Baron von Neurath's claim that Great Britain had no right to be heard in defence of Atistrian independence; but, unsupported- as he was by any other Power, he was in no pos ion to act. The integrity of Czechoslovakia, now threatened, was guaranteed by our ally France, hut not by England: and Chaos- herlain told the House of Cqmmons tihat our obligations to her were only those of one menmber of the ILe-.gite of Nlations to another; nor would lie coitteiiiplate any further commitments. It view, however, of the lissatisfactiolt with thlis inegative policy that was expressed by nany of his own party. as well aS of tihe Opposilion, he conceded on Mar-chi 24 iliat, over and above ilte * auto- issatic contmitments of Gre:tt Britain, our ties with IFrance might bring us to her suppor: silould she he involved in war in consequence of discharging her responsibility to the Czeclhs. He made it clear also that British good o0ices would he freely available in the quest for a solition of the Czechoslovak problem, which Hitler was now about to raise in the form of a demand for contcessions to the German or Sudeten minority in the Republic.

IRISH NAVAL BASES

Before this controversy came to a head, Chamberlain made an agreement with Mr. de Valera for the settlement of the long-standing dispute witit Eire. Though the House of Commons passed 11w second rTading without a division,. it was severely criticized by Mr. Churchill because it deprived the Royal Navy of the use of Irish ports in time of war-a complaint that was remembered two years later. Meanwhile preparations were being made to meet the imminent European crisis, including the strengthening of the country's means of defence in case it. should result in war. The Prime Minister and the Fornign Secretary mt M ri DalMdier and M. Bonnet in London to concert policy; a substantial Vote fpr Air Raid Precautions was obtained from the House of Commgns; and persistent criticisms of tile lack of preparedness in the air may have in- fluenced Chamberlain in accepting the resigna- tion of 'Lord Swinton and appointing Sir Kingsley Wood to the Air Ministry. He refused to set up a Ministry of Supply, but .evealed that a Bill for compulsory military training was alrfady drafted against the occurrence of an emergency. At the beginning of August Lord Runciman left for Prague on the invitation of the Czecho- slovak cGovernment, to Teport on the Sudeten proble. Thopgh not an official envoy of the British Prime Minister or the Foreign Office, he was clearly marked as the. missionary of appeasenient. In spite of the intoler- a Mie manner of its presentation, the case for a revision of the frontier was in- herently plausible, and Chamberlain's diplo- nacy throughout August and September was directed to persuading: the Czechoslovak Government to make concessions. his hand was strengthened by Lord Runciman's report in the same sense; but front the German side there was no hint of willingness to compromise. A series of plans put forward by the French and British Governments broke down against the increasing truculence of the Nazis, and by September. 14 it seemed that war might break otit within a few hours. On that day Chamberlain surprised the world by himself seeking a personal interview with Hitler to try to find a solution of the crisis. The followipg day he was received at Herchtesgaden-in- cidentally travelling by air for the first time in his life-was treated with the greatest per- sonal cordiality, and returned to London to say that discussions had begun, and another meet- ing would shortly be held. Throughout these discussions Chamberlain was in a weak bargaining position, for which not he individually but the'framers of British policy over a long period of years, not except- ing the Opposition critics who had so greatly influenced it, were to blame. lHe now had behidd him a country still very ill-equipped for war; and he knew also that very little reliancg was to Me placed on the fortittide of the French Government. In these circurmstances he was forced to appeal to the Czechs for the utmost possible concessions, and so armed he met Hlitler again at Godesberg on September 22. Even now, however, he found the Fiuhrer's demands intolerably exorbitant; he could do no more ihan hand over the terms to the Czechs Without any recomnmendation for acceptance, and they were in fact rejected. Hurried conferences were held with the French leaders, and it was decided to support the Czechs in arms; and Parliament was sum- nmoned on September 28 in the presence of a German ultimatum, expiring on.October 1. War pn that day appeared certain. The Fleet was mobilized; evacuation of London had begun; and trenches were being dug in the parks.

MUNICH AND AFTER
HOPES DESTROYED BY NAZIS

Buit Chamberlain's speech was dramaticallv interrupted by the delivery of a message from the Foreign Office, to the effect that Hitter had consented to a four-Power conference the following.day. It was instinctively recognized that the crisis was averted; and in fact whenl Chamberlain and Daladier met Hitler and Mussolini at Munich an agreement was reached, whereby the two fornmer undertook to persuade the Czechs to a settlement by which, indeed, thev y must nmake grievous sacrifices, hut which, if honourably carried out by the Nazis, would afford a reasonable com- promise between the incomnpatible claims of the two races. To this agreernent was appended a separate declaration, signed by Chanmberlain and Hitier, by wvhich they pledged their cottntries henceforward to settie all their differences by peaceful means; and this Chamrberlain brought home to England, proclaiming confidently that he brought peace in otir lime." In the immense relief of tension brought by deliverance from the imminent threat of war the world was disposed to agree with hinm. For a little while he was the most popular personage in Europe: even in Germany his visits had been tritipilal piogresses. But the reaction was swift. A large body of critics held that be had been guilty of a pusillanimous suirrender to blackmail, and the bitter division of opinion has continued from that day to this. But the most violent denouncer of i Munich " has never indicated a practical alternative policy that Chamberlain. in his actual posi- tion as representative of a partly armed nation. could have pursuted. Ilis reliance on the Munichi declaration was not so great as to dissuiadle hint from taking immeeliate steps to pushi oan the national re- armament. Rec-riting for the Regular Army and the Territorials was pressed on the A.R.P. organizatipn was ftirtlier elaborated and a national register was opened. The great pogromil of November destroyed thel hopes of those who had believed it possible for civiliza- tion to absorb the Nazis. Chamberlain's visit to Rome in January. 1939. which produced little more than vague expressions of good will, may be taken as the last effort of appeasement. The overriuning of the remains of Czecho- slovakia in March showed Nazi perlidy naked and tinashamed; and, althougi the stroke was once more too sidden and devast;i1ing to give a chance of British intervention, no policv re- mained practicable -but that of or)en and intensive preparation for war. In a speech at Birmingham on March 17 Chamberlain roundly denotinced the breach of the Munich agreement: the Ambassador was recalled fron Berlin " for consultation ": and immediate steps were taken to find Allies in Eastern Europe, where it was expected that the next blow would fall. On March 29 he announced the creation of what would become in war- time a Minlistry of Supply. and on April 26 his intention to introduce comippulsory military train ing.

GUARANTEE TO POLAND
OUTBREAK OF WAR

Chamberlaini had now substituited for appeasement the policy of the " peace front." It was based upon an Anglo-French gtmarantLe to Poland, the country whose integrity WaIs most immediately menaced by the Nazis; this was then fortified by a reciprocal pact with Turkey and unilateral guarantees to Runmania and Greece. The system needed to be secured by the adhesion of a Great Power in Eastern Europe; and to this end the negotiations with Soviet Russia, which had beep for a long time pressed by the Labour Party and repudiated by the Prime Minister, were at last undertaken. But negotiations hung fire in Moscow: and in August, when the Nazi agitation against Poland was working tip to war pitch, Europe was startled by the announcement that Soviet Russia had concluded a non-aggression agree- ment with the organizers of the Anti- Comintern Pact. This treaty, the result, as presently appeared, of an auction in which the British bidders stood no chance against the Nazis, who did not scruple to barter away the liberties of the small Baltic States to gain their ends, finally wrecked the peace front and made war in- evitable. For 10 days Chamberlain, supported by the Pope, the President of the Upited States and otther great personages, made strenuotis efforts to find 3 peaceful sotilion ; btit there vas inever any relil hope, and the treacherotis bombardment of Warsaw an September I wA'ithouit declaration of war caused tinivesail horror butt no surprise. The timec had conic ior Great Britain to ftilfil her obligations, and Chamberlain took his course without lhesita- tion. thouigh a little delay wAas caused by the hesitations of certain members of the French Government. Onl September 3 Chamberlain himself, in a tragic broadcast, ainotinced thc declaration of war and the ruin of his own hopes. Appeasemenit ha:l failed with honotir. By exhausting every possibility of peace before entering upon war Chamberlain had at least brought Great Britain into the conflict with clean hands; and that may comie to be con- sidered his greatest service to his country. So single-ninded a lover of peace was scarcely likely to make a great war Minister; and so it proved. He began by expanding his Government to include those militant Conservatives who had denounced the Munich policy, and especially Mr. Winston Churchill. As First Lord of the Adnmiraly the latter at onc established him- self as the dominant personality of the War Cabinet arid the leader in (he sphere.of.action; so that the conduct of the war is much less closely intertwined with Chamber-lain's per- sonal career tlian had been the diplomacy of the two precedirig' ears. .. What might have been his greatest achievement, the partial fusion -of French and Biritish goveinment through the Supreme War Council. was to perish in the collapse of France. I'he Prime Minister inaugurated-tie practice of niaking regular reporis to Parliament on the progress of the war; an( lie stood out as an tnequalled ex- positor of the ideals for which the tiationi and Empire were lighiting. But an impression was giadually created that tie intense concentra- tion of the whole strength of the counttry required for " total war " was not being attained tinder his leadership. There was still a faction that had not forgiven Munich, and these gained fresh ammunition froin the failure to support Finlanid against the Soviet att,ck. whieh they took to be an example of the old appeasement policy. T'he Labour leaders de- clined to joiti his Government, and while they stood out industry seemed to work at Iess than full pressure. Justly or- uniustly-and the present Prime Minister has never tolerated the suggestion that there was any difference of view between him and his old chief-the im- pression prevailed that every vigorous action taleen by the Government was to the credit of Mr. Churehill, and 'every instance of hesita- tion or fumbling due to- the influence of the Prime Minister. The climax came with the failuLe to prevent the German conquest of Norway. A motion in effect censuring- the Prime Minister was rejected by so small a majority that his resignation became inevitable. To Chamberlainl the vote was a surprise as well as a bitter disappointment; but when on his resigniation the Kiig's summons .wetit to Mr. Churchill he readily agreed so continiule in the War Cabitiet as Lord President of- the Cotincil. Rut his health was failing; dutring the stininer he underwent several sur- gical operations; and on October I this year he resigned from the War Cabinet and w ith- drew from political life. His work was done, and thie Churchill Admniiistration. which would have been gravely weakened by Nis defection in its early days, had been enabled by his self-elacement to inherit all the loyalties that had been concentrated upon him. He will be remembhered as;a slates- man wvho showed in sutbordinate office tihe greatness of his qualities for furthering peace- ful social progress, who as Prime Minister laboured for peace with unflagging industry and courage. btit who was not granted pe3ac in which to constimmate his leadership. In 1911 Mr. Chamberlain married Annie Vere, daughter of the late Major W. U. Cole, and had a son and a daughter. While hcr husband was playing a leading part in the municipal life of Birminguihm and throughouit his P'larliamentar -tcareer Mrs. Chamberlain has shared to the fttll his interets in housing Aind other political and social activities.



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