"...When Nadir Shah became ruler of Iran in 1736, he not unnaturally took every opportunity of insulting the Shia priesthood, and depriving them of their income. Indeed immediately after he had been crowned he assembled a number of the principal priests and demanded of them in what manner the immense reserves were appropriated. They replied "In supporting priests, colleges, and mosques. In the latter we continually offer up prayers to God for the success for our Sovereign." "Your prayers," said Nadir, "are
evidently not acceptable to the Almighty, for the empire suffered its greatest decline when your order was most encouraged. It has been rescued from destruction by my brave soldiers, who are, therefore, to be deemed God's chosen instruments, and your wealth must hence-forward be applied to their support."

Kι αν δε βάλουμε Ταμπαρί, να βάλουμε τουλάχιστον Κωνσταντίνο Κατακουζηνό:

Στα πλαίσια του Συμφώνου Ρίμπεντροπ-Μολότοφ, στηρίζω κι εγώ αυτή την υποψηφιότητα.

Και ο Παλαιολόγος ήταν μισός σλάβος Το αστείο είναι ότι εσείς οι νεοέλληνες τους πάτε τους σλάβους αλλά στην πραγματικότητα ούτε οι σέρβοι (servium) σας βοήθησαν ποτέ ούτε οι ρώσοι

οι Σέρβοι (και οι Αλβανοί) 50 χρόνια πόλεμο με τους Τούρκους για να μη μπούνε στην Πόλη.

οι Ρώσοι Ναυαρίνο.

your argument is dilavni.

Μαλακία...γιατί δεν κάνεις μια μίξη πεζικού ιππικού;

ε αυτό έκανα, οι Τεύτονες είχαν και πεζικό και ιππικό. Οι Μογγόλοι μόνο ιππικό. Την έκανα ρεαλιστική τη μάχη.

Με Ρωμαίους πάντως μπορούσα να κερδίζω μάχες χωρίς καθόλου ιππικό, ακόμα και με πολύ μικρότερο στρατό από τον αντίπαλο. Μια φορά έβαλα 380 Ρωμαίους, μόνο πεζικό (Elite Skirmishers, ακοντιστές κλπ), σε 570 Πέρσες, από τους οποίους καμιά 300αριά έφιπποι τοξότες, και 35 ελέφαντες, και τους πήρα. Βέβαια οι Πέρσες είναι αργοί, καμιά σχέση με Μογγόλους.

Τους Μογγόλους για να τους νικήσεις σε ανοιχτή μάχη πρέπει απλά να έχεις περισσότερο κόσμο. Δε γίνεται αλλιώς.

Έχω κάτι χρόνια να παίξω AoE, ιππικό δεν έχουν καθόλου;

έχουν Paladins και Hussars. Kαλούτσικα units, αλλά πάλι δύσκολα να τα βάλουν με Μογγόλους. Τους Γότθους τους παίρνουν, αλλά Γότθοι και Τεύτονες πάνω κάτω είναι το ίδιο σε units.

Tις προάλλες έπαιζα ανοιχτή μάχη 75 vs 75, Τεύτονες με Μογγόλους (απ' τη μια 25 Paladins, 20 Teutonic Knights, 15 Hussars, 10 Champions και 5 καταπέλτες, κι απ' την άλλη 30 Mangudai, 20 Ηeavy Cavalry Archers, 15 Light Cavalry Archers και 10 Light Cavalry χωρίς τόξα) και σε ενάμισι λεπτό είχε σκοτωθεί όλος ο τευτονικός στρατός.

 

Σε πεζικό vs πεζικό είναι καλοί οι Τεύτονες. Σε πεζικό vs ιππικό υστερούν.

Ο κεϊνσιανός αγγλορουφιάνος Μεταξάς ήταν η ταφόπλακα της επανάστασης στην Ελλάδα. Εκεί που θα είχαμε κανονικό εθνικοσοσιαλισμό με τα τρία Έψιλον, μας φυτρώσανε οι Άγγλοι τον μαλάκα και τον δημοκρατικό ψευδοφασισμό του. Σκατά στον τάφο του απλά.

Και στο knights of honour είναι αλλά μόλις φτάσουν γαμάνε μανούλες.

ναι μόνο που αν έχουν απέναντι Μογγόλους έφιππους τοξότες δεν προλαβαίνουν καν να φτάσουν. Αυτό είναι το κακό.

’Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don’t shoot up too high, so in the practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil – experience.’
Clausewitz, On War (The Theory of Strategy) [This translation is taken from the English translation of Clausewitz’s book by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (1976), p.61.]
 

I. Our Method Of Orientation

A quickening of military thought and a heightening of interest in theory is unquestionably to be observed in the Red Army. For more than three years we fought and built under fire, and then we demobilised, and distributed the troops in quarters. This process still remains unfinished to this day, but the army has already approached a higher degree of organisational definiteness and a certain stability. Within it is felt a growing and increasing need to look back over the road already travelled, to assess the results and to draw the most necessary theoretical and practical conclusions, so as to be better prepared for the morrow.

And what will the morrow bring? New eruptions of civil war, fed from without? Or an open attack upon us by bourgeois states? Which ones? How should we prepare to resist? All these questions require an orientation on the planes of international policy, internal policy and military policy. The situation is constantly changing and, consequently, the orientation changes, too – not in principle but in practice. Up to now we have coped successfully with the military tasks imposed upon us by the international and internal situation of Soviet Russia. Our orientation proved to be more correct, more far-sighted and profound, than that of the mightiest of the imperialist powers, which sought, one alter the other or together, to bring us down, but burnt their fingers in the attempt. Our superiority lies in our possession of an irreplaceable scientific method of orientation – Marxism. It is a powerful and at the same time very subtle instrument – using it does not come easy, one has to learn how to use it. Our Party’s past has taught us through long and hard experience how to apply the methods of Marxism to the most complex combination of factors and forces during this historical epoch of sharp breaks. We use the instrument of Marxism also to define the basis for our constructive work in the military sphere,

It is quite otherwise with our enemies. While in the sphere of production technique the advanced bourgeoisie has banished stagnation, routinism and superstition, and has sought to build each enterprise on the precise foundations of scientific method, in the sphere of social orientation the bourgeoisie has proved impotent, because of its class position, to rise to the heights of scientific method. Our class enemies are empiricists, that is, they operate from one case to the next, guided not by the analysis of historical development but by practical experience, routine, coup d’oeil and flair.

Assuredly, the British imperialist caste has, on the basis of empiricism, provided an example of far-flung greedy usurpation, triumphant far-sightedness and class firmness. Not for nothing has it been said of the British imperialists that they think in terms of centuries and continents. This habit of weighing and appraising practically the most important factors and forces has been acquired by the British ruling caste thanks to the superiority of its position, on its island vantage-point, and under the conditions of a comparatively slow and planned accumulation of capitalist power.

The parliamentary methods of personal combinations, bribery, rhetoric and fraud, and the colonial methods of bloody repression, hypocrisy and every form of vileness have entered equally into the rich arsenal of the ruling clique of the greatest of empires. The experience of the struggle of British reaction against the Great French Revolution refined the methods of British imperialism, made it more flexible, armed it in a variety of ways, and, consequently, rendered it more secure against historical surprises.

Nevertheless, the potent class dexterity of the world-ruling British bourgeoisie is proving inadequate – and more and more so as time goes by – to the present epoch of volcanic upheavals in the bourgeois regime. While they tack and veer with great skill, the British empiricists of the epoch of decline – whose finished expression is Lloyd George – will inescapably break their necks.

German imperialism rose up as the antipode of British imperialism. The feverish development of German capitalism provided the ruling classes of Germany with the opportunity to accumulate a great deal more in material and technical values than in habits of international and military-political orientation. German imperialism appeared in the world arena as an upstart, went too far, slipped up and was smashed to pieces. And yet, not so long ago, at Brest-Litovsk, the representatives of German imperialism looked upon us as visionaries who had been accidentally and temporarily thrust to the top.

The art of all-sided orientation has been learnt by our Party, step by step, from the first underground circles through all the subsequent development, with its interminable theoretical discussions, practical attempts and failures, advances and retreats, tactical disputes and turns. Russian émigrés’ garrets in London, Paris and Geneva turned out, in the final analysis, to be obsrvatories of immense historical importance. Revolutionary impatience became disciplined by scientific analysis of the historical process. The will to action became combined with self-control. Our Party learned to apply the Marxist method by acting and thinking. And this method serves our Party in good stead today ...

While it can be said of the more far-sighted empiricists of British imperialism that they have a keyring with a considerable choice of keys, good for many typical historical situations, we hold in our hands a universal key which enables us to orientate ourselves correctly in all situations. And while the entire supply of keys inherited by Lloyd George, Churchill and the others is obviously no good for opening a way out of the revolutionary epoch, our Marxist key is predestined above all to serve this purpose. We are not afraid to speak aloud about this, our greatest advantage over our adversaries, for it is beyond their power to acquire our Marxist key for themselves, or to counterfeit it.

We foresaw the inevitability of the imperialist war, and the prologue to the epoch of proletarian revolution. From this standpoint we then followed the course of the war, the methods used in it, the shift in the groupings of class forces, and on the basis of these observations there took shape, much more directly, the ‘doctrine’ – to employ an elevated style – of the Soviet system and the Red Army. From scientific prediction of the further course of development we gained unconquerable confidence that history was working for us. This optimistic confidence has been and remains the foundation of all our activity.

Marxism does not supply ready recipes. Least of all could it provide them in the sphere of military construction. But here, too, it gave us a method. For, if it is true that war is a continuation of politics, only by other means, then it follows that an army is the continuation and culmination of the entire social and state organisation, but with the bayonet to the fore.

We approached military questions with, as our starting-point, not any ‘military doctrine’, as a sum-total of dogmatic postulates, but a Marxist analysis of the requirements for the self-defence of the working class, which, having taken power, had to arm itself, disarm the bourgeoisie, fight to maintain power, lead the peasants against the landlords, prevent the kulak democracy from arming the peasants against the workers’ state, create for itself a reliable body of commanders, and so on.

In building the Red Army we utilised Red-Guard detachments, and the old regulations, and peasant atamans, and former Tsarist generals; and this, of course, might be described as the absence of ‘unified doctrine’ in the sphere of the formation of the army and its commanding personnel. But such an appraisal would be pedantically banal. We certainly did not take any dogmatic ‘doctrine’ as our point of departure. We actually created the army out of that historical material which was ready to hand, unifying all this work from the standpoint of a workers’ state fighting to preserve, entrench and extend itself. Those who can’t get along without the metaphysically tainted word ‘doctrine’ might say that, in creating the Red Army, an armed force on a new class basis, we thereby constructed a new military doctrine, for, despite the diversity of practical means and the changes in approach, there could not be, nor was there, any place in our military constructuve work either for empiricism devoid of ideas, or for subjective arbitrariness: from beginning to end, the entire work was cemented by the unity of a revolutionary class goal, by the unity of will directed toward that goal and by the unity of the Marxist method of orientation.
 

2. With A Doctrine Or Without One?

Attempts have been made, and frequently repeated, to give proletarian ‘military doctrine’ priority over the actual work of creating the Red Army. As far back as the end of 1917 the absolute principle of manoeuvre was being counterposed to the ‘imperialist’ principle of positional warfare. The organisational form of the army was to be subordinated to the revolutionary strategy of manoeuvre: corps, divisions, even brigades, were declared to be formations that were too ponderous. The heralds of the proletarian ‘military doctrine’ proposed to reduce the entire armed force of the Republic to individual composite detachments or regiments. In essence this was the ideology of guerrilla-ism just slicked up a bit. On the extreme ‘Left’ wing, guerrilla-ism was openly defended. A holy war was proclaimed against the old regulations, because they were the expression of an outlived military doctrine, and against the new ones because they resembled the old ones too closely. True, even at that time the supporters of the new doctrine not only failed to provide a draft for new regulations, they did not even present a single article submitting our regulations to any kind of serious principled or practical criticism. Our utilisation of officers of the old army, especially in positions of command, was proclaimed to be incompatible with the introduction of a revolutionary military doctrine; and so on and so forth.

As a matter of fact, the noisy innovators were themselves wholly captives of the old military doctrine. They merely tried to put a minus sign wherever previously there was a plus. All their independent thinking came down to just that. However, the actual work of creating the armed force of the workers’ state proceeded along a different path. We tried, especially in the beginning, to make maximum possible use of the habits, usages, knowledge and means retained from the past, and we were quite unconcerned about the extent to which the new army would differ from the old, in the formally organisational and technical sense, or, on the contrary, would resemble it. We built the army out of the human and technical material ready to hand, seeking always and everywhere to ensure domination by the proletarian vanguard in the organisation of the army, that is, in the army’s personnel, in its administration, in its consciousness and in its feelings. The institution of commissars is not some dogma of Marxism, nor is it a necessary part of a proletarian ‘military doctrine’: under certain conditions it was a necessary instrument of proletarian supervision, leadership and political education in the army, and for this reason it assumed enormous importance in the life of the armed forces of the Soviet republic. We combined the old commanding personnel with the new, and only in this way did we achieve the needed result: the army proved capable of fighting in the service of the working class. In its aims, in the predominant class composition of its body of commanders and commissars, in its spirit and in its entire political morale, the Red Army differs radically from all the other armies in the world and stands in hostile opposition to them. As it continues to develop, the Red Army has become and is becoming more and more similar to them in formally organisational and technical respects. Mere exertions to say something new in this field will not suffice.

The Red Army is the military expression of the proletarian dictatorship. Those who require a more solemn formula might say that the Red Army is the military embodiment of the ‘doctrine’ of the proletarian dictatorship – first, because the dictatorship of the proletariat is ensured within the Red Army itself, and, secondly, because the dictatorship of the proletariat would be impossible without the Red Army.

The trouble is, though, that the awakening of interest in military theory engendered at the outset a revival of certain doctrinaire prejudices of the first period – prejudices which, to be sure, have been given some new formulations, but which have in no way been improved thereby. Certain perspicacious innovators have suddenly discovered that we are living, or rather not living, but vegetating without a military doctrine, just like the King in Andersen’s story who went about without any clothes on and didn’t know it. ‘It is necessary, at last, to create the doctrine of the Red Army’, say some. Others join in the song with: ‘We are going wrong where all practical questions of military construction are concerned because we have not yet solved the basic problems of military doctrine. What is the Red Army? What are the historical tasks before it? Will it wage defensive or offensive revolutionary wars?’ – and so on and so forth.

It emerges that we created the Red Army, and, moreover, a victorious Red Army, but we failed to give it a military doctrine. So this army goes on living in a state of perplexity. To the direct question: what should this Red Army doctrine be? we get the answer: it must comprise the sumtotal of the principles of the structure, education and utilisation of our armed forces. But this answer is purely formal. The Red Army of today has its principles of ‘structure, education and utilisation’. What we need to know is, what kind of doctrine do we lack? That is, what is the content of these new principles which have to enter into the programme for building the army? And it is just here that the most confused muddling begins. One individual makes the sensational discovery that the Red Army is a class army, the army of the proletarian dictatorship. Another adds to this that, inasmuch as the Red Army is a revolutionary and international army, it must be an offensive army. A third proposes, with a view to this offensiveness, that we pay special attention to cavalry and aircraft. Finally, a fourth proposes that we do not forget about the use of Makhno’s tachanki. Around the world in a tachanka – there’s a doctrine for the Red Army. It must be said, however, that, in these discoveries, some grains of sensible thought – not new, but correct – are smothered beneath the husks of verbiage.
 

3. What Is A Military Doctrine?

Let us not seek for general logical definitions, because these will hardly, by themselves, get us out of the difficulty. [2] Let us rather approach the question historically. According to the old view, the foundations of military science are eternal and common to all ages and peoples. But in their concrete refraction these eternal truths assume a national character. Hence we get a German military doctrine, a French one, a Russian one, and so on. If, however, we check the inventory of eternal truths of military science, we obtain not much more than a few logical axioms and Euclidean postulates. Flanks must be protected, means of communication and retreat must be secured, the blow must be struck at the enemy’s least defended point, etc. All these truths, in this all-embracing formulation, go far beyond the limits of the art of war. The donkey that steals oats from a torn sack (the enemy’s least defended point) and vigilantly turns its crupper away from the side from which danger may be expected to come, acts thus in accordance with the eternal principles of military science. Yet it is unquestionable that this donkey munching oats has never read Clausewitz, or even Leer.

War, the subject of our discussion, is a social and historical phenomenon which arises, develops, changes its forms and must eventually disappear. For this reason alone war cannot have any eternal laws. But the subject of war is man, who possesses certain fixed anatomical and mental traits from which are derived certain usages and habits. Man operates in a specific and comparatively stable geographical setting. Thus, in all wars, in all ages and among all peoples, there have obtained certain common features, relatively stable but by no means absolute. Based on these features, an art of war has developed historically. Its methods and usages undergo change, together with the social conditions which govern it (technology, class structure, forms of state power).

The expression ‘national military doctrine’ implied a comparatively stable but nevertheless temporary complex (combination) of military calculations, methods, procedures, habits, slogans, feelings, all corresponding to the structure of the given society as a whole and, first and foremost, to the character of its ruling class.

For example, what is Britain’s military doctrine? Into its composition there obviously enters (or used to enter) recognition of the need for maritime hegemony, together with a negative attitude toward a standing land army and toward conscription for military service – or, more precisely, recognition of the need for Britain to have a navy stronger than the combined navies of the next two strongest powers, and, what was made possible by that situation, the maintenance of a small army of volunteers. Connected with this was the support of such an order in Europe as would not allow any one land power to obtain decisive preponderance on the Continent.

Undoubtedly, this British ‘doctrine’ used to be the most stable of all military doctrines. Its stability and definiteness were determined by the prolonged, planned, uninterrupted development of Britain’s power, without any events and upheavals such as would have radically altered the relation of forces in the world (or in Europe, which, formerly, came to the same thing). Now, however, this situation has been completely disrupted. Britain dealt her own ‘doctrine’ the biggest blow when, during the war, she was obliged to build her army on the basis of compulsory military service. The ‘balance of power’ on the European Continent has been upset. No-one has confidence in the stability of the new relation of forces. The power of the United States rules out the possibility of automatically maintaining any longer the dominant position of the British navy. It is at present too early to predict at the outcome of the Washington Conference will be. But it is quite obvious that, since the imperialist war, Britain’s ‘military doctrine’ has become inadequate, bankrupt and quite worthless. It has not yet been replaced by a new one. And it is very doubtful if there will ever be a new one, for the epoch of military and revolutionary upheavals and radical regroupments of world forces leaves very narrow limits for military doctrine in the sense in which we have defined it above with respect to Britain: a military ‘doctrine’ presupposes a relatively stable situation, foreign and domestic.

If we turn to the countries on the continent of Europe, even in the past epoch, we find that military doctrine assumes there a far less definitive and stable character. What constituted, even during the interval of time between the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 and the imperialist war of 1914, the content of the military doctrine of France? Recognition that Germany was the hereditary and irreconcilable enemy, the idea of revanche, education of the army and the young generation in the spirit of this idea, cultivation of an alliance with Russia, worship of the military might of Tsardom, and, finally, maintenance, though not very confidently, of the Bonapartist military tradition of the bold offensive. The protracted era of armed peace, from 1871 to 1914, nevertheless invested France’s military-political orientation with relative stability. But the purely military elements of the French doctrine were very meagre. The war submitted the doctrine of the offensive to a rigorous test. After the first weeks, the French army dug itself into the ground, and although the true-French generals and true-French newspapers did not stop reiterating in the first period of the war, that trench warfare was a base German invention not at all in harmony with the heroic spirit of the French fighting man, the entire war developed, nevertheless, as a positional struggle of attrition. At the present time the doctrine of the pure offensive, although it has been included in the new regulations, is being, as we shall see, sharply opposed in France itself.

The military doctrine of post-Bismarck Germany was incomparably more aggressive in essence, in line with the country’s policy, but was much more cautious in its strategic formulations. ‘The principles of strategy in no way transcend common sense’, was the instruction given to Germany’s senior commanders. However, the rapid growth of capitalist wealth and of the population lifted the ruling circles, and above all the noble officer caste of Germany to ever greater heights. Germany’s ruling classes lacked experience in operating on a world scale: they failed to take forces and resources into account, and gave their diplomacy and strategy an ultra-aggressive character far removed from ‘common sense’. German militarism fell victim to its own unbridled offensive spirit.

What follows from this? That the expression ‘national doctrine’ implied in the past a complex of stable guiding ideas in the diplomatic and military-political spheres and of strategical directives that were more or less bound up with these. Furthermore, the so-called military doctrine – the formula for the military orientation of the ruling class of a given country in international circumstances – proved to be the more definitive, the more definite, stable and planned was the domestic and international position of that country, in the course of its development.

The imperialist war and the resulting epoch of maximum instabilty have in all spheres absolutely cut the ground from under national military doctrines, and placed on the order of the day the need for swiftly taking into account a changing situation, with its new groupings and combinations and its ’unprincipled’ tacking and veering, under the sign of today’s anxieties and alarms. The Washington Conference provides an instructive picture in this connection. It is quite incontestable that today, after the test to which the old military doctrines have been subjected in the imperialist war, not a single country has retained principles and ideas stable enough to be designated a national military doctrine.

One might, it is true, venture to presume that national military doctrines will take shape once again as soon as a new relationship of forces becomes established in the world, together with the position therein of each separate state. This presupposes, however, that the revolutionary epoch of upheavals will be liquidated, and succeeded by a new epoch of organic development. But there is no ground for such a presupposition.
 

4. Commonplaces And Verbiage

It might seem that the struggle against Soviet Russia ought to be a rather stable element in the ‘military doctrine’ of all capitalist states in the present epoch. But even this is not the case. The complexity of the world situation, the monstrous criss-crossing of contradictory interests, and, primarily, the unstable social basis of bourgeois governments exclude the possibility of consistently carrying out even a single ‘military doctrine’, namely, struggle against Soviet Russia. Or, to put it more precisely, struggle against Soviet Russia changes its form so frequently and proceeds in such zigzags that it would be mortally dangerous for us to lull our vigilance with doctrinaire phrases and ‘formulas’ concerning international relations. The sole natural and correct ‘doctrine’ for us is: be on the alert and keep both eyes open! It is impossible to give an unconditional answer even when the question is posed in its crudest form, namely: will our chief field of military activity in the next few years be in the East or in the West? The world situation is too complex. The general course of historical devlopment is clear, but events do not keep to an order fixed in advance, nor do they mature according to a set schedule. In practice one must react not to ‘the course of development’ but to facts, to events. It is not difficult to guess at historical variants which would compel us to commit our forces predominantly in the East, or, conversely, in the West, coming to the aid of revolutions, waging a defensive war, or, on the other hand, finding ourselves obliged to take the offensive. Only the Marxist method of international orientation, of calculating class forces in their combinations and shifts, can enable us to find the appropriate solution in each concrete case. It is not possible to invent a general formula that would express the ‘essence’ of our military tasks in the coming period.

One can, however, and this is not infrequently done, give the concept of military doctrine a more concrete and restricted content, as meaning those fundamental principles of purely military affairs which regulate all aspects of military organisation, tactics and strategy. In this sense it can be said that the content of military regulations is determined directly by military doctrine. But what kind of principles are these? Some doctrinaires depict the matter like this: it is necessary to establish the essence and purpose of the army, the task before it, and from this definition one then derives its organisation, strategy and tactics, and embodies these conclusions in its regulations. Actually, such an approach to the question is scholastic and lifeless.

How banal and lacking in content are what are taken to be the basic principles of the military art can be seen from the solemnly-quoted statement by Foch that the essence of modern war is: ‘to seek out the enemy’s armies in order to beat and destroy them; to adopt, with this sole end in view, the direction and tactics which may lead to it in the quickest and safest way.’ [Foch, The Principles of War, translated by Hilaire Belloc (1918), page 42.] Extraordinarily profound! How remarkably this widens our horizon! One need only add that the essence of modern methods of nutrition consists in locating the aperture of the mouth, inserting the food therein, and, after it has been masticated with the least possible expenditure of energy, swallowing it. Why not try to deduce from this principle, which is in no way inferior to that propounded by Foch, just what sort of food is wanted, and how to cook it, and just when and by whom it should be swallowed; and, above all, how this food is to be procured.

Military matters are very empirical, very practical matters. It is a very risky exercise to try and elevate them into a system, in which field service regulations, the establishment of a squadron, and the cut of a uniform are derived from fundamental principles. This was well understood by old Clausewitz: ‘Perhaps it would not be impossible to write a systematic theory of war, full of intelligence and substance; but the theories we presently possess are very different. Quite apart from their unscientific spirit, they try so hard to make their systems coherent and complete that they are stuffed with common-places, truisms and nonsense of every kind. ’[Howard and Paret translation, page 61.]
 

5. Have We Or Have We Not A ‘Military Doctrine’?

So, then, do we or do we not need a ‘military doctrine’? I have been accused by some of ‘evading’ an answer to this question. But, after all, in order to give an answer one must know what is being asked about, that is, what is meant by military doctrine. Until the question is posed clearly and intelligibly one cannot but ‘evade’ answering it. In order to come closer to the correct way of formulating the question, let us, following what has been said earlier, divide the question itself into its component parts. Looked at in this way, ‘military doctrine’ can be said to consist of the following elements:

The fundamental (class) orientation of our country, expressed by its government in matters of the economy, culture, and so on, that is, in domestic policy.
The international orientation of the workers’ state. The most important lines of our world policy and, connected with this, the possible theatres of our military operations.
The composition and structure of the Red Army, in accordance with the nature of the workers’ and peasants’ state [sic] and the tasks of its armed forces.
The teaching on the organisation of the army (point 3), together with the teaching on strategy (point 4), must, obviously, constitute military doctrine in the proper (or narrow) sense of the word.

Analysis could be carried further still. Thus, it is possible to separate out from the points enumerated problems concerning the technology of the Red Army, or the way in which propaganda is carried on in it, etc.

Must the Government, the leading Party and the War Department have definite views on all these matters? Why, of course they must. How could we build the Red Army if we had no views on what its social composition should be, on the recruitment of the officers and commissars, on how the units should be formed, trained and educated, and so on? And then, one could not answer these questions without examining the fundamental tasks, domestic and international, of the workers’ state. In other words, the War Department must have guiding principles on which to build, educate and reorganise the army.

Need one (and can one) call the sum-total of these principles a military doctrine?

To that my answer has been and still is: if anyone wants to call the sum-total of the Red Army’s principles and practical methods, a military doctrine, then, while not sharing this weakness for the faded galloons of old-time officialdom, I am not going to fight over it (this is my ‘evasion’). But if anyone is so bold as to assert that we do not have these principles and practical methods [3], that our collective thinking has not worked and is not at work upon them, my answer is: you are not speaking the truth, you are befuddling yourselves and others with verbiage. Instead of shouting about military doctrine, you should present us with this doctrine, demonstrate it, show us at least a particle of this military doctrine which the Red Army lacks. But the whole trouble is that as soon as our military ‘doctrinaires’ pass from lamentations about how useful a doctrine would be to attempts to provide us with one, they either repeat, not very well, what has already been said long ago, what has entered into our consciousness, what has been embodied in resolutions of Party and Soviet congresses, decrees, decisions, regulations and instructions, far better and much more precisely than is done by our would-be innovators, or they get confused, stumble, and put forward absolutely inadmissable concoctions.

We will now prove this, in respect of each of the constituent elements in the so-called military doctrine.
 

6. What Kind Of Army Are We Preparing, And For What Tasks?

‘The old army was an instrument of class oppression of the working people by the bourgeoisie. With the transition of power to the working and exploited classes there has arisen the need for a new army as the mainstay of Soviet power at present and the basis for replacing the regular army by the arming of the whole people in the near future, and as a support for the coming socialist revolution in Europe.’

So reads the decree on the formation of the Red Army, issued by the Council of People’s Commissars on January 12 [sic], 1918. [4] I much regret that I cannot adduce here everything that has been said concerning the Red Army in our Party programme and in the resolutions of our congresses. I strongly recommend the reader to re-read them: those writings are useful and instructive. In them it is very clearly stated ‘what kind of army we are preparing, and for what tasks.’ What are the newly-arrived military doctrinaires preparing to add to this? Instead of splitting hairs over the rephrasing of precise and clear formulations they would do better to devote themselves to explaining them through propaganda work among the young Red Army men. That would be far more useful.

But, it may be said, and is said, that the resolutions and decrees do not sufficiently underscore the international role of the Red Army, and, in particular, the need to prepare for offensive revolutionary wars. Solomin is especially emphatic on this point ... ‘We are preparing the class army of the proletariat’, he writes on page 22 of his article, ‘a worker-peasant army, not only for defence against the bourgeois-landlord counter-revolution but also for revolutionary wars (both defensive and offensive) against the imperialist powers, for wars of a semi-civil (?) type in which offensive strategy may play an important role.’ Such is the revelation, almost the revolutionary gospel, of Solomin. But, alas, as often happens with apostles, our author is cruelly mistaken in thinking that he has discovered something new. He is only formulating poorly something old. Precisely because war is a continuation of politics, rifle in hand, there never was and never could be, in our Party, any dispute in principle about the place which revolutionary wars can and should occupy in the development of the world revolution of the working class. This question we posed and settled in the Russian Marxist press quite a while ago. I could quote dozens of leading articles from the Party press, especially in the period of the imperialist war, which treat of revolutionary war by a workers’ state as something to be taken for granted. But I will go back even further and quote some lines which I had occasion to write in 1905-1906.

‘This (the development of the Russian revolution) immediately gives the events now unfolding an international character, and opens up a wide horizon. The political emancipation of Russia led by the working class will raise that class to a height as yet unknown in history, will transfer to it colossal power and resources, and will make it the initiator of the liquidation of world capitalism, for which history has created all the objective conditions.

‘If the Russian proletariat, having temporarily obtained power, does not on its own initiative carry the revolution on to European soil, it will be compelled to do so by the forces of European feudal-bourgeois reaction. Of course it would be idle at this moment to determine the methods by which the Russian revolution will throw itself against old capitalist Europe. These methods may reveal themselves quite unexpectedly. Let us take the example of Poland as a link between the revolutionary East and the revolutionary West, although we take this as an illustration of our idea rather than as an actual prediction.

‘The triumph of the revolution in Russia will mean the inevitable victory of the revolution in Poland. It is not difficult to imagine that the existence of a revolutionary regime in the nine [sic] provinces [Russian Poland was divided into ten provinces.] of Russian Poland must lead to the revolt of Galicia and Poznan. [Let me recall that this was written in 1905. [Note by Trotsky] [Galicia was in Austrian Poland, Poznan in German Poland – B.P.] The Hohenzollern and Habsburg Governments will reply to this by sending military forces to the Polish frontier in order then to cross it for the purpose of crushing their enemy at his very centre – Warsaw. It is quite clear that the Russian revolution cannot leave its Western advance-guard in the hands of the Prusso-Austrian soldiery. War against the governments of Wilhelm II and Franz Josef under such circumstances would become an act of self-defence on the part of the revolutionary government of Russia. What attitude would the Austrian and German proletariat take up then? It is evident that they could not remain calm observers while the armies of their countries were conducting a counter-revolutionary crusade. A war between feudal-bourgeois Germany and revolutionary Russia would lead inevitably to a proletarian revolution in Germany. We would tell those to whom this assertion seems too categorical to try and think of I any other historical event which would be more likely to compel the German workers and the German reactionaries to make an open trial of strength.’ (See Trotsky, Nasha Revolyutszya (Our Revolution), p.280) [5]

Naturally, events have not unfolded in the historical order indicated here merely as an example, to illustrate an idea, in these lines written sixteen years ago. But the basic course of development has confirmed and continues to confirm the prognosis that the epoch of proletarian revolution must inevitably thrust it into the field of battle against the forces of world reaction. Thus, more than a decade and a half ago, we already clearly understood, in essence, ‘what kind of army and for what tasks’ we had to prepare.
 

7. Revolutionary Politics And Methodism

So, then, no question of principle is involved for us where revolutionary offensive warfare is concerned. But, regarding this ‘doctrine’, the proletarian state must say the same as was said by the last congress of the International regarding the revolutionary offensive of the worker masses in a bourgeois state (the doctrine of the offensive): only a traitor can renounce the offensive, but only a simpleton can reduce our entire strategy to the offensive.

Unfortunately, there are not a few simpletons of the offensive among our newly-appeared doctrinaires, who, under the flag of military doctrine, are trying to introduce into our military circulation those same one-sided ‘left’ tendencies which at the Third Communist Congress attained their culminating form as the theory of the offensive: inasmuch as (!) we are living in a revolutionary epoch, therefore (!) the Communist Party must carry out an offensive policy. To translate ‘leftism’ into the language of military doctrine means to multiply the error. While preserving the principled foundation of waging an irreconcilable class struggle, Marxist tendencies are at the same time distinguished by extraordinary flexibility and mobility, or, to speak in military language, capacity for manoeuvre. To this firmness of principle together with flexibility of method and form is counterposed a rigid methodism which transforms into an absolute method such questions as our participation or non-participation in parliamentary work, or our acceptance or rejection of agreements with non-Communist parties and organisations – an absolute method allegedly applicable to each and every set of circumstances.

The actual word ‘methodism’ is used most often in writings on military strategy. Characteristic of epigones, of mediocre army leaders and routinists is the striving to turn into a stable system a certain combination of actions which corresponds to specific conditions. Since men do not wage war all the time, but with long intervals between the wars, it is common for the methods and procedures of the previous war to dominate the thinking of military men during a period of peace. That is why methodism is revealed most strikingly in the military sphere. The mistaken tendencies of methodism unquestionably find expression in the efforts to construct a doctrine of ‘offensive revolutionary war’.

This doctrine cTntains two elements: international-political and operational-strategic. For it is a question, in the first place, of developing in the language of war an offensive international policy aimed at hastening the revolutionary denouément, and, in the second place, of investing the strategy of the Red Army itself with an offensive character. These two questions must be separated, even though they are interconnected in certain respects.

That we do not renounce revolutionary wars is attested not only by articles and resolutions but also by major historical facts. After the Polish bourgeoisie had, in the spring of 1920, imposed a defensive war upon us, we tried to develop our defence into a revolutionary offensive. True, our attempt was not crowned with success. But precisely from this follows the not unimportant supplementary conclusion that revolutionary war, an indisputable instrument of our policy under certain conditions, can, under different conditions, lead to a result opposite to that which was intended.

In the Brest-Litovsk period we were for the first time constrained to apply on a broad scale a policy of politico-strategical retreat. It seemed to many at that time that this would prove fatal to us. But within only a few months it was shown that time had worked well for us. In February 1918 German militarism, though already undermined, was nevertheless still strong enough to crush us, with our military forces which were insignificant at that time. In November German militarism crumbled to dust. Our retreat in the field of international politics at Brest was our salvation.

After Brest we were compelled to wage uninterrupted war against the White-Guard armies and the foreign interventionist detachments. This small-scale war was both defensive and offensive, both politically and militarily. On the whole, however, our international policy, as a state in that period was predominantly a poltcy of defence and retreat (renouncing sovietisation of the Baltic states, our frequent offers to engage in peace negotiations, together with our readiness to make very big concessions, the ‘new’ economic policy, recognition of the debts, and so on). In particular, we were most conciliatory in relation to Poland, offering her conditions more favourable than those indicated for her by the Entente countries. Our efforts were not crowned with success. Pilsudski fell upon us. The war assumed a clearly defensive character on our part. This fact contributed enormously to the rallying of public opinion not only among the workers and peasants but also among many elements of the bourgeois intelligentsia. Successful defence naturally developed into a victorious offensive. But we overestimated the revolutionary potentiality of the internal situation in Poland in that period. This overestimation was expressed in the excessively offensive character of our operations, which outstripped our resources. We advanced too lightly equipped, and the result is well known: we were thrown back.

Almost at the same time, the mighty revolutionary wave in Italy was broken – not so much by the resistance of the bourgeoisie as by the perfidious passivity of the leading workers’ organisations. The failure of our August march on Warsaw and the defeat of the September movement in Italy changed the relation of forces in favour of the bourgeoisie throughout Europe. From that time on, a greater stability has been observable in the political position of the bourgeoisie, and greater assurance in its behaviour. The attempt by the German Communist Party to hasten the denouément by means of an artificial general offensive did not and could not produce the desired result. The revolutionary movement has shown that its tempo is slower than we expected in 1918-1919. The social soil continues, however, to be sown with mines. The crisis in trade and industry is assuming monstrous proportions. Abrupt shifts in political development in the form of revolutionary explosions are wholly possible in the very near future. But, on the whole, development has assumed a more protracted character. The Third Congress of the International called on the Communist Parties to prepare themselves thoroughly and perseveringly. In many countries the Communists have been obliged to carry out important strategic retreats, renouncing the immediate fulfilment of those fighting tasks which they had only recently set themselves. The initiative for the offensive has temporarily passed to the bourgeoisie. The work of the Communist Parties is now predominantly defensive and organisationally preparatory in character. Our revolutionary defence remains, as always, elastic and resilient, that is, capable of being transformed, given a corresponding change of conditions, into a counter-offensive which in its turn can culminate in a decisive battle.

The failure of the march on Warsaw, the victory of the bourgeoisie in Italy and the temporary ebb in Germany compelled us to execute an abrupt retreat, which began with the Treaty of Riga and ended with the conditional recognition of the Tsarist debts.

During this same period we executed a retreat of no less importance in the field of economic construction: the acceptance of concessions, the abolition of the grain monopoly, the leasing out of many industrial enterprises, and so on. The basic reason for these successive retreats is to be found in the continued capitalist encirclement, that is, the relative stability of the bourgeois regime

Just what is it that they want, these proponents of military doctrine – for the sake of brevity we shall call them the doctrinaires, a designation they have earned – when they demand that we orient the Red Army towards offensive revolutionary warfare? Do they want a simple recognition of the principle? If so, they are breaking open an already open door. Or do they consider that conditions have arisen in our international or our domestic situation which put an offensive revolutionary war on the agenda? But, in that case, our doctrinaires should aim their blows not at the War Department but at our Party and at the Communist International, for it was none other than the World Congress that, in the summer of this year, rejected the revolutionary strategy of the offensive as untimely, called on all parties to undertake careful preparatory work, and approved the defensive and manoeuvring policy of Soviet Russia as a policy corresponding to our circumstances.

Or do some of our doctrinaires consider, perhaps, that while the ‘weak’ Communist Parties in the bourgeois states have to carry on preparatory work, the ‘all-powerful’ Red Army ought to undertake offensive revolutionary war? Are there, perhaps, some impatient strategists who really intend to shift on to the shoulders of the Red Army the burden of the ‘final, decisive conflict’ in the world, or at least in Europe? Whoever seriously propagates such a policy would do better to hang a millstone about his neck and then act in accordance with the subsequent instructions given in the Gospel. [6]
 

8. Education ‘in the Spirit of’ the Offensive

Seeking to extricate himself from the contradictions involved in a doctrine of the offensive put forward during an era of defensive retreat, Comrade Solomin invests the ‘doctrine’ of revolutionary war with ... an educational meaning. At the present time, he concedes, we are indeed interested in peace, and will do everything to preserve it. But, despite our defensive policy, revolutionary wars are inevitable. We must prepare for them, and, consequently, we must cultivate an offensive ‘spirit’ for future requirements. The offensive is to be understood, therefore, not in a fleshly sense but in spirit and in truth. [7] In other words, Comrade Solomin wants to have, ready for mobilisation, along with a supply of army biscuits, also a supply of enthusiasm for the offensive. Matters do not improve as we proceed. While we saw earlier that our most severe critic lacks understanding of revolutionary strategy, we now perceive that he also lacks understanding of the laws of revolutionary psychology.

We need peace not from doctrinal considerations but because the working people have had enough of war and privation. Our efforts are directed to safeguarding for the workers and peasants as long a period of peace as possible. We explain to the army itself that the only reason why we cannot demobilise is that new attacks threaten us. From these conditions Solomin draws the conclusion that we have to ‘educate’ the Red Army in an ideology of offensive revolutionary war. What an idealistic view of ‘education’! ‘We are not strong enough to go to war and we do not intend to go to war, but we must be prepared’ – Comrade Solomin gloomily philosophises – ‘and therefore we must prepare for the offensive: such is the contradictory formula we arrive at.’ The formula is indeed contradictory. But if Solomin thinks that this is a ‘good’, a dialectical contradiction, he is mistaken: it is confusion, pure and simple.

One of the most important tasks of our domestic policy in recent times has been to draw closer to the peasant. The peasant question confronts us with particular acuteness in the army. Does Solomm seriously believe that today, when immediate danger of a return of the landlords has been eliminated, and revolution in Europe still remains only a potentiality, we can rally our army of more than a million men, nine-tenths of whom are peasants, under the banner of offensive war for the purpose of bringing about the denouément of the proletarian revolution? Such propaganda would be stillborn.

We do not, of course, intend for a moment to hide from the working people, including the Red Army, that we shall always be, in principle, for offensive revolutionary war in those conditions when such war can help to liberate the working people of other countries. But to suppose that one can, on the basis of this statement of principle, create or ‘cultivate’ an effective ideology for the Red Army under existing conditions is to fail to understand either the Red Army or these conditions. In actual fact, no sensible Red Army man doubts that, if we are not attacked this winter, or in the spring, we shall certainly not disturb the peace ourselves, but shall exert all our efforts to heal our wounds, taking advantage of the respite. In our exhausted country we are learning the soldier’s trade, arming and building a big army in order to defend ourselves against attack. Here you have a ‘doctrine’ which is clear, simple and in accordance with reality.

It was precisely because we posed the question like that in the spring of 1920 that every Red Army man was firmly convinced that bourgeois Poland had forced upon us a war which we had not wanted and from which we had tried to protect the people by making very big concessions. It was just this conviction that engendered the very great indignation and hatred that was felt against the enemy. It was due precisely to this that the war, which began as one of defence, could subsequently be developed into an offensive war.

The contradiction between defensive propaganda and the offensive (in the last analysis) character of a war is a ‘good’, viable, dialectical contradiction. And we have no grounds whatsoever for altering the character and direction of our educational work in the army.in order to please muddleheads, even if they speak in the name of military doctrine.

Those who talk about revolutionary wars usually derive their inspiration from recollections of the wars of the Great French Revolution. In France they also began with defence: they created an army for defence and then went over to the offensive. To the sound of the Marseillaise the armed sansculottes marched with their revolutionary broom all across Europe. Historical analogies are very tempting. But one has to be cautious when resorting to them. Otherwise, formal features of similarity may induce one to overlook material features of difference. France was, at the end of the 18th century, the richest and most civilised country on the Continent of Europe. In the 20th century, Russia is the poorest and most backward country in Europe. Compared with the revolutionary tasks that confront us today, the revolutionary task of the French army was much more superficial in character. At that time it was a matter of overthrowing ‘tyrants’, of abolishing or mitigating feudal serfdom. Today it is a matter of completely destroying exploitation and class oppression. But the role of the arms of France – that is, of an advanced country in relation to backward Europe – proved to be very limited and transient. With the downfall of Bonapartism, which had grown out of the revolutionary war, Europe returned to its Kings and feudal lords.

In the gigantic class struggle which is unfolding today, the role of armed intervention from without can have no more than concomitant, contributory, auxiliary significance. Armed intervention can hasten the denouément and facilitate the victory. But for this it is necessary that the revolution be mature not merely in respect of social relations – that is already the case – but also in respect of political consciousness. Armed intervention is like the forceps of the obstetrician: used at the right moment it can ease the birth-pangs, but if brought into play prematurely it can only cause a miscarriage.
 

9. The Strategical and Technical Content of the ‘Military Doctrine’ (Capacity for Manoeuvring)

What has been said so far applies not so much to the Red Army, to its structure and methods of operation, as to the political tasks set for the Red Army by the workers’ state.

Let us now approach military doctrine in the narrower sense of the term. We heard from Comrade Solomin that, so long as we fail to proclaim the doctrine of offensive revolutionary war, we shall remain confused and shall commit blunders in organisational, military-educational and strategical and other matters. However, such a commonplace does not get us far. Instead of repeating that good practical conclusions must necessarily follow from a good doctrine, why not try to offer us these conclusions? Alas! As soon as our doctrinaires try to reach conclusions, they offer us either a feeble rehash of stale news or the most pernicious sort of ‘independent thinking’.

Our innovators devote their greatest energy to trying to fix the anchor of military doctrine in the sphere of operational questions. According to them, as regards strategy, the Red Army differs in principle from all other armies, because in our epoch of positional immobility the basic features of the Red Army’s operations are capacity for manoeuvring and aggressiveness.

The operations of civil war are, unquestionably, distinguished by an exceptional element of manoeuvring. But we must ask this question, quite precisely: does the Red Army’s manoeuvring result from its inner qualities, its class nature, its revolutionary spirit, its fighting zeal – or is it due to the objective conditions, to the vastness of the theatres of war and the comparatively small numbers of troops involved? This question is of no small importance if we recognise that revolutionary wars will be fought not only on the Don and the Volga but also on the Seine, the Scheldt and the Thames.

But let us, meanwhile, return to our native rivers. Was the Red Army alone distinguished by capacity for manoeuvring?

No, the strategy of the Whites was wholly a strategy of manoeuvre. Their troops were, in most cases, inferior to ours in numbers and in point of morale, but superior in military skill. Hence the need for a strategy of manoeuvre arose first among the Whites. In the initial stages we learnt manoeuvring from them. In the final stage of the civil war we invariably had a situation of manoeuvre countered by manoeuvre. Finally, the highest capacity for manoeuvring was characteristic of the operations of Ungern and Makhno, those degenerate, bandit outgrowths of the civil war. What conclusion follows from this? Manoeuvring is characteristic not of a revolutionary army but of civil war as such.

In national wars, operations are accompanied by fear of distance. By removing itself from its base, from its own people, from the area where its own language is spoken, an army, or a detachment, finds itself in a completely alien environment, where neither support, nor cover, nor aid is available to it. In a civil war each side finds sympathy and support, to a greater or lesser degree, in the opponent’s rear. National wars are waged (at all events, they used to be waged) by ponderous masses, with all the national-state resources of both sides brought into play. Civil war signifies that the forces and resources of the country convulsed by revolution are divided into two; that the war is waged, especially in the initial stage, by an enterprising minority on each side, and, consequently, by more or less scanty and therefore mobile masses; and, for this reason, much more depends on improvisation and accident.

Civil war is characterised by manoeuvring on both sides. One cannot, therefore, consider capacity for manoeuvring a special manifestation of the revolutionary character of the Red Army.

We were victorious in the civil war. There are no grounds for us to doubt that superiority in strategic leadership was on our side. In the last analysis, however, victory was ensured by the enthusiasm and self-sacrifice of the working-class vanguard and the support given by the peasant masses. But these conditions were not created by the Red Army – they were the historical preconditions for its rise, development and success.

Comrade Varin remarks, in the journal Voyennaya Nauka i Revolyutsiya [8], that the mobility of our troops surpasses all historical precedents. This is a very interesting assertion. It would be desirable for it to be carefully verified. Unquestionably, the extraordinary speed of movement, requiring endurance and self-sacrifice, was conditioned by the army’s revolutionary spirit, by the élan that was contributed to it by the Communists. Here is an interesting exercise for the students of our Military Academy: to compare the marches of the Red Army, from the standpoint of distances covered, with other examples from history, particularly with the marches of the army of the Great French Revolution. On the other hand, a comparison should be made between these same factors as they existed among the Reds and the Whites in our civil war. When we advanced, they retreated, and vice versa. Did we actually show, on the average, greater endurance during marches, and to what extent was this one of the factors in our victory? It is incontestable that the Communist leaven was able to produce a superhuman exertion of strength in individual cases. But it would require a special investigation to determine whether the same result held for an entire campaign, in the course of which the limits of the organism’s physiological capacity could not but make themselves felt. Such an investigation does not, of course, promise to turn all strategy topsy-turvy. But it would undoubtedly enrich with some valuable factual data our knowledge of the nature of civil war and of the revolutionary army.

The endeavour to fix as laws and erect into dogmas those features of the Red Army’s strategy and tactics which were characteristic of it in the recent period could do a great deal of harm and could even prove fatal. It is possible to say in advance that operations by the Red Army on the continent of Asia – if they are destined to take place there – would of necessity be profoundly manoeuvring in character. Cavalry would have to play the most important, and in some cases even the one and only role. On the other hand, however, there can be no doubt that military operations in the Western theatre would be far more constrained. Operations conducted in territory with a different national composition and more densely populated, with a higher ratio between the number of troops and the given territory, would undoubtedly make the war more positional in character and would, in any case, confine freedom to manoeuvre within incomparably narrower limits.

Recognition that it was beyond the capacity of the Red Army to defend fortified positions (Tukhachevsky) sums up correctly, on the whole, the lessons of the past period, but it certainly cannot be taken as an absolute rule for the future. Defence of fortified positions requires fortress troops, or, more correctly, troops of a high level, welded by experience and confident in themselves. In the past period, we only began to accumulate this experience. Every individual regiment, and the army as a whole, were living improvisations. It was possible to ensure enthusiasm and élan, and this we achieved, but it was not possible to create artificially the necessary routine, the automatic solidarity, the confidence of neighbouring units that there would be mutual support between them. It is impossible to create tradition by decree. To some extent this does exist now, and we shall accumulate more and more as time goes by. We shall in this way establish the preconditions both for better conduct of manoeuvring operations and, if need arises, for positional operations too.

We must renounce attempts at building an absolute revolutionary strategy out of the elements of our limited experience of the three years of civil war, during which units of a particular quality fought under particular conditions. Clausewitz warned very well against this. ‘What could be more natural,’ he wrote [9], ‘than the fact that war of the French Revolution had its characteristic style, and what theory could have been expected to accommodate it? The danger is that this kind of style, developed out of a single case, can easily outlive the situation that gave rise to it: for conditions change imperceptibly. That danger is the very thing a theory should prevent by lucid, rational criticism. In 1806 the Prussian generals were under the sway of this methodism’, and so on. Alas! Prussian generals are not the only ones with an inclination towards methodism, that is, towards stereotypes and conventional patterns.
 

10. Offensive and Defensive in the Light of the Imperialist War

It is proclaimed that the second specific feature of revolutionary strategy is its aggressiveness. The attempt to build a doctrine on this foundation appears all the more one-sided in view of the fact that during the epoch preceding the world war the strategy of the offensive was cultivated in the by no means revolutionary general staffs and military academies of nearly all the major countries of Europe. Contrary to what Comrade Frunze writes [Art. cit. in Krasnaya Nov (Note by Trotsky)] the offensive was (and formally still remains to this day) the official doctrine of the French Republic. Jaurès fought tirelessly against the doctrinaires of the pure offensive, counterposing to it the pacifist doctrinairism of pure defence. A sharp reaction against the traditional official doctrine of the French general staff came as a result of the last war. It will not be without value to quote here two striking pieces of evidence. The French military journal the Revue militaire française (September 1, 1921, p.336) cites the following proposition, borrowed from the Germans and incorporated by the French general staff in 1913 in the Regulations for the conduct of operations by large units. ‘The lessons of the past,’ we read, ‘have borne their fruits: the French army, returning to its traditions, henceforth does not permit the conduct of operations in accordance with any law but that of the offensive.’ The journal goes on: ‘This law, introduced soon afterward into the regulations governing our general tactics and the tactics peculiar to each arm, was to dominate the teaching given both to our marshals-under-instruction and to our commanders, through conferences, practical exercises on maps or on the ground, and, finally, through the procedure called les grandes manoeuvres.’

’The result was,’ the journal continues, ‘a veritable infatuation with the famous law of the offensive, and anyone who ventured to propose an amendment in favo

Στο Medieval total war 2 και στο knights of honour γαμάνε οι Τεύτονες πάντως.

στο ΑοΕ είναι πολύ αργοί.

επίσης οι Τεύτονες Ιππότες είναι για τον πούτσο στο AoE, για πλάκα τους έχουν οι Μαμελούκοι.

Την καταντια της λευκης-και καλα υπερ-φυλης την ειδαμε και την βλεπουμε καθημερινα απο την ηθικη της κατρακυλα. Σε λιγο βλαμμενε δεν θα υπαρχει λευκη φυλη στην δυτικη ευρωπη. Ειτε σου αρεσει ειτε οχι οι μονες χωρες που κρατανε την φαση καθαρη ειναι αυτες του ανατολικου μπλοκ, της πρωην ΕΣΣΔ και το ισραηλ οποτε βικινγκς, κελτες, γαλατες, σαξωνες και σια μας εχουν αποχαιρετησει προ πολλου...
Το μελλον της λευκης φυλης βρισκεται στις αχανεις ρωσικες πεδιαδες

Mα και ιστορικά να το δεις, το Πνεύμα της Ευρώπης πάντα στις ρώσικες πεδιάδες ήταν.

Ποιος απώθησε μια και καλή τις Μογγολικές Ορδές στο Κουλίκοβο; Οι Γενοβέζοι που ακολουθούσαν τον Τζέγκις Χαν; ΟΧΙ. Ο Δημήτρης Ντονσκόι τους γάμησε και έσωσε την Ευρώπη.

Ποιος γλίτωσε την Ευρώπη από το κεμπάπ; Ο Πάπας ή η Μαρία Τερέζα; ΚΑΝΕΝΑΣ ΑΠΟ ΑΥΤΟΥΣ. Ο Ουνυάδης, ο Σκεντέρμπεης, ο Σοβιέσκι κι ο Σουβόροφ. Δηλαδή ένας Ούγγρος, ένας Αλβανός, ένας Πολωνός κι ένας Ρώσος.

Ποιος έσωσε για πολλά χρόνια ένα μεγάλο μέρος της Ευρώπης από την αμερικανοποίηση; Οι Αγγλογάλλοι; ΟΧΙ. Οι Ρώσοι το κάνανε μέχρι που έπεσε το τοίχος, και το κάνουν ακόμα προσπαθώντας να σώσουν τους Ουκρανούς από τη Σομαλοποίηση.

Ο Ναπολέων και ο Χίτλερ ΠΟΤΕ δεν έπρεπε να τα βάλουν με τους Ρώσους. Θα μπορούσαν μαζί να είχαν φτιάξει μια Ευρώπη χωρίς Αγγλία και χωρίς Αμερική. Αντίθετα προτίμησαν να μαλακιστούν με πολέμους στην Ανατολή.

Είπαμε. Επιστροφή Έβδομου Βασιλιά Χουντικού Τρομοκράτη (Νεμρώδ, Φαραώ Ραμσής, Αντίοχος Επιφανής, Τίτος Βεσπασιανός, Γιαζίντ ιμπν Μωαβία, Αδόλφος, Χ.Τ.) = τέλος του κόσμου.

Κι επειδή ο κόσμος σήμερα είναι για τον πούτσο, εγώ λέω να το επισπεύσουμε, να κάνουμε τον Χ.Τ. αντμίν και μετά να πεθάνουμε όλοι ευτυχισμένοι.

Η Λευκή Φυλή ήταν ασύγκριτα δυνατότερη, πλουσιότερη και υγιέστερη πριν στο Σφαχτερφραϊτούνγκ, παρά μετά. Ο κρατικισμός καταδίκασε την Ευρώπη σε οικονομικό μαρασμό και ανάλωσε όλες τις δημιουργικές δυνάμεις των Λευκών. Ο θεσμικός διαχωρισμός μεταξύ των κατανωλωτών φόρων και των παραγωγών φόρων γιγαντώθηκε τόσο πολύ που μετέτρεψε την Ευρώπη σε πεδιό εμφύλιας οικονομικής σύρραξης, η οποία διαδραματίζεται καθημερινά στη λυσσαλέα, ισοπεδωτική, καθόλα αντιλαϊκή επίθεση των υπαλλήλων του Κράτους ενάντια στον παραγωγό και το δράμα του παραγωγού στην ολοένα και πιο ανέλπιδη απόπειρά του να επιβιώσει και να ευημερήσει, σε τέτοιο βαθμό που έχει εξανεμίσει πλέον πλήρως κάθε ίχνος ανωτερότητας της Λευκής Φυλής έναντι των υπολοίπων.

Αυτό που γιορτάζεις είναι η απαρχή και διαδικασία παρακμής της Λευκής Φυλής και της Ευρώπης, άσχετα αν το συνειδητοποιείς ή όχι...

και τι σε χαλάει, εσένα τον αμερικανοεβραίο, η παρακμή της Ευρώπης;

ΣΗΜΕΡΑ ΠΟΥ Ο ΜΕΓΑΣ ΗΓΕΤΗΣ ΑΝΔΡΕΑΣ ΠΑΠΑΝΔΡΕΟΥ ΕΧΕΙ ΓΕΝΕΘΛΙΑ, Ο ΧΙΤΗΣ ΠΡΕΠΕΙ ΝΑ ΓΥΡΙΣΕΙ ΣΤΟ ΝΑΟ

ΤΟΝ ΚΑΛΩ ΝΑ ΕΠΙΣΤΡΕΨΕΙ ΚΑΙ ΝΑ ΦΩΝΑΖΟΥΜΕ ΜΑΖΙ "ΣΕΙΣΜΟΣ ΣΕΙΣΜΟΣ ΣΟΣΙΑΛΙΣΜΟΣ" ΜΑΖΙ ΜΕ 1.000.000 ΚΟΣΜΟ ΟΠΩΣ ΤΟΤΕ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxtq6rapkO4

Έφτασε πάλι η μέρα εκείνη που ο εθνικιστικός χώρος αναγκάζεται να φάει στη μάπα όλη την ελληνοκιτσαρία. Κάθε χρόνο ο πιθηκομούρης Μιχαλολιάκος βάζει όλα τα πρόβατά του να "τιμήσουν τους νεκρούς των Ιμίων".

Αν ήταν μόνο για το μαντρί του κυπατζορουφιάνου, δε θα μας ένοιαζε. Το θέμα όμως είναι ότι παρασύρονται από αυτή τη μαλακία πολλοί ανένταχτοι εθνικιστές, και λένε σοβαρά ότι η 30ή Ιανουαρίου είναι "η μέρα των Ιμίων".

Αυτό έχει ως αποτέλεσμα όλο και περισσότεροι εθνικιστές να ξεχνούν ότι η 30ή Ιανουαρίου ήταν γιορτή για μας πολύ πριν τα Ίμια. Και δυστυχώς ξεχνούν ότι αυτό που γιορτάζαμε και πρέπει να γιορτάζουμε αυτή τη μέρα, είναι το κοσμοϊστορικό γεγονός του MACHTERGREIFUNG, η μέρα δηλαδή της απελευθέρωσης της Γερμανίας από τον ιμπεριαλιστικό ζυγό και της μετεξέλιξής της σε ανεξάρτητο Εθνικολαϊκό Σοσιαλιστικό Κράτος. Το γεγονός αυτό είχε και έχει τεράστια σημασία για την Ευρώπη, τον κόσμο, και κάθε απελευθερωτικό κίνημα κάθε έθνους, μιας και αποτελεί τη φωτεινή πυξίδα για όλους όσους επιδιώκουν την αποτίναξη της εβραϊκής πλουτοκρατίας, η οποία και σήμερα, όπως και τότε, κατατυραννεί τα έθνη και τους λαούς.

Αντίθετα, το γεγονός των Ιμίων, ήταν απλά μια ήσσονος σημασίας ψευδοσύγκρουση δυο προτεκτοράτων της Αμερικής, που τελικά λύθηκε όταν και τα δύο προτεκτοράτα συμφώνησαν ότι το status quo πρέπει να διατηρηθεί όπως γουστάρει ο Κλίντον, και δεν άλλαξε τίποτα στην πορεία του κόσμου, ούτε της Ευρώπης, ούτε της Ανατολικής Μεσογείου, ούτε καν της Ελλάδας.

Ο πιθηκομούρης εβραιόδουλος κυπατζής Μιχαλολιάκος, λοιπόν, παλεύει για να κάνει τον εθνικιστικό χώρο να ξεχάσει το Machtergreifung, αλλά όλοι οι εθνικιστές πρέπει να διαλαλούν χωρίς φόβο ότι στις 30 Ιανουαρίου δεν κλαίνε για "τους νεκρούς των Ιμίων" αλλά για το ότι τελικά το ιδεώδες της Λευκής Φυλής, που ενσαρκώθηκε από τις 30 Ιανουαρίου 1933 στην Ε/Σ Γερμανία, δε στέφθηκε από τη νίκη των λαών απέναντι στον εβραϊσμό. Ναι, γι' αυτό υπάρχει λόγος να θρηνούμε, όχι για τον κάθε ιστορικά ασήμαντο ναυτάκο του Ρωμέικου. Και για το Machtergreifung υπάρχει λόγος να γιορτάζουμε, γιατί θα μας δείχνει πάντα το δρόμο για την τελική επικράτηση, όσο κι αν οι εβραίοι και ο Μιχαλολιάκος παλεύουν για να μας κάνουν να το ξεχάσουμε.

ΣΤ' ΑΡΧΙΔΙΑ ΜΑΣ ΟΙ 3 ΥΠΑΛΛΗΛΟΙ ΤΟΥ ΑΝΘΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΟΥ ΚΡΑΤΟΥΣ ΠΟΥ ΨΟΦΗΣΑΝ ΥΠΗΡΕΤΩΝΤΑΣ ΤΟ. ΣΚΑΤΑ ΣΤΟΥΣ ΤΑΦΟΥΣ ΤΟΥΣ.

ΔΟΞΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΙΜΗ ΣΤΑ ΗΡΩΙΚΑ SA, SS ΚΑΙ FREIKORPS ΠΟΥ ΕΠΕΣΑΝ ΜΑΧΟΜΕΝΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ 1918 ΩΣ ΤΟ 1933 ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΑΠΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΩΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΓΕΡΜΑΝΙΑΣ, ΚΑΙ ΣΤΑ ΕΚΑΤΟΜΜΥΡΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΛΕΥΚΩΝ ΣΤΡΑΤΙΩΤΩΝ ΠΟΥ ΕΠΕΣΑΝ ΠΟΛΕΜΩΝΤΑΣ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΕΥΡΩΠΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟΥ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ ΤΑ ΧΡΟΝΙΑ 1939-1945.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/nietzsche/1886/beyond-good-evil/index.htm

μόνο η εθνικοσοσιαλιστική πουτινική Ρωσία δε θα απειληθεί ποτέ από τους λαθρομετανάστες.

Γενικά αυτοί είναι ένας άλλος κόσμος. Όταν το 1929 όλοι οι άλλοι είχαν οικονομική κρίση, αυτοί είχαν ανάπτυξη. Τώρα που όλοι οι άλλοι βλέπουν τους αράπηδες να μπουκάρουν, αυτοί είναι εντελώς απαλλαγμένοι από αυτό. Κάτι πρέπει να έχουν κάνει σωστά αυτοί για να πάνε πάντα στον αντίθετο δρόμο από αυτόν που πάει η Δύση.

το λένε συχνά τα σταλίνια αυτό. Οποτε τους ρωτήσω για την κουλτουρα της εσσδ, ποιητές, σκηνοθέτες, μουσικούς κτλ, μουγκα στην στρούγκα.

και στην αποκάτω ακριβώς παράγραφο αναφέρει 3 τσαρικούς (Γκλίνκα, Τσαϊκόφσκι, Ρέπιν) σαν "δικούς μας". Φυσικά το "δικοί μας" πάει στο ότι είναι Ρώσοι, όχι ότι είναι κομμουνιστές. Ο εθνικιστής Ζντάνοφ γούσταρε τους παλιούς, προ-επαναστατικούς Ρώσους καλλιτέχνες, αλλά λογόκρινε συνεχώς τους κομμουνιστές Προκόφιεφ, Αϊζενστάιν, Σοστακόβιτς κλπ.

Γενικά οι ομιλίες του Ζντάνοφ τα χρόνια 1947-48 έχουν καθαρά εθνικό χαρακτήρα "η δική μας κουλτούρα (ρώσικη) είναι καλύτερη από την αμερικάνικη" και από κοντά "η δική μας κουλτούρα (εργατική) είναι καλύτερα από την αστική".

Προλεταριακός εθνικισμός FTW.

Ο Ζντάνοφ στην Πράβντα (29-6-1939) εξηγεί την ευθύνη των Αγγλογάλλων για τον πόλεμο που έρχεται.


ENGLISH AND FRENCH GOVERNMENTS DO NOT WANT AN EQUAL TREATY WITH THE USSR

The Anglo-French-Soviet talks for the conclusion of an effective pact of mutual assistance against aggression, are in a stalemate. Despite the absolute clarity of the position of the Soviet government, despite all the efforts of the Soviet government to the rapid conclusion of the mutual assistance pact, we see no progress in more or less significant in the progress of the talks.

This fact can not but have a serious meaning in the current international situation. It revived the hopes of the aggressors and the enemies of peace, to derail the agreement between democratic states against aggression, it pushes the attackers to a broader development of aggression.

In this respect, a question arises: where lies the cause of the delay in the talks, including the favorable completion which is eagerly awaited and expected by all peace-loving peoples, by all the friends of peace?

Allow me to express a personal opinion on this, although my friends did not agree with me. They continue to consider that starting talks for mutual assistance pact with the USSR, the British and French governments had the serious intention to develop a powerful barrier against aggression in Europe.

I think and I will try to prove by facts, that the British and French governments do not want to be treated as equals with the USSR, that is to say the only kind of treaty that can accept a State respectable - and precisely this circumstance is the cause of stagnation of the state where the talks are.

What are these facts? The Anglo-Soviet talks in the direct sense of the term, that is to say from the moment the first English proposals were submitted on 15 April were already going on for 75 days, of which 16 days were spent by the Soviet government to prepare the response to the different English proposals and other 59 days were employed by the British and the French to slow down and drag it out. One wonders who carries, in this case, the responsibility, the fact that the talks are progressing so slowly, if not the English and the French?

The practice of international agreements, similar to the Anglo-Franco-Soviet agreement shows that England has signed a mutual assistance pact with Turkey and with Poland in a short time. It follows that when England desired the treaty with Turkey and Poland, she knew how to ensure desirable pace in conducting talks.

These endless unacceptable procrastinations and delays in the talks with the USSR are making us doubt the sincerity of the true intentions of England and France, and force us to ask the question what is precisely the basis of such a policy: serious aspirations to ensure the front Peace or desire to use these talks and the delay of the talks for some other purposes that have nothing to do with the work of creating a peaceful powers front.

Such questions arise, especially since during the talks the British and French governments piled artificial difficulties, created an appearance of serious disagreements between Britain and France on the one hand, and the USSR on the other, on issues that could be resolved without delays and without obstacles, provided a good will and sincere intentions of England and France.

We know, for example, that such a "stumbling block", artificially conceived in the talks is the question of the guarantee by the three powers of immediate assistance to Latvia, Estonia and Finland, If their neutrality would be violated by the aggressors; allegations that the Baltic states mentioned they do not want this guarantee and that these so-called circumstances prevent England and France from accepting the Soviet proposals are obviously inconsistent and can not be dictated by none other than the sole intention of making talks fail.

In any case, we know the facts testifying that when England considers itself interested in ensuring any country, it imakes any pact without waiting for the country to require guarantees for them.

English newspaper The Sunday Times wrote in its issue of June 4 that "Poland expressed its consent in case Britain would be driven to war in connection with the aggression against Holland, to help Britain, on the other hand, Britain has agreed to assist Poland in case it would be driven to war with an attack against Danzig or Lithuania. "

Thus it follows that the UK can simultaneously guarantee Poland, Lithuania and Holland. I do not know if Lithuania and Holland were asked their opinion on this bilateral guarantee - in any case there was no article on this in the press - but Holland and Lithuania deny having requested this guarantee. However, the bilateral pact guaranteeing these countries is already concluded according to the Sunday Times.

It was not long ago, when the Polish Foreign Minister, Beck, interviewed by a French journalist, said, among other things, unequivocally, that Poland demanded nothing, asked nothing about guarantees from the USSR and was fully satisfied by the fact that a recently concluded trade agreement existed between Poland and the USSR.

So what in the position of Poland is different, in this case, from the position of the governments of the three Baltic States? Absolutely nothing. This does not prevent England and France to demand of the USSR guarantees not only for Poland, but for the other four states which we do not know if they want to have a guarantee from the USSR, and also a guarantee for Holland and Switzerland with which the USSR does not even have simple diplomatic relations.

All these facts show that the English and the French do not want a treaty with the USSR based on the principle of equality and reciprocity; although they swear every day to "equality," they want a treaty where the USSR plays the compact loader role and bears alone all the weight of engagement.

However, no self-respecting country would accept such a treaty if it does not want to be a toy in the hands of people who like to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them by others. A fortiori, such a treaty can not be accepted by the USSR whose strength, power and dignity are known worldwide. It seems to me that the English and the French do not want a real treaty, acceptable to the USSR, but only conversations about a treaty, to speculate on the alleged intransigence of the USSR before public opinion in their country and make easier the path of compromise with the assailants. The next few days should show whether this is so or not.

http://www.jrbooksonline.com/pdf_books/bolshevism_from_moses_to_lenin.pdf

συγκλονιστικά! Θα τα ακουσω ολα! Mια ερώτηση, ο ξαναζεσταμενος σανός μετά απο 100 χρόνια εχει ιδια διατροφική αξια με την άμεση κατανάλωση;

δεν ξέρω, εσύ κάτι παραπάνω θα ξες από σανό τόσα χρόνια στο islandanarchy.

Πάουλ φον Χίντενμπουργκ - Ευχαριστήρια ομιλία στους στρατιώτες του μετά το Τάνενμπεργκ (9-1914)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1914-09-xx%20-%20Paul%20von%20Hindenburg%20-%20Dankrede%20an%20die%20Soldaten%20der%208.%20Armee%20nach%20der%20Schlacht%20von%20Tannenberg%20(1m%2018s).mp3

Φίλιπ Σάιντεμαν - Προκήρυξη της Δημοκρατίας (9-11-1918)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1918-11-09%20-%20Philipp%20Scheidemann%20-%20Ausrufung%20der%20Republik%20(4m%2002s).mp3

Γκούσταφ Νόσκε - Για την κατάπνιξη της κομμουνιστικής επανάστασης (1-1919)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1919-01-xx%20-%20Gustav%20Noske%20-%20Rechenschaftsbericht%20ueber%20die%20Niederschlagung%20des%20Spartakusaufstands%20(3m%2000s).mp3

Ερνστ Τέλμαν - Ομιλία στη Μόσχα (15-2-1928)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1928-02-15%20-%20Ernst%20Thaelmann%20(KPD)%20-%20Ansprache%20in%20Moskau%20(2m%2006s).mp3

Γιόζεφ Γκέμπελς - Ομιλία στο Ράιχσταγκ (5-2-1931)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1931-02-05%20-%20Joseph%20Goebbels%20-%20Reichstagsrede%20(3m%2021s).mp3

Βάλτερ Ούλμπριχτ - Ομιλία στο Ράιχσταγκ (23-2-1923)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1932-02-23%20-%20Walter%20Ulbricht%20(KPD)%20-%20Reichstagsrede%20(4m%2006s).mp3

Βίλχελμ Πικ - Ομιλία στο Ράιχσταγκ (9-5-1932)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1932-05-09%20-%20Wilhelm%20Pieck%20(KPD)%20-%20Reichstagsrede%20-%20Dieser%20Staat%20muss%20zertruemmert%20werden%20(5m%2000s).mp3

Χέρμαν Γκέρινγκ - Ομιλία στο Ράιχσταγκ ενάντια στο νόμο που έθετε εκτός νόμου τα SA (10-5-1932)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1932-05-10%20-%20Hermann%20Goering%20im%20Reichstag%20zum%20SA-SS-Verbot%20(1m%2008s).mp3

Αδόλφος Χίτλερ - Έκκληση στο Έθνος (15-7-1932)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1932-07-15%20-%20Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Appell%20an%20die%20Nation%20(8m%2010s).mp3

Κλάρα Τσέτκιν και Χέρμαν Γκέρινγκ - Ομιλίες στο Ράιχσταγκ (30-8-1932)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1932-08-30%20-%20Hermann%20Goering%20und%20Clara%20Zetkin%20-%20Reden%20im%20deutschen%20Reichstag%20(6m%2021s).mp3

Αδόλφος Χίτλερ - Πρώτη ομιλία σαν Καγκελάριος (1-2-1933)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1933-02-01%20-%20Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Aufruf%20an%20das%20deutsche%20Volk%20(13m%2019s).mp3

Πάουλ φον Χίντενμπουργκ - Η τελευταία του ομιλία στο γερμανικό λαό (11-11-1933)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1933-11-11%20-%20Paul%20von%20Hindenburg%20-%20Aufruf%20an%20das%20deutsche%20Volk%20zur%20Neuwahl%20(5m%2040s).mp3

Ρόμπερτ Λάι - Για τα συνδικάτα (16-5-1934)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1934-05-16%20-%20Robert%20Ley%20auf%20dem%202.%20Kongress%20der%20DAF%20in%20Berlin%20-%20Auszug%20(2m%2015s).mp3

Ρούντολφ Ες - Ομιλία στην Κολωνία ενάντια στους εχθρούς του καθεστώτος, πριν τη Νύχτα των Μεγάλων Μαχαιριών (25-6-1934)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1934-06-25%20-%20Rudolf%20Hess%20-%20Warnung%20an%20die%20Anhaenger%20der%202.%20Revolution%20(25m%2020s).mp3

Ανακοίνωση του Γερμανικού Ραδιοφώνου για το "πραξικόπημα του Ρεμ" (1-7-1934)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1934-07-xx%20-%20Deutscher%20Rundfunk%20-%20Kommentar%20nach%20der%20Niederschlagung%20des%20Roehm-Putsches%20(43s).mp3

Γιόζεφ Γκέμπελς - Ομιλία στη Νυρεμβέργη κατά μπολσεβικισμού (10-9-1936)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1936-09-10%20-%20Joseph%20Goebbels%20-%20Rede%20gegen%20den%20Bolschewismus%20auf%20dem%20Nuernberger%20Parteitag%20(1m%2055s).mp3

Κουρτ φον Σούσνιγκ - Τελευταία ομιλία σαν Καγκελάριος της Αυστρίας (11-3-1938)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1938-03-11%20-%20Kurt%20Schuschnigg%20-%20Erklaerung%20zum%20bevorstehenden%20Einmarsch%20deutscher%20Truppen%20(2m%2048s).mp3

Ραδιοφωνική ανακοίνωση για τη Νύχτα των Κρυστάλλων (10-11-1938)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1938-11-10%20-%20Rundfunkreportage%20'Reichskristallnacht%20in%20Wien'%20(2m%2019s).mp3

Ραδιοφωνική ανακοίνωση της εισόδου του γερμανικού στρατού στην Τσεχοσλοβακία (15-3-1939)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1939-03-14%20-%20Deutscher%20Rundfunk%20-%20Bericht%20von%20der%20Besetzung%20von%20Boehmen%20und%20Maehren%20durch%20deutsche%20Truppen%20(4m%2024s).mp3

Άλφρεντ Ρόζενμπεργκ - Αντιχριστιανική ομιλία στο Πότσδαμ (23-6-1939)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1939-06-23%20-%20Alfred%20Rosenberg%20-%20In%20Potsdam%20ueber%20das%20Christentum%20-%20Ausschnitt%201%20(1m%2056s).mp3

Αδόλφος Χίτλερ - Ομιλία την ημέρα της έναρξης του γερμανοπολωνικού πολέμου (1-9-1939)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1939-09-01%20-%20Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Reichstagsrede%20-%20Kriegserklaerung%20an%20Polen%20(35m%2003s).mp3

Αδόλφος Χίτλερ - Ομιλία στο Ντάντσιχ (19-9-1939)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1939-09-19%20-%20Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Rede%20im%20Artushof%20in%20Danzig%20(1h%2002m).mp3

Ιωακείμ φον Ρίμπεντροπ - Ομιλία στο Ντάντσιχ (24-10-1939)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1939-10-24%20-%20Joachim%20von%20Ribbentrop%20-%20Rede%20in%20Danzig%20zur%20Kriegsschuldfrage%20-%20Vorrede%20von%20Albert%20Forster%20(1h%2015m).mp3

Bίλχελμ Κάιτελ - Για τη νίκη επί της Γαλλίας (24-6-1940)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1940-06-24%20-%20Wilhelm%20Keitel%20-%20Ueber%20den%20Friedensvertrag%20mit%20Frankreich%20(2m%2016s).mp3

Xέρμαν Γκέρινγκ - Για την ήττα στη μάχη της Αγγλίας (7-9-1940)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1940-09-07%20-%20Deutscher%20Rundfunk%20-%20Hermann%20Goering%20ueber%20die%20Erwiderung%20der%20britischen%20Luftangriffe%20(2m%2012s).mp3

Αδόλφος Χίτλερ - Αντικαπιταλιστική ομιλία (10-12-1940)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1940-12-10%20-%20Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Vor%20den%20Arbeitern%20der%20Borsigwerke%20(1h%2035m).mp3

Xάινριχ Χίμλερ - Για τα ολλανδικά SS (1941)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1941-xx-xx%20-%20Heinrich%20Himmler%20-%20Aufnahme%20neuer%20Rekruten%20in%20die%20niederlaendische%20Waffen-SS%20(4m%2057s).mp3

Ρούντολφ Ες - Τελευταία ομιλία (1-5-1941)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1941-05-01%20-%20Rudolf%20Hess%20-%20Ansprache%20an%20die%20Arbeiter%20des%20Messerschmittwerkes%20in%20Augsburg%20(15m%2052s).mp3

Γιόζεφ Γκέμπελς - Πόλεμος με την ΕΣΣΔ (22-6-1941)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1941-06-22%20-%20Joseph%20Goebbels%20-%20Verlesung%20der%20Fuehrerproklamation%20zum%20Angriff%20auf%20die%20Sowjetunion%20(2m%2057s).mp3

Αδόλφος Χίτλερ - Η βεβαιότητα της νίκης στο Στάλινγκραντ (8-11-1942)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1942-11-08%20-%20Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Rede%20im%20Muenchner%20Loewenbraeukeller%20(59m%2007s).mp3

Τόμας Μανν - Στο BBC κατά εθνικοσοσιαλισμού (18-1-1943)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1943-01-18%20-%20BBC%20-%20Thomas%20Mann%20-%20'Nationalsozialismus%20-%20das%20heisst%20die%20Loesung%20der%20sozialen%20Frage%20durch%20Krieg'%20(1m%2029s).mp3

Γερμανική Ραδιοφωνία - Η παράδοση της 6ης Στρατιάς στο Στάλινγκραντ (3-2-1943)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1943-02-03%20-%20Deutscher%20Rundfunk%20(OKW)%20-%20Kapitulation%20der%206.%20Armee%20(1m%2042s).mp3

Ραδιοφωνικός σταθμός Μόσχας - Η παράδοση της 6ης Στρατιάς στο Στάλινγκραντ (3-2-1943)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1943-02-xx%20-%20Moskauer%20Rundfunk%20in%20deutscher%20Sprache%20ueber%20die%20Kapitulation%20der%206.%20Armee%20und%20Generalfeldmarschall%20Friedrich%20Paulus%20(44s).mp3

Γιόζεφ Γκέμπελς - Ολοκληρωτικός Πόλεμος (18-2-1943)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1943-02-18%20-%20Joseph%20Goebbels%20-%20Rede%20im%20Berliner%20Sportpalast%20(1h%2048m).mp3

Σοβιετική Ραδιοφωνία - Νίκη στο Κουρσκ (12-7-1943)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1943-07-12%20-%20Sowjetischer%20Rundfunk%20(NKFD)%20-%20Propagandasendung%20gegen%20Deutschland%20(2m%2000s).mp3

Αδόλφος Χίτλερ - Για την παράδοση της Ιταλίας (10-9-1943)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1943-09-10%20-%20Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Zur%20Kapitulation%20Italiens%20(57s).mp3

Χάινριχ Χίμλερ - Ομιλία στο Πόζναν για την εξόντωση των Εβραίων (4-10-1943)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1943-11-18%20-%20Heinrich%20Himmler%20-%20Ansprache%20vor%20neuen%20SS-Fuehrern%20im%20Generalgouvernement%20(52m%2004s).mp3

Αδόλφος Χίτλερ - Μήνυμα στο γερμανικό λαό μετά την απόπειρα (20-7-1944)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1944-07-20%20-%20Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Ansprache%20an%20das%20deutsche%20Volk%20nach%20dem%20Attentatsversuch%20(2m%2024s).mp3

Φρίντριχ φον Πάουλους - Λαός και Στρατός (8-12-1944)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1944-12-08%20-%20Ausschnitt%20aus%20dem%20Aufruf%20von%20Generalfeldmarschall%20Friedrich%20Paulus%20an%20'Volk%20und%20Wehrmacht'%20ueber%20den%20Sender%20des%20NKFD%20(1m%2034s).mp3

Αδόλφος Χίτλερ - Τελευταία ομιλία (
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1945-01-30%20-%20Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Letzte%20Ansprache%20am%2012.%20Jahrestag%20der%20Machtuebernahme%20(16m%2058s).mp3

Γιόζεφ Γκέμπελς - Τελευταία ομιλία (21-4-1945)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1945-04-21%20-%20Joseph%20Goebbels%20-%20Letzte%20Rede%20-%20Aufruf%20an%20die%20Berliner%20Bevoelkerung%20zum%20Kampf%20(2m%2043s).mp3

Γερμανική Ραδιοφωνία - Ανακοίνωση του θανάτου του Φύρερ (1-5-1945)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1945-05-01%20-%20Deutscher%20Rundfunk%20(OKW)%20-%20Der%20Fuehrer%20ist%20gefallen%20-%20Regierungsuebernahme%20durch%20Karl%20Doenitz%20(3m%2047s).mp3

Καρλ Ντένιτς - Διάγγελμα στο γερμανικό λαό (1-5-1945)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1945-05-01%20-%20Deutscher%20Rundfunk%20-%20Karl%20Doenitz,%20Hitlers%20Nachfolger,%20mit%20seiner%20Rede%20an%20das%20deutsche%20Volk%20(4m%2006s).mp3

Γερμανική Ραδιοφωνία - Ανακοίνωση παράδοσης, τέλος πολέμου (9-5-1945)
http://nsl-archive.tv/Tontraeger/Reden/Bis-1945/1945-05-09%20-%20Deutscher%20Rundfunk%20-%20Letzter%20Wehrmachtsbericht%20(2m%2044s).mp3

Για να μην παρεξηγηθώ, κι εγώ θεωρώ τον Αλέκο μέσα στους 8 καλύτερους στρατιωτικούς διοικητές στην ιστορία (μαζί με Καίσαρα, Ναπολέοντα, Ταμερλάνο, Τζένγκις Χαν, Σουμπουτάι, Αννίβα και Χαλίντ ιμπν Ουαλίντ). Αλλά δεν τον βάζω πάνω από κανέναν από αυτούς. Ίσως 7ος ή 8ος, πρώτος όμως με την καμία.

Το hype γύρω από τον Αλέκο υπάρχει για τον απλούστατο λόγο ότι ανήκει στο δυτικό κόσμο. Για κάθε δυτικό ιστοριογράφο, ο Αλέκος είναι ο δικός μας. Ο Αννίβας είναι εχθρός επειδή τα έβαλε με τη Ρώμη, για τους άλλους δεν το συζητώ καν, αυτοί είναι "βάρβαροι κατακτητές" και τους βάζουμε πάντα κάτω από τους δικούς μας, ή δεν τους βάζουμε καθόλου. Διότι ο δυτικός άνθρωπος δε μπορεί να χωνέψει ότι ο εκλεπτυσμένος μαθητής του Αριστοτέλη μπορεί να υστερεί σε πολεμικές αρετές από τον τοξότη της στέππας ή τον καμηλιέρη της αραβικής ερήμου.

Για τον ίδιο λόγο η δυτική ιστοριογραφία αγκαλιάζει τον Γκουντέριαν (και καλά κάνει), αλλά αγνοεί τον Γιακίρ. Τον Γιακίρ, για τις καινοτομίες του οποίου με τα τανκς τη δεκαετία του 1920 και το 1930 παραμιλούσε η Ευρώπη:

In 1935, Yakir conducted military maneuvers in Kiev, with the Kiev and Kharkov military districts' forces.[citation needed] The major aim of these maneuvers was to test the theory of deep operations and the latest technology. A total of 65,000 troops, including 1,888 paratroopers, 1,200 tanks and 600 aircraft participated in these maneuvers. These were first maneuvers in the world that used combined operations of large tank, airforce and airborne formations. The troops acted along a front of 250 metres (0 mi) and a depth of 200 metres (0 mi). The representatives of major world armies attended the maneuvers. The British General Archibald Wavell reported to his government, "If I had not witnessed this myself I would never have believed such an operation possible."[citation needed] The German Wehrmacht copied Soviet innovations in preparation for World War II.

O δε Χίντενμπουργκ παρασημοφόρησε ο ίδιος με τιμές τον Γιακίρ το 1929 όταν αυτός αποφοίτησε από τη γερμανική ακαδημία Πολέμου:

At the end of the course Hindenburg handled of a copy of Cannae, the famous military treatise of Alfred von Schlieffen to Yakir with the following written dedication: "To Herr Yakir, one of the most talented commanders present"

M. V. Frunze
"Unified Military Doctrine and the Red Army" (1921), from Izbrannye proizvedenie (Moscow, 1940), originally published in Armiia i revoliutsiia, # 1 (July 1921).

Translation copyright David R. Stone 2006, revised 2012.

One of the most important questions attracting the attention of our contemporary military thought is the question of the so-called "unified military doctrine."

It has served as a subject for lively discussion in articles a series of military specialists placed in the pages of the now-defunct journal "Military Affairs"; army personnel have approached this question earnestly, as witnessed by the proceedings of many military conferences shedding light on the questions of reorganization of the Red Army.

All this speaks of the presence of the deep theoretical and practical interest aroused by this question. But, unfortunately, the matter has not yet moved further than simple interest, for up to this time we have not only not attempted the systematic study of our military doctrine, but the very contents of that concept are to a sufficient degree cloudy and indeterminate.

In particular, the articles of our old military specialists have brought to light disagreement in opinions and views. It's gone literally according to the proverb: "so many heads means so many opinions." As recognized by the leading representatives of the military world, it turns out that our old general staff does not hold any kind of determined views on this basic question of military theory, and even more than that, there is no clear conception of what the very question substantively consists of--the skill to properly pose it is lacking.

This fact, which speaks above all to the extremely thin military-theoretical resources which we have inherited from the old army, could lead to sad ruminations on the chances for further efforts in that direction. We need to recognize, doubtlessly, that there is some foundation for those kind of fears, but only some.

It's worth remembering the social-political situation in which our (19) old comrades in military affairs developed and worked out their thinking. In the atmosphere of an autocratic police state, which suppressed any social and personal initiative, against a background of our general economic and political backwardness, under the extremely ingrained habits and views in all spheres of social activity, of course one couldn't speak of some kind of broad scholarly creativity.

All these deformities appear especially sharply in the state of our military affairs, where inquisitive thought was relentlessly nipped in the bud and initiative was undercut. Therefore one cannot objectively blame the old General Staff for that confusion and helplessness it displayed on a series of questions. Nevertheless, a fact remains a fact, and all those who hold the interests of our Soviet republic dear and want to see the further development and strengthening of its military power must take it into account.

We think that on the basis of newly created social relations, in a situation not only allowing but directly demanding from each honest citizen maximal energy and initiative, that our military theory will be able to develop quickly and grow stronger as well. We think that in the midst of the old General Staff we will find more than a few workers capable of tearing from their spiritual selves the clothes of the Old Testament Adam, not able to think differently than within the bounds of narrow frames and habits presented by a bourgeois worldview, steeped in a spirit of philistine dullness and stagnation.

The basic condition for fruitful work by our old specialists consists of this ability to rid themselves of the remains of old routines, to understand all the complexities of the destruction of the old world going on around us, to take up the point of view of the new social classes moving into the arena of life. The practical experience many of them received in the ranks of the Red Army will give sufficient material for this task.

All this, taken together with the activity of the newly-spread wings of the young generation of our military workers, moving up during the period of revolutionary wars from the lower ranks of the population, gives complete assurance that in the near future the business of analyzing our military experience will move forward along with the working out of those unified views which must serve as a basis for the Red Army's training and the absence of which we now painfully feel from the top to the bottom of the Red Army.

This article presented for the reader's attention is an attempt to raise the question of a "unified military doctrine" from the point of view of the interests of a workers' state and revolution and to sketch as an example a path which, it seems to us, the resolution of the problem must follow. (20)

II.

Before all else, what exactly do we mean by "unified military doctrine"? What is the practical meaning of this idea?

An answer to this question is already evident from the most superficial look at the essence of contemporary wars, the character of current military tasks and the conditions of their resolution.

Wars of the current historical period in comparison with previous epochs have a whole series of characteristic features. In previous times the outcomes of armed clashes depended on comparatively small groups of the population, or on defined and formed standing formations who considered war their profession, or on those temporarily included in the ranks of troops for these goals. Now, however, the participants of war are whole nations almost to a man. It's not thousands and tens of thousands fighting, but whole millions--wars themselves draw into their sphere and decisively subordinate all sides of social life, and drag in without exception state and social interests. The theater of military operations is no longer a narrowly bounded space, but a huge territory with tens and hundreds of millions of inhabitants; technical means of struggle are endlessly developing and becoming more complex, creating newer and newer categories of specialties, types of arms, and so on and so forth.

Under these conditions, the basic demand of military art and science--the cohesiveness of the general plan and strong coordination in its conduct--could indeed be left hanging. While in previous wars the commander's direct leadership of individual units of the overall formation was a normal occurrence, now there can be no talk of that. Meanwhile unity, wholeness, and agreement are needed more than at any previous time. And they are needed not only in the period when military operations have already developed, but also at that time when preliminary preparations for those operations are going on, for, as a general rule, this preparatory work both by the state as a whole and its military apparatus in particular will play a decisive role. The state must determine in advance the character of general policy and, in particular, military policy, while noting correspondingly possible objects of its military exertions, working out and establishing a specific plan of general state activities, taking into account future clashes and preparing their tasks in advance by a propitious use of national energy.

As for the military apparatus, it must take the organizational form most demanded by the general state aims, based on the general state program, and by further work create a strong unity of all the armed forces, connecting them from top to bottom by a commonality of views on both the character (21) of military tasks themselves, and on the means of their resolution.

This work on developing unity of thought and will in the ranks of the army is an affair extraordinarily complex and difficult and can succeed only when it is completed methodically [planomerno], on the basis of the situation precisely formulated and sanctioned by the general opinion of the class ruling the country.

From what has been said above, it's clear that the study of "unified military doctrine" has great practical significance for the Republic's entire military development. This study must, above all, indicate the character of those military clashes which await us. Should we prepare ourselves for the passive defense of the country, not setting or pursuing any kind of active assignments, or must we have those active tasks in mind? Military policy and the entire character of our armed forces' development, the character and system of training for individual soldiers and the largest formations, military-political propaganda and in general the country's entire system of education depends on the resolution one way or another of this question.

This study must absolutely be unified as an expression of the unified will of the social class in power.

Here is an illustrative list of general ideas and the practical tasks proceeding from them, all of which must be included in the understanding of "unified military doctrine."

It was already noted above that there is no more or less generally accepted and exact formulation of this concept in our military literature. But despite all the difference of opinion expressed on the concept of "unified military doctrine," the majority of the various formulations' basic points generally coincide. Based on what's been said above, these basic points may be divided into two categories: 1) technical and 2) political. The first consists of those concerning the organizational basis of the Red Army's development, the character of troops' military preparation, and methods of resolving military tasks. To the second relates the connection between the technical side of the armed forces' development with the general structure of state life, determining that social environment in which military work must take place, and the very character of military tasks.

In such a way, it's possible to propose this definition of "unified military doctrine": "unified military doctrine" is the instruction accepted in the army of a given state, establishing the character of the country's armed forces' development, troop training methods, their guidance on the basis of the state's ruling views on the character of military tasks lying before them, and the means of resolving those tasks, proceeding from the state's class essence and determined by the level of development of the country's productive forces. (22)

This formulation does not at all pretend to constructive finality and complete logical consistency. That is simply not the issue. What's important is the concept's basic content: its final crystallization is a matter for further practical and theoretical research.

III.

Having established the general logical content of "unified military doctrine," we will move now to the question of concrete practical content of this understanding in application to really-existing armies in various states.

In connection with this, it's especially interesting to pause on the example of three states which have sharply expressed outlines of a single military ideology (military doctrine), completely developed and embodied in precise form in their armed forces. I have in mind Germany, France, and England. We begin with the first.

Germany until very recently was the state with the most powerful military apparatus, a structured system of organization of its armed forces and a completely defined military ideology, unified for both the leading elements of the army and the entire country.

The basic line of German military doctrine in its technical part (i.e. strictly military) is an extremely sharply expressed aggressive spirit. The idea of activity, of striving to complete military tasks via energetic, brave, and unwavering offensive conduct permeates all German manuals and instructions for high commanders. This idea also determined the structure of the entire German military apparatus, emphasizing the resolution of operational problems and creating in the German General Staff a powerful and all-authoritative organ, managing all activities for military planning and troop training. All troop education and training went on in this tactically offensive spirit and in the final result prepared such a perfectly structured and prepared armed forces, that its preeminent combat qualities were revealed in full measure on the fields of the imperialist war's immense battles.

One asks: to what or to whom was Germany obliged for the presence of such qualitatively superior armed forces?

The first answer has already been given: Germany developed its army on the basis of a "unified military doctrine," constructed in correspondence with the tenets of the military art. But this is only a first answer. We must ask further: why did (23) the German army have such a doctrine, why was that doctrine inculcated from top to bottom, while at the same time in Russia, say, there was nothing similar, although Russia also doubtlessly possessed theoretical knowledge of the military art.

This question cannot be answered by pointing to the exceptional military gifts of German military figures, who supposedly by the strength of their genius discovered the secrets of victory and created the German military doctrine which raised their army to unattainable heights. Such an explanation is childishly naive, but one must take note of it, for some of our military specialists' articles consistently show attempts to link the essence of creating a military doctrine to the individually remarkable people's activities and talents of (see, for example, such a definition: "military doctrine is the prophetic voice of military genius" and similar nonsense.)

The basic outlines of German military doctrine are not at all an accident; they turn out to be wholly and completely a product of the general structure of German life in the period leading up to the imperialist war.

What in fact was the German Empire until 1914? It was an economically and politically powerful capitalist state with sharply expressed imperialist coloring, a state conducting an openly predatory policy, and, while relying on its material and cultural strengths, striving for world hegemony. The presence of strong competitors in the form of other imperialist countries (France, England, Russia, and others), which had historically created state-national unity earlier and successfully seized the best morsels of world resources, forced imperialist Germany to exert all its strength in the struggle for world position. The ruling bourgeois class in Germany subordinated the country's entire life to this basic state goal: victory over its competitors.

The press, the sciences, the arts, the schools, the army--all were organized and directed by the bourgeoisie to one goal. The bourgeois succeeded in corrupting and subordinating to its influence even significant layers of the German proletariat--a class which was objectively opposed to that predatory line of conduct taken by the bourgeoisie. And against this background, in this atmosphere of general admiration for the army and fleet, on the basis of the most active foreign policy, placing before the army defined offensive tasks, no other kind of German military doctrine could have been created besides that which we have before us. In the personnel of the German general staff and all the German army, in the very personality of Emperor Wilhelm as never before, all Germany reflected the self-satisfied burzhui [pejorative term for bourgeoisie] and landlords, sure in their strength and their ecstatic dreams of world power. "Germany over all"--that was the slogan which poisoned the consciousness of the majority of the German nation in the era of the imperialist war. And the German regiments were true to this slogan as well, assuredly following the principles of their doctrine, as they dashed in a shattering stream across the plains of Belgium in 1914.

The very first clashes with enemy armies showed the strategic and tactical correctness of the positions of German doctrine.

Such was the case with Germany. The conclusion one can made from it is the following: all the military affairs of a given state, up to and including training, on the basis of which are constructed its armed forces, are a reflection of the entire structure of its life, and, in the final analysis, its economic way of life, as a first source of all its strength and resources. The German generals would never have succeeded in creating their military doctrine, and even if it had been done, they would not have been able to inculcate it so thoroughly into the German army if the corresponding conditions of German life had not greeted it.

IV.

We move now to France.

This country also is a representative of predatory imperialism. Just as with the German bourgeoisie, France was always ready to seize foreign goods and acted in such circumstances no worse than "militarist" Germany. But in actuality the French bourgeoisie had significant differences from their eastern neighbors. In disputes with competitors over resources they lacked the open impudence and self-assurance which marked the German ruling clique. It is worth remembering only the conflicts of 1905, 1909, and 1911 with the very same Germany over Morocco and the cowardly, predatory, and wily policy which France followed in that case, clinging to the resources slipping from its hands and at the same time not having the decisiveness to start a dogfight.

This unique character of French foreign policy is determined in general by the economic and political position of the Third Republic. In its development, French industry had fallen far behind from the industries of other leading countries; the French population for a series of years had not grown, and the phrase "the population remains in a stationary position" became the usual characterization of the French population according to the data of the yearly statistical account. In place of the open seizure of foreign territory, accompanied by the risk of becoming tied up in a difficult struggle, French capital looked for different, calmer paths to the exploitation of foreign labor, widely looking for deals of any sort with foreign capital with a goal of a world division of resources. (25)

This spirit of the French bourgeoisie--opportunistic, unsure of itself and its strength, passive--determined the general character of French military doctrine. Regardless of the presence in the French army of the richest military traditions, beginning with the great Turenne (Henry de la Tour d'Auvergne) and ending with Napoleon, regardless of the shining examples of military art they had given in the spirit of brave, attacking strategies and tactics, the military doctrine of the armies of the Third Republic was inferior to Germany's. It was characterized by a lack of confidence in its strengths, an absence of broad offensive plans, an inability to bravely seek decision in battle, instead seeking to tie its will to the enemy and not considering the will of the latter. The positive content of the doctrine governing the French army in the most recent era essentially consisted of attempting to decipher the plan of the enemy, occupying for this purpose a temporizing position, and only with the clarification of the situation looking for decision in a general offensive. Such were the essential lines of French military doctrine, planting its impressions on the entire image of activities of the French army in the last war, especially in its first, maneuver period.

Here it is especially worth underlining that in their individual gifts French commanders were hardly any worse than German ones. Besides that, many of them theoretically sympathized not with their own doctrine, but in fact with German doctrine and its spirit of the greatest activity. Despite all that, they could not change the general spirit of the French Army, its entire internal structure, and the character of ruling views in it on the method of resolving military problems, since this was a product of more powerful factors than the strength of individual personalities.

In such a way, the example of France confirms all that we said on the question of doctrine in connection with Germany. The military structure of a given state, the character of view and outlooks in the military sphere, and finally the very content of principles of military affairs is determined by the entire structure of life of a given period and, in particular, the essence and character of that social class holding power at the given time.

As for England, its example is curious in that the geographical and historical particularities of its position directed the attention of its ruling classes not to ground forces, but to a navy. England was and is a primarily colonial power. The exploitation of colonies was the chief source for the enrichment of the British bourgeoisie, and the support of colonial rule was its greatest military task. In connection with this, the support of control of the sea acquired for English capital the significance of a question of life and death. The idea also became the basic, foremost principle of English military doctrine. This was concretely expressed in the formula mandatory for all English governments of past epochs: to have a fleet, equal in power to the next two naval powers combined. Until recently this program was unswervingly followed, but now, with the appearance on the field of competition of a rival like the United States of America, the position has changed, and the energies of the English bourgeoisie must look for some new formula providing for its aggressive policy.

A few words on the military doctrine of the Russian army under tsarism.

After what was said above about our military doctrine, even posing this question may seem strange. Nevertheless a doctrine, however unformed, did exist in the tsarist army, and although it did not present any positive aspects, all the same this negative example may show the close tie between thinking about war and the general structure of life.

The political side of this doctrine consisted of the three-part idea--Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality--beaten into the heads of young soldiers in lessons of renowned sophistication. As concerns its military-technical part, in our directive instructions it consisted of simple borrowing of foreign originals, the greater part only in abridged editions; but in this as well the doctrine was the stillborn child of our few military theorists, remaining foreign not only to the mass of the officer corps, but to its highest leadership as well. This sharply displays all the unparalleled mediocrity, all the internal rottenness and flaccidity of late tsarist Russia. In actual fact, the army was always the subject of the tsar's special care, and nevertheless this same army in his hands turned out to be completely unready for combat.

What's been laid out allows us to make some general conclusion on the question interesting us:

The first of them is the thought we have repeated more than once, that the military affairs of a given state, taken as a totality, are not a self-sufficient quantity, but as a whole are determined by the general conditions of the life of that state.

The second--that the character of the military doctrine accepted in the army of a given state is determined by the character of the social class which stands at its head.

The third--the basic condition of the vitality of military doctrine consists in its strong correspondence with the general goals of the state and those material and spiritual resources which it has at its disposal.

Fourth--it is impossible to invent a doctrine capable of being a vital organizational principle for an army. All basic (27) elements of it are already given in the surrounding context, and the work of theoretical investigation consists of the discovery of those elements and their inclusion in a system in correspondence with the fundamental positions of military science and the demands of the military art.

Fifth--the basic theoretical task of the workers of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA) must be the study of the character of the social structures surrounding us; determining the character and essence of the military tasks growing out of the essence of that state; a study of the conditions providing for their fulfillment with regard to both material and spiritual prerequisites; a study of the particularities of the construction of the Red Army and the application to this of methods of struggle; harmonization of the demands of military science and art with all those particularities which are objectively and directly connected with the character of our proletarian state and the revolutionary epoch we have lived through.

V.

What basic elements must underlie the military doctrine of our Workers'-Peasants' Red Army?

In order to answer this, we turn first to an analysis of our state.

By its character and by its essence our homeland presents itself as a state formation of a wholly new type. Differing from all other states existing now on the globe, the RSFSR [Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic] is the only state in the world where power belongs to labor. Beginning from October 1917, when the working class of Russia, united with the laboring peasantry, seized power from the hands of the great and the petty bourgeoisie, we live in a worker-peasant state, where the leading role belongs to the working class.

The basic idea and sense of proletarian dictatorship consists of the task of destroying capitalist production relations and replacing them by a structure founded on socialized ownership of the means of production and the planned distribution of the products of that production. This idea is in unresolvable contradiction with the foundations of existence of the world's remaining states, where for now capital rules.

Proletarian dictatorship signifies the most wholehearted, most merciless war of the laboring classes against the class of rulers of the old world--the bourgeoisie who, relying on the strength of international capital, on the strength and fortitude of their international connections, and finally on the spontaneous conservatism of the petty-bourgeois mass, are a threatening and powerful enemy of the newly-born world. Between our proletarian state and the entire remaining bourgeois world there can be only one relationship: long, stubborn, desperate war to the death--a war, demanding colossal endurance, discipline, hardness, unwavering commitment, and unity of will. The outer form of these mutual relations may change superficially depending on the struggle's changing conditions and course; a state of open warfare may give up its place to some kind of treaty relations, allowing to a certain degree the opposing sides' peaceful coexistence. But these treaty-based forms are not able to change the basic character of mutual relations. And it is necessary to completely realize and openly recognize that joint, parallel existence of our proletarian Soviet state with the state of the bourgeois-capitalist world in the long term is impossible.

With energies multiplied tenfold by overthrow of the bourgeoisie in only one country as a premonition of their fate, the bourgeoisie cannot rest until they destroy the nest which serves as the breeding ground and source of danger to their worldwide domination. At the first convenient moment, the waves of the bourgeois-capitalist sea surrounding our proletarian island will dash against it, straining to wash away all the conquests of the proletarian revolution. And at the same time the flame of the revolutionary fire will spring up more often and more sharply in various countries of the bourgeois world, and the threatening tramp of proletarian columns preparing for a storm speaks of some kind of attempts from the opposite direction. This contradiction can be resolved and removed only by the strength of arms in a bloody struggle of class enemies. There is no other way out, nor can there be.

From this we come to the following conclusion: the consciousness of every worker, every peasant, every soldier, and most of all every member of the ruling communist workers' party must be filled with the thought that at present our country is in a state of siege and will remain in that state so long as capital rules in the world, that the energy and will of the country must be directed for now to the creating and strengthening of our military might, that state propaganda must psychologically prepare general opinion with the idea of unavoidable active struggle with our class enemy, with taking care and providing for the needs of the army. Only in such an atmosphere can the matter of developing our armed forces be completed successfully.

This moment of general consciousness of the unavoidability and importance of the military tasks lying before the state is the first and most important element in the future unified military doctrine of the Workers'-Peasants' Red Army.

Here it's worth noting still another particularity characterizing the doctrine of a workers' army. Since the world's bourgeoisie are forced to impel the working masses to achieve military goals alien to them, they accomplish this with the help of all possible subterfuges, built on either the excitement of certain crowd instincts (ambition, the most extreme national chauvinism, and others), or mass deception. It's worth remembering, for example, the history of the "Keys to the Holy Places," the Byzantine inheritance (Russia), the idea of revanchism (France), and so on.

For a workers' state like Soviet Russia, there is no need for these deceptive means. The class interest of laborers in revolution's victory and the idea of their international solidarity as a means of achieving victory is wholly adequate for creating the strongest ties for the goals of general struggle. Do we have plain evidence that this element has become a living component part of the worldview of Russia's broad laboring masses? Doubtlessly yes. Supplies of spiritual energy among the working class, fighting for its freedom, are fully sufficient. It is only necessary the expenditure of these supplies be carried out in the proper direction and with sufficient planning and coordination. Military propaganda, organized on a statewide scale, must be the means for achieving this.

The PUR (Political Directorate of the RKKA) must be the organ working out everything connected with this question, and all the organs of education under the general leadership of Glavpolitprosvet [Main Directorate for Politics, Propaganda, and Education] must be responsible for putting those measures into practice. Only such an organization of responsibilities can create the same propitious strengthening of the military might of the Republic that took place in Germany. The role of German schools in this matter is already well known. It's necessary only to recall the well-known phrase that "the honor of victory at Sadowa and Sedan belongs to the schoolteacher." It's equally necessary for the honor of victory in the world revolution, taking place before our eyes, to belong to our teachers and propagandists, in school and out.

As for the concrete social-political content of this part of our future military doctrine, it's found as a whole and fully developed in the ideology of the working class, in the program of the Russian Communist Workers' Party. The old formula of the tsarist army--"Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality"--surrendered its place to the ideas of revolutionary communism, soviet power as a specific form of proletarian dictatorship, international brotherhood and solidarity of labor. Three years of activity by the political sections and communist cells of the Red Army have already brought sufficiently tangible results in the sense of the broad Red Army mass's political education in a new spirit, and, continuing in the same direction, this activity must prepare for us unified armed forces, strongly cohesive from top to bottom thanks to a single political ideology.

Today's basic task in this connection, together with deepening and expanding political work at the lower levels, is work on joining our officer [commander] corps to the general Red Army mass. (30) The state must throw all the weight of its influence immediately into ending those remnants of disunity which are still observed in the Red Army. People with an ideology opposed to that of labor must be removed from it. This does not at all signify the necessity for the entire officer corps to become members of the Communist Party. But it does mean achieving a position in which the officer corps has become essentially Soviet, thereby removing any basis for suspicion directed at them, so that they and the rank-and-file Red Army mass will feel complete union and mutual understanding.

VI.

As for the question of the character of the military tasks that we may face--that is, should they be of a strictly defensive character or should the Red Army be ready if necessary to move to the offensive--from the ideas presented above the conclusion is clearly determined.

The general policy of the working class, a class active by nature, a class striving for victory over the entire bourgeois world, cannot NOT be active in the highest degree. It is true, if one considered the material resources of our country alone, that the limits of this activity become sufficiently narrow and defined for the present time by that level of economic development and the general position in which we currently stand. It is therefore possible that for a certain interval of time the actively revolutionary energies of the working class will not be directed at the achievement of goals of the active type. But this fact does not change the essence of the matter. That principle of grand strategy applies fully to politics: "the one who wins is the one who finds in himself the decisiveness to attack; the side which only defends is inevitably headed for defeat." The working class will be forced by the very course of the revolutionary process to move to the offensive against capital when the proper opportunity presents itself. In such a way, at this point we have complete agreement between the demands of the military art and general politics. As for the material provision for the possibilities of conducting this offensive line, it's worth considering that the base of our offensive may not be Russia alone, but a whole series of other countries as well. All depends on the degree of maturity of the revolutionary process within these countries and the capabilities of their working class to move to open struggle with their class enemies.

The class character of the approaching clashes, providing us aid in the interests of the general cause of all proletarian elements, destroys to a significant degree the negative (31) consequences of the indications given above of the difficult economic position of our country. The proletariat can and will attack, and alongside the proletariat, serving at its greatest weapon, the Red Army will attack as well.

From this follows the necessity of educating our army in the spirit of greatest activity, to prepare it for the completion of revolutionary tasks via energetic, decisive, and bravely conducted offensive operations.

If we turn to the combat experience the Red Army already has, we see that it has long been conducting itself essentially in this way. Almost all significant operations during the Civil War carry traces manifesting a spirit of activity and initiative on our side. It may even be said that at times our activity went beyond all bounds, bordering on an inability to evaluate the current situation and not avoiding the dangers of excessive risk.

All this is completely natural, for in an army created and led by the proletariat, a spirit other than the most active could not exist.

The active character of approaching military clashes mentioned above presents a whole series of practical demands to our general staff. It's necessary to establish the procedures of the higher staffs so that the Red Army can fulfill its duties against any operational objective [napravlenie] and on any part of the front. The limits of this front in the near future are determined by the entire span of the old world.

By the way, the preparation of our officer [commander] corps must include not only military training but also the economic and political conditions of possible theaters of military action. This presents the military apparat in general with preparatory work immense in scope and importance.

Analyzing the probable nature of our future military clashes, we may predict in advance that we will in technological terms be weaker than our opponents. This circumstance has extremely serious significance, and in addition to exerting all efforts and means to achieving technological equality, we must look for ways to equalize to some degree this disadvantage.

VII.

We have some means to do this. The first and most important of them is the preparation and training of our army in the spirit of maneuver operations on a grand scale. (32)

The extent of our territory, the possibility of retreating significant distances without losing the ability to continue the struggle, and other factors present suitable conditions for the application of maneuvers of a strategic character, that is outside the field of battle. Our officer [commander] corps must be trained primarily in the ideas of maneuverability, and the entire mass of the Red Army must be taught the art of quickly and methodically carrying out march-maneuvers. The experience of the recent imperialist war in its initial stages, and equally the whole experience of our civil war (having on the whole a maneuver character), gives us the richest material for study on this.

In this connection (given the general scarcity of our military means) engineering defense and assault [sic], playing such a colossal role in the imperialist war, must move to last place in our army. The auxiliary role which these methods must play consists in serving as a supporting means for field operations. Use of local conditions, broad application of artificial fortifications, the creation of temporary artificial barriers, providing for the completion of general march-maneuvers--this is the proper sphere for the application of these methods and measures. In particular, the role and significance of fortifications in our future operations will be minuscule. It will be much more cost-effective to strengthen our field forces at the expense of fortifications.

Once again the experience of the Civil War gives us the richest material from this standpoint. The activity of partisans in Siberia, the struggle in cossack regions, the "basmachi" in Turkestan, Makhno's uprising and in general banditism in Ukraine and other regions presented an unlimited field for study and general conclusions of a theoretical character. But a necessary condition for the fruitfulness of this idea of "small war", I repeat, is the timely development of a plan and the creation of all conditions providing for its broad development. Therefore one of (33) the tasks of our general staff must be the development of the idea of "small war" and its application to our future wars with enemies more technologically advanced than we are.

The maneuver character of our future operations raises the question of reevaluating the role and significance of cavalry in contemporary battle. The positional character of the recent imperialist war created in many minds the impression that cavalry, as an independent, active force, cannot play a special role and must move to a secondary place.

Truly, the experience of the civil war gave newly shining examples of independent cavalry actions both on our side and on our opponents', and gave cavalry back its former significance, but it is well-known that not all consider the experience of the civil war alone sufficiently convincing, and the question can therefore not be considered clear to all.

By our deep conviction, in future operations Red cavalry will have an extremely important role, and therefore care over its preparation and development must be one of our first responsibilities.

In order to best prepare cavalry for combat operations, special attention must be directed to the colossal experience of the Civil War and developing on the basis of this research special directives for old cavalry commanders.

VIII.

Organizationally, a standing Red Army is the only possible basis for our armed forces in the near future. This follows from what we've said about the character of our military missions. This question can now be considered definitively settled in connection with the corresponding resolutions of the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party and subsequent governmental decrees. We can permit transition to a militia system on the basis of Vsevobuch [organization responsible for universal military training] only to a degree that provides for specific savings on government expenditure while not undermining the Red Army's capability to carry out active missions.

As concerns the internal life of the Red Army, it must be organized to achieve the maximal convergence with the ideals of communist society. Of course, given current levels of productive forces, propaganda on the complete equality of the officer corps with the rank-and-file is impossible, and could attract only those interested in destroying the strength and power of the Red Army. This is clear to the vast majority of Red Army soldiers; nevertheless the internal structure and routines of the army of the Workers-Peasants' Soviet state must be free from any privileges not proceeding from the demands of service and not flowing out of its character. Only on this basis is it conceivable to create such comradely cohesion and mutual understanding of high and low ranks in the army which is the most important security for the physical and spiritual might of the Red Army.

In unit training, the element of drill in the Red Army must move to last place; in that, the very understanding of drill must be completely changed. Drill in the old sense of the word--that is, purely mechanical training of elements of the unit with the application of harsh measures of discipline--we cannot even speak of. We have no reason to strive to attain that level of training of our soldiers, who would be ideal for lovers of parades and shows. It is enough to achieve a certain level of structure, quickness, and correctness in carrying out specific activities. This should not be mechanical; it's necessary to organize everything on the achievement of these effects through the maximum development of the personal initiative and independence of each Red Army soldier. In this regard, the characteristic particularities of our state and our army open up the widest possibilities. We have the chance to build the unity of our army not through harsh discipline, but by the maximum mental development of the Red Army soldiers. While every bourgeois state must fear the introduction of the slaves of capital to knowledge and spiritual development, for us this very development is the truest guarantee of victorious achievements. The entire apparatus of our training of the individual soldier must be applied to this demand.

The maintenance of service discipline in the ranks of the army is an obligatory and necessary condition of its might, and in this regard the demands of the Soviet state are most decisive. But at the same time there is an immense difference between our contemporary understanding of discipline and that of the old tsarist army. Discipline in the Red Army must be based not on fear of punishment or naked compulsion, but instead on voluntary, conscious fulfillment by each of his service duty, and the first example of this kind of discipline must be the officer [commander] corps.

How should discipline be maintained? First, by the self-consciousness of the leading elements of the Red Army mass, its communist cells, its political workers, and all of the officer [commander] corps, their self-restraint, dedication to the revolution, heroism, and self-sacrifice. Second, the ability of the officer corps to connect, to approach, to some degree to blend with the broad Red Army mass. Third, by the correctness of the Red Army's political and technical leadership, strengthening the faith of the Red Army mass in the complete match between the [capabilities of] Red Army officers and their assignments. Without these conditions, the maintenance of discipline in a revolutionary army (36) like our Red Army is a hopeless task. Of course, it is absolutely impossible to get along without some elements of compulsion, but their application must be within the strictest limits. Only that can be recognized as the true Red Commander, who without any compulsion achieves complete subjection to his will.

In general terms, these must be the basic elements of the military doctrine which will form the basis for the development and strengthening of the might of the Soviet federation. To fulfill its purpose the ideas of our doctrine must penetrate and permeate all our military manuals and instructions, must become an organic part of the worldview of the Red Army mass and especially its officer corps. It seems to me entirely proper to present the basic practical concepts growing out of the doctrine in a special manual, which would be a basic catechism of the Red Army.

This is a rough circle of general ideas which, it seems to me, those working on questions of military theory in its general elements must all hold close. Doubtlessly, what's been presented here is only an attempt to raise questions and attract corresponding attention. As for final answers, they may only come as a result of the lengthy and stubborn work of military-theoretical thought on the basis of collective experience.

I only wish to express my most fervent desire--that the development of the question of the Red Army's doctrine would occupy that place in our literature and our practical activities that it rightfully deserves, thanks to its special significance for the further development of the Republic's armed forces.

(συνέχεια)

Σουμπουτάι (Ρωσία 1225-28 μ.Χ.)

Τι να πεις εδώ; Ο Σουμπουτάι είναι ο μοναδικός στρατιωτικός διοικητής στην παγκόσμια ιστορία, που κατέκτησε τη Ρωσία χειμώνα. Ναι, ΤΗ ΡΩΣΙΑ, ΧΕΙΜΩΝΑ. Οι κινήσεις του ενάντια στον ρώσικο ανταρτοπόλεμο, που στο μέλλον θα νικούσε τους Τεύτονες (1380), τους Σουηδούς (1707), τους Γάλλους (1812) και τους Γερμανούς (1941-45) μιλάνε από μόνες τους. Βαθμολογία: 10/10.

Συνολική αποτίμηση:

Κι εδώ ο Αλέκος έρχεται τελευταίος. Δεν είναι βέβαια εύκολο να νικήσεις έναν εχθρό που δε φαίνεται πουθενά, εδώ κοτζάμ Αμερική την πάτησε στο Βιετνάμ με τους αντάρτες. Αλλά ή είσαι Μέγας, ή δεν είσαι.


5. Ο αντίπαλος


Ο Αλέκος αντιμετώπιζε την Περσική Αυτοκρατορία. Μεγάλη, αχανής, δε λέω, αλλά στην παρακμή της. Θα έπεφτε αργά ή γρήγορα έτσι κι αλλιώς. Ο Αννίβας πάλι, τα έβαλε με τη Ρώμη στην ακμή της. Η Ρώμη όλο και μεγάλωνε, κι ο Χάνιμπαλ μόνος του πήγε να γυρίσει πίσω την ιστορία, και σχεδόν τα κατάφερε. Το ίδιο κι ο Ναπολέων. Ο Χαλίντ κι ο Τζέγκις Χαν/Σουμπουτάι/Ταμερλάνος είχαν κι αυτοί να κάνουν με παρακμασμένους αντιπάλους, όπως κι ο Αλέκος.

Έχει επίσης ειπωθεί, ότι ο Αλέκος έφτιαξε τόσο μεγάλο κράτος σε τόσο μικρό χρόνο, επειδή τον ένοιαζε η κατάκτηση κι όχι η σταθεροποίηση. Γι' αυτό κι η αυτοκρατορία του διασπάστηκε αμέσως μετά το θάνατό του. Ο Φίλιππας, αντίθετα, έκανε 20 χρόνια να κατακτήσει την Ελλάδα επειδή νοιαζόταν πιο πολύ για τη σταθεροποίηση των κεκτημένων του. Γι' αυτό λέγεται ότι αν ο Φίλιππας έμπαινε στην Περσία, θα προχωρούσε πολύ αργά, και σίγουρα δε θα έφτανε ως την Ινδία. Βέβαια, το να βάζεις την κατάκτηση πάνω από τη σταθεροποίηση, δεν το είχε μόνο ο Αλέκος. Το είχαν πολλοί ιστορικοί ηγέτες κατά καιρούς (Μαχμούτ Γκαζναβί, Μοχάμεντ Γκόρι, Αλπ Αρσλάν) που έφτιαξαν μεγάλα κράτη αλλά πολύ εφήμερα. Ο μόνος που συνδύασε άριστα κατάκτηση με σταθεροποίηση ήταν ο Τζένγκις Χαν.

Βοnus: Η αντιμετώπιση των ελεφάντων

Αλέξανδρος (Γαυγάμηλα 331 π.Χ.)

Ο Αλέκος αντιμετώπισε τους περσικούς ελέφαντες βάζοντας τους ακοντιστές του να σκοτώσουν τους οδηγούς των ελεφάντων.

Σκιπίων (Ζάμα 201 π.Χ.)

Ο Σκιπίων στην αρχή της μάχης άνοιξε ένα μεγάλο κενό στις γραμμές του για να περάσουν οι εχθρικοί ελέφαντες, κι όταν είχαν φύγει πολύ μπροστά, τους αχρήστευσε με τους ακοντιστές του.

Χαλίντ ιμπν Ουαλίντ (Καντισίγια 636 μ.Χ.)

Ο Χαλίντ έκανε κάτι παρόμοιο με τον Αλέκο, έβαλε τους ακοντιστές του να τυφλώσουν τους περσικούς ελέφαντες και να τους κόψουν τις προβοσκίδες.

Ταμερλάνος (Δελχί 1398 μ.Χ.)

Ο Ταμερλάνος έκανε το πιο γαμάτο. Άναψε φωτιά στις μύτες των καμηλών του και τις έστειλε πάνω στους ελέφαντες. Οι ελέφαντες τα κάνανε πάνω τους βλέποντας τις φωσφοριζέ καμήλες, και γύρισαν πίσω ποδοπατώντας τους δικούς τους στρατιώτες. Ο Ταμερλάνος μπήκε θριαμβευτής στο Δελχί, ακόμα κι αν έμεινε χωρίς μεταγωγικές καμήλες.

Συμπέρασμα: Οι ελέφαντες ήταν τα τανκς της εποχής, με τη διαφορά ότι ήταν ζώα κι όχι μηχανές. Στη μάχη σώμα με σώμα ήταν ανίκητοι, αλλά από μακριά αντιμετωπίζονταν εύκολα. Δεν είναι τυχαίο που η μόνη μάχη που έχασε ο Αννίβας, ήταν αυτοί στην οποία είχε ελέφαντες (Ζάμα). Στην Ιταλία δεν τον χάλασε και πολύ που δεν τους είχε. Οι ελέφαντες δηλαδή, ήταν κάτι σαν τον Ραντούλιτσα. Περισσότερο ζημιά κάνουν σε αυτόν που τους έχει, παρά στον αντίπαλο. Ο Αλέκος τους νίκησε, αλλά και τόσοι άλλοι τους νίκησαν. Ο Αλέκος δηλαδή μπορεί να είναι Μπαρτζώκας, αλά να μην τον κάνουμε και Ομπράντοβιτς επειδή κέρδισε τους Ραντούλιτσες της εποχής του!

ΒΙΑΤΣΕΣΛΑΒ ΜΟΛΟΤΟΦ: Διάγγελμα προς το λαό της Σοβιετικής Ένωσης στις 22 Ιούνη 1941

Πολίτες της Σοβιετικής Ένωσης!
Η Σοβιετική Κυβέρνηση κι ο επικεφαλής της σύντροφος Στάλιν, με εξουσιοδότησαν να κάνω την ακόλουθη ανακοίνωση:

Σήμερα στις 4 π.μ., χωρίς να παρουσιάσει αξιώσεις, χωρίς να κηρύξει πόλεμο, η Γερμανία επιτέθηκε στη χώρα μας. Γερμανικά στρατεύματα πέρασαν τα σύνορά μας από πολλά σημεία και τα αεροπλάνα τους βομβάρδισαν τις πόλεις μας, Ζίτομιρ, Κίεβο, Σεβαστούπολη, Κάουνας και άλλες. Έγιναν επίσης εχθρικές αεροπορικές επιδρομές και βομβαρδισμοί πυροβολικού από το ρουμάνικο και το φινλανδικό έδαφος.

Aυτή η ανήκουστη επίθεση κατά της χώρας μας αποτελεί προδοσία χωρίς προηγούμενο στην ιστορία των πολιτισμένων λαών. Η επίθεση αυτή διαπράχτηκε παρά το γεγονός ότι είχε συναφθεί σύμφωνο μη επίθεσης ανάμεσα στην ΕΣΣΔ και τη Γερμανία, και ενώ η Σοβιετική Κυβέρνηση τήρησε πιστά όλους τους όρους του συμφώνου. Η επίθεση κατά της χώρας μας διαπράχτηκε παρά το γεγονός ότι σε όλο το διάστημα της λειτουργίας του συμφώνου, η γερμανική κυβέρνηση δεν είχε βρει ούτε ένα λόγο να παραπονεθεί για μη τήρηση του συμφώνου από εμάς.

H ολοκληρωτική ευθύνη γι' αυτή τη ληστρική επίθεση κατά της Σοβιετικής Ένωσης, πέφτει πάνω στους γερμανούς φασίστες ηγέτες και μόνο. Στις 5:30 π.μ., δηλαδή ενώ η επίθεση είχε ήδη αρχίσει, ο φον Σούλενμπουργκ, γερμανός πρέσβης στη Μόσχα, για λογαριασμό της γερμανικής κυβέρνησης δήλωσε σε εμένα ως Λαϊκό Κομισάριο Εξωτερικών Επιθέσεων, ότι αφορμή της γερμανικής κυβέρνησης για την έναρξη του πολέμου ήταν η συγκέντρωση μονάδων του Κόκκινου Στρατού κοντά στα ανατολικά σύνορα της Γερμανίας. Απαντώντας του, δήλωσα για λογαριασμό της Σοβιετικής Κυβέρνησης, ότι μέχρι την τελευταία στιγμή η γερμανική κυβέρνηση δεν έχει παρουσιάσει καμιά αξίωση στην κυβέρνηση της ΕΣΣΔ, ότι η Γερμανία επιτέθηκε στην ΕΣΣΔ παρά την ειρηνική θέση μας, και ότι γι' αυτούς τους λόγους η φασιστική Γερμανία είναι o επιδρομέας. Επίσης για λογαριασμό της Σοβιετικής Κυβέρνησης δήλωσα ότι ποτέ ο στρατός μας ή η αεροπορία μας δεν παραβίασαν τα γερμανοσοβιετικά σύνορα, και ως εκ τούτου η είδηση που μετέδωσε το ρουμάνικο ραδιόφωνο, ότι δήθεν η σοβιετική αεροπορία βομβάρδισε ρουμάνικα αεροπλάνα, είναι ψέμα και προβοκάτσια. Όπως ψέμα και προβοκάτσια είναι και η σημερινή προκήρυξη του Χίτλερ, που προσπαθεί καθυστερημένα να συκοφαντήσει τη Σοβιετική Κυβέρνηση για αποτυχία τήρησης του γερμανοσοβιετικού συμφώνου.

Τώρα που η επίθεση έχει ήδη ξεκινήσει, η Σοβιετική Κυβέρνηση έδωσε εντολή στο στρατό μας να αντεπιτεθεί για να αποκρούσει τη ληστρική αυτή επίθεση, και να διώξει το γερμανικό στρατό από τα εδάφη της χώρας μας.

Ο πόλεμος αυτός μας επιβλήθηκε όχι από το γερμανικό λαό, όχι από τους Γερμανούς εργάτες, αγρότες και διανοούμενους, των οποίων τα βάσανα αντιλαμβανόμαστε καλά, αλλά από την κλίκα των αιμοβόρων φασιστών ηγετών της Γερμανίας που έχουν υποδουλώσει Γάλλους, Τσέχους, Πολωνούς, Σέρβους, Νορβηγούς, Βέλγους, Δανούς, Ολλανδούς, Έλληνες και τόσους άλλους λαούς.

H Σοβιετική Κυβέρνηση εκφράζει την ακλόνητη πεποίθησή της ότι ο άξιος και αντρειωμένος Κόκκινος Στρατός και Κόκκινο Ναυτικό, και τα γενναία γεράκια της Σοβιετικής Αεροπορίας, θα αναλάβουν με τιμή το χρέος τους στην πατρίδα και στο σοβιετικό λαό, και θα καταφέρουν συντριπτικό χτύπημα στον εισβολέα. Δεν είναι η πρώτη φορά που ο λαός μας αντιμετώπισε την επίθεση κάποιου αλαζονικού εχθρού. Τον καιρό της επίθεσης του Ναπολέοντα ο λαός μας απάντησε με πόλεμο για την πατρίδα, κι ο Ναπολέων νικήθηκε και βρήκε την καταστροφή του. Το ίδιο θα γίνει με το Χίτλερ, που μέσα στην αλαζονεία του κήρυξε σταυροφορία κατά της πατρίδας μας. Ο Κόκκινος Στρατός κι ολόκληρος ο λαός μας θα διεξάγει ξανά νικηφόρο πόλεμο μέχρι τέλους για την πατρίδα, για την τιμή, για τη λευτεριά!

Η σοβιετική κυβέρνηση εκφράζει τη βαθιά πεποίθηση ότι το σύνολο του πληθυσμού της ΕΣΣΔ, όλοι οι εργάτες, αγρότες και διανοούμενοι, άντρες και γυναίκες, θα κάνουν με καθαρή συνείδηση το χρέος τους και τη δουλειά τους. Ολόκληρος ο λαός μας πρέπει τώρα να σταθεί δυνατός κι ενωμένος όσο ποτέ πριν. Κάθε ένας πρέπει να απαιτεί από τον εαυτό του κι από τους άλλους πειθαρχία, οργάνωση και αυταπάρνηση που αρμόζουν στους αληθινούς σοβιετικούς πατριώτες, και να παρέχουν όλα όσα έχει ανάγκη ο Κόκκινος Στρατός, Ναυτικό και Αεροπορία, για να εξασφαλιστεί η νίκη απέναντι στον εχθρό.

Η κυβέρνηση σας καλεί, πολίτες της Σοβιετικής Ένωσης, να συνταχτείτε γύρω από το ένδοξο Μπολσεβίκικο Κόμμα, γύρω από το μεγάλο ηγέτη και σύντροφό μας Ιωσήφ Στάλιν. Ο πόλεμός μας είναι δίκαιος. Ο εχθρός πρέπει να ηττηθεί. Η νίκη θα 'ναι δική μας!

From Zhdanov's speech to Cominform in Sklarska Poreba, 22 September 1947:


The aggressive and frankly expansionist course to which American imperialism has committed itself since the end of World War II find expression in both the foreign and home policy of the United States. The active support rendered to the reactionary, anti-democratic forces all over the world, the sabotage of the Potsdam decisions which call for the democratic reconstruction of Germany, the protection given to Japanese reactionaries, the extensive war preparations and the accumulation of atomic bombs—all this goes hand in hand with an offensive against the elementary democratic rights of the working people in the United States itself.

Although the U.S.A. suffered comparatively little from the war, the vast majority of the Americans do not want another war, with its accompanying sacrifices and limitations. This has induced monopoly capital and its servitors among the ruling circles in the United States to resort to extraordinary means in order to crush the opposition at home to the aggressive expansionist course and to secure a free hand for the further prosecution of this dangerous policy.

But the crusade against Communism proclaimed by America’s ruling circles with the backing of the capitalist monopolies leads as a logical consequence to attacks on the fundamental rights and interests of the American working people, to the fascization of America’s political life, and to the dissemination of the most savage and misanthropic “theories” and views. Dreaming about preparing for a new war, a third world war, American expansionist circles are vitally interested in stifling all possible resistance within the country to adventures abroad, in poisoning the minds of the politically backward and unenlightened American masses with the virus of chauvinism and militarism, and in stultifying the average American with the help of all the diverse means of anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propaganda—the cinema, the radio, the church and the press. The expansionist foreign policy inspired and conducted by the American reactionaries envisages simultaneous action along the lines:

1) strategical military measures,

2) economic expansion, and

3) ideological struggle.

Realization of the strategical plans for future aggression is connected with the desire to utilize to the utmost the war production facilities of the United States, which had grown to enormous proportions by the end of World War II. American imperialism is persistently pursuing a policy of militarizing the country. Expenditure on the U.S. army and navy exceeds 11,000 million dollars per annum. In 1947-48, 35 per cent of America’s budget was appropriated for the armed forces, or eleven times more than in 1937-1938.

On the outbreak of World War II American army was seventeenth largest in the capitalist world; today it is the largest one. The United States is not only accumulating stocks of atomic bombs; American strategists say quite openly that it is preparing for bacteriological weapons.

The strategical plans of the United States envisage the creation in peace-time of numerous bases and vantage grounds situated at great distances from the American continent and designed to be used for aggressive purposes against the U.S.S.R. and the countries of the new democracy. America has built, or is building air and naval bases in Alaska, Japan, Italy, South Korea, China, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Austria and Western Germany. There are American military missions in Afghanistan and even in Nepal. Feverish preparations are being made to use the Arctic for purposes of military aggression.

Although the war has long since ended, the military alliance between Britain and the United States and even a combined Anglo-American military staff continue to exist. Under the guise of agreement for the standardisation of weapons, the United States has established its control over the armed forces and military plans of other countries, notably of Great Britain and Canada. Under the guise of joint defence of the Western Hemisphere the countries of Latin America are being brought into the orbit of America’s plans of military expansion. The United States government has officially declared that it has committed itself to assist in the modernisation of the Turkish Army. The army of the reactionary Kuomintang is being trained by American instructors and armed with American material. The military circles are becoming an active political force in the United States, supplying large numbers of government officials and diplomats who are directing the whole policy of the country into an aggressive military course.

Economic expansion is an important supplement to the realization of America’s strategical plan. American imperialism is endeavouring, like a usurer, to take advantage of the post-war difficulties of the European countries, in particular of the shortage of raw materials, fuel and food in the Allied countries that suffered most from the war, to dictate to them extortionate terms for any assistance rendered. With an eye to the impending economic crisis, the United States is in a hurry to find new monopoly spheres of capital investment and markets for its goods. American economic “assistance” pursues the broad aim of bringing Europe into bondage to American capital. The more drastic the economic situation of a country is, the harsher are the terms which the American monopolies endeavour to dictate to it.

But economic control logically leads to political subjugation to American imperialism. Thus the United States combines the extension of monopoly markets for its goods with the acquisition of new bridgeheads for its fight against the new democratic forces of Europe. In “saving” a country from starvation and collapse, the American monopolies at the same time seek to rob it of all vestige of independence. American “assistance” automatically involves a change in the policy of the country to which it is rendered: parties and individuals come to power that are prepared on directions from Washington, to carry out a program of home and foreign policy suitable to the United States (France, Italy, and so on).

Lastly, the aspiration to world supremacy and an the anti-democratic policy of the United States involve an ideological struggle. The principal purpose of the ideological part of the American strategical plan is to deceive public opinion by slanderously accusing the Soviet Union and the new democracies of aggressive intentions, and thus representing the Anglo-Saxon bloc in a defensive role and absolving it of responsibility for preparing a new war. During the Second World War the popularity of the Soviet Union in foreign countries was enormously enhanced. Its devoted and heroic struggle against imperialism earned it the affection and respect of working people in all countries. The military and economic might of the Socialist State, the invincible strength of the moral and political unity of Soviet Society were graphically demonstrated to the whole world. The reactionary circles in the United States and Great Britain are anxious to erase the impression made by the Socialist system on the working people of the world. The warmongers fully realize that long ideological preparation is necessary before they can get their soldiers to fight the Soviet Union.

In their ideological struggle against the U.S.S.R. the American imperialists, who have no great insight into political questions, demonstrate their ignorance by laying primary stress on the allegation that Soviet Union is undemocratic and totalitarian, while the United States and Great Britain and the whole capitalist world are democratic. On this platform of ideological struggle—on this defence of bourgeois pseudo-democracy and condemnation of Communism as totalitarian—are united all the enemies of the working class without exception, from the capitalist magnates to the Right Socialist leaders, who seize with the greatest eagerness on any slanderous imputations against the USSR suggested to them by their imperialist masters. The pith and substance of this fraudulent propaganda is the claim that the earmark of true democracy is the existence of a plurality of parties and of an organized opposition minority. On these grounds the British Labourites, who spare no effort in their fight against Communism, would like to discover antagonistic classes and a corresponding struggle of parties in the USSR. Political ignoramuses that they are, they cannot understand that capitalists and landlords, antagonistic classes, and hence a plurality of parties, have long ceased to exist in the USSR. They would like to have in the USSR the bourgeois parties which are so dear to their hearts, including pseudo-socialistic parties, as an agency of imperialism. But to their bitter regret these parties of the exploiting bourgeoisie have been doomed by history to disappear from the scene.

The Labourites and other advocates of bourgeois democracy will go to any length to slander the Soviet regime, but at the same time they regard the bloody dictatorship of the fascist minority over the people in Greece and Turkey as perfectly normal, they close their eyes to many crying violations even of formal democracy in the bourgeois countries, and say nothing about the national and racial oppression, the corruption and the unceremonious abrogation of democratic rights in the United States of America.

One of the lines taken by the ideological “campaign” that goes hand in hand with the plans for the enslavement of Europe is an attack on the principle of national sovereignty, an appeal for the renouncement of the sovereign rights of nations, to which is opposed the idea of a “world government.” The purpose of this campaign is to mask the unbridled expansion of American imperialism, which is ruthlessly violating the sovereign rights of nations, to represent the United States as a champion of universal laws, and those who resist American penetration as believers in a obsolete and “selfish” nationalism. The idea of a “world government” has been taken up by bourgeois intellectual cranks and pacifists, and is being exploited not only as a means of pressure, with the only purpose of ideologically disarming the nations that defend their independence against the encroachments of American imperialism, but also as a slogan specially directed against the Soviet Union, which indefatigably and consistently upholds the principle of real equality and protection of the sovereign rights of all nations, big and small. Under present conditions imperialist countries like U.S.A., Great Britain and the states closely associated with them become dangerous enemies of national independence and the self-determination of nations, while the Soviet Union and the new democracies are a reliable bulwark against encroachments on the equality and self-determination of nations.

It is a noteworthy fact that American military-political intelligence agents of the Bullitt breed, yellow trade union leaders of the Green brand, the French Socialists headed by that inveterate apologian of capitalism. Blum, the German social-democrat Schumacher, and Labour leaders of the Bevin type are all united in close fellowship in carrying out the ideological plan of American imperialism.

At this present juncture the expansionist ambitions of the United States find concrete expression in the “Truman doctrine” and the “Marshall plan”. Although they differ in form of presentation, both are an expression of a single policy, they are both an embodiment of the American design to enslave Europe.

The main features of the “Truman doctrine,” as applied to Europe are as follows:

1. Creation of American bases in the Eastern Mediterranean with the purpose of establishing American supremacy in that area.

2. Demonstrative support of the reactionary regimes in Greece and Turkey as bastions of American imperialism against the new democracies in the Balkans (military and technical assistance to Greece and Turkey, the granting of loans).

3. Unintermitting pressure on the countries of the new democracy, as expressed in false accusations of totalitarianism and expansionist ambitions, in attacks on the foundations of the new democratic regime, in constant interference in their domestic affairs, in support of all anti-national, anti-democratic elements within these countries, and in the demonstrative breaking off of economic relations with these countries with the idea of creating economic difficulties, retarding their economic development, preventing their industrialization, and so on.

The “Truman doctrine”, which provides for the rendering of American assistance to all reactionary regimes which actively oppose the democratic peoples, bears a frankly aggressive character. Its announcement caused some dismay even among circles of American capitalists that are accustomed to anything. Progressive public elements in the U.S.A. and other countries vigorously protested against the provocative, and frankly imperialistic character of Truman’s announcement.

The unfavourable reception which the “Truman doctrine” was met with accounts for the necessity of the appearance of the “Marshall Plan”, which is a more carefully veiled attempt to carry through the same expansionist policy.

The vague and deliberately guarded formulations of the “Marshall plan”, amount in essence to a scheme to create a bloc of states bound by obligations to the United States, and to grant American credits to European countries as a recompense for their renunciation of economic and then of political independence. Moreover, the cornerstone of the “Marshall Plan” is the restoration of the industrial areas of Western Germany controlled by the American monopolies.

It is the design of the “Marshall Plan”, as transpired from the subsequent talks and the statements of American leaders, to render aid in the first place, not to the impoverished victor countries, America’s allies in the fight against Germany, but to the German capitalists, with the idea of bringing under American sway the major sources of coal and iron needed by Europe and by Germany, and of making the countries which are in need of coal and iron dependent on the restored economic might of Germany.

In spite of the fact that the “Marshall Plan” envisages the ultimate reduction of Britain and France to the status of second-rate powers, the Attlee Labour government in Britain and the Ramadier Socialist government in France clutched at the “Marshall Plan” as at an anchor of salvation. Britain as we know, has already practically used up the American loan of a 3,750,000,000 dollars granted to her in 1946. We also know that the terms of this loan were so onerous as to bind Britain hand and foot. Even when already caught in the noose of financial dependence on the USA, the British Labour government could conceive of no other alternative than the receipt of new loans. It therefore hailed the “Marshall Plan” as a way out of the economic impasse, as a chance of securing fresh credits. The British politicians, moreover, hoped to take advantage of a creation of a bloc of Western European debtor countries of the United States to play within this bloc the role of America’s chief agent, who might perhaps profit at the expense of weaker countries. The British bourgeoisie hoped, by using the “Marshall Plan”, by rendering service to the American monopolies and submitting to their control, to recover its lost positions in a number of countries, in particular in the countries of the Balkan-Danubian area.

In order to lend the American proposals a specious gloss of “impartiality,” it was decided to enlist as one of the sponsors of the implementation of the “Marshall Plan” France, as well which had already half sacrificed her sovereignty to the United States, inasmuch as the credit she obtained from America in May 1947 was granted on the stipulation that the Communists would be eliminated from the French Government.

Acting on instructions from Washington, the British and French governments invited the Soviet Union to take part in a discussion of the Marshall proposals. This step was taken in order to mask the hostile nature of the proposals with respect to the USSR. The calculation was that, since it was well known beforehand that the USSR would refuse American assistance on the terms proposed by Marshall, it might be possible to shift the responsibility on the Soviet Union for “declining to assist the economic restoration of Europe,” and thus incite against the USSR the European countries that are in need of real assistance. If, on the other hand, the Soviet Union should consent to take part in the talks, it would be easier to lure the countries of East and South-East Europe into the trap of the “economic restoration of Europe with American assistance.” Whereas the Truman plan was designed to terrorize and intimidate these countries, the “Marshall Plan” was designed to test their economic staunchness, to lure them into a trap and then shackle them in the fetters of dollar “assistance”.

In that case, the “Marshall Plan” would facilitate one of the most important objectives of the general American program, namely, to restore the power of imperialism in the countries of the new democracy and to compel them to renounce close economic and political co-operation with the Soviet Union.

The representatives of the USSR, having agreed to discuss the Marshall proposals in Paris with the governments of Great Britain and France, exposed at the Paris Conference the unsoundness of attempting to work out an economic program for the whole of Europe, and showed that the attempt to create a new European organization under the aegis of France and Britain was a threat to interfere in the internal affairs of the European countries and to violate their sovereignty. They showed that the “Marshall Plan” was in contradiction to the normal principles of international co-operation, that it harboured the danger of splitting Europe and the threat of subjugating a number of European countries to American capitalist interests, that it was designed to give priority of assistance to the monopolistic concerns of Germany over the Allies, and that the restoration of these concerns was obviously designated in the “Marshall Plan” to play a special role in Europe.

This clear position of the Soviet Union stripped the mask from the plan of the American imperialists and their British and French coadjutors.

The all-European conference was a resounding failure. Nine European states refused to take part in it. But even in the countries that consented to participate in the discussion of the “Marshall Plan” and in the working out of concrete measures for its realization, it was not greeted with any special enthusiasm, all the more so since it was soon discovered that the USSR was fully justified in its supposition that what the plan envisaged was far from real assistance. It transpired that, in general, the U.S. government was in no hurry to carry out Marshall’s promises. U.S. Congress leaders admitted that Congress would not examine the question of granting new credits to European countries before 1948.

It thus became evident that in accepting the Paris scheme for the implementation of the “Marshall Plan”, Britain, France and other European states themselves fell dupes to American chicanery.

Nevertheless, the efforts to build up a western bloc under the aegis of America are being continued.

It should be noted that the American variant of the Western bloc is bound to encounter serious resistance even in countries already so dependent on the United States as Britain and France. The prospect of the restoration of German imperialism, as an effective force capable of opposing democracy and Communism in Europe, cannot be very alluring either to Britain or to France. Here we have one of the major contradictions within the Anglo-French-American bloc. Evidently, the American monopolies, and the international reactionaries generally, do not regard France and Greek fascists as a very reliable bulwark of the United States against the USSR and the new democracies in Europe. They are, therefore, staking their main hopes on the restoration of capitalist Germany, which they consider would be a major guarantee of the success of the fight against the democratic forces of Europe. They trust neither the British Labourites nor the French Socialists, whom, in spite of their manifest desire to please, they regard as “semi-Communists”, insufficiently worthy of confidence.

It is for this reason that the question of Germany and, in particular of the Ruhr as a potential war-industrial base of a bloc hostile to the USSR, is playing such an important part in international politics and is an apple of discord between the USA and Britain and France.

The appetites of the American imperialists cannot but cause serious uneasiness in Britain and France. The United States has unambiguously given it to be understood that it wants to take the Ruhr out of the hands of the British. The American imperialists are also demanding that the three occupation zones be merged, and that the political separation of Western Germany under American control be openly implemented. The United States insists that the level of steel output in the Ruhr must be increased, with the capitalist firms under American aegis. Marshall’s promise of credits for European rehabilitation is interpreted in Washington as a promise of priority assistance to the German capitalists.

We thus see that America is endeavouring to build a “Western bloc” not on the pattern of Churchill’s plan for a United States of Europe, which was conceived as an instrument of British policy, but as an American protectorate in which sovereign European states, not excluding Britain itself, are assigned a role not very far removed from that of the “49th State of America”. American imperialism is becoming more and more arrogant and unceremonious in its treatment of Britain and France. The bilateral, and trilateral talks regarding the level of industrial production in Western Germany (Great Britain—USA, USA—France), apart from constituting an arbitrary violation of the Potsdam decisions and, are a demonstration of the complete indifference of the United States to the vital interests of its partners in the negotiations. Britain and especially France, are compelled to listen to the America’s dictates and to obey them without a murmur. The behaviour of American diplomats in London and Paris has come to be highly reminiscent of their behaviour in Greece, where American representatives already considering it quite unnecessary to observe the elementary decencies appoint and dismiss Greek ministers at will and conduct themselves as conquerors. Thus the new plan for the Dawesization of Europe essentially strikes at the vital interests of the peoples of Europe and represents a plan for the enthrallment and enslavement of Europe by the United States.

The “Marshall Plan” strikes at the industrialization of the democratic countries of Europe, and hence at the foundations of their integrity and independence. And if the plan for the Dawesization of’ Europe was doomed to failure, at a time when the forces of resistance to the Dawes Plan were much weaker they are now, today, in post-war Europe, there are quite sufficient forces, even leaving aside the Soviet Union, and if they display the will and the determination they can fell this plan of enslavement. All that is needed is the determination and readiness of the peoples of Europe to resist. As to the USSR, it will bend every effort in order that this plan be doomed to failure.

The assessment given by the countries of the anti-imperialist camp of the “Marshall Plan” has been completely confirmed by the whole course of developments. In relation to the “Marshall Plan”, the camp of democratic countries have proved that they are a mighty force standing guard over the independence and sovereignty of all European nations, that they refuse to yield to brow-beating and intimidation, just as they refuse to be deceived by the hypocritical manoeuvres of dollar diplomacy.

The Soviet government has never objected to using foreign, and in particular American credits as a means capable of expediting the process of economic rehabilitation. However, the Soviet Union has always taken the stand that the terms of credits must not be extortionate, and must not result in the economic and political subjugation of the debtor country to the creditor country. From this political stand, the Soviet Union has always held that foreign credits must not be the principal means of restoring a country’s economy. The chief and paramount condition of a country’s economic rehabilitation must be the utilisation of its own internal forces and resources and the creation of its own industry. Only in this way can its independence be guaranteed against encroachments on the part of foreign capital, which constantly displays a tendency to utilise credits as an instrument of political and economic enthrallment. Such precisely is the “Marshall Plan”, which would strike at the industrialisation of the European countries and is consequently designed to undermine their independence.

The Soviet Union unswervingly holds the position that political and economic relations between states must be built exclusively on the basis of equality of the parties and mutual respect for their sovereign rights. Soviet foreign policy and, in particular, Soviet economic relations with foreign countries, are based on the principle of equality, on the principle that agreements must be of advantage to both parties. Treaties with the USSR are agreements that are of mutual advantage to both parties, and never contain anything that encroaches on the national independence and sovereignty of the contracting parties. This fundamental feature of the agreements of the USSR with other states stands out particularly vividly just now, in the light of the unfair and unequal treaties being concluded or planned by the United States. Unequal agreements are alien to Soviet foreign trade policy. More, the development of the Soviet Union’s economic relations with all countries interested in such relations demonstrates on what principles normal relations between states should be built. Suffice it to recall the treaties recently concluded by the USSR with Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland. In this way the USSR has clearly shown along what lines Europe may find the way out of its present economic plight. Britain might have had a similar treaty, if the Labour Government had not, under outside pressure, frustrated the agreement with the USSR, the agreement which was already on its way to conclusion.


The exposure of the American plan for the economic enslavement of the European countries is an undisputable service rendered by the foreign policy of the USSR and the new democracies.

It should be borne in mind that the America herself is threatened with an economic crisis. There are weighty reasons for Marshall’s official generosity. If the European countries do not receive American credits, their demand for American goods will diminish, and this will tend to accelerate and intensify the approaching economic crisis in the United States. Accordingly, if the European countries display the necessary stamina and readiness to resist the enthralling terms of the American credit. America may find herself compelled to beat a retreat.

O Ρένενκαμπφ πάντως, αν και δεν έλεγε πολλά σαν κομαντάντε, είχε κι αυτός γαμάτο μουστάκι




μάταια προσπαθεί να τον μιμηθεί ο Κοντονής

Δεν διάβασα το κείμενο αλλά ο Λένιν είχε και έναν πολύ καλό λόγο να γουστάρει τους Γερμανούς του Α' ΠΠ γιατί πολύ απλά αυτοί τον αμόλησαν στην Ρωσία και τον στήριξαν για να κάνει την επανάσταση έτσι ώστε η Γερμανία να σιγουρέψει την Ανατολή και να αφοσιωθεί στο δυτικό μέτωπο παρότι έτσι κι αλλιώς είχε πάει γαμιώντας τους Ρώσους στο Τάνενμπεργκ.

τους Γερμανούς έτσι κι αλλιώς τους συμπαθούσε ο Λένιν. Τους αγγλογάλλους δε γούσταρε.

Το Τάνενμπεργκ παίζει να ήταν και μιλημένο, αφού οι Ρώσοι είχαν γερμανό διοικητή που λέγεται ότι τα τσέπωσε για να μην κάνει κίνηση.