My Road to Berlin, by Willy Brandt

[p023] My Road to Berlin, by Willy Brandt. Peter Davies, 25s. Willy Brandt, the subject of this autobiography, came from a working- class background and spent his early days in conditions of dire poverty. Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Parlia- mentary Labour Party, came from an entirely different environment. Yet today, these two leaders of the largest social-democratic parties in the world have a great deal in common. They both bathe in the adulation of the class enemy; though neither is averse to using the word ‘socialism’ in perorations, they have both striven with might and main to ensure that their countries are bound hand and foot to the foreign policy and the war strategy. of the most powerful capitalist power in. the world. Like Ebert, the first social-democratic president of the German Republic, they ‘hate the revolution like sin’. It is for his services to. American capitalism and the ‘western way of life’, that Wall Street gave Brandt a ticker-tape reception when he visited the United States in February 1959. Appropriately, he starts his life story . with this visit. It places him firmly on the side of imperialism in its struggle with the non-capitalist world. He was, at one time, a great admirer of August Bebel, leader of German Socialism at the beginning of the century. One wonders if he ever calls to mind these words of Bebel’s: ‘When the class enemy praise me then I ask myself “where have I gone wrong”, when they curse me and attack me then I know that I am on the right road, that I am serving my class well.’ Gaitskell, too, may -well ponder these words. And yet, Brandt’s evolution into a right-wing social democrat was not an inevitable process. In the 1930s, when _ the Nazi menace was growing in Germany, he belonged to the Left of the Socialist youth. He grew impatient and irritated at the impotence of the social-democratic leadership and their unwillingness to organize a real fight against the fascists. Almost as an echo of the current struggle inside the British Labour Party, we read of the differences between the Socialist youth and the social democratic leaders, as typified by

[p024] 22 Jules Leber, militarism. *. . . We had grown up in the anti-militaristic tradition of the German labour movement, we had been taught to distrust the “reigning class”; whereas Leber knew that in order to gain power the Social Demo- crats had either to win the sympathy and allegiance of the army or to remain without influence.’ on the question of As the crisis in Germany became ~ more intense; more and more voices within the Socialist Youth were raised against the leadership of the party. If the Communist Party had known how to apply the Leninist tactic of the United Front in this situation, it would have rallied millions to its banner. But the dead hand of the Stalinist leadership in Moscow pre- vented this. Once Stalin had defined Social-Democracy as the ‘twin’ of Fascism and the Social-Democratic leadership as ‘ Social-Fascist ’, all talk of a united front became so much hot air. ; Disillusioned with Social - Demo- cracy, disgusted with the tactics of the Stalinists, especially after the ‘ Brown- Red Referendum’ in Prussia, Brandt and his fellow Leftists left the Social-Democratic Party and joined the Socialist Workers’ Party, a sort of German IL P. Later, his experiences of Stalinism in the Spanish civil war. and his years of exile in the calm backwaters of Scandinavia reconciled him to Social-Democracy. Today, basking in the reflected sunlight of American capitalism, Brandt has forgotten the militancy of his youth and the original causes of his disillusionment with Social-Demo- ‘cracy. The social reforms which he rejected as ‘sedatives’ in the 1930s, have now become the ultimate objec- tives of the party which he leads. C.V.G. Merchant of Death The Fall and Rise of Alfried Krupp, by Gordon Young. Cassell, 21s. Mr. Young’s book is more than just a biography of Alfried Krupp;. it is an important account of the record of the Krupp firm in the arming of Germany in both wars, and the secret rearmament in the yerrs between. The declared aim of the author is mereiy to present the facts of the case, and apart from occasional under- tones, he does so without comment. This may be just as well, for in instances such as this where the facts clearly speak for themselves, a purely documentary account is likely to receive more attention. The author goes into the Krupp family history at some length, giving a detailed account of the firm’s growth during the last century under Alfried Krupp, the ‘Cannon King’, who took over the foundry in 1826, which then employed only seven men, and by 1887 was employing over 20,000 men and had sold a total of 25,567 big guns to 21 countries. After his death the firm was strong and prosperous enough to stand the ensuing period of uncertain manage- ment until 1906 when Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach, father of the present Alfried Krupp, married the grand-daughter and became owner. It was he more than anyone else who was personally responsible for the firm’s material support of the Kaiser, and later Hitler. The extent to which he was involved is’ demon- strated by the fact that in 1914 one of his own directors publicly alleged - that six months before the outbreak of war, Gustav had received con- fidential information from Berlin that war was impending, and had been. able to reorganize his works for war production. Gustav. denied _ this charge, but nearly thirty years later during the Second World War he stated openly that he had secretly commenced arms production in the *twenties, and deceived the Allied Investigation Commissions. Tanks were being manufactured by Krupps as early as 1926, experimental work was carried on by Krupp engineers through the Swedish firm of Bofors, and even the ‘ Big Bertha’ gun was hidden inside a dummy factory chimney. Together with the other industria- lists, Gustav supported Hitler in his rise to power, and later became an ardent Nazi himself. At Nuremburg the indictment of having taken part in the planning and waging of the war was drawn up against him, but by that time he was dying and unfit to plead, and his son Alfried stood trial in his place. Alfried Krupp had taken over the firm in 1943, and although the first charge against him LABOUR REVIEW—Spring, 1961 —of involvement in the Nazi war plans—failed, he was finally sentenced to twelve years for employing slave labour and plundering occupied countries. Since then the cynical story has repeated itself, except for the impor- tant detail that this time it was the Western governments, urgently seek- ing to rebuild capitalism in Germany, who resurrected the war criminal and lifted virtually all the restrictions from him. Now he is once again the powerful and respected industrial giant, richest man in Europe, and therefore a pillar of democratic free enterprise. According to capitalist ethics, there is really nothing that can be. said against him; he may have employed 70,000 slave workers in his factories, but then that was all a long time ago, and in any case, has he not since paid monetary compensa- tion to the survivors? S.W. Background to Franco