Workers' Liberty

World War Two created extremely difficult circumstances and political challenges for internationalist Marxists.

By summer 1943 the Axis war machine was suffering heavy setbacks. Although Hitler had completed a total occupation of France in November 1942, and still held on to his conquests in the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and parts of western Russia, the Axis powers no longer looked able to win the war.

No. 1 July 1943

is proletarian revolution coming?

The Stalinist bureaucrats have dissolved the Comintern. “Warning”, declares the Axis propaganda, “this is just a manoeuvre, a chimera, playing dead”. “Hurrah!” the Anglo-Saxon imperialist press cries with joy, “our allies are not communists, they are good Russian patriots”. “Of course, it’s just a manoeuvre” is the rationalisation the communist worker still committed to the Third International

No. 2 August 1943

German soldiers have received the Nazi press’s parcimonious news on events in Italy with bewilderment and with anxiety.

The real face of the war

No. 2 Summer 1943

[Illegible] I came back from leave a few days ago and I was amazed by the situation in Germany. What I saw is not easy to describe.

May 1944

The SPD leadership’s treachery in the First World War left the German working class disarmed. Talk of revolution was smothered by the state of emergency. Therefore it was liberating when on 1 May 1916 Karl Liebknecht organised a demonstration in Potsdamer Platz with the support of thousands of workers from Berlin,

Soldiers! Comrades! A new and decisive phase of the Second World War has begun. Anglo-American capital has launched its troops on the offensive on the European continent. With 4,000 warships, 13,000 planes and half a million soldiers they have begun landings on the French Atlantic coast.

July 1944

Soldiers who fought in Russian remain confused about the contradictory character of Soviet life: on the one hand great, undeniable progress in the cities, including new houses, large roads and modern

(A letter from a soldier)