Chapter Twenty-Seven: World War II: The Early War Phases (1939-1941)

27. World War II: The Early War Phases (1939-1941)

Foster pictured here in 1940 with Earl Browder,
who was later expelled from the Party for his
appeasement philosophies with capitalism.

World War II, like the first world war and the great economic crisis of 1929-33, was a manifestation of the deepening general crisis of world capitalism. It was a great explosion of imperialist contradictions, within the framework of the rapidly decaying capitalist system. The war was precipitated as a murderous struggle among the big capitalist powers for control of world markets, resources, territory, and populations—for a political redistribution of the world. In its largest aspect, the war was also an attempt by reactionary big capital in the major countries to destroy democracy and socialism and to establish a fascist world in which the workers would be merely so many robots. The chief aggressors were the German, Japanese, and Italian imperialists who, after wiping out democracy in their own countries, directly initiated the conflict by brazenly setting out to conquer the world. But the imperialists of Great Britain, France, and the United States, through their governmental appeasement of the fascist powers, also bore a large share of the war guilt. Before the war was finished, the capitalist war criminals were responsible for the deaths of at least 50 million people, for a vast ocean of mass suffering, and for the destruction of $4,000 billion in wealth.1

From the outset the war also had a deep people's content. This was the struggle of the democratic masses, battling in self-defense against enslavement by the fascist imperialists of the Axis powers. It was this growing struggle of the peoples against slavery that finally put the stamp of a people's war, a just war, upon World War II as a whole. Stalin, after showing that the hostilities had originated in the irreconcilable antagonisms between the two camps of big imperialist powers, thus characterized the war: "Unlike the first world war, the second world war against the Axis states from the very outset assumed the character of an anti-fascist war, a war of liberation, one of the aims of which was also the restoration of democratic liberties. The entry of the Soviet Union into the war against the Axis states could only enhance and did enhance, the anti-fascist and liberation character of the second world war."2 As the great war developed, the peoples fought with desperation against the most bloody and menacing tyranny the world had ever known. They fought for their civil rights, their living standards, their labor unions, their national independence, their very lives.

In the early, imperialist-dominated stages of the war. Communist policy called for defense of the invaded peoples (in China, Spain, Ethiopia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere), prevention of the spread of the war, and for a democratic peace. After the involvement of the Soviet Union, which drastically changed the character, scope, and perspectives of the war in a democratic direction, the Communists militantly supported the prosecution of the war, to the overwhelming defeat of the fascist enemy.

THE "PHONY" WAR

World War II proper began with Hitler's attack upon Poland, on September 1, 1939. The war was led on both sides by imperialist governments. Hitler's powerful, highly mechanized army shattered the Polish resistance in three weeks, and the fascist Polish government, cowardly taking to its heels, fled across the border, leaving the country to its fate. Hitler, therefore, speedily fanned out his forces all over western Poland. Meanwhile, the U.S.S.R., in self-defense in the face of the advancing Nazi troops, took over eastern Poland, essentially up to the so-called Curzon Line, which many years before had been designated by a League of Nations commission as the proper demarcation point in the Soviet-Polish border dispute. The revolutionary peoples of Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia, who had been torn away from Russia twenty years before by the Versailles Treaty, proceeded to rid themselves of their pro-Nazi governments and voted to resume their affiliation with the U.S.S.R.

After the fall of Poland the so-called "phony war" set in. Great Britain and France, which were both pledged to defend Poland, never stirred to help that assailed country. Obviously these two great powers were utterly dumbfounded by the unwanted situation confronting them. Through several years they had systematically "appeased" and built up Hitler's Germany and its armed forces, in the full expectation that this great might would be used to destroy the hated Soviet Union. But now, by the unexpected turn of events, these very forces were being turned into a destructive drive against themselves, while the Soviet Union stood unscathed. The British-French-American imperialists had been hoist by their own petard. They had developed a "wrong war"; now they must needs transform it into the "right war" against the Soviet Union. This murderous scheme was their goal during the next six months, during the "phony war" period, when neither side in the conflict made a military move against the other.

Hitler had his own strategy for world conquest. He would have gladly united with the western powers for an all-out attack against the U.S.S.R., could he have made a satisfactory bargain with them—this was the motive of the Hess flight to England, and Goebbels hammered on it all through the war. There were two great obstacles which prevented such an agreement, however; namely, the antagonistic imperialist ambitions of the western powers and the powerful anti-fascist spirit of their working class, led or heavily influenced by the Communist parties. More-aver, the arrogant Hitler believed Germany was strong enough to defeat all its imperialist rivals, plus the Soviet Union. His war plans, therefore, conflicted directly with those of his western capitalist rivals. His strategic objectives were first to knock out Britain and France and their satellites as the easiest marks, and then later to defeat the Soviet Union. Thus, he hoped to kill two birds with one stone; he would gain the productive capacity of western Europe and he would not have to share with Britain and France his anticipated rich plunder of the Soviet Union. As for the task of beating the Soviet Red Army, Hitler had no doubt that this would be a small chore for his powerful Wehrmacht.

While the western imperialists, after the collapse of Poland, were trying desperately to shift the war away from themselves and against the U.S.S.R., the Finnish-Soviet war broke out on November 30, 1939. The war was immediately caused by Finnish incursions across the Soviet borders, but at bottom it was a British-French provocation, an attempt to unite the armed capitalist world against the U.S.S.R. in a frenzied anti-Communist war crusade. Finland had been armed by Great Britain, and its famous fortifications on the Soviet frontier were built by British engineers. The Finnish government was run by the typically fascist clique of the ex-tsarist general, "Butcher" Mannerheim, with the help of a particularly degenerated group of Social-Democratic leaders, all of whom were also tied in with Hitler.
The Finnish-Soviet war lasted until March 12, 1940. Upon that date the U.S.S.R., after smashing the "impregnable" Mannerheim Line, made a fair and democratic peace with Finland. During the war period the wildest agitation against the Soviet Union was carried on in Great Britain, France, Scandinavia, and the United States. Fascist Finland was pictured as an abused democratic country, and the U.S.S.R. was expelled from the League of Nations as an "aggressor." Fantastic stories were broadcast about Finnish military exploits in the war. Volunteer anti-Soviet armed forces were raised in Britain, France, and elsewhere. In the United States, where a frenzied pro-Finland incitement raged, President Roosevelt denounced Russia and granted Finland a $10 million loan, while reactionaries and confused liberals cried out for general war against the U.S.S.R. But later on, to the embarrassment of all its friends in the western world, the government of "democratic" Finland clearly displayed its true fascist colors by fighting on the side of the Axis powers in World War II.

Hitler, as remarked earlier, had his own war plan, and it was not based upon co-operation with the western capitalist nations. When he was all prepared, he launched his crushing attack upon the western countries. His armies invaded Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940, and finished off those countries in a few days. By May 28th of the same year, Der Fuehrer's forces had smashed the "invincible" French army, forced the Low Countries out of the war, and driven the British army into the sea at Dunkirk, France. The capitalist governments of western Europe, with their ruling classes and army officers corps saturated with fascism, callously betrayed their peoples and crumbled before the attack of Nazi Germany.

AMERICAN REACTIONS TO THE WAR

While highly sympathetic to the peoples attacked by the fascist aggressors, the American people were sharply opposed to the United States entering the war. Several Gallup polls, between September 1939 and May 1940, indicated that over 96 percent of the American people opposed American participation in the war.3 All the mass organizations reflected this general anti-war sentiment. At its 1939 convention, in October, the A.F. of L. declared, "As for our own country, we demand that it stay out of the European conflict, maintaining neutrality in spirit and act." The C.I.O. convention, meeting at the same time, took a similar stand, stating that "Labor wants no war nor any part of war."4

The three major farm organizations—the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Grange, and the National Farmers Union-assembled in their conventions during November 1939, protested against the current high military expenditures and opposed the United States entering the war. Such united front organizations as the American League for Peace and Democracy, National Negro Congress, American Youth Congress, League of American Writers, Southern Congress for Human Welfare, and the like, also went on record against United States participation in the war. When President Roosevelt, therefore, two days after the invasion of Poland, declared that the attitude of the American government toward the war would be one of neutrality, he was undoubtedly supported by the great masses of the people.

The powerful pro-fascist elements in the United States took a position of so-called neutrality toward the war. But this was of a very thin variety. Actually their line was to prevent the American people from aiding in any way the invaded nations of Europe and Asia, and at the same time themselves to give all possible assistance to the fascist aggressors. To this end they systematically cultivated and exploited the strong and traditional isolationist sentiments among the people.

THE COMMUNIST POSITION ON THE WAR

On the day Hitler attacked Poland, thus precipitating World War II, the National Committee of the Communist Party was holding an enlarged session in Chicago in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Party in that city. Regarding the war, the National Committee declared, through the general secretary's report, that "The American government cannot take sides in the imperialist rivalries which directly led up to the invasion of Poland. But it can, and must, intervene jointly with the Soviet Union on behalf of peace, on behalf of the national independence of Poland, on behalf of a peace policy which would prevent the realization of new Munich betrayals."5 This was an unclear position.

On September 19, 1939, the National Committee of the Communist Party issued a formal statement on the war. 6 It said, "The war that has broken out in Europe is the Second Imperialist War. The ruling capitalist and landlord classes of all the belligerent countries are equally guilty for this war. This war, therefore, cannot be supported by the workers. It is not a war against fascism, not a war to protect small nations from aggression, not a war with any of the character of a just war, not a war that workers can or should support. It is a war between rival imperialisms for world domination." The Party called for "maximum support to China and to all oppressed peoples in their struggle against fascism, for freedom and national independence." It urged the forging of "the Democratic Alliance of the workers, toiling farmers, and middle classes against the economic royalists and imperialist warmakers." It would fight to "protect and improve living standards, democratic liberties, and the right to organize and strike." It called for support of "the peace   policy  of  the  Soviet  Union—the  land  of  Socialist  democracy, progress, peace, and national liberation." The central slogan was, "Keep America Out of the Imperialist War."

This attitude of opposition to the war in its early stages, when the imperialists dominated it, was in accord with the position of the Communists all over the world. On November 7th, the twenty-second anniversary of the Russian Revolution, when the political leadership of the western allies' war forces was still in the hands of the British and French imperialists, the Communist International issued a manifesto on the war, entitled Peace to the People. The Comintern characterized the war as "an unjust, reactionary, imperialist war, which the ruling circles of Britain, France, and Germany are waging for world supremacy." It stated, "The bourgeoisie began this war, because they became entangled in the insurmountable contradictions of the capitalist system and are trying to solve these contradictions by means of new wars." This war, the bourgeoisie would not have begun or waged, "had it not been aided by the treacherous top leaders of the Social-Democratic parties. . . . The working class cannot support such a war." The statement declared, "Down with the imperialist war," and it called upon the proletariat, while defending its living standards, organizations, and liberties, to "demand the immediate cessation of the predatory, unjust, imperialist war."7

The Communist policy was not one of isolationism or neutrality, but of dynamic struggle to defend the rights of the conquered peoples, to prevent the spread of the war, and to bring the war to the quickest possible democratic conclusion. It was along this general line that the C.P.U.S.A. conducted its fight in the first phase of the war, between September 1939 and June 1941.

During this period, among the many peace activities backed by the Communist Party was the American Peace Mobilization. This organization was formed in Chicago, on August 31, 1940, at a great united front convention of trade unions, youth organizations, Negro groups, women's clubs, fraternal societies, etc. There were present some 6,000 delegates from 39 states, representing a total membership of about 12 million. Along with defending the economic and political rights of the American toiling masses, this big movement fought against the further extension of the war and "For a People's Peace. For a peace without indemnities, without annexations, based upon the right of all people in subjugated or colonial countries to determine their own destinies." 8

ROOSEVELT HEADS TOWARD WAR

Although President Roosevelt at the war's beginning had pledged the country to a policy of neutrality, he at once began to orientate toward supporting the western powers against the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis. A whole body of legislative and executive orders started to take shape, designed to recruit large armed forces, to mobilize industry and the workers for war production, to finance the military effort, to give aid to the western powers, and to curb all opposition to the war. This war program became much more definite when in the spring of 1940 Hitler's Wehrmacht began to overturn and break up the rotten governments and fascist-saturated armies of Britain, France, and their allies.

On November 4, 1939, Congress amended the Neutrality Act of 1937, and the eventual great flood of munitions to Great Britain began. At first this operated according to the so-called cash-and-carry-plan, whereby the western allies could get whatever supplies they could pay for. Fifteen months later, however, beginning on March 11, 1941, this was followed by the Lend-Lease Act, which conferred upon the president dictatorial power with regard to the disposition of American war materials. According to this law, the president was authorized to transfer the whole or any part of U.S. naval and army equipment to other countries and to place new defense production at their disposal, upon such financial terms as the president saw fit to impose. This direct aid to the Allies was supplemented by such measures as the defense pacts with Canada, on August 18, 1940, and with Great Britain, on September 2, 1940, by which that country was given fifty destroyers in return for granting the United States 99-year leases on bases in her colonies all the way from Newfoundland to Guiana. In March 1941, a $7 billion aid-to-Britain bill was passed. 9

Industrial mobilization was also pushed energetically. The United States was now becoming "the arsenal of democracy." To bring some faint traces of order into the characteristic capitalist production chaos, the government set up the National Defense Advisory Commission, headed by William S. Knudsen, president of General Motors. When this failed, the president established the Office of Production Management on January 7, 1941, with Knudsen and Sidney Hillman as co-chairmen. On May 27th, Roosevelt declared an unlimited national emergency. Intense propaganda was also instituted to speed up the workers. The general result of these combined efforts was that production began to climb. Unemployment largely subsided. War put into operation the industries which capitalism otherwise could not get under way. Whereas in 1939 the gross national product was $88.6 billion, by  1941  it had reached $120.5 billion. Congress poured out huge appropriations to finance the mounting production and the other war expenses. These soared from $931.5 million in 1938 to $8.2 billion in 1941.

The traditional volunteer system for recruiting manpower for the armed services was quickly superseded by the principle of compulsion, for the first time in American peacetime history. On September 16, 1940, therefore, the president signed the Selective Training and Service Act, submitting some 16,500,000 men, aged from 21 to 35, to conscription. Most of the war measures in Congress had been adopted with top-heavy majorities, but this one, confronting widespread popular resistance, faced a one-third opposition vote in Congress.

THE 1940 ELECTIONS

In the midst of these far-reaching preparations for war the presidential elections of 1940 took place. The Democrats nominated Roosevelt, with Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, for vice-president. The Republicans picked out for their candidates Wendell L. Willkie and Senator Charles L. McNary. Willkie, formerly a Democrat, was a Morgan man and previously the head of a monopoly, the Commonwealth and Southern Corp. A "Wall Street liberal," he saw eye to eye with Roosevelt on many phases of domestic and foreign policy. That this type of liberal was able to win the Republican nomination (against Senator Taft) signified that the "isolationist," pro-Hitler leaders of the Republican Party had passed into a temporary eclipse because of the powerful mass alarm at the startling victories which Hitler's armies were then winning in Europe.

Although the Republican Party platform assailed the New Deal, Willkie's attitude was, in substance, that he would, if elected, out-New-Deal Roosevelt. In a speech at Elwood, Indiana, Willkie quoted the precise words of President Roosevelt as expressing their common stand on domestic and foreign policy. As the election approached, however, Willkie realized that he could not be elected with any such me-too stand. So he demagogically appealed to reactionary anti-red prejudices by declaring that Roosevelt had "Communistic tendencies," and he also tried to misuse the peace sentiments of the masses by stating that Roosevelt was forcing the country into the war. In addition, he made a big fight against Roosevelt's breaking of the two-term tradition.

Roosevelt, who assured the people that he would not lead their sons into war, was duly elected for his third term. He carried 38 states with 449 electoral votes, while Willkie won in only 10 states with 82 electoral votes. Roosevelt's plurality in 1940, however, was much reduced from that of the elections of 1936, dropping from 10,797,090 to 4,938,711.

The Communist Party, at its eleventh convention held in New York City, beginning on May 30, 1940, put up as its presidential candidates Earl Browder and James W. Ford. Meeting much local resistance, however, from the American Legion and other reactionary organizations, the Party succeeded in getting on the ballot in only 23 states, being barred by one device or another in New York, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and other important states. This accounted for the Party's low election vote of 46,251. The Party centered its main fight around the slogans, "Keep the United States out of the imperialist war" and "For a people's peace." It also made a vigorous fight for the demands of the Negro people and the youth, for the preservation of democratic rights, and especially in defense of the living standards of the working class, which were being undermined by the insatiable demands of the growing war machine.

An important by-product of the 1940 election was the resignation of John L. Lewis as president of the C.I.O. Lewis, who had fallen out with Roosevelt, claimed that the latter was not giving sufficient concern to the needs of the workers and called upon the people to elect Willkie. He declared, "I think the re-election of President Roosevelt for a third term would be a national evil of the first magnitude."10 Therewith, Lewis promised to resign if Willkie were not elected, a pledge which he duly carried out by quitting at the Atlantic City convention, on November 18, 1940, as head of the C.I.O. Thus Lewis, instead of taking the line of independent political action, had tried to lead the workers deeper into the two-party trap. Philip Murray was elected as the new president of the C.I.O.

John L. Lewis did a real service for the working class in leading the great organizing drive of the C.I.O. which resulted in the unionization of the basic and trustified industries of this country. His most glaring contradiction as a labor leader, however, was that while making an economic fight for the workers, at the same time he gave his support to the ultra-reactionary Republican Party. Only during Roosevelt's first two terms did he waver in this life-long Republican affiliation. At the time of Lewis' resignation his popularity in the C.I.O. and far and wide among A.F. of L. workers was immense.

PERSECUTION OF THE PARTY

In the pre-Pearl Harbor period militant reaction, under cover of the proclaimed "national emergency," developed a sharp attack against the Communist Party. Roosevelt obviously gave his sanction to this. Among these attacks, during October-November 1939, Earl Browder, general secretary of the C.P., William Weiner, I.W.O. leader, and Harry Gannes, foreign editor of the Daily Worker, were arrested charged with passport violations. Browder was sent to Atlanta prison in March 1941, and served one year of a four-year sentence, when he was released by Roosevelt under heavy mass pressure. Weiner and Gannes were not tried, on account of grave illness.

William Schneiderman, Secretary of the C.P. in California, a naturalized citizen living in this country since the age of two, had his citizenship revoked in June 1940, on grounds of membership in the Y.C.L. and C.P. before his naturalization. The U.S. Supreme Court in October 1942, however, during the war situation, reversed the lower court's ruling, stating that it was a tenable conclusion that the "Party in 1927 desired to achieve its purpose by peaceful and democratic means."11 Wendell Willkie was Schneiderman's attorney. Judge Murphy wrote the Court's opinion.

A number of other prosecutions were directed against Party leaders. Several were condemned by the Dies Committee for contempt for refusing to turn over Party membership lists. Also, in West Virginia the C.P. candidate for governor, Oscar Wheeler, in August 1940, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for collecting signatures on a Party election petition. During the same month 18 workers carrying on routine election activities were arrested in Oklahoma, charged with violating the state anti-syndicalism law, and held in $100,000 bail each. R. Wood and A. Shaw were sentenced to 10 years apiece, but were shortly released.

Among the many vicious laws passed during this period was the notorious Smith Act, of June 22, 1940. This law, under which the Party is now, in 1952, being prosecuted, provides ferocious sentences for the alleged crime of "teaching and advocating the overthrow of the United States government by force and violence," and for conspiring to do this. Its chief significance in 1940, however, was that, as a repressive measure, it forced the Hitler-like finger-printing and registration of 3,600,000 non-citizen foreign-born.

Another vicious piece of legislation was the Voorhis Act, fathered by Congressman Voorhis, a member of the Dies Committee. It was signed by the president in October 1940. This reactionary law deprived the Communist Party of the right of international affiliation, a right enjoyed for generations by a host of organizations-economic, political, scientific, industrial, educational, and religious. To meet this attack, the Party held a special convention in New York, November  16-17,  1940. This convention, while reaffirming the "unshakable adherence of our Party to the principles of proletarian internationalism," and resolving to fight for the abolition of the Voorhis Act, declared, "That the Communist Party of the U.S.A., in convention assembled, does hereby cancel and dissolve its organizational affiliation to the Communist International, as well as any and all other bodies of any kind outside the boundaries of the United States of America, for the specific purpose of removing itself from the terms of the so-called Voorhis Act." This act of disaffiliation killed the contemplated prosecution of the Party by the Department of Justice, which was designed to illegalize and break up the Party and to jail its leaders. The Party did not abandon its internationalist position. As a result of the newly-passed Smith Act, the Party at the 1940 convention, upon Browder's proposal, incorrectly adopted a clause in its constitution restricting the Party's membership to United States citizens. This cost the Party about 4,000 members and substantially weakened its influence among the foreign-born. The clause was removed at the 1944 convention. At the latter convention, also, the admission age for Party membership was reduced from 21 to 18 years.

THE AMERICA FIRST COMMITTEE

The sinister movement comprising the America First Committee was the nearest thing to a general fascist party that the United States has yet had. Its line was the familiar "isolationism." Under cover of elaborate peace demagogy it cultivated every form of reaction in the United States and gave all possible assistance to the fascist Axis powers. The America First Committee was much more definitely fascist than its predecessor, the American Liberty League of the 1936 presidential campaign.

The America First Committee was launched on the campus of Yale University, initiated by R. Douglas Stuart, a 24-year-old law student, in the spring of 1940. It spread rapidly, being taken over by General Robert E. Wood, head of Sears, Roebuck and a member of the Chicago Tribune gang. The movement was lavishly financed, having among its many backers Henry Ford, L. J. Rosenwald, E. P. Weir, Robert M. McCormick, T. N. McCarter, and others. Among the large number of public figures associated with it were Senators Wheeler, Nye, and Lodge, Hugh S. Johnson, Amos Pinchot, Philip LaFollette, Edward Rickenbacker, John T. Flynn, Kathryn Lewis, and others. It attracted many muddle-headed liberals, including Chester Bowles, later the head of Americans for Democratic Action. William H. Hutcheson, first vice-president of the A.F. of L., was a member, and Norman Thomas spoke from its platform at a mass meeting in New York, in March 1941.12 The influence of the Catholic hierarchy was also much in evidence. Every fascist organization in the country was directly or indirectly connected with the Committee. Charles A. Lindbergh, the noted aviator whom Roosevelt called a "copperhead," was its principal spokesman. Headquarters were in Chicago.

A subsidiary of the America First Committee was the No Foreign Wars Committee. This outfit was run by such notorious fascist-like elements as Merwin K. Hart, Vern Marshall, and G. T. Eggleston. Its special task, in the broad America First movement, was to propagate a virulent anti-Semitism. The Communist Party made an all-out campaign against the America First Committee and all its works.

The America First Committee, playing upon the intense peace sentiments of the people, mushroomed into a national organization claiming 15 million adherents.13 It had a tremendous propaganda organization, large numbers of neighborhood public headquarters being established in all parts of the country. The aim of the backers of the movement was to crystallize it into a political organization, as a reinforcement for the Republican Party. But the whole vast agitation met a sudden shipwreck after the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941. In the face of the surging war spirit of the people, the America First Committee was immediately dissolved.

HITLER MARCHES TOWARD DISASTER

Now let us turn back to the war proper. After Hitler had driven the British into the sea at Dunkirk, obviously the next strategic step was to overrun the British Isles. They were largely defenseless. Hanson W. Baldwin states that "the British in the summer of 1940 had less than one fully equipped division able to meet German invaders."14 The British air force and navy were similarly weak, and could not have repelled an invasion. Nevertheless Hitler did not venture to seize the great prize lying so temptingly before him. This was primarily because of his fear of a two-front war, his dread of the Red Army in his rear in the East. The fact is that up to this time, so great was this fear, Hitler kept three-fourths of his army in Eastern Europe, on guard against the Russians. It is a fiction that the Royal Air Force, in the "Battle of Britain," saved that country from invasion.

Instead of grabbing Britain when he could, in 1940, Hitler had to turn his urgent attention to the Balkans, particularly as the Red Army had just occupied the former Russian province of Bessarabia. For the next few months, therefore, Hitler devoted his main efforts to the East, pulling Bulgaria into the war, militarily crushing Yugoslavia, Greece, and Albania, and otherwise getting the Balkan situation under control. Then, considering that Great Britain could be no danger in his rear for the next period, he delivered his major blow—against the U.S.S.R. Hitler felt it was indispensable to smash the Soviet Union in order to subjugate Europe and to break his way through to the lush perspectives of conquest in Asia and Africa. Therefore, on June 22, 1941, cynically violating his non-aggression treaty with that country, he suddenly sent his armies storming across the borders of the Soviet Union. This was Hitler's fatal step. It changed the whole course of the war, and it marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany and its pirate allies.

1 Labor Research Association, Economic Notes, Oct. 1951.

2 Joseph Stalin, For Peaceful Coexistence, p. 8, N. Y., 1951

3 Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book 5, p. 57.

4 Congress of Industrial Organizations, The C.I.O. and the War, Washington, D. C, 1939.

5 Earl Browder, Unity For Peace and Democracy, p. so, N. Y., 1939.

6 The Communist, Oct. 1939.

7 The Communist, Dec. 1939.

8 Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book ;, p. 58.

9 Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book 5, p. 34.

10 Dulles, Labor in America, p. 322.

11 American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born,  The Schneiderman Case, p. 26, N. Y., 1943.

12 Oneal and Werner, American Communism, p. 292.

13 John Roy Carlson in American Mercury, June 1948.

14 New York Times, May 14, 1945.