| Summary: | Bemerkungen: [] = Absatzmarken im Volltext des Originals; Herkunft: Privatsammlung Susanne Miller
"They must be disarmed and kept disarmed and they must abandon the philosophy and teaching of that philosophy which has brought so much suffering to the world."- PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT to United States Congress, 7th January, 1942. [] Fight for Freedom [] ... WHAT IS IT? [] "FIGHT FOR FREEDOM" [] Editorial & Publishing Services Ltd., [] 39 Berkeley Court, Baker Street, London, N.W.1 [] [] AN APPEAL [] "We can be proud of the courage shown by our comrades there, and the surviving know that with your wonderful help they will he victorious. [] "These Labour masses in the Occupied Countries knew perfectly well what to do, without any orders coming from outside. [] "I said last year: [] 'The Occupied Countries are impenitent, they are stubborn, they are block-headed, exactly like John Bull would be if Great Britain were invaded. But you have never been invaded as were the Belgians, twice in one generation, and for this reason it may be more difficult for you to understand completely what a German occupation signifies.' [] "I must add something to these words this year. [] "The German armies have, in the meantime, enlarged their list of crimes to an extent unseen in the history of mankind. They have slaughtered and murdered millions of the Allied nations - Socialists included. They have damaged, for life, the precious youth of the Occupied Countries, our youth included. They have undermined the health and the family life of the working-class of these countries, so to harm them for all time. [] "For that, we - Socialists as we are and want to be - we owe them, these nations and our comrades, a great debt. [] "We must protect them against repetition, we must ask for deeds instead of words - and we must not leave them to hopes, even hopes based on the most sacred beliefs which, if not fulfilled, would mean their ruin in a Third German War ... [] "Security is the basis for all life. We want it and we have to bring it, otherwise Socialism and all what it involves, has no future. But the attribute 'Socialist' is not enough. We accepted that, once, but we have learned the lesson. There must be Socialism, Democracy, Security, Freedom and Peace in the heart, not only upon the lips." - CAMILLE HUYSMANS, Labour Party Annual Conference, London, June, 1943. [] [] The Story of "Fight for Freedom" [] MANY Continental Socialists and Trade Unionists from Occupied Europe came to this country in the summer and autumn of 1940. They were unmuzzled voices of their people. They had great faith in Britain's power to save Europe and herself. They were alone with her in her greatest hour, and did not feel alone. They were Allies in spirit and purpose. [] They soon found one another. They had meetings, formal and informal, and time and again the same theme kept recurring. Did Britain understand, NOW? [] Some of them had seen the German Army - the German people in arms and had fought it. They had made mistakes. They had not believed that this could happen twice in a short time. But neither, it would seem, had Britain - as she had not foreseen what nearly happened, the downfall of France and of Britain, too. [] Some of them had loved peace not wisely but too well. They had been neutrals. But Britain, as well as France, had also sought to appease the potential enemy, and was caught unprepared, with their own security and the Freedom of mankind as the stakes. [] With their own experience in mind they now began to study the German Problem again. They searched their memories. Meanwhile, they scanned the British Press, and detected a tendency to accept Hitler or the National Socialist Party as an alibi for the Germans, and this second German World War as an avoidable accident. They were uneasy. [] Nevertheless, nothing was done. Our Allied friends were the guests of this country. They had not come here to teach the British about the Germans. Britain was at war with Germany - for the second time. [] But they were soon to discover, when the Battle of Britain had been won, that anti-Nazi Germans and Austro-Germans, who had arrived here before them, were engaged in political activity - on behalf of Germany. These Germans belonged to that trickle of political refugees which had crossed the frontier in 1933 and 1934. There were even much later arrivals. These anti-Nazi Germans had a press. They had found, publishers. Their influence upon the sympathetic and receptive, but ill-informed, could be observed. A plain declaration by James Walker, M.P., as to the undoubted War Guilt of the German people (Chairman's Address, Labour Party Annual Conference, 1941) provoked a storm of opposition among the German refugees and their British friends. It was then that "FIGHT FOR FREEDOM" Editorial and Publishing Services Ltd. was formed to publish the Truth about Germany. [] "Fight for Freedom stands for an associated political effort of Socialists and Trade Unionists from the Occupied Territories and eminent British colleagues with a few German Social Democrats and Trade Unionists who had proved themselves to be also Allies in spirit and in truth. They are all well known in the Labour movements of their respective countries, and throughout the international movement. Their experience, knowledge and bona fides are unquestionable. Their reputation as socialists, democrats and anti-militarists cannot be challenged. [] The "Fight for Freedom" is absolutely independent. It is a publishing company and a research centre. It has no agreements with other societies and has never sought them. Its former German collaborators are servants of a better future Germany. The rigorous investigation of the facts of history, and especially of those facts which have had a great influence upon the present historic events, is its method. "Fight for Freedom" has no other programme or policy. Its task is enlightenment. [] They only serve the cause of International Socialism who have "peace in their hearts, and not only upon their lips." The "Fight for Freedom" has no other bias. [] It has presented facts which are incontestable, because it is both wise and expedient to know the truth about one's enemy. His spiritual and political armoury is a not less worthy object of study than his weapons and strategy. If the truth grates upon the ears of some anti-Nazi Germans in our midst, that is nothing new. It was the same in Germany, even in the Weimar Republic, where anti-militarists were often assassinated, and the assassins seldom brought to trial. [] If it hurts British friends, that is not the fault of the "Fight for Freedom." [] [] "We appeal to the people of all countries who equally long for peace and we appeal especially to the people of Germany in whose hands lies the decision whether or not millions of men, women and children are to suffer death. Herr Hitler has started this war, but he can only continue it if the German people continue to support him. The fact that he is the leader of the German people does not relieve them of their responsibilies to one another and to the world. [] Peace is obtainable now, provided that there is an abandonment of aggression and a recognition of the rights of all nations and of all people. " - RIGHT HON. C. R. ATTLEE, Caxton Hall, London. 8th November, 1939. [] "... It must not be assumed that Germany had calculated that she must of necessity win this war. She did not calculate that she could win the last one. She nearly did. But she did calculate that she could bleed her enemies so white in two world wars that the third might possibly be the triumphant one for her to secure the domination of the world. There was cold-blooded, calculated militarism behind the whole of that philosophy, and the great statesmen of all the United Nations - however long the struggle might be, however bitter it might become, in order to carry out their obligations to the generations yet unborn would see it through to such a conclusion that there would not be another 1918, another opportunity for a third world war ever to take place ..." - RIGHT HON. ERNEST BEVIN, Chairman, Independence Day Luncheon, Dorchester Hotel, 5th July, 1943. [] "... That there were many people in Germany opposed to Nazism in the early days of Hitler's power I do not doubt; many of them, alas! have since been eliminated. That there are still some remaining I feel sure. How many I do not know. But they are quite ineffectual as an opposition, and should be ready, in the interests of a future free and democratic Germany, to agree with the conditions laid down by the United Nations, including, as they must, unilateral disarmament and Allied occupation for as long as is necessary to secure the re-education of the Nazified youth of Germany. We shall be wise to doubt the bona fides of any who suggest that these conditions are harsh or unreasonable, irrespective of their political or social outlook." - ALFRED J. DOBBS, J.P., Chairman's Address, Labour Party Annual Conference, London, 14th June, 1943. [] "We, the United Nations, demand from the Nazi, Fascist and Japanese tyrannies unconditional surrender. By that we mean that their will-power to resist must be completely broken, and that they must yield themselves absolutely to our justice and mercy. It also means that we must take all those far-sighted measures which are necessary to prevent the world from being again convulsed and wrecked and blackened by their calculated plots and ferocious aggression. It does not mean, and it never can mean, that we are to stain our victorious arms by inhumanity or by mere lust of vengeance, or that we do not plan a world in which all branches of the human family may look forward to what the American Constitution finely calls 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.'" - RIGHT. HON. WINSTON CHURCHILL, M.P., Guildhall, London, 30th June, 1943. [] [] Board of Directors and Editorial Board of " Fight for Freedom [] (Members serve in their individual capacity) [] JAMES WALKER, J.P., M.P., Chairman. Political Secretary of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation. Member and ex-Chairman of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party. [] CAMILLE HUYSMANS, Vice-Chairman. Mayor of Antwerp. Member and ex-Speaker of the Belgian Parliament. President of the Belgian Parliamentary Committee and of the Labour and Socialist International. [] PROF. DR. LUIS ARAQUISTAIN. Author. Former Ambassador, Spanish Republic, at Berlin and Paris. [] VICTOR BODSON. Minister of Justice: Luxembourg. Vice-Chairman of the Luxembourg Labour Party and Member of the Luxembourg Parliament. [] PIERRE BROSSOLETTE. Formerly Foreign Editor of the Socialist Le Populaire, Paris. [] JOHN BROWN. General Secretary of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation. Member of the General Council of the T.U.C. [] ADAM CIOLKOSZ. Member of the Polish National Council and of the Central Executive Committee, Polish Socialist Party. Member of the Polish Parliament. Prisoner of Brest Litowsk. [] ALFRED J. DOBBS. National Unional of Boot and Shoe Operatives. Member and ex-Chairman of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party. [] CHARLES DUKES, C.B.E. General Secretary of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers. Member of the General Council of the T.U.C. [] DR. MILAN GAWRILOWITSCH. Former Minister of Justice, Yugoslavia. [] DR. CURT. GEYER. On Editorial Staff of the Vorwaerts, Berlin, and Editor of the Neuer Vorwaerts, Prague and Paris. [] GEORGE GIBSON. General Secretary of the Mental Hospital and Institutional Workers' Union. Member and ex-Chairman of the General Council of the T.U.C. [] WILL LAWTHER. President of the Mineworkers' Federation of Great Britain. Member of the General Council of the T.U.C. [] WALTER LOEB, Hon. Managing Director. Former President of the State Bank of Thuringia, Weimar, and Deputy Member of the Reichsrat. Member, Frankfurt City Council. [] B. MOLLER. General Secretary of the Amalgamated Danish Seamen's Union in Great Britain. [] KONRAD NORDAHL. President of the Norwegian Trades Union Movement. [] JAKOB H. OLDENBROEK. Assistant General Secretary of the International Transport Workers' Federation. Member of the Royal Netherlands Government Extraordinary Advisory Council. [] THOMAS POCOCK, J.P. Secretary of the Southern District Council, National Union of Railwaymen. Mayor of Battersea, 1942. [] MISS MARY E. SUTHERLAND, J.P. Chief Woman Officer of the Labour Party. [] ALDERMAN JOSEPH TOOLE, J.P. Lord Mayor of Manchester, 1937. [] DR. GUSTAV WINTER. Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Former Foreign Correspondent of the Socialist Pravo Lidu, Prague, in Paris, London and Geneva. [] FRANK WOLSTENCROFT. Secretary, Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers. Member and ex-Chairman of the General Council of the T.U.C. [] RENNIE SMITH, Secretarjy. Ex-M.P. joint Editor, Central European Observer. [] EDITORIAL BOARD [] JOSEF BELINA. Chairman of the Anglo-Czechoslovak Employment Exchange. Former Assistant General Secretary of the Czechoslovak Metal Workers' Union, and Editor of their Journal. [] W. W. HENDERSON. Secretary of the Press and Publicity Department of the Labour Party. [] PROF. A. PRAGIER. Member of the Polish National Council. Professor, Free University in Warsaw. Member of the Polish Parliament. Prisoner of Brest Litowsk. [] M. SLUYSER. Netherlands Government Information Bureau. Member of the Royal Netherlands Government Extraordinary Advisory Council. On Editorial Staff, Het Volk, Amsterdam. [] And Professor Dr. Luis Araquistain, John Brown, Dr. Curt Geyer, Camille Huysmans, Rennie Smith, Miss Mary E. Sutherland. [] RESEARCH DEPARTMENT [] F. K. BIELIGK. On Editorial Staff of the Social Democratic Leipziger Volkszeitung. Member of Leipzig City Council. [] KURT LORENZ. Manager of the Social Democratic Oberschlesische Volksblatt, Gleiwitz. [] BERNHARD MENNE. Formerly Editor of the Schlesische Arbeiterzeitung, Breslau, etc. [] And Dr. Curt Gever, Walter Loeb. [] "FIGHT FOR FREEDOM" Editorial and Publishing Services Ltd. is a Company limited by guarantees. Its general objects are described in its Articles of Association, of which the following is an extract: [] To promote and further the cause of uniting the world against aggression and the condemnation of recourse to war for the solution of international controversies and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy in the relations of all nations with one another. [] To promote and further the cause of ensuring the freedom of the individual and the provision for the individual of the rights of liberty, equality and fraternity. [] To promote and further throughout the world democratic parliamentary government of the people, by the people, and for the people. To collect and furnish information relating to the matters aforesaid. To receive subscriptions or donations from the public and to utilize [!][utilise] funds placed in trust for the furtherance and carrying out of the objects of the Company. [] No director may hold a paid position and no profits may be divided amongst the members. [] All income and property of the Company shall be applied solely towards the promotion of the objects of the Company. It is provided that the chairman shall always be of British Nationality. No nationality may hold a majority on the Board. [] [] National Socialism has deep and spreading roots in the soil of German thought and history. [] It was in 1907 at the International Socialist congress, Stuttgart, that a German delegate, Wolfgang Heine, insisted that [] "it is hardly possible to enter upon nice distinctions between aggressive and defensive wars. But there will never be any difficulty in making out clearly whether Germany is in danger." [] Wolfgang Heine was appointed Home Secretary for Prussia in the Weimar Republic. [] On the 4th August, 1914, the German Social Democrats voted the War Credits, without a single exception. Next day, the Arbeiter-Zeitung, Vienna, national organ of Austrian Social Democracy, wrote: [] "That day of the German Reichstag will stand out in history as one on which was displayed the dignity, grandeur and sublimity of the German spirit. Whether diplomacy has done well, whether it has done what it should have done, the future will decide ... The German people is united in its resolve, steadfast as iron, to suffer no one to abase it; neither death, nor devil will succeed in conquering that great and talented people - our German people ... Opposed to us are nothing but miserable sophistries and unnatural coalitions, from which every principle of morality is absent." [] And during the war, it was an eminent German Social Democrat, Conrad Haenisch, who said: [] "Not only the immediate interests of International Socialism, but also its future interests, imperatively require the victory of Germany." [] And Conrad Haenisch was not alone in that opinion within the Party. He was appointed Prussian Minister of Education in the Weimar Republic. [] It was a middle-class German Socialist "Intellectual" who concluded his Drei Jahre Welt Revolution (Three Years of World Revolution, Constable, 1918) with the threat: [] "What does the French Revolution of 1789 amount to compared with the huge dimensions of the World Revolution of to-day ? The only parallel which history affords to the overthrow of the English world domination by the Germans of to-day is the overthrow of the Roman world domination by the Germanic races of that time. Then, as now, the whole of the known world reeled under the shock. As then, so now. And then will dawn a new epoch for humanity." [] This is not Dr. Goebbels speaking. Our author is Dr. Paul Lensch, German Social Democrat, editor for eleven years and chief editor for five years of the Left-Wing Leipziger Volkszeitung, Member of the Reichstag, and liaison officer between the German High Command and the Party, writing in September, 1917. [] No other Socialists, only German Socialists, have written or spoken like that, at any time or in any circumstances. [] Why are Germans like that ? What really happened in Germany ? It is the main purpose of the " Fight for Freedom " to help you to answer these questions.
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