Glezos

Tuesday 24 December 2013

Greece: The EU’s Neo-liberal Poster Boy


Economic Freefall
From a budget deficit at 120% of GDP in 2010 we are now hovering around 180% nearly four years into the worst crisis in living memory where GDP has fallen cumulatively by 25%, averaging 5% fall annually (whereas during the civil war it fell 12%!).

Unemployment has broken all EU records, hovering officially at 28% overall and 65% for the under 25year olds. Every year the claim is made that growth is returning, but the only growth on the horizon is unemployment (1.5m), soup kitchens, suicides (plus 5k) and homelessness.

Alleging they have created a budget surplus (by adding QE to the budget), the Government is being touted as the poster boy of the EU, but this has been done by reducing Greeks to penury. All new wages (including doctors) are at E580; the pension age has shot up to 67, with 40 year contributions. The latter essentially means the end of pensions for there is no work available for even a discontinuous 40 year period, though there is ‘lots’ of part time work. In other words, a decade after the arrival of the Euro, hourly wages are now at E2.5 (£2).

The EU’s ‘Free Movement’ destroyed the Greek labour movement as Greece borders the ex-‘communist’ states of the Balkans. The oversupply of labour in a de-industrialising Greece led to a lowering of wages and the displacement of Greeks from the labour market.  It is well known that Greece has large numbers of illegal immigrants who work in a cash economy and send euros abroad. Figures from the Bank of Greece show that billions of Euros went to Albania, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Of course figures on repatriation of funds by illegals is a kind of surrogate indicating the extent of the immigration as well as a scourge for the health of the Greek economy and Greek working people. In 2004 there were 4.5m active workers now there are 2m.

The cost of the Olympics and NATO’s agreement that Greece should match Turkey’s arms spending in the ratio of 7 to 10, essentially bankrupted the country. The added burden of 72 new property taxes and a collapse in property prices of between 30-80% has led to a 90% collapse in all new building work. This was the capitalist economic model of the last couple of decades and it appears to be in permanent decline.


Raw Materials: Gold, Gas & Oil: Bonanzas for Multinationals
The Greek gas distribution company Despa was sold to Americans not Russians, who offered a better deal, will not be functioning for years. A gold mine in Skouries, Thessaloniki, was sold for peanuts to a Canadian conglomerate by the ex-PASOK finance minister, Papakonstantinou, with no share (or even royalties) for the Government. Protestors have been imprisoned on trumped-up charges with demonstrations as large as 30k in Thessaloniki (Greece’s 2nd city)

Health
The EU has done deals with Israeli pharmaceutical companies TEVA, via Germany, to import non-EU patented medicine for sale in Greece. The Greek pharmaceutical industry which employs over 20,000 people and supports over 30% of the domestic market will be shut down as a result. The model for this are the shipyards, airports and soon to be, railways and transport systems. The Samaras government is sacking contracted to the Greek NHS doctors by the hundreds (Finance Minister Georgiadis had a close escape in a meeting with them) and they have imposed E 25 charges to visit hospitals without taking into account the lack of medicines when one eventually manages to get into a hospital. The increase in mental health issues is such that, before the crisis, 1000 people yearly went to homes. Now it’s more than 3000, but most of the mental health institutions are on the verge of closure due to lack of funding.

ERT-Public Sector
The State broadcaster, ERT was shut down in just 24 hours despite the lie that they would be re-hired. It has ceased international broadcasting as a prelude to total cessation of public sector broadcasting. Victory of the state here became the green light for further mass sackings (school caretakers, municipal police etc.).

The EU’s rule means the imposition of externally determined budgetary constraints (25k sackings from the 700k strong public sector), making a public service media unviable. There is no other rule to require the existence of one so long as there is ‘pluralism’ i.e. more than one private sector provider of corporate ‘news’. This is directly linked to the Free Trade Agreement with the USA which seeks the abolition of the ‘cultural exception’ of national governments in cultural life so that Hollywood dominates above all else. This is directed most strongly at France, but would apply to all European nations. The contemporary capacity to wage this cultural assault is in total contrast to the circumstances of 1939 when Greece won an important ruling against a Belgian company for a railway contract when it defaulted alleging if a public service is threatened states have the right to default. (1)

The EU is funding propaganda equating ‘Nazism with Communism’ under ‘Europe for the Citizens’ programme for 2014-20 whereby each nation’s history is erased to create a ‘common European citizen’. Participants (i.e. media outlets and NGO’s) can claim up to Euro 100,000 for working towards this aim.

Massive strike wave
In the last twelve months strikes in the transport sector Metro, Seafarers and Secondary School Teachers, have been met with emergency strike bans in total conflict with all the agreements of the EU and ILO’s alleged ‘right to strike’. A strike by university administration staff facing sackings has been going on for 13 weeks with 3-4 of the main universities shut down for the last 3 months.

The conflict with the Troika and the collapsing Samaras government (which relies on 4 MPs to give it a majority) is now over continued mass sackings, repossessions of first homes and a land tax. As opposed to the rest of Europe, Greek home ownership was accrued primarily via work and not bank loans. So any new laws which aim to repossess properties on behalf of the parasitic banks will be met with fierce resistance, as has already been evidenced over electricity cut offs, imposed due to property taxes, which was eventually defeated on the streets. Thomson from the IMF said if you want a welfare policy buy tents.

The Troika, Agent of the ECB/IMF
None of the socio-economic indicators have improved over the four year programme and none of the declared aims have achieved anything more than a massive worsening of standards of life. The crisis has no end in sight despite all the official pronouncements and the contradictions building up in the foundations of the EZ are so large than when the debt crisis re-merges again(ECB’s money printing ceases) it will make the previous one feel like a walk down the park. Only by breaking up the EU-EZ leaving its budgetary controls can nations embark on a different course. The irony is that the majority ‘left’ forces in Greece want a Europe of the ‘peoples’ whilst the euro-sceptics want a Europe of ‘nations’ when what is at stake that there is no common Europe for the common man but only for the multinationals and the centrifugal forces pulling it apart raises hope that the sooner it dissolves the better.


(1)“In a scholarly study on the issue of force majeure in relation to the obligations of States, Mr. Youpis (Greek council) explained yesterday that a State is not required to pay its debts if, by paying, it would compromise its essential public services. The Belgian government would most likely agree with the principle thus stated.”


VN Gelis
6th December 2013

 

Friday 13 December 2013

An Eye Witness Report from a Dickensian Athens







A city centre which at night resembles parts of Detroit and daily life which resembles Victorian Britain with many beggars and a general feeling of a country in irreversible decline. Schoolchildren have been seen looking in dustbins for food and many people have died burning wood in makeshift stoves in apartments to keep warm.

Despite all the official pronouncements that the Troikas (EU-ECB-IMF) programme will herald growth decline has been on average 5% fall in GDP annually over the last five years figures not seen since the 12% annual fall during the civil war of the 1940’s and unemployment has skyrocketed to at least 2.5m (official amount 1.5m) roughly between 30-40% of the population.
The shock therapy which is killing the patient stone dead has led to massively reduced govt majority (4) and we are in a permanent govt crisis with confused orders from the centre. Land taxes and property taxes are destroying the social fabric of society splintering it apart until there is nothing left and new Orwellian measures of seizing bank accounts electronically on behalf of tax demands  are to be applied as the new year gift to Greek citizens due to the massive non-payment crisis of all the new taxes. Over E70billion has gone to pay parasitic banksters (under Troika tutelage) and the wage and pension cuts which range from 20% to 60% (eg. bus drivers) implies that govt spending is massively reduced. Schools and hospitals are being merged, many schools have no heating and over 25k public sector workers have been fired this year.

Wave upon wave of immigration continue to hit Greek shores and they have nowhere to go so inevitably there is a crime wave in poorer Athenian districts and the prisons are already full. The younger generation and those till their 40’s will never see a pension as without 40 year contributions one will not be able to get one and companies avoid full time work to pay less tax and insurance. The new norm are jobs at E2.5 an hour with shifts whenever the boss feels like it.

The organised forced of the fake left which now have a majority on the public sector union ADEDY organised a rally on Saturday and only around 200 people turned up. The leaders of the unions hide behind govt strike bans despite massive strike waves that broke out in both February and October of this year. Syriza as the main party of the opposition despite gaining 27% does not seek a fight for power and is relegated to asking for Germany’s surpluses as a way to solve the capitalist crisis ie the old bankrupt economic model.
If the current situation continues and so far it is the longest depression in a western economy the state will start to disintegrate. Whether a revolt occurs prior to disintegration or as a consequence of it is what is on everyone's mind. Time is running out for all concerned.

Friday 22 November 2013

David Walters Marxist Internet Archive An American Provocateur

David Walters(Marxist Internet Archive): An American Provocateur Proponent of the NWO and One World Government

"Dear comrades, if we shall keep mum today, tomorrow the Jewish Marxists will ride on our backs... Vladimir Lenin" 


“The Greek people are anarchic and difficult to tame. For this reason we must strike deep into their cultural roots: Perhaps then we can force them to conform. I mean, of course, to strike at their language, their religion, their cultural and historical reserves, so that we can neutralize their ability to develop, to distinguish themselves, or to prevail; thereby removing them as an obstacle to our strategically vital plans in the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.”
(As reported in the popular Greek magazine, Oikonomikos Tachydromos on 14 Aug. l997, Henry Kissinger, while addressing a group of Washington, D.C. businessmen in Sept.1974)

"They condemn us that we want to abolish borders and dissolve the State. But the State we build today no longer exists as they dissolved it. Who therefore is a patriot? They or us? Capital doesn't have a country and it runs to find profit in whatever country it is able to. That is why it isn't concerned for the existence of borders and the state. But all we own are our hats and the small kerb in front of us, unlike capital that runs wherever it finds profit."
Aris Velouhiotis- Partisan Leader of Greece 1944

http://www.marxists.org/archive/velouchiotis/1945/x01/x01.htm
A section of the article that Walters refused to upload on MIA and only after consistent complaints do they appear.

Show me who your friends are….
On who runs MIA and their piece in the New York Times (House Organ of US Imperialism) plus the dubious role of a Brian Bagsen (an avowed anti-bolshevik in charge of the Russian section!!)
 “Historical Bias: I believe Marxism was a complete failure as a form of government. Hence, it follows that I  believe that Marxism has been a failure when in the form of a political party. Yet, despite these failures, it has an ever present connection to radical mass movements, which is an interesting paradox. I openly loathe Bolshevism and vanguardism, which I firmly believe leads to horribly unethical government where the ends justify the means. Needless to say, these beliefs often put me at odds with many in this organization, and eventually led to my depature.”
Brian Bagsens Biography

I wish we had MORE of him…
David Walters
http://tinyurl.com/q6bzuol

At the end of the 90’s David Walters flew to Greece like others before him, to use their skills in setting up some  new venture that which later became the Marxist Internet Archive. I was informed of him and asked to try and make contact. At the time of the NATO bombardment of Serbia egged on by British imperialism with mass protests in Greece (where nooses were set up for Tony Blair and the weekly satirical magazines ‘Pontiki’ had him in a gay pose with Clinton) this must have affected the American for over the next decade and a half he has engaged in an internet stalking relationship on behalf of American imperialism against myself. I came across him over the debates regarding Seattle where another American group (Spartacist League) condemned the protests and called them reactionary and nationalist as workers complained against Chinese imports and abstained from them.


Visit to the USA
Walters was involved in disrupting a visit to a now disbanded self-proclaimed Marxist Workers Group in Detroit over the fact that I reprinted what Engels wrote on homosexuality and the fact that the leader of this group said in late 1999 that there was no ‘immigration’ problem to Greece and there was no ‘open border policy of US-EU imperialism in place’. We arrived at Detroit international airport and waited and waited for them. They turned up to tell us that something had happened which they didn’t explain and after a day we left as we were provided with nowhere to sleep and left to fend for ourselves having to leave at 6am to get out of the city. On arriving at a McDonalds we were told to move away as we were the wrong colour and could end up dead before we could find a taxi.

9/11 Fake Terror and anti-Iranian venom
Over the course of a decade Walters has trumpeted vociferously the 9/11 put up job which launched the ‘war on terror’ and bankrupted the USA. He alleges that he has connections with a French group though no one ever has verified it and according to himself he is a loner.  I would classify him as an American deadbeat who lives in a Potemkin village world of make believe. In the same period the same friend who helped set up the Marxist Internet Archive noticed that a whole host of anti-communist stuff was appearing and some of the editors on the threads were avowed and self-declared anti-Bolsheviks and this was noted in a circular sent out by me to many US organisations as they refused to upload translations done by myself either from English to Greek or from Greek to English from Greece’s revolutionary historical past. They kept on citing various problems when it came to Greek translations from computer malfunctions to html codes etc. They also refused to upload material on the Greek civil war written by Greeks so we were forced to produce a book on it...

At the same time he kept on stating our views are marginal in Greece (five or so ex-organisations that make up the  collective Patriotic Left) that Greece is a sub-imperialist country and they can receive an unlimited number of illegal immigrants as the EU has deemed this necessary via the Dublin 2 agreement, that no one has published any study on Marxism and Immigration (D Dousias in 2009 who presided over the only scientific analysis of the Greek Roma and who has been included in my latest work on Immigration http://imfoccupationgreece.blogspot.com/) and he appears to support all Americans who voice the opinion that Greeks as a nation should be overrun erased etc and become like the USA (which is the starting point of all conversations ie how wonderful is the ‘multicultural’ ghetto of the USA and its export should be a sine non qua for the labour movement everywhere and anywhere). John Reinman on the self-styled ‘socialist’ discussion group voiced the same opinion from Oakland California that it has been overrun by all and sundry and that this is essentially wonderful. So the Yank experience becomes the world experience and if one doesn’t subscribe to that schema one is labelled ...racist.  This coming from a country that called Vietnamese ‘gooks’, Arabs ‘sand niggers’ and kept blacks segregated up till 1970 and just as they stopped segregation they got them all to join the prison industrial complex having a higher incarceration rate than anywhere else on earth etc. Its as if we now all live in the international departure of an airport lounge and we shake hands with everyone we meet say ‘gia sou’ and this is now called ‘international socialism’ not globalism of the most rotten kind. Whoever uses Oakland California as a starting point in anything needs their head examined. That’s where we don’t want to end up.

Walters then goes on to berate a member of the Patriotic Left for being in Tehran when the main topic was 9/11 and how WW2 was used to justify the creation of the state of Israel. These views (bar the Anglo-American fake left) are widespread in France and Greece as an ex-central committee member of the French CP Garaudy wrote on the state of Israel a long time ago. Walters hides behind the collaborationist French govts past history to support left Zionism and label people ‘anti-semitic’ for they dare breach the topic of the US airbase in the Middle East. An old tired trick that no longer holds water but works well in US academia and the far left globalist circuits that label people either ‘conspiracy theorists’ ‘holocaust deniers’ ad nauseum. Having lost uncles in Hitler’s concentration camps it is a bit of a cheek to argue that I believe there were no concentration-extermination camps. Why don’t we just say what Walters really means. There was only one Holocaust, the jewish one and it trumps all others and anyone questioning the depth and severity of it must deny it existed for after all how can we collect money to prop up the Zionist entity if we haven’t got a story to sell?

Degeneration of the US ‘far left’...
 In years of old before they became corrupted an American group wrote this
    [O]n a sufficiently large scale, immigration flows could wipe out the national identity of recipient countries.... If, for example, therewere unlimited immigration into Northern Europe, the population influxfrom the Mediterranean basin would tend to dissolve the national identity of small countries like Holland and Belgium. More generally, unlimited immigration as a principle is incompatible with the right ofnational self-determination; to call for it is tantamount to advocating the abolition of national states under capitalism.”
Workers Vanguard's original article on the subject (January 18,
1974):

Now they send me articles castigating the ‘nationalism’ of the Greek labour movement in other words accept your lot don’t complain and don’t protest. Between an armed revolution and global revolution there are a multitude of ways the issue of illegal immigration could be wrested from the fake rightists.

Most of the American ‘far left’ groups degenerated in the 70’s into self appreciation societies which became infatuated with the individual self and adopted the policies of lifestyles ( paedophilia, gay, lesbian now trans) just like the Ottoman Empire did in 1864 before its ignominious collapse and it is an irony of history that then Anglo-French imperialism considered them ‘backward’ for legalizing homosexuality (before the Russian Revolution) and coined a phrase in French (shagging like a Greek!) and now British imperialism is on a mission via Camerons foreign office to ‘educate’ the backward members of the Commonwealth and actively promote homosexual lifestyles (majority of countries which have homosexuality banned on their statute books are from the ex-Commonwealth countries)

The arrival and perpetual legalization of immigrants in the USA (11million under Obama) became the second most adopted slogan from the ‘far left’ groups there. Anyone raising any objections was also labelled reactionary and backward as if the destruction of historic nations (which have a history far greater than the bastard offspring of British Imperialism) is a principle that anyone other than  real fascists can espouse in this day and age whereby unelected central banksters and their political offshoots dictate who lives and who dies.

We had a decade of being told we live in Fortress Europe and then we realise this was just the propaganda trick used by the globalists for a ‘fortress’ which has the front gate open wide ain’t a fortress.

There were groups of ex-trotskyists (Vitsoris group) who during the course of the last direct imperialist occupation of Greece who claimed opposing the 3rd Reich was futile, Germany is unifying Europe, it is bringing the working class into closer unity forgetting that the abolition of nations is a decision nations should be allowed to take by themselves not imposed from above with the presence of army officers or from turning national tax offices into the vehicle of imposing bankster rules as they have done in Greece and have imposed in Cyprus (via the bailin).

Agios Panteleomonas 2008 Immigration Question goes National
When local residents started to complain and protest about the unchecked arrival and squatting of hundreds of illegal immigrants who used the square to live, sell drugs, go to the toilet harangue the local Greek girls and old women by relieving them of their gold jewellery (mostly a Christian cross) one should have said these Greeks are racist they aren’t open to the world despite since the 70’s having the 4th most tourists in the EU.

When predominantly women set up committees and egged on men to do something about the fact they couldn’t go about their daily business, men were forced into action. The corporate media that represents the interests of globalism started a vociferous campaign against the residents labelling them ‘racists. On the back of this campaign the ‘leftists’ who work in tandem with the corporate media started to march and march and march against the local residents. Riot police turned up and threw tear gas into the main church. The residents stood firm beyond all the odds. Walters labelled all these residents ...nazis.

Lets now look at Walters line on immigration, its due to the root causes of imperialisms decay, the collapse of societies due to war and population movements across borders. If I am not mistaken the war in Vietnam started in 1945 and lasted till 1975 a full thirty years. The civil war in Yugoslavia and the imperialist intervention lasted another decade in the 1990’s. The amount of Vietnamese or Serbs that arrived in Greece can be numbered in the palm of one hand. Now why is that? All immigration according to Walters is ‘progressive’ ‘anti-imperialist’ for we are dealing with ‘immigrant rights’ UN conventions and as Felicity Lawrence said ‘migration theory’. Iraqui and Afghani collaborators of Western imperialism never crossed the borders into Greece chased out by those resisting imperialism in their territories only victims of ...imperialism. Collaborators become an above class entity (migrants) and they gain supra-national rights. The labour movement of each country based within specific national borders have no rights to question anyone and anything. They have to be open in order to not be ‘xenophobic’.

So when we had underage girls being pimped by Nigerian drug dealers in central Athens 100m from Omonia square we have to put this down to ‘migration theory’ ie pimping has gone global and there is nothing to be done. Locals aren’t allowed to say anything as they weren’t allowed to say anything in the slums of South Africa when the same phenomena appeared. Long live the unity of international pimps and underage prostitution should be added as another one of Walters ‘transitional demands’ in the current era. When the Algerian resistance banned prostitution and alcohol and took out severe measures against those who flouted the rules, we should have argued they are oppressing the rights of ‘sex workers’ and they should be free to ply their trade with occupation troops, otherwise this shows the chauvinistic oppression by males of Algerian women?

When the corporate media journalists who are nothing more than hired whores of capitalism in decay arrive in any scene they dictate the terms of the news agenda not based on what happened and why but on what we need to say and gather facts accordingly. Paul Mason arrived in Patras interviewed a few people and declared there was a Golden Dawn riot against illegal immigrants from the offices of the BBC as always which has a monopoly of the truth (same BBC that announced half an hour before it collapsed the 3rd Tower during 9/11 and also the non-existent finding of weapons of mass destruction to justify the Iraqui invasion). Although given airtime and does circuits in Universities and book fairs as to how the working class has gone global to sell books for his much needed pension pot so he can retire in some idyllic setting.

The reality was a Greek woke up one night heard a whole bunch of noise, went out to tell some people to shut up, not knowing they were lumpen illegal hoodlums and they stabbed him to death. In the disused ex-fabric producing factory Piraiki Patraiki they went to hide. The next morning locals gathered to protest and find them. The police arrived on the scene to save them from a riot. The locals stole a road digger to attack one of the ex-factory walls. GD arrived on the scene in the form of party leaders and informed the road digger owner his road digger had been stolen trying to diffuse the situation. The police then used helicopters to ship out those inside the factory to the safety of Athens. So hundreds of residents involved in more than a few days battle with riot cops (many had to be shipped in from Athens) were labelled GD. Problem solved. Who is Paul Mason? Ex leftie leader of Workers Power. Totally impartial as always, being British helps when reporting on Greece...having a past as a colonial overlord. Mustn’t let tradition get in the way of a good revisionist story after all we have agendas to sell.

Walters then castigates another poster for uploading Marx’s comments on immigration rounding on him as if they were uploaded by me. This is the style of ‘debate’ hatchet job man who pretends he actually is listened to by anyone and rounds on them if they mention Marx on Immigration. Well here is a blogsite only with comments by Marx and Engels on Immigration. Read at your peril cos you wont find most on the MIA, they don’t do that sort of thing. They are respectable with Stalin and Rorty all over.
http://classicalmarxismvsimmigration.blogspot.com/

Nuclear Power apologist...
After the ban by the now disbanded Permanent Revolution group Walters went round campaigning for nuclear power how progressive it is and how it will end ‘global warming’ in particular just as Fukushima occurred. Despite the facts against the topic eg Pripyat 25 years after Chernobyl is a city still evacuated of 50k citizens as the readings are 75k times higher than they were before the explosion. An American true to form everything that is rotten from the states he wants exported. He has found ‘safe’ nuclear power despite the fact that Pripyat is now burnt out for at least 600 years due to radioactivity, the same with Fukyshima and despite the protests in Japan that saw 200k citizens march outside the Presidential Palace, but hey lets ignore mass movements, we know better, nuclear power is safe...Walters said so and as an American one must take their hat off to him.

British ‘far left’ and Greece
Just like they did nothing for the struggle of independence for Kenya prior to that what is it they did regarding Britain’s involvement in fostering Greece’s civil war and supporting the collaborators of Hitler?
Answers on a postcard please. Prize a book of mine on the Greek civil war.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Greek-Civil-War-VN-Gelis/dp/1468011545/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375609286&sr=1-1&keywords=the+greek+civil+war
The British ‘far left’ has always been in the overwhelming majority pro-imperialist alongside their American counterparts. Their support is always based on the ‘ethnics’ behaving themselves and following  what the centre decides.

WRP-Gerry Healy had an organisation in Greece which destroyed the first post-dictatorial printshop after expelling the majority of the organisation in a typical healyite frame up and shutting down all the bookshops. Throughout this period Bob Archer was with Gerry Healy and not only that, when their honcho in Athens (another self-styled fake jew Savvas Michael) was parading in Tehran and Libya singing the praises in order to get money from there we were supposed to keep quiet when allegations regarding rape and financial fraud were aired in public for the first time. I made a special journey to the UK to interview their Gestetner trade union rep they had called Richard Goldstein and translated the interview and with a series of reports, posters and adverts in Pontiki exposed the WRP and called for a Commission of Inquiry (as to whether they had handed over pictures of Iraqui communists to Saddam and taken money from the oil-igarchs) but the successors to Healy weren’t interested only in trying to maintain Healyism without Healy. In the 90’s Archers alliances with Slaughter were based on an anti-Serb venom paralleled only by Blair (who obviously had guns). There is a saying in Greek ‘show me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are’ fits accordingly with Bob Archer and David Walters. A marriage made in heaven.

The Militant had followers in PASOK who were in PASOK. One wing ‘left’ in 1991 another about three years ago. What discerned them was their slavish acceptance of PASOK as being ‘social democratic’ instead of pure capitalist (liberal centre party of Greek capitalism) and their careerist appetites. When things started to rock they jumped ship in order to find new homes (latest declaring themselves the ‘communist wing in Syriza and supporting the Euro, EZ and EU!!) Those that joined PASOK or were allied to it did it for material gain, there wasn’t much politics and there hasn’t been much since. When hundreds of thousands hit the squares swearing at Parliament and the PASOK and ND MP’s how did they cdes of Militant in Greece feel? Their whole lifetime in politics was geared around being in PASOK. Insofar as they marched in the 70’s chanting ‘US bases Out’ ‘National Independence and Territorial Integrity’’  EC and NATO are the Same’ Greece Belongs to the Greeks’ they weren’t racist or nationalist, but John Reinman http://oaklandsocialist.com/  if he was a member then forgets the ‘sins’ of his youth and in old age seeks revenge to those who remind him of his past. Now if they weren’t the slogans being chanted confirm that with those who were there...

SWP Greece has been one of the most vociferous in gaining EU subsidies to promote ‘diversity and multiculturalism’ through their open border Soros networks (Athens Indymedia run on govt platforms from the Athens Polytechnic), language schools for foreigners, social forums etc and its no coincidence that when they were exposed way back in 2004 I was banned from even broaching the subject in their media. Half their organisation after the SWP UK touting it as being the biggest in Greece joined Sinaspismos to get an electoral subsidy and now in the leader of Davanelos they parade as being the ‘left opposition’ inside Syriza when they have been known to support every anti-Greek act by foreign US subsidised govts eg Skopje when they marched there holding up the flags of a foreign territory which has claims on Greece, over the issue of Macedonia. When hundreds of thousands of Greeks marched in the 90’s against the USA’s attempts at divide and rule they resurrected the hundreds of thousands who marched during the 3rd Reich (when it handed over a section of northern Greece to Bulgaria without fear for their lives and many were killed.)

They consistently campaigned against the citizens groups that sprung up in central Athens turning up with the riot cops to tear gas them and hurl abuse from 2008 onwards. GD turned up for the same reasons to pay lip service to the struggle of the residents in order to gather votes. Now because the SWP are the marketing agents for GD (they both call each other Bolsheviks and nazi respectively when they are nothing of the sort just two sides of the same globalist coin) they managed to help gain them votes from 0.29% to 10% in three years. A group which is so ridiculous allegedly against the Troika but for the EU and against Merkel but for her as they condemn the protests against her. Now the corporate global media jumped on the bandwagon of GD these votes hover around 15-20%. The system is creating its next fallback option in the form of Syriza or GD as players in any coalition that might be formed.

Left unchecked illegal immigration would be a ticking time bomb. Campaigning around the fake slogan of ‘migrant rights’ and calling for ‘unity’ among all and sundry may apply to imperialist centres which had colonies all over the world but does not apply to banana republics for the scale and  volume of immigration surpasses the domestic labour force (Eleftherotypia-newspaper spoke in 2004 about the presence of 2.5m so has the Greek TUC research department INE-GSEE spoken about the presence of 40% foreign born workers in relation to the indigenous labour force). That is over a decade ago.
Campaigned  pro-actively for a vote for PASOK in 1991...

Permanent Revolution ex-Workers Power (another now disbanded group and the irony here is Walters always intervenes on the scene  whilst groups are on the verge of disbanding) had a blog site. I intervened initially on topics related to Greece as I did with a series of letters in Weekly Worker regarding Greece. PR forecasted perpetual boom (instead of ‘catastrophist theory’... as they labelled it) just as the EZ was going into depression and they asked for a meeting and a series of eyewitness reports from Greece. In the middle of one of them when we had a two day bombardment to destroy the occupation of the squares Walters appeared with his poison pen letters (not on the content of the material which was being uploaded by the way) to talk about ....gays and immigration.  PR then blocked the second eye-witness report. PR who were an offshoot of Workers Power have known that I disagree with the Americanisation of politics in fields of sexual relations (its not the duty of labour parties to actively promote any sexual lifestyles) from the 80’s. But as British they are in bed with the Yanks and kowtow to their every whim. In that they follow the political class that rules Britain to the letter. They are American poodles.

‘Weekly Worker’ or otherwise known as Globalist Weekly
When a book came out ‘How the IMF Broke Greece’ edited by me with contributions from others and was reviewed by an ex-British miner Dave Douglass, Walters appeared on the scene (without having read it to attack it!) and to say ‘illegal immigration’ is good for Greece as it has been good for... America. The irony now of the situation is that illegal immigration left unchecked has led to riots in many parts of Greece. We are now being told to condemn Greeks for rioting when Greeks are being killed by the local corporate media, the foreign corporate media (Paul Mason-Newsnight Channel 4 John Snow) in other words to accept their lot as no one can go against the 4th Reich (much like the ex-cdes of the Vitsoris group) for the arrival of millions in the territory of Greece is a natural phenomena (‘migration theory,’ ‘human rights ‘ in the past it was just known as Lebensraum). Funny how Cuba closes its borders to ‘gusanos’ but Greece cant. So why does Greece have a navy, an  army and a rail service? To ship them in by the kilo dump them without any means of support in a concrete mega city and then expect them to live like hippies (ie to molest no one, to commit no crimes to live idyllically by eating air and handing out flowers to each passer  by in particular old ladies not living like animals in squares and using them as latrines in 40c heat) as if they are in Matala in Crete in the 70’s.

Or let’s put it another way. 15 million or so tourists visit Greece a year. Why not turn the tourist industry into just a reception centre of illegal immigration so no UN conventions on ‘human rights’ are breached. Ensure each new arrival is housed and fed to the standard of tourists in hotels and turn Greeks into waiters for this service so they can get some hotel work back as they have been made redundant from that as well. After all an ‘open border’ policy espoused by Greeks who were trained under Lyndon Larouche and happen to be the family that had the central bankster bros under Simitis who brought us into the Euro (and now pretend they are the rrrevolutionaries of Antarsya) are the direct connection between the British ‘far left’ and Greece.

But the fake left wont touch the topic as they don’t want to go against the status quo. They are globalisations last vital bulwark. Hence when they look at Syriza they see ‘success’ and want to repeat it abroad as if the conditions are the same everywhere and the success of Syriza whatever that means in practice, is anything to look up to other than with they eyes of parliamentary cretins, just as the Greek parliament has ceased to exist.

There is no nationalism as yet of Greek labour. It has been decimated, de-industrialised and replaced by globalized labour which has no interest for Greece or the Greek nation. They are all there for their own individual ends not the collective ends of society as they can just up sticks and leave at any moment in time and aren’t interested in society or social issues as issues. Hence one notices the total absence of immigrants from the globalist left and if they are there they are there for show like a flower on vase by the window.

But that isn’t the issue with Walters. Walters does not seek debate just the closure of it by creating labels, latest one being I am David Irving when he openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Greeks. Well what label aspires to him? The only good American is a dead one? After all he is on record to not support the military conflicts arrayed against the USA from Afghanistan to Iraq... wants the mess that is the USA exported everywhere and assumes we have to fall for it.

The other irony is that all the parties of the official fake Left KKE-Syriza ask for illegals to leave Greece ie by overturning the Dublin 2 agreement and being given travel papers to go to northern Europe to alleviate Greece’s problems. In other words they want Greece to be an open border arrival point, then processing and then movement up the chain. You don’t hear Walters criticise them for being anti-immigration now do you? That is what Syriza and the KKE openly argue. Lets look at Lenin:

"What does 'Down with frontiers' mean? It is the beginning of anarchy.... Only when the socialist revolution has become a reality, and not a method, will the slogan 'Down with frontiers' be a correct slogan."

Lenin April 1917 on the National Question
http://classicalmarxismvsimmigration.blogspot.com/2011/02/lenin-against-open-borders.html

I remain committed to the ideals of Greece belongs to the Greeks, US Bases Out, Greece must Exit the EU etc even if Syrizas new found friends in the bankruptcy of the Anglo-American ‘far left’ have adopted the Brookings Institute, the London School of Economics and the world banks as their mantra and the evidence of it is that all talk of ‘socialism’ is in reality just talk about lifestyles (race or sex never about class). Hence there never was any ‘debate’ on the WIN site, just a concerted and united effort by Americans and their British toadies to state openly Greece should cease to exist. One does not debate neo-fascists, one exposes them openly for what they are, pure globalists whether of the ‘open’ or closed variety.

On neo-fascism...
I’ll leave the last words to Lafazanis the leader of the Left Faction in Syriza with 30% of the votes at their founding conference:
“you want a procedure with Presidential decrees in order to avoid the control of Parliament – a control which is to be avoided only by non-democratic regimes. The two bourgeois parties have engineered a disgusting and to be condemned coup, blatantly, by using Parliament as a decoration”
2nd August 2013

Which leaves one with the obvious question if the Greek Parliament no longer votes on anything why does the Left still participate in it?
Answers again on a postcard please.

Much like the other question. Walters alleges he has the same line as me on the nation state and he was criticised by Gerry (hands off the US ambassador in Libya!) Downing that he is a rabid nationalist and that a national question arises if the volume of immigration is such to question the identity of nations, but that this law is overturned if you are an imperialist country or sub-imperialist overturning Trotskys observations in 1940 that a national question may also emerge in imperialist countries if overrun by Hitler, he argues for the closure of borders in non-imperialist countries. So how come that doesn’t make him a xenophobe, nationalist as Gerry alleges? So South Africa must have arrived at an imperialist level of development as well?


EU-USA=One World Govt
“The totalitarian state, subjecting all aspects of economic, political, and cultural life to finance capital, is the instrument for creating a supernationalist state, an imperialist empire, the rule over continents, the rule over the whole world.”
Nationalism and Economic Life
-Leon Trotsky 1933

The centralising tendencies of global imperialism implies they no longer seek to have nation states with any role whatsoever. They are creating  an imperialist unification based not on army invasions like Hitler (that happened with the defeat of Germany and Japan in WW2) but on NATO, WTO, central banks, IMF, common currencies leading to world currencies. By destroying nations or creating mini-USA’s everywhere imperialism wants to create the old ‘divide and rule’ philosophy to control and contain all labour movements like what the British Empire did in Africa when it shipped Indians over and blocked the Blacks from working on the railways so they could not disrupt the Empire.

Socialist Discussion Site…
I was on the site for one month prior to withdrawing. The eyewitness report from the ERT occupation affected the Syriza lackeys... on the site. Let’s have a look at some of their comments:
Greeks are ‘primitive xenophobes’ Dan

‘Apodidictic manner’ Bob Archer

After explaining to me that Greece benefitted from the EU and EZ and the EU I am told...despite contrary information provided from a KKE source:
‘I would be grateful if vngelis would take part in the discussion in a less strident manner.’
Dan

The sarcasm in vngelis' postings is unpleasant and uncomradely. S/He is constantly trying to associate those who disagree with him as fake lefts, supporters of quislings or appeasers of fascism. This is not an appropriate style for this discussion
Dan

Being labeled a terrorist here….
Both sought to "expose" the true character of the "neofascist" state by provoking it into battles with the revolutionary brigades; both resorted to acts of individual terror, assassination and bomb throwing in an attempt to short circuit the process of winning the majority of the class. These were the Italian Red Brigades and the German Red Army Fraction.
Dan

Sorry Comrade Gelis, I strongly disagree with your views. If Greece is swallowed up by workers from across the world I will not mourn but as joe hill put it: organize
Stu

From a primitive xenophobe to whether I am …Greek
I guess the question to Comrade Gelis and to all of us are you Greek (or wherever you are from) first or a communist revolutionary first? If the former than Comrade Gelis' comments fit and present a radical nationalist view. If the latter then we are internationalists and the borders drawn and maintained by the oppressors mean nothing to us.
Stu

In some ways, there is a similar issue here in California, and we see it very concretely here in Oakland, where I live. My own neighborhood, for instance, used to be 90% people born in this country; now it is a mixture of Asians, Latin Americans, one block which is primarily Iraqis, etc. (My own personal attitude is that this polyglot really makes things interesting.) Yes, there is competition for jobs. Also, I understand that some of the immigrants receive certain government services that native born people who are in equal need don't, and this does create some resentment. My attitude is that everybody should get these services.

If it is really true that Greece's economy is really, actually being strained by the numbers of immigrants, then I think the movement should demand that the EU help provide for them. But what I feel most strongly is this: How can any movement that is fighting for a better society take the attitude towards immigrants of "You can drown in the sea. You can go back home and be bombed to death. You can go back home and starve." No working class movement can take that attitude and move forward. It is inevitable that if it does, it will turn to nationalism and some sort of racism and/or sexism as well as homophobia, etc.

John Reinmann


My son has worked on building sites in Greece where the lingua franca of the site was English because of the range of nationalities working there. The description of the working conditions was like something from a century ago. He is also scathing of the commonplace racism he experienced there.
Felicity Dowling


Walters other American friend a lawyer who did a stint with Healys outfit (under Wohlforth) in the USA prior to the Greenstein mob that took over and now prints the Financial Times for the USA has ditched the Trade Unions and on the WSWS website goes round attacking the nationalism of everybody but not the American transnational corporations that rule the world… for which Walters has defended vociferously.
A CAPITALIST WORLD GOVERNMENT IS A UTOPIAN ILLUSION, BUT IF IT WERE IN THE OFFING, IT WOULD PROBABLY BE MORE SOMETHING TO BE WISHED FOR THAN SOMETHING TO BE FEARED. YES, I VALUE THE ELIMINATION OF WAR MUCH MORE THAN THE PRESERVATION OF GREEK NATIONAL CULTURE. YOUR VALUES ARE FUNDAMENTALLY WARPED--IT GOES MUCH DEEPER THAN A MERE POLITICAL DIFFERENCE.
SRD



Conclusion

Even in the ex-stalinist states when the USSR was starting to collapse the old national antagonisms resurfaced. National culture,  national traditions etc re-emerged. How could that be when it was already buried as we had the creation of ‘soviet man’?

To now have Americans and Brits arguing that the destruction of nation states (under whatever guise they come up with or whatever tinpot theory they concoct) is something progressive without the nation states volunteering to commit national hara-kiri or even allowed a vote on it indicates how fast they have degenerated into a new world order of globalism. Anyone voicing these views (erasure of nations) should be automatically excluded, but what we see is that like 60’s samizdat in the old USSR we now have a similar thing developing in the West where any views deemed ‘nationalist’ are banned from the ‘open’ ‘alternative’ ‘anti-capitalist’ ‘socialist’ media outlets which are the twin side of the corporate media.

PS
Under any rules of democracy (not of course Anglo-American) one would be allowed the right of reply prior to being ‘suspended’ or the same  rules would apply to the person who made the allegations. But of course under globalist rules all norms of basic democracy no longer apply. This indicates the neo-fascist nature of ‘debates’. One has to first fit into a schema before being able to respond and once labeled for not answering in the pre-conceived schema one is labeled accordingly: ‘anti-semitic’ ‘racist’ ‘homophobic’ not necessarily in that order. But we don’t precisely live in a democracy any more but an Orwellian new world order…As I have also other things to do than waste my time answering American provocateurs I send my reply to the allegations but do not confirm I am willing to respond or have time to do so…

VN Gelis
August 2013

Thursday 14 November 2013

Why the No Confidence Vote by Syriza? Dissaray and Dissolution of the EU?



After his trip to Texas and Washington (we still don’t know who he met there and what was the nature of the discussion) we heard that the only way the Eurozone can be saved is by saving the European south. Tsipras put his no confidence vote once the plane had landed. So did he work this out on the way back from the States or was there a discussion with other members of the leadership by phone from the USA?

Having no hope of winning as no confidence votes have never shown a break in the ruling party formations as ND has a 50 MP bonus he managed to achieve 124 votes with GD, KKE, Ind Greeks voting with his motion with the knowledge of course that only MPs from PASOK and ND could bring down their own government.  In the end one PASOK MP voted against and was expelled and another claimed he was ill and didn’t turn up to vote. The main area of dispute has been the new taxes on agricultural land and property plus liberalising all repossessions, which has seen around 70 ND MPs baulking at the vote. Stratoulis from Syriza had stated that PASOK previously in 2011 had won a No Confidence vote but soon thereafter Papandreou was given his marching orders. Hence the question remains what does Tsipras know we don’t and why did he place the No Confidence Vote?

Only a few thousand turned up at the Sindagma rally showing that Syriza once more has no actual support in society and the vote to it was a reaction to all else than support for its EU neo-liberal policies.

So what it going on. The Troika cannot impose any more new taxes, the ruling parties have fragmented and ND is on the way to becoming the new PASOK. It has been in power for 16 months around the same time Papandreou lasted from when he called the IMF into Greece way back in May 2010. Samaras is now a busted flush his bonapartist measures whereby paramilitary shootouts occur to generalise the theory of the ‘two extremes’ (murders of antifascist rapper and two GD members) go nowhere and the crisis continues unabated with around 25k public sector workers to be fired by Xmas and 150-250k earmarked for the following two years. Unemployment continues to rise and the scenes of young people scavenging in dustbins is widespread in Athens. We have seen scenes of ruling party MPs calling their own ministers Leninists for wanting to take away peoples property! The conclusion is we have a ruling crisis and this flows from the fact that people no longer have any money to pay the endless array of taxes. The state is shutting down and deregulating its operations. The Universities have been closed since they opened after the govt fired a majority of its admin staff. Hospitals aren’t functioning and thousands of doctors have been given their marching orders.

In order to forestall an inevitable social explosion they will either cut Samaras short replacing him with another joker of the style of Papadimos or bring Syriza to power. That is where the fun will start for Syriza will try to solve the unsolveable: remain in the Euro whilst cancelling all payments to the debtors.

If there is a pan-European move in that direction due to the fact that the Eurosceptics have the upper hand in two major countries (France and UK) in the forthcoming Euroelections and the fact that the role of the German finance ministry hasn’t been assigned alongside Brussels starting an investigation into the full impact of Germany surpluses, the Tsipras move is part of a wider plan. If on the other hand Tsipras wanted to bring down the government he could have called for all the MP’s who voted with him to withdraw from Parliament as he did mention that the govt rules on Executive Decrees 22 in total in other words an IMF junta with the façade of Parliamentary democracy but he could have, but didn’t.

Without a return to national currencies a restoration of border controls in capital goods and labour and a national strategy to restore economic activity as a first step to restore growth that gives people work and a livelihood and the dissolution of the EU and the EZ we will continue to go from bad to worse. This crisis isn’t going away.

Friday 1 November 2013

Security Services Job? Two GD murdered at point blank range...Minister Mitsotakis calls for Martial Law


                                                       Two dead Golden Dawn Members

In what appears to be the standard hallmark of a security services job two GD members outside their offices in N Ionia a suburb of Athens were gunned down in what was the tradition of 17N style of execution. Men wearing motorcycle helmets shot at point blank range three GD members according to reports. Two are dead as they emptied their bullets in them. The third allegedly escaped so far.

Kiriakos Mitsotakis - son of the Mitsotakis clan (the premier Bilderburg Quisling political dynasty of Greece) who in his role as Public Sector Minister has presided over a mass job cull of 25k workers in the recent period was interviewed in the Belgian press this week calling for martial law to implement the 'reforms' is the total firesale of Greece.

Since early September when a mass coordinated campaign against Golden Dawn was inaugurated by the global corporate media in alliance with the Quisling administration of the Troika in Greece led by Samaras and Venizelos (ND and PASOK) the Greek corporate media with interests in the Gold Mines of Skouries started selling the theory of the 'two extremes' of the Right and the Left.

The fake Left jumped on this bandwagon playing along having protest after protest over the murder of Fissas helping to derail thus a massive strike wave which was cut short due to his murder. Instead of pointing the case towards the security services as with the murder of the Bank workers at Marfin they sold the theory of the ...'right extremist'.

The journalist-whores who make up the Greek corporate media are willing to sell the theory 'of the two extremes' in order to declare martial law, the plans for which were announced in the Belgian media by Mitsotakis junior (known as the Bush clan of Greece). This is repetition once more of the Gladio style provocation campaigns that rocked Italy in the 70's.

Since September they have adopted the nazi rule of collective liability and have locked up GD MP's banned them from collecting the state subsidy given to all the other political parties and started a massive witchhunt against them.

The state will now start to make links with 'red' terrorists and associate this criminal act to justify its state sponsored terrorism: mass sackings. mass closures of schools and hospitals. mass suicides etc. They have blood on their hand and they seem determined to continue along that path. They have no other path. Capitalism is collapsing and it will sink everything in its path unless its overthrown

2nd November 2013
GD MP's in Parliament have stated that a police car was stationed outside the party offices in N Ionia for the last month and absent last night when the killing took place. Alongside Syriza they are calling for calm for peoples reaction to the event.

Sunday 29 September 2013

Troikas Quisling Administration in Greece Full Slide into Bonapartism=State Ban of GD?

Golden Dawn MPs in various still pictures. Characteristic is Mihaloliakos bowing as if he has met the Queen (Dora Bakoyiannis daughter of ex-Premier Mitsotakis the Bush clan in Greece)!

The question of our attitude toward govt measures ostensibly against fascism is highly important.

Since bourgeois democracy is basically bankrupt, it is no longer in a position to defend itself on its own ground against its enemies on the right and the left. That is in order to maintain itself the democratic regime must progressively liquidate itself through emergency laws and administrative arbitrariness. This self liquidation of democracy in the struggle against the right and left brings to the fore the Bonapartism of degeneration, which needs both the left and the right danger for its uncertain existence in order to play them off against one another and to progressively raise itself above society and its parliamentarism. The Colign regime has seemd to me for a long time to be a potentially Bonapartis regime.

IN this highly critical period the main enemy of Bonapartism remains of course the revolutionary wing of the proletariat. Thus we can say with aboslute assurance that as the class struggle deepens all emergency laws extraordinary powers etc will be used against the proletariat.

After the French Stalinist and Socialist voted for the administrative disbanding of paramilitary organizations, that old scoundrel Marcel Cahin wrote in l'Humanite approximately as follows "A great victory.... Naturally we know that in capitalist society all laws can be used against the proletariat. But we will strive to prevent this etc" The lie here is the word "can" What should have been said was " We know that as the social crisis deepens all these measures will be used against the proletariat with tenfold intensity" There is a simple conclusion to be drawn from this: We cannot help build up the Bonapartism of degeneration with our own hands and supply it with the chains it will inevitably use to bind the proletarian vanguard'

January 13th 1936
Trotsky 




In the space of six months we have gone from the ban of strikes to the indefinite closure of the state broadcaster ERT, to the mass sackings of 25k state employees (which is a breach of the Greek constitution) and now the unnanounced banning of elected parties.

The media oligarchs who have big interests in Greece like Bobolas who owns Ethnos newspaper and Aktor the company involved in the extraction on behalf of El Dorado Gold this week was instrumental in arresting 27 citizens on trumped up charges (they are languishing in gaol) were instrumental in ‘exposing’ GD.

When mass strikes erupted lass time in February 2012 and conflict ensued in Sindagma Sq we had the then leader of the far right LAOS (like UKIP) party Karatzaferis join the Troika govt thus ensuing their departure from the political scene. The collapse of the Papadimos govt opened up the way for the meteoric rise of both Syriza and GD due to the collapse of the PASOK vote.

Subsequently we had the rise of the Samaras govt backed by PASOK and the LAOS of the Left in the form of Kouvelis-DEM Left joining the coalition. Now faced by a collapse in the polls of Samaras ND, (disintigration of both PASOK and Dem Left) we have Syriza holding out and GD around 15-20%, thus hovering around becoming the 2nd biggest party.

The bonapartist measures imposed by the Troika on the Greek ruling elite in banning parties opens the door to bans on the Left (who are the main target in times of severe economic and social meltdown) for the ‘anti-terrorist’ police enters centre stage and the lies of Samaras of a coup by Special Forces reservists was only made to conceal his own real coup. Heading towards a third bailout and a new round of wages and pension cuts the mythology of the current administration that it is weeding out ‘criminality’ at the same time as letting Tzohatzopoulos loose or allowing Papakonstantinou to walk free is not lost on the people.


30th September
Banning parties (18 GD MP’s) means opening the way for either new elections (if the MP’s are removed as they were this morning from turning up into Parliament) or delaying elections till the end of the year due to alleged constitutional irregularities.

The fact of the matter is that this Parliament is a rump, they make shit up as they go along, there are no rules of engagement anymore.

The ideal solution of course would be no Parliament just administrators no electoral considerations etc. But the ideal to exist one has to erase history, tradition etc. For now Greeks are observers of the pantomime and the arrest of GD and this implies that no one can protest about anything anymore for the Troika state decides what is correct and what is wrong as evidenced in Halkidiki where the protestors were held on the same category as GD as being ‘criminal elements’

The murdered Fissas and his father worked in the KKE shipyard zone of Perama. The KKE just fired its most talented journalist and the Ethnos newspaper its most talented journalist Delastik (member of Antarsya) who wrote a piece which essentially argued who profits who gains from this event implying indirectly the govt. It has the most to lose and the most to gain.

How they resolve the constitutional issues, the banning of GD without it being a formal ban, the collapse of their vote, the road towards a third catastrophic bailout etc is anyones guess. Just like with the closure of ERT they are making it up as they go along. If elections are allowed to be held (Troika dont want them) then the 18 seats up for grabs would ensure Syriza had a clear chance of wining as the difference in the last elections between them and ND was only around 1%…

5th October
The whole thing seems to be a charade. The leader of GD is inside most others have been released. The mythology of 'nationalism' is being exposed as just mythology. In September GD went to commemorate the Quisling administration of Ioannis Rallis of WW2 at Meligalas when they founded the shock troops to stabilise the country once the Germans had left by crushing the Left. In other words a Quisling administration which one of their members had reminded Parliament of by criticising the present lot as Quislings. GD like the fake left is presenting an anti-Quisling approach to Parliament but in reality is pro-Quisling. A big hue and cry was made over the overturning of a couple of benches of illegal immigrant sellers in two market areas by the global media but little reported was that those selected were those that didn't have police permission. Hundreds others that had weren't touched. The aim behind the whole circus appears to lower GD's electoral numbers not to ...fight fascism. For to fight that one would first have to fight the 4th Reich and the Troika. That aint happening by the powers that be.


The rise of Adolf Hitler – Jack Gale

LABOUR REVIEW VOL II NO 11 April 1979

The rise of Adolf Hitler
The German Army played an indispensable part in building the Nazi Party and in bringing Adolf Hitler to power.

An examination of this role shows that the claim by the founders of the Anti-Nazi League that Hitler's rise could have been stopped if only lovers of democracy had realised the danger early enough, is dangerously false. As the British ruling class prepares for civil war against the working class, the understanding of the way the State used every possible means to smash the German labour movement is of vital importance today. The development of a mass fascist party coup not have taken place without the conscious action of the State, combined with the treachery of the leaderships in the German workers' movement.
Hitler could have been stopped, even as late as 1933 — the year power was handed to him by the representatives of capitalist democracy — but only if the working class of Germany had been united behind a revolutionary party. The Social Democratic leaders, who feared a revolutionary working class more than they feared capitalism, could never lead a struggle against fascism. Neither could the leaders of the Communist Party, because they were by that time thoroughly dominated by Stalin's line. Their reactionary denunciation of reformists as 'Social Fascists' kept the workers divided and allowed Hitler to take power in accordance with the 'democratic' constitution.

Trotsky had fought for the Communists to propose a principled United Front of the working class parties to halt Hitler, and it was the experience of Hitler's victory which led the co-leader of the Russian Revolution to conclude that the Third International had, under Stalin, ceased to be an instrument of socialist revolution.

It is not possible to grasp how to fight fascism without a close study of Trotsky's writings during this period. (Trotsky's writings collected on Germany, 1931-1932 are available from New Park Publications, 2 Ib Old Town, London SW4 OJT, price £1.50).
This article does not purport to be a full examination of the rise of German fascism. It deals with one aspect of it — the role of the army, within the 'democratic' state, in building up fascism.
What it does attempt is to trace Hitler's political career, in order to expose as a myth the story of the "penniless ex-corporal' who joined a small right-wing group, built it up by his own talents, was subsequently able to persuade big business to back him, and gradually grew stronger and stronger because loo-one recognised the danger and stopped him in time. This is die version Hitler himself began to build up in Mein Kampf and which is swallowed wholesale by the revisionists who formed the ANL.
The truth is that Hitler was, from the very beginning of his political career, a paid agent of the German Army. Before he ever joined the anti-Semitic German Workers' Party he was a fully-paid member of the Political Department of the Army's Munich Command. And his army bosses sent him into politics. This is how it happened.

The revolution of 1918 broke out in Munich, the main city of Bavaria, even before it did in Berlin, and the King of Bavaria abdicated before the German Kaiser. Kurt Eisner, the man who led the November revolution in Bavaria, was murdered in February, 1919. A Social Democratic government staggered on until April 6, when a Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Munich.

This was drowned in blood at the beginning of May, by a combined force of regular soldiers and Freikorps volunteers, and the Social Democrats placed back in power. On the night of March 13, 1920, the District Commander of the Reichswehr (that is, the German regular army), General Arnold von Moehl, presented the Social Democratic premier, Johannes Hoffman, with an ultimatum and imposed in his place a right-wing regime. This was nominally led by Gustav von Kahr, but in fact was always controlled by the military.
Under these conditions, Munich became the centre for all the most right-wing, nationalist, anti-Semitic and military elements in both Bavaria and Germany. This is where Hitler got his start.

His first appearance was as a witness for the prosecution at the Commission of Inquiry which tried and shot everyone it could findwho had been active in the short-lived Soviet Republic of Bavaria. This inquiry was set up and conducted by the Second Infantry Regiment of the German Army. Naturally, the 'inquiry' was fixed from start to finish. Hitler's presence as a 'witness' means only one thing— he was in the pay of the army. The future Fuhrer played his part well and was rewarded with the job of Instruction Officer in the Press and News Bureau of the Political Department of the Army's Seventh "(Munich) District Command. His task was to lecture soldiers on the dangers of communism, pacifism and 'democracy'.

ORIGINS OF THE STORMTROOPERS
Of course, there was a lot of such human scum doing similar work. Why did Hitler's career develop differently? Von Moehl had succeeded in Munich when the Kapp putsch (an attempt to seize power by the far right) had failed in Berlin. Angry rightists fled from Berlin to Munich. They included men like the notorious Captain Erhardt, who made Munich the centre of his Erhardt Brigade, an organisation for political murders. Also in the Seventh Munich Army District were a number of key military political figures — such as Major-General Ritter von Epp and his assistant—a man who was to play a big role in fascist history — Major Ernst Roehm.

It was the head of the Political Department of the Seventh Munich Army District who gave Hitler his next assignment — to join the tiny organisation known as the German Workers' Party. When Hitler joined this organisation, in September 1919, it had total funds of 7.50 marks and a membership of around 40. But one of these members was Ernst Roehm. Another was Von Epp. Why were such high officers interested in an obscure political group of minor cranks? Partly, of course, because they shared their reactionary political outlook.
But there was another reason. The Versailles Treaty at the end of World War I set strict limits on the size of the German Army to a mere 100,000, on the insistence of Germany's imperialist rivals. But the right-wing officers needed to keep together hand-picked, trained men, not merely as a nucleus of a future army, but also to carry out the political tasks they required. They therefore built up the Freikorps, an association of ex-soldiers, and other 'defence leagues', 'patriotic leagues' and so on. They also seized on small nationalist organisations and pushed ex-soldiers into them. They then financed these groups and built up their strong-arm squads. These were directly or indirectly under the control of the top army brass.

LABOUR REVIEW VOL II NO 11
RISE OF HITLER

The German Workers' Party suited this strategy perfectly. Hitler was sent into it, in order to look after the interests of the army, acting as a front man for the army officers. It was Ernst Roehm who had the job of pushing ex-servicemen into the party's ranks and organising its fighting squads — which actually became the nucleus of the SA. In December 1920, Roehm and his superior, Ritter von Epp, provided the sixty thousand marks needed to buy the party a weekly newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter.'

There is no doubt whatever that Hitler was able to build up his anti-semitic organisation, not because the German workers were indifferent, and not because of his own talents, but because of his own talents, but because of the careful direction and financial backing which he received from the army. Indeed, it is possible he might never even have become leader of the tiny German Workers' Party but for the fact that he was the man who could provide the money — army money. With this backing, Hitler became president of the party in July, 1921. He used this position to sweep away the old committee, and replace it with army men — like Max Amann, an ex-sergeant-major in the List Regiment who was given control of the party's business activities. Amann was in constant contact with the army — and by February 1923, Hitler had enough funds to make the Volkischer Beobachter a daily newspaper.

(Hitler was also getting financial support from an emigre" group of. White Russian generals, with whom he had been put in contact by German officers. One of these Russians was the wealthy General Biskupski.  Another was General Skoropadski, who had been appointed governor of the Ukraine by the Germans in 1918.)

It was around this time that ex-officers like Rudolf Hess and Hermann Goering joined Hitler. But Hitler could never explain where the money he was providing was actually coming from. In July 1921, the disgruntled former leaders of the party issued a leaflet denouncing Hitler, saying 'If any member asks him how he lives and what was his former profession, he always becomes angry and excited, Up to now no answer has been supplied to these questions.'2

Hitler took out a libel action to stop such questions being asked, but was unable to explain in court how his activities were financed. Some money was coming in from wealthy backers, but not enough to explain the expansion which Hitler was able to carry through. Members of the Bechstein family (the piano manufacturers) gave money, as did a factory owner in Augsburg called Grandel. But money from capitalists of real size didn't start coming in until Hitler was working in collaboration with General Ludendorff in 1923 — that was when steel magnate Fritz Thyssen began to give money. But even then powerful backing from big industry was still several years away.

ARMY INDECISION
Army support was still far more important for Hitler. In January 192^1of instance, it was Roehm and General Otto von Lossow who reversed a ban by the Police President of Munich on a march by Hitler's SA (Stormtroopers). And it was Roehm again who engineered an alliance of right-wing organisations in Bavaria which did much to extend Hitler's influence. The groups who united with the Nazis were the Reich Banner led by Captain Heiss, the Lower Bavarian Fighting League under Lieutenant Hofmann, Zeller's Patriotic Leagues of Munich, and Mulzer's Oberland Defence League. Army officers were prominent in all these groups.

At this time, Hitler was planning a march on Berlin, and came close to persuading the ARMY GOC in Bavaria, General von Lossow, to join it. The fact is that the army was undecided. On May 1, 1923, Hitler assembled 20,000 Stormtroopers on the outskirts of Munich under the military command of Lieutenant-Colonel Kriebel and Lieutenant Rossbach (an ex-Freikorps leader), but Roehm arrived with a message from von Lossow that all arms had to be returned to military barracks. Hitler capitulated. He was not prepared to march against the orders of the army.

Significantly, both Hitler and Roehm disappeared for some months after this debacle. Hitler did not make a single public appearance between May 4 and August 1, while Roehm left Munich in May and did not reappear until September 19. Hitler was never brought to trial, for what were after all serious offences against the state. Proceedings against him were in fact begun by the State Prosecutor's office. Hitler replied saying he welcomed the opportunity to appear in court 'where I can speak out openly'.3 After this vested threat, all charges-were dropped — somebody, somewhere, didn't want the Nazi leader to 'speak out openly'. Whoever that was, had contacts in high places—it was a personal intervention by Franz Gunner, the Bavarian Minister of Justice, which got the charges dropped.
Hitler could reasonably assume that key people in the army and the state considered him guilty of no more than a premature action. On September 2 — by which time inflation had reduced the German mark to more than one million to one US dollar—he addressed a mass rally of 'Patriotic Associations'. By his side stood General Erich Ludendorff, the man who had been the virtual military ruler of Germany during the war.

Hitler at this time was working for a march on Berlin from Munich with the aim of overthrowing the Reich Government. This was by no means a wild scheme. There was a real possibility of persuading Gustav von Kahr, the State Commissioner of Bavaria, and Lossow, commander of the army in Bavaria, to join him. At the same time, the Berlin government could not rely on the army. At the time of the Kapp Putsch in March 1920, part of the army under General von Luttwitz had openly supported the coup attempt, and the Commander in Chief, General von Seeckt, had refused to allow his troops to be used to defend the legal government.  
        *
In October 1923, Berlin demanded the suppression of Hitler's paper, the VolkischerBeobachter, and the arrest of some of his followers. Both Kahr and Lossow refused to carry out this order. Berlin sacked Lossow, but Kahr—who had dictatorial powers in Bavaria — kept him in his post, extracted an oath of allegiance to Bavaria from the soldiers there, demanded the resignation of the Berlin government, and put armed forces on the borders of Bavaria and Thuringia.

In November, Hitler attempted to seize power in Bavaria and announced a march on Berlin. On November 9, Hitler marched through Munich at the head of 3,000 men, with General Ludendorff by his side. But a small group of police, vastly outnumbered by Hitler's force, opened fire and the Nazi leaders — with the exception of Ludendorff and his adjutant Major Streck — fled for their lives.

Hitler's coup had failed. And the reason was that Hitler was convinced the army was with him. As he said in Munich ten years later: 'We never thought to carry through a revolt against the army. It was with it that we believed we should succeed.'

Hitler had considerable support from the army — but not yet as much as he needed. When his trial took place, the State Prosecutor let slip a highly significant statement: 'At first, Hitler kept himself free of personal ambition for power. Later on, when he was being idolised by certain circles, he thoughtlessly allowed himself to be carried beyond the position assigned to him,'4

And Hitler made clear just what position had been assigned to him. 'I wanted to become the destroyer of Marxism,' he told the court.

NAZISM AND THE STATE
Hitler, despite his own claims, was not leading a revolution. He was not seeking to replace the rule of one class with the rule of another, but to substitute one form of bourgeois rule with another form of rule by the same class. Therefore, his new 'state* apparatus could be built up out of the existing one. As he explained himself in 1936:

We recognised that it is not enough to overthrow the old State, but that the new State must previously have been built up and be practically ready to one's hand... in 1933 it was no longer a question of overthrowing a state by an act of violence; meanwhile the new State had been built up and all that there remained to do was to destroy the last remnants of the old State — and that took but a few hours.

Hitler knew where his State was to come from. He told the court:
I believe that the hour will come when the masses, who today stand in the street with our swastika banner, will unite with those who fired upon them. When I learned that it was the police who fired, I was happy that it was not the Rekhswehr which had stained its record. One day the hour will come when the Rekhswehr, officers and men, will stand at our side.6
The trial indicated that Hitler's confidence that the state forces were on his side was not misplaced. Ludendorff was acquitted and Hitler was given the minimum sentence of five years — and then released after serving less than nine months. Moreover, Hitler's conditions in jail were luxurious. 40 other National Socialists were with him in Landsberg Prison. They ate well, had as many visitors as they liked, and spent most of their time in the gardens. Hitler was allowed his own batman, and not all the fascists in the jail were prisoners. Rudolf Hess, for example, chose voluntarily to stay there to be with his leader.
Hitler was given ample facilities—including a secretary—to write Mein Kampf. He was permitted to conduct a wide-ranging correspondence, and was allowed as many newspapers and books as he wished. The fascist leader's thirty-fifth birthday fell while he was in jail, and he was allowed so many parcels and flowers that several rooms of this remarkable 'prison' were filled to overflowing. Nor did Hitler occupy a cell. He was given a large, sunny first floor room.

In the years after Hitler's release from jail, German capitalism made a temporary recovery largely due to massive foreign loans mainly from the United States. This contained the seeds of future disaster, since by

1930 the country owed something like 30,000 million gold marks in foreign debts. Unemployment fell and the middle class began to recover.

In the Reichstag elections of May 1928, the Nazi Party polled only 810,000 votes compared with the Social Democrats' 9. IS million. The Communist Party got 3,265,000 votes. The Nazis weren't even the leading right wing organisation. That dubious 'honour' fell to the German National Party which polled 4.3 million votes. In 1928, the leadership of the German National Party was taken over by a former Krupps director Alfred Hugenberg, who had made a fortune out of the inflation. Hugenberg had the backing of the largest of all the ex-servicemen's organisations, the Stahlhelm, as well as the Pan-German League, and capitalists like Dr Albert Voegler, General Director of United Steel and Reichsbank President Dr Hjalmar Schacht.

What came to Hitler's rescue was the Young Plan. A committee chaired by US banker Owen D. Young decided in June 1929 that Germany should go on paying reparations for World War I for a further 59 years. The Rightist organisations, including the Nazis and the German National Party, came together in a joint campaign and placed a 'Law Against the Enslavement of the German People' before the Reichstag and a subsequent plebiscite. They were heavily defeated, but it was during this campaign that the really big money began to come behind Hitler, especially from the coal and iron magnates and the bankers.

GERMANY CRASHES
Then came the world slump. Unemployment in Germany rose from 1,320,000 in September 1929 to 3 million in September 1930, 4,350,000 in September 1931 and 5,102,000 in September 1932. By 1933 over 6 million Germans were out of work. In September 1930, Hitler's vote shot up to 6,409,600. But the Communist Party vote also went up to 4,592,000. The votes of the Social Democrats and the centre parties fell, but the Social Democrats still remained the largest party.

In Britain, Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail welcomed Hitler's gains as 'a reinforcement of the defences against Bolshevism'. Hitler still had a long way to go; however, to achieve his stated aim of 'defeating democracy with the weapons of democracy'.7

How this was to be achieved was explained by him in a speech in Munich in March 1929. Referring to the fascist victory in Italy, Hitler declared:
There is another state in which the Army had a different conception of (its) needs. That was in the State where, in October 1922, a group made ready to take the reins of the State out of the hands of the gangsters and the Italian Army did not say 'Our only job is to protect peace and order'. Instead they said 'It is our task to preserve the future for the Italian people'.

And the future does not lie with the parties of destruction, but rather with the parties who carry in themselves the strength of the people, who are prepared and who wish to bind themselves to this Army, in order to aid the Army some day in defending the interests of the people. In contrast we still see the officers of Our Army belatedly tormenting themselves with the question as to how far one can go along with Social Democracy. But, my dear sirs, do you really believe that you have anything in common with an ideology which stipulates the dissolution of all that which is the basis of the existence of an Army? The victory of one course or the other lies partially in the hands of the Army—that is, the victory of the Marxists or our side. Should the Leftists win out through your wonderful unpolitical attitude, you may write over the German Army: 'The encl of the German Army.' For then, gentlemen, you must become political, then the red cap of the Jacobins will be drawn over your head.8

By 1931, money was pouring into Hitler's coffers — from men like Emil Kirdorf, the biggest figure in the Ruhr coal industry; Fritz Thyssen and Albert Voegler of the United Steel Works; Ernst Bus-kuhl and H.G. Knepper of the Gelsenkirchen Mine Company; Stein and Schroeder of the Stein Bank in Cologne; E.G. von Strauss of the Deutsche Bank; Eduard Hilgard of the Allainz Insurance Corporation and many more.

The reason was not that a racist group had managed to attract big business money, but that Hitler was seen by these huge employers as the man who could give the political lead around which the army could be rallied against the working class.

END OF PARLIAMENTARISM
Hitler, nevertheless, had to steer a careful course. He could not be certain that the Army would not move against him if he repeated his 1923 adventure of a march on Berlin. What he did know was that the army would certainly support him if he could take power through the apparatus of capitalist democracy. However, Hitler never'won a capitalist election. At the height of their parliamentary success before Hitler was given the Chancellorship, the most the Nazis got was 230 out of 600 Reichstag seats, in July 1932. Even in the election after Hitler was in office, in March 1933, the Nazis only got 288 out of 647 seats.
Hitler had to be brought to power another way. They key figure in this process was a certain Major-General Kurt von Schleicher. In 1928, when General Wilhelm Groener became Minister of Defence, Schleicher became head of a special department, called the Minis-teramt. This department co-ordinated the affairs of all the armed forces and dealt with their links with other ministries. It became the key political post in the forces. Schleicher rapidly achieved dominance over Groener, as Well as over the Army C-in-C, General von Hammerstein. Moreover, one of Schlekher's close associates was Colonel Oskar von Hindenburg, son of the aged President.

Schleicher wanted a strong government, in place of weak coalitions, and he saw Hitler as his man. In January 1931, he removed the ban on Nazi supporters being enrolled in the forces or getting employment in arsenals and supply depots. Then he entered lengthy talks with SA chief Ernst Roehm. Later he arranged discussions for Hitler first with Bruening and then with Hindenburg.

All this occurred while three successive parliamentary coalitions — headed by Mueller, Bruening and Papen •>— failed to achieve a stable parliamentary majority and Germany was ruled mainly by presidential decree. This meant mat, in effect, real power was in the hands of a small group of men round the President: that is, the Chancellor, General von Schleicher, Oskar von Hindenburg and Otto Meissner, head of the Presidential Chancery.
Of course, the Army was never unanimous in its attitude to Hitler. Groener, for instance, was always suspicious of the Nazi leader and in April 1932, used his powers as Minister of Defence to ban the SA and SS and all their affiliated organisations. He was violently attacked in the Reichstag and — under pressure from Schleicher and the Army C-in-C, Hammerstein — Groener resigned. Next, Schleicher got rid of Chancellor Bruening. He announced that the Army no longer had confidence in the Chancellor — and the President dismissed Bruening.

The new Chancellor, a Westphalian nobleman called Franz von Papen, never had a chance of a parliamentary majority—he governed only through the support of the President and the Army. Three of the four big parties — the Communist, Social Democrat and Centre Parties — all opposed him, while the Nazis remained 'neutral' in line with Hitler's deal with Schlekher.

Capitalist parliamentary government was, therefore, virtually at an end in Germany even before Hitler became Chancellor. The only way von Papen's government could get any stability at all was if it won the support of the Nazi Party, along with its army backing. However, it must be stressed that Schlekher and Hitler were not conducting their manoeuvres in a vacuum. The working class was active and only its leadership kept it from victory.

WORKERS'RESISTANCE
It was. this failure of the workers' leadership which enabled the plans of Schleicher and Hitler to proceed without interruption. In July 1932 the Nazis polled 13,745,000 votes and became the biggest party in the Reichstag — but the Social Democrats polled just under eight million votes and the Communist Party got five and a quarter million. The working class vote combined just about equalled that of the Nazis. The swing to the Nazis had come from those who had earlier supported the middle-class parties like the People's Party, the Democrats and the Economic Party.

The claim of the Anti-Nazi League that the working class was apathetic in the face of the Nazi threat is a slander. On July 17,1932, for instance, the Nazis staged a provocative march through the working-class districts of 'Red' Hamburg. They were met by a fusillade of shots from roof-tops and windows, which they returned. An armed battle took place in which 19 people were killed and 285 wounded. The Nazis did not march through Hamburg. In the same month Goebbels attempted to make an election visit to the Ruhr. Another pitched battle took place and 18 people were killed.

The leadership, of course, was a different question. When von Papen dismissed the Social Democrat and Centre coalition in Prussia because of the Hamburg riots, the trade unions and the Social-Democratic Party discussed calling a general strike. They decided against it. The Stalinists, as is well known, were denouncing Social Democracy as a worse danger than fascism and thus splitting the working class.

Even at that stage, with revolutionary leadership, Hitler and his army backers could have been stopped. Hitler had swallowed up the centre and right parties—but the working-class opposition to fascism was still solid. It was for that reason—that the working class was not defeated and demoralised — that the Army swallowed its last reservations and decided to back Hitler fully. Even Schleicher up to that point had regarded Hitler as a strong pillar of support for some capitalist politician whom he, Schleicher, would nominate on behalf of the Army.
                                      
It still took time. Hitler demanded the Chancellorship, and Schleicher and Papen offered only the vice-Chancellorship. Hitler refused to support the government and it fell. In the ensuing election of November, 1932, the Nazi Party's vote fell for the first time since 1930. They lost two million votes and 34 Reichstag seats. The Communist Party vote increased.
Yet again, Papen offered Hitler the vice-Chancellorship. Hitler refused. It was Schleicher — alarmed by die increased Communist vote and by a strong transport strike in Berlin — who moved. Papen was,urged to resign and he did. Hindenburg said he would consider Hitler as Chancellor only if he could command a Reichstag majority — something Hitler could not do.

The result was that Schleicher himself became Chancellor of Germany. President Hindenburg, in fact, entrusted Papen with the task of forming a new government, but Schleicher declared that the Army would not support him. Hindenburg withdrew his proposal. Papen was finished. And Schleicher became the last Chancellor of pre-Hitier Germany on December 2, 1932. He was to last less than two months. One of his first acts was to broadcast to the nation, asking his listeners to 'forget' that he was a soldier and think of him as 'the impartial trustee of the interests of all in an emergency' and one who 'supported neither capitalism nor socialism'.9

Schleicher could get no support from the working class, nor from the Centre—and Hitler was by now sure that he could hold out for his full demands, the Chancellorship or nothing. It was, for him, a desperate gamble. The party had almost split, with one section anxious to enter Schleicher's government. Funds were falling. And the last election had been a disaster. But in crisis-ridden Germany, Schleicher could find no support for any government. At the same time the Stalinist and reformist leaders had paralysed the working


On January 22,1933, negotiations began involving on die one side
Papen, Meissner and Oskar von Hindenburg, and on the other Hitler, Goering and Frick. They lasted a week. On January 28 Schleicher asked the President for powers to dissolve the Reichstag and to rule by decree. He was rejected.

What is clear is that Hitler did not come to power triumphant and strong. German capitalism and with it German capitalist politicians were in desperate crisis. Manoeuvre after manoeuvre, solution after solution, political combination after political combination, were tried.

No-one knew where to turn. The already rejected Papen tried again to form a government. Schleicher proposed to Hitler that they form a joint government backed by the Army and the Nazi Party. At the same time, there were reports that Schleicher was planning a military coup to impose himself as dictator of Germany. Hitler warned Hindenburg of this and placed his own forces on the alert. The whole political situation was one of complete chaos.
In this situation, Hindenburg agreed to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. But once again, the final decision lay with the army. General von Blomberg, who had been army commander in East Prussia, was summoned to Berlin. Would he serve as Minister of Defence under Hitler? Blomberg and his Chief of Staff Colonel von Reichenau, had already been in contact with Hitler. He agreed to serve, and Hitler was in.

On January 30 1933, Adolf Hitler, by constitutional and legal means, became Reich Chancellor of Germany. He knew who was responsible for that. In September 1933 he declared:
On this day, we would particularly remember the part played by our Army, for we all know well that if, in the days of our revolution, the Army had not stood on our side, then we should not be standing here today.10

Notes
1 Alan Bullock, Hitler. A Study in Tyranny, p. 61.
•  Bullock, p. 74.
3  Rudolf Olden, Hitler the Pawn, p. 130.
4  Bullock, p. 105.
8 NormanH.Baynes(ed),Speec/?esof>k/o^)/?H*/ef 1922-39, Vol. 1,pp. 155-156.
•  Bullock, p. 108.
7 Gordon W. Prange (ed), Hitler's Words, p. 42.
•  Bullock, p. 147.
•  Bullock, p. 218.

10 Baynes, Vol. 1 p. 556.