The Second World War: A Marxist History: A Marxist History

by Chris Bambery

The Second World War casts a long shadow, portrayed as a necessary and paradigmatic war that defeated fascism. During recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, US presidents and British prime ministers have tried to claim they were following in the footsteps of Winston Churchill by standing up to dictators.

In The Second World War Chris Bambery tests this position in a thorough account of the war and tries to understand why it still dominates TV history channels and school history books.

Bambery argues that the conflict ultimately was about a division of the world between the great powers, as well as a rising of ordinary people against fascism. He offers a complex and radical analysis, that is unique when compared to many modern and conventional histories of the war.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2013

About the author

Chris Bambery is a Scottish political activist, socialist, author, journalist, and TV presenter and producer.

Reviews

[Glenn · Rating 1 out of 5]

More of a “History of WW2 with a Marxish accent”, than a “Marxist history of WW2”. It gives a left-wing tinge to the account, and might be useful as a short and accessible way to begin to dispel many of the common myths about the war. But it’s very surface-level, and its fundamental failing is that it never thoroughly explores the class basis or significance of events.

Its short length is no excuse for slurring over explanations and missing key details. Bambery is obsessed with surface level details, often giving a blow-by-blow account of who said and did what. But he completely neglects to discuss the real underlying class balance of forces, motives, etc. By the end of the book I was literally screaming “where is the class analysis?!”

Several times, he makes no distinction whatsoever between the competing interests and actions of classes within a nation. And at others he offers lengthy descriptions of the various camps/factions but does not recognise their real class aleigance.

These are serious mistakes. And the result is that while the events discussed offer many opportunities to elucidate Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, or draw out important perspectives (e.g. his ‘Lessons of Spain’), we get none of this.

By mistakenly identifying the USSR as ‘state capitalist’, he is also unable to explain the difference between Hitler and Stalin, to analyse the actions of the Comintern or the Red Army, or to recognise the significance of the planned economy. This is a gaping hole in his ‘analysis’ and I think leads him to wrongly emphasise the war as an imperialist redivision of the world, which is really only half the picture.

(Anyone looking to better understand the class nature of the USSR and communist parties of the 30s and 40s would benefit reading Trotsky’s ‘In Defence of Marxism’; particularly the first few chapters)

The best analysis anywhere in the book is in the quotes from Trotsky, or perspectives held by the Revolutionary Communist Party during the war. It's a testament to the power of a proper Marxist analysis, and to the poor quality of this writer, that with the benefit of years, hindsight, writing at leisure, and endless academic sources, Bambery is unable to progress the analysis one bit since these Trotskyists of the 40s.

The last chapters are quite poor. Particularly the chapter discussing events in the colonial world which is skated over with very little nuance. And the omission of discussing the post-war boom in the concluding chapter leaves the conflicts and uprisings he does mention completely out of context and unexplained.

Overall, severely lacking. It fails as an agitational work too; only occasionally condemning the crimes and perpetrators of the war in any strong terms (and figures like Churchill and Petain get off quite lightly). And it’s not a really effective antidote to the usual pro-war histories either, with only scant detail given to class struggle in the military or ‘home front’ or to the resistance and partisan movements.

It's a shame as there is little else on offer besides lengthy academic texts, or ‘left’ histories of the war which take the uncritical CP/reformist line.

[Pinko Palest · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a marxist history of WW II really. In fact, it is a strictly trotskyist interpretation of the conflict. While quite good o the actual fighting and in the build up, it is not very useful when dealing with the resistance or in the final chapters

[Victor Lopez · Rating 2 out of 5]

As someone who does not really agree with Trotsky, much less his followers, but I was willing to give this book a fair shake (in the name of intellectual fairness and all that jazz). Unfortunately, the work really is not up to snuff and ends up being a boilerplate analysis of the war and the Marxist analysis is Tony Cliff-style railing against 'Stalinism'. It fails on most levels.

In the spirit of generosity we can begin with the good parts: There were some interesting bits discussing the divisions among the different ruling classes in the inter-war period (the sections about France's struggle between the Popular Front and the incipient fascist movement led by the Croix de Feu organization, very reminiscent of Marc Bloch's arguments in Strange Defeat), the unsettled disputes between the imperialist powers in the West and Asia, etc. Other than that it offers nothing super innovative which cannot be gleaned from academic or popular works on the war (Beevor, Glantz, Weinberg, Hastings, etc. come to mind).

The aspects meritorious of deeper analysis include the 'Marxist' aspects of the analysis, which purportedly distinguish this work from mainstream literature and the unique methodology should elucidate overlooked aspects. To put it succinctly, the work fails catastrophically in this respect. Firstly, the work completely misunderstands the crucial role of the Soviet Union, for all its flaws, within the conflict. Following Cliff's read, Bambery alleges that the USSR was 'state capitalist', 'semi-imperialist' and that this motivated it in its partition of Poland and seeking accomodation with the allied powers instead of... fomenting international communist revolution (with what lol? old rifles, sticks and rocks,shitty pamphlets and good ol' moxie?). He claims that the evil bureaucracy, basically occupying the role of a financial bourgeoisie pushed the USSR to war and that this conservative caste helped stomp out revolutions that would have miraculously stopped fascism (Bambery claims that the Stalinist PCE undermined the fighting power of the Spanish Republic by not being revolutionary enough, whereas most serious analyses note the military and organizational disparity between the Republican and Rebel camps; there is also mention of the French communist party merely being Stalin's puppets and falling in line with the evil reactionary popular front government led by Blum or whatever... it basically devolves into a bog standard Trotskyist screed mixed in with wishful thinking). It really downplays how the mere existence of the Soviet Union was a. inspirational and aid (via the third international, its blunders in these places aside) to many third-world revolutions at this time, such as the Chinese struggle against Japan and Indian struggle against Britain, which scared imperialist powers shitless (especially in Britain, France, US and Japan) and b. that the Soviet policies vis a vis their assistance to the world communist movement were cautious for a reason (which scholars like Jonathan Haslam and Geoffrey Roberts get into) c. the role of the Soviets in backing popular revolutions in countries like Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria during the late Stalin period when Soviet integration into the world system made this 'safer' to d0.

The analysis of the uneven development of communist movements internationally really can only be chalked up to the author's very distorted readings of Lenin (and Trotsky) informed by individuals like Tony Cliff. The idea of the Popular Front is completely alien to the author, this analytical failure plays such a preponderant role in the "Marxist" analysis of the playing out of the conflict that it cannot be overlooked. Allegedly, Popular Fronts are perfiduous attempts by the bourgeoisie to neuter the radical communist movement in its glorious revolution (ignoring all the examples where the communists played a leading role in anti-fascist coalitions (all their failures and mistakes aside), how can it be that when waging a giant war against fascism we must isolate ourselves from the brunt of the fighting and entreat ourselves to isolation in 'purity' of principles? It is absurd. Similarly, in the section about Asia (which is much less expansive than the European section) it is alleged that only the Trotskyists in Vietnam and China remained true to anti-colonial struggle and that the evil Stalinists arrested them and capitulated to imperialism, which led to their countries becoming degenerate state capitalism.

There is no nuanced analysis of the historical circumstances occupied by the international communist movement, very little theoretical rigor other than ruminating attacks against Stalinism (muh evil bureaucrats) and superficial explanations as to what could have been possibly done differently in the "Was Revolution Possible?" section at the end (and there definitely is room for that, it is welcome! But there is a difference between garbage sloganeering and principled critique)... This last part was porbably the most hilariously bad section because the argument boils down to a half assed "just do a revolution, bro!"and sidestepping the importance of political organization (there is vague gesturing at factory occupations and strikes that occured spontaneously, but this does not immediately translate into the organizational capacity to seize state power).

To cut this rant short: The book, like most books, had something interesting that could be salvaged from the wreckage. However, if I knew what I know now, I would probably skip it for a mainstream book on the war since what I got was not very impressive.

[Sugarpunksattack Mick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chris Bambery's 'The Second World War: A Marxist History' is an ambitious project to cover the lead up to world war two, the war itself, and a summary of the post-war landscape all from a critical, marxist perspective. Spurred in part by deliberate misleading denunciations by pro-war reactionaries, Bambery begins his book explaining how cheerleaders of the US lead War against Iraq and Afghanistan called anti-war people 'appeasers' recalling those that sought to avoid war by appeasing Hitler. Bambery quickly debunks this myth showing that far from being some kind of left wing hippies, the appeaser were mostly right leaning (large swaths of the British Conservative Party, royal family, and tory press). Moreover, these appeasers of Hitler were also motivated by a greater ideological position, shared by the leaders of other nations, mainly that the real global enemy was communism.

Bambery's thesis has three parts: first, the real enemy of the competing empires was communism or more generally revolutionary change that would threaten ruling classes and social order, which was a real threat in both France and Spain in the thirties. Second, the second world war is a continuation of world war one especially the effort by the competing empires to reshape the global map.  Third, the competing empires make world war two an undoubtably imperialist war. Nonetheless, the war and reasons individual people and nations participated are still complex and shifting, which Bambery does an excellent job of contextualizing over the course of the book. The general strength of this book is in its ability to destroy the veneer of moral goodness of each empire and show that they are clearly motivated by selfish, imperialist visions. Bambery does this perhaps most intensely with the Britain (Winston Churchill in particular). Similarly, Bambery avoids deifying the USSR, but does provide a more even handed account of their efforts than is often provided. He accounts for both the unbelievable sacrifices the USSR experienced as well as detailing the damage they inflicted upon the Nazis. The single weakness of this book is it is too heavily focused on a 'western' perspective leaving the 'east' is consigned to two short chapters and are mostly oriented to how western empires related to them. The real weakness from my perspective is that Bambery has not written a second volume of this book.

Bambery is a marxist and presumably of the trotskyist variety given he was a member of Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In 2011, Bambery and 38 others resigned from the SWP and went on to start the International Socialist Group (Scotland). Bambery and others resigned because they argued the SWP had no viable strategy to oppose government austerity. What this illustrates is that Bambery is able to think beyond a rigid ideological position and not necessarily beholden to a party position. In short, Bambery's book goes beyond any simplistic understanding of WWII and captures the complexity of each event, actor, and outcome. Bambery's book is an extremely readable account of world war two that dispels many of the propagandistic readings presented by western historians without, in turn, descending into ideological diatribes. If you only read one book on world war two that goes beyond the 'normal' view of the war then read this book!

[Niklas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marxilainen toisen maailmansodan historia kertoo vähän erilaisen tarinan sodan syttymisestä, mutta ennen kaikkea sen seurauksista. Bamberry argumentoi varsin uskottavasti kuinka toinen maailmansota oli länsiliittoutuneille ja Neuvostoliitolle osa niiden harjoittamaa imperialistista politiikkaa, joka törmäsi fasistisen Saksan imperialistiseen hyökkäyspolitiikkaan. Länsiliittoutuneiden suoraan sanottuna törkeä reaalipolitiikka Aasiassa ja Euroopassa tähtäsi oman valtapiirin laajentamiseen, jolle vasemmistolaiset vastarintaliikkeet tarjosivat oikeutuksen, ja jota hyödynnettiin siekailematta. Sodan jälkeen vasemmistolaiset vastarintaliikkeet jätettiin oman onnensa nojaan, tai ne petettiin uuden maailmanjärjestyksen aikaansaamiseksi. USA sai sodan myötä synnytettyä oman "vapaakauppaan" perustuvan valtapiirinsä, joka itse asiassa oli ihan samanlainen kauppablokki kuin mitä Englannilla ja muilla oli ollut ennen sotaa, mutta tällä kertaa USA:n kauppablokki vain käsitti koko maailman. Argumentaatio ei aina ole kaikkein vahvinta, mutta perimmäinen viesti on piristävää vaihtelua olemassaoleville toisen maailmansodan historioille...

[Pablo García · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mas que un libro marxista sobre historia de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, un libro sobre historia de la Segunda Guerra Mundial con toques de trotskismo. Es un esfuerzo de sintesis tremendo donde se presenta el conflicto con sus precedentes y consecuencias de una forma global, q a veces peca de superflua. Tiene un buen enfoque, aunque no hay un analisis profundo desde la perspectiva de la lucha de clase. Creo q el titulo se le queda grande, pero no quita que sea una buena lectura con argumentos interesantes. 8,5/10

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is a comprehensive but concise marxist history of the Second World War. The author argues convincingly that the war was ultimately a continuation to the First World War - a struggle between the great powers to divide and re-divide the world. However, for many of those fighting the war, their aim was to destroy the horror of fascism. The author shows how the aspirations of the latter were undermined by the war aims of their rulers and the paralysing ideology of Stalinism. Chris Bambery is very good on the Tory appeasers, Anglo-American relations, the collapse of France, the phoney war, the Russian war, the roots of the Holocaust and the barbarous atomic bombing of Japan. Many people who should read this book will not do so for all the wrong reasons - and one good one - it has an £18.00 price tag. Ask your library to stock it.