The European ruling class is in a terminal state. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, the Swiss psychiatrist who dedicated herself to treating terminal patients, identified five stages of grief that we go through when we lose someone. The first stage of grief described by Kübler-Ross is denial. Faced with the loss of its prestige, influence, and economic power, and above all with the rise of China and the other BRICS countries, the European ruling class reacts exactly as predicted in this first stage of grief: with denial.
Very angry, confused and astonished by the profound transformations of the world, the European ruling class vehemently denies its own inevitable decline, its growing impotence and the definitive end of the colonial period, its glorious past.
This class, which in 2022 reacted euphorically to Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, certain of a quick victory in which economic sanctions combined with NATO’s military might would lead to Russia’s defeat and the fall of Vladimir Putin, opening the door to the exploitation of Russia’s natural resources and its colonization by the West, now desperately denies that Ukraine and NATO’s entire arsenal have already been defeated, violently punishing those voices in Europe who dare to state the obvious, that this war is already lost. The mainstream European press, spokesperson for this dying class, without realizing its own ridiculousness, persists in spreading the most absurd lies about the Russian “threat,” about the “imminent collapse” of the Russian economy and its inevitable future, always future, defeat in Ukraine. Denying reality so emphatically does not change reality, it only makes the enormous and lamentable effort of denial even more pathetic. In its terminal state, the European ruling class has lost all shame and credibility, but it is still capable of causing a great deal of harm. To better combat it, then, it is important to remember a little of its history and denounce its most dangerous lies.
The European ruling class and the myth of denazification
The myth of denazification at the end of World War II is a fundamental pillar in the construction of the supposed “moral superiority” of the European ruling class, which is so important in legitimizing its control. This class presents itself as a proud defender of democracy and human rights, as a historical enemy of Nazism and all fascist movements.
The truth that this class tenaciously seeks to hide is that the reconstruction of European capitalism that allowed its own rise to power was carried out with the support and participation of Nazis and Nazi collaborators, especially in Germany.
At the end of World War II, Germany was divided into distinct occupation zones by the Allied armies—the US, the UK, France, and the USSR. However, as historian Mary Fulbrook wrote in her book A History of Germany 1918–2014, there was a huge difference in the treatment of Nazis and their collaborators between the Soviet occupation zone and the other zones:
“In the Soviet zone, given the primarily structural and socioeconomic interpretation of Nazism which prevailed, major efforts were devoted to the land reform which served to abolish the Junker class, the resources of certain Nazi industrialists were expropriated and there were reforms of industry and finance which had not merely reparations as their aim, The Soviets were concerned also to oust individual Nazis from important positions. They carried out purges not only in the political and administrative spheres, but also in the teaching profession and the judiciary.”
“Quite apart from their attempts to gain some sort of compensation for the enormous material and human losses imposed on them by German aggression, the Soviets implemented certain economic policies designed so to transform the socioeconomic structure of their zone that could never again, in the Soviet view, be the material basis for a Nazi capitalist militarism. They sought to eradicate the Junker class and the large capitalists in a stroke.”
Regarding the occupation by Western powers, Mary Fulbrook states:
“It is notable that, in contrast to the Soviet zone, there were no radical transformations in economic structure in the Western zones of occupation.”
“Denazification lurched along in curious ways in the Western zones. It was not quite clear whether the aim was to punish or to rehabilitate former Nazis; and whether the intention was to cleanse the political, administrative and economic spheres of their presence, or to cleanse former Nazis of the taint of Nazism in order to reinstate them in their former areas of expertise. In contrast to the Soviet zone, which effected a major restructuring of society, along with a replacement of the old elites by new personnel, as well as permitting individual rehabilitation, the Western zones tended towards rehabilitation rather than transformation.”
Also, according to Mary Fulbrook:
“Nevertheless, it can be argued that in more subtle, less immediately obvious ways, there was in fact a major socioeconomic reorientation taking place in the Western zones of Germany. In the immediate postwar period, many people thought the way was open for a socialist transformation of Germany. The Allies’ decision to suppress indigenous anti-fascist groups and support moderate and conservative political parties was paralleled in the sphere of economic policy. Indigenous demand, for example, for the socialization of mines, were peremptorily dealt with by the Americans. Socialization measures proposed by the Land governments of Hesse and North-Rhine-Westphalia were suppressed by the Americans and – under American pressure – the British respectively. Subtle pressures were exerted by the Americans to split communist and socialist trade unions, to isolate the former and moderate the latter.”
Finally:
“Former Nazis, both the committed and the conformists, were able to fit easily into Adenauer’s Germany. Although in the immediate postwar period about 53,000 civil servants had been dismissed for membership in the NSDAP, only 1,000 were excluded permanently from any future employment. Under the 1951 Reinstatement Act many were reemployed in the civil service and obtained full pension credits for their service in the Third Reich. By the early 1950s between 40 and 80 per cent of officials were former NSDAP members. Similarly, only a very few members of the judiciary were permanently disqualified. Former Nazis were even able to gain prominent positions in public life. Adenauer was quite prepared to include former Nazis in his cabinet, such as former SS-member Oberlaender as Minister for Refugees. Perhaps the most controversial of Adenauer’s appointments was that of Hans Globke, the author of the official commentary of the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, as Adenauer’s chief aide in his Chancellery. “
Regarding the courts responsible for prosecuting Nazis, Mary Fulbrook comments:
“The tribunals soon came to be likened to laundries. One entered wearing a brown shirt and left with a clean starched white shirt instead. Denazification had finally become, not the cleansing of German economy, administration and society of Nazis, but rather the cleansing and rehabilitation of individuals.”
David de Jong, a Dutch journalist who has investigated some particular cases of Nazi industrialists and bankers in Germany, published in 2022 the book Nazi Billionaires – The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties, where he informs:
“By 1970, Friedrich Flick, August von Finck, Herbert Quandt and Rudolf-August Oetker made up West Germany’s top four wealthiest businessmen in descending order of fortune. All four were former members of the Nazi Party; one of them had been a volunteer Waffen-SS officer; they had all become billionaires.”
In his book, David de Jong devotes special attention to the use of forced labor of prisoners of war in factories in Germany and occupied countries. Mentioning Friedrich Flick, for example, the author writes:
“By 1943, those performing forced labor at Flick’s coal mines increasingly consisted of women and children deemed fit for work in the open-pit mines. Many were Russian teenagers from thirteen to fifteen. By the time Flick’s sixty-first birthday came around, his conglomerate had 120,000 to 140,000 workers. About half of them were forced or enslaved.”
And also:
“IG Farben, Siemens, Daimler-Benz, BMW, Krupp, and various companies controlled by Günther Quandt and Friedrich Flick were some of the largest private-industry users of forced and salve labor.”
“Slave labor collaborations between SS-run concentration camps and German companies included Auschwitz with I.G. Farben, Dachau with BMW, Sachsenhausen with Daimler-Benz, Ravensbrück with Siemens, and Neuengamme with Günther’s AFA, Porsche’s Volkswagen, and Dr. Oetker.”
Ferdinand Porsche, the famous designer and owner of the car factory that bears his name and also of Volkswagen, was a dedicated collaborator with the Nazi regime and a producer of weapons for the German army. Porsche used slave labor not only in Germany, but also at the Volkswagen factory in occupied France. According to de Jong, Porsche was acquitted by a court in Dijon, France, in 1948. And, according to de Jong, “not even mentioned in the trial” was the use of “thousands of French civilians and soldiers as forced laborers and slaves in the Volkswagen complex.”
In 1951, at the height of the Adenauer era, the Stille Hilfe (Silent Help) Association was founded in Germany. The German organization Zukunft braucht Erinnerung (The Future Needs Memory) (1) states on its website that Stille Hilfe is “an organization that was primarily dedicated to supporting Nazi murderers, but which, unfortunately, only became known to the public very late and in a rudimentary form. What was frightening about this aid organization, apart from its incomprehensible intentions, was the fact that certain people were involved in it or supported it. At least until 2011, the organization was still very active.”
Its founder, Princess Helene Elisabeth von Isenburg, devoted herself mainly to providing legal assistance to Nazi war criminals sentenced to death who were imprisoned in Landsberg Prison, under Allied control. She became known as the “Mother of the Landsbergers.” This association also provided financial assistance to Nazi criminals and their families.
It is also important to mention the Blue Division, a group formed by Spanish Francoist volunteers who joined the Nazi army in the fight against the Soviet Union. In 2015, several members of the Die Linke party in Germany questioned the German government (2) about the payment of around €100,000 per year in pensions that were still being made to these former Nazi combatants and their families by the German government, which the Die Linke party considered scandalous. (3)
The fact that an association with the objectives of Stille Hilfe could have been created in Germany in 1953 and that pensions to former Nazi combatants from a foreign country were still being paid in 2015 by the German government are two more striking pieces of evidence against the myth of denazification. Similar events occurred throughout Western Europe, where Nazis and their collaborators played an important role not only in the reconstruction of European capitalism but also in the repression of popular movements demanding revolutionary changes in social organization, such as the socialization of mines mentioned by historian Mary Fulbrook. It was this popular pressure that led to the creation of the welfare state in countries such as Germany, France, and England. It is important to remember that capitalism as an economic system emerged from the war completely discredited and had to be reimposed throughout Europe by the United States with the collaboration of the former European elites who had supported fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. With the end of World War II, the fascists, Nazis, and their collaborators had another function of the utmost importance: the fight against the USSR.
The many faces of Russophobia
Russophobia in both Europe and the US have a long history, dating back to the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Cold War period accentuated Russophobia, which became firmly established even in popular culture, where Soviets were always portrayed as caricatured villains in a wide variety of films and books. Paradoxically, it was after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 that Russophobia took on new dimensions. The years of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency in Russia from 1991 to 1999 were a period of great euphoria in the West regarding its former adversary. The USSR had been defeated, and Russia’s immense natural resources were now available for privatization. According to IMF estimates, capital flight from Russia in the 1990s amounted to about $150 billion. The country was plunged into chaos and economic depression, and in the eyes of the West, Russia was very close to becoming a new Western colony. Upon succeeding Yeltsin in 1999, Vladimir Putin managed to reverse this process of political and economic decline, preventing the neo colonization of Russia, which the West has never forgiven. This is the origin of the demonization of Vladimir Putin, an important ingredient fueling current Russophobia. With the special military mission in Ukraine, Putin has once again thwarted the interests of the West. Through a proxy war in Ukraine, Western powers, with their economic blockades and NATO’s military might, hoped to destroy the Russian economy, overthrow Putin’s government, and put someone like Yeltsin in power in Russia.
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