Sam Darcy - An Eye-Witness at the Wreckers Trial

Mark the dayNovember 26, 1936.

You will want to remember this infamous date when you tell your grandchildren about the events of the present time. It was the day on which the Japanese government, dominated by a militarist-fascist clique, and the German government, dominated by the barbarous Nazi thugs, signed the now notorious "Anti-Comintern Pact".

The signing of the pact was in truth only the registering of a fact which was evident for some years previously. Cooperation between Nazi Germany and the fascist militarist Japan against the forces of progress, democracy and socialism began immediately upon Hitler's coming to power.

In the balance of world politics, the rise of Hitler to power in Germany added weight to that side which stood for the rule of the worst robber and oppressive sections of finance capital in every part of the world. Japan, strengthened by this, openly and with great vigor began her efforts to dominate the Pacific. Her armies seized the Manchurian areas of China and set up her own puppet government. She invaded the northern provinces of China proper; she made efforts to penetrate into the Yangtze Valley region with her military forces; she began to speak openly of invading the territory of the People's Republic of Mongolia and of the Soviet Union. The years following recorded an almost uninterrupted series of invasions by small provocative Japanese military bands of the U.S.S.R., the Western Maritime and Amur provinces and Outer Mongolia (Mongolian People's Republic).

With each new assault upon a peace-loving people, Japan looked with glee at Europe to see her aggressive war actions applauded, aided and abetted by the Nazi German government. When they were yet within the League of Nations, Japan formed a close alliance with Hitlerite Germany and fascist Italy. If not in writing, at least in fact, they concluded an agreement for mutual support in each of their assaults upon a world that wanted peace, to seize new territory and new spoils.

Japan supported Germany in the tremendous rearmament program that she undertook, in her rearming the Rhine, to fulfill her tremendous militarization program within Germany, for attack upon France, Czechoslovakia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. She supported Germany's demand for colonial expansion, and since all the main areas or colonies that might be taken are already gobbled up by one or another power, Japan supported the demand of Germany that some of the other capitalist governments relinquish their colonies and hand them over to Germany. She supported Hitler's aggression in the Baltic and in the Balkans.

To give point to her threats, Nazi Germany laid keels for a vast new navy, increased the length of her army service, made the German people tighten their belts and do without butter, fats, flour and other necessities of life, so that the militarists could have cannon, poison gas and shrapnel. Fascist Italy received out of this bargain a blank authorization from the other two robbers to make her now well-known assault upon the defenseless Ethiopian people, to seize their territory and turn it into a slave colony to Italian capitalism.

Thus, in the period from 1932, when Hitler first began to take power, until 1936, when the notorious ''Anti-Comintern Pact" was concluded, there was formed the unholy trinity of the barbarous rulers of Japan, Germany and Italy for war upon the worlda war to turn back the clock of progress, to destroy democracy, and to enslave the peoples to the most reactionary finance capital exploitersand their annointed Fuehrer, Duce and Mikado.

It is certain that the wording of the pact was not a frank statement of its aims. It pretended only to cooperate against Communists. But in the chancelleries of Europe, in the State Department of Washington, in the diplomatic offices of every government of the world, it was clear that Germany did not need the help of Japan to fight the Communist forces within its own country. And Japan and Italy were in a similar position. Without any formal pact, the police of all of the capitalist countries have long cooperated against all working class leaders who tried to forge an international movement of solidarity to defend the interests of the producers. For this, no special pact is necessary.

But it was commonly recognized that the officially published pact was, in fact, a cover for the conclusion of a military alliance against civilization and progress.

The preparations for military aggressions by these three fascist countries and especially the two chief ones, Germany and Japan, have been accompanied by years of sinister intrigue against every other country in the world. Probably not 1 per cent of their activities has been uncovered. But now and then the entire world, and particularly the naive and easy-going bourgeois liberals, are startled by the flare-up of some isolated exploding point which throws light on the dark imperialist intrigues.

Isn't that what occurred when the people of the world awoke one morning to discover that Generals Franco and Mola (two fascist generals tolerated by a democratic government) used their posts to fulfill a secret agreement with Germany and Italy to overthrow democracy in Spain and establish a fascist regime? The people of Spain are now paying for not being alert to this fascist intrigue in their country.

Less dramatic, but no less significant and ever more frequently, there crop up more individual manifestations of this intrigue. In February, 1933, Great Britain was startled to hear that one of its leading, supposedly trusted officers of the Seaforth Highlanders, Norman Baillie-Stewart, gathered and sold information to a representative of German fascism by the name of Otto Waldermar Oberst. The trial was held secretlybut not so secret as to hide the fact that Nazi Germany had so saturated England with its spying organization and intrigues that the British government was forced to strike back openly.

Numerous similar occurrences took place in the United States, but, characteristically, instead of Germany being the chief protagonist, Japan took the role. There was, for example, the case of a high officer of the American navy, Fransworth, who worked with the Japanese military and naval forces, as had Baillie-Stewart with Germany. That the United States government was forced to make an open stand against Japan in the Farnsworth case signified what is common knowledge to almost every resident of the West Coast of the United Statesthat Japan is spending a good-sized fortune every year for spying and provocative activities in the entire Pacific, and particularly on the West Coast of the United States.

Within the past few years, numerous trials of such Nazi espionage and wrecking agents took place in France, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania and other countries. There were numerous exposures of the activities of the notorious Gestapo agents, especially in the Berthold Jacob kidnapping case in Switzerland and in the Barcelona disclosure of the archives of the Nazi Bureau in Spain.

The activities of Hess, Hitler's deputy "Fuehrer", have already been considerably described in the book The Brown Network. This book names the majority of the 2,450 paid Nazi Gestapo espionage and wrecking agents abroad. It also establishes that Germany maintains an auxiliary apparatus abroad of over 20,000 spies. Through it "foreign policy office" headed by Rosenberg in Munich and the phoney "World League Against Communism" they maintain with finances and personnel for leadership many "innocent" spy organizations in foreign countries"Fontists" in Switzerland, "Rexists" in Belgium, "Croix de Feu" in France, "Silver Shirts" as well as German immigrant societies in the United States, etc.which are also used for their insidious work.

In Czechoslovakia Nazi agents kidnapped fifteen people (not one of whom has ever been heard from since) in 1933-35. In 1933, the Rumanian Premier Duca was murdered by the "Iron Guard", a Nazi subsidiary, which is on orders from Berlin. The Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss was murdered by the Nazis. Barthou of France and the King of Jugoslavia were assassinated by the Nazi subsidiary organization "Ustashi" in September, 1934. The murders, espionage and wrecking by the world network of Nazis and their agents and allies in the Soviet Union will be dealt with more extensively in the subsequent chapters.