Jozef Gebbels - Communism with the Mask Off and Bolshevism in Theory and Practice

There is no longer any political question at issue here. This thing cannot be judged or estimated by political rules or principles. It is Iniquity under a political mask. It is not something to be brought before the bar of world history but rather something that has to be dealt with by the judicial administration of each country.

In the following pages there are some passing references which call for a brief introductory comment. In pre-War days Russia was often spoken of as the granary of Europe. Dr. Goebbels says that if it were under proper administration it could still supply grain for the whole of Europe. Yet he states that, under the Bolshevic regime, millions are dying of hunger year after year in this vast granary. Is this a fact? And if it be a fact, what is the explanation? He gives the explanation clearly enough. If we admit the fact we shall not find it easy to refute his reasoning.

In referring to his authorities for the statement of fact he was rather cursory, as was necessary within the specified time allowed for his speech. He merely states that the truth of this awful spectacle of what may be called perennial famine can be proved from reliable documentary sources, among which are even the official reports of the Soviet authorities themselves. But the most striking testimony of all are the pronouncements of such public personalities as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna. As Dr. Goebbels has merely referred to their statements I have thought it well to repeat these statements here in their original form, so that the mind of the reader may be fully satisfied as to these sources of information which Dr. Goebbels uses in his indictment of the Bolshevic regime.

On July 26, 1934 the Times published the following report of a debate in the House of Lords:

The Archbishop of Canterbury said that he was sometimes surprised to notice that some of those commonly associated with Lord Ponsonby, while most eager to defend workers and peasants in this country who were alleged to be exploited by capitalism, seemed extraordinarily averse to consider the case of peasants and workers in Russia who were exploited by a powerful capitalist bureaucracy. They seemed always to resent any attempt to lift the veil carefully placed over foreign observers by the Soviet Government and to realize and face the appalling misery which in vast areas of Russia lay behind that veil.

After a long and full study of an immense mass of documents and evidence from all quarters and the examination in many cases of sufferers themselves, the impression left on his mind was that the condition of things last year in Russia, and particularly in parts of Southern Russia, was appalling. The number who died of hunger was nearer 6,000,000 than 3,000,000. In one town 40,000 out of a population of 240,000 died; in another 40 percent died out of 40,000 inhabitants. There were places where people were living on cats and dogs and where horseflesh was a luxury. There were places where the advent of mice in spring was regarded as a providential source of food.

He had photographs, the authenticity of which it was impossible to doubt, of corpses lying in the streets and other bodies simply waiting on the pavements for death, while the people of the town were passing by as if there was almost nothing particular to notice. He hoped that some of these appalling events belonged to the past, but there could not but be apprehensions about the future.

The Earl of Denbigh said that he had heard a great deal lately in the way of particulars of the appalling conditions in the Ukraine, where the largest portion of the Catholic population of Russia was found. They had heard of the treatment of the bishops and clergy in the Ukraine, and he had seen photographs of the appalling state of affairs in the streets and in the country generally. It must be remembered that all this had been brought about by the deliberate policy of the bloodthirsty and callous system which had been practised in Russia for the purpose of forcing the population into the doctrines of Communism.

On December 1617, 1933 a meeting was held in the Archbishops Palace at Vienna, presided over by His Eminence, the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna Dr. Theodor Innitzer. This meeting was attended by representatives of all the international and interdenominational relief associations organised for the help of the starving people of Russia. The conference issued the unanimous statement that millions of innocent people in the Soviet Union were in the grip of famine and that the relatively good harvest of 1933 would be able to bring only transitory alleviation. The same committee issued a further proclamation on July 12, 1934 under the presidency of Cardinal Innitzer. This proclamation stated: There is no doubt that in the Soviet Union a new famine wave of unpredictable extent is about to break in. Millions and millions are again threatened with famine. Again countless people must succumb to the distress unless a brotherly helping hand is reached to them from outside.

To prove that the famine spoken of in the above pronouncements is of a recurrent nature and is not to be explained by the drought of 1933, one has only to cite the still more urgent appeal issued from the same quarter on February 5, 1935, signed by Cardinal Innitzer and, among others, by the Jewish Chief Rabbi of Vienna. The text of this appeal ran thus:

The undersigned Relief Organisations, which include the various churches and denominations in their work for the starving people of the Soviet Union, deem it their duty to make the following public announcement:

It is our firm conviction, which cannot be shaken by any reports to the contrary, that large sections of the Russian people are facing a new climax in the terrible famine disaster. An immense mass of direct information and the indubitable testimony of eyewitnesses during the last two years establish the fact that the greatest distress exists among the population in certain areas of the Soviet Union and among certain classes of the Russian people. Today even the Russian official announcements acknowledge that large numbers of people in the afflicted areas are entirely without provisions and are irrevocably given over to famine. According to the report of an American eyewitness, the harvest has been collected with unprecedented severity.

And only thus was it possible to abolish bread cards in the cities.

The harvest produce is distributed first of all in favour of the army, the industrial population and other privileged groups in the cities; whereas the lives of the people in the agricultural districts, and especially those of the individual farmers, are once again placed in grave danger. A decree published by the Soviet Government on the 26th December 1934 proves how serious is the distress.

In the beginning of August, this year, one of the most authoritative English newspapers published a leading article entitled Two Dictatorships, in which a naive and misdirected attempt was made to place before the readers of the paper certain alleged similarities between Russian Bolshevism and German National Socialism. This article gave rise to an extraordinary amount of heated discussion in international centres, which was only another proof of the fact that an astonishing misconception exists among the most prominent West European circles as to the danger which communism presents to the life of the individual and of the nation. Such people still cling to their opinion in the face of the terrible and devastating experiences of the past eighteen years in Russia.