Germany was partitioned by the Allies, first on a temporary basis into British, French, American, and Soviet zones of occupation, and later into West Germany (the British, French, and US zones - the Federal Republic of Germany, FRG) and East Germany (the Soviet zone, the not-very-democratic German Democratic Republic, or GDR). The Americans knew capitalism in Germany was deeply unpopular - and were determined to save it. The US official George Kennan argued that the US must "endeavor to rescue Western zones of Germany by walling them off against Eastern penetration and integrating them into an international pattern of Western Europe rather than a united Germany". This Western rejection of a united Germany was in violation of wartime treaties.

The military occupation of West Germany, under which its constitution was established, was seen, at least by the Americans, first and foremost as aimed at the restoration of West German capitalism and supportive state machinery - rather than at the restoration of German democracy. So on certain key occasions, the US occupiers openly advanced business interests by suppressing popular democracy.

Donald Sassoon deals with this in Chapter Six of One Hundred Years of Socialism. He explains that leftwing economic proposals were consistently hampered by the Americans. The SPD (Social Democrats) called for a planned economy and large-scale nationalization in 1946, and, partly because the Nazis had made rightwing views unpopular, the CDU (Christian Democrats) also called for nationalizations. But the support of the British government and the main two German political parties for nationalization was not enough: there was not yet any central government to implement it, and regional attempts by thwarted by the United States.

In the West German state of Hesse, the Constituent Assembly voted for a pro-nationalization constitution, with the support of both the CDU and the Communists. (Only the Liberals were against.) The US occupying forces tried to sabotage the provision by subjecting it to a separate referendum from the constitution as a whole. 76.8% of Hesse citizens voted in favour of the new constitution, and 71.9% voted in favour of the pro-nationalization article. So the United States, which loves democracy, then vetoed the article’s implementation.

Sassoon adds: "Similar left-leaning legislation establishing some form of industrial democracy in Hessen, Baden-Wurttemberg and Bremen was vetoed by the Americans either directly or through pressure on the French and the British. Communist newspapers were censored, protest strikes banned, and land reform plans drastically reduced." In the Ruhr, Britain wanted to introduce a form of industrial democracy, but again the Americans vetoed it.

The US was deeply worried by the trends towards social democracy in Germany. Noam Chomsky tells us: "The United States was determined to prevent expropriation of Nazi industrialists and firmly opposed to allowing worker-based organizations to exercise managerial authority." The US resolved that it would "veto the major union constitutions, forcefully terminate social experiments, vetoing state legislation, co-determination efforts, and so on. Major Nazi war criminals were recruited for US intelligence and anti-resistance activities." One example was that of Reinhard Gehlen - who had headed Nazi military intelligence on the Eastern front, and who now became head of the West German state espionage agency, under CIA supervision. "Union activists were purged and strikes were blocked by force." Nazis were rehabilitated and the treatment of workers was so appalling that even the American Federation of Labor complained about it.

Michael Parenti explains: "The Western capitalist allies did little to eradicate fascism... except for putting some of the top leaders on trial at Nuremburg." As early as 1947, German conservatives began to complain that Nuremburg prosectors were pro-Jewish and pro-Communist. "Under the protection of the US occupation authorities, the police, courts, military, security agencies, and bureaucracy remained largely staffed by those who had served the former fascist regimes or by their ideological recruits - as is true to this day. The perpetrators of the Holocaust... got away with it - in good part because those who were supposed to investigate these crimes were themselves complicit."

Note, for example, the West German businesses, and US businesses, and other businesses internationally who had given so much help to the Nazis and who had so eagerly agreed to employ slave labour. The Rockefellers’ Chase National Bank laundered money for the Nazis, and went unpunished. Corporations such as DuPont, Ford, General Motors and ITT eagerly assisted the Nazis. "After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the US government for war damagves inflicted on its German plants by Allied bombings." GM got $33 million. And Allied bombings were actually designed to hit German civilians in preference to damaging business property: "Cologne was almost levelled by allied bombing but its Ford plant, providing military equipment for the Nazi army, was untouched." The Allies put the interests of big business above those of the war effort - and above those of humanity.

Two of the very few victories for the Left: Article 15 of the West German Federal Constitution, which permits the socialization of both industry and natural resources; and the special rights granted to the trade unions in the coal and steel industries of the British occupation zone - which perhaps laid the ground for the co-determination laws passed by the West German Federal parliament much later on.

As described by Chomsky and Parenti, the West German pattern was pretty much repeated in Italy - where masses of fascists were released from jail in less than a year after liberation, with communists imprisoned instead. The US, which had backed Italian fascism until the late 30s, briefly succeeded in reestablishing the rule of the pro-fascist Italian royal family, and succeeded until the 1990s in keeping the corrupt Christian Democrats constantly in power. The State Department also negotiated amiably the neo-fascist leaders about what "alternatives" to consider if the communists won power.

In Japan, strikes were crushed, industrial democracy suppressed, and the Zaibatsu, or the monopolistic industrial-financial conglomerates at the heart of the Fascist economic machine, were retained. The economic system imposed, at the expense of the workers and the poor, was described as "totalitarian state capitalism" by a member of the US military occupation force, Sherwood Fine. Britain irritated the US by arguing in favour of Japanese workers’ rights.

by Richard Pond, 1998

Sources: Sassoon, "One Hundred Years of Socialism"; Parenti, "Blackshirts and Reds"; Chomsky, "Deterring Democracy".