Andre Marty Tells- Socialist· Labor
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000'786 ANDRE" MARTY TELLS- WHO in France helped Hitler gain positions, munitions, gold? WHERE did Hitler get the aluminum, stee! and copper for his war machine? WHO sabotaged airplane production in France? WHO led the first attack onlhe people of France? HOW can the people of france save their country? SOCIALIST· LABOR 3c. COLLECTlO~ CO TEl TS ''\THO BETRAYED FRANCE? by Al1d"e MaTty 3 VVE ACCUSE! Manifesto of the Communist Party of Fmnce 19 PUBLlSHED BY WORKERS LlBRARY PUBLlSHERS, INC, P. O. BOX 148, STATIO! D, EW YORK, N. Y. JUNE, 1940 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. ~209 WHO BETRAYED FRANCE? , BY ANDRE MARTY Parliamentary Deputy of Paris THE awful and terrible war is extending in depth and in- tensity. Its hideous onslaught has already destroyed thou sands of human lives. Immense terror-stricken throngs are sweeping along in flight as during the hours of ancient bar barism. "Total" war is bringing the "crosses of war" even to the cradles. The French people did not and do not want this war. They were driven into it against their will. And the very people who drove them to slaughter compel the French soldiers to fight with odds of two to one against them. Why? Because army divisions and air squadrons are mount ing guard over the Pyrenees, the third frontier. For the menace of war from Italy implies the possible entry into action of airplanes and the 150,000 Italian troops at present stationed in Spain with their enormous supplies of war mate rials. With Franco's army added! And to think that it would have been possible to have had in Madrid a People's Govern ment based on, and directly controlled by, the Spanish people, the natural friends of the French people! Even if that had 3 not saved peace, the French people would today have pos sessed absolute security on their Pyrenean frontiers. Who could doubt for a single moment that this People's Government at Madrid would have placed the enormous mineral and industrial riches of Spain at the disposal of a similar government of the French people? Who could doubt that the French people would also have had at this tragic moment the inestimable support of the great and enthusiastic Spanish people who proved themselves capable of supreme sacrifice for the ideal of progress, liberty and peace? Why is this not so? Because at the time when the people of Spain were advancing in a mighty people's movement towards liberty and well being and were destroying the foun dations of all social, political and intellectual reaction, there were French Ministers who smashed this movement and cast them into slavery. These men are Blum, Daladier and Bonnet. Consciously, ddiberately, persistently, they placed the interests of the French people behind those of Anglo-French finance. Yes, the soldiers of France are now fighting with odds of two to one against them. Again why? Because there is a whole army in Syria, including Australian and Indian di visions. What are they doing there? Is it to defend France or to serve the interests of the British oil kings and other sharks of their type? Yes, the French soldiers are inferior in numbers and sup plies. But again, why? Because the French Government-and especially Daladier, Bonnet and Blum-delivered to the German Government the Czech Maginot Line in Sudetenland, a line that was capable of holding forty divisions in case of war! Because these very people-and this does not excuse p~ople like Benes 4 -yielded up the huge industrial and military centers of Czechoslovakia. Because in March, 1939, Daladier, Bonnet and Blum, at the instructions of their boss, Chamberlain, gratuitously handed over to Germany in Czechoslovakia 1,582 airplanes, 501 anti-aircraft guns, 2,175 pieces of artillery, 785 trench mortars, 468 tanks, 43,876 machine guns, 114,000 revolvers, 1,090,000 rifles, more than 3,000,000 shells, more than 1,000, 000,000 cartridges, and along with this a tremendous quan tity of bridge-building materials, sound detectors, search lights and motorized vehicles. Soon afterwards they handed over to him gold belonging to the Czech Government and deposited in London and Paris. Why did people like Daladier, Bonnet and Blum display this attitude of continually and systematically arming rival im perialists and quite obviously urging the latter, with increasing energy, on to war? To understand this one has only to reread in the official Yellow Book of the French Government the note written on March 19, 1939, by Robert Coulondre, French Ambassador to Berlin, in an official report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. (The document is entitled: Annexe 10, No. 80. Re produced, among other things, in a special issue of ['Europe Nouvelle, dated December 23, 1939; p. 1434.) "I would like to try ••. to discover in what direction the pressure of German dynamics can he exercised, to examine if we can still consider these dynamics as directed exclusively towards the East, and to draw some practical conclusions for our conduct." A precious admission: Daladier, Bonnet, Blum, Reynaud and others were persistently preoccupied with the desire to 5 turn Germany eastwards, against the Union of Soviet So cialist Rep4blics. These gentlemen deliberately sacrificed the interests of the people of France, the security and even the independence of the country for the benefit of the financial, reactionary French-British oligarchy. On the other hand, why were huge supplies of armaments delivered to the Poland of the Becks with such speed by Blum and Daladier? Why were thousands of millions of francs advanced to these corrupt Polish militarists, thieves and liars, whom the French taxpayer still continues to feed with a golden spoon? Why was this reactionary Polish state-the oppressor and plunderer of peoples-endlessly in receipt of these "financial injections" which the Polish gentry immedi ately transformed into bestial orgies, while the French un employed and Polish immigrants were pitilessly driven to starvation by the stroke of a pen of a Pomaret* in order to amass th~se treasures? The very earth of Poland answers: All fortifications of im portance were built facing the U.S.S.R.! But that did not prevent the official press, led by Leon Blum's Populaire, from brazenly attributing the disaster that befell the reactionary Polish state to the entry of the Red Army into Western Ukraine and Western Byelo-Russia, where it brought peace and liberty to 13,000,000 inhabitants. Naturally, they kept silent about the role of Colonel Beck and others who had sold their own people! And that is not all! The smallest child understands that a modern army without airplanes is doomed to destruction, and * Charles Pomaret, Minister of Labor in the French Government in 1938. 6 that there are no fighting planes without that light metal, aluminum, extracted from bauxite, which France possesses in huge quantities and of which Germany has infinitely small supplies. Yet, during these last years this precious mineral has been sold to Germany at a pace that grew in proportion to the increasing ferocity of the blows dealt by Daladier and Blum to the People's Fronts in France and Spain. German boats even came to load at Toulon, before the eyes of the French Navy. And Monsieur Daladier was Minister of Na tional "Defense" and War! All this proves that the foreign policy of the capitalist government of France, at an ever-growing pace, since 1936, has been strengthening reactionary Germany economically, politically, industrially and, subsequently, militarily, in a con tinued eff{)rt to turn its government against the Soviet Union! And all this evidently at the expense of the peace al'l.d security of France, but to the advantage of Franco-British high finance. Those mainly responsible for the present war and for the misfortunes that have befallen the peoples are Daladier, Bonnet and Blum. They have been branded by the open in sult of the stunning resignation of General Faucher. ** * Then came the cataclysm, resulting from this policy of sys tematic sabotage of peace by the governments of Paris and London. At first there were eight months of "phony warfare." It is evident today that contrary to their campaign of bluff about defense of the country, Daladier, Blum and Bonnet were preoccupied with quite other thoughts. 7 What thoughts? Let us take, for example, the Finnish affair, which proved the marvelous foresight of the Soviet Government and also the extraordinary technical capacity of the Red Army. At that time, in France, the whole of the press (headed by the Socialist press), like the official radio broadcasts, proclaimed the enemy to be not Germany but the U.S.S.R.; Daladier announced in the Chamber that he had sent to Finland 179 airplanes, 472 pieces of artillery, 795,000 shells, 5,100 mao chine guns and 200,000 hand grenades-so much less for the French Army-and that he had prepared a force of 100,000 men, happily saved by the peace initiative of the Soviet Government. But there is worse to come. Modern death-dealing machines demand above all copper and iron. But copper is arriving, and does not cease arriving, in Germany via Italy, from one of the richest mines in the world, the Rio Tinto mines in Spain, the capital of which-almost entirely British-is quoted at three times its 1939 value. And the "British grand fleet" lets it all pass. As to iron, "to prevent Germany from getting it from Norway," the French Socialist Minister of Blockade, Mon net, the trusted man of Leon Blum, cynically violated Nor wegian neutrality, dragging that country into war, and making it necessary to send French soldiers there.