349 After the Second World War, the Cold War brought these four capitalist powers together. Under the leadership of the United States they formed the core of the Western camp, which stood against its socialist counterpart, led by the Soviet Union and China. The disintegration of Socialism and the Soviet Union around 1990 seemed to pave the way for an ultra-liberal capitalist world under the leadership of the United States, the sole remaining superpower at a time when Russia underwent a dramatic crisis and China was just emerging. In a fine book, Jacques Sapir (2008) shows how this highly likely development was completely aborted and resulted in a tendency toward a multipolar world, associated to a return of the nation and nationalities state. This multipolar world would be made up of several very large powers, Brazil, China, Europe, India, Russia and the United States of America. Each large power would have its spheres of influence, and alliances could come into existence, as is already the case for the United States and Europe, for example. The presently ongoing – 2008/09 – crisis of the capitalist system might reinforce these tendencies towards a multipolar world. However, since the onset of the crisis 2008 a new development seems to have set in or is gaining momentum, an ever more intense cooperation between Germany and Russia to wit. There is even talk of an axis Berlin-Moscow, sometimes of an axis Paris-Berlin-Moscow. Maybe Eurasia is slowly emerging. It has been suggested elsewhere in this essay that such a state of affairs would mean a return to the situation, as it existed before the First World War. In a way, a highly unstable Orwellian situation, associated to capitalist power struggles, would come into being, which would leave little scope for effective socio-economic and environmental policies. The only way out, it seems to us, is provided by Keynes’s Social Liberalism, which has been set out in an elaborated way in the chapter on the natural world order above. In this context, it is likely that an ever stronger Eurasia could accelerate the movement towards a social liberal world; indeed, within the framework of Eurasia a reorganised Russian Federation could form am extremely stable bridge of peace between Europe and Asia. Moreover, within the framework of Eurasia Germany and Russia could conclude a peace agreement putting a definitive end to the Second World War. It is difficult to say how the final situation that will come to exist between Germany, Poland and Russia will look like. All one can say at the moment is that the actually existing frontiers are a Diktat of Stalin. It is by no means sure that the powers in question, above all the people living in the countries in question, consider these frontiers as settled once and for all. 350 And inflation profiteering certainly occurred in Germany and Russia, following up the great inflations there in 1922-23 and 1991-92 respectively. In this context, it is always important to mention that a very few discredit, as a rule, very large numbers of honest and, frequently, helpless people, even entire nations, also great nations. These remarks on monstrous activities in the political, economic and financial domain lead to a specific problem of Modernity, that is, ethics and alienation. Some remarks on this problem will be made in a subsequent subsection (ethics and alienation – the Apocalyptic Age 1914- 1945 continued) set out below. To avoid any misunderstandings, it has to be emphasised that Europe must, of course, be immensely grateful to the Western allies, specifically to the United States, for having liberated the West of Europe from Nazi occupation; the gigantic British contribution to winning the war against Nazi-Germany has already been duly mentioned. But it is clear to everybody that the fate of National Socialist Germany has been sealed on the Eastern front through the stupendous performance of the Red Army. In this context, General Dwight D. Eisenhower ought to be mentioned, certainly one of the most humane military leaders of the Second World War, and, subsequently, an outstanding President of the United States. Significantly, it was President Eisenhower, who, at the very end of his second mandate at the very beginning of 1961, warned about the concentration of power at the military-industrial complex (Thomas Palley website). However, in spite of the heavily alienated, that is, totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union, based upon ruthless power Stalin, as was Germany under Hitler, it is unlikely that the Soviet armies would have crossed permanently the borderlines fixed at Teheran and Yalta, had Operation Overlord failed or not taken place. This would have meant war against the West, eventually including remnants of the German army, perhaps even nuclear war. Truman’s nuclear diplomacy was there, and, as is well known, Klaus Fuchs prevented its being put into practice by transmitting to Soviet Russia the secret of the atomic bomb. Never the Soviet leadership would have taken the risk to move into the direction of the Atlantic, given the fact that the Soviet Union was exhausted after having lost around 30 million people and with her Western territories in ruins, while the economy of the United States was entirely intact and the US possessed an entirely new deadly weapon. However, the onslaught of the Red Army in 1944 raised fears among the Western Allies. Given this, the Invasion of Normandy took place in June 6, 1944, just in the last possible 351 moment for the Western Armies to be able to meet the Red Army at the centre of Germany, broadly at the agreed frontiers. In this context two seemingly mysterious facts have to be mentioned. There is, first, a rather strange letter of Prime Minister Winston Churchill to his Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, dated December 3, 1944: “I put this down for record. Of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction. She has been the sole international force linking the hideously sundered nations and ourselves. What does it matter whether she has been able to give us the commercial advantages we desire or has given too many to the Germans, to keep herself alive? She has been a democratic State, standing for freedom in self-defence among her mountains, and in thought, in spirit of race, largely on our side. 2. I was astonished at [Uncle Joe’s] savageness against her, and, much though I respect that great and good man, I was entirely uninfluenced by his attitude. He called them “swine”, and he does not use that sort of language without meaning it. I am sure we ought to stand by Switzerland, and we ought to explain to [Uncle Joe] why we do so. The moment for sending such a message should be carefully chosen” (Churchill 1985/1948-54, volume VI, p. 616). The background to this letter is the fact that, in autumn 1944, the Red Army Intelligence found large quantities of Swiss made ammunition and weapons in Poland and Hungary. Given this, Stalin probably wrote a harsh letter to Churchill strongly condemning Switzerland and asking for punishment, and the above letter of Churchill’s to Eden refers to this letter. Now, it is highly unlikely that Switzerland should have delivered weapons and ammunition to Nazi Germany in the final stages of the War just for commercial reasons, as Churchill suggests in his letter. This could have had serious consequencs after the War: in fact, Switzerland might have been condemned and heavily sanctioned. There are indeed rumours saying that Stalin brought up the matter at Yalta and had proposed to occupy Switzerland in the same way as Germany and Austria. The occupation zones proposed by Stalin are probably a bad joke: The heavily industrialised North-East of Switzerland (Basel, Zurich, Winterthur) should have become Soviet occupation zone, the agricultural Mittelland region around Berne American zone; French speaking Western Switzerland should quite naturally have gone to France, and the British should have got the Alps, to enable them to go skiing as much as they like! In any case, Churchill arranged the matter. Indeed, he did not want any sanctions taken against Switzerland, because, as is very likely, he had himself encouraged Switzerland to supply weapons and ammunition to Nazi Germany in the second half of 1944 in order to slow down the advance of the Red Army. It is evident that he could not speak about this matter, even in a letter to his Foreign Minister! 352 [Churchill’s endavour to slow down the rapid advance of the Soviet armies at the end of the War is in line with his having favoured an allied invasion in the Balkans, giving the allied armies the possibility to advance in the direction of Hungary and Poland, thus cutting off the westward way for the Red Army.] In any case, not the slightest reproach may be addressed to Switzerland in this matter, because she was simply dragged into a shameful game. It has been extensively argued in this essay who, in fact, are the greatest war criminals as far as the Second World War is concerned, bringing about unbearable suffering for the German, Jewish and Polish people and, last but not least, the peoples of the Soviet Union, and, in fact, to the European peoples in general. However, Churchill’s Swiss action eventually sheds additional light on the sense of the German Ardennen Offensive: Subsequent to the slowdown of the advance of the Red Army in automn 1944, the Germans wanted to prevent the Americans from being the first in Berlin at the expense of the Soviets.