How British Communists Flirted with a Nazi Win

How the CPGB embraced revolutionary defeatism in about turn farce

If you were a British communist in late summer 1939, you might think that getting straight on the correct attitude towards Nazi aggression would not be too taxing. After all, this is Hitler, we’re talking about, and you’re knowledgeable and committed. You read the Daily Worker, you hear impassioned speeches on the importance of fighting fascism, even while opposing Chamberlain and the Men of Munich, and you take seriously Harry Pollitt’s warning that the “appetite of the fascist tiger grows with every fresh kill”.

Joseph Stalin, however, was about to introduce a generous dose of cognitive dissonance into your life. With the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939, communists across the world were instructed to abandon their anti-fascist rhetoric and instead focus on opposing the imperialists in their own countries. The fight against Nazism, once a moral imperative, was now secondary to the shifting demands of Soviet foreign policy.

The resulting ideological about turn was stark, as evidenced by the political somersault performed by the Daily Worker, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in the space of just a few weeks. Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, with Britain declaring war on Germany two days later. On 4 September, the Daily Worker offered its full-throated support for the war.

The war is here. It is a war that CAN and MUST be won. And the people of Britain can win it. Fascism and its friends everywhere have brought this war upon us. Till now Hitler has had an easy time of it. His friends in other countries—and above all in Britain—have “opened the door” for him. Now it is the business of the enemies of Fascism to take a grip of things in Britain and fight this war to a victory over Fascism on every front.

[...]

For we are down to brass tacks. Hitler is making war upon us. You hear the sirens wailing their warning of fascist attack. There is not a minute to be lost. WE have got to get on here and now with the job of winning this war for the people against Fascism. (Daily Worker, Sept 4, 1939, p. 4)

Daily Worker, September 4, 1939

Shortly afterwards, the CPGB published a pamphlet written by Harry Pollitt that made the party’s line on the war absolutely clear:

To stand aside from this conflict, to contribute only revolutionary-sounding phrases while the fascist beasts ride roughshod over Europe, would be a betrayal of everything our forebears have fought to achieve in the course of long years of struggle against capitalism. (How to Win the War, p. 4).

Three weeks later, the party's line on the war was still crystal clear—only now, it was the exact opposite. The war was no longer about resisting the fascist tiger, but rather was to be seen as a conflict between imperial powers for the control of territory. There was no relevant distinction between fascist and democratic states, meaning that it was the duty of communist parties to focus on bringing down their own governments—even if this meant military defeat. Indeed, the suggestion coming from Moscow was that it would not be entirely regrettable if Germany were to emerge victorious in the war against Britain.

This new line was communicated to rank-and-file communists in Britain via a new CPGB “manifesto” published in the Daily Worker on October 7 (p. 2). The excerpts that follow will give you a sense of it:

• The continuance of this war is not in the interests of the people of Britain, France or Germany. End this war before it has brought death and destruction upon millions and millions of people, before the flower of our youth is slaughtered.

• The truth about this war must be told. The war is not a war for democracy against Fascism. It is not a war for the liberties of small nations. It is not a war for the defence of peace against aggression.

• The British and French ruling class are seeking to use the anti-Fascist sentiments of the people for their own imperialist aims.

• The struggle of the British people against the Chamberlains and Churchills is the best help to the struggle of the Germans against Hitler.

• Only the Socialist State, the Soviet Union, in this war crisis has taken action on behalf of the people and of peace.

• The Soviet Union is leading the fight for peace.

Yes, you’ve got that right, the Soviet Union, the same Soviet Union that only a few weeks previously signed a secret deal with Nazi Germany to carve up Eastern Europe, the same Soviet Union that marched uninvited into Poland, is now the great hope for world peace.

Daily Worker, 7 October 1939

If you can get past the stupidity on display here, there is an interesting story to be told about how the CPGB got itself into this mess. The trouble really started with the news that Dave Springhall, the party’s representative in Moscow, was on his way back to the UK with instructions from the Comintern for a new line on the war.

This did not initially go down well with the bulk of the CPGB leadership. At a Central Committee meeting on 24 September, held before Springhall returned to provide details of the new line, Harry Pollitt, the party’s General Secretary, argued strongly against a change of direction, insisting that fascism represented an existential threat to the British working-class.

I know what I want, but I am paralysed. I feel like a caged lion, waiting for Springhall to come back. We are all like a lot of rabbits in front of a snake, wondering whether we are on the right or wrong line. My own point is that we are on the right line. (Cited in About Turn, Eds. Francis King & George Matthews, pp. 24-5)

Unfortunately, one of the rabbits was not convinced the snake’s arrival was entirely a bad thing. Rajani Palme Dutt, in many ways the archvillain of this story, saw an opportunity to flaunt his Stalinist credentials. He hedged: the CPGB definitely wasn't just going to be told what to do, of course not, but…well, the situation was different now, Stalin had put Hitler back in his box, there was obvious wrongdoing on both sides, and in an imperialist war, only a people's government could defend the working-class against fascism—and anyway, no need to jump the gun, best to wait until the details of the new line had been fleshed out. (See About Turn, p. 25)

Only William Rust, among the CPGB leadership, sympathised with Dutt’s wait-and-see approach. Almost all the others were not for turning. Maurice Cornforth, a Cambridge-educated philosopher, and at the time the CPGB’s Eastern Counties district organiser, was particularly scathing, arguing in favour of the military defeat of Germany, and asking what was the point of the Central Committee if its role were merely to rubber stamp decisions handed down from Moscow.

A week later, things looked very different. Springhall had arrived back in London on the evening of the 24th of September. The next morning he provided the Central Committee with details of the new line, which turned out to be every bit as unhinged as Pollitt had feared.

The war wasn’t in any sense a just war, it was “an out-and-out imperialist war, a war which the working class in no countries can give any support to”. Poland was a semi-fascist, imperialist country (despite the absence of colonies), and it would be seen as “not a terrific misfortune” if it were to disappear from the map. There was no essential difference between fascist states and democratic countries, and as far as the Soviet Union was concerned, there was little to choose between Hitler and Chamberlain. There was no consideration given to the question of what system of government might be brought to Britain were it to lose the war. (See About Turn, pp. 53-61)

Pollitt knew he couldn’t sell this volte-face to the wider party membership, but the principle of democratic centralism meant the CPGB was bound to adopt the new line. Consequently, he handed over his general secretary’s responsibilities to a new secretariat made up of Dutt, Rust and Springhall.

At a fractious Central Committee Meeting held on October 2-3, Dutt demanded absolute fealty to the new line. It wasn’t enough simply to vote for it, communists had a duty to accept the line, to understand it and to apply it.

We want no half-hearted supporters, no vacillators, no faint-hearts. Every responsible position in the Party must be occupied by a determined fighter for the line. Right through the Party and through every organisation of the Party. We are going into a fight. We cannot go into it with the burden of a wrong line—in this first few weeks that is already a heavy burden for us, with the confusion, the weakness, the half-hearted kind of sentiments we have had to have the past week. (About Turn, p. 85)

He went on to remind the Central Committee that party members don’t have the luxury of anything as bourgeois as their own private thoughts:

Comrades, a Communist has no private opinions. That is, he has no sanctum of private opinions that he is going to hold apart from the collective thinking and the collective decisions of our movement. (About Turn, p. 285)

Nothing worrying about that sentiment, nothing at all.

If you read the transcript of the October 2-3 meeting, it is clear that the tone of Dutt’s address upset a lot of people. However, only three Central Committee members dissented from its substance.

William Gallacher, the party’s only sitting MP, was furious, vowing never to work with any of the interim secretariat again:

I have never in all my experience of this Central Committee, listened to a more unscrupulous and opportunist speech than has been made by Comrade Dutt, and I have never had in all my experience in the Party such evidence of mean despicable disloyalty to comrades as has been evidenced by these three. (About Turn, pp. 100-01)

J. R. Campbell, in effect, asked the obvious question—what the hell did they think was going to happen if Germany did in fact win the war?

I want to insist that it is not only French and British imperialism which is menaced by this situation, but the French and British peoples which are menaced by this situation. I cannot accept the thesis that the difference between fascism and democracy has lost its former significance. I think the difference between fascism and democracy retains its significance to the full, when armed fascism is in the field and is pushing forward relentlessly to acquire new territory and destroy democracy. Fascism today is facing the British and French peoples with nothing more or less than the complete destruction of their democratic institutions.

This is not a matter of rectifying a frontier. Not a matter of stealing a different colony here and there. Not a matter of reducing the power of the British Navy, but a matter of smashing the British and French peoples so that they cannot rise again, and smashing their democratic institutions in the process. And in that circumstance, when fascism is threatening our people in such a way, we cannot have a line in which we proclaim that we are prepared to retreat before extraordinary fascist aggression. That it is a matter of no consideration for us to defend ourselves against extraordinary fascist aggression until in some way or other… we have got a revolutionary workers government in this country. (About Turn, pp. 107-08)

Harry Pollitt, remarking that he didn’t envy “comrades who can so lightly in the space of a week, and sometimes in the space of a day, go from one political conviction to another”, echoed Campbell in questioning the wisdom of revolutionary defeatism in the context of an emboldened Nazi Germany, adding that what he really wanted to do was “smash the fascist bastards once and for all.” (See About Turn, pp. 201-03)

But that was it, that was the extent of the opposition to the new line. Other members of the Central Committee might have had doubts about specific elements of the new policy, but they quickly fell into line. The political somersaults on display over the two days of the meeting made the Central Committee look like a clown circus. Take Maurice Cornforth, for example, the philosopher-revolutionary, who had previously been scathing in his rejection of the changed line. In just a week, he somehow transformed himself into a walking, talking cautionary tale for those people who suppose that a philosophical education might inoculate a person against ideological capture. That’s not an exaggeration:

Perhaps it sounds rather silly in some ways to have oneself in the position where when the Soviet Union does something one is willing constantly at first, while thinking it over, to follow what the Soviet Union is doing, but I must say that I personally have got that sort of faith in the Soviet Union, to be willing to do that, because I believe that if one loses anything of that faith in the Soviet Union one is done for as a Communist and Socialist. …[T]he fact of the matter is that a socialist state, I believe, in that position, can do no wrong, and is doing no wrong, and this is what we have to stick to, so these are the reasons why personally I commenced to turn political somersaults, because that is what it means. (About Turn, pp. 130-31)

Well, he was certainly right about one thing—it does sound rather silly. Actually, it sounds absolutely bonkers.

Unsurprisingly, Cornforth was far from being the only Central Committee member willing to prostrate himself before the mighty Soviet Union. Bill Cowe, for example, quite openly admitted that he had often blindly followed the line taken by the Communist International (Comintern), the “unrivalled political authority and guide for the Communist Parties of the world and Communist Party members”. He did allow himself the possibility that on this occasion the International had got it wrong, but luckily it turned out in the end that he had got it wrong. (See About Turn, p. 275)

Peter Kerrigan reported a similar struggle, with a similarly happy outcome. What helped him get to the right view? Yes, you’ve guessed it, the Soviet Union:

…I have always justified the Soviet Union in every action that the Soviet Union has taken. That does not mean to say that I have expected all the changes that have taken place or anticipated them. As a matter of fact I was flabbergasted, quite frankly, when the Soviet Union marched into Poland. (About Turn, p. 244)

Alas, Kerrigan was not able to put his flabbergastedness to good use:

I must accept the thesis because I am convinced that the Soviet Union under no circumstances will ever do anything that is against the interests not only of the Soviet people but of the people of the whole world, and that is the test… (About Turn, p. 255)

By this point, I’m sure you’ve guessed how this is going to turn out. The Central Committee voted 21 to 3 for the new line—only Pollitt, Campbell and Gallacher voted against. It had taken just one week for the CPGB to reverse its previous stance.

You might be tempted to think that Pollitt, Campbell and Gallacher came out of all this looking pretty good. Well, not so much, actually. Shortly afterwards, at a closed session, Pollitt persuaded the Central Committee to switch Gallacher’s vote to the majority line, on the grounds that he had been led astray by his personal antipathy towards Dutt at the previous meeting, and was actually in favour of the new thesis.

By late-November, both Pollitt and Campbell had, in typical Soviet style, recanted their opposition to the new policy. They owned up to helping the enemies of the working-class by persisting with a wrong position, pleading guilty to “an impermissible infraction” of party discipline.

However, if it was Dutt’s hope that the Communist Party would colonise the minds of its supporters, he perhaps didn’t quite get his way. On 30 April 1956, Pollitt told ITV that “In 1939, I thought it an anti-fascist war. I thought it then and I think it now”. (See About Turn, p. 35, footnote 61)

He was in weighty company: heaping irony upon irony, in February 1946, Stalin made the same claim:

[A]s distinct from the first world war, the second world war from the very outset assumed the nature of an anti-fascist war, a war of liberation, one of the tasks of which was to re-establish democratic liberties. (Cited in About Turn, p. 33)

Oh, what a tangled web they wove.

Further Reading

About Turn (Francis King & George Matthews (eds.), Lawrence and Wishart, 1990) contains verbatim transcripts of the Central Committee meetings of the CPGB between 25 September and 3 October, 1939.