Letter on the Berlin Wall and the war between capitalism and socialism

In response to the Nov. 11 editorial, “The wall & counterrevolution,” published on the 25th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall, longtime WW reader and supporter Phyllis Lucero of Colorado Springs, Colo., sent us the following letter:

The “only” reason the U.S. poured millions of Marshall Plan aid to West Germany (and similar aid to defeated Japan) was to keep them on the U.S. side and to get rid of socialism. If all the aid had gone to East Germany and not a penny to West Germany, then the West Germans would have gone to East Germany. The Soviet Union (USSR) wanted to help East Germany more but couldn’t because the USSR had been the country most devastated from the invasion from Hitler’s Germany and there were no other countries to help the USSR.

If Hitler had won in the USSR, he would have treated this occupied country terribly. The USSR did not mistreat the East Germans.

From the very beginning of the 1917 socialist revolution in Russia against the Tsarist and capitalist regime, the U.S. and all the leading capitalist countries of Europe ganged up on Russia to put down the workers’ revolution. You can find a description of this in the 1970 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana with a quote from the book, “Civil War, America’s Siberian Adventure,” by U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William Graves, who commanded the expedition; or in “Archangel, the American War with Russia,” by John Cudahy; in “The Cold War and its Origins,” by Dennis F. Fleming; or “The Ignorant Armies,” by E.M. Halliday, among others.

Only a relatively few troops from each of many capitalist countries were involved, and this was kept “top secret” as the capitalist rulers wanted to keep the people brainwashed and denied them the truth of their invasions on the side of the corrupt Tsarists.

After World War II, all the capitalist countries got together knowing they could not defeat workers’ socialism unless they they all ganged up on the socialist Soviet Union — hence, the formation of NATO. With the help of the Catholic Church, the U.S., the other wealthy countries and the “Quislings” from Russia, the Cold War enemies were successful in bringing down socialism in the Soviet Union in 1989-1991. Here are some quotes from articles in the corporate media that admit much of this:

From an Associated Press article published on April 27, 1997, the first line is “Eight years ago, the Iron Curtain fell with the pope’s help,” with the reference being to Pope John Paul II.

Another article printed in the Gazette-Telegraph on Sept. 20, 1996, with the headline, “Pope, CIA teamed up to oust Communists, book says.” The book is “His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of our Time,” by former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein and Italian journalist Marco Politi. “The authors say John Paul met with then-CIA Director William Casey, who has since died, and former CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters 15 times in an effort to bring democracy [meaning capitalist counterrevolution — PL] to Poland.” It added that “the CIA had secretly given the Solidarity trade union movement more than $50 million to support its work in challenging the Polish government.”

At the beginning of World War II, in 1939 and 1940, the U.S. and all its capitalist allies had allowed Hitler to march across and conquer countries to give it access to the Soviet Union (USSR). They did this thinking that Hitler and the USSR would weaken each other and they could step in as the victors. Many of the military elite wanted to finish off the USSR in 1945, but others were war weary and thought the U.S. population would not accept any more direct war-mongering. Hence this hostility to the USSR took the form of the Cold War. It is hard for social­ism to advance when all the capitalist countries gang up against it, as they did with NATO.

All these wars were fought for the rich to expand markets, gain access to resources and to exploit cheap labor.

I was raised as a right-wing Mormon in redneck Kansas. I opened my mind when I was 20 and by the time I was 24 I was a full-fledged committed socialist. I’ve been a contributor to and supporter of Workers World for more than 34 years.