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TIL that the United States was selling raw materials to Nazi Germany in the middle of the battle of kursk in 1943 (oblongmedia.net)

submitted 1 day ago by Tolc@lemmy.world to c/til@lemmy.world

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

“US corporations were conducting covert business operations with the Nazis: such as Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks and Firestone Tires, which had subsidiaries in neutral nations like Sweden and Switzerland…”

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[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 21 points 1 day ago

It is not for your country that you fight when you go to war. It’s for your governors, your rulers, your capitalistic masters.

Neither your country, nor humanity, neither you nor your class — the workers — gain anything by war. It is only the big financiers and capitalists who profit by it.

War is bad for you. It is bad for the workers. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain by it. They don’t even get any glory from it, for that goes to the big generals and field marshals.

What do you get in war? You get lousy, you get shot, gassed, maimed, or killed. That is all the workers of any country get out of war.

War is bad for your country, bad for humanity: it spells slaughter and destruction. Everything that war destroys — bridges and harbors, cities and ships, fields and factories — all must be built up again. That means that the people are taxed, directly and indirectly, to build it up. For in the last analysis everything comes from the pockets of the people. So war is bad for them materially, not to speak of the brutalizing effect war has upon mankind in general. And don’t forget that 999 out of every 1,000 who are killed, blinded, or maimed in war are of the laboring class, sons of workers and farmers.

In modern war there is no victor, for the winning side loses almost as much as the defeated one. Sometimes even more, like France in the late struggle: France is poorer to-day than Germany. The workers of both countries are taxed to starvation to make good the losses sustained in the war. Labor’s wages and standards of living are much lower now in the European countries that participated in the World War than they were before the great catastrophe.

‘But the United States got rich through the war,’ you object.

You mean that a handful of men gained millions, and that the big Capitalists made huge profits. Surely they did: the great financiers by lending Europe money at a high rate of interest and by supplying war material and munitions. But where do you come in?

from Now and After by Alexander Berkman, Chapter 6: War? Available to read for free here.

This was written between WW1 and 2, but the idea remains the same.