COMMUNIST TECHNIQUE
By C. M. WOODHOUSE EVEN before the so-called "rape of Czechoslovakia " it was often and publicly argued that the technique of expansion used by the U.S.S.R. was a repetition of Germany's technique under Hitler. Since that event it has become a commonplace. Journalists and politicians by the score have not only repeated it exhaustively, but have tired of it and begun to take it for granted. They have lately been concerned rather to emphasise their own sagacity by pointing out how long ago they first recognised the fact. All this is normal and natural; what is extraordinary about it, however, is that it is not a fact at all but a delusion. It would be truer to say that the crucial probleni- of our relations with the U.S.S.R. is pre- cisely the opposite. The trouble with the Soviet technique is just that it is not the same as Hitler's ; if it were, we should have less doubt what to do about it.
To compare accurately what Hitler used to do with what Stalin now does three stages must be distinguished—the means, the imme- diate end and the ultimate end. In Hitler's case the means were violence and armed force; the immediate end was the domination of the world from Berlin ;t.he ultimate end, if the dreams of a mad- man deserve such a name, was the creation of a new world-order. In Stalin's case it may be conceded that the second stage is probably identical, with the substitution of Moscow for Berlin. But in the third stage, despite superficial similarities, there is an important difference of principle ; and this entails a total dissimilarity at the first stage between the technique of the U.S.S.R. and the late tech- nique of Germany. The difference of principle is the characteristic difference of Communism from Fascism—that where the latter is essentially racial and national the former is essentially oecumenical and supra-national. The danger of the Gerthan Fascist was that he regarded himself, by virtue of his race, as superior in every respect that mattered to anyone else. The danger of the Soviet Communist is that he does not ; he regards ail races as equal. Hitler's world-order was intended to be ,a hierarchy controlled and dominated by the supermen of Germany. The Soviet world-order, from which racial discrimination is excluded both in theory and in practice, is. intended to be a federation of equal communities, all imbued throughout with the same doctrine. Whereas the former was to be held together by the bonds of physical force, the latter is to be held together by the cement of common ideas. Where the Gauleiter had to be a German; the Commissar does not have to be a Russian. That is why the term " Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," which is intended eventually to cover the world, contains no reference to any particular country.
It follows that, although the immediate end of the U.S.S.R. may be patently identical with the second stage in the progress of Germany, there must be differences in the means to be used at the first stage. The desire to absorb countries outside their national boundaries can be attributed equally to Germany and to the U.S.S.R., but the meaning of the absorption is different. Briefly, the differentia of the U.S.S.R.'s approach to countries still outside the Soviet Union is this—that the aim of Communism is not so much to conquer as to convert. Like Islam, Communism uses physical force only as a means, justified by but not essential to a religious end ; like the Inquisition, the police-state is only the safe- guard, not the foundation, of the creed ; and in both respects Com- munism differs from Fascism. The ultimate sanction of Fascism was physical strength ; that of Communism is moral strength. (The word " moral " is, of course, used here and throughout in the sense which distinguishes it from " physical," not that which opposes it to " immoral " or even " amoral " ; as a matter of fact, either of the latter two words would fit equally well, if not better, in this context.)
The significance of the difference can be seen in the use of the fifth column. The technique of Hitler was to use a fifth column in a foreign country to prepare the way for the entry of the German Army, accompanied by German officials, to take charge of the administration. Quisling and Seyss-Inquart and Neditch were mere tools ; but Dimitrov and Tito and Gottwald are responsible agents. For the technique of the U.S.S.R. is to train a fifth column to do the whole job from beginning to end, including the usurpation of power by itself, without the need for the Red Army to intervene at all. However bitterly we may hate the tyrannies of Eastern Europe, we cannot deny this hard fact ; there has not yet been a single case since the war, in any country, of the use of the Red Army to impose and maintain a totalitarian regime by force. Each succes- sive Communist revolution, however powerfully backed by moral and financial support from Moscow, has derived its physical strength solely from indigenous resources.
There is no need to multiply instances to reinforce this point ; the most recent case will suffice, until it is replaced by another more recent still. The events of 1948 in Czechoslovakia have been freely compared with the events there of 1938-39. One difference is far more important than any resemblance. In 1938-39 the
German Army progressively occupied the whole country; 1948 the Red Army never crossed the frontier. The force which Henlein could only derive from Germany was derived by Gottwald from the resources of Czechoslovak Communism alone. • To this it may be objected that the Red Army was on the frontier ready to invade if President Benes had refused the Communist ultimatum. This may be true, and it is an important point ; but it is not an objec- tion. For if Benes had refused, then one of two things must have happened ; either the Red Army must have crossed the frontier, or the Communists must (for the time being) have given way. In other words, the U.S.S.R. would have been forced to choose between adopting Hitler's technique in place of its own and letting the revolution fail. The success of the revolution, as it happened, lay precisely in the fact that the Soviet Government was not compelled to follow Hitler's method. The victory was won from within, not from without ; by " moral," not by physical force. This analysis does not whitewash the Communist menace ; on the contrary, it magnifies it into something not equal to Hitler's but far more terrible.
It is easy to see why Benes gave way ; he remembered Munich. It must have seemed more than probable to him that if he challenged
the Red Army to invade Czechoslovakia, the Western Powers would' let him down exactly as they had in 1938. No one can blame him but no one can be sure he was right. If he had refused the Com- munists' demands, the Communists might have accepted his refusal and given way themselves ; then a victory would have been gained for western democracy, and the final struggle with Communism would have been postponed, though certainly not averted. If the Communists had not accepted his refusal, however, then an in- vasion by the Red Army would at least have created a situation which the Western Powers have learned how to fight. Possibly we should not yet have gone to war, though the mood of the U.S.A. renders that possibility far from certain. But what is quite certain is that the concession of yet another moral victory to Communism has left western democracy weaker still in a field where we have not yet begun to find a means of counter-attack. The war has so far been fought in the moral, not the physical, sphere, and we have been proved as good as bankrupt of moral weapons ; we have only the atomic bomb, which will create far more Communists than it ever kills. The melancholy conclusion of this paradoxical logic is that war is either inevitable or, if not inevitable, then desirable as the only hope. All this comes from the perversity of thinking of Stalin in terms of Hitler. But it is too unreasonable a conclusion to be accepted as final if there can be found any other conceivable resolution of the dilemma.
The dilemma can now at least be clearly seen behind the con- fusion induced by the identification of the two different techniques. The Soviet Union is conquering Europe by a series of internal • revolutions, not by armed invasion. The Western Powers, in default of creative ideas out of which to generate counter-revolu- tions, can see no way to break the power of the U.S.S.R. except by war. But they cannot bring themselves to commit aggressive war ; therefore the initiative cannot pass to them without a WSW The Soviet technique will never give the Western Powers a casus belli of the kind they have learned to cope with until the head of a threatened State has the courage, which President Benes understandably lacked, to challenge the Communists to resort to open force. Even then the casus belli may not arise ; the indigenous Communists may prove strong enough to win by themselves—a consummation of " self-determination " with which by current standards it would be " unwarrantable to interfere." But if the indigenous Communists are not strong enough, then either they must give way or the Red Army (or one of its satellites) must invade.
The chance which Benes missed lies in the logical certainty that either of the last two alternatives would, by comparison, be a gain for the western cause. The former alternative would be a moral victory, which would only need to be repeated whenever occasion arose to ensure the ultimate defeat of Communism ; and as soon as it failed to work, whether at the first attempt or the fiftieth, the latter alternative would at least entail the translation of moral war- fare, which we are at present losing, into physical warfare, which we know how to win. In this limited sense it would be a gain for the West to force Stalin to deviate into the technique of Hider ; but that by itself is not the crux or the hope of the argument. Its crux and its hope lie in this—that almost everybody in the world is aware of this fact ; and " almost everybody " includes Stalin and the Soviet Government, and excludes only those who delude them- selves into the belief that the Soviet technique already is that of Hitler.
If, then, the choice is once forced upon the U.S.S.R. the chances are that the hard-headed realists in Moscow will choose retreat rather than war, consoling themselves every time with the reflec- tion that retreat is only temporary. For it may be presumed that they would prefer not to let the struggle pass from the field in which, on present form, they are winning, to the field in which, on present form, they are more likely to lose. This presumption is the only possible guide to constructive action in the west. Con- structive action means the reassertion of our moral strength, whether we call it Christianity or European civilisation or Western democracy, without the sacrifice of our physical strength. How to set about this tremendous task is a subject far beyond the scope of a brief discussion, the purpose of which is merely to point out how not to set about it. For if Stalin's technique were indeed identical with Hitler's, then there would be no way whatsoever to deal with him except the way we dealt with Hitler. That, if we choose to believe it, is defeatism ; but it is also the exact opposite of the truth.
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