World War II
Articles about World War II, resistance movements, opposition to the war and its protagonists.
The Schlurfs – youth against Nazism
A short account of the Schlurfs, working class Austrian youth who rejected the values of Nazism
Schlurfs, no, not little blue gnomes but young people in Austria who rejected what the Nazis had to “offer” – the whole package of militarism, the work ethic, authoritarianism and race hatred.
Churchill, the Cenotaph and May Day 2000 - Practical History
This response to the graffitiing of official monuments in London on May Day 2000 looks at the origins of war memorials in the social conflicts at the end of World War One and at the myth of the Second World War as an anti-fascist crusade. See also A good day out in London? for further reflections on May Day 2000.
"The destruction of representational images is the destruction of a hierarchy that is no longer recognised... The solidity of the images was the expression of their permanence. They seem to have existed for ever, upright and immovable; never before had it been possible to approach them with hostile intent.
Revolutionary defeatists in Greece in World War II - Aghis Stinas
Selections from the memoirs of the Greek socialist Aghis Stinas, focusing on class struggle, internationalism and revolutionary defeatism during the Second World War.
Taken from the Antagonism website.
World War II: a people's war? - Howard Zinn
Historian Howard Zinn critically analyses the conception that World War II was really a "people's war" against fascism, as opposed to yet another inter-imperialist conflict with nothing to offer working people.
Anti-semitism and National Socialism - Moishe Postone
No functionalist explanation of the Holocaust and no scapegoat theory of anti-Semitism can even begin to explain why, in the last years of the war, when the German forces were being crushed by the Red Army, a significant proportion of vehicles was deflected from logistical support and used to transport Jews to the gas chambers. The specificity of the Holocaust requires a much more determinate mediation in order even to approach its understanding.
Anti-Semitism and National Socialism
By Moishe Postone
Wolf, Enno (1903 -1939/1940?)
A short biography of Enno Wolf, German anarchist who perished in the Nazi concentration camps
Enno Wolf was on born on 30th August 1903. Little is known about his life. He was a member of the Kassel group of the anarchosyndicalist Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD).
Hannibal, Hermann 1898-1963
A short biography of Hermann Hannibal, blacksmith and member of the FAUD, imprisoned by the Nazis in Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Hermann Hannibal was born on 8 October 1898 in Kassel. Little is known about his private life. He worked as a blacksmith. Between 1919 and 1925 he had 10 criminal convictions, eight of them for theft. He had two children: Franz, born on 4th January 1930, and Ilse, also born in the 1930s.
Berner, Rudolf, 1907-1977
A short biography of Swedish anarchist Rudolf Berner, active in Spain and in underground work in Nazi Germany.
Berner, Rudolf (Rube) AKA Frank Tireur
Born on 14 July 1907 in Skövde (West Sweden), Rudolf Berner grew up in a small farmer and working-class family of many children. He attended school and learned painting and crafts.
1945: US responses to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Selected quotations from US officials about the dropping of nuclear weapons on Japan which demonstrate that the bombing was not to end the war, but was to issue a warning to its Cold War rival.
"...the greatest thing in history."
- Harry S. Truman
President of the United States during the Atomic Bombing
"It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse."
- General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold
Commanding General of the U.S. Army
Air Forces Under President Truman
The Ninety-third Division - Black US soldiers' struggles in World War II - Nelson Peery
Extracts from Nelson Peery's Black Fire - The Making Of A Black Revolutionary. Peery describes here the racism and segregation encountered by black soldiers and their militancy in opposing it during WWII.
