“Résistance antinazie ouvrière et internationaliste: De Nantes à Brest, les trotskistes dans la guerre (1939–1945)” by Robert Hirsch, Henri Le Dem and François Preneau, published by Syllepse in September 2023.
Many books have been published about World War II. Recently there has been a renewed focus on the role of the anti-fascist resistance in occupied territories. This resistance is sometimes lumped together, while there were major political differences within the resistance. The book “Résistance antinazie ouvrière et internationaliste: De Nantes à Brest, les trotskistes dans la guerre (1939–1945)” by Robert Hirsch, Henri Le Dem and François Preneau, published by Syllepse in France, brings a specific political outlook within that resistance: a consistently revolutionary and internationalist streak.
The resistance of the Trotskyist group in Brittany targeted the working class and deliberately sought support among ordinary German soldiers who were clandestinely anti-fascist. By the end of the war, there was effectively an operation with a core of German soldiers who collaborated on the illegal paper “Arbeiter und Soldat” and the four issues of “Arbeiter im westen,” which were distributed at 150 to 200 copies each in Brest.
From July 1943 to December 1944, some 20 issues of the paper ‘Front ouvrier’ were distributed in the factories and workshops of Brest, Nantes and the region. ’Front ouvrier’ discussed the problems of the workers and linked them to the need for collective action against the bosses, including the French capitalists who worked willingly for the Germans. It was warned that anti-fascist resistance should not simply lead to a transfer of power to other capitalists who would continue the same exploitation in a “democratic” manner. “We will not allow ourselves to be imposed by chiefs in the service of the bourgeoisie of London or Washington, who are fighting for ‘liberation’ by imprisoning thousands of North Africans, militant workers and anti-colonial activists in their concentration camps. We resist on our own account,” ’Front Ouvrier’ noted.
In 1942, there were raids to deport French workers to get them into forced labor in Germany. The war machine needed this forced labour. Opposition to this was strong. In a leaflet, the Trotskyists in Brest wrote: “Every day the Hitler supporters proclaim victory in their newspapers, but after three months of ‘triumph,’ they must now resort to forced labour. (…) Everywhere where it is possible, we must organize collective resistance, in the factories, in the workshops, in the stations. We must make sure that the Nazis everywhere know that the working masses are in solidarity with the designated workers. The Nazis must know that the French workers in Germany will do nothing against their Soviet brothers but everything to sabotage Hitler’s war machine. We will not regain our freedom by subjugation but by struggle.” It was pointed out that the conscious workers know they have only one enemy: international capitalism.
The requisitions led to strikes, and when eventually a group of workers was put on a train, they remained militant. With raised fists they chanted the Internationale as they were led away at a very slow pace. They couldn’t go any faster because there were repeated alarms, activated by sympathetic railroad workers. The train took three hours to cover 16 kilometers. La Vérité, the illegal newspaper of the French Trotskyists, noted that there were also protests in Germany. “German women protested by putting themselves on the rails,” it said. In the summer of 1943, the clandestine newspaper “Front Ouvrier” stated that only 12% of the requisitioned workers from Nantes had effectively left that year. The young workers rebelled and went into hiding.
There were strikes, such as on Nov. 11, 1943, commemorating the Armistice of 1918, in which thousands of workers stopped their work. A leaflet from “Front Ouvrier” in L’Arsenal d’Indret announcing that the director was receiving 1,000 francs per deported worker caused such a stir that the director, invariably called “admiral slave trader,” was transferred.
‘Front Ouvrier’ always started from a class distinction, including in the consequences of the acts of war. While the rich were able to shelter safely, the workers were victims of bombings. Allied bombings also wreaked havoc in Nantes and its surroundings. ’Front Ouvrier’ pointed out that the civilian population was not cared for. “On the pretext of destroying military targets or to drive out the Germans, 3,000 inhabitants of Nantes were massacred and the city was razed to the ground. Churchill and Roosevelt are not waging war to free the French workers from misery and slavery. (…) They wage war to subdue the sharks of German finance capital because they threatened the financial hegemony of London and Washington over Europe and the world. (…) They wage war to know who will be the ruler of the world: Anglo-Saxon capitalism or German capitalism. In that war between capital, the workers are not looked after. (…) The workers want bread, peace and freedom. They can only count on themselves to enforce this through a hard struggle against the capitalists who have only misery and massacres to offer.” The leaflet pointed to the Italian example where a general strike brushed aside Mussolini’s regime and called for working class unity, “from the American miners to the Greek workers, from the Portuguese workers to the British steel workers.” Demands were made such as concrete shelters, canteens for workers who had lost their homes and double wages. “The money for this will be sought in war profits,” ‘Front Ouvrier’ noted.
There was invariably a call for bread, peace and freedom. In the slogans raised there was emphasis on the need for workers’ control of resources and production, as a stepping stone to liberation by the working class itself. This often departed from very direct demands such as a higher contribution for the purchase of meals in the canteens, control of the canteen so that the quality of the food would improve or even that the entire supplies would go to the workers. When the canteen at Batignolles received 680 liters of wine while the 600 users received only a quarter of a liter each, “Front Ouvrier” asked where the remaining 530 liters went… “It is obviously not the kitchen staff who are responsible for this, but the gerant,” the leaflet noted. The extensive quotes from the leaflets in the book illustrate the class character of Trotskyist resistance. They also indicate the great influence of what was a small group of revolutionary activists.
The resistance was stronger with an internationalist approach. This may seem obvious, but the nationalist tendencies (including the Stalinists) lumped all Germans into the same Nazi ranks. However, “Front Ouvrier” noted that the resistance benefited from a passive or even an increasingly active anti-fascist attitude on the part of ordinary German soldiers. “Do not consider them ‘dirty Krauts,’ we are fighting against the same common oppressor: Hitler,” he said. At its peak, there were 27 German soldiers involved in the network of French Trotskyists in Brittany, and about a dozen of them regularly participated in meetings. Leaflets to the German soldiers called for them to help young French workers in their resistance to deportations or addressed the plight of the French workers. Deadly repression by the Nazi machine put an end to this operation: several soldiers were executed, and also the German-Jewish militant Martin Monath, who was part of the leadership of the Fourth International and actively participated in the leaflets to the German soldiers, was arrested and murdered by the Gestapo in 1944.
This book makes clear that the Nazis were up against a strong workers’ resistance in the occupied territories. At home they had razed the labour movement to the ground, but in France, Belgium, Holland and elsewhere they clashed with resistance, including with strikes. Revolutionary militants played an active role in them. In 1941 tens of thousands of workers in Belgium went on strike, a year later there was a small miners’ strike in Charleroi, led by Trotskyists who had built a strong position in the great miners’ strike of 1932 and in the general strike of 1936.
A detailed description of the workers’ resistance of French Trotskyists offers a picture not only of how it was organized but also of its political approach. This book tells the story of World War II in a way you will find almost nowhere else, from the point of view of the working class, workers’ struggles and the political approach of revolutionary Marxists. It highlights the crucial role of concrete class struggle in revolutionary resistance to war.
