Ideological Struggle Quotes
The president was surprised by the rapid spread and expansion of the anti-war movement at the time was convinced that the communists were organizing the effort. After all the investigations and histories, it was an extremely fast growing movement—perhaps the first of the digital political movements as e-mail was one of the tools used in the universities where e-mail was then coming into use.
The Second World War placed German Communists in a dilemma. The capitalistic democracies had been an enemy of communism, but the worst enemy was Fascism and there was nothing worse than German Fascism who victimized the German communists. Therefore, the democracies were not to be regarded as the enemy of German or world communism.
Objecting to the United States supporting the Kurdish Peshmerga forces attacking ISIS in Syria when they were affiliated with the PKK an organization that used terror tactics to gain independence for Kurds in Turkey.
Vladimir Lenin
The one area where communists were successful was in fighting for the Russian Homeland in WWII and the subsequent assault on Germany from the East. Most American military experts did not believe that the Russians could hold out. However with American weapons and supplies they proved most effective in causing German casualties. The Russians, however, had lost 22 million soldiers and civilians—a fearful cost. But the Communists proved they could lead a nation at war, and this success bought them 50 years of acceptance from the Russian people before their inability to manage a civilian society finally became clear and the Soviet Union collapsed.
The Ambassador of Bavaria represented an area where the politicians saw democrats and socialists as their great enemy, as did many of the leading right wing conservatives in all of Germany. They believed that a great war would give them a chance to crush democratic socialism in Europe. Bethmann warned that just the opposite might result, and indeed it did. He was correct. Many of the crowned heads of Europe were deposed and the democratic socialists emerged as a major political factor in the victorious democracies. Bethmann-Hollweg, however, was not a strong leader and could not prevent the Conservatives, the military leaders, and Kaiser Wilhelm from initiating WWI.
