|PROMETHEUS| wrote:Comrade,
Any idea as to where and how we may be able to find this analysis?
There's an article that summarizes the GDR investigations on German fascism in the September 2000 issue of Revolutionary Democracy (Vol. VI, No.2):
http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n2/index.htm
THE NAZIS AND MONOPOLY CAPITAL, by Allan Merson (in RD, pages 50-72).
It's very interesting reading, but I just noticed that unfortunately it isn't online. There's not even the introduction (by Vijay Singh). But I don't it would be a great crime if I quote the first part of the introduction I have here in the paper copy of the issue:
"Fifty-five years after the vanquishing of Nazism the monster of fascism continues to plague the world. Over decades neo-fascism has made its presence felt in Germany and Italy, gaining a new stimulus in the former nation after the annexation of the German Democratic Republic. Contemporary Austria and India have fascist parties as the major component of the ruling political coalitions. Fascism stares the democratic movement in the face once again. Any discussion of fascism has to re-assess the history of Nazism in Germany which was placed to power in one of the most economically advanced countries of the world and whose victory represented a major catastrophe for mankind. Allan Merson reveals the intimitate nexus between National Socialism and monopoly capital in the coming to power of Hitler's party as well as in the economic policies of the period 1933-45. This is a salutary analysis for the bulk of the western histories of Nazism shy from taking up this central question. The author leans heavily on the investigations conducted by the GDR historians - revealing the powerful traces of Marxism in the field of historical research which remained in this country after the restoration of capitalism in the 1950s - and which confirmed the 1933 Comintern definition of fascism as the open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital. Notwithstanding Allan Merson's adherence to the view of the now-dissolved CPGB on the 'peaceful transition to socialism' this study is an important window to a body of literature which is little known. We also draw attention to the usefull study by the same author on the resistance of the Communist Party of Germany to Nazism in the difficult years between 1933 and 1945 ('Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany', Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1985)."
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