the riot makers by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

11. Disintegrating French Military Morale Through Sloganeering.

Communist sloganeering contributed materially to the demoralization of the French Army before the Fall of France in 1940. We cannot help but point to the striking parallel between the disintegration of the Czarist armies in 1917 and the French Army in 1940. In both cases, Leninist sloganeering played a major contributing role.

At the 1928 Comintern congress, Communists decided to go all out for “antimilitarist” work, infiltrating, undermining and disorganizing the armed forces of their enemies. A handbook, Revolutionarer Anti-Militarismus, was written, outlining the theoretical background, strategy and tactics of this revolutionary art. This Comintern book listed about a hundred slogans which the antimilitarist section of the French Communist Party worked out in April 1929. These slogans were considered applicable all over the world. They were designed to play up grievances of men in the ranks, stir general discontent over matters beyond the control of their high commands and generally cause soldiers to raise any demands that would trouble their commanders and hamstring their military organizations. The “central antimilitarist slogans” followed these lines:

Fight the preparations for imperialist war by opposing the bourgeoisie more strongly; Support the U.S.S.R. with all means; Support the Red army and the Red fleet; Assist the fight of the colonial peoples against imperialism; Fight the social democrats who participate in the

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armaments of the bourgeoisie—but who oppose the arming of the proletariat; Oppose conscription; Dissolve the imperialist army; Arm the proletariat; Resist training for imperialist war; Demand training for revolutionary war; Ally the workers, peasants, reservists, soldiers, and sailors in the fight against imperialism; Join the organizations of conscripts; Organize soldiers’ and sailors’ committees, and so forth.

Other slogans oppose the calling up of conscripts and reservists; call for the broadening of soldiers’ rights such as the right to organize and demonstrate; demand the amnesty of soldiers arrested for revolutionary activities. Nor are various special demands overlooked; free travel on street cars and railroads; better barracks; improvement of military justice; elimination of security surveillance; right to wear civilian clothes, and so forth.

Additional slogans deal with food, military pay, leave, service regulations, hygienic matters, and the status of reservists.

Soldiers belonging to linguistic minorities are urged to request that instruction be given in their own language and that they be used only in their home areas.

Soldiers under medical care should ask for the right, while on active duty, to obey instructions given by their private physician. Another comparable gem is found in the demand that soldiers should be given the right to request a new assignment every three months. Such a rule would make any army unmanageable. 20

During the first two years of World War II, Hitler and Stalin were allies, and the world Communist movement’s apparatus worked in Hitler’s behalf. But the antimilitarism campaign in the French armed forces dated from 1935, from the original order to bore in. In 1937 the French Communist Party issued a secret document reaffirming the 1935 order that the central task of all Communists was “to organize the struggle of the masses for the disintegration of the bourgeois army.

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