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"NOT ESPECIALLY inhumane." This was French fascist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen’s recent verdict on the wartime occupation of France. During the Second World War over 60,000 resisters and 75,000 Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps from France. Fewer than 3,000 Jews returned. These deportations were made easier by the willing participation of Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime, which governed the part of France not immediately occupied by the Germans following France’s defeat in 1940. Vichy drew up lists of Jews resident in France and then played a full role in their persecution.

Tony Benn led the line-up of speakers at a meeting packed with over 400 students hosted by the Goldsmiths College Student Union Peace Campaign, and the Islamic Society last week. Also speaking at the south London university were Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition, Pat Arrowsmith from CND and Azzam Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain.

Speaking to a recent campaigners’ conference, the director of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals recalled how German chancellor Gerhard Schröder once dismissed a group of environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with the comment, "You are not exactly a mass movement." Why should small NGOs be of any concern to an elected chancellor in the comfort zone between elections?

New left on the rise in Germany A CONFERENCE of the initiative for a new left party in Germany last weekend took a major step towards launching a serious challenge to the German SPD—the equivalent of New Labour.

Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America by Stephen Sewell

IN 1989 mass demonstrations, strikes and confrontations brought lightning-fast transformation to the Stalinist states that most people thought would never change.

WORKERS AT the Opel car company in Germany have shown exactly how to respond to mass redundancies—by holding a lightning strike. The strike has disrupted production across Europe.

Lindsey German I WAS born in 1951. For someone of my generation, the changes in women’s lives throughout the world have been absolutely astonishing. Perhaps most remarkable is the change from women being centred in the home to working outside the home.

ONE OF the greatest dates in our history was 18 March 1871. The story starts at the heights of Montemartre, Paris, at about 3am. The whole square is dominated by 250 cannon. The guns had just been used in a war between France and Germany in which Paris had been besieged for the whole winter.

GERMANY WAS on the brink of revolution after the First World War. A workers’ revolt in this powerful country could have broken the isolation of the Russian Revolution and helped to prevent the rise of Adolf Hitler. It was a turning point in the history of the 20th century.

Lindsey German is the convenor of the Stop the War Coalition.

THE government’s Agenda 2010 policy in Germany threatens the biggest attack on the welfare state since the Second World War.