Extract from : An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe

Planning Revolution

1. The Zimmerwald Manifesto Against the War

Drawn up by Trotsky in September 1915 following a revolutionary conference in Zimmerwald, Switzerland.

Proletarians of Europe!

The war has lasted more than a year. Millions of corpses cover the battlefields. Millions of human beings have been crippled for the rest of their lives. Europe is like a gigantic human slaughterhouse. All civilization, created by the labour of many generations, is doomed to destruction. The most savage barbarism is today celebrating its triumph over all that hitherto constituted the pride of mankind.

Irrespective of the truth as to the direct responsibility for the outbreak of the war, one thing is certain: the war that has produced this chaos is the outcome of imperialism, of the attempt on the part of the capitalist classes of each nation to foster their greed for profit by the exploitation of human labour and of the natural resources of the entire globe.

Economically backward or politically weak nations are thereby subjugated by the great powers who, in this war, are seeking to remake the world map with blood and iron in accord with their exploiting interests. Thus entire nations and countries like Belgium, Poland, and Balkan states, and Armenia are threatened with the fate of being torn asunder, annexed as a whole or in part as booty in the game of compensations