Bitter Lessons of Hitler's Rise

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Stormtroopers outside the Communist Party HO in Berlin. Janu 928: Coalition government with the Social Democrat Terman Mueller as Chancellor. CP swings over to the heory of the 'third period': capitalism is in its final crisis ind the Social Democrats are just 'social fascists' 930-1: Slump hits Germany. Unemployment rises to 3 nillion in 1930 and over 4 million in 1931. Nazis gain trength. In September 1930 parliamentary elections hey gain 18% of the vote, as against 2.6% in May 1928. March 1930: Coalition collapses. Heinrich Bruening of the Jatholic Centre Party becomes Chancellor, rules by emerieptember 1930: New parliamentary elections. SPD, Harmed by Nazi gains, decide to tolerate Bruening govern lugust 1931: Referendum, called by Nazis, to bring down ¡PD-dominated state government in Prussia. CP supports his, under the slogan of the 'red referendum', but SPD lecember 1931: SPD creates anti-fascist 'Iron Front' March 1932: Presidential election, as unemployment nounto to 5 million. SPD supports Field Marshal HindenMay 1932: Hindenburg appoints Franz von Papen [Centre "arty member promptly expelled by his party] as Chanellor to form a government 'above the parties' luly 1932: After Nazi provocation, Papen dissolves SPD-ler 'russian government. SPD says it will appeal to the courts CP calls for a general strike [to defend the same governnent against which it had called the 'red referendum'), Already the CP leader Thaelmann had explained in ieptember 1930 that through the Mueller government, 'the rule of fascism has already been establshed in Termany" • Now, as Trotsky recounted: "Thaelmann, lemmele, and others speak of the fascist coup d'etat of uly 20. At the same time, they warn the workers against he approaching danger of the Hitlerite, that is, the equally ascist, overturn. Finally, the Social Democracy is desiglated just as before as social fascist. The unfolding events re in this way reduced to this, that species of fascism take he power from each other with the aid of "fascist" coups Jecember 1932: Hindenburg appoints General Kurt von anuary 30 1933: Hindenburg calls Hitler to be Chancellor. ¡PD calls for calm, CP blusters about a general strike. 'ebruary 1933: 'Reichstag [parliament buildings] fire' lamed on CP. Civil liberties suspended.

March 1933: Parliament votes dictatorial powers to Hitler. ›P deputies have all fled or been jailed - only the SPD &. May 1933: SPD trade union bureaucrats urge workers to narch in Hitler's 'National Day of Labour' parade. The ext day, the Nazis take over the whole trade union movenent and send militants and bureaucrats alike to the con¡O YEARS ago on January I0, Hitler came to power in Jermany - opening an era if bloody destruction of he labour movement, mass laughter of Jews, violent ¡ersecution of gays and of ripsies, doubly brutal ippression of women, and vorld war.

Why did Hitler triumph? Could it happen again?

TV and press comment in the anniversary - like he BBC2 Timewatch programme this Wedneslay, 26th, on 'How do you lemocratise a Nazi?' — is iable to focus on authoriarian traditions in the ferman character and uchlike. But such explanitions give us little idea of vhy, for example, a broadly imilar fascist regime was nstalled in Italy, a country here the stereotype national character' is ¡ency decree.

nent as "lesser evil' egime survives.

urg ['lesser evil', again], who wins. rut there is little response. l'etat.

ichlęicher as Chancellor.

otes against.

entration camps. undisciplined and anarchic.

Leon Trotsky, writing in the 1930s, gave a better analysis of Nazism. And more: before the triumph of Hitler he proposed and argued for a strategy to stop Nazism.

The scene was set for GENRE UND FROST, FÜR fascism, he argued, by the economic decay and crisis of capitalism in the 1930s. But fascism was not just the gradual, organic product of those economic and social conditions. It was the result of specific political processes.

rascism was a mass F'anninm mond movement of the middle class (and also partly of the unemployed). Directed in words both against finance capital' and against the reds, in reality its aim was, and could only be, to smash the workers' organisations - with a thoroughness and brutality not possible for 'cold' capitalist methods.

The economic crisis, making it impossible for the capitalists to rule stably with the old methods of bourgeois democracy and class collaboration, drove the bourgeoisie - or at least important sections of it - towards support for fascism, despite all the risks and overhead expenses. It also ruined • the middle class, driving masses of them to look for desperate remedies and thus towards fascism.

But whether or not the ruined middle classes would swing to fascism depended on the reaction to the crisis of the other major class, the working class: If the working class rallied solidly against the rising fascist movement, knocking the swagger out of it, and if the labour movement could show a way out of the economic crisis, then the rise of fascism could be checked and the middle classes won to socialism.

Fascism could triumph only after the labour movement had missed its chance.

The reason why the German labour movement missed its chance, argued Trotsky, was the policies of the Social Democratic (SPD) and Stalinist (CP) leadership.

The German workers'

KIA HPER

ARBEN BROT heTT arv 22 1933 The Social Democrats backed I Hindenburg appointed Hitler a: movement was the strongest in the world - even in November 1932 the SPD and CP between them won 13 million votes - and the workers were willing to fight. Members of the CP and of the SPD-led Iron Front fought the Nazis on the streets heroically again and again.

But the SPD always resorted in the end to reliance on capitalist 'lesser evils' and appeals to the police and courts to deal with the Nazis.

The CP capitulated in a more radical-sounding but equally disastrous way. It made a great noise about fighting not only fascism but capitalism as a whole.

But it blinded workers to the specific threat of Nazism by denouncing all capitalist regimes as fascist.

It rejected a drive for SPD-CP united action against the Nazis on the grounds that the SPD was only 'the moderate wing of fascism" • It isolated the revalutionary workers ARE NOT DERERAT STARKY HE REYOLOTIONNE • IEVERRSCHAFTS OPPOSITIOD Yindenburg (right) for presiden s Chancellor.

from the mass of thei class forming separate rea trade unions, wnieh al the end of 1930 had onl 150,000 members while th SPD-led unions had fiv Trotsky's writings wer all directed at the member of the CP, urging them t change policy. SPD mem bers and even bureau crats could be won to actio:

against the Nazis - bu only if there was a seriou revolutionary force mar ping out and pushing fo that action. In the shor term that revolutionar force could only be the C - a party that was heavil bureaucratised and disoriented by the grip of th cynical Kremlin bureau cracy, but still a worl removed from the totall degenerate Communis Parties of today.

"A new historica party cannot arise simpl because a number of ol Social Democrats have con vinced themselves, ver belatedly, of the counter revolutionary character c the Ebert-Wels policy. A new party can just as little be improvised by a group of Communists who have as yet done nothing to warrant their claim to proletarian leadership. For a new party to arise, it is on the one hand necessary to have great historical events, which would break the backbone of the old parties, and on the other hand, a principled position elaborated, and cadres tested, in the crucible of events."

Trotsky dissected the Stalinist proclamations that there was no difference in 'class content' between bourgeois democracy and fascism. Yes, he replied, the ruling class is the same in each case.

''The ruling class, however, does not inhabit a vacuum. It stands in definite relations to other classes. In a developed capitalist society, during a "democratic" regime, the bourgeoisie leans for support nrimarilv unon the working classes, which are held in check by the reformists.

'In a fascist regime, at least during its first phase, capital leans on the petty bourgeoisie, which destroys the organisations of the proletariat. Italy, for instance! Is there a difference in the "class content" of these two regimes?

'In the course of many decades, the workers have built up within the bourgeois democracy, by utilising it, by fighting against it, their own strongholds and bases of proletarian democracy: the trade unions, the political parties, the educational and sports clubs, the cooperatives, etc. The proletariat cannot attain power within the formal limits of bourgeois democracy, but can do so only by taking the road of revolution: this has been proved both by theory and experience. And these bulwarks of workers' democracy within the bourgeois state are absolutely essential for taking the revolutionary road. The work of the Second International consisted in crearing just such bulwarks during the epoch when it was still fulfilling its progressive historić labour.

*Fascism has for its basic and only taks the razing to their foundations of all institutions of proletarian democracy. Has this any "class meaning" for the proletariat, or hasn't it? The lofty theoreticians had better ponder over this."

And he exposed the Stalinists' bluster about a "united front from below':

"It is necessary to show by deeds a complete readiness to make a bloc with the Social Democrats against the fascists in all cases in which they will accept a bloc. To say to the Social Democratic workers: "Cast your leaders aside and join our 'non-party' united front", means to add just one more hollow phrase to a thousand others.

•'The overwhelming majority of the Social Democratic workers will fight against the fascists, but - for the present at least — only together with their organisations. This stage. cannot be skipped. We must help the Social Democratic workers in action - in this new and extraordinary situation -to test the value of their organisations and leaders at this time, when it is a matter of life and death for the working class.

"It is necessary, without any delay, finally to elaborate a practical system of MEnDUlES - HUL WILLI LIE mancrrao - nnt with tha aim of merely "exposing" the Social Democracy [before the Communists], but with the aim of actual struggle against fascism.

•The programme of action must be strictly practical, strictly objective, to the point, without any of those artificial "claims" without any reservations, so that every average Social Democratic worker can say to himself: what the Communists propose is completely indispensable for the struggle against fascism. On this basis, we must pull the Social Democratic workers along with us by our example, and criticise their leaders who will inevitably serve as a check and a brake. Only in this way is victory possible."

To shout about revolution while rejecting the united front against fascism was empty words, he explained.

'The logic of events is such that the struggle for "parliament" and for "democracy" becomes for every Social Democratic worker a question of power. Therein lies the main content of the whole conflict from the standpoint of the revolution." But the Stalinists remained deaf. Even after Hitler's victory they insisted that their policy had been 'absolutely correct. • The Trotskyists concluded that the CPs were 'dead for the revolution' and that a new revolutionary movement, Fourth International, must be created.

Trotsky's writings on Germany remain one of the finest sources of strategic education for us trying to build a revolutionary socialist movement today.

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no.117 January 27 1983 Page

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Martin Thomas looks at the fight Nazism

Lam FASCHISMUS, HUNGER