Chapter Eight: The Nazi Terror¶
Core Argument¶
The German labour movement, the strongest in the world by numbers, organisation and revolutionary tradition, could have defeated Hitler if united. Trotsky argued for a united front of the SPD, KPD and trade unions, yet the reformist leaders refused to fight, preferring capitulation to civil war. The Reichsbanner alone numbered three million members in 1932, outnumbering the Reichswehr, Stahlhelm and Nazi forces combined; a general strike could have paralysed the army. When spontaneous demonstrations erupted on 30 January 1933 and worker delegations requested orders to fight, the leaders drew back, pleading caution and pledging to uphold the Constitution. No resistance was offered: no shots fired, no general strike, no barricades. The SPD leaders supported every reactionary government as the ‘lesser evil’, while the Stalinists continued attacking ‘social fascism’ as the main enemy and rejected a united front. Both blamed each other, producing paralysis.
The pact between heavy industry and the Nazi party had been sealed at the Düsseldorf Club of industrialists on 27 January 1932, after Hitler assured them his ‘socialism’ posed no threat. Nazi economic policy justified this confidence: Hitler destroyed workers’ organisations, introduced the ‘leadership principle’ in factories, and expanded heavy industry through rearmament, generating enormous profits. On 1 May 1933, Hitler cynically declared a ‘National’ Labour Day; German trade union leaders co-operated humiliatingly, breaking links with the SPD and calling on members to attend Nazi rallies. The TUC’s Gewerkschaftszeitung declared Hitler’s victory “our victory as well”. On 2 May, Stormtroopers occupied union headquarters without resistance. The ‘German Labour Front’ was established on 10 May, the right to strike abolished on 16 May, and the federations dissolved. The SPD was banned on 23 June; a one-party totalitarian regime was in place by 14 July. Within a short period, 2,500 communists were murdered and 130,000 sent to camps.
Stalin was impressed by Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives and initiated his own purge, beginning with the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934. By 1937, Stalin had killed more top KPD leaders than Hitler: four of the German Politburo and eleven of the Central Committee. According to Leopold Trepper, only Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht remained of the principal KPD leaders who fled to the USSR. Trotsky argued the Stalinist leadership had systematically sabotaged the German proletariat, isolating communists from trade unions and drawing the noose around the party. By March 1933, Trotsky argued for a new party, concluding the Communist International was dead. By 1935, he wrote that his work on a new International was more important than 1917.