8. The Nazi Terror¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter details the catastrophic defeat of the German labour movement in 1933, arguing that the Nazi seizure of power was not an invincible tidal wave but a preventable political disaster, made possible only by the total bankruptcy of the labour leadership. The core narrative thrust is that a united front of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Communist Party (KPD), and the trade unions—the most powerful labour movement in the world—could have crushed the Hitler movement. Instead, the leaderships capitulated without a fight. The SPD chairman Otto Wels resigned from the Labour and Socialist International to appease the Nazis, denounced comrades abroad who resisted, and even voted for Hitler’s foreign policy while the police occupied party buildings. The trade union leaders, Theodor Leipart and Peter Grassman, offered full cooperation for Hitler’s May Day celebrations, only to be arrested the following day by the SA, their organisations dissolved and funds confiscated. The chapter quotes Doctor Robert Ley, who dismissed their declarations of devotion to the Führer as worthless before carting them to prison.
The polemic is directed with equal ferocity against both the SPD and the Stalinist-led KPD. The SPD is condemned for grovelling before the fascist iron heel. The KPD, however, is subjected to a more detailed critique for its catastrophic “Third Period” ultraleft policy, which branded the SPD as “social fascists” and the main enemy. Even after the SPD was banned and its leaders imprisoned, the KPD Central Committee maintained this line. The chapter reproduces a Comintern declaration from April 1933 that described the KPD’s policy as “perfectly correct” and a “resounding success,” despite the party being smashed. Trotsky is invoked as the sole figure who understood the scale of the defeat, recognising it as worse than the betrayals of 1914 and foreseeing the inevitable world war.
The chapter then traces the internal logic of the Nazi regime: the suppression of the SA’s “second revolution” in the Night of the Long Knives, the betrayal of the petty bourgeoisie, and the consolidation of a Bonapartist police state. It concludes with a contemporary (1988) analysis arguing that the conditions for a repeat of fascism no longer exist, due to the proletarianisation of the middle class and the radicalisation of students. The bourgeoisie, having learned from the costly Nazi experiment, now prefers military-police dictatorships. The final lesson is that the working class must learn from the German catastrophe to arm itself with a Marxist programme capable of seizing power before disillusionment again opens the door to ferocious reaction.