They were responsible for Hitler¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter mounts a fierce polemic against those who blame the German working class for Hitler’s rise and continued rule. Its core argument is that the German workers did not bring Hitler to power; rather, the responsibility lies squarely with the Stalinist and Social-Democratic leaderships in Germany, and their counterparts in Britain, who betrayed the working class and cleared the path for fascism. The chapter insists that the German workers, far from supporting Hitler, have continued an underground struggle despite horrific repression, and that their apparent toleration of the regime during war stems from a desperate lack of alternatives: Stalin offers only support for Churchill and Anglo-American imperialism, while Goebbels’ propaganda truthfully warns that a defeat orchestrated by British and American capital would mean the same starvation blockade that killed a million German babies after the last war. The way out, the chapter argues, is for British workers to fight for a revolutionary socialist government, which would present an internationalist alternative and shatter Hitler’s grip within weeks.
The historical evidence marshalled is specific and damning. The German Revolution of 1918 is cited as the moment when Social-Democratic leaders saved capitalism by preventing workers from taking power. The slump of 1929–33 drove the middle class, not the workers, into the arms of the Nazis, but Hitler could still have been defeated. The Social-Democrats told workers to trust Hindenburg; the Stalinist Communist Party refused a united front, even voting with the fascists against the socialist government in Prussia. Trotsky and the Fourth International campaigned for four years for a united front, but the leaderships refused. After Hitler took power, the Communist Party declared fascism a victory for the working class that would not last; the trade union and Socialist leaders even voted for Hitler. At the 1933 TUC conference, Citrine justified the refusal to call a general strike on the grounds it would lead to civil war.
The polemic is directed against two targets simultaneously: the Stalinist and Labour bureaucracies, who are accused of shameless hypocrisy in blaming German workers for a catastrophe they themselves engineered. The chapter draws on the theoretical framework of Trotskyism, specifically the analysis of fascism as the product of a betrayed revolution and a divided working class, and the necessity of a united front against the common enemy. It ends with a call for international working-class solidarity: British workers must fight for workers’ power and extend a hand to their German brothers, to prevent British and American capitalists from intervening against the coming German revolution. The final demand is not revenge, but the socialist united states of Europe.