Major Takeaways
In the preceding chapters we have outlined the genesis and essential features of Nazism, the evolution of the NASDAP’s political line from a reckless putschism to a pragmatic combination of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary (demagogic-terrorist) forms of struggle and lastly, Hitler’s dramatic ascent – first to the position of the Reich Chancellor and then from that base camp to the summit of absolute dictatorship. Here it might be useful to highlight the most important lessons we have learned.
Synergic Combination of Demagoguery and Terror
Nazism is not just about unbridled violence, old conspiracies, extreme cruelty and large-scale repression. In an equal measure it is about high-pitch, extensive, relentless propaganda and mass indoctrination. It appeals not only to people’s base instincts and regressive ideas/beliefs; it can also stir up noble emotions like selfless service to the nation and sacrifice for a great cause. That is why it attracts not the riffraff and the lumpenproletariat alone, but also sections of genuine patriots and idealist students and youth.
It is, however, the complementary or symbiotic roles played by terror and demagoguery that made the duo deadly. Terror was not only a tool to silence, immobilise and to some extent physically eliminate the opposition: it had a strong demagogic impact or demonstration effect in showcasing the fascists’ strong will and power, which many saw as the need of the hour for a Germany in chaos and disorder. Thus the torture on the Jews were meant to send a strong message to all others that any individual or social group earning the displeasure of fascists will meet the same fate.
If during the years prior to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, demagoguery was a fundamental element in the terror-demagoguery synergy, it was clearly the other way round during the period of consolidation of fascist dictatorship (January 1933 – June 1934). The smashing of trade unions and disbanding of political parties were accompanied by communists, social democrats and other opponents of the regime being brutally tortured in the “Brown Houses” of fascist Brownshirts and then sent back to their homes and workplaces with broken limbs as living warnings to others. At the same time, anti-Semitic polarisation and social ostracisation of Jews were carried on under slogans like “Germans, only buy from Germans”, “Germans, do not let anybody but Germans to treat you”, “Germans, only allow Germans to judge you” and the like, obviously meant to remove Jews and other ‘outsiders’ from business, the medical profession, the judiciary and so on. There was no dearth of parochial nationalist/racist propaganda either, e.g., “Germans, only read German literature, only enjoy German art”.
Adaptations of such slogans are quite familiar to us today, and so are the launching of infrastructure and housing projects, many of which had actually been planned or initiated by the previous government (both in Germany then and in India now). Fulfilment of promises made during the election campaign was not an easy job, however. The government tried to placate the people with the declaration that its first priority was to undertake a complete overhaul of the entire policy framework in a genuine nationalist orientation (a job entrusted, in India, to the NITI Aayog) and thus to lay the foundations for more substantial changes and developments that would follow. “New Germany”, the Fuhrer promised, would once again be a flourishing nation, a “national socialist people’s community” freed from ‘artificially introduced’ class divisions.
(In Modispeak, “Social harmony” – sab ka sath, sab ka vikash!)
Connivance of State Authorities and the Emerging Policy Consensus
As we have seen, on many occasions the judiciary treated the Nazis very leniently. Had the Supreme Court of Bavaria stuck to the five-year prison term for Hitler as mandated by law and confined him behind bars till the end of 1928, the modern history of Germany – indeed of the entire world – might have been very different, because that would have deprived him of crucial four years of political preparation before taking the final plunge for power.
Soon after the court ordered his release in late 1924, Hitler appealed to the Bavarian government to lift the ban on his party, and that too was granted on the ground that “the beast is tamed”. All this goes to show how grossly both the judiciary and the executive underestimated the budding monster. Similarly, many in the Army, including a section of the serving top brass and retired generals, strongly supported Hitler even as the mass of ex-soldiers actually joined the fascist movement as its foot soldiers – not because Hitler had once been an army man, but because they fully endorsed Hitler’s aggressive national chauvinism.
Of course, Marshall Hindenburg as Reich President refused to appoint Hitler as chancellor for a pretty long time, but that was only because he knew Hitler would not submit to his authority for long. Sympathetic officials in the civil services, like those in the armed forces, also helped the NASDAP in various ways.
The connivance or active complicity of the existing state authorities was but a reflection of a broader consensus in the ruling classes and their political representatives: the republican government must be ousted, preferably by constitutional means. Given this policy thrust, the Nazi leader continued to be hated and feared by his competitors, but it was simply not possible to ignore the greatest crowd puller among the lot. This political imperative ultimately got the better of personal and partisan rivalries and Hitler was made Chancellor by common consent. Then everyone in the cabinet, as well as the Reich President, actually helped Hitler – unwittingly to their own perils – to demolish the entire foundation and edifice of bourgeois democracy and monopolise all powers in his own hands. Occasional internal bickering notwithstanding, in an overall sense almost the entire political class (save those on the left) thus acted as willing accomplices in the construction of what has been called the Fuhrer state.
Objective Conditions and Role of the Individual
Hitler soared over his more experienced rivals because he was undoubtedly the worthiest of the pack. By adding the ‘socialist’ tag to the dominant discourse of nationalism, he adorned it with a pro-poor, pro-working class coat of paint and successfully initiated in Germany a brand-new style or trend in bourgeois politics, one that is now known as right-wing populism. And by simultaneously locating in the Jews the ‘other’ of the ‘pure Aryan German race’ he invented a convenient fall guy – an enemy within – against whom a majoritarian ethnic German community could be polarised and mobilised as the party’s social base. This narrative of “national-socialist revolution” – where “national” stands for a new breed of racist or majoritarian nationalism and “socialism” means nothing but deceptive rhetoric – served as an attractive template to hold the entire gamut of fascist tools: demagoguery and terror, political intrigues and manipulations, and of course, a fine teamwork woven around the Fuhrer cult. Hitler wielded these instruments with exemplary dexterity and determination, tactical flexibility and strategic steadfastness, ingenuity and mendacity to utilise the post-war situation to his best advantage and reached his goal defeating his Left antagonists and outsmarting his right-wing competitors. That he ultimately failed to save the day is, of course, another big story.
“Without Hitler, the rise of National Socialism would have been
unthinkable. In his absence, the party would have remained one of many ethnic-chauvinist groups on the right of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, the special conditions of the immediate post-war years in both Bavaria and the German Reich were also crucial: without the explosive mixture of economic misery, social instability and collective trauma, the populist agitator Hitler would never have been able to work his way out of anonymity to become a famous politician. The circumstances at the time played into Hitler’s hands, and he was more skilful and unscrupulous about using them than any of his rivals on the nationalist far right.”
– Volker Ullrich, Hitler Ascent 1889-1939
From Movement to State Power
The story of Hitler tells us – and so does that of Mussolini too – that Nazism/fascism serves the monopoly bourgeoisie and ultimately becomes a tool in satisfying its fathomless greed and expansionist ambitions, but is not produced by it[1]. Rather it is adopted, so to say, by the monopoly bourgeoisie when in a period of economic and socio-political crisis it passes a certain threshold in the road to power or assumes power. Once in power, fascism tends to metamorphose, more or less rapidly, from an ultra-reactionary political tendency/movement into an “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital”, as the Thirteenth Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of Communist International (November-December 1933) described it. This definition, it is necessary to note, applies only to fascism in power, not to a party striving for power.
It is also important not to confuse the social composition of a fascist movement with the class character of the fascist project in general or a fascist group/party in particular. Fascists try and recruit followers from all sections of the population, but with greater success among the unemployed youth, jobless workers, frustrated intellectuals and crisis-ridden petty producers – in short, the worst victims of economic crisis and social instability – whom the left parties have not yet been able to politicise and organise[2]. So the social base of a fascist party – in other words, the social composition of a fascist movement – remains heterogeneous, with the petty bourgeoisie and the poor predominating. But its class character is determined by the class policy and ideology it pursues, the class it serves and is politically programmed to serve more nakedly if and when it comes to power. Right from its inception, the Nazi party with its physical attacks on trade unions and ideological onslaught on Marxism/Bolshevism – and this at a time when Germany stood at the forefront of international working class movement – did yeoman’s service to the German as well as the world bourgeoisie. And after coming to power, it served capital better than any other government in the world. The fascist state did this not only by regimentation and suppression of labour, massive state investment in infrastructure, armaments and related sectors, thereby boosting overall demand; but also by lesser-known policy measures like privatisation of a number of public sector units.
Irresistible? The Masses and the Left
Bertolt Brecht, eminent Marxist poet and playwright and a contemporary of Hitler, keenly observed the ascent of the megalomaniac and declared, in no uncertain terms, that it was resistible. In borrowing the title of this booklet from Brecht’s very pertinent play, we have endorsed this view, and we believe the facts assembled here do corroborate it.
Now, what are the facts?
As we have seen, Hitler did not ride to power with a clear popular mandate with more than 50% vote share. Utilising the political vacuum marked by short lifespans of successive governments, he did attract large sections of people with his promise of a strong and stable government and an end to social anarchy and his national-socialist rhetoric. Between September 1930 and July 1932 the NSDAP made consistent progress in the hustings, but suffered great losses in the November 6 Reichstag elections, when the number of seats in its kitty went down from 230 to 196 in just four months. In December, the Nazi Juggernaut crashed in the Thuringia landtag election, losing nearly 40 percent votes. Yet the very next month Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor – how, we have seen before, and this was certainly not inevitable.
Did the people of Germany join Hitler’s war – political and physical – on the Jews? By no means. However, the fascists did succeed in opening up a chasm between the Jewish minority and the Christian ‘ethnic German’ majority. The latter saw overt acts of brutality as unnecessary and unjust excesses, but came to passively accept the policies of legal discrimination and exclusion on racial grounds. The Nazis, much like the Sanghis here, thus appeared before the electorate as the most aggressive – and therefore most effective – champion of the supposed supremacy of the majority. No doubt, this strategy brought them handsome dividends at the hustings.
Yet, the Left always remained a formidable force. Right from its inception, the Weimer Republic was a left bastion. In the first, that is the 1919 Reichstag election, the SPD and the USPD (Independent Socialist Party, which had split from the SPD in 1917) together gathered 45.6 percent of votes cast. And if we look at the last election to the Reichstag, we find that the combined tally of the two left parties far surpassed the Nazi kitty both in terms of seats won and percentage of ballots cast: 221 seats (SPD 121 and KPD 100) vis-a-vis 196 and 37.29 percent vis-a-vis 33.09 percent.[3] Had the two parties campaigned together before the election – and more important, fought the fascists together on the streets, at the factories and in the fields – they must have scored much better not only in the electoral arena but also in inflicting a crushing political and moral defeat on the fascists. (This growing challenge from the Left was arguably one strong reason why the ruling classes and their representatives – including the monarchist aristocrat Hindenburg – ultimately accepted the Nazis as the last resort for preserving and bolstering the rule of capital.) How the disunited left frittered away this massive, largely organised and highly conscious mass support remains a sad chapter of history with profound lessons for us today.
The two left parties’ failure to unite was rooted in their opposite ideological and political positions. Ever since 1914, when the SPD leadership sided with the German imperialists in World War II and thus reneged from proletarian internationalism and revolutionary Marxism to bourgeois nationalism and revisionism, and when revolutionary sections of the party came out as the Spartacus League (the forerunner of the KPD), the two parties drifted further and further apart, often colliding directly. In 1919 they found themselves on the opposite sides of revolution and counterrevolution, with the Ebert-Scheidemann government unleashing the freikorps against revolutionaries including Luxembourg and Liebknecht. Thereafter the KPD continued to combine militant extra-parliamentary battles with parliamentary struggles, with a clear stress on the former, while the SPD got itself mired in parliamentary cretinism and economism, even abandoning its own agrarian reform program. In 1929 Berlin saw the ‘Blutmai’ or ‘Bloody Sunday’ when the SPD government fired upon a KPD-sponsored rally killing more than 30 people. The KPD in its turn made itself ludicrous in 1931 by first opposing a Nazi-sponsored popular referendum seeking the deposition of the Prussian government, and, when the SPD rejected its (KPD’s) “ultimatum” for a united front, supporting the same referendum, now calling it the “red referendum”! Communists in league with fascists and other hard-core right-wing groups campaigning for the ouster of a democratically elected left-led government was a shocking sight indeed. However, the people of Germany proved to be more mature and massively defeated the referendum.
The constant clashes between the two parties were rooted in their extremely negative political assessments about each other. The KPD believed that in the context of severe capitalist crisis, it was social democracy which held back the workers from fighting capitalism to finish (this much was not untrue) and therefore was the “main enemy” (which was absolutely wrong); hence arose the dangerous thesis of “social fascism” where social democracy and fascism was seen as “twin brothers”. The KPD at least appealed for joint struggles on certain occasions, but the SPD was always adamant. As the party Chairman Otto Wels declared at the Leipzig party convention in 1931 that “Bolshevism and fascism are brothers. They are both founded on violence and dictatorship, regardless of how socialist or radical they may appear.” With this level of mutual animosity, it was only natural that the two parties won’t be able to unite even in self-defence, barring some commendable examples of camaraderie at lower levels. It is also to be noted that, despite the policy paralysis of the SPD leadership, their ranks and individual leaders including Reichstag deputies continued to put up a commendable resistance to the Nazi Chancellor’s draconian measures.
As against the political shortcomings and blunders of the Left leadership, what stands out in bold relief is the courage, determination and class solidarity of the German workers as the most powerful bulwark against fascism. As Professor Hett points out in Class Struggle and the Rise of Hitler, “In 1930, when the Nazis had gained 18.3 percent of the electorate in the Reichstag elections, the Nazis could only muster a pathetic 0.51 percent of delegates in factory council elections.” Referring to “the fear reigning among party leaders at the thought of unleashing a struggle that could become a revolution or civil war”, Hett goes on to say, “The formation of the Eiserne Front (Iron Front)[4] in 1931 was a concession to rank-and-file dissatisfaction with the leadership’s political passivity. At an Iron Front rally, one activist declared, ‘Socialists deserve to end up in the madhouse if they confront the fascists with democratic means alone,’ and at an SPD shop stewards’ meeting, someone argued, ‘if the others threaten civil war, we can’t wave the peace palm; if the others spray bullets, we can’t toss candy.’ In the summer of 1931, the SPD’s leadership dissolved the Socialist Youth organization because it continually disagreed with the leadership’s conservative orientation.”[5]
In our country today, we find the working classes marching at the forefront of the struggle against the BJP government. The Indian Left may not be as strong as their German comrades were 100 years ago, but the good part is that unlike in Germany they are closing their ranks and also uniting with other fighting forces such as the Dalit organisations. The majority of bourgeois parties, rather than joining the BJP-NDA bandwagon, are trying to put up a unified opposition to the ruling coalition – which is, moreover, plagued with growing internal bickering. Fascism in India is certainly resistible and definitely defeatable, both in the electoral arena and as a socio-political power.
Notes:
1. Captains of industry supported the Nazi attacks on the trade union movement, but opposed the social disorder created by the latter. This love-hate relationship began to turn into uninhibited support only when the party started making apparently unstoppable strides to power and when, roughly since 1928, the big bourgeoisie and its parties felt the time had come to go over to an offensive against the Weimer system.
2. The overlap of the potential social bases of the fascists and the Left, and therefore the political tug-of- wire between the two, was clearly visible in Germany. While the class-conscious organised workers remained a stable base of social democrats and communists, fascists succeeded in winning over large chunks of the social democratic vote bank in other sections of the downtrodden. This experience holds out a lesson that remains valid to this day: to resist fascism, the Left must expand its direct political and organisational work beyond its traditional worker/worker-peasant base to other sections of the populace.
3. In the previous (July 1932) election also, the SDP and KDP together got 222 seats (only 8 less than the NSDAP) and 35.9% compared to the Nazi’s 37.27% (just 1.37% lower).
4. An anti-Nazi, anti-monarchist and anti-communist paramilitary organization formed in December 1931 by the SPD. It worked as a united front of labor and liberal groups and the SPD youth organization.
5. Pham Binh History 300, Historical Research; planetanarchy.net
[ ** David Olere - From March 1943 to January 1945 he was detained in Auschwitz as a Sonderkommando, a special labor unit responsible for emptying the remains from the crematory ovens as well as removing the bodies from the gas chambers. He also bore witness to the horrific testing performed by the Nazi’s and was forced to work as an illustrator and write letters for the SS. He began creating his art after his release in 1945 out of a sense of obligation to those who did not survive.]
