| Now it can be told: When Reds and Nazis worked together and helped each other! |
Now it can be told: When Reds and Nazis worked together and helped each other!
Both Nazis and Communists opposed moderate Social-Democrats
|
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
Poster: "Death to capital, or death under the heel of capitalism!"
 |
I emphasize this important fact again, it was during the existence of the Weimar Republic, in the decade preceding Hitler's Third Reich (1923-1933), that both Communists and Nazis discovered that they shared their revulsion of the existing democratic order and the moderate Social-Democrats. It was in 1981 that Hermann Weber, a well known German historian and political scientist, published a very important study on the strategy and tactics of the German Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands or KPD) between 1929 and 1933. During this critical period most German Communists described the Social-Democrats as "Social-Fascists," they were perceived as the greater enemy (Hauptfeind), an enemy worse than the Nazis, that is. This was also the line followed by the Soviet controlled Communist International (Comintern) which instructed the German Communist Party on July 20, 1931, to form an alliance with the Nazis with a view to bringing about the downfall of Prussia's moderate Social-Democratic, Centrist and Liberal-Democratic coalition government. Prussia's Social-Democratic Prime Minister Otto Braun (1872-1955) was a courageous man who was well aware of the mortal danger the extremists - Nazis and Communists - posed to democracy and freedom - not only in Prussia but in Germany as a whole.
 |
Photo: Otto Braun
It was in the spring of 1931 that the so-called "national opposition" consisting of Hitler's National Socialist Party (NSDAP) and German conservative nationals (DNVP, DVP, and a group referred to as Stahlhelm) proposed to held a plebiscite (Volksentscheid) on the dissolution of the Prussian Parliament to bring about the fall of the government. Initially, the DKP rejected the proposal describing it as "Fascist betrayal of the people." Soviet Communist Party leader Joseph Stalin did not agree with this DKP line. Using the channels of the Comintern, Stalin instructed the German party to adopt a different line. Consequently, the German Communist Party leadership announced on July 22, 1931, that they would join what was now suddenly termed a "Red Referendum."4
In order to achieve a majority vote the Nazis could not do without Communist participation in the referendum. A unique Red-Brown alliance had been formed: both Nazis and Communists marched together in demonstrations against the Social-Democratic government of Prussia.
In his excellent study on the history of the Socialist International, Franz Borkenau, observes:
"This was no longer simply the theory of ‘Social-Fascism,' the belief that there was no difference between Fascism and democracy and that the Social-Democrats were just as bad as the Nazis... Their (= the Communists, V.) participation in the Nazi referendum implied more. It implied the view that to overthrow the last defense of German democracy, the Prussian government, in co-operation with the Nazis, meant progress, that a Nazi régime was preferable to a democratic régime."5
This government, in turn, said the yes-voters had to choose between Communism and Fascism: "Those who want a Soviet controlled Prussia or a Fascist controlled Prussia, must take part in the plebiscite and vote ‘yes.'"6 On the day of the plebiscite, August 9, 1931, nearly 10 million voters said "yes," and nearly 400,000 voters said "no." But the total number of those who were allowed to vote was 26,587,672. The extremists would have won if more than 13,3 million voters would have said yes. Consequently, parliament was not dissolved and Otto Braun continued to be Prime Minister of Prussia until the summer of 1932 when he was outmanoeuvered by the then federal German Reich Chancellor (a kind of Prime Minister) Franz von Papen.
On January 30, 1933, NSDAP leader Adolf Hitler became Reich Chancellor and Von Papen Vice-Chancellor. Soon after this crucial date in German history – the death of the Weimar Republic – the Nazi president of the Reichstag, Hermann Göring first became Interior Minister and later Prime Minister of Prussia, Germany's most important province. Göring immediately started a brutal campaign against Communists and Social-Democrats. The Nazis no longer needed the extremists from the left and persecuted them. (A similar thing happened in Iran, where Ayatolla Khomeini first formed a kind of alliance with the Iranian Communist Tudeh party, but began to persecute them when they were no longer needed; the Communist Soviet Union also courted the Khomeini regime in 1979/1980.7)
 |
Photo: Hitler on left, Vice Chancellor Von Papen
What happened in Prussia also happened on a national level. This was clear from the voting pattern in the German Reichstag (National Parliament) and the Prussian Landtag (regional parliament). In the majority of cases both Nazis and Communists joined ranks when they were voting in favor or against the issues confronting them. For example, there were 241 issues to be voted on in the Reichtstag and the Prussian Landtag in 1929 and 1930. In 140 cases – 70 percent! – Communist and Nazi voting behavior was identical.8
On October 18, 1930, the German Reichstag rejected a motion of no confidence proposed by both NSDAP and KPD.9
Heinrich Brüning from the Catholic Center Party (Zentrumpartei) was Reich Chancellor at the time (until May 1932). Brüning's Defense Minister Wilhem Groener issued a decree in January 1930 prohibiting any display of sympathy in the armed forces (Reichswehr) towards the Nazi and the Communist Parties. Groener argued that both parties advocated the violent overthrow of the state wishing to replace it by the dictatorship of their party.10
Herman Müller, a Social-Democrat who had been Reich Chancellor between June 1928 and March 1930, tried to make a speech in the Reichstag on October 17, 1930. But he was constantly interrupted in a very aggressive manner by both Communists and Nazis. Even the Moscow Pravda commented favorably on the Nazi outburts in parliament, saying that the behavior of the National Socialists was "much more proletarian" than the behavior of the Social- Democrats."11
Communists and Nazis were in an exuberant mood after the gains made by them in the recent September elections. (NSDAP: 18, 3 percent or 107 seats and KPD 13,13 percent or 77 seats; the total number of seats was 577.)12
After the economic crisis of 1929, both extremist parties would make significant gains in subsequent elections whereas the moderate Social-Democratic and centrist parties would be loosing ground all the time.
Nazis and Communists equally blamed the "capitalist system," and "Wall Street" for the economic crisis and rising unemployment. The Nazis blamed "Jewish" bankers and industrialists (das internationale Finanzjudentum) whom they claimed to be part of a secret world government. (Similar anti-Semitic conspiracy theories would later surface in the Arab world and Iran.)
Albert Leo Schlageter: both a Nazi and a Communist "martyr" (1923)
 |
In May 1923 Communists and Nazis organized joint acts of sabotage against the occupation of the German Rheinland by the French.13 (In January 1923, Hitler's NSDAP already had 55,000 members.) This occured after the French executed a popular German resistance fighter named Albert Leo Schlageter. Although there are conflicting reports about Schlageter's possible affiliation with the Nazis,14 both Nazis and Communists equally hailed him as their hero. The NSDAP and other nationalist parties organized commemoration ceremonies in Schlageter's birthplace Schönau on June 10, 1923. In an attempt to build bridges with the extreme right, Karl Radek, a prominent Soviet member of the Comintern's Executive Committee (ECCI) who played an important role in organizing the German Communist movement, hailed praise on Schlageter in a speech on June 23, 1923:
"All the time I had before my eyes the corpse of the German Fascist, our class enemy, condemned and shot by... French imperialism... The fate of this German nationalist martyr should not be passed over by us in silence, or with a contemptuous phrase. Schlageter, a courageous soldier of the counter-revolution, deserves honest and manly esteem from us, soldiers of the revolution... Schlageter is dead ... At his grave his comrades vowed to carry on his work."15
Debating an ECCI draft resolution on Fascism, Radek pleaded for an alliance with "German patriotic circles," a common front between Communists and revolutionary nationalists "against Entente and German capital." "On the basis of this speech," Franz Borkenau writes, "the Communist Party started a so-called Schlageter campaign, which led to a number of public discussions between leading Communists and outstanding Nazis about the aims of the impending German revolution."16
In the early 1930s the German Communist Party followed a "national Bolshevist strategy" with a view to winning back the minds of those who had left the Communist ranks and were now voting for extreme right parties like the NSDAP.17
Nazis and Communists organized a strike in Berlin in 1932
Both Communist and Nazi trade unions played a leading role in organizing a public transportation strike in Berlin in November 1932. Early November 1932 the "Berliner Verkehrsgesellschaft" (BVG), a municipal transport organization, announced a cut in wages. Due to the severe economic crisis there was simply not enough money to pay all the BVG workers. Parliamentary elections were scheduled for November 6, and Communist and Nazis expected to make significant gains if they were to play a leading role in an anti-BVG strike. The Communist "Revolutionäre Gewerkschaftsopposition" (RGO) and the Nazi "Nationalsozialistischen Betriebszellenorganisation" (NSBO) simply outmanoeuvred the moderate trade unions in the central strike committee. This was in line with what KPD party chief Ernst Thälmann had said in October 1932: "When strikes are being organized in firms and companies, it is absolutely essential and desirable that Nazis are invited to take part in the Strike Committees."18
This was part of the "common front strategy from below" recommended by high ranking Comintern officials.19 Instead of forming alliances with moderate Social-Democrats (invariably denounced as "Social-Fascists") the Communists joined ranks with the equally extremist Nazis. Hitler's notoriously violent SA-men or "brownshirts" and Communists marched together through the streets of Berlin – even destroying busses whose drivers had ignored the call to strike.
Paving the way for Hitler's totalitarian rule
In doing so the KPD actively promoted the Weimar Republic's downfall and, consequently, the party was digging its own grave. Only three months later would Hitler become Reich Chancellor who would subsequently open the abyss for all those who underestimated him. But a number of influential Communists did not see Hitler as an enemy but as an ally. Dimitry Manuilski, a high ranking Soviet Comintern functionary in charge of German affairs, addressed a Comintern meeting on December 15, 1931, saying:
"The chief enemy is not Hitler, the chief enemy is the system of Severing (Social-Democrat Interior Minister of Prussia, V.), Brüning (Reich Chancellor), Hindenburg (Reich President). With Hitler's help will we first destroy the Social-Democratic Party apparatus as well as the Brüning state apparatus. In the present phase of the development of the German revolution Hitler unmistakenably is our ally."20
The Communist Party claimed to be a working-class party, yet it had repeatedly collaborated with the Fascists and continually refused to collaborate with the Socialists, Franz Borkenau correctly observes. Even after the Nazis had begun to bloodily persecute both Communists and Social-Democrats, German Communists continued to lay the blame on those who should have been their allies:
"Thus, while Socialists and Communists went together to the concentration camps and the Socialist Party was practically annihilated, the Communists continued to talk of the Socialists as the ‘Social-Fascists' and regard them as the chief supporters of the régime, and in consequence as the chief enemy while real, as opposed to ‘Social' Fascism took second place in their thoughts.... Their can harldy be any doubt that the party was partly responsible, together with all other groups of the left, for what had happened.'21
Social-Democratic "Münchener Post" commented on the parliamentary elections held on March 5, 1933 (after Hitler became Reich Chancellor, that is, these were the very last elections Hitler and his ilk would allow):
"Had it not been for the KPD, Hitler would never have become Reich Chancellor nor would he have triumphed on March 5. The leadership of this party installed the hatred of Social-Democrats into the hearts of millions of workers, and this very hatred now caused them to flee to the brown ranks of the swastica. Many Communists who on Saturday were still wearing the Soviet star as they were walking, manifested themselves as crack new Nazis on election day."22
A similar thing would occur after the war when Communists took control of what would later become their "German Democratic Republic" (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR). Many former Nazis would quickly join the East German Communist Party and subsequently even make a career in the party and state apparatus.23
Back in 1933 Stalin was indeed concerned about the brutal suppression of the German Communist Party, but he was more interested in maintaining good relations with Nazi Germany. Hitler, too, was, not immediately interested in dramatic foreign policy changes that would provoke hostile Soviet reactions.24 Stalin made precisely the same mistake as the German Communists: he deeply underestimated Hitler.
 |
But there is another interesting aspect which deserves attention. This is the aspect of the totalitarian mind. The ideologies of Nazis and Communists differed vastly, but what they did have in common was their diabolical and totalitarian nature. There is a psychological mechanism that somehow draws adherents or followers from completely contradictory ideologies and movements together in a common struggle against freedom and democracy, indeed against the West.
Of course, there were many (often violent) clashes between Nazis and Communists during the years of the Weimar Republic. To portray them only as allies in a war against freedom is a gross simplification. After Hitler became Reich Chancellor in 1933, he quickly set out to persecute the Communists. And in June 1941 he invaded the Soviet Union, a war Stalin had tried to avoid at all costs. But it cannot be denied that Communists and Nazis occasionally formed alliances against those whom they denounced as common enemies (such as the moderate Social-Democrats), against democracy. They were using the mechanism of parliamentary elections to obtain the majority with a view to abolishing freedom and democracy.
Lessons for today
Today, in the twenty-first century, Fascists, Islamist Fascists and Communists are again forming alliances against the forces of freedom and democracy. But the Islamo-Fascists may be stronger than the Marxists, the Socialists and the Communists. They eventually prevailed in Iran using Communists, Marxists and naive leftist students as their allies. Afshin Ellian, a former refugee from Iran who currently lives in the Netherlands, criticized the young and enthousiastic leftists – his own generation – who in 1979 dreamt about the revolution, but got the monster of the Islamic state, darkness and Fascism instead. They talked about Ché Guevara, Marx and Lenin and cherished illusions about the common struggle by leftists and followers of the arch-conservative cleric and Jew-hater Ayatolla Khomeini.25
In the 1990s the same kind of Islamist Fascists prevailed in Afghanistan over the secular and leftist forces, creating monsters like Al-Qaeda. Those who give in or allign themselves with these evil and diabolical forces will sooner or later fall into the same abyss. There are really naive people like Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, who think they can be on friendly terms with the Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood, today's Fascists and Jew-haters in the Middle East, that is. (There is nothing new under the sun: there were also prominent but naive Englishmen in the 1930s – so-called "fellow-travelers" – who visited Nazi Germany just for the sake of being friends with high ranking Nazis.)
An important Hamas cleric recently said: "We will conquer Rome, and from there continue to conquer the two Americas and Eastern Europe.26
This kind of arrogance was only matched by the Nazis and the Communists who equally wanted to conquer the world. Hamas, by the way, is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The bitter lessons of the German Weimar Republic, Iran and Afghanistan should not be forgotten by those who live today.
Emerson Vermaat is an investigative reporter in the Netherlands specialized in crime, terrorism and European history. He published a major Dutch study on ideologies (Communism, Maoism and Nazism) in 1977 and developed a special interest in Nazi Germany, Russian and East European history and anti-Semitism. His website is: www.emersonvermaat.com.
Behind the paywall: Warlords - The Untold Stories of WWII
This outstanding, highly original documentary focuses on the relationships between the supreme commanders of the European powers in WW2: Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and FDR. It's an invaluable analysis of the political agendas that shaped military strategy. No one with an interest in politics or war should allow themselves to miss this secret history of the most terrible war the world has ever known. The research is extraordinary: subtle and intelligent. This is a unique view, even for an old military history buff. The footage is good, if standard, and there are some non-intrusive 'recreations' used more for clarity than for dramatic impact.
Everyone age 14 and up should watch this.
Notes:
1. Hans Jansen, Van Jodenhaat naar Zelfmoordterrorisme. Islamisering van het Europees Antisemitisme in het Midden-Oosten (Heerenveen: Uitgeverij Groen, 2006), p. 736. Professor Jansen is one of the best Dutch experts on anti-Semitism.
2. Emerson Vermaat, Haj Amin Al-Husseini – Nazi Collaborator and Model for Today's Islamists, Militant Islam Monitor and Pipelinenews, February 27, 2008.
3. Ibid.
4. Hermann Weber, Hauptfeind Sozialdemokratie. Strategie und Taktik der KPD 1929-1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1981), p. 40; Hagen Schulze, Otto Braun oder Preussens demokratische Sendung (Frankfurt a.M.: Propyläen Verlag, 1977), p. 664ff; André Gerrits and Tim Graaf, Sociaal-democraten, communisten en de ondergang van de democratie, in: Socialisme en Democratie, April 1983, p. 24ff.; E.H. Carr, Twilight of the Comintern 1930-1935 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), p. 42, 46. Der Freistaat Preussen: Plebiszite (www.gonschior.de/weimar/
5. Franz Borkenau, World Communism. A History of the Communist International (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983), p. 342, 343.
6. Hagen Schulze, op. cit. p. 667.
7. On Soviet-Iranian relations between 1979-1981, see Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Die sowjetisch-iranischen Beziehungen unter Khomeini, in: Osteuropa, July 1982 (vol. 32, No. 7), p. 558-575.
8. Michael Koth, Rede in Leuna, December 21, 2000 (wws.kds-im-netz.de), Michael Koth is a former high ranking Communist Party official in East Berlin. He later joined the controversial "Kampfbund Deutscher Sozialisten" (KDS) which seeks to build bridges between Socialists, Communists and (neo)-Nazis. The facts mentioned in Koth's Leuna speech are largely correct, however, and have been confirmed by others. The author interviewed Professor P. Valkenburg, a political scientist from Groningen University, the Netherlands, in 1983. Dr. Valkenburg told me that Nazis and Communists in the German Reichstag (Parliament) voted indentically in 70 percent of the cases.
9. Deutsches Historisches Museum, Chronik 1933 (www.dhm.de/lemo/1930/index.
10. Ibid.
11. Michael Koth, op. cit.
12. Das Deutsche Reich. Reichtagswahl 1930 (www.gonschior.de/Weimar/
13. Harry Brinkmeyer, Der 1. deutsche Demokratieversuch – didaktische Untersuchungen und Reflexionen zur Weimarer Republik. Das Krisenjahr 1923 (Seminararbeit, 2000, archivnummer K7479). Mat 26, 123: "Da sich Kommunisten und Nationalsozialisten auch gemeinsam am Widerstand und Sabotageakten beteiligen, wird in Teilen beider Parteien über eine Zusammenarbeit nachgedacht."
14. Stefan Zwicker, Nationale Martyrer. Albert Leo Schlageter und Julius Fucik. Heldenkult, Propaganda, Erinnerungskultur (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2006), p. 51.
15. Jane Degras, The Communist International 1919-1943. Documents (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 1971), Vol II (1923-1928), p. 39; Harry Brinkmeyer, op. cit. June 20, 1923: "Er (Radek) beabsichtigt einen Brückenschlag zum rechten Radikalismus."
16. Franz Borkenau, op. cit., p. 246.
17. Getrennt marschieren, vereint schlagen? Nationalrevolutionäre Ideologie und Strategie. (www.trend.infopartisan.net/
18. Streik bei der Berliner Verkehrsgesellschaft (http://de.wikpedia.org/wiki/
19. Kommunistischer Widerstand 1933-1945 (ww.ddr.biogafien.de): "Sozialfaschisten." "Die von ihr (=KPD) seit 1932 verfolgte Linie von ‘Einheitsfront von unten..."' "Die SPD wurde als soziale Hauptstütze der Bourgeoisie und als Hauptfeind auf dem Weg zur proletarischen Revolution gesehen."
20. Quoted in: Rheinischer Merkur, July 28, 1978, see: Konrad Löw, Warum fasziniert der Kommunismus? Eine systematische Untersuchung (Cologne: Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft/Deutscher Insituts-Verlag, 1983), p. 199.
21. Franz Borkenau, op. cit., p. 378, 379.
22. Münchener Post, March 6, 1933, quoted in: Konrad Löw, op. cit., p. 198.
23. Olaf Kappelt, Braunbuch DDR. Nazis in der DDR (Berlin: Elisabeth Reichmann Verlag, 1981). One of these former Nazis in East Germany was Michael Kohl. He was a member of the "Hitler Youth" (HJ) and his father was an active Nazi Party member until the collapse of the Third Reich. Officially, this should have been a reason to prevent Kohl from joining the East German Communist Party and making a career in the state apparatus of the GDR (or DDR). But the Soviets protected him, he had possibly been recruited by the KGB soon after the war. He would later play an important role as East German Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. (See page 260, 261.)
24. Gustav Hilger, Wir und der Kreml. Deutsch-sowjetische Beziehungen 1918-1941. Erinnerungen eines deutschen Diplomaten (Frankfurt am M./Berlin: Alfred Metzner Verlag, 1955), p. 241, 243 ("Dies äusserte sich unter anderem in wiederholten Beteurerungen des Aussenkommisariats, dass die Sowjetregierung auf die Aufrechterhaltung guter Beziehungen zu Deutschland grösseren Wert lege."), p. 244, 254 ("Demgegenüber gab Hitler im Frühjahr 1933 in mehreren Erklärungen bekannt, dass die deutsche Politik gegenüber der Sowjetunion unverändert bleibe."), p. 251 (Hitler: "Der Kampf gegen den Kommunismus in Deutschland ist unsere innere Angelegenheit... Die staatspolitischen Beziehungen zu anderen Mächten, mit dem uns gemeinsamen Interessen verbinden, werden davon nicht berührt."). See also: Thomas Weingartner, Stalin und der Aufstieg Hitlers. Die Deutschlandpolitik der Sowjetunion und der Kommunistischen Internationale 1929-1924 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1970), p. 118, 168, 198-202.
25. Afshin Ellian, Springlevende tirannie, in: NRC Handelsblad, January 9, 2007, p. 15 ("De oorspronkelijk links-liberale revolutie droeg, onzichtbaar, een monster met zich mee: de islamitische staat." See also: Afshin Ellian, Brieven van een Pers. Over Nederland en islamitisch kannibalisme (Amsterdam: JM. Meulenhoff, 2005), p. 155, 166 ("De teksten van onder andere Ché Guevara, Lenin en de oude, activistische Marx vormden de intellectuele bagage van jongeren die de tirannie van de sjah wilden vervangen door vrijheid..."), p. 168, 223.
26. Yunis Al-Astal, Gaza, Al-Aqsa TV, April 11, 2008 (www.memritv.org/clip_
Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app
| ||||||||||
© 2025 Michael Flores
PO Box 167963, Chicago, IL 60616
Unsubscribe
