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this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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"First Hitler, Then Our Turn!"
Famous rallying slogan of the Weimar Communist Party
Famous just not real, it comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_H%C3%B6ltermann from the SPD. I think it got misattributed in english because Americans didn't know the difference between social democrats and communists.
While said by Holtermann (though in a different sense - saying that after Hitler, the SPD will have to clean up; rather than saying Hitler will radicalize the working classes by his grotesque behavior), it was more prominent as a KPD slogan in opposition to a united front with 'social fascists' (the SPD).
If anybody could find anything at all written in the 1930s saying it's a KPD slogan, and not just people decades later calling it "well known" with no source and only in English with no explanation what it was in German, that would be really cool.
"Warum versagten die Marxisten", published 1934, mentions it as "Nach Hitler Kommen Wir"
The pro-Nazi periodical "Deutschlands Erneuerung" also mentions it as a slogan of the KPD in 1933.
I've found both of those before, the second one quotes it as "Herr Holtermann proudly predicted" so that doesn't work.
The first one based on Google Books is an unattributed chapter title, and searching doesn't find any German words for slogan or motto in it. And Rudolf Olden is prominent enough that I think someone would have cited it by now if he had a KPD attribution in there.
"Find me someone who attributes it to the KPD in a contemporary document."
[finds you a contemporary document]
"Well, he doesn't academically cite his sources or literally call it a motto!"
Yeah, that's about what I expected.
Relax I'm not fucking with you I'm actually interested in this. There are a lot of contemporary documents, there are a bunch of 1933 SPD newspapers with "Nach Hitler kommen wir!" on the front page, the problem is finding anything that isn't quoting Holtermann.
Why did the Marxists fail is the closest I've found, because he doesn't explicitly say who he's quoting. You can read this anthology version of it which unfortunately edits out the actual quote, but Olden is very critical of the SPD for acting like there was an electoral or legal solution to Nazis instead of planning for a civil war, so I really think he's quoting Holtermann.