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this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Splintering of the establishment left (SDP) versus the actual left (KPD) in the 1932 German elections was a big part of what allowed Hitler's rise to power. Even while both were literally gun-battling in the streets with the paramilitary force that later became the SS, the KPD was calling the SDP "the main enemy" and "social fascists." The SDP saw what was coming and allied with their conservative opponents to promote Hindenburg in the 1932 election, so that Hitler wouldn't win, while the KPD ran their own candidate who siphoned off 13% of the vote.
Hindenburg still barely squeaked into power, but Hitler was the only candidate with a strong unified front behind him, and on Hindenburg's death Hitler assumed power and immediately starting killing the KPD members en masse. The SDP and KPD blamed each other, for not compromising and thus allowing Hitler to gain so much ground instead of facing a unified opposition, but at that point it didn't really matter who was or wasn't at fault, and the KPD were the first grouping explicitly singled out for death once he took over.
You can read all about it in here.
I had someone on Lemmy tell me not that long ago that the lesson of this was that the KPD was right, and the SDP were the real enemy for compromising with the conservatives, and if they'd just been more left and earned the support of the real left people then the whole thing wouldn't have happened. I do wonder what attitude in hindsight of one of the KPD people in the camps would have been to this "it's not my job to vote for you, it's your job to earn my support" electoral philosophy, but it's impossible to know, because of course they all were put to death.
Yeah, that sounds like my experience on here.
The SPD ordering the execution of Luxemburg and Liebknecht kinda was an irreparable schism I think.
Ah yes, remember the part where the Spartacists had a literal armed uprising because they didn't like the prospect of participation in a democratic government? Something Luxemburg herself voted against?
Oh, what am I saying, what I meant is "The Weimar Government should have put the gun barrel to their head and begged the Spartacists to pull the trigger on them"
She was still killed in spite of that, which was my point: establishing that the political bridge was burned; the division was not healed in time to form a united front against the Nazis.
There is no disagreement here the SPD fought the KPD and won.
They mainly used Freikorps to do it, and those Freikorps were nothing close to left wing or even democratic. They were imperialists and monarchists who formed the basis for other more infamous paramilitary groups. Interwar history is wild.
"How dare you fight back when I try to armed-uprising you, that is very unfair and my feelings are hurt now and so I can't support you."
I love the left dearly but this sounds exactly like left person logic, yes. 🙂
And again, it's relevant that the SDP was willing to heal divisions with (at least some of) their enemies to fight the Nazis, and the KPD (from what you're saying) were not (at least where the SDP was concerned).
I have no particular dog in this fight; I'm out of my depth now in terms of what happened and who was at fault. My point is, those bitter divisions and arguments and the justifications for them that you're talking about -- however you want to allocate blame for them between the SDP and KPD -- didn't do either of them a lick of good when the NSDAP started kicking down doors and shooting them both in the back of the head, and that's relevant to the upcoming US election.
Why is it always a fake made up quote to respond to? It will sound however you want since you came up with it.
I really was just trying to point out that the division between the SPD and KPD didn't start in the 30s and went back further and involved some pretty complex shit regarding World War 1 and its aftermath.
But I may have been too partizan bringing up the Freikorps: whom the SPD allied with in 1919 and some of which formed the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary organization: in 1921. Maybe that context is too inappropriate.
I wasn't trying to put words in their mouth; just saying how it sounded to me if they were upset that when they took up arms against the SDP in 1919, what came back to them was violent and unfair. There's also the issue (which is maybe why I'm so unsympathetic in general) that it's silly to still be upset in 1932 about something that happened in 1919, when the way to stay alive and keep alive a whole bunch of people who had nothing to do with either SDP or KPD, would have been for both of them to let it go and start fighting the bigger enemy.
But yeah, maybe I picked an unkind / unfair way to make the point, you're right. And like I say, we're into the detail points that I really don't know about, so I am learning also from you about all of this for the first time.
I won't launch into the end of WW1 or the civil wars and revolutions replacing monarchies and empires overnight, so I'll just give a contextual thought.
1932 and 1919 are thirteen years apart.
Donald Trump was elected eight years ago.
It isn't too crazy of a timeline, politically speaking. And for the germans their leadership was summarily executed by paramilitary groups sent by the government.
(Assuming you meant in 1919)
Yeah, but wasn't that after the KPD did an uprising and was doing battle with the SDP?
I'm genuinely asking; I'm just not familiar with it. If you want me to read up and get back to you I can do that too.
Not quite. The German communists rebelled against the German Empire in the final days of World War 1 in 1918. The SPD were apart of the revolutionaries that rebelled against the German Empire. They split apart over issues on whether to support continuing the war, etc.
So when the Kaiser dissolved the Empire in 1918 the legitimacy and boundaries of the successor state: the German Republic wasnt clear. Elections werent held until Jan 1919 and importantly the infamous peace of the Treaty of Versailles wasnt even signed until June 1919. Like in this time Poland was restablished as a country out of the defeated empires. Yugoslavia was just... made.
So a majority faction of the SPD won the elections 1919 and quickly moved to crush the communes and soviet republics that had been set up across the former empire.
The Freikorps, which were paramilitary groups mostly still loyal to the monarchy, were used by the SPD led government to suppress the communists. Those Freikorps did so, including extrajudicially murdered Luxemburg and Liebknecht, while the other prominent communists fled to Russia or elsewhere.
Which really ended up putting the influence of german communism in soviet russia's hands, especially after the bolsheviks won their revolution in 1922 and especially after Stalin came to power in 1924.
No, it didn't. Which is why I'm all-in on making sure that the NSDAP doesn't win this election.
And you think the division between the SPD and KPD in 1933 was due to... the actions in the chaotic post-war environment of 1919, despite periods of participation in a common united front before that and the fact that the KPD's final break with SPD cooperation came at the behest of the Stalinist USSR, which made demands the KPD, like most interwar Communist Parties, cheerfully danced to without question?
More precisely, "There is no disagreement that the democratic government, which included the SPD, fought the armed uprising against the democratic government, supported solely by the KPD, and won".
I am am clearly stating the political schism between the KPD and SPD from post war Germany wasn't mended by the time of the Nazis. More examples of that division worsening isn't really counter to that notion.
Ignoring the extended period of a united front breaking apart because the leader of the KPD was a Soviet puppet isn't exactly "an issue in 1919 wasn't mended 😔"
Their deaths easily left a power vacuum that was filled by soviet leaning german communists, most especially after 1922 when the civil war ended and the soviets emerged victorious. While some of the prominent german communists that werent russian soviets... were dead.
The Nazis had formed by 1920 and the S.A. formed from some Freikorps by 1921. It isn't like there was an expansive amount of time there.
Yet the period of the United Front between the KPD and SPD lasted from '23 to '28. The idea that it was an organic change because of deep-seated grudges is extremely questionable even just by the timeline, much less the details of the interactions of the 20s and early 30s.
Ebert was in power until 1925 and Stalin came to power in 1924. A 1923-1928 timeline is a little odd.
Lmao that was me again
KPD was responding to the same economic distress as the NSDAP, they were right to believe the national populist movement would continue growing if they didn't deliver on real material relief to the German people.
That the SPD eventually fell to the NSDAP (with hindenburg placing Hitler as chancellor, allowing him to assume power after his death) certainly doesn't exonerate their responsibility in allowing the rise of the nazis.
That was a banger conversation, if I wasn't on mobile I'd go back and find it.
I think I got irritated and just abandoned the conversation, but we can continue.
What you just said actually made a lot of sense and as far as I know the history, I agree with it more or less completely (and would allocate blame for Trump at most of the Bill Clinton / Nancy Pelosi type Democrats in exactly the same way for exactly the same reason)
So if it sounded like I was exonerating them I was not. My point was, once Hitler comes around it doesn't matter; if you're still running a 13% spoiler candidate to weaken the alternative to Hitler, and then blaming the ones who won the election because they didn't do a good enough job of compromising with you... I mean, you may have a case, but you'll still be dead if Hitler wins. Surely that is relevant?
They sure didn't get the real material relief to the German people by not supporting Hindenburg; definitely not until 1945 and even then it came with some caveats.
Plenty of area of agreement I think.
I just don't think the NSDAP would have been defeated even if the SPD and KPD somehow fully united (I probably have as much knowledge of the history as you do, or less). Fascism doesn't work like that, it would have just continued to boil under their thin coalition until eventually they would have to put it down forcefully. Just like I don't think beating trump in a single election will defeat the fascist movement he represents. Whoever it is that's leading the opposition has to take (likely un-democratic) action against them if they really want to put it down, and honestly I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that Biden wont cross that line.
Revolutionary movements generally don't fully resolve until the conditions that seeded them change, one way or the other. That's why it's important that whatever coalition that forms the opposition is serious about addressing them, and in my mind simply having the coalition isn't enough.