Mike Davis on chilling lessons
1933 Warnings from history by Paul Flewers (Ed.) published by Merlin Press
Does history repeat itself? This book provides some vital clues to avoiding the trajectory of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, which saw the cataclysmic rise and triumph of the German National Socialist Party and the Third Reich. With the ascent of Trump 2 alongside a tyrannical Putin in Russia and a growing number of ultra-right ethno-nationalists in Hungary, Turkey, Austria, the Netherlands and beyond, the world looks a darker place than at any time since the Second World War.
Flewers explains in his introduction how the failure of the German revolution 1919-1923, crippling war reparations, unemployment and immiseration sowed the seeds for the rise of Nazism. Most significant was the political division of the most powerful working class in the world.
It is this story, reproduced in the writings of dissident socialists Peter and Irma Petroff, that forms the heart of the book. It is a sobering and depressing indictment of the progressive forces of the time, namely the Social Democratic (SDP) and Communist parties (KPD).
First published by the Woolf’s publishing house in 1934 the Daily Worker (CPGB) denounced the book while remaining silent in respect of the Petroffs’ revealing comments on the subordination of the German CP to Soviet diplomatic requirements and its repeated adaptation to German nationalism, most notoriously in 1931 when the party joined the Nazis in calling for a referendum to oust the social democrat government in Prussia. The Independent Labour Party’s Labour Leader gave an enthusiastic review.
In his introduction Flewers reminds us that on the eve of Hitler’s victory, the SPD alone produced almost 200 daily newspapers, eighteen weeklies and one monthly theoretical journal. Its allied trade union movement produced a similarly wide range of publications. The Communist Party (KPD), with 350,000 members – a third of the Social Democrats, at its height commanded a trade union organisation of 320,000 members. And yet the Nazis came to power.
The Petroff’s piece titled ‘The Secret of Hitler’s Victory’ identifies the fundamental problem as the disunity of the German left, allowing Hitler to stir up the discontent of the masses, ‘put them against the state and build a praetorian guard for its overthrow.’
To keep the Weimar coalitions alive during the 1920s and early 30s, social democrats made concession after concession while undertaking a systematic piecemeal destruction of the social and political achievements of the labour movement. The eight-hour day was sacrificed, the social welfare services were depleted, various benefits were cut down, and wages reduced. While the rich got off lightly, the workers paid. The result: the party got the blame for all the ills of the people, while Hitler promised everything to everybody.
The Petroffs remind us that the progressive achievements of social democracy in its early years—the social state, cultural freedoms, universal franchise, liberty, free speech, meetings, demonstrations, free press, political asylum were all being undone…like Penelope pulling to pieces what had been woven during the day. While the police were strictly republican, the Reichswehr were staunchly monarchist. After the defeated Nazi rising in Munich 1923 the government took no effective steps against the armed counter-revolutionary groups. Gradually, all government was by decree.
The Petroffs paint a bleak picture of the stagnation of the labour movement organisations: staged meetings, violence, lack of open discussion, flag waving, and stereotyped special official nominees of the party led to more power to bureaucrats. This helped discredit democratic parliamentarianism and prepare the soil for fascism.
They write of a ‘barren barrack-like collectivism, a product of WW1 conditions and a contempt for human rights’. Ideals that had inspired the working class movement before WW1 meant nothing to the new generation. Immorality and lack of true comradeship and class solidarity was broken through the growing enmity of the social democrats and communists.
Social democracy’s minimum-maximum programme left the capitalist state intact, while in contrast, the communists idealised violence and the dictatorship of the party, with leaders chosen by the Comintern.
The Petroffs themselves worked for the revolution in Russia after 1917, then moved to the Soviet embassy in Germany from 1921 until 1925. They stayed until Hitler’s triumph, managing to get to the UK in 1933.
While the communists kept alive the idea of revolution, surrendered by the social democrats, they belatedly took up the struggle against Nazis. Social democrat class collaboration led to a huge bureaucratic machine, based on favours and cronyism. Trade unions were neutered through a conciliation and arbitration system designed to prevent strikes, with no trace left of the old militant socialist spirit, argue the Petroffs. One trade union leader said the role of the SDP was to play doctor to cure sick capitalism.
A united front between the workers’ parties could have stopped the Nazis. The Comintern’s adoption of the Third Period, denouncing social democrats as ‘social fascists’ deepened the divisions. No effective left party emerged. No general strike was called. Street fighting, attacks and murders by Nazi ‘Brown gangs’ free to wear uniforms mounted throughout the early 1930s. Social democrats failed to arm their defensive organisation, the Reichsbanner. The Petroffs detail the power struggles in the Reichstag and the Prussian state, culminating in the ultra-conservative Von Papen persuading the ageing Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor in January 1933. The repression and murderous Nazi regime leading to world war and the Holocaust followed.
Flewers includes an essay by Hyppolyte Etchebehere, an Argentinian revolutionary socialist who provides a chilling diary of the unfolding events in Germany and three contemporary articles by syndicalists on the stifling of the German labour movement. This book’s relevance today needs no underlining.