AHC: A Communist Revolution in Nazi Germany

[the Imperium of Canada]

Challenge here is with a POD of whatever you want, have a successful communist revolution in what was arguably the most violently anti-communist state that has ever existed, Nazi Germany.

How could such an event happen?

 

[Aloha]

Göring and Hitler get killed in Beer Hall Putsch and the Reichstag fire doesn't happen, taking more time for the Nazis to get into power and resulting in the crackdown on the Communists in real life not being implemented as harsh as OTL, and in the very worst scenario Nazi Germany falls into insolvency without Göring to raise the funds for the party from the industrialists and bankers. Add in France either winning the Battle of France or at least performing better than in OTL, and we could see people deciding to resist against the government.

 

[CHKeeley]

I think the NSDAP had managed to form a strong enough anti-communist base among various industrialists, large swathes of the German middle class, the military and traditional Junker elite (to an extent anyway), and sections of the working class that an outright Communist revolution post-1933 is very difficult to do. To do it, you'd need the Nazi social/economic system to crash in on itself badly, but the problem there is that then the more traditional centers of power in German society will step in to salvage the system as is rather than sit by and let it collapse to a point where a workers revolution is remotely feasible. A German Wehrstaat is the likely outcome of such a collapse rather than a DDR.

 

[TxAggie]

I can't think of how to put the pieces together right now, but an intact leftist SA with a couple million men could give a potential communist revolution a lot of horsepower.

 

[Rich Mullins]

Ernst Rohm catches wind of the Night of the Long Knives. Having nowhere else to turn, he reaches out to the Communists. They agree to support him. He launches a preemptive putsch that turns into a full blown revolution. Due to these events, Rohm embraces a form of Marxism/Leninism though with his own distinct spin on it.

 

[Intergallactic]

Ernst Rohm catches wind of the Night of the Long Knives. Having nowhere else to turn, he reaches out to the Communists. They agree to support him. He launches a preemptive putsch that turns into a full blown revolution. Due to these events, Rohm embraces a form of Marxism/Leninism though with his own distinct spin on it.

NazBol Rohm

 

[Deleted member 94680]

Ernst Rohm catches wind of the Night of the Long Knives. Having nowhere else to turn, he reaches out to the Communists. ...

This is conceivable. Probably the best chance of communist action post ‘33

 

[David T]

Ernst Rohm catches wind of the Night of the Long Knives. Having nowhere else to turn, he reaches out to the Communists. They agree to support him. He launches a preemptive putsch that turns into a full blown revolution. Due to these events, Rohm embraces a form of Marxism/Leninism though with his own distinct spin on it.

He "reaches out" to the Communists? The KPD underground was vey weak and scattered by 1934. Gestapo repression had done its work.

 

[CHKeeley]

Ernst Rohm catches wind of the Night of the Long Knives. Having nowhere else to turn, he reaches out to the Communists. They agree to support him. He launches a preemptive putsch that turns into a full blown revolution. Due to these events, Rohm embraces a form of Marxism/Leninism though with his own distinct spin on it.

As I pointed out a bit earlier in the thread, the virulent anti-communism of a large swathes of the German classes and the pretty destroyed nature of the KPD by 1934 means he'll only be "reaching out" to only small and scattered groups of Communists, likely in Thuringia. Other than that, they aren't gonna provide much help and will probably be spectacularly bad optics for SA putschists as now all the Nazi propaganda leveled against "Judeo-Bolshevism" can be used directly as a broadside against them. Can't see this really happening given the situation. Plus, for all the socialistic influence on "The Second Revolution" and other rhetoric of the SA prior to Kolibri, I don't think Röhm will be eager to embrace any form of Marxism given that the entire laurels of the SA rested on fighting communist organizations in the street and winning away the support of the industrial proletariat from communist organizations. The SA was as anti-communist as they come, and the communists hated the SA..

 

[Nyvis]

Rohm would never do that, I don't know what you're on. He may have made a few populist noises, but he shared Nazi positions on communism. And what little remained of the KPD fighting strength would just tell him to go die in a ditch anyway.

Honestly your best bet is much later: slow breakdown of Germany in a grinding eastern front, maybe without the allies in the west hastening its collapse, and the communists leading the uprising to finish it from the inside once its focus on the front means it loses the ability to enforce order at home?

 

[Saci]

There isn't enough communists to start much less to finish anything in the middle of an existential war with the Soviet Union. Even when the front utterly collapsed Germany managed to keep order at home, more or less. If they are holding the front, not matter the costs, they'll be able to maintain order at home.

Probably, you can make Hitler really offend the military in 1933-1934 that he is ousted by a coup and during the military government they do something that really offend large sections of the german population to a point where a communist revolution is a probability. But even then, that's very difficult.

 

[saluto]

Hindenburg dies after Hitler is elected but before the Enabling Act, resulting in a power struggle within the German government that culminates in an abortive coup by elements of the Reichswehr that fails to take out Hitler or secure most of the country. Instead chaotic fighting breaks out in which a social revolution takes place, with workers seizing control of factories and traditionally left-leaning neighbourhoods.

The problem is making this revolution succeed, but I don’t think it’s asb.

 

[Fries]

I wonder, can something be done with Strasser? Say, an alliance between Strasserists, Communists, and other anti-Hitler groups leads to a unified rebellion?

 

[HelloThere]

For some reason the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact does not come about. Nevertheless, Germany attacks Poland in September 1939 and wins with heavy losses. When Hitler urges the generals to attack France in the spring of 1940 they say no, first with words, then with bullets.

Hermann Göring becomes the new Führer. Göring, a man who likes to eat a lot and doesn't want to die in a bunker, leaves it to the territorial gains from the German-Polish war and uses the time as a leader to amass wealth for himself and his cronies. The Nazi regime is increasingly becoming a open kleptocracy.

Meanwhile, the underground KPD and the underground / exile SPD sign a pact on orders from Moscow and stir up hatred in the population against the "band of robbers" around Göring. While the economic situation in Germany continues to deteriorate and social inequality continues to grow, the increasingly withdrawn morphine addict Göring does not notice what is brewing.

One day the barrel overflows: Workers start a strike that sweeps across the country like a wildfire. Revolutionary masses march on the Reich Chancellery. Goering is hung upside down.