Did the "Communist threat" really enable the Nazi takeover?
- Thread starter Anarch King of Dipsodes
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Henry Manson
Banned
I don't think that the user is attempting to imply that a revanchist White Russia would necessarily be a moral good.
Agreed
I think the issue lies on how much of a justifiable evil it is for them compared to the any of the reds
Wasn't there a small sect of Orthodox Old Believers that were noted for their... habit of going around naked?
YaWasn't there a small sect of Orthodox Old Believers that were noted for their... habit of going around naked?
This is why I believe Rasputin was the only possible solution for Russia, he truly represented the will of the people
Henry Manson
Banned
As @balllightning points out correctly, I was referring to the KPD, not the Bolsheviks, by 'Communists'.
If that was what you truly meant then I apologize for misinterpreting what you said. It’s very true the KPD’s actions did help the Nazis take over….. “first Hitler, then it’s our turn”, as they said. I definitely agree the KPD is partially to blame.
Deleted member 169412
Let's not pretend that the "rebellious territories" weren't German imperialist puppets or that the German puppets in the East weren't anything other than "open naked imperialism".
Yes, Russian imperialism was a bad thing. That doesn't mean Germany conquering the "rebellious territories" and installing pro-German rulers was any better.
You may be thinking of the Doukhobors. Not "Old Believers"; more like an Orthodox version of Protestants. They are generally pacifistic, often vegetarian. Some migrated to western Canada. One subgroup became known for protesting military service while naked.Wasn't there a small sect of Orthodox Old Believers that were noted for their... habit of going around naked?
That is entirely possible... I know that a few distinct sects sprang up among the Old Believers in the post-Nikon schism, along with other sects more inspired by the Protestants (esp Baptists), so-called "Judaizers", etc....
Was probably the Doukhobors I was thinking about...
The difference is that there was not a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Germany, but the KPD did want to destroy German democracy and attempted to do so violently on multiple occasions, and pushed a line that the SPD were social fascists worse than the Nazis.
Ironically, the KPD even engaged in anti-Semitism at times during the Weimar era, accusing both the SPD and the NSDAP of being controlled by Jewish Capital.
Communists in the 1920s-1930s did not understand Fascism. Stalin went on believing Fascism was merely the last dying stage of finance capital in its croaking form. Part of this was because of their materialist method of analyzing any relations of power, and therefore they missed exactly who Fascism appealed to and where.
They also overestimated the extent to which rank and file Communists were willing or able to follow the party line, or to suppress often populist workerist beliefs that clashed with a materialist view of history and power relations. The fact is, once Communist press organs were banned under National Socialist rule and their organizations dissolved, many former Communists began supporting the government, sharing its views on foreigners and Jews and enjoying the material benefits that the KdF brought them. The NKVD reported all of this to Stalin during the 1930s and other intelligence agencies, particularly the French, kept detailed records on German public opinion and picked up this trend. The leaders in Russia and France chose not to believe this and all through 1939 and 1940, it was believed that Germany was on the verge of revolution and expressed in government linked press reports in France and Britain.
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If you hold to Marxist ideology, Germany should have been where Communism was strongest and would've been the center of world revolution. Now, I think history has thoroughly disproved said ideology, but yes domestic Marxism was obviously going to factor into NSDAP ideology because of its anti-national tendencies.
The early NSDAP, like most incipient political parties of the early 20s whether on the right or the left, had a belief in a popular socialism of sorts and talked in Marxian terms of the German proletariat, bourgeoisie, etc, while expressing absolute opposition to Marxism because of its stance on the national question. This is not going to change based off of who governs Russia.
But other Nazi beliefs, such as Lebensraum in Russia itself and foreign policy orientation, very much would have been changeable
Now, as for the Spartacists, they had developed somewhat independently of the Russian Bolsheviks but certainly saw in them an inspiration of sorts. The Spartacists however were not nearly as dependent on the army - in Russia the army was a force for revolt, not reaction, as it was the introduction to mass politics for millions of Russians. In Germany, the opposite was true, mass politics predated the war and the army was an institution with its own beliefs that inculcated its soldiers into those beliefs. By all credible accounts, Hitler for example was not a political radical of any kind before 1919. The Spartacists needed more support in the army and they didn't have it. They could have succeeded I think only with a Russian invasion, as they lacked popularity in non-industrial parts of Germany and were vulnerable to divide and conquer tactics.
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