Henry Manson
Banned
I never passed judgement on the personalities of the Bolsheviks themselves.
I was merely speculating on the chain of events that could have lead from the total White defeat of the Reds during the RCW to a better tomorrow.
Did the "Communist threat" really enable the Nazi takeover?
- Thread starter Anarch King of Dipsodes
- Start date
I was merely speculating on the chain of events that could have lead from the total White defeat of the Reds during the RCW to a better tomorrow.
The Nazis feared "judeo-bolshevism", specifically because they believed the bolshevik revolution had been some dastardly jewish plot. In their worldview, the jews were higher in the pecking order than the communists, and thus the biggest threat.
Henry Manson
Banned
Yet they wouldn't have gained power without the thread of Communism getting spread around by the Soviet Union.
Hitler can believe all sorts of things ITTL. It only really matters if he gains power, which he is certainly not going to in this scenario.
at the very least I don't think they'd be the Nazis of OTL. Seriously, no revolution likely means most of Aufbau Vereinigung stays in Russia. AV was a huge influence and source of personnel and funding for the early Nazis. Remove them from the equation and the Nazis likely develop differently, or maybe even die in the crib. In either case, coming to power as per OTL seems unlikely.
He might, fear of the Soviet Union specifically was not the sole nor the most important factor in the rise of the NSDAP. I would argue it wasn't even an important factor at all. A bunch of local issues would have weighted a lot more, including but not limited to revanchist sentiments against the west, the dolchstoßlegende in which they specifically blamed Jews and Socialdemocrats, and perhaps most important of all, economic woes, etc.
For example in the mid-20s before the Great Depression, things were actually looking up for the German republic. The NSDAP seemed to have lost its chance at power forever, having obtained less than 3% of the vote in the 1928 elections. During this period, German-Soviet relations were actually pretty good, too.
And as I mentioned, the USPD-SPD split happened before the October Revolution, anyway. So there would still be communists in Germany in a scenario in which the Octber Revolution never happened. In fact, had the October Revolution never happened, the USPD/KDP might be stronger, and they did get more than 10% of the votes in the 1928 election.
The truth of the matter is that fascists and far-rightists have always used the supposed threat of trade-unionists, socialdemocrats, socialists, and communists to polarize and galvanize societies, which they then take advantage of to appeal to national pride, etc. That does not mean that these groups are to blame whenever through history a fascist regime has emerged, the fascists themselves are to blame, and perhaps the societies which made their ascent possible in the first place too.
Henry Manson
Banned
The KPD would never have gotten as strong as it did historically without funding and institutional/structural assistance from the Soviet Union.
Henry Manson
Banned
So, yes, the communists and their associated far-leftist apologist acts themselves bear a significant proportion of the blame for the emergence of the Nazi Party in the first place.
By that logic you can blame the USA for the being responsible for the rise of the Nazis by helping win WWI. You can blame western capitalism for creating the Great Depression that collapsed the German economy. Hell, I can blame Ghengis Khan and Alexander the Great by your reasoning. Pointing towards the Reds winning the civil war specifically is pointless, the rise of nazism was the result of many factors, not simply because the USSR or other ideologies existed.
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Henry Manson
Banned
Well, the US tried to save the Weimar Republic, not destroy it as the Communists were fanatically intent on doing.
It fails to explain why there wasn't consolidation behind the DNVP, an expressly more anti-Communist organization. The NSDAP hated Marxism because it was anti-nationalist and Jewish and Bolshevism because they believed it to be Jewish and Slavic. The DNVP believed this, but they also opposed ideologically every idea Marxism had on the social question.
As far as the socialists were concerned they thought they were saving germany too by ending the Republic. So did the Nazis. Saying those ideologies are responsible because they existed ignores how cause and effect in the study of history works. It appears that you're kinda trying to narrow the blame on these groups, but many different factors allowed the Nazis to come to power. I'm not saying that they weren't a factor, they absolutely were, but I question the idea that they can be "blamed". Both ideologies arose from the crappy post war situation. The Jews simply existing, by your logic, are responsible for the Nazis coming to power if you narrow the lens in that manner. If they weren't in Germany, the Nazis might not have had a platform, but can you really blame them for the Nazis coming to power? Hindsight is 20/20, and looking back we can examine what factors created Nazi Germany now generally, but none of that was the result of a single thing, it was many things at once, some related, others not. Nothing in history happens in a vacuum.
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Henry Manson
Banned
The KPD and the NSDAP were both intent on the destruction of the democratic system in Germany.
The SPD and initially the Zentrum were the only major political parties that wanted the republican system to continue.
If you are even confusing what the different leftist groups within Germany at the time are standing for, maybe you should educate yourself again.
You just did it again.
The Communists are not morally to blame for Hitler's actions.
Henry Manson
Banned
Yes of course they are.
Had the Communists allied with the SPD/USPD during 1929-1933, Hitler would never have been able to gain power in the first place.
Thank you very much, KPD.
And if the SPD hadn't used the Freikorps to crush the Spartacists, there wouldn't be such enmity between the two groups, and so on and so forth until the beginning of time. The fact that you personally choose to place responsibility on the KPD and the Bolsheviks for the Nazis' rise to power doesn't affect the actual topic of discussion here.
Yup they stood for ending the Republic, I'm well aware of their ideologies and I have a degree in this topic (for what that turned out to be worth lol) My point is you can't blame one thing or group, the Nazis were the convergence of numerous factors of the time including the rise of radical socialism in Germany. I'd advise leaving accusations of a lack of education at the door, it makes your arguments look personal, and this discussion is most definitely not.
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It's a complex subject and an interesting one to discuss for political historians let alone counterfactual historians.
In truth, Bolshevism was a useful recruiting sergeant not just for authoritarian parties but for democratic ones too. The Conservative Party in the UK dominated the inter war period using ploys such as the Zinoviev Letter to taint Labour with Communism - indeed, the undercurrent of that continued well into the 1980s.
For parties of the centre-left, Bolshevism was a real problem as it enabled their opponents to attach aspects of their programme to the frightening prospect of a Communist Revolution. Economic changes such as worker participation became tainted with the notion of worker control and were therefore resisted not just by big business but also by smaller artisans who feared the scourge of collectivisation.
I'd theorise that had there been no Communist Revolution, you'd have seen centre-left or socialist politics in the ascendancy across Europe in the 1920s so you could argue Bolshevism helped the democratic centre-right stay politically relevant in the more mature democracies but in those states with less of a democratic tradition, it empowered more radical nationalist and traditionalist political sentiments.
Another key aspect is the radicalisation of popular opinion through mass media - newspapers, often owned by wealthy individuals who saw Communism as an existential threat to their power (which it was), used the papers to preach a consistently anti-Communist message.
Final thought - in the more mature economies, the aspiration of the working classes wasn't to become revolutionary but to become the petit bourgeois (home ownership, perhaps a car) and this was directly challenged by Communism.
In truth, Bolshevism was a useful recruiting sergeant not just for authoritarian parties but for democratic ones too. The Conservative Party in the UK dominated the inter war period using ploys such as the Zinoviev Letter to taint Labour with Communism - indeed, the undercurrent of that continued well into the 1980s.
For parties of the centre-left, Bolshevism was a real problem as it enabled their opponents to attach aspects of their programme to the frightening prospect of a Communist Revolution. Economic changes such as worker participation became tainted with the notion of worker control and were therefore resisted not just by big business but also by smaller artisans who feared the scourge of collectivisation.
I'd theorise that had there been no Communist Revolution, you'd have seen centre-left or socialist politics in the ascendancy across Europe in the 1920s so you could argue Bolshevism helped the democratic centre-right stay politically relevant in the more mature democracies but in those states with less of a democratic tradition, it empowered more radical nationalist and traditionalist political sentiments.
Another key aspect is the radicalisation of popular opinion through mass media - newspapers, often owned by wealthy individuals who saw Communism as an existential threat to their power (which it was), used the papers to preach a consistently anti-Communist message.
Final thought - in the more mature economies, the aspiration of the working classes wasn't to become revolutionary but to become the petit bourgeois (home ownership, perhaps a car) and this was directly challenged by Communism.
Then so are the Jews in Germany, had they not been there as a group, the nazis can't push some grand communist Jewish conspiracy. So thank you Jews? I'm not saying you blame them, I'm saying by that logic, they are to blame by simply existing. Radical socialism was a factor, we both agree on that, but I challenge the idea that it was the sole cause. History is about examining all factors that cause an event, the more factors you consider, the better the picture you can create, and ultimately, learn from.
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