"Our Struggle": What If Hitler Had Been a Communist?
- Thread starter The Red
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You mean New France, where all the refugees /surviving troops flee to set up a government in exile?
I know this is just the quotation and isn't the main point of the chapter, but I could not help but be immediately struck by this statement and consider it in light of what we know, and Mao did not, about China's future. Looking at 2020 China—unmistakeably "bourgeois capitalist" (indeed one of the most laissez-faire, pro-market, anti-worker states in the whole world) and unmistakeably enduring a period of bourgeois dictatorship—Mao's optimistic assertion of his own success, his triumph over Marx's laws of history, comes across as somewhere between bitterly ironic and laughable.
The chapter itself is great, as always. And I'm glad Peter is sufficiently attached to his civil-servant-ish ethos that he's wary of things like this. Germany is going to need men and women like him. A lot of people won't be like him, and I suspect that the Red Front is—as Peter's comparison to the fascist thugs implies—going to be low on scrutiny/accountability and going to take a pretty wide view of who counts as a "traitor".
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In china's context I have seen people say that they are still under a proletarian dictatorship since the state generally works for the good of the majority and executes capitalists on ocasion, but I have a really bad feeling that we, as in, the comments, are gonna have some kind of confrontaion about this, so if people feel like debating, please don't go overboard with it.
It's great to see some more updates! Interesting developments in France... I wonder if we might see fascist or fascist-esque regimes taking power in the other Allied nations? Certainly Britain seems likely, based on the earlier updates with Oswald Mosley achieving a prominent position in the British government. I wonder if the same thing will happen to America.
You wouldn't be wrong. If some outsiders term German Ideology as a 'Collective-Vanguardism' towards Communism then what Klaus is talking about is very much on the 'vanguard' end of that. It's an elaboration of Lenin's emphasis on a nucleus of professional revolutionaries in steering the transistion from Capitalism to Communism and although German Ideology puts a personal emphasis on this (the European worker generally having better material conditions in which to realise Communism than their Russian counterpart), there is naturally going to be a demand for a body whose purpose is to ensure that it's maintained. This will also apply to the implementation of German Ideology on other European countries.
Operationally speaking there will be some similarity to the Gestapo although there was too much personal empire building involved with those two for the analogy to really fit.
Algeria at this time was viewed by many in the French metropole as effectively an extension of France with the Med just being a large river. Although that didn't mean those who espoused such views necessarily believed that the Algerians, or even the Pied-Noirs, were French.
Interesting points both. On Contradiction was written in the context of the Second United Front and there probably was a certain motivation to try and justify why it wasn't such a bad thing beyond "let's at least make sure there's a China left to fight over". Of course it's taken on a broader meaning in Maoist and to a certain extent Third Worldist thought ever since it was first published during the Korean war and as such it's justified to argue whether Dengism is, to paraphrase Mao's ally in the Second United Front, a disease of the skin or a disease of the soul in relation to it.
Thanks! Although Klaus and Peter came to revolutionary thought in similar ways the lessons they've taken from their experiences will ultimately impact on how the revolution itself might unfold. Not just them naturally, but in such a scenario it's right to wonder whether there are more going to be more people like Peter than Klaus in Germany.
I always try and engage with every comment and I realise you're interested in the notion of European countries setting up redoubts in their colonies, I think it's an interesting topic as well, but this sort of thing is a bit too spoiler-heavy to really comment on.
Thanks! This was a time IOTL when many countries in the world were falling to fascist or right-wing authoritarian regimes, in Europe it was to such an extent that it's easier to list the countries which didn't. France was arguably most prominent amongst these, being more at threat than either Britain or America but both of those countries also had those elements and although the structures of their liberal democracy are more secure they aren't impervious, particularly when fascist-esque (ITTL, so far) people like Mosley are actively a part of them.
Chapter CXVII
Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she has shaken off all guidance and all reason, and she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to avoid it with all possible speed. Yet it is very true that we need a model, and that we want blueprints and examples. For many among us the European model is the most inspiring. We have therefore seen in the preceding pages to what mortifying set-backs such an imitation has led us. European achievements, European techniques and the European style ought no longer to tempt us and to throw us off our balance. When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders.
~ Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
~ Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Place du Combat, Paris; March 1934
The Spring had come late upon the city but now across the parks of the French capital the flowers were in bloom. It had been a gruelling Lent but now the Easter holiday was almost upon Paris and for the first time in a generation it was a celebration which had the wholehearted backing of the French state.
This was not only to emphasise the recent revocation of the republican laws separating church and state within French society but also an attempt to bring the French people together after the ugliness which the formation of the state had entailed. It was a time to come together under the Marechal and celebrate the glory of God as one nation, back on the righteous path at last.
If the new censures on the press and radio hadn’t ensured this message was projected loud enough the city was being branded enthusiastically with painted slogans of the Action Francaise and Cross of Fire amongst numerous other factions. Each was eager to prove their loyalty but also to put their own stamp on the regime still being crafted, tricolours could still be seen on the streets of Paris but they were now matched in number by several different monarchist and party flags. These competing enthusiasms for different images of France had not boiled into hostility so far between these disparate groups however, Pétain’s leadership had seemed to ensure that via daily radio broadcasts from his new governmental residence within the Palace of Versailles.
The public reaction to these pronouncements had been a mix of enthusiasm and resignation. Many people had been genuinely swept up in the calls to save France from internal and external enemies whilst others had seen ways to move ahead in life through support of the new regime, or simply to settle old scores. Others couldn’t get the images of bloodied, starving students and trade unionists being dragged through the streets from the last occupations towards an uncertain fate.
From the new governmental ministries, the less glamorous means of implementing a new regime were also under way in their own locations. In the unremarkable structures of the Place du Combat this took the form of the new General Commissariat for Foreign Elements, tasked with rooting out aliens undermining the state in the aftermath of the Stavisky affair and the Communist subversion being spread from Berlin and Moscow. Until recently this had been the headquarters of the French Communist Party, and those now contemplating their fate within its walls were left to wonder how many of the former occupants had escaped to either of those countries, amongst the countless other thoughts which wandered in and out of their heads. Amongst those awaiting an answer to these questions was former Sergent-Major Hachim Gueye of the Colonial Corps.
Hachim scowled, trying to take his mind off the pressing boredom. It was hard to focus on the clock in the crowded hall but he was fairly sure it wasn’t actually moving. He was certain some people had left the waiting area in the meantime but it was also definitely busier than when he had first arrived. The increasing number of people had only made the crowd more diverse. He was not alone as a Senegalese but there were also Arabs, Algerians, Morroccans, Malagasy, Guyanans and Laotians, Germans and Jews. He realised he would likely lose count if he tried to keep track of everyone but he doubted that even this new authority was really managing to do that. They were here because they were the other and thanks to that status their fate was now ambiguous.
It was a scandalous state of affairs but no-one was here to complain and even with the wait there had been little audible grumbling. These were people who wanted to prove why they deserved to be part of the new France after all, or at least to retain part of their previous dignity. When Hachim had received his own letter alerting him to report for the examination of his case it had been a struggle not to burn the piece of paper there and then but he had built a life in France and had earned the right to do so. He was resolved to make the new regime see that whether they liked it or not. And so he waited.
Many others had simply left. During or immediately after the coup it had seemed a civil war like the type which had torn through Germany four years earlier might erupt, people dreaded the violence on the streets whereas others dreaded the new regime even more. A week of sporadic electricity and no trains left a sense of things falling apart. The stories of rioters in the other banlieues being gunned down left an impression every time a crackle could be heard in the distance, or merely a car backfiring.
Hachim had long been acquainted with such sounds and struggled to sympathise with anyone flinching at the sound of faraway gunfire. He had once been similarly scared but charging into the face of German machine guns had left him numb to such sensations, even whilst some of his comrades were left with mental wounds far more severe than anything they had incurred physically. He and his fellow tirailleurs had been told they were descendants of martial races, built for combat, but they had bled and suffered just as much as anyone else in the war. That had been the result of the promises of adventure, opportunity and citizenship which had inspired him to leave the backbreaking drudgery of farm work in his homeland for the metropole.
After two years of hell the war had finally ended but that hadn’t cut short his military service, the devastated French countryside being replaced for the occupied German Rhineland. It was an environment untouched by the last four years of bloodshed even if the Germans had seemed hellbent on tearing themselves apart. Hachim had not had the same thirst for revenge against the Germans as the Frenchmen he had fought alongside but they were the enemy and now a conquered nation under occupation, if they wanted to kill each other he didn’t mind all that much and neither did his superiors seem to.
His fluency in French allowed him to develop a handle of German and he was able to glean insights as to the political chaos of the land they were occupying, which only seemed to complicate the situation further. Whilst French troops had fought and died in a new fight against communism in Russia, German communists were allowed to shelter from the German authorities under French protection.
By the time that decision had quite literally blown up in the face of his superiors Hachim had finally been discharged but without the promised citizenship. He had opted to remain in the metropole anyway, to return to Senegal would be to acknowledge a return to subservience. The promise of work in Paris had given him a life of sorts in the long hours of unsteady jobs that so many of the city’s residents had grown accustomed to. It remained a magical place all the same; Paris was a world of its own, one where drudgery did not exist. It was one he had fought for and one he intended to remain a part of.
Eventually Hachim’s name was called and he was escorted to an office where a young man asked him to sit. After confirming his name and previous rank the official parroted an explanation of the reasons for the new regime and why their sworn duty to the future of France involved looking into him. This hadn’t been the first time Hachim had ever been brought in to explain his residency to officials but it was the first time he had been explicitly told that people like him were no longer welcome. Where his record of military service had usually been enough to embarrass anyone too interested in his right to remain within France it was now his time in the Rhineland that was of interest.
Being stared down by someone in their twenties in a suit too big for them and asked as to whether he had had any communist contact whilst in Germany had made him want to laugh. Hachim had wanted to spit in the youngster’s face, to ask him if he had served in the war or if he had even been alive at the time of Verdun. But he wished to remain and as such deferentially denied anything which could be deemed disloyal. He tried to reassure the official that he wished only to serve the Empire he belonged to as loyally as he had in the past.
It was, seemingly, enough to win him a reprieve.
Hachim was finally told he could go home but might be called upon again in the future. He had missed a day of work in waiting to be told his fate remained in the balance. Then again, he thought, that would have been the case either way.
The people of France awaited the results of the constitutional convention regardless of their background but Hachim knew the players involved and to expect the worst. Today he had gained a taste of the new official attitude, people like him were inferior, fit only to be subjects, second class citizens in their own native lands rather than tolerated in the metropole.
But he existed there all the same and he would continue to.
It was the best victory he could score against them at this moment in time.
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The painting is Comedian's Handbill by Paul Klee
I’m wondering if this will lay the foundation for the popularity of Communism in North Africa and other European colonies. While there will be many racist German Communists, it isn’t necessarily a political pillar of the DAP so the Germans might treat colonial soldiers and their people with far more respect so could lead to major Communist insurgencies in French colonies.
Pretty much! Naturally it's easier if you don't have an empire to begin with but few Germans bemoan the loss of their colonies by this stage, United Front Weimar is probably the most anti-imperialist regime in Europe besides the Soviet Union.
Yeah the stated aim of the DAR will be the destruction of all imperialism even if their tone about it is more than a bit condescending. Naturally this aim takes on strategic as well as ideological parameters when it comes to dismantling or just unsettling the European empires, particularly in North Africa and the Middle East.
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The USSR, for all its flaws, did practice its anti-colonialism to...some degree.
It was commie guns that helped end colonial regimes from France to Portugal.
There is a reason why many anti-colonialist figures did look up to Soviet Russia.
On a side note I got major flashback to how the Jewish vets were treated post ww1 in Germany vibes, at first they were treated decently enough but as time went on they received more and more discrimination- if there’s ever a serious communist presence in the French North African colonies there’s probably going to be a major overreaction from the fascists against those vets
Albeit mostly for its own self-interest to one-up the USA in the Cold War and expand its influence around the globe (not like the US was much better in that regard). Though correct me if i'm wrong, the USSR largely didn't give a damn about colonialism until after Stalin's death. The USSR under Stalin saw the colonies as extensions of the West or something and not really something to really invest in undermining. Khrushchev (and his successor Brezhnev especially) was the one who really began the push beginning with the Suez Crisis and thereon?
What's funny I remember reading that when the USSR under Brezhnev opted to publically support any movements that declared themselves socialist or something, lots of groups in the 3rd world just opted to put the word "socialist" or something related to it in their name just to get that sweet sweet ruble and not really practice anything socialistic, and all it did was drain the USSR of cash.
So right now my guesses as for how the New Regime in France is going to look is basically Francoist Spain but if the Carlists and associated hadnt gotten minimized. Of course this will lead to very interesting bickering when the time comes, to say the least, with Peitan keeping things from blowing up but not having the energy to crush them down and form them into his own image, like a certain Generalissimo.
Also random observations, please forgive me if I made these before:
One thing I'm really interested in for later is how Hitler builds up a compentent officer corps for his conquests later on. Given that the OTL German Officer corps was basically a bastion for Hard Right Politics who will be purged (probably have already been purged).
Also I don't think I said this before but I really feel for the anti Communist SDP. They were in a no win situation where not teaming up with the Communists would mean their deaths due to Facist Takeover while teaming up with the Communists gave Hitler the opportunity to play Power games and isolate them from power. Really reminds me of how the Republican goverment in Spain had to operate, slowly having the Communists take more and more power due to that Soviet Support and allowing the Anarchists to run wild in Catalonia....
Also random observations, please forgive me if I made these before:
One thing I'm really interested in for later is how Hitler builds up a compentent officer corps for his conquests later on. Given that the OTL German Officer corps was basically a bastion for Hard Right Politics who will be purged (probably have already been purged).
Also I don't think I said this before but I really feel for the anti Communist SDP. They were in a no win situation where not teaming up with the Communists would mean their deaths due to Facist Takeover while teaming up with the Communists gave Hitler the opportunity to play Power games and isolate them from power. Really reminds me of how the Republican goverment in Spain had to operate, slowly having the Communists take more and more power due to that Soviet Support and allowing the Anarchists to run wild in Catalonia....
Maybe without Nazi Germany as the big boogeyman, the great purge is averted or with out the general paranoia among communist cadres it is much smaller.
Err, I don't really see that. The Great purge was because of Stalin's fears of a internal overthrow, pecificly by other socialists who disagreed with him and Military "Bonapartists", and (correct me if I'm wrong on this by the way), the usual players accused of espionage were the British and French. I don't think Commie Hitler changes anything here, if anything, his presentation of another form of Socialism may even intensify it.
I just think that an overthrow of Stalin can't happen without a large external factor. In OTL the great purge happened because they feared that once Nazi Germany kicks in the door the "disloyal" elements would use the chaos for a coup. Or that is my understanding of the situation atleast.
Without a big threat right next door and instead on the other side of europe, meaning they would first have to fight their way through germany to get to the USSR, and german-soviet relations ultimately being patched up, as we have seen from the teaser with Hitler and Stalin at the October Revolution parade, Stalins position is secure in the sense that the rank and file perceive his policies and actions as correct, meaning that it would be hard to find the necessary support for a coup.
Tell that to Stalin. The man was a living bundle of Paranoia and vindictiveness. I'm still fairly sure that the man will go Purging out to Just make extra sure... And that patch up happens in the 40s if I remember correctly. Plenty of time to do damage
Anyways some more observations:
In Spain, both sides have seen their worst fears come true, In Germany (Leftwing Social democracts opening the doors to Communist Takeover) in France (Rightwing Military Reactionaries sweeping Liberal Democracy away). Of course, the Rightists may indeed be emboldened by Peitan and Co. and move earlier. However, CEDA is still in power (Unless Butterflies changed that) and they may not see the need...boy this is going to be fun.
When this is all over France is going to have alot of recriminations and scores to go around... The Right will be stained with Peitan and the Dictatorship, while the Left is going to be tainted by collaboration with the Communist Occupation once it comes into power. Seeing how that shakes out in the post war/Post Commie era is going to be fascinating and sad...