"Our Struggle": What If Hitler Had Been a Communist?
- Thread starter The Red
- Start date
Deleted member 92121
I was thinking about him, but this Robert fellow seems to be to young. And the biggest problem is, Lafollete was a hardline anti-war politician. This guys seems much more moderate on the whole affair.
Deleted member 92121
I was wandering, will you jump ahead in time now that Hitler's commitment to revolution has been stablished or will we continue to see his progress through the 1920s?
To be honest it's something I've thought about but I haven't quite come to a decision yet. Hitler's commitment to the revolution has been stabilised but he's some way away from taking control of the KPD. After that things might speed up for a short while but there might be more developments that need to be covered than I'm presently aware of.
Sorry for the quiet recently guys, I've spent a few days across the sea which has meant I haven't had a huge amount of time to write. All the same, I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who nominated and voted for this TL in the Turtledoves! It's a great honour to win out of the excellent competition that was on offer and a huge boost to my eg, sorry, self-confidence. There's no 'I' in Our Struggle and the contributions and wit of this TL's readership have been incredibly important in its direction, for that I'm so grateful to you all and hope you're all looking forward to the next chapter.
\o/
I hope the memes I posted helped turn the tide at least a bit.
Even though we were winning since the start... You know, don't think about it. Just believe in it.
I eagerly await the next chapter.
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Chapter XXIV
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”
~Georgi Plekhanov
~Georgi Plekhanov
By the summer of 1919 the new Weimar coalition had seemingly returned stability to Germany, the Spartacists and the Bavarian Soviet had bene crushed whilst the workers’ councils were rapidly diminishing in strength and in vision. Despite the liberalism of the new republic, the old conservative attitudes had remained entrenched and were rapidly returning to the mainstream.
Industrialists reasserted themselves as the dominant actors in the economy, quickly acting to “resolve” what had been characterised as economic hindrance on the back of expanded worker’s rights and a far larger workforce of women who did not want to give up their jobs after the war nor the expanded social freedoms that their roles had provided. Wages gradually decreased in value, and whilst the eight hour week had been ensured alongside union recognition, the bosses and foremen often appeared to be as overbearing as ever. The wartime shifts were gone but conditions seemed little better as Germany returned to peace.
The return of stability and an uptick in the economy caused by the sudden growth in exports had made it relatively easy for men to find employment, temporarily the cracks in German society created by class conflict were temporarily plastered over. Nonetheless there was plenty of resentment aimed at the Weimar coalition from a different angle.
The growth in German exports had been brought about due to both the weakness of the German currency and the lifting of the British blockade, both of these events were good for the German economy but they were nonetheless the consequences of defeat. These temporary improvements in Summer of 1919 will forever be overshadowed by the Treaty of Versailles, which amongst other punitive measures delivered by the victorious Entente, doomed the republic and ensured that the alliance with the established and more radical elements of the German right would soon come to an end.
The harsh terms of defeat were almost universally despised by virtually every facet of German society but someone had to implement them and in doing so the Weimar yoked themselves and republic to the despised treaty. Whilst both the far-left and far-right would eventually use this to their advantage in their own way the Communists were far too busy in attempting to rebuild their movement to attempt any immediate uprising in the wake of the hated treaty. This did not apply to those on the far-right, and their Freikorps legions.
The Communists argued that the Versailles Diktat was tantamount to the subjugation of the German working class, a bid to turn Germany into another colony of Britain and France. On this point the far-right agreed with them but with a very different analysis of the situation. These men saw both the social democrats and the communists as part of the same problem and via a variety of conspiracy theories and old grievances they were blamed for German defeat, for the treaty, and for almost every other problem afflicting German society.
Having been instrumental in crushing a revolution, these men were confident that they could successfully start one of their own.
Bridging the Horseshoe, David Irons
---
The morning always began early in the waning days of August, the sun hadn’t yet risen but Gerda was already aware of the smells and sounds that beckoned its arrival. Many people saw this as a far more preferable way of waking themselves up instead of a pounding alarm but Gerda had barely slept at all. The sensation was pleasant all the same, a welcome distraction from the complicated future she would have to face, her tangled thoughts were only exacerbating the hangover.
The cabaret was one of more established art forms in Berlin by the end of the war, though for many of the audience it continued to have the charm of an innocent indiscretion. Cristina and Gerda had been spellbound when they had first started working in Essen, despite the far lower quality of show you could see in the city, now they liked to think of themselves as regulars. They would forever resist the title ‘new women’ as a bourgeois construction but beyond the rhetoric they would have come across to most as the dictionary definition. She had gone with someone else last night and now she was in an unfamiliar bed, an unspoken evil in her rural past.
Gerda slumped out of bed to stare out at the steadily brightening sky and the city below. She was in the suburbs of Berlin, far enough that there was still more forestry than houses. She wondered how long that would remain the case, for even in the wake of a lost war and a failed revolution the city was already healing and expanding.
Like the city, Gerda couldn’t believe how quickly events in her life seemed to be travelling by. This time last year she had been an apolitical farm girl working overtime in a munitions to ensure the victory of the German Empire, and now, after risking her life in partaking in an attempted revolution, she was devoting all of her spare time to rebuilding the KPD in the wake of the defeats in Berlin and Munich, trying to get her word in whenever possible.
Despite its official rhetoric it had become apparent the KPD had emerged as a rather masculine organisation in the wake of Rosa Luxemburg’s murder. Paul Levi, one of the few prominent survivors of the massacre in Berlin. Unlike those who had proceeded him he seemed far more interested in making the Communists resemble a more radical version of the Social Democrats, to steal the clothing of the USPD. The rhetoric remained largely similar, but a party that was preparing to fight elections had need of a hierarchical structure and hierarchy in practice usually featured very few women
The ongoing civil war in Russia seemed to dominate attention, and despite there having been some mixed feelings about Lenin it seemed there was a universal recognition that he was the only revolutionary who seemed to be enjoying any sort of success. In addition to their own failures, the revolutions in Austria and Hungary had petered, whilst stories of industrial trouble in Britain and France were uninspiring. There seemed to be a larger outbreak of violence in Ireland but Gerda had learned to understand that was nothing new and ideologically vague. Ireland had not been the quandary in the vast amount of literature she had been trying to devour as much as possible of in every free moment. There was universal favour for the ideas of those who had been martyred in Berlin but their deaths had led many to look east. She had read Marx’s views on Russia as being too underdeveloped to facilitate a revolution, now it turned out that even he was being contradicted by reality. She had needed a drink.
Berlin was far calmer than it had been, at least in the sense that there were no longer any armed bands shooting down Spartacists in the street. In the bars and cafes you still had to watch what you were saying. This went not just for people with right-wing sympathies but between Social Democrats and Communists as well.
This truth was almost universally apparent, and Ernst Muller was certainly aware of it. His time spent on the balcony, daydreaming about the bright future that would be provided by a democratic and socialist Germany only to see revolution break out on the streets below, had made him rather wary of hubris when there could be communists around. He feared that someone might have seen him and recognised him as Scheidemann’s secretary. This was paranoia on his part, perhaps mixed with some element of grandeur, He was not a particularly arrogant man but he nonetheless felt that he had a role in the future of the new republic and that this was a threat to his personal safety. It was a mantra that had called upon him to remain sharp, but it had been a particularly busy day at the office, and he needed a drink as well.
There were always plenty of staff available at the bar, and even on busy nights it was fairly easy to get served despite the line at the bar often descending into a scrum. Both Ernst and Gerda found themselves amongst this group of quickly expanding and departing patrons, similar to a shoal of fish if the beer on offer could be replaced with water. Despite for all his dedication to staying sharp on the chance of getting knocked on the back of the head by a vengeful communist, Ernst had managed to drop his wallet whilst trying to slam it down on the bar.
Gerda had been the one to pick it up amongst the scrum, and a mutual attraction had quickly arose out of her initial disdain. She had felt an inherent need to sneer at the way Ernst had flailed around on the floor trying to reclaim his lost property, typical bourgeois behaviour, yet the state of his suit and overall anxious manner made him appear as if he had all the world’s problems on his shoulders and had been trying to fix them. Overall there was an intense sense of joy in his eyes when she had handed him the wallet, a natural capitalist response at having money returned that they thought they had lost, but it seemed to go beyond that.
They had talked, they had laughed, they had danced, and oddly enough politics never came up at all. To Ernst, Gerda was a factory worker, and to Gerda, Ernst was simply a civil servant. Had Gerda been wearing a hammer and sickle on the lapel of her jacket, or even if Phillip Scheidemann’s card fallen out of Ernst’s wallet, there likely would have been a few awkward moments before both went their separate ways, but both had found themselves momentarily worn out and as such a connection was made long before politics could interfere.
Both Ernst and Gerda had found that they enjoyed each other’s company a great deal, probably a great deal more than they actually would have. Times of great stress had a way of doing that to people, alongside bringing up other urges as a way of relieving said anxiety. Alcohol was one of these, though in the company of others that could often exacerbate matters into creating certain feelings that might not have been there otherwise, or in bringing feelings that would have otherwise been concealed to the fore.
Gerda was aware that whatever demons had possessed her where out of her system, the same seemed to apply for Ernst, who would have appeared to be completely dead if it wasn’t for his light snoring. It hadn’t been something she had done before and afterwards she had been entirely unable to get any sleep, such was the confused mix of elation and misery within her. All Gerda knew was that the trains would be running soon, she would go back to Christina and they would see if there was any party work to be done.
She snuck out of the flat into the beginning of the new day, entirely unaware of the new life that she and the President’s secretary had created.
---
Plekhanov is one of the lesser known fathers of Russian Socialism, Husker Du less so but I felt as if they had thematic resonance.
Skeletor 1917
Banned
Hmm very interesting TL
But for communist mkvment in Germany ,it's far more realistic to get some elements of nationalism
National Bolshevism so to speak
But for communist mkvment in Germany ,it's far more realistic to get some elements of nationalism
National Bolshevism so to speak
This is really interesting. I haven't had the chance to read the whole thing yet, but I was wondering how you plan to handle a Communist revolution in an already advanced capitalist society? Although Germany very much fits the bill for such a society, fertile ground for a classically Marxian revolution, it's rather unknown territory historically, as all OTL communist states were largely agrarian, with little to no preexisting industrial infrastructure of which to speak. A far cry from the pictures of bustling industrial modernity that were the Ruhr and Silesia.
Fine by me, I like Putsch. Great source of fiber... no wait, that's Post Toasties. Anywho, good update, and if I read that last line correctly should we expect a boy or a girl?
