It was definitely not communism, but it was pro-labour. The SA defended strikers in multiple occasions.
You don't have to be communist to be anti-capitalist.
"Our Struggle": What If Hitler Had Been a Communist?
- Thread starter The Red
- Start date
It was definitely not communism, but it was pro-labour. The SA defended strikers in multiple occasions.
You don't have to be communist to be anti-capitalist.
Germans going straight from the Second Reich to becoming the Red bastion is a favorite daydream of mine, but I don't think it works as serious AH, because the Entente forces are right there with their commanders having no intention of seeing Germany go Red, any more than the defeated forces of Napoleon III would tolerate the Paris Commune. If the Germans look to be in danger of going Communist the Entente forces are going to get involved somehow.
Now it would be nice maybe to imagine the outcome of that is to spread the Red virus among the Allied troops too and suddenly a red flag is flying from the Eiffel Tower and behold a somewhat grudging but effective Franco-German Red Combine with Britain in the throes of civil war, the Americans scarpering off as the same thing is on the verge of happening there too, and unsure whether returning troops from Europe will help calm things or just fuel the flames. This is of course the classic Leninist hope of the period, that the imperialist war has ripened the working classes for the great proletarian uprising at long last.
But Marxist revolutionary paradigms assume that certain forms of development have to be in place, and while it was easy to imagine at the time of the endgame of the Great War that things were close enough and the Revolution was at hand, in retrospect we can see they clearly were not. Germany was not ready to go Red, France was not ready, Britain was not ready, the USA was not ready. The working class has to be both alienated and capable of solidarity. The upper classes meanwhile have to be hollowed out and collapsed into a tiny sector of the population dependent on the loyalty of millions of retainers who have come to know, at least dimly, that they too are proletarian and have nothing to lose but their chains. The process that brings this state of affairs about is the development of capital itself, transforming the whole world into one tightly centralized, organized profit making machine in which the vast majority of humanity serves as and are treated as interchangeable and disposable parts while a handful of families play chess with them. To the sensibilities of people shocked by the novelty and violence of the emerging age a century ago, it looked like humanity had gone quite far enough down that road and both those who feared and those who hoped for the great Revolution would perceive little room left for further development. But a subsequent century has shown us how far we are from the Marxist critical tipping point; maybe we approach it now, maybe not yet. Maybe it won't be human beings that form the revolutionary proletariat but abused artificial intelligences instead.
I admire much about Marx but have to come to think that as a politician, ironically enough, he had a tin ear and was ham-handed. The whole premise of the great revolution may be expecting human beings to behave as they never will in real life.
Anyway, the time was not yet ripe in 1918 for immediately successful Communist revolution in Germany, and not in Europe on a wider scale, so if by some improbable feat of volunteerist forcing the Red Flag is hoisted and kept flying over Berlin, the Entente forces will come swarming in, to ally with every right wing form of resistance they can to come tear it down.
Deleted member 92121
I had totally forgotten Strasser, and I agree that Rohms rethoric was much more anti-elite than socialist in nature. Still, his relationship with Hitler was a very personnal one, and I seriously doubt that Rohm would've accepted a position subordinate to Strasser. He would've, at a minimum, demanded joint leadership of the Party, using his SA as leverage.
This thread has just gone full circle. A LONG while ago, in the early pages, there was a big discussion involving just this, the probability of a Entente interference in a german socialist revolution in 1918. I agreed with most of your points back then but now my view has changed somewhat.
Anyway, funny recurrence.
Oh, for sure. Plenty of opportunities for fracture and backbiting. According to what I read, Strasser was not on good terms with Rohm either and both regarded each other as rivals. Aside from struggle for influence, there'd also be institutional reasons for that: Röhm was in charge of the SA, whereas Strasser headed the Political Organisation of the Party.
The relationship between the SA and the PO was always bad. One of the reasons for the SA's radical rhetoric about a 'Second Revolution' after the 'seizure of power' was that they felt the 'gold pheasants' and 'bureaucrats' were reaping all the rewards of the SA's struggle against the 'Weimar System', while the common SA man did not get 'his due'. Of course, by then Strasser was out of the game in OTL, but the bad blood between both groups would have been something he'd have to deal with if he ended up in the driver's seat.
I also don't think Strasser would have possessed the same unquestioned authority as Hitler. Hitler's all or nothing strategy threatened to end in, well, nothing, but also ensured he would have absolute power. He tied the movement to his person and its propaganda revolved around him. Strasser was a very prominent, respected figure, but Nazism was always more Hitlerism than anything else. I'd honestly say there's a very good chance the Party fractures. Of course, by then Germany is already on the way to some form of dictatorial right-wing régime.
Deleted member 14881
Perhaps a German version of the National Legionary State with the SA against everyone else in Germany would happen?
I can't really see how a fascist Stalin would work to be honest, the Tsarist state was ultimately too totalitarian and racist for any large number of people to defend it. Even those who would have been well placed to become the "Vozhd", such as Kolchak, were ultimately doomed by how bankrupt the White cause had become.
I love the wackiness of this scenario but it falls into the same trap of Leon Notsky or the Notzi Party in AH; it is technically the same guy but he's so far removed from what we know of him in OTL as to basically be nothing more than a blank shell.
Languishing in Bolivia after realising that he had no career progression in the BPP-Reichswehr leadership of Bavaria.
Goering isn't actually the leader of the VB, although he is a prominent figure in the movement.
It's important to remember that you can't really separate "socialism" from "national socialism", in the same way that a Seahorse can't be a horse and Kendall mint cake can't actually be a cake. Rohm had taken part in the crushing of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, aligning himself with the KPD would be about as good for his health as sticking his head in a lion's mouth.
I wouldn't say "multiple occasions", it wasn't a habit. Though they did support some strikes it was purely cynical for the purposes of undermining the government, they were happy to attack workers striking for the exact same reasons after the Nazis had taken power.
The characterisation of Marx as a sort of naive optimist is one that I’ve always found to be rather ironic, given that the basis of dialectical materialism was at least partly developed in reaction to Socialists who Marx dismissed as “utopian”.
Granted the final crisis hasn’t yet manifested itself so far but whilst the material conditions may not have aligned themselves I don’t see how that’s reason to believe that there’s some sort of “human nature” preventing them from doing so.
What we have had, I’m sure you’ll agree, are crisis points. One of these was 1917-19 and Germany could have gone communist in that timeframe, along with much of Europe.
Would the Entente have just marched in to crush a worker’s regime? Probably but there’s little chance that that would have been anything other than a hollow victory for them. The workers and soldiers of France and the U.K. were almost as tired of war as their German comrades. Protracted mass mobilisation, with peace taken away from them to crush fellow workers is likely to end in mutiny if not outright revolt.
This put an extremely strange picture in my head of Stalin as The Penguin.
"Holy right-wing deviationism, Batman!".
Plot twist: the nastiness of the war causes the workers on both sides to rise up, overthrowing both liberal capitalism and authoritarian communism and implement democratic socialism 
.
I don't think that will actually happen, since the diegetic information doesn't seem to indicate anything like that, but I think it would be a funny twist ending.
.I don't think that will actually happen, since the diegetic information doesn't seem to indicate anything like that, but I think it would be a funny twist ending.
A perpetual whiner who ends up dressing like the Joker? Of course Robin would turn out to be a Trot!
Plot twist: the nastiness of the war causes the workers on both sides to rise up, overthrowing both liberal capitalism and authoritarian communism and implement democratic socialism
I am People's Commander Tolkiene and this is my favourite theory on the Workers' Citadel.
Plot twist: the nastiness of the war causes the workers on both sides to rise up, overthrowing both liberal capitalism and authoritarian communism and implement democratic socialism
I don't think that will actually happen, since the diegetic information doesn't seem to indicate anything like that, but I think it would be a funny twist ending.
That would be fun, and I have a lot of time for democratic socialism, but I also enjoy massive existential crises and people being forced to pick sides that they really aren't happy with. It's a tough one.
Finally caught up. I think TTL's WW2 will end in stalemate, maybe the war ending in 1948-1949, where the Cominterm is at the breaking point, but the Anglo-Americans also cannot invade an Europe defended by both the Soviets and Germany and with Britain on the verge of economical and societal collapse.
The situation would look eerily similar to the Fatherland timeline, with commie German-Europe and the Soviets in one side, and the British Empire and America on the other. I imagine after a few decades, the communist regimes thaw, though that would be being overly optimistic.
On the other hand, the Anglo-Americans could have a chance, but it would take a long time and the cost would be massive. Assuming Italy and Japan are on the Allies, they have free access to the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the Far East. They can hit the Soviets in the caucasus and try invading through the Black Sea, America and Japan could try a joint-invasion of the Russian far-east. But it would be very, very costly. So much that I don't think America/Britain would go for it.
In Anglo-American Nazi war, I think the author wanted to make the Allies win, it was his objective from the start, but realistically it would have ended in stalemate.
The situation would look eerily similar to the Fatherland timeline, with commie German-Europe and the Soviets in one side, and the British Empire and America on the other. I imagine after a few decades, the communist regimes thaw, though that would be being overly optimistic.
On the other hand, the Anglo-Americans could have a chance, but it would take a long time and the cost would be massive. Assuming Italy and Japan are on the Allies, they have free access to the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the Far East. They can hit the Soviets in the caucasus and try invading through the Black Sea, America and Japan could try a joint-invasion of the Russian far-east. But it would be very, very costly. So much that I don't think America/Britain would go for it.
In Anglo-American Nazi war, I think the author wanted to make the Allies win, it was his objective from the start, but realistically it would have ended in stalemate.
Deleted member 92121
Would it? There's so much coastline when we input the fact that the mediterranean, North sea, and Pacific could be under allied control. And that's not facturing the possibility that Manchuria and/or China as a whole could be under Japanese control or allied with the Anglo-Americans. That gives then so much space to mount a invasion on. I mean, it could absolutely end halted, but it looks like some sort of invasion is possile simply by considering the sheer ammount of border and Coastline the German-Soviets would've to defend.
Chapter LVI
History does not pamper the proletariat.
~ Rosa Luxemburg
~ Rosa Luxemburg
The time had come once more when it was no longer safe to be a Communist in Berlin.
The violent clashes between the Red Front and the Blackshirts had provoked an official position that was akin to hysteria in its aftermath. The police response to the riot had begun in earnest a few hours after the dust had settled around the park that had so recently been covered in blood and broken bodies. More violence was now being perpetuated throughout the city in a fashion so extensive that made Gerda sure that someone had been waiting for this opportunity to round-up Berlin’s Communists. She kept her head down with her eyes straight ahead, just as she had when the Freikorps had rampaged throughout the city, and held her daughter close as walked hurriedly through the streets towards a way out.
The pleasant Berlin evening was being disturbed by the screech of police whistles and the clamour of their wagons all over the city as they went out of their way to find the perpetrators of anti-fascist violence in the city. The police had been humiliated by their inability to keep order during the Stadtpark riot that day and now they were exacting vengeance. Seemingly oblivious to the fact that most members of the Red Front had the foresight to retreat to a safehouse rather than go to their address, it had quickly become a frustrating task for the police, frustrations that they took out on the families of the missing men, and anyone on the street who looked like they might have a Communist affiliation.
Gerda heard a distressed cry behind her and quickened her pace in the hope that their train still hadn’t left Potsdamer Platz, pulling her daughter by the hand all the while. A few hours beforehand she had wondered why she had to go out of Berlin at all, the call had come at an unsavoury hour for a single mother and the warnings of mass arrests of communists in Berlin hadn’t helped her to find someone to look after her daughter whilst she attended. All the same, she didn’t want Rosa to be in the city for the duration of the backlash, and was glad for the excuse to go to Hamburg with her.
“Does this mean I won’t be going to school tomorrow?”
Gerda couldn’t help but smile at her daughter’s hopeful tone. When she had grown up on her parent’s farm school hadn’t been something that was meant for girls, a fact she had tried to remind Rosa of whenever she had complained about how strict her teachers were or how much homework she had. Her daughter was a reminder to Gerdda of the progress that German women had made since she was a girl, even if Gerda had dressed as an old maid regardless. Her new woman attire didn’t feel correct in the climate, and her fear of arousing suspicion made her dress as matronly as possible, as if she were taking Rosa to an impromptu Christening. Working for the Communist Party meant repeated rendezvous with the police and if any were to spot her she might end up in a cell, but she was taking the risk anyway. Why would she hide when she could fulfill a crucial task in the name of getting the party one step closer to power?
The riots Hitler had brought about were the basis for her trip, not to flee Berlin but to do the party a favour instead. Gerda’s hopes that Thalmann would one day see that Hitler was unstable had come true but the timing had been awful and now that she was on the train she was keen to go through the documents that she had been asked to bring to an impromptu meeting in Hamburg to discuss the question of Hitler’s continuing role as General Secretary. She scanned through the documents, expecting that there would be some new information had discovered that had caused him to change his mind about Hitler, or perhaps even something he had had waiting for an opportune moment in case the time ever came to eject Hitler. In her frustration she lit a cigarette, and reopened her notebook to try and she if there was anything she might have missed. Comparing her own notes with the documents she had been ordered to bring, it seemed that the crux of the issues with Hitler were just her own misgivings typed up. She wondered if the case against Hitler would be strong enough based on her own opinions, or perhaps if his recent behaviour was simply damning in itself. It was a thought that gave her pause, before stomping boots brought her back to reality.
Gerda held her breath as the ticket inspector went through the carriage checking tickets, he was not escorted by any police, but he was nonetheless a man in uniform,
Rosa fidgeted uncomfortably, seemingly aware of her mother's alarm. The two remained silent as the inspector vacantly checked their tickets with a grunt of acknowledgement.
"Why were you afraid of that man?" Rosa whispered
"He might have been an agent of the state, it's always important to be careful when you're part of the workers movement."
"Is it safer for workers in Hamburg?"
Gerda noticed a policeman wandering up the platform before the train announced its departure with a heavy shunt. She inhaled deeply before breathing a sigh of relief.
"I hope so."
---
The painting is Hamburg Wharf Worker by Heinrich Vogeler.
I remember this mindset well from my own younger days.
Anywho, so Gerda is going south, and acting as a courier. From the outside looking in we know whatever she had won't be enough to stop Hitler from coming to power, but one must wonder how much of a stumbling block it will be (and if the Red Fuhrer will take eventual vengeance on anyone involved in the meeting).
As always, good update Red.
Yeah, this sounds like it will backfire, lead to a purge, and cement his power instead, knowing what we know about the future.
An advance into the Soviet Far East sounds hellish; little to no infrastructure, conditions which often go beyond the limits of human endurance, no air cover for half the year, and the enemy supply lines getting shorter whilst yours get longer with every push.
Might be fun to write!
Deleted member 92121
You know im now begginig to wonder,would the Communist germans try to form sort of bastordized version of Christianity, like what happed otl with the Nazis and their "practical christianity". Perhaps using the same language as the liberation theolgy from the OTL 70s.