Who was responsible for the German left’s failure to stop Hitler?

Basically I don’t think there’s an answer to the OP’s question because it starts from a false premise.

I tend to agree with this sentiment. I'm not sure what they were supposed to have done to stop Hitler and this question predicates that they were expected to do so...
 
And worst of all, they never were able (or willing to) actually enforce their harsh treaty. Essentially they waited until Panzers started rolling through the Ardennes.

Mixed, actually. During the Weimar republic, they occupied the Ruhr area for a comparatively minor thing. When Hitler was in power, they didn't even do anything when he broke treaties and occupied Prague.

If the KPD supported Wilhelm Marx in the presidential election Hindenburg would still win, center right wingers wouldn’t vote for someone the communists endorsed

Technically true, but ASB. They wouldn't even support a Social Democrat for reasons stated by others, let alone a Zentrum guy (and not even from the left wing of his party).
 

Anchises

Banned
Mixed, actually. During the Weimar republic, they occupied the Ruhr area for a comparatively minor thing. When Hitler was in power, they didn't even do anything when he broke treaties and occupied Prague.

Yeah, but the Ruhr occupation imho had nothing to do with constructively enforcing the treaty. Maybe I am not fair towards France, but the Ruhr occupation to me always seemed like an Imperialist power grab. It was actually one of the reasons that made enforcing the treaty so much harder.
 
Fun fact: The SPD and KPD combined never had anything close to a majority in the Reichstag. Even the 1928 election, which saw a swing to the left, only gave them 40.4% of the vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_1928

Even in January 1919 when Germany was in as left-wing a mood as it would ever be, the SPD and USPD combined (the KPD had just been formed and didn't have any candidates) only got about 45 percent of the vote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_1919
 

destiple

Banned
Hindsight is 20/20
and its not like Hitler was the only xenophobic antisemitic militaristic right wing leader in the 1930s
I mean why didnt the Japanese "left" stop their military aggression , we give them a free pass as most of the people they killed were asian ?
 
If we are talking purely about failures on the Left, I too tend to blame the Stalinist line of "social fascism" - (I blame Stalin for a lot of things, naturally, he had a great talent for shooting Leftism in the foot and then making it gangrenous and amputating the whole leg) - but lets not forget that the KPD had good reason to hate the Social Democrats too, who after all had collaborated with the Freikorps to murder Rosa Luxembourg and crush the Spartacists.

Seem like a pretty good ideas from SPD side, seeing as how Social Democrats ended up when pro-violent revolution socialists gained power.
 
While the KPD and SPD were as interested in clashing with each other as they were with the Nazis, IMHO the right actually had more to do with Hitler than the left, although their infighting helped. A fair chunk of the traditional/right or conservatives cooperated with Hitler agreeing in part with his policies, but with the delusion that they could control him and steer him to a more traditional conservative path. They were wrong.
Of course. Remember, though, it seemed at the time to be a reasonable idea at the time. Remember, Hitler's first ministry gave the Nazis, on paper, just three ministries - the Chancellery, the largely powerless Interior Ministry, and the Civil Aviation Ministry. Hindenburg certainly had no idea that Blomberg was Nazi-leaning at the time. To your average reasonable German at the time, it would be hard to see how the Nazis would establish a totalitarian state using control of the insane asylums, the airlines and a few paper-pushers. Even Schumacher, the Social Democrat, derided the Nazi presence in the government as "a piece of decoration."
 
@Francisco Cojuanco : You are wrong in one respect - the Interior Ministry was extremely powerful in one way - they controlled the police. Goerings first job was head of the Prussian police. After WWII, during the brief period when countries liberated by the USSR had "coalition" governments, one ministry the communists always demanded was the Interior Ministry. Control the police, well you can see where that leads.
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
The KPD for existing, the SPD for letting the Müller government fail in 1930.
After the 1930 elections the political options of the SPD were very limited.

And Heinrich Brüning ist to blame for his reactionary plans of going back the pre 1918 monarchy and for quitting instead of finding out if Hindenburg would have really tired him.
The president wouldn't probably not done so, at least not right away.
 
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