Hitler Wasn't Inevitable

[TBF]

(note from TBF: History repeats itself. Socialists of varying stripes trying to stop the tide in Germany. If you don't understand the rise of Trump and/or similar personalities, this article lays it out)

Beyond the official proceedings, significant historical questions remain unresolved, raising important discussions on human nature, the role of the Left, and whether progressive movements can overcome racism and other oppressions to fight together. The dominant question, of course, is how something so awful could happen in the first place. How was it possible that the most horrific crime in human history could occur in Germany, the “land of poets and thinkers?”

Hitler’s rise to power was by no means inevitable, but rather the outcome of both specific historical conditions as well as the actions (and inactions) of various social forces. While many conventional histories paint Nazism as a kind of collective German project, what Hitler’s rise to power really illustrates are the very real consequences that socialist strategy can have in a society wracked by economic depression and political polarization.

Hitler Wasn’t Inevitable

The 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials is cause to reflect on the forces that failed to halt Nazism’s rise.
by Marcel Bois ~ 11/25/15

< snipped beginning of article >

The Impact of the 1929 Crisis

Just a few years before Hitler’s takeover in 1933, his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) remained largely irrelevant. It was only after the stock market crash in 1929 that their vote total jumped from eight hundred thousand in 1928 to over six million in 1930 and 37 percent of the vote in 1932, making them the largest party in parliament.

The backdrop for this rapid growth was of course the ongoing economic crisis eating away at the very foundations of global capitalism. The massive slump in investment caused by the 1929 crash led to a 29 percent decline in global industrial production by 1932. Germany’s industry was particularly hard hit, as it was financed by massive foreign (particularly American) loans, which collapsed as soon as lenders withdrew credit.

As firms large and small went bankrupt across the country, considerable sections of the middle classes were thrown into poverty. The peasantry also suffered as food prices dropped, and workers faced wage cuts averaging 30 percent. By 1933, unemployment had gone from 1.3 million in 1929 to roughly 6 million. Only one-third of workers were employed full time ...

Much more here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/nuremberg-trials-hitler-goebbels-himmler-german-communist-social-democrats/

(And a final note: Trotsky got it and sure as hell tried: Appealing to KPD members in the pages of the Militant in 1931, Leon Trotsky summarized the German political situation as follows: If you place a ball on top of a pyramid the slightest impact can cause it to roll down either to the left or to the right. That is the situation approaching with every hour in Germany today. There are forces who would like the ball to roll down towards the Right and break the back of the working class. There are forces who would like the ball to remain at the top. That is a utopia. The ball cannot remain at the top of the pyramid. The Communists want the ball to roll down toward the Left and to break the back of capitalism.)

ETA: Borrowed from n2doc's toons:

[merrily]

1. The World War I peace treaty greatly contributed to Hitler's ability to rise.

I wish we could somehow figure out more about the causes of World War I and that peace treaty. I don't feel the official stories tell the whole story.

[restorefreedom]

4. i have seen several people compare the current situation

with ww1.

pretty scary.

[Jim Lane]

5. From what I've read, the treaty was a screwup caused by bad planning

The participants in the Paris conference in 1919 started out with the idea that they would prepare an opening negotiating position to present to the German government and its allies. It's sound negotiating tactics to start out asking for more than you expect to get, so what they came up with was very harsh.

The problem was that the process went on so long that it needed to be concluded, and there was no German government in a position to do any negotiating. As a result, what had been drafted as a somewhat extreme negotiating position became the final agreement, unchanged. The unintended consequence was, as you say, to create resentment -- justifiable resentment -- that fueled Hitler's rise to power.

[merrily]

8. Thank you, Jim. I am the first to admit that I may have become more cynical than I should

rightfully be--and that may explain my view that a very harsh treaty was not an intended consequence at all. And, it is not as though the parties who had come up with the extreme "negotiating" position were powerless to ameliorate it on their own to something more humane, in the absence of anyone negotiating on behalf of Germany.

I learned something from a very old Western that On Demand has been showing on and off for about a year now: sometimes, people hit exactly what they aimed at, even if, at first glance, it appears they missed their intended target. (Melody Jones, with Gary Cooper in the title role.) Obviously, I could very well be wrong, but I think that is what happened with the terror of a treaty.

Have a great Thanksgiving Day.

[Jim Lane]

10. The point of general agreement is that the treaty turned out to be a bad idea.

In conducting the post-mortem, we’re both oversimplifying a little by treating the victorious Allies as a unit. There were substantial disagreements among them. There may have been elements of both views present – that the French, for example, genuinely wanted the harsh terms, which were to some extent accepted by the British and the Americans on the theory that it was just a negotiating position.

I’m guessing that what I remember is from the book Peacemaking 1919, by Harold Nicholson. He participated in the peace conference, so he might be subject to the tendency you mention (that victors write history to suit themselves). On the other hand, he wasn’t a major decisionmaker, and my recollection is that he was willing to criticize some of the things that happened.

In terms of victors making themselves look good, it’s not clear which of these two versions looks better, as you stand amidst the rubble of Europe in 1945:
(1) To prevent another war, we opted for very harsh terms that would disable Germany from repeating its aggression and would be an object lesson to other countries. With the benefit of hindsight, I guess we overdid it.
(2) In one of the most important undertakings of our careers, we went in without a clear idea of our plan. We spent months in conference operating under the assumption that there would be further negotiations later, and then switched over to taking our negotiating position and using it as an ultimatum.

To my mind, option (1) is a regrettable but understandable mistake. Option (2) is pure screwup.

If I were you I wouldn’t worry about being too cynical. As Jane Wagner wrote in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (Lily Tomlin’s one-woman stage show), “No matter how cynical you are, it’s never enough to keep up.” So in this instance your cynicism may well be spot-on.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, too!

[merrily]

11. I'm not really worried about my sometime cynicism. I agree with Tomlin, whom the late, great

Jacpine Radical would quote to me whenever I mentioned cynicism in a post he saw.


Thank you for that sweet, albeit poignant, memory.

[Demeter]

6. Just as the NATO treaty, which should have dissolved with the USSR, and Turkey's Ergodan

will lead to WWIII. It doesn't help that we have truly feckless leadership in the West, and yes, I'm including them all.

[merrily]

9. World War III is not an option. If I am wrong, the good news is that we can stop stressing

over global warming. Indeed, if World War III commences, we can stop stressing over almost everything, really.

And, on that calamitous note, Happy Thanksgiving, LOL!

[SoapBox]

2. Terrifying...mandatory reading.

"German employers also understood that polarization could not go on forever, but were mostly worried about the possibility of the labor movement taking power. The Nazis understood how to capitalize on this fear, promising to enforce the interests of business by any means necessary. At a Nazi fundraiser organized by prominent industrialists, SS leader Rudolf Hess displayed photos of revolutionary demonstrations on one side, and uniformed SA and SS divisions on the other:

Here, gentlemen, you have the forces of destruction, which are dangerous threats to your counting houses, your factories, all your possessions. On the other hand, the forces of order are forming, with a fanatical will to root out the spirit of turmoil . . . Everyone who has must give lest he ultimately lose everything he has!

Former Nazi official Albert Krebs described the scene in his memoirs: “Not all capitalists were particularly enthusiastic about the Nazis, but their skepticism was relative and ended as soon as it became clear that Hitler was the only person capable of destroying the labor movement.” Terrified by the prospect of further gains for the labor movement, capital’s support for Hitler grew rapidly.

Trotsky illustrated the dynamic colorfully: “The big bourgeoisie likes fascism as little as a man with aching molars likes to have his teeth pulled” — that is to say, it was ugly, but it was necessary. Hitler kept his promise to capital. After being declared Chancellor in January 1933 he outlawed both workers’ parties and the trade unions within a few months. Thousands of Social Democrats, Communists and trade unionists were arrested and murdered."

The Tea Party Bots, Banksters and Billionaires, the likes of Trump/Walker...snap out of your coma America.

[rhett o rick]

3. k & r. Thanks for posting. nm