Reply #17: Unfortunately SPD + KPD didn't equal a majority [View All]

[kenny blankenship]

SPD + Zentrum was a working coalition. It didn't work very well in the general rout of the Great Depression - but what would? President von Hindenburg (old monarchist, Nationalist Party dinosaur) favored the Center because of their non-Socialist pro-military pro-church traditional principles. Center was no Left party but made coalition with the Social Democrats out of necessity. Hindenburg invited a series of Center party leaders to form governments (since there was no absolute majority) even though they were junior partner to the SPD Zentrum coalition by percent of the vote. When the Nazis surged after 1930, the Center Party started to do all their deals with Hitler. Von Papen believed he would "reach out", I suppose, to the Nazis and steal their base. He tried to maneuver Hitler to the sidelines by getting him to run for the Presidency in 32, knowing he'd lose. Even though Hitler didn't win, he wasn't weakened and didn't lose his base to the Center. (Just like Republicans don't meet people in the middle when invited, they just keep going right faster than before, so you can't peel them away by being Repuke-Lite) Hindenburg remained President, and driven by the popular surge for Nazis and his own rightist authoritarian tendencies, soon awarded the Chancellorship to Hitler. The capture of the Center by the hard right was completed by the with-us-or-against-us test of the Reichstag fire and Enabling Act. Center went with Hitler. Left went to the camps.

And of course there was no love lost between KPD and SPD. The communists held a strong grudge against the Social-Democrats for putting down their armed revolutions in the immediate aftermath of WWI. They did not play well together. And this is the nub of the chestnut "the fractious Leftards allowed Hitler's rise to power!" However, to say this is to simply ignore the comparative strength and roles of the various parties. KPD was not third largest party, nor even close to the numerical strength of either the SPD or Center Party. SPD was second largest, after the Nazis, and Center was third. At different times those rankings were reversed but at no time was KPD big enough to be a majority coalition maker. SPD plus KPD could not have stopped Hitler from receiving and wielding the Chancellorship. But SPD plus Center could have. There are probably quite a few errors of detail in my account, but I believe if you look at the history in overview, this is the truth: Left plus Center could have blocked Hitler, (or at least forced him to openly attempt violent overthrow, which possibly would bring the Army in against him.) but Center decided its traditional principles were closer to Naziism than to the post-Marxist tradeunionism of the Social Democrats. Saying the "left is to blame!" is a gross offense to the truth: for the left stood up and paid an awful price for it.