I’ve got Redditors using this as an example of the KPD voting with the Nazis against the SPD. Saying they formed a “voting block” with them. Apparently it was supported by Stalin? What context am I missing here?
To add on, I've read a little of Trotsky's whining on it and it also adds in context that prior to the KDP parliament faction agreeing to vote in a bloc with the NSDAP parliament faction, the KDP tried to form a voting bloc to do the exact same thing with the SDP.
Now Trotsky's moaning basically boils down to "you call the succdems social fascists yet you want to cooperate with them to undermine the Weimar republic and when they say no you cooperate with the fascists to do the same thing. Why aren't you launching the revolution right now? Why aren't you copying me during my golden years of the October Revolution and the Civil War exactly to the T? What are you a bunch of wimpy pacifists that hide behind the parliamentary chair? Why aren't you burning down the reichstag?"
There's little tidbits here and there of points I agree with such the section titled " "The People’s Revolution” Instead of the Proletarian Revolution " where Trotters says "The fascist Strasser says 95 percent of the people are interested in the revolution, consequently it is not a class revolution but a people’s revolution. Thälmann sings in chorus." It and the rest of the paragraph essentially says the German communists fell into the rhetorical trap of the Right by abandoning the rhetoric of the class struggle in favor of rhetoric of popular struggle, therefore trailing the fascists in the race to win the working class instead of beating it in the race.
Whether or not that's true, I haven't read anything from the KDP of that period, but the spirit of the phrase is correct.
Well, Wikipedia's got two sentences and one citation on it, so it's really specious in itself, but that's beyond the point- the Landtag was a bicameral parliament with a House of Lords, so it follows that Communists would support abolishing it on the basis of instituting a legislative body that would reduce the influence of Germany's ruling class rather than any actual coordination with Nazis. It's also extremely unclear whether or not it was the official position of both the Nazis and the KPD, or if it was a measure supported by it's rank-and-file members individually. It's basically "How dare you, Hitler also promoted vegetarianism and non-smoking, so your opposition to my BBQ /Cigar Treat Ritual is Nazism, actually" writ large.
I'm not super well read on the details of the end of the weimar republic, but it would probably be hard for anyone to tell you what you're missing, if they don't know what your current understanding of the events are.
Well basically the narrative that they’re claiming is that left wing parties infighting and finally the communists allying in a voting block against the Nazis was what allowed the Nazis to come to power. Basically justifying the anti-communism of Iron Front (yes this is more random Reddit arguing about whether the 3 Arrows symbol is sufficiently antifascist).
My understanding is that the KPD was not regularly allying with the Nazis against the SPD and that the SPD was the party being overly hostile over the KPD’s anti-capitalism
There's certainly not one thing, that allowed the Nazis to come to power, that would be a gross oversimplification. But the KPD did probably not oppose the Nazis as much as they could have. Voting with the Nazis in the 1931 referendum and having anti-semites in the KPD certainly didn't help to hinder the Nazis. There's much to study and learn about the weimar republic, but to try to sum it up in a short paragraph of whether it was the democrats fault or the communists fault seems ridiculous. Wouldn't touch a discussion like that with a 10 foot pole lol
In the OP "an example of the KPD voting with the Nazis against the SPD" which I would guess isn't wrong. Other than that I do not know.
If the referendum itself wasn't initiated by a Nazi org I might agree. But as it happened, I think it's a terrible look on the side of the KPD.
See that’s the sort of thing that I’d like to see discussed but seems to only get brought up as gotchas in spats Online over what team jersey someone’s wearing
TBF the people who spent literal years studying germany 1919 - 1933 are probably not the same who spend their time arguing the same topic with strangers on internet forums. Learning is best done somewhere else, and constructive arguments are done in tight knit groups of usually certified experts.
turns out that things arent just ideas and voting, you need to have systemic upheaval at every level for fascism to arise
And the motion that did allow the Nazis come to power happened during some vote where the SPD was not present, correct?
Voting with fascists on specific issues does not equal and alliance with fascists. The left and the fash acts as they do for widely different reasons and sometimes the leftist desire to improve life for the masses and raise class consciousness coincidences with the need for fascists to build a faux-populist image.
Saying that this makes the left and the fash allies is almost as nonsensical as saying that the fact that both Hitler and Stalin had moustaches did.
If such a left-fash alliance existed it is also weird that the left were the first to be murdered by the Nazis, long before they got around to milquetoast liberals.
