Friday, February 01, 2013

Remembering Hitler

This week marks the 80th anniversary of Hitler's rise to power in Germany. Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher had been dismissed just weeks after his election. His replacement was Adolf Hitler. "The political situation now is so complicated and is subject to so many psychological factors that it is impossible to make any definite forecast," George S. Messersmith, the United States consul general in Berlin wrote in a dispatch. Hitler's cabinet was viewed as just another in a series of more or less short-lived German governments.

The rise of Hitler to power in Germany is an event which the workers of all countries should study with care. Although Hitler did not actually come to power until 1933, this was only the culmination of a development the origins of which can be traced back many years before. The Nazi movement was at no time comparable to the orthodox political parties which capitalism had hitherto thrown up. They were not a “class” party in the sense that the Conservative Party in Britain is the party of British capitalism. Their membership and supporters held views as varied as the chameleon. The Nazis  like the Social Democrats and the Communists was a party of discontent. The Nazi party, like its bitter opponents, the Communists, was never thought of as “reformist,” although its economic programme simply stunk of the old hash served up by every reformist party throughout the capitalist world. "Jobs for the jobless" “Provision for the aged,” “Protection for the small trader,” “Education for the talented children of the poor,” and so on, ad nauseum. 

The Nazis owed part of their success to the fact that in the eyes of many their policies promised a complete break with the past. Their opposition to “the system” plus their vicious abuse of the opponents, as well as their incessant baiting of Jews, maintained for them a reputation of being “revolutionaries.” And indeed they were “revolutionaries” in the sense that they aimed at a political revolution: the elimination of the democratic constitution. Nationalists and conservative” parties had lost a good deal of their previous support to the Nazis, their adherents saw in the “National Socialist” movement an organisation that could compete for “mass appeal” with the Social Democratic and Communist parties whilst at the same time providing a check to the political and economic threats of the disgruntled workers. This political incoherency is the real explanation of the “ Fuehrer-cult.” The more backward and confused politically a people are, the stronger is the gravitation toward absolute personal leadership as a unifying force.

It is one of the ironies of politics that the parties of political compromise should thus get caught in a trap fashioned by themselves. Their past associations and compromises with capitalism and capitalist parties made them weak and unpopular in a period of world crisis. Like all who have helped to administer capitalism they get blamed for the crisis.

Everything undertaken by Hitler under Nazism has found its parallel in the capitalism of other areas and other times. No socialist will deny that all the Hitler regime stood for is repugnant and revolting to every ideal which he strived to establish. There must be no mistake that socialists hate Hitlerism in a manner beyond question. To say Nazism is little different to capitalism is not exonerating Nazism but damning capitalism.

What is clear is that World War Two was not fought to save the Jewish people from the Holocaust as this did not get fully under way until some time in 1942. Even when it was clear what was happening to Jews, the Allies failed to mount any significant rescue operations when these became possible. Their political and military calculation was that not to help the Jews was to help defeat Hitler; killing the Jewish population meant Germany diverting troops and resources from the front line, thus contributing to an Allied victory. According to Paul Johnson in his 1988 A History of the Jews,  “...the Holocaust was one of the factors which were losing Hitler the war. The British and American led governments knew this."

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