In August 1931, to capitalize on their growing popularity, the Nazi Party launched a referendum to overthrow the Social Democratic government of Prussia. At first the KPD correctly attacked it. Then, three weeks before the vote, under orders from Stalin’s Comintern, they joined forces with the fascists to bring down the main enemy, the Social Democrats. They changed the name of the plebiscite to a “Red Referendum” and referred to the fascists and the members of the SA as “working people’s comrades”!
Fortunately, the referendum failed to get a majority. With the recent electoral successes of the Nazis, such a referendum victory would have brought Hitler to power two years earlier.
The lunatic actions of the German Stalinists failed – but they learned nothing. “Today the Social Democrats are the most active factor in creating fascism in Germany,” declared Thälmann. It was a mad adventure that served to disorient the proletariat and facilitate the success of the fascists.
When the German Communist Party finally considered the proposal for a united front it became a meaningless slogan, insisting that it was “from below”, excluding the SPD leaders. As Trotsky aptly put it: “This was a united front with itself”!
Echoing its German counterpart, the British Daily Worker of 8 May, 1931, explained: “Fascism cannot be fought by supporting social democracy, for this means supporting fascism and the capitalist offensive”. Again, the same journal declared, “The socialists are the left and the fascists are the right hand of the same capitalist body.” By the end of 1932 the British Stalinists published a series of questions and answers about Germany:
Q: Cannot the socialists and communists unite? Cannot all workers’ organizations – the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the trade unions and the cooperatives come together and do something to resist the drive of fascism?
A: It is undoubtedly necessary to create working class unity but this must be unity between the workers in the factories and the streets, and not unity between the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, which is not a working class party…for the Communist Party to unite with such a party would be to become an accomplice in the drive to fascist dictatorship.
Within a month, the German Stalinists had organized a united front with the Nazis in the Berlin transport workers’ strike! The tram workers took unofficial action over a proposed wage cut. To everyone’s surprise, the Nazi Party supported the strike. They joined forces with the Communist Party attacking trams and ripping up tram lines. Street collections were organized for strike funds, and in Berlin appeared the alarming and confusing sight of a Communist and a Nazi standing together and shouting in unison, while they rattled their collecting tins: “For the strike fund of the RGO” – “For the strike fund of the NSBO”. The RGO was the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (communist), and the NSBO the (fascist) National Socialist Factory Cell Organization.
This spectacle repulsed ordinary socialists and trade unionists and caused a loss of sympathy for the strike. Within a week the strike was called off.
The fall of the Müller Government in 1930, followed by the even more right-wing administration of Heinrich Bruening with its unpopular deflationary policies, prepared the way for Hitler’s electoral gains in September. The Bruening Government, as it lacked a parliamentary majority, ruled by decree in a semi-Bonapartist fashion, but was nevertheless supported by the SPD Reichstag deputies “as the lesser evil”. In December 1931, Trotsky made a desperate appeal to the ranks of the KPD:
Worker-Communists, you are hundreds of thousands, millions; you cannot leave for any place; there are not enough passports for you. Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank. Your salvation lies in merciless struggle. And only a fighting unity with the social democratic workers can bring victory. Make haste, worker-Communists, you have very little time left!