Introduction
The only way to defeat the Nazis was by confronting them with the united might of the working class. What was necessary was not the defence of the existing government and legality but that the working class should fight to defend its own organizations, as Trotsky pointed out in 1931:
In the course of many decades, the workers have built up within the bourgeois democracy, by utilizing it, by fighting against it, their own strongholds and bases of proletarian democracy: the trade unions, the political parties, the educational and sport clubs, the cooperatives, etc. The proletariat cannot attain power within the formal limits of bourgeois democracy, but can do so only by taking the road of revolution: this has been proved both by theory and experience. And these bulwarks of workers’* democracy within the bourgeois state are absolutely essential for taking the revolutionary road. The work of the Second International consisted in creating just such bulwarks during the epoch when it was still fulfilling its progressive historic labour. (Trotsky, What Next? In The Struggle against Fascism in Germany, pp. 158-9.)
Despite their appearance of strength, Trotsky pointed out that the Nazis were “human chaff” – petty bourgeois and lumpenproletarians who would run for their lives when confronted with a serious proletarian fighting force. But the policies of both the Social Democrats and Stalinists kept the movement divided and helpless in the face of the Nazi menace.
Yet the Stalinists remained deaf to all these warnings. This is how Thaelmann, the main leader of the KPD, answered Trotsky’s call for a united front:
Trotsky wants in all seriousness a common action of the Communists with the murderer of Liebknecht and Rosa (Luxemburg), and more, with Mr Zoergiebel and those police chiefs whom the Papen regime leaves in office to oppress the workers. Trotsky has attempted several times in his writings to turn aside the working class by demanding negotiations between the chiefs of the German Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party. (Thaelmann’s closing speech at the 12th Plenum, September 1932, Executive Committee of the Communist International. (Communist International No 17-18, Page 1329.)
In an article published in Die Internationale (November, December 1931, page 488), Thaelmann indignantly repudiated the proposal of a united front with the Social Democratic Party:
It (the Social Democratic Party) threatens to make a united front with the Communist Party. The speech of Breitscheid at Darmstadt on the occasion of the Hesse elections and the comments of Vorwaerts on this speech show that social democracy by his manoeuvre is drawing on the wall the devil of Hitler’s fascism and is holding back the masses from the real struggle against the dictatorship of finance capital. And these lying mouthfuls…they hope to make them more palatable with the sauce of a so-called friendship for the communists (against the prohibition of the German CP) and to make them more agreeable to the masses.
And again:
In his pamphlet on the question, How will National Socialism be Defeated? Trotsky gives always but one reply: ‘The German CP must make a bloc with the Social Democracy…’ In framing this bloc, Trotsky sees the only way for completely saving the German working class against fascism. Either the CP will make a bloc with the social democracy or the German working class is lost for 10-20 years.
This is the theory of a completely ruined fascist and counter-revolutionary. This theory is the worst theory, the most dangerous theory and the most criminal that Trotsky has constructed in the last years of his counter-revolutionary propaganda. (Thaelmann, closing speech at the 13th Plenum, September 1932: Communist International, No. 17-18, page 1329.)
In their madness, the Stalinists openly incited the communist workers to beat up socialist workers, break up their meetings, etc, even carrying the fight to the school children in the very playgrounds! Thaelmann put forward the slogan “Chase the social fascists from their jobs in the plants and the trade unions.” Following on this line of the leader, the Young Communist organ The Young Guard propounded the slogan: “Chase the social fascists from the plants, the employment exchanges, and the apprentice schools.” The organ of the Young Pioneers which was aimed at the children of CP members, even put forward the incredible slogan: “Beat the little Zoergiebels in the schools and the playgrounds”.
This line was uncritically accepted by all the parties of the Communist International: “It is significant”, wrote the paper of the British CP, the Daily Worker of May 26th, 1932, “that Trotsky has come out in defence of a united front between the Communist and Social Democratic Parties against fascism. No more disruptive and counter revolutionary class lead could possibly have been given at a time like the present”.
Alan Woods
From ‘Trotsky: The Struggle against Fascism in Germany – Introduction to the Spanish edition’, Marxist.com
1 March 2004