Meeting organised by Lewisham Workers' Liberty.
Hitler’s Nazis ruled Germany from 1933 until the end of the World War Two.
They Nazis were ultra nationalists, racists and anti-semites — policies they took to the most murderous extreme in their death camps.
How could such people come to power in one of the most advanced countries of Europe?
By 1932 the Nazis polled nearly 14 million votes, somewhat more than the combined total for the two German workers’ parties — the Social Democrats and the Stalinist Communist Party. Alongside their political wing they had 400,000 paramilitaries in the Sturmabteilung (SA) to fight for power.
Hitler also had the backing of the big German capitalists by 1933.
The German workers’ movement was powerful but Social Democrats had no answers for the economic and social crisis. The middle classes and unemployed looked to the Nazis for answers. The alternative was weak.
-In the years leading up to Hitler’s victory: -the German Communists tried to compete against the Nazis by using anti-semitism and by appeals to nationalism, thus fertilising the ground for the mass growth of fascism.
-The German Social Democrats looked to the police to stop the Nazis, and for the state to ban them. But a state ban against the fascists in 1932 allowed the Nazis to present themselves as the persecuted and did little to damage them.
- The Communist Party, who had labelled the Social Democrats “social fascists” — a type of Nazi failed to make a “united front” with the reformist socialists to stop the real fascists.
In this meeting we will discuss the lessons for anti-fascism today.
All welcome!
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