Never Again!
Donny Gluckstein. The Nazis, Capitalism and the Working Class (London: Bookmarks, 1999). Review by Alex Kerner
Recent years have witnessed many books attempting to explain the rise of fascism in Germany, including the barbarity of the Holocaust.
Unfortunately most of these histories have attempted to explain away the events as an inevitable part of Germanic history.
One of the most acclaimed books was Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. Goldhagen's basic argument is that all Germans possessed a maddening anti-Semitism, which led them to support and take part in the Holocaust:
"Whatever else Germans thought about Hitler and the Nazi movement, however much they might have detested aspects of Nazism, the vast majority of them subscribed to the underlying Nazi model of Jews."
Donny Gluckstein's new book seeks to set matters straight, attempting to show that nothing about German fascism was inevitable. His argument is that the Nazis only gained mass support once the economy went into crisis.
And even then Hitler never secured majority support, especially among members of the working class.
One of the key themes in the book is the counterrevolutionary nature of fascism. He describes how the Nazi's grew out of a right wing reaction to the upheavals that dominated Germany after the First World War.
The Freikorps, the militia which was used to crush the uprisings, became the breading ground for the first fascists.
Even Hitler's anti-semitism was deeply woven in his hatred for workers' revolution, with one of the common statements being that "the driving force of the revolution are the Jews."
Gluckstein concludes that "it would be wrong to counterpoise Nazism's counterrevolutionary character with its anti-Semitism, or to suggest one outweighs the other."
The Nazis themselves were an insignificant sect before the Great Depression ripped apart the lives of the vast majority of Germans.
The ruling class called for attacks on welfare and tax cuts for business. It demanded an end to compromise with the organizations of the working class, their political parties and trade unions.
In moments like this, when the working class was unwilling to accept many of these demands, the physical force represented by the Nazi's militia, the SA and SS, became a viable alternative.
The Nazi's electoral support grew from 2.6 per cent in 1928, to 18.3 per cent in 1930, and by July 1932, it reached 37.4 per cent. This gave them leverage to push the ruling class to take them seriously as the force to crush the working class.
Nonetheless, the rise was not inevitable. There was massive hatred toward the Nazis among workers.
In all but one election the vote for the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD) had a higher combined total than the Nazis.
Trade Union organizations demanded action to stop the Nazis.
But the leadership of both parties refused to mount a united challenge. The SPD refused to fight on the ground, even failing to mobilize when their Prussian government was overthrown by a right-wing coup.
The Communist Party went even further in their lunacy, refusing to work with anybody, and labeling everyone outside of their party as fascist.
Though members of the KPD occasionally fought street battles with the Nazis it never went beyond individual heroism. As a result no mass movement developed.
Gluckstein shows how fascism destroyed the trade unions, and the main working class parties in order to make capitalism run more efficiently. Much of the imperialist strategy of the Nazis reflected German capital's need to expand its markets.
Nonetheless, even after all open opposition was crushed, the support for fascism was always lukewarm. Far from embracing many of the anti-semitic policies, many opposed them.
After one of the most grotesque pogroms, Kristallnacht, "all sections of the population reacted with deep shock." Even the darkest days, during the period of the Final Solution, much of what was being done had to be coded in euphemisms and hidden.
The Nazis, Capitalism, and the Working Class exposes many of the myths about this period. But most importantly it concludes that fascism is not merely a German or Italian problem.
In periods of intense economic crisis the ruling classes can turn to extreme solutions. And if fascism is the force necessary to maintain their system of exploitation, they will support it.
We've witnessed in recent weeks attacks on two rabbis in Toronto and the shooting of 5 children at a Los Angeles Jewish day care. The media and politicians have only too happily whipped up anti-Chinese racism.
Fascism today is a legitimate force in Europe, getting 15 per cent of the vote in France and forming part of coalition governments in Italy and Turkey.
The rise and victory of fascism today is not inevitable is working people stand together to oppose it. Never Again!