#1933 #Germany #History

Twilight of the Comintern (EH Carr)
p.90 in the Chapter: “Hitler In Power”

…The first formal assessment by Comintern of Hitler's victory at a session of the presidium of IKKI on April 1, 1933. It was imperative to minimize the magnitude of the disaster; for the KPD [German Communist Party] was, as the Comintern journal still proclaimed, "the vanguard arm of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism in the capitalist world". Heckert delivered a report which was mainly concerned to place the blame for the German catastrophe on the broad shoulders of the SPD. From August 4, 1914, social-democracy had "pursued the policy of a united reactionary front with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat". It had come to the rescue of the bourgeoisie in the revolution of 1918-1919. "The bourgeois republic of the Weimar constitution, built by the hands of social-democrats, rested in reality on the same social and economic basis as the Hohenzollern monarchy." The petty bourgeoisie, inflamed by the oppressions of the Versailles treaty and the treachery of the social-democrats, had been engulfed by a wave of chauvinism, which had also not spared some sections of the working class. Only the KPD had stood firmly against Fascism. Terror could not break a party five million strong; and Heckert ended with the prediction that it would "lead the working class to the final victory over Fascism and capitalism". The presidium adopted a resolution which endorsed Heckert's diagnosis, seeking comfort in an argument formerly spurned when it had been propounded by Neumann and his supporters: 
   “The establishment of an open Fascist dictatorship, which destroys all democratic illusions among the masses, and frees them from the influence of the social-democrats, will hasten Germany's progress towards the proletarian revolution.”

It praised the policies of the KPD "before and at the time of the Hitler coup" as "quite correct", and summoned the party "to prepare the masses for decisive revolutionary battles, for the overthrow of capitalism and for the overthrow of the Fascist dictatorship by an armed rebellion". …