It was a curious alliance of the lower middle classes with the big industrialists on the one hand and the richer peasantry on the other. The industrialists supported Hitler and gave him money because he cursed socialism and seemed to be the only bulwark against an advancing Marxism or Communism. The poorer middle classes and peasantry and even some workers were attracted by the anti-capitalistic slogans.
On January 30, 1933, old President Hindenburg (he was eighty-six years old then) made Hitler Chancellor, which is the highest executive office in Germany, corresponding to the Prime Minister. There was an alliance between the Nazis and the Nationalists, but very soon it was obvious that the Nazis were in full command and no one else counted. A general election gave the Nazis, with their allies the Nationalists, just a bare majority in the Reichstag. Even if they had not got this majority, it would not have mattered much, for the Nazis arrested their opponents in the Parliament and put them in jail. All the Communist members were thus removed, and many of the Social Democrats. Just then the Reichstag building caught fire and was burnt down. The Nazis stated that this was the work of the Communists and that it was a plot to undermine the State. The Communists denied this vigorously and, in fact, they accused the Nazis’ leaders of having caused the fire to find an excuse for attacking them.
Then began the Nazi or the Brown Terror all over Germany. To begin with, Parliament was wound up (although the Nazis had a majority in it), and all power was vested in Hitler and his Cabinet. They could make laws or do anything they liked. The Weimar Constitution of the Republic was thus scrapped and all forms of democracy were openly scorned. Germany was a kind of federation; this, too, was ended, and all power was concentrated in Berlin. Everywhere dictators were appointed, who were responsible only to the dictator next above them. Hitler was, of course, the dictator-in-chief.
While these changes were taking place, the Nazi Storm Troops were let loose all over Germany, and they began a reign of violence and terror, amazingly savage and brutal. It was unique of its kind. There have been Terrors before, Red Terrors and White Terrors, but they always took place when a country, or a dominant group was fighting for its life in a civil war. The Terror was a reaction of terrible danger and constant fear. The Nazis had no such danger to face, nor had they any reason to be afraid. They controlled the government, and there was no armed opposition or resistance to them. The Brown Terror was thus not an outcome of passion and fear, but a deliberate, cold-blooded, and incredibly brutal suppression of all who did not fall in line with the Nazis.
It would serve no purpose to give a list of the atrocities that have taken place in Germany since the Nazis came to power, and that still take place behind the scenes. There have been savage beatings and tortures and shooting and murder on a vast scale, both men and women being victims. Enormous numbers of people have been put in gaols and concentration camps, and are said to be treated very badly there. The attack has been fiercest on the Communists, but the more moderate Social Democrats have fared little better. A dead set has been made at the Jews, and others attacked have been pacifists, liberals, trade unionists, and internationalists. The Nazis proclaim that it is a war of extermination against Marxism and the Marxists and indeed the entire “Left”. Jews must also be eliminated from all posts and professions. Thousands of Jewish professors, teachers, musicians, lawyers, judges, doctors, and nurses, have been turned out. Jewish shopkeepers have been boycotted and Jewish workers dismissed from factories. There has been a wholesale destruction of books that the Nazis do not approve of, public burnings taking place. Newspapers have been ruthlessly suppressed for the slightest difference of opinion or criticism. No news of the Terror is allowed to be published, and even a whisper of it is punished heavily.
All organizations and parties, other than the Nazi Party, of course, have been suppressed. The Communist Party went first, then the Social Democratic, later the Catholic Centre Party, and lastly even the Nazis’ allies, the Nationalists. The mighty German trade unions, representing the labour and savings and sacrifices of generations of workers, were broken up and all their funds and properties confiscated. Only one party, one organization, was to remain—the Nazi Party.
The strange Nazi philosophy is forced down every one’s throat, and such is the fear of the Terror that no one dare raise his head. Education, the theatre, art, science—everything is being given the Nazi stamp. “The true German thinks with his blood!” says Hermann Goering, one of Hitler’s chief men. “The age of pure reason and of unprejudiced science is over,” says another Nazi leader. Children are taught that Hitler is a second Jesus, but greater than the first. The Nazi Government does not favour too much extension of education among the people, and especially among women. Indeed, woman’s place, according to the Hitlerite, is the home and kitchen, and her chief job is to provide children to fight and die for the State. Dr Joseph Goebbels, another Nazi leader, who is Minister for “Public Enlightenment and Propaganda”, has said that “woman’s place is in the family; her proper task is to provide her country and her people with children . . . The liberation of women is a danger to the State. She must leave to man the things that belong to man.” This same Dr Goebbels has also told us what his method is of enlightening the public: “It is my intention to play on the Press as on a piano.”
Behind all this barbarism and brutality and fire and thunder lay the privation and hunger of the dispossessed middle classes. It was really a fight for jobs and bread. Jewish doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, etc., were turned out because the “Aryan” Germans had not been able to compete with them and looked hungrily at their success and wanted their jobs. Jewish shops were closed because they were successful rivals. Many of the non-Jewish shops were also closed and their owners were arrested by the Nazis because they were suspected of profiteering and charging unreasonably high prices. The peasant supporters of the Nazis have been casting longing eyes on the big estates in East Prussia, which they want parcelled out among themselves.
An interesting feature of the original Nazi programme was a proposal to limit all salaries to 12,000 marks per year, which is equivalent to Rs. 8000, or Rs. 666 per month. I do not know how far this has been given effect to. The present salary of the Chancellor is 26,000 marks per year (Rs 1440 per month). It is proposed that not even the directors or employers of private companies, which are subsidized by government, are to be paid a higher salary than 18,000 marks per year, and these people have often been paid huge sums in the past. Compare these figures with the bloated salaries which poor India pays her officials. The Congress proposed at Karachi to fix the salary limit, at Rs. 500 per month.
It must not be imagined that behind the Nazi movement there is only brutality and terror, prominent as these are. There is undoubtedly a very real enthusiasm for Hitler among large numbers of Germans, apart from the vast majority of the workers. If the figures of the last election are taken as a guide, he has 52 per cent of the population behind him, and this 52 per cent is terrorizing the remaining 48 per cent, or part of it. With this 52 per cent, or perhaps more now, Hitler is very popular. People who go to Germany talk of a strange psychological atmosphere there, as of a religious revival. Germans feel that the long years of humiliation and suppression, caused by the Treaty of Versailles, are past, and they can breathe freely again.
But the other half, or thereabouts, of Germany feels very differently. The German working class is dominated by an intense hatred and fury, hidden and controlled by fear of the terrible reprisals of the Nazis. They have submitted as a whole to force and terrorism, and watched with sorrow and despair the destruction of what they had built up with vast labour and sacrifice. Of all that has taken place during the last few months in Germany, not the least amazing has been the complete collapse of the great Social Democratic Party without the slightest effort to resist. This was the oldest, the biggest, and the most highly organized party of the working class in Europe. It was the backbone of the Second International. And yet it submitted tamely and with hardly a protes
t—though protests alone would have been singularly futile—to every insult and indignity, and finally to extinction. Step by step the Social Democratic leaders submitted to the Nazis, hoping each time that their submission and humiliation might save them something at least. But their very submission was made a weapon against them, and the Nazis pointed out to the workers how their leaders had basely deserted them when danger threatened. In the long history of the struggle of the European working class there are some triumphs and many defeats, but never had there been such a disgraceful surrender and betrayal of the workers’ cause without the least effort to resist. The Communist Party tried to resist and called for a general strike. They were not supported by the Social Democratic leaders, and the strike fizzled out. The workers’ movement, though broken up, is still carrying on with a secret organization which appears to be widespread. In spite of the Nazi spy system, secretly published newspapers are supposed to have a circulation of several hundred thousand. Some of the Social Democratic leaders who managed to escape from Germany are also trying to carry on some propaganda from abroad by secret methods.
The working class was by far the greatest sufferer from the Brown Terror. World opinion was, however, more agitated by the treatment of the Jews. Europe is partly used to class warfare, and sympathy always goes along class lines. But the attack on the Jews was a racial attack, something of the kind that used to occur in the Middle Ages or, in recent times, unofficially, in backward countries like Tsarist Russia. The official persecution of a whole race shocked Europe and America. To add to the shock, the German Jews had among their number many world-famed men, brilliant scientists, doctors, lawyers, musicians, and writers, headed by the great name of Albert Einstein. These people considered Germany their home, and they were looked upon everywhere as Germans. Any country would have felt honoured to own them, but the Nazis, in their mad racial obsession, hunted them out, and a mighty outcry rose against this all over the world. Then the Nazis instituted a boycott of Jewish shops and professional men, and yet, strangely enough, they would not allow these Jews as a rule to leave Germany. The only result of such a policy must be to starve them out. The world outcry made the Nazis tone down their public methods against the Jews, but the policy continues.
But Jewry, although it is scattered all over the world and can call no nation its own, is not so helpless as not to be able to retaliate. It controls a great deal of business and finance and, quietly and without much fuss, it proclaimed a boycott of German goods. And not only that, but something more, as a resolution, passed in May 1933, at a New York conference, declared. It was resolved “to boycott all goods, materials, or products manufactured, raised or improved in Germany, or any part thereof; all German shipping, freight, and traffic services, as well as all German health, pleasure, and other resorts, and generally to abstain from any act which would in any manner lend material support to the present regime in Germany”.
This was one of the reactions of Hitlerism abroad; there were other reactions which were even more far-reaching. The Nazis had all along denounced the Treaty of Versailles and demanded its revision, especially on the eastern frontier, where there is the absurd arrangement of a Polish corridor to Danzig cutting off a bit of Germany from the rest of the country. They also loudly asked for complete equality in arming. (You may remember that they were largely disarmed by the Peace Treaty.) Hitler’s blood-and-thunder speeches and threats of rearming upset Europe completely, especially France, which had most to fear from a powerful Germany, and for some days Europe seemed to be on the brink of war. Suddenly this Nazi fear led to a new grouping of Powers in Europe. France began to feel quite friendly towards Soviet Russia. Fearing a revision of the Treaty of Versailles, all the countries that had been created by it or had profited by it, like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Rumania, drew together, and at the same time drew nearer to Russia. In Austria a surprising situation arose. A fascist Chancellor, Dolfuss, was already in control there, but his brand of fascism was different from that of Hitler’s. The Nazis are strong in Austria, but Dolfuss has opposed them. Italy welcomed Hitler’s triumph, but did not encourage all Hitler’s ambitions. In England, which for many years had been pro-German, the people became anti-German and even began to talk again of “Huns”. Hitler’s Germany was quite isolated in Europe. It was obvious that a war would have meant a crushing of unarmed Germany by the powerful army of France. Hitler changed his tactics and began to talk in terms of peace, and Mussolini came to his rescue by proposing a Four-Power Pact between France, England, Germany, and Italy.
This Pact was ultimately signed by the four Powers in June 1933, though France hesitated before doing so. As far as the language of the Pact goes, it is inoffensive enough, and all it says is that the four Powers will consult each other in certain international matters, especially in regard to any proposal to revise the Treaty of Versailles. This Pact is looked upon, however, as an attempt to form an anti-Soviet bloc. France apparently signed it most unwillingly. Perhaps a result of and an answer to this Pact has been the non-Aggression Pact which was signed in London on July 1, 1933, between the Soviet and her neighbours. It is interesting to notice that France has expressed her great sympathy and agreement with this Soviet Pact.
Hitler’s fundamental programme—and it is the programme of German capitalism—is to pose as the champion of Europe against Soviet Russia. If Germany is to have more territory, it can only get it in eastern Europe or at the expense of the Soviet Union. Before this can be done Germany must be armed, and it is therefore necessary to get the Treaty of Versailles revised to this effect or, at any rate, to have the assurance that nobody will interfere. Hitler counts on Italian support. If he can win over England’s support also, it will be easy, so he probably hopes, to neutralize France’s opposition in any discussions under the Four-Power Pact.
Hitler is thus trying to win British support. In order to do so he has even publicly stated that it would be a calamity if the British hold on India was weakened. His anti-Sovietism is itself an attraction to the British Government, for, as I have told you, there is nothing that British imperialism dislikes quite so much as Soviet Russia. But the British people have been so disgusted with Nazi activities that it will take some time to win them over to any proposal involving an approval of Hitlerism.
Nazi Germany has thus become a storm centre in Europe, adding to the multitude of fears of this “panic-stricken world”. What will happen in Germany itself? Will this Nazi regime last? There is plenty of hatred and opposition to the Nazis in Germany, but it is clear enough that all organized opposition has been crushed. There is no party or organization left in Germany, and the Nazis are supreme. Among the Nazis themselves there appear to be two parties: the capitalist element and the business community forming the right wing, and the majority of the rank and file of the party, who have added to their number many workers who have recently joined them, forming the left wing. The people who gave the revolutionary urge to Hitler’s movement had a great deal of anti-capitalist radicalism, and they have subsequently accepted many socialists and Marxists. The right wing and the left wing of the Nazi movement had little in common. Hitler’s great success consisted in keeping them together and playing one off against the other. This could be done as long as a common enemy was in sight. Now that the enemy has been crushed or absorbed, the conflict between the right and left wing is bound to develop.
Already there are rumblings. The left-wing Nazis demanded that the first revolution having been successfully completed, the “Second Revolution” should now be begun, this being against capitalism, landlordism, etc. Hitler has, however, come down with a threat to suppress ruthlessly this “Second Revolution”. So he has ranged himself definitely with the capitalist right wing. Most of his principal lieutenants now occupy high offices, and being comfortably installed, they are not eager for change.
This account of Hitlerism has been a long one. But you will agree that this Nazi triumph and its consequences have been most important for
Europe and the world and will have far-reaching results. Undoubtedly it is fascism, and Hitler himself is a typical fascist. But the Nazi movement has been something more widespread and radical than Italian fascism was. Whether these radical elements will make any difference or will simply be crushed, remains to be seen.
To some extent orthodox Marxist theory has been confounded by the growth of the Nazi movement. Orthodox Marxists have believed that the only genuinely revolutionary class was the working class and, as economic conditions worsened, this class would draw to itself the discontented and dispossessed elements of the lower-middle class and ultimately bring about a workers’ revolution. As a matter of fact, something very different has happened in Germany. The workers were far from revolutionary when the crisis came, and a new revolutionary class was formed chiefly from the dispossessed lower-middle classes and other discontented elements. This does not fit in with orthodox Marxism. But, say other Marxists, Marxism must not be looked upon as a dogma or religion or creed which authoritatively lays down the final truth, as religions do. It is a philosophy of history, a way of looking at history which explains much and makes it hang together, and a method of action to achieve socialism or social equality. Its fundamental principles have to be applied in a variety of ways to meet the changing conditions of different times and different countries.
Note (November 1938):
Since the above letter was written, five and a quarter years ago, there has been nothing so remarkable in world politics as the growth in power and prestige of Nazi Germany under Hitler. Hitler dominates Europe today, and the great Powers, or those who were great, bow down to him and tremble at his threats. Twenty years ago Germany was defeated, humbled, crushed. And now, without a military victory or war, Hitler has made her the victorious nation, and the Treaty of Versailles is dead and buried.
Glimpses of World History Page 136