Liberal Pundits, Liberal Pundits Fuck Off!

Its election season again, and just like Christmas the signs show up earlier and earlier. One tradition in particular really drives me up the wall. Its the classic "Lie about the rise of Hitler to guilt everyone into voting for a candidate whose only positive is they're not as obnoxious as the other guy" tradition. 2016 was full of this, so much so that it drove me in desperation to write a blog trying to get through to these people. Re-reading it I stand by what I said, there was no electoral path in 1933, but there was a few things left out or barely touched on that are very important.

When the Presidential elections for 2016 were closed and Trump won I had hoped for a silver lining. The fact that the Democrats had gain 3 million more votes than the Republicans but still lost convincingly would; I hoped, finally get through to many of these obnoxious pundits on forums, social media and the talkshow circuit the fact that governance and power is more than just a ritualistic popularity contest every other year. And it given how many liberal commentators were demanding such things as making the electoral college dependent on districts or even abolishing it entirely, it looked like maybe a transition was starting to take place.

Of course none of the schemes for electoral reform went very far but I hoped they were a start. And a minority appear to have moved at least a bit further, but as time went on even these half measures seem to have been forgotten. Its an election year and we've come full circle. 

Once again I'm seeing more and more talking points, image macros and smug video snippets lecturing a largely imaginary constituency of political radicals to swallow their pride and support the lesser evil (tm). Only now I've noticed a shift, a lot of the Hitler crying has moved back a year, a lot of it is now using the 1932 parliamentary election results. Take for example this handy infographic.

This seems better, since it was at least an election that took place before Hitler was Chancellor and had control of multiple state police forces and the 50,000 SA auxiliary (pictured with a beat cop up top). But the flaws and out right lies remain the same. 

The funny thing here is that even if it was possible for the SPD and KPD to let bygones be bygones and forget about all the dead party members and mass imprisonments and botched uprisings etc, it wouldn't change anything. In 1933 the combined vote of the SPD and KPD fell short of a third meaning the Enabling Act would still pass since all the other parties with representation agreed to support Hitler. And of course the KPD were already being tracked down and arrested and so did several of the SPD deputies, so even they did manage to get a big enough slice of the Reichstag they would not be able to block the Act.

But let's look at the election results anyway.

National Socialist German Workers' Party	13,745,680	37.27	230	+123
Social Democratic Party of Germany	7,959,712	21.58	133	–10
Communist Party of Germany	5,282,636	14.32	89	+12
German Centre Party	4,589,430	12.44	75	+7
German National People's Party	2,178,024	5.91	37	–4
Bavarian People's Party	1,192,684	3.23	22	+3
German People's Party	436,002	1.18	7	–23
German State Party	371,800	1.01	4	–16

These are the best showing parties in July 1932, there were dozens more contesting that failed to get even one percent of the vote.

So the theoretical combined"Left" slate falls short 21.58+14.32= 35.90% which is still just below the 37.27% the Nazi's got. I'm actually a little surprised that they didn't use the November 1932 election results since there the Nazi party vote was slightly lower than the combined vote shares of the KPD and SPD.

But sad thing here, and why I feel confident calling this talking point a dirty trick by scummy liberals is that it doesn't matter how many votes the SPD or the KPD or some kind of hybrid SPD/KPD slate would get, Hitler did not get to power through a parliamentary majority or winning a presidential election, he was handed power by a coalition of German conservative politicians, Industrialists, Army Officers, and Aristocrats. 

Back in 2016 I spent a lot of time emphasising that Hitler was already Chancellor and his party had control of several important state functions before the elections were held in 1933. It is very important to keep in mind, but its also important to understand that by May 1932 Germany was already effectively run by a coalition of right wing militarists who were drifting further to the right, desperate for mass support to prop up their increasingly isolated regime and increasingly anti democratic and increasingly dictatorial.

After the coalition government under Chancellor Bruning, who was nicknamed the Hunger Chancellor because of the extreme austerity measures his government pushed through by emergency decrees in response to the economic chaos of the Wall Street Crash, a minority government dominated by the President Hindenburg and Von Papen continued to govern Germany by emergency decree though with even less democratic camouflage. They could do this because the Weimar constitution allowed them to do so. This is important, not only because the austerity measures increased popularity for the Nazi party, but the Bruning and Papen minority administrations frequent use of emergency powers, and interventions in the economy paved the way for an authoritarian governing mechanism which Hitler took full advantage off. When minority administrations propped up by Hindenburg's personal popularity proved unfeasible they turned to Hitler for support.

There's an important open letter that was written during this time called the Letter of the Industrialists, now the letter was published after Papen had gotten Hindenburg to agree to making Hitler an offer of a coalition, but its still an important document as it shows us who was willing to publicly invite Hitler into power. Here's a sample.

Gleichlautende Schreiben an den Reichspräsidenten schickten: Senator Dr. Beindorff, Ewald Hecker (Präsident der Industrie- und Handelskammer, Hannover), Dr. Kurt von Eichborn (Bankier), E. Helfferich (Reeder), Eberhard Graf von Kalckreuth (Großgrundbesitzer), Graf von Keyserlingk (Großgrundbesitzer), Carl Vincent Krogmann (Bürgermeister Hamburg), Dr. E. Lübbert, Erwin Merck, Joachim von Oppen-Dannenwalde (Großgrundbesitzer), Friedrich Reinhart (Bankier), August Rosterg (Generaldirektor der Winterhall A.G., Kassel), Kurt Gustav Ernst von Rohr-Manze, Engelbert Beckmann, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht (einflußreicher Bänker mit Beziehung zur Wall Street, später Reichsfinanzminister, Kurt Freiherr von Schröder (Mitinhaber der Firma J.H. Stein, Köln), Fritz Thyssen, Rudolf Ventzki, Senator F.H. Witthoefft, Kurt Woermann. Das Schreiben unterstützten inhaltlich auch Dr. Albert Vögler (Vereinigte Stahlwerke), Kommerzienrat Dr. Paul Reusch (Gutehoffnungshütte) und Dr. Fritz Springorum (Hoesch).

Its a list of Conservative politicians and industrialists. They were the support behind Papen and Hindenburg, and by both the offer and public shows like the letter prove were the ones willing to give Hitler power over Germany.

How many votes then would the KPD or an KPD backed SPD have to win before  August Rosterg (Generaldirektor der Winterhall A.G., Kassel), et al would publicly plead with Hindenburg to give Thalmann the Chancellorship? 

Ah, but what if, for argument sake a combined left platform took a majority of the seats in the Reichstag? Well that couldn't of happened, as we've seen their vote shares at their best were about just over a third of the vote. And we know from the vote on the Enabling Act that all the over parties including the liberal and catholic parties would side with Hitler over the two left parties, so a broader coalition is out of the question. But if miracles happened and they did get over 50% of the vote, I don't see how it would be feasible for them to form a government. Since there is no way Hindenburg and his coalition would cede power to them. 

On the contrary the naked hostility towards the German "Reds" was a major factor of given Hitler the Chancellorship in the first place. As we saw in January 1933, the "Moderate" Conservatives and capitalists were willing to give the Nazi's substantial control over the police and tolerate their private armies, Goring had already effectively outlawed the left in Prussia and was working on extending it nationwide, even the SPD the party that had collaborated the most to protect Germany from a Communist Revolt were viable targets for arrest as far as Papen and co were concerned. 

See that's the other thing about Weimar Germany, the popular image of an idealistic democracy beset by right wing extremists (the Nazis) and left wing extremeists (the Communists) with moderates (everyone else) crumbling under the constant pressure, is complete nonsense. Nearly every political party had a fighting organisation, and many were linked to paramilitary death squads in 1918. The DNVP which was the party many of the Conservative politicians around Papen and Hindenburg belonged to or had links and sympathies, which is often depicted as a fairly typical European Conservative party in reality had for years advocated the destruction of the Weimar republic and the restoration of the authoritarian monarchy and rebuilding of the German military and Empire. It also had a paramilitary group known as the Steel Helmets, and they were open admirers of Mussolini and the first group in Germany to adopt the label Fascist. After Hitler had come to power and made it clear that it would be him and not the Conservatives who would be the dominant force the Steel Helmets merged with the SA.

Members of the Steel Helmets wearing Nazi armbands in 1934

I could go on forever, but the point is, there was no way for even a mildly left wing electoral movement to succeed in Weimar Germany. For all its pretensions for democracy and openness power never rested with the people and the ballot box in Weimar Germany. In the early 30s the coalition of political conservatives, militarists, and capitalists found themselves in a crisis, they couldn't stand alone and they turned to the only option left to them, Hitler and the Nazis. At the time and especially with hindsight this shouldn't be a surprise, the Nazis were nothing more than more hard-line versions of the previous Conservative adminstrations.

Again the real lesson of the rise of Hitler is that democracy and elections are not a safeguard against fascism and reactionary movements. Ironically this is the one part that does indeed parallel with 2016, many people who had objected and opposed the American system and the Democratic party, many of them had reasons to oppose and despise Hillary Clinton personally, were so alarmed and worried at the prospect of Donald Trump's open courtship of white nationalism, and naked reactionary and xenophobic attitudes, that they swallowed their pride and principles and voted for the Democrats. I even know of a few who were so alarmed and felt so vulnerable that they even did some campaigning. And it worked 3 million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton to be President than did for Donald Trump to be President.

And yet as we know it didn't matter, because just like Weimar Germany power does lie with the electorate. The system said he qualified for power, and when he had although some of the heads of the institutions that govern the USA couldn't stand him and his views, they either resigned in protest or just sniped at him from the side lines. At least in Weimar Germany Schleicher tried to split the Nazi party and turn it on itself, what has the official "resistance" achieved these past four years that matches that?