Iron Front Simulator: Social Democracy vs Fascism

 

An example of the Social Democratic Party's propaganda between the wars
"Help Protect this house, Republic, Freedom, Give your vote to
the Social Democratic Party!"

"Such a general development cannot be attributed to the false tactics of any single party or to the mistakes of individual leaders. On the contrary, the conduct of individual leaders is determined largely by the sentiments of the people as a whole. It would be erroneous, however, to regard the sentiments of the moment as reflecting the natural make-up and character of the people. They are merely the consequence of the special circumstances which have brought about this profound degradation of the entire nation."

- Karl Kautsky, Hitlerism and Social Democracy, 1934

A friend shared a game they had found on Itch.io Social Democracy: An Alternative History. For brevity and clarity, I'll be referring to the game as SDA. The game's premise is quite intriguing, the year is 1928 and your task is to block the rise of German Fascism through the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The game runs in the browser, loads quickly and works very well on desktop computer and smartphone. I discovered it yesterday and have clocked over ten play throughs, most of which were on normal, but then It tried out easy to explore more paths and options. There is a hard mode which I haven't touched as beating the game on normal is extremely difficult, my one clear win was on easy after figuring out the most likely outcomes of several dead end paths.

 The game is played through text with period photographs, political posters and music recorded at the time, it keeps the User Interface concise and works really well at building atmosphere and immersing you in that world. The game can be played entirely through one tab, though checking its library is recommended both to explain the personalities and factions and to provide you with some feedback on the impact of your actions.

It turns out that even with foreknowledge of the period and the threat posed by Hitler and the Nazi party, stopping them is very difficult. Most of my games ended with Germany plunged into civil war, though I take some comfort that Hitler and Papen are not in total control of Germany, perhaps World War II can still be avoided. The Kautsky quotation at the top pops up at the start of every new game, after several attempts I think it's an excellent opener to the game. Since the player is essentially a time-traveller, the task should be easy, but the "obvious" solutions are off the table, this isn't a Hitler assassination simulation it's a Social Democracy simulation. 

You have to stop Hitler whilst remaining true to the ideology and goals of the SPD in the late 1920s. Yes, there was a time when the SPD took a firm and bloody hand to defend the German Republic from insurrectionary threats, but that was in the early days, the enemies were Communists, Anarchists and former party members and the people tasked with executions and street fighting the Reichswehr and Freikorps no longer reply to the SPD's letters and are fraternising with the SA and Stahlhelm (Paramilitary group for the German Nationalist pro-Kaiser DNVP, and also the first organisation in Germany to adopt the banner of Fascism). For years, the party has pushed for a "normal" bourgeois parliamentary way of doing things. Essentially, the SPD saved itself on Monday, but as a consequence doomed itself on Saturday.

You don't have much room to manoeuvre, yes the SPD has its own security paramilitary the Reichsbanner and then later the Iron Front, but these are dwarfed by the SA, Stahlhelm and Communist RFB (Red Front Fighters), the SPD has control of the Prussian state and has a good chance at joining the government and accessing state ministries, but institutions employ thousands in layers of responsibility and the state administrations are full of the traditional supporters of the German right, relying on them to target your enemies is not a sound strategy.

And that's just at turn one, the Wall Street crash is coming, as is the Presidential elections and a clash over the governorship of Prussia. There are many examples of the special circumstances getting in the way of the best laid plans. Using the typical methods of the SPD in the late 1920s is insufficient as a response to the far right, the only paths that can give a chance at victory are the paths that break heavily with recorded history. Building bridges with the Communist Party helps resist Nazi attacks, as does pursuing a radical restructuring of the party and an ambitious economic intervention program, though there are many barriers on those paths to derail you before the final showdown.

I think SDA is useful at showing the player a more accurate picture of party politics. Amongst the left-wing there is an obsession with the party structure, it's treated like the missing ingredient in an equation, get the party form and program right and the rest falls into place more or less. This is a major factor of the "splitting" phenomenon -though not the only one, as this also afflicts groups that aren't interested in the party form- and why elections in Europe are often contested by multiple parties with similar names, branding and ways of speaking, and why meaningful collaboration between these supposedly similar groups is so rare. They can't work together as equals because they all view each other as fundamentally wrong, and giving ground is compounding the error. And that's looking at the modern day, in the period of the Weimar Republic these parties not only split and rivalled each other over personality and position, they had all in living memory fought each other in pitched battles and street fighting and murder are still common occurrences. 

Building a broad front is extremely difficult, and the paid functionaries of the state have their own agendas and views on how things should be run. And there are factions within the party who must be appeased and convinced, the other parties have their own plans and the international situation is almost completely out of the hands of the party leadership even when they form a government. And that's just for the bourgeois democratic state, looking at the role of the party in building a new state or alternative system and the potential for control and co-ordinated action diminishes further.

Autumn Chen the games' developer has proven that it is on paper possible for a social democratic movement to stop a fascist threat, and at the same time shown that they almost certainly will fail to do so, as to effectively defeat the far right vision of government and society requires that movement to act in a manner that forces it to transform into a new more radical and disruptive form with little in the way of political logic driving that change. Playing SDA reminded me of my time playing Suzerain both in what it was teaching me and the tools it used to create a player experience. I don't do numerical or star scores, but SDA is one of my favourite games of this year.