This aid was unintentional and of a very different kind from that which the American monopolies gave Hitler. The policy of the Soviet state contained features that greatly facilitated the Nazis' propaganda and disunited their opponents.
Social Democrats are the main competitors of the communists
Despite the fact that the fascists came to power in Italy back in 1922, the Bolsheviks did not consider fascism the main threat to socialism for a long time. Rather, on the contrary, the fascist dictatorship was viewed as the last stage of decay of bourgeois democracy, after which a proletarian revolution is inevitable. From this point of view, the suppression of rights and freedoms by the fascists should have been the last straw in the patience of the working class and induce it to revolt.
The Bolsheviks considered their main opponents in European countries to be the Social Democrats. After the First World War, they came to power in a number of countries and represented a democratic alternative to both fascism and communism. Their policy in Austria, called "Austro-Marxism", was especially successful. Austro-Marxists reduced the working day, introduced a progressive tax on income and consumption. Large funds were allocated from the state budget for social insurance, health care and pensions for workers, and for programs of cheap housing construction.
Reforms in the interests of the working class, softening the contradictions of capitalism, were also carried out in Germany under the Social Democrat President Friedrich Ebert (1919-1925), under the Labor government of James MacDonald in Great Britain (1924-1929) and in some other countries.
These events gave great popularity to the reformist socialists, reduced social tensions and knocked the ground from under the feet of the European communists. Those, on the instructions of the Soviet Bolsheviks, glued the label of "social-fascism" to the social democracy. In 1919, the Bolsheviks created the Communist International (Comintern) to guide their supporters abroad.
Promotional video:
Communists and Nazis versus Social Democrats
Although Hitler's National Socialism first loudly declared itself as an attempted coup in Bavaria back in 1923, for a long time the old political groups - both conservatives, liberals, and leftists - did not see it as a serious political force. A fierce struggle for influence over the working class was fought between the Social Democrats and the Communists.
The Nazis also wedged themselves into this struggle, giving their ideology a "working" flavor. They actively used left-wing populist rhetoric to win over the workers. The Nazis formed their own trade unions, organized or supported workers' strikes. The left wing of the Nazi party, led by the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser, was very active. The program documents that came out from under their pen often differed little from the program documents of the communists in that part that dealt with issues of the situation of the workers. Hitler subsequently dealt with the left wing, but at that time he did not hesitate to gain popularity in the working environment by any means.
Since the left-wing National Socialists took more radical positions on many issues than the Social Democrats, they were considered ideologically closer among ordinary German communists. Communists and Nazis attacked the trade unions and other organizations of the Social Democrats (which, however, did not prevent them from fighting among themselves). In the Reichstag, the Nazis and communists voted together to confiscate the possessions of the royal dynasties of the former German states. In 1931, they both voted in a referendum for the resignation of the Social Democratic government of Prussia. True, the struggle for one and the same massive social support made them competitors. But the Comintern constantly followed instructions to the German communists to bring down the main fire of criticism on the "social-fascists".
Stalin's paralysis of the German Communist Party
In the summer of 1928, at the 6th Congress of the Comintern in Moscow, social democracy was constantly honored with "social fascism," although this definition was not later included in the program documents of the congress. But on the other hand, it has been repeatedly stated that there is no fundamental difference between the fascist dictatorship and the liberal-bourgeois democracy, for which the socialist reformers stand. This attitude fatally influenced the tactics of the entire world communist movement on the eve of Hitler's coming to power in Germany.
Instead of organizing a rebuff to the Nazi offensive together with the Social Democrats and other progressive forces, the German communists, following orders from Moscow, continued to attack the Social Democrats. The blindness of their leadership regarding the threat of real fascism is evidenced by the speech of Ernst Thalmann at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Comintern in April 1931. Assessing the results of the September 1930 elections to the Reichstag, in which the Nazis received 18.3% of the vote, the leader of the German communists said that more "Hitler will not have better days, but only worse."
Other leaders of the German communists, Heinz Neumann and Hermann Remmele, who fought for weakening the struggle against the Social Democrats and for a tactical alliance with them against the offensive of fascism, were expelled from the Central Committee of the KKE in November 1932, at the initiative of Thälmann, who carried out Stalin's next order. At the same time, Neumann was also expelled from the communist faction in the Reichstag, and Remmele from the executive committee of the Comintern.
Both leaders, however, continued to work along the lines of the Comintern, having emigrated from Germany after Hitler came to power. Despite the fact (and perhaps also because) that their foresight was confirmed, and since 1935 the Comintern proclaimed the doctrine of creating left "popular fronts" to counter fascism, both of them were subjected to repression by the NKVD. Stalin did not forgive those who, opposing him, turned out to be smarter and more far-sighted than him.
In 1937, Neumann and Remmele, who lived in the USSR, were arrested. Neumann was shot in the same year, Remmele - in 1939. The NKVD handed over the wife of Neumann to the Gestapo in 1940. In general, it is significant that in terms of the number of destroyed German communists, the Stalinist regime was almost equal to the Nazi one (and even surpassed in the relative number). If the Nazis executed a total of 222 communists out of several hundred thousand, then Stalin - 178 out of 1,400 who emigrated to the USSR.
Yaroslav Butakov