Page 52 - The Chief Culprit

Stalin’s Role in Elevating Hitler y 29

In 1927 Stalin foresaw the Nazi takeover in Germany, and considered this develop-
ment desirable: “Precisely the fact that the capitalist government is turning fascist is leading
to a heightening of tensions within the capitalist countries, and to revolutionary actions by
workers,” Stalin told the Central Committee in 1927. Stalin gave Hitler’s regime the name
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“terrorist dictatorship” and stressed that “the revolutionary crisis will increase faster [since]
the more the bourgeoisie gets confused in its combinations and tactics, the more it employs
terrorist methods.” In his report to the Seventeenth Party Congress, he stressed: “I speak not
about fascism in general, but about fascism of the German type.”
In 1925, Stalin declared that World War II was inevitable, as was the Soviet Union’s
entrance into that war. “ ere can be no doubt that a war in Europe will start and they will
all fight in it.” But Stalin did not want to start the war himself, or to be its participant from
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the first day: “We will have to enter, but we will enter last, we will enter in order to throw in
our weight and tip the scale.” e more crimes Hitler committed in Europe, the better for
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Stalin, the more reasons Stalin had to send the Red Army to liberate Europe.
For Stalin’s strategy to be implemented Hitler needed to secure an absolute majority
of the votes in the German parliamentary elections. He could not do this alone. On July 31,
1932, Hitler’s party amassed 13.7 million votes in the elections to the Reichstag (German par-
liament), 37.3 percent of the total number of votes—the peak for the Nazi party, after which
its popularity began to decline. However, this was not enough for an absolute majority. In the
following four months, Hitler lost 2 million votes. e decline continued, and gained mo-
mentum. e breakdown of the votes for the major German political parties on November 6,
1932, when the emergency Reichstag election took place, was as follows:

Hitler’s party (NSDAP)—11,705,000
Social Democrats—7,231,000
Communist Party—5,971,000

Hitler’s National Socialist Workers’ Party faced a crisis. At first glance, Hitler seemed to
be the winner and the most popular politician in Germany, and therefore should have taken
power. However, he did not have an absolute majority, and could not take power. But com-
bined, the Social Democrats and the Communists had more votes. Hitler’s National Socialist
Workers’ Party was in a deep financial crisis as well, its funds diminishing fast. Goebbels
wrote in his diary: “All hope has disappeared. . . . ere is not a pfennig in our cash boxes. . . .
Nobody gives us any credit. . . . We are on our last breath.” Goebbels’s entry on December 23,
1932, said: “I am overwhelmed by a terrible feeling of loneliness, which borders on a sense of
total loss! e year 1932 was a sequence of one misfortune after another. It should be erased
completely. . . . We have no prospects, no hopes left.” e terrible position the Nazis found
themselves in was no secret to outside observers. By New Year’s Eve, the powerful newspaper
Frankfurter Zeitung was already rejoicing at the “disintegration of the NSDAP myth.” Harold
Laski, one of the leading intellectuals of the English left, was assured that: “ e day when the
National Socialists presented a lethal danger has passed. . . . If we discount chance, it is not
so improbable that Hitler will finish his career as an old man in some Bavarian village, telling
tales to his friends in the evenings in some beer hall, about how he once almost orchestrated
a takeover in the German Reich.” 6