The United States Is in Its Germany, 1933, Moment
Germany, 1933. The then Weimar Republic was in turmoil. The Depression of the 1930s had taken full hold of the economy, which, in turn was still burdened by the reparations payments that the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, negotiated following the end of the First World War by the victors, at the Central Powers’ expense. Germany had had a series of Conservative governments with their respective Prime Ministers, none of which had been able to stay in power for very long. There was increasing “talk” of having the President of the Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, the commander of the Prussian Army in World War I (and an old Prussian — you can tell by the ‘Von”), putting Adolf Hitler, then known as the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP in German), into the Chancellorship. No one knew for sure what he might/would do once placed in that position, other than that the party itself took a right-wing line, further to the right than the conservative coalitions that had occupied the Chancellorship for the years leading up to 1933.
There were fears on the Left of what might happen if Hitler came to power. There were two left-wing parties, the Socialist Party of Germany (the SPD) and the Communist Party of Germany (the KPD). They were both opposed to right-wing policies, whether those of the traditional Conservatives or those of the NSDAP (as abbreviated, the NAZI’s). Together they would have held just under a majority of the seats in the Reichstag (the German parliament). Given the growing threat to the fragile democracy of the Weimar Republic coming from the NSDAP, it seemed natural that they would have formed an alliance against it. But the SDP and the KPD had a post-World War One history of antagonism and had never been allies during the period of the Weimar Republic.
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Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, MA is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, StonyBrookMedicine, Stony Brook University. He has authored, co-authored, edited, and co-edited 37 books, on subjects ranging from the U.S. health care delivery system to health and wellness, drug policy reform, the sport of triathlon/duathlon, and politics. Presently, he writes weekly on politics at www.opednews.com and his website: https://www.stevenjonaspolitics.com/.
Source: OpEdNews.com
Photo source: n-tv.de