Anti-Fascist Series #8

 “The Brown Plague”by Daniel Guerin, 1932-1933 / 1994 republished

This is a wonderful political travelogue tracking the last year of the Weimar Republic – 1932 - and the first year of the Nazi takeover of Germany - 1933.  A young Guérin twice takes to the road, hitch-hiking and bicycling, staying at youth hostels, intending to report back to France on what he sees.  As such it is not your typical ‘mile-high’ view of what was occurring in Germany – it captures the ‘on-the-ground’ cultural and social side, not just the political.  It is incredibly revealing, especially for those of us living in a society with a growing fascist movement and all that personally entails.  As Eugène Ionesco observed in his play “Rhinoceros,” even family members can turn into beasts.  

Guérin also wrote “Fascism and Big Business,” a classic analysis of the German capitalist class’s support for Hitler (also available at May Day). On the political side Guerin agrees with Trotsky and the rank-and-file German Communists (CP) and Social Democrats (SD) he met who nearly all were for an anti-fascist block between the CP and the SD. This was against Stalin’s “3^rd period” policy, while the SDs vacillated.  Stalin preferred the fascists to the ‘social-fascists’ of the SD, fantasizing that the CP would take power after Hitler.  This 3^rd period ‘mistake’ led to the victory of the Nazi Party and later WWII.

1932

In his first visit in 1932 Guérin travels through the small towns of Bavaria and bigger cities like Frankfurt and Berlin.  He attends a session of the Reichstag as a reporter, watching a session in which the traditional German Landswher Right and Goring’s Nazis have a temporary falling out over a vote of no-confidence in the government.  At this point the traditional German conservatives thought they could still manipulate the Nazis.

In the small towns of Germany the Nazi Party’s Brownshirt SA predominates, denouncing capitalism, unemployment, inflation and poverty – an echo of the socialists and communists.  Yet with a large base of small businessmen and farmers, as it also promoted nationalism, anti-Semitism and the traditional family. Guérin hears Gregor Strasser in Dresden denounce the draconian Versailles Treaty, a pharmacist and one of the voluble leaders of the Brown Shirts.  Thousands greet him with the Roman salute. The German rightists busily denounced French imperialism to Guérin … showing that ‘anti-imperialism’ is not merely a left-wing phenomena.

In Dresden Guérin visits a grand Social-Democratic union hall ‘People’s House' full of chandeliers and waiters in white shirts – like a gentlemen’s smoke lounge.  Guérin could see how the bureaucratic SD leadership was disengaged from what was happening on the ground just by looking at this building and meeting the fat, complacent men inside. The SDs led the majority of the German union movement at the time.

Guérin, being gay, notes the many muscular and tanned unemployed youth – ‘Wanderers’ - hiking the highways like him, dressed in boots and lederhosen.  He comes on groups of young ‘wild gangs’ dressed in varied costumes, alienated from society – some of whom later end up in the fascist movement and some in opposition.  He visits a youth camp on a lake run by the CP’s militant Rotfront (Red Front) near Berlin where nature-worship provides an outlet from poverty .  He joins a group of youths at the back of a city bar singing The Internationale. 

But everywhere on his first visit he sees signs of low-level political struggle between the camps – fist-fights, insults, yelling, newspaper and poster destruction, marches … and fear.

Brownshirt Leadership before the Fall

1933

Guérin returns in 1933 after the rightist Hindenburg appoints Hitler Chancellor.  This starts a domino effect of anti-Socialist and dictatorial laws, especially after the burning of the Reichstag 4 weeks later, which is blamed on the CP. (The head of the Berlin fire department alleged the Nazis had prevented the fire department from putting out the fire.  For this he was imprisoned and later killed.  Communists were arrested at the time and pardoned by West Germany years later. Hitler claimed the fire was “a sign from God” to go after the Communists.  Many think it was a successful ‘false flag’ action by the Nazis. Others that a deranged individual Communist did it.)

Guérin visits youth hostels that were once calm or Socialist and are now all occupied by angry Nazi youth.  They show no interest in him as a Frenchman unlike before when they crowded around with questions. He watches a Nazi ‘Sunday” of spectacles in Leipzig.  This involves the burning of socialist books, posters and pamphlets topped by an effigy of CP leader Thälmann; lots of singing of patriotic and rightist songs like Horst Wessel; endless speeches and formations; motorcycle parades and hikes by militarized youth through the countryside.  But as some note, spectacle does not fill stomachs.

Guérin comments on the ‘socialism of fools’ - anti-Semitism - as Jews comprised less than 1% of the German population, owning some department stores and were present in some professions like law.  He notes Hitler’s pacifist speeches, but knew behind them Germany was preparing for war against France for its occupation of the Ruhr and then conquering ‘greater Germany.’  He was told that every job required the applicant to be baptized as Catholic or Protestant and to study the Bible and Nazi books as part of the application process.  He tracks the takeover of the German labor movement by Nazi decree. This involved the lightening occupation of SD offices, union halls and People’s Houses by Brown Shirts, who proclaimed an end to SD ‘corruption' while being even bigger crooks themselves.

NATIONAL BOLSHEVISM

Guérin writes of the Brownshirt goal of “National Bolshevism” - a contradiction in terms.  He reveals what it is – a yearning for social revolution but on the terms of the national German bourgeoisie.  I.E. impossible.  The dissatisfaction with the failures of the bureaucratic SD and of the ultra-left CP led to this third position.  Hitler’s liquidation of Strasser, Rohm and the Brownshirts in 1934 by the 'Blackshirts' put an end to that movement as a semi-independent entity.  This cemented the Nazi bloc with German capital.

The youth, as usual, are the most radical on both sides. He talks with rank and file workers who explain how the Social Democracy rotted from the inside, failing to deal adequately with the Depression or fascism.  Signs of resistance to the Nazis – strikes and protests - don’t dissuade them from trying to win the whole proletariat to their ‘yellow’ Labor Front. The Nazi Labor Front signs a ‘no strike’ pact with the capitalists which irritates even the SA.  Musicians and wanderers are to be thrown into forced labor camps.  Employed workers will be forced to join the new Nazi labor organization.

In the dock at Nuremberg - Goring, Von Papen, Hess, Von Ribbentrop - ELG  

The intention of the Nazis is to cow and frighten everyone into silence and fear. This is after both left parties failed to take drastic action against the Nazis, who banned them and dissolved their organizations.  Guerin visits a socialist bookshop in Berlin that is open, but will be closed by the regime after burning its books, along with CP offices and newspapers. A lonely CP functionary sitting in his office is arrested the next day.  Guèrin hears whispered confidences from hidden liberals, Socialists and Communists. When winning people over doesn’t work the next logical step for the Nazi regime is illegality, prisons, concentration camps, torture and execution.  Guèrin visits the Oranienburg (later Sachsenhausen) prison near Berlin on the sly and sees what is happening. 

In reaction to the wave of arrests and detentions, Guèrin talks to various isolated groups of young people functioning in illegality, attempting to unite CP and SD workers to make propaganda and to revive some kind of organization and opposition.  The SD & CP leaderships are in disarray and impotence, still repeating cliches. The small group of Trotskyists seem to be the most prepared. But ultimately he is pessimistic as to the left's ability to recover what was lost.

THE POINT

It should be obvious at this point in Guèrin’s narration that the main and immediate target of fascism are socialists, communists, the labor movement and the working class.  Even a quick look at the Trumpist movement's hysteria over 'socialism' tells you that it is one of its main targets - although you wouldn't know if from the liberal press.  The press hates socialism after all, so they don't want to reveal this ideological similarity with Trump. In Germany nationalism, war and anti-Semitism were next on the agenda after socialism was crushed.  Which should give you a deep understanding of what fascism is really all about – it is scapegoating to preserve a desperate capitalist regime that can no longer control labor or society in any other way.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left:  Fascism Today; Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate; Against the Fascist Creep; Fighting Fascism (Zetkin); The Real Red Pill; No Fascist USA; The Ultra-Right; It Can’t Happen Here (Lewis); Anti-Fascism, Sports, Sobriety; The Coming Storm; A Fascist Edge; Clandestine Occupations; Charlottesville, Virginia; What is the Matter With the Rural U.S.?; Angry White Men.

 And I bought it at May Day Books!  Keep us open…knock if needed.

Red Frog

April 4, 2021