11 January 2025
Published on 7 July 1934, following Hitler's purge of top Nazi leaders through a serious of executions and "suicides" in what is called "Night of the Long Knives."
At the time, the Communist Party seemed to believe, as the mainstream press did, that Hitler's days were numbered ... that his defeat was looming.
It's also interesting to look back and read people praise Stalin and Stalinism. Literally millions of people would die needlessly under Stalinism, with estimates as high as 20 million people.
However, there can be no questioning the anti-fascist fire of the Communist Party towards Hitler and fascism. The communists never had any use for Hitler. The Soviet Union would go on to lose 27 million people in World War II. But in 1934, the war had not yet begun. It wouldn't begin until 1939 when Germany invaded Poland on 1 September.
NEW YORK. - Before thousands of workers gathered in Madison Square Garden in this city, Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States, explained the Communist position on the recent events in Germany.
Analyzing the social forces operating in Germany he said, "The forces of the proletarian revolution are advancing with seven-league boots."
The full text of his speech follows:
Friend and Comrades:
The Daily stories of murder that have poured out of Germany for 15 months, have, in the past week, been varied from the usual in the type of victims. The leaders of the Brown Shirts, the Hitlers, Goerings, Goebbels, Roehms, Heines, Helldorfs, etc., in true gangster style, have begun to murder one another. Here at least we need waste no sympathy on the victims, who were among the most bestial, most sadistic, most perverted of their Nazi Party, whose leaders are the embodiments of bestiality, sadism and perversion.
Last week's gang war within Hitler's top ranks, has, however, a very special interest for all anti-fascists. This event, predetermined by the whole corrupt system of German Fascism and its history, marks a definite stage in the maturing of the pre-conditions for the proletarian revolution in Germany. It marks the ripening of that catastrophe which the German Communist Party and the Communist International warned the German masses could be the only fruit of Hitlerism in power.
Hitler rode to power on the basis of the wildest promises to the declassed petty-bourgeoisie, white collar workers, impoverished peasantry and the strata of young unemployed workers who never had employed workers who never had the training of work in factories, that he would relieve their misery. The bloody smashing of the Storm Troops is the open and final rejection of their claims for the honoring of those promissory notes. It would be wrong to say simply "Hitler did not keep his promises." He kept those he made to Krupp and Thyssen; he defaulted on those he made publicly to the masses.
Hitler promised to restore German economy and to regain for Germany her old international position of "equality" among the imperialist powers. But 15 months of Nazi rule had plunged the economy into new depths, shattered the currency system, destroyed foreign trade, and isolated Germany internationally as she had never before been isolated, while hastening all Europe to the brink of war.
The rising mass movement against Hitlerism on the part of the overwhelming majority of the workers who have always opposed it, emboldened the petty-bourgeois followers of fascism to demand their promised rewards. A section of Hitler's lieutenants, typified by the unspeakable Roehm, conspired to make use of this mass movement to raise themselves to the position of ruling clique. Under the slogan "second revolution," they tried to use against Hitler the same tricks whereby Hitler came to power. But they forgot that the real ruling clique was Krupp, Thyssen Schacht, for whom Hitler is only the paid thug. The real rulers of the Nazis, German finance capital, gave Hitler his orders last Friday to clean up these conspirators for fear that the break that they would create in Nazi ranks would provide the opening for the revolutionary upsurge of the deeply disillusioned and revolting German masses.
But the bloody "cleansing" ordered by Krupp, Thyssen & Company, the German counterpart of our steel, oil, auto and shipping magnates, in order to ward off one danger, has created new and greater dangers; at one blow it has split open the boasted Nazi unity. It has shattered the mass base under the Nazi regime, exposed the whole rotten heart of Hitlerism. The danger of the Brown Shirt masses who took seriously Hitler's promises, is suppressed at the price of creating more favorable conditions for the revolutionary masses to prepare decisive blows against it. Events of the last week-end proved the correctness of the Communists who pointed out the impossibility of unity of one Party of bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie and workers. They revealed already great breaks in the crumbing base of Hitler's rule, and forecast its early doom.
When Hitler took power, the bourgeoisie of all countries hailed his advent as opening a new era for German capitalism. The Socialist Parties of the Second International joined this chorus, together with their contemptible adjuncts - the Trotskyites and Lovenstonites - by proclaiming a "prolonged era of fascist reaction, " and the "irreparable defeat of the proletarian revolution." Social-Democracy, after paving the way to power for Hitler, and after being repulsed by Hitler in their abject pleas for a corner under his dictatorship, within Germany, where Hitler could reach them, licked his bloody hands, while outside of Germany they barked heroically from a safe distance.
But the Communist Party, which fought Hitler uncompromisingly from the beginning, continued this fight without faltering. Its fundamental analysis was different, its action was different. The Communists, using the fundamental teachings of Marx, Lenin and Stalin as their guide, never failed to see the real class forces at work in Germany. They knew the difference between Hitler's national-socialist demagogy and the class policy of the Krupps and Thyssens which ruled it from behind the scenes. This consistent Communist understanding and policy was expressed last December at the 13th Plenum of the Communist International, in the report of the Executive Committee, in the following words:
"It is not true to say that capitalism has managed to stabilize its position with the aid of fascism as many Social-Democrats assert. This is what the world bourgeoisie WANTS TO DO; this is the aim of its policy of fascization; but the results are altogether different. We say revolutionary development is simultaneously hindered and accelerated by the fascist fury of the bourgeoisie. The dual character of the objective consequences of the policy of fascism must be understood, otherwise it will be not be possible to see the perspective clearly ...
"Amidst the conditions of tottering capitalism, even the fascist terror of the bourgeoisie cannot for long restrain the masses of the workers from decisive action. The terror arouses anger, even among the majority of those workers who up till now have followed the Social-Democrats, and if only the Communists are able to approach these workers properly it will be much less difficult than formerly to win them over to the side of revolution. Even fascist demagogy can now have twofold effect. It can, in spite of the fascists, help us to free the masses of the toilers from the illusions of parliamentary democracy and peaceful evolution; and the other bait that fascists use in place of these illusions (small private property, national interest) can be exposed by showing what the ruling fascists do for the benefit of the class interests of the bourgeoisie and the landlords. When the big bourgeoisie tries to convert the peasantry and the urban petty-bourgeoisie into a reliable prop for themselves, they accelerate the process of differentiation among these intermediary classes, even where the bulk of the masses of these exploited classes at first swing over to the side of fascism. The ruin of these classes by fascist rule quickly creates the soil for winning them over to the side of the revolutionary proletariat."
With this clear-cut revolutionary perpsective, and with the greatest determination and heroism, the Communist Party or Germany went forward with its revolutionary work. It quickly adapted itself to illegal conditions of work. Illegal groups were created in factories, in workers' neighborhoods, and even within the fascist organizations themselves. An illegal press was established, turnout out millions of leaflets, newspapers, and pamphlets, which has never ceased to work.
The correct approach and fearless work of the Community Party resulted in deep penetration into the ranks of the Social-Democratic workers, who had been deserted by their bankrupt and cowardly leaders. Tens of thousands of Social-Democratic actives, joined the Communist cells or allied themselves with them in carrying on the revolutionary anti-fascist work.
The only decisive victories won by the workers against the fascism were those won under the leadership of German Communist Party. Outstanding among these was the decisive defeat of Hitler in the Leipzig Court. Backed by the revolutionary masses of the world, the heroic Communist defendants in the Reichstag Fire Trial hurled defiance in the face of the Nazi butchers, ripped open their corruption for the whole world to see, and showed boldly to the German workers the only road to the destruction of Hitlerism and to working class power. These men - Popoff, Taneff, Torgler, and the giant of them all, Dimitroff, showed to the world the steel-like qualities of revolutionary fighters who stand firmly on the program of the Communist International. This trial signified to the world that Communism in Germany had not been defeated, that it would not be defeated. It was a powerful factor in stimulating all the revolutionary work within Germany and the world-wide mass support behind the German proletariat. The gigantic victory of snatching Dimitroff and his comrades out of the hands of the Nazi murderers, was the first delivered under the Leninist leadership of the Communist International.
It was no accident that the upheaval in the Nazi top ranks took place three days before the infamous "Peoples Court" of Hitler was scheduled to open with the legal farce of the lynching of Ernst Thaelmann, leader of the German working class - at a moment when again the world proletariat was gathering its forces in a mighty second blow in support of the anti-fascist struggle of the German workers in the struggle for the release of Ernst Thaelmann.
Within Germany itself the approaching trial of Thaelmann, together with the deepening misery and catastrophic condition of the masses, was creating a tremendous revolutionary stirring among the masses. The depth of this can be appreciated by the outcome of the recent factory council elections only a few weeks ago. There, by Nazi admission, and in the face of intensified terror, the decisive majority rejected the fascists' lists.
It was this workers' movement which stimulated and gave the foundation to the broad movement of resistance to fascism among middle-class elements, expressed in the churches, among the peasantry, and even among the lower ranks of the Brown Shirts - the fighting forces whereby Hitler achieved power - under the slogan of "the second revolution," which for them meant relief from the class policies carried out by Hitler on behalf of Krupp, Thyssen and the landlords.
It was in the midst, and as a result of this situation that the events of the past week took place. In this light it is clear, not only that the original Communist analysis of German fascism was correct, but also that the breakup of the fascist regime and the rise of the forces of the proletarian revolution is proceeding with seven-league boots. The persistent heroic work of the Communist Party in the factories, in the fascist trade unions, among the Storm Troopers, among all of the strata of the exploited population against the Hitler dictatorship, against the demagogy, against the detestable anti-semitism which is the German counterpart of the stink of the slave-market that is constantly stirred up in this country against the Negroes by the white ruling class - these things were and are tremendously important factors in the beginning of rebellion by the masses deceived by Hitler:
We Communist, who never in the darkest days lost our heads, who at all times foresaw and foretold its inevitable and early breakup can now confidently assert that our German Communist Party, with the help of the world proletariat, will more than ever give leadership and organization to the rising revolutionary upsurge, will meet and overcome the tremendous difficulties that still lie in the way, will finally cut through the jungle of fascism. Just as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Stalin is victoriously building a new world of Socialism, overcoming all obstacles, so the Communist Party of Germany, under the leadership of Thaelmann, for whose freedom we are fighting, will smash the old world which in Germany shows its final and most detestable form, and establish a free Soviet Germany.
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