Austerity or Death #5
“If a compromise is to be reached, the welfare budget cuts will have to be far smaller than what is currently proposed, Prime Minister,” Otto Wels said. “The German Empire’s total population stands at ninety million. Fifty million of them are workers, two million are unemployed. Even allowing for the temporary shock of the Great Depression, these figures are absurd. Saving the unemployed and the working class is the immediate priority. Saving people must come before saving the state. Frankly, if welfare cuts remain on the table I could not support it, but since the Chancellor’s side proposed negotiations first, we are responding in good faith.”
“Good grief…” The moment he finished speaking the chamber began to murmur.
“There it is, their true colors at last,” Roman grumbled from the front row. “They’re going to make a deal with the capitalists after all. Comrade Stalin was right. The Social Democrats are nothing but fascists with a new coat of paint.”
“Exactly. How can anyone expect to carry out a revolution by cooperating with reformists? On that point, Comrade Stalin has the clearer view.”
“How disappointing.”
Emilia feels the same, doesn’t she?
Even inside the Comintern itself, the central organization of the Russian revolution, there were factions arguing that an alliance with the Social Democrats was necessary and factions insisting it was not. If the Germans took this line, what were the rest of us supposed to do?
“I am pleased you see it that way, Representative Wels. In that case, what scale of welfare reduction would you consider acceptable?”
“No more than a ten-percent cut per ministry at the absolute maximum.”
“…That is excessive.”
“The cabinet’s own proposal is excessive. Slashing housing and education subsidies by more than thirty percent would amount to the total destruction of compulsory schooling and public housing policy in Germany. Revitalizing capital is important, of course, but we cannot inflict that level of harm on the German people.”
It seemed Wels had not offered the compromise thoughtlessly. He drew a clear, firm line against the Chancellor’s extreme austerity.
When I glanced at the Social Democratic benches, Representative Crispin sat with a persistently sour expression, clearly displeased.
“Still, they must have their reasons,” Konrad whispered. “Even in the worst case the workers’ sentiment will keep the Social Democrats honest. Let’s wait and see.”
He was right. They were acting with calculation. But would they really tilt toward approval? Even ten percent was already unreasonable…
As the tedious arithmetic dragged on I opened the magazine I had brought and laid it on the desk. The phrase “National Socialism” I had seen last time still gnawed at me.
Why had the thugs who attacked the crowd been carrying the banner of an extra-parliamentary party that used that name? What was the connection to Hitler? And why did conservative newspapers and magazines keep mentioning the term?
There were too many questions. The Comintern would eventually dig up the answers if I simply waited, but the itch was unbearable. I wanted to find something out for myself.
The respectable conservative press offered no real explanation of the words “National Socialism.” They had no reason to use the term “socialism” in the first place. I hunted every line with burning eyes, yet nowhere could I find a proper definition or context.
Since I had no memory of how the term had been used in the original timeline, the whole thing remained opaque.
The articles that did employ the phrase usually read like this:
“Meanwhile the National Socialists have offered a fresh perspective on the incident, striking at the links with trade unions and thereby contributing to the restoration of the rightful authority of the great nobility.”
It was an excerpt tying a minor strike and a modest rise in crime in Bohemia-Brünn a few weeks earlier to the influence of the unions.
Yet they wrote in this manner without ever explaining who these “National Socialists” actually were. How was anyone supposed to understand?
Did conservatives have a private vocabulary? And why would conservatives—who loathed the left with religious intensity—make common cause with a movement whose very name contained the word “socialism”? It was not a splinter from the Social Democrats, and certainly not from the Communists.
“Hmm…”
I decided to widen the net. Until now I had only glanced at publications favored by the wealthy Brandenburg and Silesian aristocracy and capitalists. It was time to look at everything.
While wandering the streets in search of fresh material, one headline caught my eye.
“The People’s Observer…?”
I picked up the newspaper lying on the pavement.
What was this? Why had it been thrown away?
“Excuse me, do you know who discarded this?” I asked the first passerby.
“How should I know? Ah, The People’s Observer? That’s the cheapest paper they sell alongside the Red Flag at the kiosks.”
“Really?”
The Red Flag cost only five pfennigs. Something cheaper than that?
“How much?”
“One pfennig. They hand it out for free half the time anyway.”
“One pfennig?!”
Back at headquarters I showed my find.
“It was just lying on the street, so I brought it. They say it costs only one pfennig a copy.”
“One pfennig…?”
“They must be rolling in money. Who publishes it?”
“I haven’t had time to read it yet.”
I spread the paper open on the table at KPD headquarters.
“You people never bother with right-wing rags the way I do.”
“We don’t read them because we enjoy them,” someone shot back. “We read them because we have to know.”
“Exactly. Now stop pestering me and let me read.”
The headline screamed across the front page.
The recent rise in crime in Bohemia is intimately connected with strike activity. Trade-union agitation is disturbing public order. Moreover, this incident has laid bare the plain truth that Bohemians cannot govern themselves. Germany is a crucible in which countless races are fused. Only by preserving the pure Aryan and removing every other race can Germany achieve ethnic purity and rise again as a great power…
“Ordinary right-wing papers would simply say unions harm society and therefore capitalists should be given more power. But capitalists aren’t all German.”
In the original timeline Germany had never been a single-nation state. Bohemia, Flanders, Wallonia, the Trent region with its Slovenes and Italians—all were part of the Reich.
“Extreme ethnic nationalism of this sort is unusual even for conservatives.”
“It’s not unusual, it’s nonexistent! There are ten million Bohemians in Bohemia alone. Who would publish propaganda like this?”
“I’m more astonished they can sell it for one pfennig.”
The suspicious points kept multiplying.
“And it matches Hitler’s rhetoric far too neatly. He also goes on about Aryans.”
“But shared slogans don’t prove organizational ties. Are we going to claim every conservative paper belongs to Hugenberg?”
“No, but still…”
“So who publishes it? That’s what we need to know.”
I turned the page.
“Eher Verlag.”
“Not a well-known house. They must have other revenue streams to sell at this price. Anything else?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Wait—look at this.”
Ernst pointed at a line near the masthead. Every eye in the room snapped to it.
Inquiries to Barlow Palace, 45 Brienner Straße, Munich.
The room fell silent.
---
The bill that would have driven the German people to their deaths has been defeated. The result of an alliance between the KPD and the SPD together with a split inside the conservative camp. The margin was a mere five votes. Germany is not yet prepared to let the will of the masses shape its politics.
Receiving the pale winter sunlight through the window, he turned the page. In his hands was Pravda, once the newspaper of the Russian Communist Party and now the official voice of the Comintern.
He took a sip of coffee that steamed in the cold air and continued reading.
“Hoo…”
He stroked his mustache, impressed. It was not merely that the proposal which had drawn the world’s eyes had been rejected.
He set the paper down.
“You see? Cooperation with the reformists has not yet become impossible.”
“That story again, Comrade Trotsky?”
Another mustached man sat in the room. While Trotsky read the newspaper with refined poise, the second man pored over documents, eyes blazing as he hunted for a single word.
“It is not ‘that story again.’ It is proof that the power of socialism in Germany is not yet dead, Stalin. The Social Democrats have betrayed the revolution in many respects, yet the German Communist Party still has room to work with them.”
“Mark my words, the Social Democrats will compromise with the capitalists again. The moment they vote in favor of that bill, Germany is finished.”
“I believe they will not. The German Social Democratic Party still carries the face of Marx and the red flag.”
“It would be wiser to place our hopes in the newly formed Labor Party.”
Stalin’s reply was dry—dryness was simply his manner of speech.
“The Labor Party! Yes, Emilia Heinz, wasn’t it? That comrade has impressed me in many ways.”
“A wise young woman.”
“What was his name—Hitler? You heard she fought that mad nationalist?”
“How could I not have heard?”
For a fleeting instant Stalin’s iron mask cracked into a smile.
“Though she follows the ideals of the late Comrade Luxemburg rather than those of the late Comrade Lenin or ourselves, I am convinced she can bring about revolution in Germany. Comrade Ernst Thälmann has also been requesting assistance on several fronts lately.”
“And isn’t that precisely what you are handling?”
The papers in Stalin’s hands were all reports from agents sent into Germany concerning the unknown far-right forces. His task was to organize, summarize, and pass them on to the German Communist Party.
“The Comintern must act more vigorously, Stalin. How long will we simply wait?”
“To dispatch the Red Army arbitrarily into the present Germany would be a colossal diplomatic blunder, comrade.”
“Diplomacy? What use is diplomacy in the face of revolution?”
“It is not you who must weigh such things, but I.”
Trotsky burst into loud laughter.
“If a spontaneous revolution arises from within, the Comintern will of course intervene.”
“As it should. In any case I have entrusted that matter to you and Comrade Voroshilov.”
Trotsky rose from his chair.
“How proceeds the Second Five-Year Economic Development Plan?”
“Reports will arrive in January.”
“And the railway expansion?”
“I do not receive those reports.”
Trotsky sometimes found Stalin’s emotionless, witless tone wearisome.
“Very well. I shall look into it. Good work, Comrade Stalin.”
“Good work, Comrade Trotsky.”
After all, both of them were servants appointed by the people.
He put on his overcoat and left the room.