Overthrow the Cabinet #4
“Are you saying you intend to change your party line?”
“To put it concisely, yes, that would be accurate.”
The very next day, our interview with the Frankfurter Zeitung officially confirmed our new direction.
“May I ask what led you to this decision?”
“The German Constitution enacted in 1919 contains democratic values, yet it also harbors several critical flaws. Elections are not truly equal; the weight of a vote varies according to wealth. Once elected, a parliament is unlikely to properly reflect the people’s will until its four-year term expires. The fact that Chancellor Heinrich Brüning could proclaim an Emergency Decree and enforce austerity measures despite the people’s clear opposition, and that the People’s Front and the National People’s Party in the Reichstag had no effective means to stop him, proves one thing: Versailles democracy is broken. It must be changed from the roots.”
When I first entered the Reichstag, our party had been a tiny faction that relied on the Communists for a single seat. Back then, the Frankfurter Zeitung barely mentioned us in a single line tucked away in the corner of an austerity debate. Now here I was, giving a full interview. Life truly is unpredictable.
“What form do you envision, Representative Heinz?”
“We must create a state in which the people directly own and manage factories, land, enterprises, and the nation itself. By eliminating the distinction between rulers and the ruled, we build a structure where citizens can participate directly in both political and economic activity and express their will. That is why we need workers’ and people’s councils. That is why we need communism.”
“So you are saying you will once again adopt revolution as your party’s official platform?”
“Since its founding more than eight months ago, the Workers’ Party has never abandoned the goal of revolution. We merely set it aside temporarily to cooperate with the moderate Social Democrats. Now that the People’s Front has exhausted every possibility within the bounds of the law and still failed, we are moving toward direct action. In that sense, yes. The People’s Front’s platform will now be revolution.”
“Wouldn’t such a method be terribly inefficient?”
“Democracy is not a system that measures efficiency. Even if it is inefficient, it ensures that everyone’s opinion is reflected equally without bias and gives every person the opportunity to shape their own destiny. That, I believe, is the very reason democracy exists.”
The Frankfurter Zeitung, nominally a “centrist liberal” paper, printed my openly communist statements without alteration. Our “Revolutionary Declaration” was broadcast over the airwaves and transmitted across the world.
Soon after, the Comintern—contacted by Thälmann—sent a telegram encouraging the new alliance. Countless left-wing and liberal newspapers began acknowledging our cause and promoting its value. The instinctive fear of revolution, long branded into the hearts of the middle class and moderates, was beginning to fade.
With public opinion shifting rapidly in our favor, the Worker’s Factory project also found a way to circumvent the big corporations’ raw material embargo. If the market refused to sell goods to workers, we would simply create our own market.
It began with the unions at the large enterprises that dominated the resource market. Previously, capitalists could threaten unions by cutting wages, knowing that without jobs workers would starve. But now that the Worker’s Factory offered an attractive alternative, there was no reason for workers to remain in exploitative corporations.
“They’re telling us to open an independent market for the workers! The unions have grown fat!”
“Still, be careful. A friend running a steel complex in Breslau says all his workers have fled to those Bolshevik factories and he’s running at a loss.”
“Hah… to think we’ve reached the point where we’re being blackmailed by the lower classes…”
The absolute dominance of management and the absolute subjugation of labor had finally reversed. A change in the base structure had immediately triggered a change in the superstructure.
As a result, several companies began voluntarily allowing unions to sell portions of their output. A Worker’s Market emerged where the Worker’s Factory and union-led sellers traded raw materials and goods among themselves. In industrial cities with high worker-to-population ratios—such as Dortmund in the Ruhr and Prague in Bohemia—entire marketplaces dedicated solely to the workers’ market appeared.
“The Patriotic League attacked one of our factories?”
“Yes, Chairman. They burst in without warning and smashed all the equipment!”
Of course, not everything was going smoothly. The conservatives were hardly going to sit idle. Clearly, the old Red Front Fighters’ League of the Communists and the Reichsbanner of the Social Democrats alone were not enough to protect factories and demonstrators spread across the entire country.
“We’ll need a new organization.”
“The right-wing forces are starting to cross the line.”
“Exactly. We need an organization that isn’t tied to either the Communists or the Social Democrats—one that can take responsibility for the entire People’s Front…”
“What about merging the RFB and the Reichsbanner?”
“That’s an excellent idea.”
Wels’s proposal was accepted by Thälmann, and the two left-wing paramilitary groups temporarily united.
“We’ll call the new organization the Red Revolutionary Front (Roter Revolutionäre Front, RRF).”
Thus, the Red Front Fighters’ League and the Black-Red-Gold Reichsbanner merged under the banner of the Red Revolutionary Front. Their primary objective was to protect workers and demonstrators from the ever-increasing pressure of the right wing. Combined, their membership approached eight hundred thousand—an enormous force.
With public opinion, the economy, and the social structure all turning in our favor, Heinrich Brüning was now the one with fire under his feet.
“Did you hear? The Chancellor has banned publication of the Frankfurter Zeitung!”
The other side was finally beginning to take serious action.
“You summoned me, Representative?”
Alfred von Hugenberg had invited Adolf Hitler and his party to a mansion in the small Thuringian town of Bad Harzburg.
“Representative Hitler, have a seat.”
Despite the refined gesture with which von Hugenberg stroked his beard, his voice was edged with urgency.
“Why have you called me here, Representative?”
“I called you because you have worked diligently for our party these past three years, and because I believe the National Socialist Party you lead shares the same vision as we do.”
“It is an honor, Representative.”
“As you know, the left has grown unbearably arrogant lately. Before, the Bolshevik-controlled Communists and the insufferably arrogant Social Democrats—who strut about as if they created democracy—were too busy fighting each other to bother us. But ever since they formed an alliance, they’ve begun ignoring us completely. They openly talk about seizing factories and expropriating land, and they’re actually doing it!”
“But aren’t the great estates protected by the Cabinet’s Osthilfe subsidies?”
“They’re seizing land by buying it outright from the nobility! The Bolsheviks are starving to death aristocrats whose families have held those lands for centuries!”
It was perfectly natural not to understand what was wrong with capitalists choosing capitalism while workers pooled their money to buy impoverished noble land within the capitalist system. After all, conservatives were never creatures who listened to reason.
“The government police, who should be cracking down on the unions, are sitting on their hands simply because the Social Democrats are involved! We must join forces to oppose the Bolshevik elements trying to steal our country.”
“You are correct, Representative.”
In the end, the only reason von Hugenberg had summoned Hitler was the single banner of “anti-communism.”
“We will bring the Stahlhelm—the monarchist paramilitary organization under the National People’s Party—and attack them. Does the National Socialist Party have the strength to suppress the unions?”
“More than enough, Representative. Our party has one hundred thousand Sturmabteilung—SA—members who are always ready to fight for the nation.”
“Excellent. From now on, we will directly sponsor your party. All you need to do is beat down those unions that have forgotten their place. Understood?”
“When you say ‘sponsor,’ what exactly do you mean?”
“We will provide party propaganda funds and various other resources.”
If the aristocracy, who already wielded enormous influence in the Reichstag despite their small numbers thanks to overwhelming wealth, began supporting the National Socialist Party, its recognition and influence would rise dramatically.
“Very well. Then allow me to share our strategy as well.”
Adolf Hitler set aside the pledge document von Hugenberg had handed him and continued.
“To put it simply, our National Socialist German Workers’ Party aims to secure at least one hundred seats in the next election.”
“One hundred seats…?”
In the September 1930 general election, the National People’s Party had won only 101 seats. Yet Hitler, who had never once entered the Reichstag, was aiming for a hundred seats on his first attempt.
“Won’t that be difficult?”
“Of course it won’t be easy. That is why we must steal the votes of citizens and workers who currently support the weak People’s Front and the leftist reds.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“What do you believe is the reason Germany lost the Great War?”
This was the very foundation that had allowed right-wing forces like Hitler to gain power until now. Logically, the glorious German Empire of the Habsburgs—which had repelled the Ottoman invasion under the Islamic crescent, crushed the tyrannical ambitions of Napoleon who sought to conquer the world, and stood firm against the liberal tide sweeping the globe—could not possibly have been defeated by mere Britain and France. Someone inside must have interfered.
“Germany was defeated by Jewish capitalists greedy for wealth and by the Social Democrats who conspired with the Jews to taste power. The German nation is greater than any other. If we sweep away those traitors and all classes cooperate to build a powerful German national community, the German people—regardless of class or origin—will follow us.”
Von Hugenberg, who had previously dismissed Hitler’s calls to change the party line as “the recklessness of a young representative,” was visibly taken aback by the rhetoric coming from the leader of another party.
“…I believe you, Representative Hitler.”
“Let us work well together, Representative von Hugenberg.”
And so the German National People’s Party (DNVP) and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) united under the name Harzburger Front, bound together by their shared hostility toward democracy and the labor unions.