Overthrow the Cabinet #12
The membership process proceeded more smoothly than expected. After all, there was no way Otto Wels’s Social Democratic Party—now pursuing a revolutionary line under the banner of the Social Democratic Party—would reject our request to join the Socialist International.
Whether we succeeded or failed here would decide whether the coming era belonged to the workers or to the fascists. Hoping for a favorable response, Wels enclosed our application along with a letter urging the German Labour Party’s admission into the Workers’ Socialist International and sent it off to London.
In tandem, the Communist Party began serious efforts to expand its organizational strength.
Ernst Thälmann had come up with quite a good idea.
And so a new organization was formed under the name Anti-Fascist Action, shortened to Antifa, and publicly launched on Sunday the 22nd.
“The fascists and National Socialists who carry out massacres and crush strikes are one and the same! The conservatives and industrialists who sponsor and encourage National Socialism are their accomplices! The National Front that gives them free rein is no different! The time has come for unity! We cannot hand Germany—or the world—over to the fascists! Free German people and workers! For the people’s true democracy! For socialism and communism! Join the Anti-Fascist Action!”
Thälmann thundered the birth of Antifa right in front of the Communist Party headquarters. The logo featured three overlapping red flags—symbolizing the alliance of our three parties.
The phrase Her zu uns—“Come to us”—soon became the defining slogan of Antifa. The Red Revolutionary Front would serve as the party’s combat organization, the trade unions and the ADGB would mobilize the workers, and Antifa would rally the citizens. The internal organization for revolution was, for all practical purposes, complete.
What remained was to reconcile the Socialist International and the Communist International as much as possible during the summer congresses, minimizing the risk of civil war or foreign intervention after the revolution, force Brüning’s resignation, hold new elections, and secure an outright majority for the People’s Front. The feeling that revolution was truly near began to settle in my bones. Just a few more months…
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“Chancellor, are you truly suggesting this?”
While the left and center were uniting under the People’s Front and Antifa, and the right was joining hands at Harzburg, Heinrich Brüning—his position shrinking by the day—secretly summoned Alfred von Hugenberg, leader of the German National People’s Party, to the Chancellor’s residence.
Von Hugenberg sat arrogantly, puffing on a thick cigar. The acrid smoke filled the Chancellor’s office.
Von Hugenberg let out a derisive snort, as if he had heard something absurd.
He sneered at Brüning.
To von Hugenberg and the conservatives, democracy was nothing more than a prison that confined the Empire.
Von Hugenberg was openly insulting him, but he possessed capital—a power that transcended mere political influence.
He tapped the ash from his cigar into the tray and continued.
He tossed the documents he had brought onto Brüning’s desk. Brüning picked them up cautiously.
The first sentence that met Brüning’s eyes was shocking.
1. Immediate and total abolition of all social welfare budgets. Complete repeal of inheritance tax, corporate tax, and progressive taxation. Any resulting shortfall shall be covered by expansion of consumption taxes.
2. Substantial increase in subsidies to landowners east of the Elbe. Ban all unlicensed private grain sales and transfer complete control of land and grain commerce to our aristocratic class.
3. Immediate dissolution of all trade unions. Total prohibition of strikes and demonstrations. Arrest every member of anti-state organizations such as the so-called Antifa created by that red bitch, and ban them by law.
4. Complete dissolution of the People’s Front.
5. Dissolution of Parliament. Return all power to His Imperial Majesty the Kaiser and the cabinet appointed by His Majesty. We shall handle the rest.
In other words, minimize taxes on the rich while extracting the maximum possible taxes from the lower classes who lived by consumption. It was a return to the 19th century.
Von Hugenberg smiled with satisfaction and continued reading the next clause.
His demands grew increasingly outrageous. Dissolving the People’s Front—which nearly eighty, perhaps even ninety percent of Germans supported—meant stripping the lower and middle classes of any political influence in a country where weighted voting already amplified the power of the wealthy.
Brüning had no justification to accept even one of these conditions. With living standards already falling due to austerity, raising taxes on the lower classes would be literal suicide. Every other demand von Hugenberg made amounted to treating the national budget as his personal treasury.
Brüning’s face turned deathly pale.
Von Hugenberg shouted at Brüning, who kept pleading impossibility.
Brüning had long known that to conservatives, the “state” was not an institution that served the people but a tool to protect their own interests. He simply hadn’t realized it had come to this.
In the end, Brüning yielded.
Von Hugenberg rose arrogantly, closed the door, and left the residence. Brüning thought bitterly that it would have been better to have sat down for a drink with Deputy Emilia Heinz a few months earlier. At least she—communist though she might be—still possessed the tether of reason. Or perhaps the People’s Front she led was the last remaining tether of German reason.
“Haa…”
Brüning sighed as he stared simultaneously at the Frankfurter Zeitung enthusiastically promoting the birth of Antifa and the papers von Hugenberg had left behind.
This cannot continue.
Finally, he set aside the absurd conservative demands for the moment and began drafting a secret letter to Deputy Heinz.