Overthrow the Cabinet #15
The chimes of the Reichstag clock tower echoed coldly through the chamber as Brüning’s voice rang out, sharp and unyielding.
“The Sturmabteilung of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and the Red Front Fighters’ League of the Communist Party of Germany shall both be legally prohibited.”
“He really went all the way…!”
In the end, Brüning had banned the Nazi stormtroopers—and, in the same breath, outlawed the Communist RFB as well. He simply could not abandon his self-justification as “the only rational center opposing both extremes.”
Fortunately, the Social Democrats still stood with us, and they remained an organization Brüning feared to touch directly. The RFB’s structure could be swiftly rebuilt without using its old name. After all, the Red Revolutionary Front had originally been a joint effort between the Reichsbanner and the RFB; it was simply a matter of folding the RFB fighters entirely into the RRF.
The real problem was that the Chancellor and the Nazis had achieved exactly what they intended.
“Comrades!” Thälmann’s voice boomed across the square. “We have now confirmed there is no room left for dialogue with the Chancellor! The time for struggle has come! Let us drive out the capitalist pigs and landlord swine who starve the people while filling their own bellies in league with the Nazis! Let us establish true democracy on this soil!”
Yet his speech no longer stirred the citizens with the same fire it once had.
“Then why the hell did Representative Heinz take a bullet if we’re just going to keep postponing the revolution?! My neck’s about to snap from waiting!”
“If we launch a revolution now, the capitalists will beg the West for help. Britain and France will inevitably intervene against a workers’ revolution. We must wait until our alliance with the international socialist camp is complete and our comrades in Soviet Russia are ready to support us.”
“Wait? So even the Communists are choosing stability over liberation now?”
“My friend bled out and died because of your damn demonstrations!”
“Can’t you people stop these kinds of protests? Liberation is all well and good, but if we keep waiting like this for months, won’t it only cause even greater harm?”
“This dying heat in the demonstrations, this demand for safety, is exactly what Chancellor Brüning and the conservatives want! The people must continue to resist!”
The demonstrators’ fury was cooling. After years of mass protests, the bloodshed of the March Massacre had erupted into a slaughter of thirty-nine innocents. Public opinion toward revolution soured at terrifying speed.
No matter how fiercely the People’s Front newspapers—Frankfurter Zeitung, Die Rote Fahne, and the rest—tried to argue the necessity of revolution, it was useless.
This was bad.
The gray-zone press, previously sustained by independent business interests, had largely swung behind the government or the Nazis. In a country where universal equal suffrage had not yet been introduced, the middle classes—whose votes carried more weight than those of the workers—were turning away. Even if Brüning were forced to resign and a general election were held, securing a majority would be far from easy.
“…We may need to restrain our actions somewhat until we coordinate with the Comintern and the Socialist International this summer,” I said quietly.
At this point, Brüning remaining in power was preferable to the Nazis or conservatives taking over.
“Let’s focus on what we already have. We’ll encourage anti-fascist activity, promote recruitment into the RRF, and begin full-scale expansion of the Worker’s Factory project.”
In that ambiguous situation, the People’s Front had no choice but to drastically revise its line. And so the alliance spent an entire month in a state of uneasy calm.
A lull meant there was nothing we could do.
Communist activity had shrunk, but the Brüning cabinet was also expending considerable effort to suppress the Nazis, so the brownshirts could not run completely wild. The Chancellor seemed determined to make maximum use of this moment when both the right and the left found themselves on unstable ground.
Once citizens who opposed austerity stopped coming out to protest, Brüning not only refused to resign—he doubled down on austerity. The social safety net that successive German cabinets had built and reinforced was stripped of its budget, lost its ability to function, and began collapsing piece by piece. Aggressive tariff hikes and currency devaluation drove prices through the floor.
“We will shut down the Workers’ Faith newspaper, which has been carrying excessively anti-state content. We ask the public to understand and cooperate with the government’s policies as it seeks to resolve the impending economic crisis.”
Now they were moving to close even small-scale left-wing papers.
“This is a serious infringement on freedom of the press! Withdraw the closure of Workers’ Faith immediately!”
“That cannot be done. Several newspapers, including Workers’ Faith, have not worked for the well-being of the state during this national emergency. Instead, they have focused solely on attacking government policy with baseless criticism. It is better to sacrifice a measure of press freedom than to allow such outlets to continue inflicting great harm on society.”
“Then why the hell haven’t you banned the Nazis—the very perpetrators of the March Massacre?!”
“…Political parties and the press are separate matters.”
Once the Social Democrats, who had tried to maintain a middle course between the revolutionary Communists and the conservative National Front, fully swung toward the revolutionary camp, Brüning began taking a far more openly right-leaning stance. Of course, the Social Democrats were still a frightening presence to the Chancellor… but his intention was clear.
Brüning genuinely still believed he could form an alliance with the German National People’s Party. Otherwise he would never have shown such blatant anti-left bias.
It seemed he had also managed to reach some kind of understanding with the United States.
“Discussions are underway with President Herbert Hoover of the United States regarding an extension of the reparations payment deadline, citizens.”
He was probably trying to generate positive news about the direct purpose of austerity—reparations payments—in order to win public support for his policies. Still, the fact that the reparations would eventually have to be paid remained unchanged.
As the situation grew chaotic, the Nazis began shaping public opinion by pulling in the gray-zone press that had betrayed the People’s Front.
While our press grew increasingly left-wing and the right-wing press grew ever more reactionary, Brüning did little beyond shutting down a few papers that had crossed the line. He was trying to turn the press war to his own advantage. He wanted to prove, “While the left and right engage in this unproductive shouting match, the government has produced real solutions.”
To counter that narrative, we aggressively promoted the Worker’s Factory project and advertised its results. Yet large corporations, which squeezed workers to the brink of death to maximize efficiency, were gradually suppressing labor unions and using the Nazis’ power to obstruct the workers’ market as they sought their own solutions.
“We are not thugs—we are the solution! We cannot live as slaves to the capitalists forever! We must not lose the revolutionary fervor, the passion for liberation!”
“A nation where law and order are upheld! A nation that achieves national unity! A nation with powerful military strength! Only the National Socialist German Workers’ Party can create such a country!”
While we took every measure we could to crush the Nazis and preserve revolutionary momentum, May arrived. Which meant the 7th Comintern World Congress, to be held in Moscow on the 24th, was now just around the corner.