35. Weimar Germany’s Leftists Fought Each Other, Allowing the Nazis to Gain Power
In 1928, the Nazis were a radical fringe party, that polled at below 3% in elections to Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag. By 1932, the Nazis had become the country’s biggest party, with the single biggest bloc of Reichstag seats. Early the following year, Hitler was sworn in as Germany’s Chancellor, bringing an end to German democracy and ushering in the Third Reich.
Throughout their rise, the Nazis had never concealed their loathing of parliamentary democracy. Nor had they hidden their hostility to the parties of the left, particularly the Social Democrats, Germany’s center-left workers’ party, and especially the revolutionary communists. Yet, despite the rising threat from the radical right, the German left – especially the communists – spent much of its energy fighting other leftists, rather than making common cause against the Nazis. It did not take long after the Nazis gained power for leftists to discover just how catastrophically wrong that course of action had been.
