Voting for the Lesser Evil Led to Hitler’s Conquest of Power

“The situation was desperate and called for desperate measures.  The Social Democratic party could choose either the road of political revolution through a united front with the Communists under Socialist leadership, or co-operation with the semi-dictatorships of Brüning, Papen, and Schleicher in an attempt to ward off the greater danger, Hitler.  There was no other choice.  The Social Democratic party was faced with the most difficult decision in its history.  Together with the trade unions, it decided to tolerate the Brüning government…”[1] 

This is a quote from a man named Franz Neumann. He passed away in 1954. He was Jewish, a socialist, and among the top leadership of the largest political party in Germany during the rise of the Nazis. They were called the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). It’s where the phrase “democratic socialism” comes from. Back then they called it “social democracy.”   

The SPD was handed the presidency of the Weimar Republic from its founding in late 1918, shortly after the end of World War I. The SPD was the largest party until the Nazi’s “soft coup” in early 1933. In the quote above, Neumann is describing the two options that were facing the SPD. When he refers to the Communists, he’s referring to the SPD’s main rival on the left, which was the Communist Party of Germany, the KPD.  

This article deals with the path the SPD took, the path of “cooperation with the semi-dictatorships.” The next article will address the path of “political revolution,” which was the path the SPD did not take. Many people try to blame the KPD for Hitler’s conquest of power, for splitting the vote of the left. That’s not how Neumann saw it and we should believe him over everyone else today.

Today’s leading democratic socialists refuse to admit that their politics are the same as what dominated the German left and failed against the Nazis. It is as though they want to personally benefit from an alliance with liberals and progressives, which ultimately means they’re choosing the path of semi-dictatorship as though this is going to defeat fascism.  This phrase, the “path of semi-dictatorship,” is not familiar one in the US. In our current struggle against fascism, it’s just another way of describing the politics of voting for the lesser evil.

That’s what dominated the German left against the Nazis, just like it dominates the left in the US today. The SPD was desperate to believe that the government was going to successfully regulate capitalism. They believed the government was going to tax corporations and the rich, then give enough of that money to working class and middle class people, basically trying to bribe them not to join the Nazis.  

It didn’t work. Like our nightmare today, their version of the “American Dream” had died, but SPD leaders refused to admit it. They gaslit the working class instead. Like ours today, the leadership of the SPD liked the comfort and security that came with being middle class.  

They didn’t want to risk giving it up. Instead, they accepted the risk that the Nazis could rise to power. And just like our middle class leaders today, they didn’t have a backup plan.

The SPD, including Neumann himself, put all their eggs into the lesser evil basket. The more they’re politics failed, the more they tried to use government repression to stop the rise of the Nazis.  Not only did it fail to stop the Nazis, but they used it on the KPD as well. They repressed their own potential allies. This is what Neumann meant by semi-dictatorships, and it is happening again today.  

Neumann was explicit about what took place after “Brüning, Papen, and Schleicher,” yet today’s leaders in the US ignore history. “Continuing the policy of the lesser evil, the party supported the re-election of Hindenburg in April 1932,” he wrote. Hindenburg then appointed Hitler as chancellor in January 1933.   

By that time, Hitler was able to take control of a government that had already built a massive capacity to repress the population. The social democrats and their liberal allies like Hindenburg handed it over to Hitler. They built a semi-dictatorship and eventually opened the path to power to the Nazis.  

Neumann wrote the above quote after years reflecting on what went wrong. He called voting for the lesser evil “the policy of a man who is hounded by his enemies but refuses either to accept annihilation or to strike back, and invents excuse after excuse to justify his inactivity.” Instead, Neumann eventually came to believe in the need to strike back, to choose the path of revolution.

Because the SPD went all in on lesser-evilism, they were fundamentally unprepared when Hindenberg appointed Hitler and as he then rapidly concentrated power around himself. Hitler then went on a rampage and Jewish socialists like Neumann were forced to flee the country nearly overnight.

Today, our so-called leaders on the left, including Bernie Sanders and people like AOC, aren’t talking about this history.  Since Trump lost to Biden in November 2020, they’ve been steadily marching in lockstep with Joe Biden’s semi-dictatorship.  “Middle Class Joe” is now trying to out-Trump Trump by sharply turning rightward.  

Biden is driving the genocidal Israeli onslaught in Palestine while also pushing for an expansion of the southern border wall. He’s been shoveling more and more money into police budgets, increasing the capacity of the government to spy on its own citizens, and fueling wars around the world. His administration is supporting the repression of pro-Palestinian activists. The Biden Administration and the FBI continue to treat anti-fascists and anti-racist activists as “domestic terrorists,” equal to actual fascists and white supremacists. 

The writing is on the wall. We too have a choice to make. Let’s choose the path of revolution, not cooperation with semi-dictatorships. The next article will begin to explain what that could look like.

NOTES

1. Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, (Chicago: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, 2009). P. 31.

Atlee McFellin lives in East Cleveland, Ohio and is originally from Battle Creek, Michigan. He was raised in no small part by his late maternal grandmother who was born into a middle-class Catholic family and grew up in Hitler’s Germany.