Stalin полностью

397. Bessel, Political Violence, 76–7; Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, 44.

398. The Center Party and the Bavarian People’s Party had entertained the possibility of coalition government with the Nazis, whereas the Social Democrats, the only consistently unequivocal defenders of Weimar democracy, remained fixated on the letter of the law even though they had been victims of extra-constitutional maneuvers. The SPD opposed as demagogy popular job-creation measures such as public works, which the Nazis strongly supported. Gates, “German Socialism.”

399. Geyer, “Etudes in Political History,” 101–23; Deist, Wehrmacht and German Rearmament.

400. Winkler, Der Weg, 444–5, 754. Even after the Nazis had come to power and decimated the German labor movement, the Comintern executive committee would continue to single out Social Democrats as “the main prop of the bourgeoisie also in the countries of open dictatorship.” McDermott and Agnew, Comintern, 112. See also Fischer, Stalin and German Communism; and Bahne, Die K.P.D.

401. Thälmann wrote to the Comintern (Jan. 27, 1933) that the Nov. 1932 election showed a crisis had overtaken the Nazi party, and some “petit-bourgeoisie” were moving to the antifascist camp, joining the working masses. (Not long thereafter, Thälmann, who had consistently called Nazism and Social Democracy “twins,” was arrested by the Nazis. He would spend eleven years in solitary confinement before being executed at Buchenwald.) Shirinia, Komintern v 1933 godu, 119 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 19, d. 248, l. 17–8). By contrast, the Comintern’s Georgi Dimitrov was urging unification of Communists with Social Democrats in “antifascist actions.” Sobolev, Georgii Dimitrov, 102–3; Leibzon and Shirinia, Povorot v politike kominterna, 50–7. See also von Rauch, “Stalin und die Machtergreifung Hitlers,” 117–40.

402. This is the surmise of Tucker, Stalin in Power, 232.

403. A Nov. 1933 document, advanced at the next Comintern enlarged plenum, which could not be put forward without Stalin’s approval, defined “fascism as the open terrorist dictatorship of the more reactionary, more chauvinistic and more imperialist elements of finance capital.” Shirinia, Komintern v 1933 godu, 469–70 (citing RGASPI, f. 495, op. 171, d. 38, l. 212; d. 299, l. 103; d. 301, l. 4; op. 19, d. 248, l. 222); Ferarra and Ferarra, Conversando con Togliatti.

404. DGFP, series C, I: 464; G. Castellan, “Reichswehr et Armée Rouge,” in La Relation Germano-Soviétiques de 1933 a 1939, 248; F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics, 360; A. E. Ioffe, Vneshniaia politika Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1928–1932, 267.

405. Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 105 (citing AVP RF, f. 05, op. 13, pap. 91, d. 28, l. 189). On Jan. 23, 1933, days before Hitler’s formal ascension, in his speech on foreign affairs, Molotov declared that “of all the countries that have diplomatic relations with us, with Germany we have had and have the strongest economic relations.” The many Jewish diplomats in Soviet service distinguished between the fascist Mussolini—with whom the Soviets enjoyed amicable relations—and Nazism. DVP SSSR, XVI: 50–6; III sessiia TsIK SSSR 6–ogo sozyva: stenograficheskii otchet, 23–3o inavaria 1933 g., biulleten’ no.1, 37–43; Dullin, Men of Influence, 93 (citing internal Soviet diplomatic correspondence referring to Mein Kampf).

406. Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 105 (citing AVP RF, f. 05, op. 13, pap. 91, d. 28, l. 90–1). Foreign Minister Neurath was not a Nazi. Neither was Germany’s ambassador to Moscow, Dirksen, who assured the foreign affairs commissariat that Hitler’s and Rosenberg’s public statements “contain no real political significance” and that “real state policy will quickly compel the Nazis to forget about their previous plans.” Sluch, “Germano-sovetskie otnosheniia,” 105 (citing AVP RF, f. 05, op. 13, pap. 91, d. 28, l. 206).