politics

You’re literally a lib with a horrific misunderstanding of history.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-liberal-accord-with-nazism-1.711626

https://jacobin.com/2015/11/nuremberg-trials-hitler-goebbels-himmler-german-communist-social-democrats/

The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) understood what sort of threat the NSDAP posed, yet failed to put up the kind of fight necessary to stop them. In a desperate attempt to block the Nazis from taking power through legal means and save Weimar democracy, the SPD pursued a strategy of supporting the “lesser evil” — i.e., the current right-wing, authoritarian government — as a bulwark against Hitler (who would certainly be even more right wing and authoritarian).

This entailed support for the candidacy of archconservative Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential election and toleration of Brüning and von Papen’s authoritarian presidential cabinets, as well as the tax hikes and spending cuts they enacted.  The strategy ran counter to the party’s political program, not to mention the material interests of its supporters.

The weakness of this strategy was particularly obvious on July 20, 1932, when Chancellor von Papen dissolved the SPD-led government in Prussia, the largest state in the republic. The SPD had already organized workers’ militias for precisely such a situation, the so-called Iron Front, a year earlier. But when faced with an actual confrontation the party leadership abandoned armed resistance, instead urging calm and restraint.

The German trade union confederation (ADGB) followed a similar path. Many trade unionists were also SPD members and supported the lesser evil strategy, tolerating Hindenburg’s government in hopes of stopping the Nazis through constitutional means. Consequentially, they also refrained from calling for a general strike in Prussia in 1932.

…

Thus, most Communists no longer knew Social Democrats as work colleagues, but only as supporters of the lesser-evil strategy and events like “Bloody May” on May 1, 1929, when police under the command of Social Democrat Karl Friedrich Zörgiebel violently suppressed a KPD-led demonstration.

Accentuating the blockade was the SPD leadership’s outright refusal to collaborate with the Communists. The SPD at the time was consumed by an anti-Communist fervor, often equating Communism with Nazism. Party Chairman Otto Wels declared at the Leipzig party convention in 1931 that “Bolshevism and fascism are brothers. They are both founded on violence and dictatorship, regardless of how socialist or radical they may appear.”

…

Trotsky and Thalheimer’s appeals for a united front were well-received by workers and intellectuals, as the popular desire for unity in the face of the growing Nazi threat was understandably widespread. This desire could be seen in the “Urgent Call for Unity” issued by thirty-three well-known public intellectuals including Albert Einstein in the run-up to the 1932 elections, calling for the KPD and SPD to “finally take a step toward building a united labor front, which is necessary not just for parliamentary, but for additional defense as well.”

Like I said, the liberals sided with “lesser evil” fascists than work with communists until the very end.