(BTW, if the KPD and SPD had as much support as the Nazis -- actually, when the Nazis started out they had much more popular support, since the Nazis were only a handful -- what is your explanation for the fact that they were eclipsed in a few short years by the Nazis, and ultimately crushed by them?) *********
If memory serves, the KPD and SPD combined vote was greater than that of the NSDAP in 1932.
******** On 30 January 1933 Hitler became the prime minister of Germany. This was not inevitable at all. Two months earlier, in November 1932, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) won 7.2 million votes and the Communist Party (KPD) 6 million. So the two organisations between them got 13.2 million votes, while the Nazi vote was 11.7 million, i.e. 1.5 million votes less.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium/chap08.htm
The Nazis crushed the opposition because they had State power given to them by conservatives like Hindenberg AND because rank and file lefties were not sufficiently free of the authoritarian personality character structures which they had been brought up with, their resistance to the Nazi domination lacked the capacity for self-organization which could have effectively challenged State authority.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1969/human.htm
Best, Mike B)
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