What if antifascist Communists had taken over Germany in 1933?

In the early 1930s, Germany's democratic system declined. Militias with totalitarian attitudes ruled the streets, with the whole battle boiling down to a showdown between Nazis and Communists.

It could have ended up in a different way than it did.

The Communists were behind the "antifascism", or, short, Antifa, whose descendants recently gained momentum in the USA, especially after the Trump victory. Different from what many think, "antifascism" was a genuinely communist term, and other, non-communist opponents of the Nazis would not be called "antifascists" by them.

Like their counterpart, the historical communist antifascists fiercely fought against free speech and attempted to rule the public with intimidation and violence, bound to stifle any debate or political expression, except their own. Something that is repeating in today's Antifa movements around the world. And of course, we've seen the countries where they've won...

 

It would have been worse because then Germany would have allied with the USSR and then likely not only WW2 but the cold war would have been much worse because of it.

I am sure people want to scream "But no Hitler". Well Communist's weren't nice people and the total loss of life not even taking the higher number people having to survive Communism would be higher because the US fighting both Germany and the USSR at the same time was a no win war. France would have been part of Communist Germany and Japan would have likely had to sue for peace after the Russians drove them out of China with the help of Germany.

 

The only truth in your post is that the communists and fascists were deadly enemies.
Idiots that scream "lefty fascists" reveal ignorance of terms.
"Antifa" is a recent concoction, and not pre-WWII.

 

There was an attempted Communist Revolution during the end of WW1 (the November Revolution) though it was crushed by Freikorps with several socialist figures murdered. Quite a couple of socialists involved, such as Rosa Luxembourg, had bitter arguments with the Bolsheviks because they fervently disagreed with the Soviet Union's politics. Communism was never a united front. I'm not too knowledgeable about the Communist movement in the 20's and 30's Germany, so I don't know if they would be Pro-Soviet or perhaps be more libertarian socialist (such as council communists) which would result in a good deal of tension between the two.

It would have resulted in a more isolated Fascist Italy for sure and possibly altered the outcome of the entire Spanish Civil War, due to Franco relying on the Germans and Italians for military and economic aid. We might have seen Republican Spain emerging victorious. To say what would happen after that would be pure speculation, but it'd be interesting to see what'd happen with three independent socialist nations.

 

The Communist party (KPD) evolved from the social democrat party (SPD) and they fought the NSDAP but they hated the SPD bitterly. Nazis were enemies but the social democrats were just traitors for them. A SPD government used the Freikorps to fight the communist uprising, the communists later called the SPD "Sozialfaschisten" (social fascists). In November 1932, the last free election, the KPD achieved 16,9%, their highest outcome (NSDAP 33,1%, SPD 20,4%).

The communists were far away from a legal government and a communist revolution would have caused a butchery in Germany and probably later on in the rest of Europe. If it would have been worse than the Nazi rule? Comparable, I assume, just the victims would have been others.

 

Some historians blame the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in1919 for the German communist party being pushed towards a Soviet/Bolshevik style. But by the end of the 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin's terror in the USSR was already fully underway, and the German KPD was aligned with the USSR. So if the commies had taken over Germany in 1933, it would have definitely become a satellite of the USSR.

 

Winning elections has never been the communists' way of choice to take power. Instead, they would club down any competitors one by one, forming temporary alliances until the last competitor would stand alone. When the Nazis prevailed, some activists urged SPD and KPD to unite, which yielded the "Antifaschistische Aktion" symbol, originally with two red flags for KPD and SPD. Today, it is mostly used with black and red flag, referring to communists and anarchists.

Strangely, American Antifa frequently use the triple-arrow symbol of the "Iron Front", the street fighting militia of the SPD, which was also anti-communist. German Antifa would probably hardly tolerate this.

Yes, Nazis and communists were deadly enemies, much like Bloods and Crips. By the time, it was, most prominently, Social Democrat Kurt Schumacher, who called the communists "red-painted fascists". Modern day Antifa (Black Bloc) developed in the 1980s and changed strategy, away from hierarchic communist militias, towards loose organization and support by genuinely criminal street violence.

 

I went with "Little better' in the poll.... but
now that you put it this way...... you do have me questioning my response.

I saw three episodes of an excellent documentary series on Netflix this weekend.....


Untold History of the United States... I highly recommend it.

Oh... and something serious is going on in a nation where I lived for a year and a half.......

Ecuador could become another Venezuela.....

 

Communists were very similar to the Nazi's, the Nazi's even co-opted many of the popular political platforms of the socialists in order to win more support with the people by siphoning off the middle ground between the Nazi's and the socialists. Go read the Nazi 25 Point plan and tell me what it reminds you of:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm

If the socialists had won power instead of the Nazi's, the world would be a worse place. A communist Germany would have truly allied with communist Russia resulting in a much more powerful communist block in Europe.

That is total BS. Todays "antifa" is an international, extreme left, terrorist group. They riot, oppress innocent people, oppose free speech and free elections (that have results they don't like), have engaged in bombings in Sweden, Germany, Sicily. "antifa" seeks to destabilize and overthrow so they can impose their extreme left tyranny, not so people can be free.