“VICTORY OF DESPAIR”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 5 April 1933, Page 5

“VICTORY OF DESPAIR”

TROTSKY LOOKS AT GERMANY LONDON, 30th March, “Hitler has been lifted to victory by 17,000,000 desperate people, proving that capitalist Germany has lost faith in decaying Europe, converted by (he Versailles Treaty into a madhouse lacking straitjackcts,” writes Trotsky (ex-Soviet Minister) in the “Manchester Guardian. ’ “This victory of despair is due to the blindness and incompetence of (lie workers’ leaders. While the Social Democrats and other Parliamentary parties aimed to ‘educate’ Fascism, with Hmdenburg as the drill sergeant, the workers instinctively wanted to fight it. “Their inaction has left the workers defenceless. Hitler’s political army of officials, clerks, shopkeepers, peasants and intermediate classes in social consciousness are mere human dust. “His difficulties are only beginning. The industrial crisis is increasing. Unemployment lias reduced the standard of living and will increase the workers self-consciousness, resulting in widespread economic stmggics. “Hitler has faced for too long a sanguinary war inside Germany to think seriously of war. France, on the contrary, may try to persuade capitalist countries to support her in a fight against Bolshevism and the Soviet.”