Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

touch with one another. They ceased to represent a threat to the
Nazi regime after 1935 or thereabouts, except for social democrats
like Julius Leber, Carlo Mierendorff and Theodor Haubach, who
were members of the 20 July 1944 resistance movement and went
down with it.
The differences between the social democrats and the communists
were only partly resolved in exile, even in the concentration camps,
and then only because they had a common enemy. It should nevertheless
be noted in this connection that socialists and communists
worked together in Popular Front alliances in France and
Spain in the 1930s – in the specific context of class struggle –
making common cause against all conservative, clerical, reactionary
and Fascist forces. The left certainly experienced the unscrupulous
use of force in the Spanish Civil War by communists who followed
the Moscow line. In the Latin countries too, relations between democratic
socialists and communists were strained, not least as a result
of Stalinist influence.
As far as the social democratic or socialist parties in Eastern Europe
are concerned, the period between the two world wars can be described
as a period of stagnation for social democracy. In most
cases, they were not an important factor. In Poland, for example,
they took only 13% of the votes in 1928, leaving them in a much
weaker position than the National Democrats or the Peasants’ Party.
The same goes for Hungary; both were still agricultural countries.
The socialists were not even in a strong position in Czechoslovakia,
where democracy was established on a different basis from
most other countries. The complicated history of the socialists in
that area cannot be investigated here and more detailed research
is certainly still required in some cases.
The Hitler-Stalin pact was a bitter blow to social democrats and
socialists throughout Europe: not only did it divide Central Europe
between Hitler’s Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union and rob it
of all vestiges of self-determination; it also had an expressly anti-social
democratic, anti-left side to it.
The situation in the various European countries varied. On the
whole, however, it can be said that the social democrats and socialists
were among the most doughty defenders of freedom and
democracy. They did not support dictatorial regimes anywhere and
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