Fascism, Stalinism and the United Front

Few confrontations between right and left have had such consequences as that in Germany in the 1930s. The victory of the Nazis in 1933 was to dominate the fifteen years that followed. It represented a defeat of undreamt-of magnitude, not just for the left but for the whole working-class movement, and it led directly to the second world war.

Yet it was an avoidable defeat. The German workers’ parties had millions of supporters. With correct policies they could have defeated fascism. This is shown nowhere more clearly than in the writings of Leon Trotsky, then in exile from Stalin’s Russia. Trotsky’s understanding of the class forces involved in this confrontation was, and remains, unparallelled.

This is the sixth book in Bookmarks’ Revolutionary Classics series. Trotsky’s own writings are published here with full notes and commentary, and a new introduction.