Nazi and Communist Collaboration In

Germany During the Decade Preceding

Hitler's "Third Reich"[1923-1933]

April 22, 2008

Nazi and Communist Collaboration In Germany During The Decade Preceding Hitler's "Third Reich"

[1923-1933]

By Emerson Vermaat

April 22, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - "The extremes touch" is a well

known saying and quite often it is true. Today, leftist Socialists and Marxists join radical

Muslims or "Islamists" in what they perceive as the common struggle against the United

States and the West. One of the best friends of the extremist Iranian president Ahmadinejad is

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a radical Socialist who wants to follow the example of

Cuba's Fidel Castro. This is the same Ahmadinejad who is a "Holocaust denier" who invites

neo-Nazis and other Fascist Holocaust deniers to conferences in Tehran.

Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, two important branches of today's radical Islam, espouse

the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the so-called "Protocols of the Wise Men (or Elders) of

Zion." Ahmed Sheikh Yassin, the co-founder of Hamas, had an Arab translation of the

"Protocols" on his desk when he was writing the Hamas Charter. 1

It is not coincidental, therefore, that the same charter specifically refers to the Protocols.

Sheikh Yassin was also a strong admirer of a virulent Jew-hater whose name was Mohammed

"Haj" Amin Al-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who had been granted asylum

by the Nazis in 1941 and who spent the war years in Berlin where he actively promoted the

Nazi cause.2

The "Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion" were very popular in Hitler's "Third Reich." Nazi

Party philosopher Alfred Rosenberg was born in Czarist Russia (actually he was born in

Latvia which was then part of Russia) and it was this Baltic German who in 1918 took the text

of the Protocols from Russia to Germany introducing it to his extreme rightist friends from the

Thule Society in Munich. It was from this obscure group that the Nazi Party would evolve

around 1920.

Heinrich Himmler, the notorious SS-Reichsführer, had a strong admiration for Eastern

religions and Islam. He often talked to his friend Haj Amin Al-Husseini, and it was during the

war that the SS ran several "imam schools" in Nazi Germany. Himmler admired Muslims

because they did not mind dying in battle.3

A Muslim who dies in battle believes he goes straight to paradise - a mere fiction, of course.

But for Himmler's SS such "holy warriors" were quite useful. Himmler's SS-Muslim units

committed terrible atrocities and war crimes in Bosnia. Al-Husseini was the high ranking

Arab cleric who encouraged these young fanatics to fight in the Nazi ranks. The Grand Mufti

of Jerusalem was a radical Muslim who believed in jihad, the Shari'a, and above all, in killing

Jews. His alliance with the Nazis was not unique, however.

Today, Islamists from Hamas have been interviewed in the German neo-Nazi press. Both neo-

Nazis and radical Palestinians are vehemently opposed to Israel, the USA and usually deny

the Holocaust. (At the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal many top Nazis also lamely claimed

they had never noticed anything about this genocide; although they could not deny the facts,

they still claimed to be completely innocent which was also a form of Holocaust denial.)

Many Marxists and so-called anti-globalists are making common cause with radical Muslims.

Marxists, leftist "Third Worldists" and neo-Nazis usually have the same kind of enemies: the

West, America, Israel, and so on. Marxists and neo-Nazis may be ideological enemies, yet

they may find common ground when it comes to hating these common enemies. ("The enemy

of my enemy is my friend.")

This, by the way, happened before. I am referring here to occasional alliances or coalitions

between yesterday's Nazis and yesterday's Communists. It was in Germany's shaky post First

World War democracy, the so-called "Weimar Republic," that Communists and Nazis

organized a strike in Berlin 1932, and were marching together in demonstrations against the

ever weaker forces of moderation and calm that still existed in the final years of the Weimar

Republic.

Both Nazis and Communists opposed moderate Social-Democrats

I emphasize this important fact again, it was during the existence of the Weimar Republic, in

the decade preceding Hitler's Third Reich (1923-1933), that both Communists and Nazis

discovered that they shared their revulsion of the existing democratic order and the moderate

Social-Democrats. It was in 1981 that Hermann Weber, a well known German historian and

political scientist, published a very important study on the strategy and tactics of the German

Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands or KPD) between 1929 and 1933.

During this critical period most German Communists described the Social-Democrats as

"Social-Fascists," they were perceived as the greater enemy (Hauptfeind), an enemy worse

than the Nazis, that is. This was also the line followed by the Soviet controlled Communist

International (Comintern) which instructed the German Communist Party on July 20, 1931, to

form an alliance with the Nazis with a view to bringing about the downfall of Prussia's

moderate Social-Democratic, Centrist and Liberal-Democratic coalition government. Prussia's

Social-Democratic Prime Minister Otto Braun (1872-1955) was a courageous man who was

well aware of the mortal danger the extremists - Nazis and Communists - posed to democracy

and freedom - not only in Prussia but in Germany as a whole.

It was in the spring of 1931 that the so-called "national opposition" consisting of Hitler's

National Socialist Party (NSDAP) and German conservative nationals (DNVP, DVP, and a

group referred to as Stahlhelm) proposed to held a plebiscite (Volksentscheid) on the

dissolution of the Prussian Parliament to bring about the fall of the government. Initially, the

DKP rejected the proposal describing it as "Fascist betrayal of the people." Soviet Communist

Party leader Joseph Stalin did not agree with this DKP line. Using the channels of the

Comintern, Stalin instructed the German party to adopt a different line. Consequently, the

German Communist Party leadership announced on July 22, 1931, that they would join what

was now suddenly termed a "Red Referendum."4

In order to achieve a majority vote the Nazis could not do without Communist participation in

the referendum. A unique Red-Brown alliance had been formed: both Nazis and Communists

marched together in demonstrations against the Social-Democratic government of Prussia.

In his excellent study on the history of the Socialist International, Franz Borkenau, observes:

"This was no longer simply the theory of ‘Social-Fascism,' the belief that there was no

difference between Fascism and democracy and that the Social-Democrats were just as bad as

the Nazis... Their (= the Communists, V.) participation in the Nazi referendum implied more.

It implied the view that to overthrow the last defense of German democracy, the Prussian

government, in co-operation with the Nazis, meant progress, that a Nazi régime was

preferable to a democratic régime."5

This government, in turn, said the yes-voters had to choose between Communism and

Fascism: "Those who want a Soviet controlled Prussia or a Fascist controlled Prussia, must

take part in the plebiscite and vote ‘yes.'"6 On the day of the plebiscite, August 9, 1931, nearly

10 million voters said "yes," and nearly 400,000 voters said "no." But the total number of

those who were allowed to vote was 26,587,672. The extremists would have won if more than

13,3 million voters would have said yes. Consequently, parliament was not dissolved and Otto

Braun continued to be Prime Minister of Prussia until the summer of 1932 when he was

outmanoeuvered by the then federal German Reich Chancellor (a kind of Prime Minister)

Franz von Papen.

On January 30, 1933, NSDAP leader Adolf Hitler became Reich Chancellor and Von Papen

Vice-Chancellor. Soon after this crucial date in German history – the death of the Weimar

Republic – the Nazi president of the Reichstag, Hermann Göring first became Interior

Minister and later Prime Minister of Prussia, Germany's most important province. Göring

immediately started a brutal campaign against Communists and Social-Democrats. The Nazis

no longer needed the extremists from the left and persecuted them. (A similar thing happened

in Iran, where Ayatolla Khomeini first formed a kind of alliance with the Iranian Communist

Tudeh party, but began to persecute them when they were no longer needed; the Communist

Soviet Union also courted the Khomeini regime in 1979/1980.7)

What happened in Prussia also happened on a national level. This was clear from the voting

pattern in the German Reichstag (National Parliament) and the Prussian Landtag (regional

parliament). In the majority of cases both Nazis and Communists joined ranks when they were

voting in favor or against the issues confronting them. For example, there were 241 issues to

be voted on in the Reichtstag and the Prussian Landtag in 1929 and 1930. In 140 cases – 70

percent! – Communist and Nazi voting behavior was identical.8

On October 18, 1930, the German Reichstag rejected a motion of no confidence proposed by

both NSDAP and KPD.9

Heinrich Brüning from the Catholic Center Party (Zentrumpartei) was Reich Chancellor at the

time (until May 1932). Brüning's Defense Minister Wilhem Groener issued a decree in

January 1930 prohibiting any display of sympathy in the armed forces (Reichswehr) towards

the Nazi and the Communist Parties. Groener argued that both parties advocated the violent

overthrow of the state wishing to replace it by the dictatorship of their party.10

Herman Müller, a Social-Democrat who had been Reich Chancellor between June 1928 and

March 1930, tried to make a speech in the Reichstag on October 17, 1930. But he was

constantly interrupted in a very aggressive manner by both Communists and Nazis. Even the

Moscow Pravda commented favorably on the Nazi outburts in parliament, saying that the

behavior of the National Socialists was "much more proletarian" than the behavior of the

Social- Democrats."11

Communists and Nazis were in an exuberant mood after the gains made by them in the recent

September elections. (NSDAP: 18, 3 percent or 107 seats and KPD 13,13 percent or 77 seats;

the total number of seats was 577.)12

After the economic crisis of 1929, both extremist parties would make significant gains in

subsequent elections whereas the moderate Social-Democratic and centrist parties would be

loosing ground all the time.

Nazis and Communists equally blamed the "capitalist system," and "Wall Street" for the

economic crisis and rising unemployment. The Nazis blamed "Jewish" bankers and

industrialists (das internationale Finanzjudentum) whom they claimed to be part of a secret

world government. (Similar anti-Semitic conspiracy theories would later surface in the Arab

world and Iran.)

Albert Leo Schlageter: both a Nazi and a Communist "martyr" (1923)

In May 1923 Communists and Nazis organized joint acts of sabotage against the occupation

of the German Rheinland by the French.13

(In January 1923, Hitler's NSDAP already had

55,000 members.) This occured after the French executed a popular German resistance fighter

named Albert Leo Schlageter. Although there are conflicting reports about Schlageter's

possible affiliation with the Nazis,14

both Nazis and Communists equally hailed him as their

hero. The NSDAP and other nationalist parties organized commemoration ceremonies in

Schlageter's birthplace Schönau on June 10, 1923. In an attempt to build bridges with the

extreme right, Karl Radek, a prominent Soviet member of the Comintern's Executive

Committee (ECCI) who played an important role in organizing the German Communist

movement, hailed praise on Schlageter in a speech on June 23, 1923:

"All the time I had before my eyes the corpse of the German Fascist, our class enemy,

condemned and shot by... French imperialism... The fate of this German nationalist martyr

should not be passed over by us in silence, or with a contemptuous phrase. Schlageter, a

courageous soldier of the counter-revolution, deserves honest and manly esteem from us,

soldiers of the revolution... Schlageter is dead ... At his grave his comrades vowed to carry on

his work."15

Debating an ECCI draft resolution on Fascism, Radek pleaded for an alliance with "German

patriotic circles," a common front between Communists and revolutionary nationalists

"against Entente and German capital." "On the basis of this speech," Franz Borkenau writes,

"the Communist Party started a so-called Schlageter campaign, which led to a number of

public discussions between leading Communists and outstanding Nazis about the aims of the

impending German revolution."16

In the early 1930s the German Communist Party followed a "national Bolshevist strategy"

with a view to winning back the minds of those who had left the Communist ranks and were

now voting for extreme right parties like the NSDAP.17

Nazis and Communists organized a strike in Berlin in 1932

Both Communist and Nazi trade unions played a leading role in organizing a public

transportation strike in Berlin in November 1932. Early November 1932 the "Berliner

Verkehrsgesellschaft" (BVG), a municipal transport organization, announced a cut in wages.

Due to the severe economic crisis there was simply not enough money to pay all the BVG

workers. Parliamentary elections were scheduled for November 6, and Communist and Nazis

expected to make significant gains if they were to play a leading role in an anti-BVG strike.

The Communist "Revolutionäre Gewerkschaftsopposition" (RGO) and the Nazi

"Nationalsozialistischen Betriebszellenorganisation" (NSBO) simply outmanoeuvred the

moderate trade unions in the central strike committee. This was in line with what KPD party

chief Ernst Thälmann had said in October 1932: "When strikes are being organized in firms

and companies, it is absolutely essential and desirable that Nazis are invited to take part in the

Strike Committees."18

This was part of the "common front strategy from below" recommended by high ranking

Comintern officials.19

Instead of forming alliances with moderate Social-Democrats

(invariably denounced as "Social-Fascists") the Communists joined ranks with the equally

extremist Nazis. Hitler's notoriously violent SA-men or "brownshirts" and Communists

marched together through the streets of Berlin – even destroying busses whose drivers had

ignored the call to strike.

Paving the way for Hitler's totalitarian rule

In doing so the KPD actively promoted the Weimar Republic's downfall and, consequently,

the party was digging its own grave. Only three months later would Hitler become Reich

Chancellor who would subsequently open the abyss for all those who underestimated him.

But a number of influential Communists did not see Hitler as an enemy but as an ally. Dimitry

Manuilski, a high ranking Soviet Comintern functionary in charge of German affairs,

addressed a Comintern meeting on December 15, 1931, saying:

"The chief enemy is not Hitler, the chief enemy is the system of Severing (Social-Democrat

Interior Minister of Prussia, V.), Brüning (Reich Chancellor), Hindenburg (Reich President).

With Hitler's help will we first destroy the Social-Democratic Party apparatus as well as the

Brüning state apparatus. In the present phase of the development of the German revolution

Hitler unmistakenably is our ally."20

The Communist Party claimed to be a working-class party, yet it had repeatedly collaborated

with the Fascists and continually refused to collaborate with the Socialists, Franz Borkenau

correctly observes. Even after the Nazis had begun to bloodily persecute both Communists

and Social-Democrats, German Communists continued to lay the blame on those who should

have been their allies:

"Thus, while Socialists and Communists went together to the concentration camps and the

Socialist Party was practically annihilated, the Communists continued to talk of the Socialists

as the ‘Social-Fascists' and regard them as the chief supporters of the régime, and in

consequence as the chief enemy while real, as opposed to ‘Social' Fascism took second place

in their thoughts.... Their can harldy be any doubt that the party was partly responsible,

together with all other groups of the left, for what had happened.'21

Social-Democratic "Münchener Post" commented on the parliamentary elections held on

March 5, 1933 (after Hitler became Reich Chancellor, that is, these were the very last

elections Hitler and his ilk would allow):

"Had it not been for the KPD, Hitler would never have become Reich Chancellor nor would

he have triumphed on March 5. The leadership of this party installed the hatred of Social-

Democrats into the hearts of millions of workers, and this very hatred now caused them to flee

to the brown ranks of the swastica. Many Communists who on Saturday were still wearing the

Soviet star as they were walking, manifested themselves as crack new Nazis on election

day."22

A similar thing would occur after the war when Communists took control of what would later

become their "German Democratic Republic" (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR).

Many former Nazis would quickly join the East German Communist Party and subsequently

even make a career in the party and state apparatus.23

Back in 1933 Stalin was indeed concerned about the brutal suppression of the German

Communist Party, but he was more interested in maintaining good relations with Nazi

Germany. Hitler, too, was, not immediately interested in dramatic foreign policy changes that

would provoke hostile Soviet reactions.24

Stalin made precisely the same mistake as the

German Communists: he deeply underestimated Hitler.

But there is another interesting aspect which deserves attention. This is the aspect of the

totalitarian mind. The ideologies of Nazis and Communists differed vastly, but what they did

have in common was their diabolical and totalitarian nature. There is a psychological

mechanism that somehow draws adherents or followers from completely contradictory

ideologies and movements together in a common struggle against freedom and democracy,

indeed against the West.

Of course, there were many (often violent) clashes between Nazis and Communists during the

years of the Weimar Republic. To portray them only as allies in a war against freedom is a

gross simplification. After Hitler became Reich Chancellor in 1933, he quickly set out to

persecute the Communists. And in June 1941 he invaded the Soviet Union, a war Stalin had

tried to avoid at all costs. But it cannot be denied that Communists and Nazis occasionally

formed alliances against those whom they denounced as common enemies (such as the

moderate Social-Democrats), against democracy. They were using the mechanism of

parliamentary elections to obtain the majority with a view to abolishing freedom and

democracy.

Lessons for today

Today, in the twenty-first century, Fascists, Islamist Fascists and Communists are again

forming alliances against the forces of freedom and democracy. But the Islamo-Fascists may

be stronger than the Marxists, the Socialists and the Communists. They eventually prevailed

in Iran using Communists, Marxists and naive leftist students as their allies. Afshin Ellian, a

former refugee from Iran who currently lives in the Netherlands, criticized the young and

enthousiastic leftists – his own generation – who in 1979 dreamt about the revolution, but got

the monster of the Islamic state, darkness and Fascism instead. They talked about Ché

Guevara, Marx and Lenin and cherished illusions about the common struggle by leftists and

followers of the arch-conservative cleric and Jew-hater Ayatolla Khomeini.25

In the 1990s the same kind of Islamist Fascists prevailed in Afghanistan over the secular and

leftist forces, creating monsters like Al-Qaeda. Those who give in or allign themselves with

these evil and diabolical forces will sooner or later fall into the same abyss. There are really

naive people like Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, who think they can be on friendly

terms with the Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood, today's Fascists and Jew-haters in the

Middle East, that is. (There is nothing new under the sun: there were also prominent but naive

Englishmen in the 1930s – so-called "fellow-travelers" – who visited Nazi Germany just for

the sake of being friends with high ranking Nazis.)

An important Hamas cleric recently said: "We will conquer Rome, and from there continue to

conquer the two Americas and Eastern Europe.26

This kind of arrogance was only matched by the Nazis and the Communists who equally

wanted to conquer the world. Hamas, by the way, is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim

Brotherhood. The bitter lessons of the German Weimar Republic, Iran and Afghanistan

should not be forgotten by those who live today.

Emerson Vermaat is an investigative reporter in the Netherlands specialized in crime,

terrorism and European history. He published a major Dutch study on ideologies

(Communism, Maoism and Nazism) in 1977 and developed a special interest in Nazi

Germany, Russian and East European history and anti-Semitism. His website is:

www.emersonvermaat.com.

Notes:

1. Hans Jansen, Van Jodenhaat naar Zelfmoordterrorisme. Islamisering van het Europees

Antisemitisme in het Midden-Oosten (Heerenveen: Uitgeverij Groen, 2006), p. 736. Professor

Jansen is one of the best Dutch experts on anti-Semitism.

2. Emerson Vermaat, Haj Amin Al-Husseini – Nazi Collaborator and Model for Today's

Islamists, Militant Islam Monitor and Pipelinenews, February 27, 2008.

3. Ibid.

4. Hermann Weber, Hauptfeind Sozialdemokratie. Strategie und Taktik der KPD 1929-1933

(Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1981), p. 40; Hagen Schulze, Otto Braun oder Preussens

demokratische Sendung (Frankfurt a.M.: Propyläen Verlag, 1977), p. 664ff; André Gerrits

and Tim Graaf, Sociaal-democraten, communisten en de ondergang van de democratie, in:

Socialisme en Democratie, April 1983, p. 24ff.; E.H. Carr, Twilight of the Comintern 1930-

1935 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), p. 42, 46. Der Freistaat Preussen: Plebiszite

(www.gonschior.de/weimar/Peussen/Volksentscheide.html.)

5. Franz Borkenau, World Communism. A History of the Communist International (Ann

Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983), p. 342, 343.

6. Hagen Schulze, op. cit. p. 667.

7. On Soviet-Iranian relations between 1979-1981, see Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Die sowjetisch-

iranischen Beziehungen unter Khomeini, in: Osteuropa, July 1982 (vol. 32, No. 7), p. 558-

575.

8. Michael Koth, Rede in Leuna, December 21, 2000 (wws.kds-im-netz.de), Michael Koth is a

former high ranking Communist Party official in East Berlin. He later joined the

controversial "Kampfbund Deutscher Sozialisten" (KDS) which seeks to build bridges

between Socialists, Communists and (neo)-Nazis. The facts mentioned in Koth's Leuna speech

are largely correct, however, and have been confirmed by others. The author interviewed

Professor P. Valkenburg, a political scientist from Groningen University, the Netherlands, in

1983. Dr. Valkenburg told me that Nazis and Communists in the German Reichstag

(Parliament) voted indentically in 70 percent of the cases.

9. Deutsches Historisches Museum, Chronik 1933 (www.dhm.de/lemo/1930/index.html).

10. Ibid.

11. Michael Koth, op. cit.

12. Das Deutsche Reich. Reichtagswahl 1930

(www.gonschior.de/Weimar/Deutschland/RT5.html).

13. Harry Brinkmeyer, Der 1. deutsche Demokratieversuch – didaktische Untersuchungen

und Reflexionen zur Weimarer Republik. Das Krisenjahr 1923 (Seminararbeit, 2000,

archivnummer K7479). Mat 26, 123: "Da sich Kommunisten und Nationalsozialisten auch

gemeinsam am Widerstand und Sabotageakten beteiligen, wird in Teilen beider Parteien über

eine Zusammenarbeit nachgedacht."

14. Stefan Zwicker, Nationale Martyrer. Albert Leo Schlageter und Julius Fucik. Heldenkult,

Propaganda, Erinnerungskultur (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2006), p. 51.

15. Jane Degras, The Communist International 1919-1943. Documents (London: Frank Cass

& Co. Ltd, 1971), Vol II (1923-1928), p. 39; Harry Brinkmeyer, op. cit. June 20, 1923: "Er

(Radek) beabsichtigt einen Brückenschlag zum rechten Radikalismus."

16. Franz Borkenau, op. cit., p. 246.

17. Getrennt marschieren, vereint schlagen? Nationalrevolutionäre Ideologie und Strategie.

(www.trend.infopartisan.net/trd0203/t130203.html).

18. Streik bei der Berliner Verkehrsgesellschaft

(http://de.wikpedia.org/wiki/streik_bei_der_Berliner_Verkehrsgellschaft). On Commnunist

strategy and tactics during this strike, see also: Heinz August Winkler, Der Weg in die

Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930-1933 (Dietz

Verlag Bonn, 1990), p. 765-775.

19. Kommunistischer Widerstand 1933-1945 (ww.ddr.biogafien.de): "Sozialfaschisten." "Die

von ihr (=KPD) seit 1932 verfolgte Linie von ‘Einheitsfront von unten..."' "Die SPD wurde

als soziale Hauptstütze der Bourgeoisie und als Hauptfeind auf dem Weg zur proletarischen

Revolution gesehen."

20. Quoted in: Rheinischer Merkur, July 28, 1978, see: Konrad Löw, Warum fasziniert der

Kommunismus? Eine systematische Untersuchung (Cologne: Institut der Deutschen

Wirtschaft/Deutscher Insituts-Verlag, 1983), p. 199.

21. Franz Borkenau, op. cit., p. 378, 379.

22. Münchener Post, March 6, 1933, quoted in: Konrad Löw, op. cit., p. 198.

23. Olaf Kappelt, Braunbuch DDR. Nazis in der DDR (Berlin: Elisabeth Reichmann Verlag,

1981). One of these former Nazis in East Germany was Michael Kohl. He was a member of

the "Hitler Youth" (HJ) and his father was an active Nazi Party member until the collapse of

the Third Reich. Officially, this should have been a reason to prevent Kohl from joining the

East German Communist Party and making a career in the state apparatus of the GDR (or

DDR). But the Soviets protected him, he had possibly been recruited by the KGB soon after

the war. He would later play an important role as East German Deputy Minister of Foreign

Affairs. (See page 260, 261.)

24. Gustav Hilger, Wir und der Kreml. Deutsch-sowjetische Beziehungen 1918-1941.

Erinnerungen eines deutschen Diplomaten (Frankfurt am M./Berlin: Alfred Metzner Verlag,

1955), p. 241, 243 ("Dies äusserte sich unter anderem in wiederholten Beteurerungen des

Aussenkommisariats, dass die Sowjetregierung auf die Aufrechterhaltung guter Beziehungen

zu Deutschland grösseren Wert lege."), p. 244, 254 ("Demgegenüber gab Hitler im Frühjahr

1933 in mehreren Erklärungen bekannt, dass die deutsche Politik gegenüber der Sowjetunion

unverändert bleibe."), p. 251 (Hitler: "Der Kampf gegen den Kommunismus in Deutschland

ist unsere innere Angelegenheit... Die staatspolitischen Beziehungen zu anderen Mächten, mit

dem uns gemeinsamen Interessen verbinden, werden davon nicht berührt."). See also:

Thomas Weingartner, Stalin und der Aufstieg Hitlers. Die Deutschlandpolitik der Sowjetunion

und der Kommunistischen Internationale 1929-1924 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1970),

p. 118, 168, 198-202.

25. Afshin Ellian, Springlevende tirannie, in: NRC Handelsblad, January 9, 2007, p. 15 ("De

oorspronkelijk links-liberale revolutie droeg, onzichtbaar, een monster met zich mee: de

islamitische staat." See also: Afshin Ellian, Brieven van een Pers. Over Nederland en

islamitisch kannibalisme (Amsterdam: JM. Meulenhoff, 2005), p. 155, 166 ("De teksten van

onder andere Ché Guevara, Lenin en de oude, activistische Marx vormden de intellectuele

bagage van jongeren die de tirannie van de sjah wilden vervangen door vrijheid..."), p. 168,

223.

26. Yunis Al-Astal, Gaza, Al-Aqsa TV, April 11, 2008

(www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1739.htm).