In Europe

disturbances; and after a few months Chancellor Franz von Papen, along with Hitler, seized the opportunity to place Prussia under political receivership. That step – in fact, an outright coup – was completely unconstitutional, but protest was to no avail. Political violence continued to mount, particularly from within the ranks of the SA. During the month of July alone, sixty-eight people were murdered and many hundreds assaulted. The victims were most often communists and socialists.
    On 31 July, 1932, national elections were held for the Reichstag. The NSDAP again became the most powerful party by far: it doubled its seats, to 230 of the 604 now contested. According to constitutional procedure,Hitler had to be appointed chancellor: more Germans had voted for his party than for any other. But this situation was unacceptable to the nation's political grandees. Hindenburg refused to appoint Hitler chancellor. He could not justify it, he said, ‘to God, my conscience or my fatherland’ if he were to place all power in the hands of one party, especially one party so singularly intolerant towards those with other ideas. Behind closed doors, he said that he would appoint ‘that little corporal’ to the position of postman, but never to that of chancellor.
    The threat posed by the Nazis did not drive the social democrats and communists closer together. Their relations were still based on old grudges. In early 1932, the KPD chairman Ernst Thälmann went so far as to call the social democrats ‘the moderate wing of fascism’. Ten months later, however, this did not keep the communists from joining forces with the National Socialists in a wildcat strike of Berlin trams and buses against the moderate proposals made by the ‘reformist’ trade unions. On Alexanderplatz, Nazis and ‘Kozis’ jointly stormed a tram running on line 3, fought against the police together at the Schöneberg garages and cooperated in plundering a car belonging to the SPD house organ
Vorwärts
. Tauntingly, that paper wrote: ‘Yesterday one still heard cries of “Brown-Shirted Thuggery” from one side, and “Red
Untermenschen
” from the other! But today a new and solid alliance has been forged! What class-conscious worker could fail to blush at the sight!’
    Papen, meanwhile, remained in office at the head of a ‘national cabinet’ and governed by decree. Hitler was furious. Finally, the Reichstag passed a vote of no confidence against Papen. The violence in the streets increased. New elections were scheduled. On 6 November, two days after the Berlin public transport strike, the Nazis lost two million votes, but nonetheless remained the biggest party with 196 of the 584 seats.
    Interestingly enough, it was not in Berlin's working-class neighbour-hoods that the NSDAP lost the most votes. Through their brief alliance with the Nazis, the communists had unintentionally given a signal that was to have far-reaching consequences: the Nazis, at least in certain workers’ circles, were no longer pariahs. They belonged.
    The day after the elections, the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution was celebrated with a flourish at the Soviet embassy on Unterden Linden. The arrival of the new order was in the air. It was to be the last major Soviet gathering – for the time being – in Berlin. Even Papen dropped in. The caviar was flown in from Moscow, the wines from the Crimea. Hundreds of guests, diplomats, army officers and journalists elbowed up to the buffet tables, while Lenin looked on.
    Throughout that entire year, the success of Stalin's Five-Year Plan had been the talk of Berlin's diplomatic and financial circles: entire cities had been raised from nothing in the Soviet Union, gigantic factories for machinery and tractors built. The country was laying the foundations for lightning-fast industrialisation. In the eyes of many Europeans, the East was giving flower to an attractive and tempting alternative: it was energetic, modern, socially aware and united. Even the Nazis were fascinated by what was going on in Russia: the four-year plan launched by Göring in 1936, with which he hoped to create the most powerful military-industrial complex in Europe, was clearly inspired by the Soviet example.
    In winter 1932, the German political scene was caught in a deadlock. The new chancellor, General Kurt von Schleicher, tried to forge a national coalition from all the parties represented in the Reichstag. On the right he hoped to draw