That "wot if the SPD defeated Hitler with electoral politics?" game seems off
That "wot if the SPD defeated Hitler with electoral politics?" game seems off
I don't understand the appeal of a revisionist history that absolves the SPD of paving the way for Hitler. Doubly so a revisionist history that somehow, after all the sacrifices and all the horror, pretends that the Nazis could have been defeated with electoral politics.
The very basic premise just sounds like a revisionist re-writing of history to pretend the SPD didn't have a critical role in destroying the "Good Future". It promulgates the idea that fascism can be defeated with liberal electoral BS in what was, historically, the most stern rebuke of liberal democracy in history. I don't get it. Who is this for?
It is an inherantly revisionist game, your goal is to prevent Hitler from getting into power. I don't think it's necessarily bad just that it would've been better had they made their own universe with different country, characters etc.
I don't think it's inherantly promoting electoral politics either. Whether a party wins/loses depends on whether their policies improve material conditions of the working class while repressing fascists. Votes are just a proxy.
In real life there were no puppet masters making SPD do good things.
My main problem with the game is that it portrays KPD in an "unwilling to work with anyone with slight differences" kind of way even though I dont think KPD would have refused to collaborate with SPD had they been more pro-worker, pro-class struggle.
You are able to work with them toward the end of the game. Like the paramilitaries can reach a strategic alliance, they can back the counter-revolution against the fascists, and they can be convinced to back the SPD chancellorship.
That's peak crybully shit.
The SPD very clearly signalled who they were willing to work with and who they were unwilling to work with. History stands as testament to this.
Blaming the KPD for having the correct line on social fascism and recognising the SPD for what it was is political victim-blaming.
This is pure speculation but I could guarantee you that if the KPD had collaborated with the SPD then they would have been scapegoated for it. Instead they took the correct line and resisted, and they get blamed for being too intransigent and engaging in factionalism that facilitated the Nazi rise to power. It would have been yet-another example of that unfalsifiable orthodoxy.
I think it comes down to liberals being physically incapable of recognizing that they enable fasicsm and fascists.
Just because liberals voted for the Fascists in 1924, repeatedly praised Fascism in the press, suppressed militant antifascists regularly, trained dozens of Fascist cadets, elected politicians sympathetic to Fascism, repeatedly overlooked or trivialized Fascist oppression, signed a naval pact with Fascists, extended credit to Fascists, signed military alliances with the Fascists, partitioned Czechoslovakia for the Fascists, tolerated businesses that marketed products (including oil and nickel) to Fascists, became economically critical to the Axis war machine, provided bank accounts for Fascists, bailed out Axis businessmen, held more Axis POWs than Jewish refugees, collaborated with self‐identified fascists, started Operation Paperclip and kept the employés, started Operation Bloodstone, accepted surviving Axis collaborators as party members, endorsed an underground network of neofascists, allow monuments to Axis collaborators, martyrize Axis collaborators, and contribute to neofascism in Ukraine, doesn’t mean that they enable fascism and fascists.
Just wanted to add:
Directly incorporating the Nazi private intelligence agency into the state (the Gehlen Org), appointing Nazi leaders to high ranks within NATO (there's about half a dozen examples of this), chanted "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!" alongside the Nazis in government chambers (German Social Democracy and the Rise of Nazism by Donna Harsch)
Also them failing to realize that material conditions can shape things such as electoral outcomes, not solely the other way around
Definitely has a weird bent to it. I was able to 'succeed' by militarizing the party, capturing the interior ministry and repressing the Nazis and building relations with the KPD. Sort of a fun time waster but like you say not very politically astute.
Game name =? Im just curious
Interesting.
This reminds me of a game I came across that was pretty similar which took you through the dawn of civilization and it was choose your own adventure where you were posed different binary choices based on historical developments and you'd take a path (e.g. opting to domesticate grain leads you down a mesopotamian path and opting to herd animals leads you down a Mongolian nomadic path) but it was really pretty materialist and it didn't shy away from class conflict.
I wish I could remember the name of it.
Edit: Don't ask me how I managed to find it - Idle Civilization: World Story
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=su.nkarulin.cardshistory
Suzerain or any of the map and clock games maybe
I love social democracy. We can all get sterilized together.
maybe i should play this to get a sense of this criticism, it sound interesting.
okay i've played it twice now so i don't have an exhaustive picture of the options, but my endings were both civil war and i even got a positive ending card on the short version (i pumped all my money into the paras), so i don't think the criticism that it's all about electoral politics 'working' necessarily holds up