I showed in the series of posts on Germany that extreme class contradictions brought that country close to a workers’ revolution. The failure to achieve this revolution led to the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Hitler, backed by German monopoly capital, then attempted through war to transform Germany into a second version of the United States. For example, Poland and the nations of the Soviet Union were to be transformed into Germany’s version of the “American West.”
The fuhrer and the German imperialists he represented also attempted to destroy the class consciousness of the German working class. Their attempt to transform Germany into a second version of the United States failed, however, and after the war (West) Germany was absorbed into the U.S. world empire. With the help of “the Empire,” Germany finally gained the markets and access to cheap raw materials it so desperately needed.
So German imperialism got something out of World War II after all, finally emerging from the intolerable conditions that its imperialist rivals had imposed on it after World War I. As a result, the prolonged social crisis gripping German capitalism was overcome.
While German capitalist politics became increasingly “Americanized” after World War II, U.S. politics are showing signs of becoming “Germanized.” We should not, of course, exaggerate the “Germanization” of U.S. politics. It is neither 1918, 1923 nor 1933 in the United States. But the surprising response to “socialist” Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party, combined with the gains made by far-right demagogue Donald Trump in the Republican Party—a man who some have compared to Adolf Hitler—represents something new in American politics.
A Critique of Crisis Theory 