In the 1932 German federal elections where Hitler took power, the next two parties on the list were the SPD (moderate socialists) and the KPD (revolutionary com

In the 1932 German federal elections where Hitler took power, the next two parties on the list were the SPD (moderate socialists) and the KPD (revolutionary communists), both of whom refused to ally with the NSDAP. It was the centrist conservative Franz von Papen who first chose to strike a confidence-and-supply deal with the Nazis in order to avoid having to work with socialists. Then it was the right-wing President Paul von Hindenburg who chose to replace Papen with Hitler and let the Nazis form a new government -- again, in order to have him 'deal with' the communists. At the same time as Hitler was setting up his dictatorship, his brownshirt paramilitaries (the Sturmabteilung) were having shooting matches in the streets with communist militias, seemingly the only group in the country to recognize the existential danger of Naziism. Indeed, it was a terror attack on the Nazi-controlled parliament by an independent (i.e. non-KPD affiliated) communist that Hitler ultimately chose to use as pretext for declaring an emergency and beginning his dictatorship. Socialists and Communists certainly tried to take control of Germany, but they never succeeded. As the Nazi party took power, they were opposed every step of the way by communist forces, even as nearly every other major pillar of German society (excepting a few segments like the Catholic Church and, for a time, the Wehrmacht) fell totally in line. It was the conservatives, not the communists, who betrayed Europe to fascism, war, and genocide.