In August 1931, to capitalise on their growing popularity, the Nazi Party launched a referendum to overthrow the Social Democratic government of Prussia. At first the KPD correctly attacked it. Then, three weeks before the vote, under orders from Stalin's Comintern, they joined forces with the fascists to bring down the main enemy, the Social Democrats. They changed the name of the plebiscite to a 'Red Referendum' and referred to the fascists and the members of the SA as 'working people's comrades'!

https://marxist.com/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=843&catid=290&id=7521&lang=en&view=article

In their campaign the referendum was called the 'Roter Volksentscheid' and working-class members of the NSDAP and SA were referred to as 'Schaffende Volksgenossen'.

On 24-25 July a conference in London of representatives of the central committees of the British, French, German, Polish, and Czechoslovak communist parties welcomed 'the decision of the KPD central committee to take part in the referendum against the social-fascist Government of Prussia'. 'The working and peasant masses in all countries must realize that the road to emancipation from capitalist bondage and imperialist slavery lies through the overthrow and annihilation of the Second International. To win the workers . .. who still follow treacherous social-democracy is the command of the hour for the revolutionary movement of Europe.' The English and French delegates published a protest against Versailles and their countries' policy towards Germany; the Polish and Czech delegates followed suit, and added a demand for self-determination for the Germans in Czechoslovakia and for the Ukrainian and White-Russian minority areas of Poland.

The result of the referendum (9.8 million votes for dissolution of the Landtag, out of an electorate of 26.4 million) was regarded as a victory for the KPD; all thosewho voted 'yes', under whatever misleading slogan, objectively strengthened the revolutionary front. Pravda wrote that it was a move forward by the German workers towards the forthcoming struggle under KPD leadership. One KPD writer said that an SPD Government confronting a proletariat that was confused and divided was a thousand times greater evil than an open fascist dictatorship confronted by a class-conscious, resolute, and united proletariat. Trotsky was bitterly critical of this attitude; in November, when the SPD made overtures to the KPD for a united front (which were rejected), Trotsky's approval of the move was described in the KPD press as 'Trotsky's fascist proposal for a KPD-SPD bloc'. This was 'a criminal idea'.

At the end of the year Thaelmann wrote of the opposition in the KPD to support of the referendum, on the ground that 'the Braun-Severing Government in Prussia was after all a "lesser evil" than a Hitler-Goebbels Government', that the tendency to make such distinctions 'is the most serious danger for the party'. 'How great this danger is', he went on, 'can be seen inter alia from the latest social-fascist manoeuvre, which "threatens" to make "a united front with the KPD". We must ask ourselves: Have we created all the conditions to enable us to counteract easily this new treachery, this misleading of the masses?' To say that Briining was preferable to a Hitler-Hugenberg dictatorship was 'a despicable and treacherous betrayal', designed to discourage the masses from fighting the bourgeoisie. Trotsky wrote that the KPD action would enter the textbooks of revolutionary strategy as an example of what not to do; within bourgeois-democratic Germany the proletariat had been able to establish its own proletarian democratic organizations, which it was the basic aim of fascism to destroy. 'The idea that the triumph of fascism will not introduce anything new is now being zealously propagated in all CI sections.' To say that they saw no difference between Briining and Hitler meant that it did not matter whether working-class organizations existed or not; it also meant the acceptance of defeat.

https://marxists.architexturez.net/history/international/comintern/documents/volume3-1929-1943.pdf

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