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“More than 30 years later, during the political radicalization of the 1960s, Trotsky’s writings were essential reading for workers and students who wanted to understand how it was possible for fascism to come to power in Germany. I belong to a generation, born in the aftermath of World War II, which found in the writings of Leon Trotsky an incomparable analysis of the political causes of the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century. Trotsky’s writings made clear that the victory of fascism was not inevitable. Hitler’s rise to power could have been prevented. Fascism was neither the irresistible outcome of the “Dialectic of Enlightenment,” as claimed by Adorno and Horkheimer, nor the product of repressed sexuality, as argued by Wilhelm Reich. Fascism, the most barbaric form of bourgeois rule, came to power as a result of the failure and betrayals of the political leadership of the working class.”

By David North, from  Leon Trotsky and the defense of historical truth