Socialists & Communists Combine Their May Day Parade – 1936

Not Your Typical Deluded Socialist / Communist Gathering

One of Marchers In New York’s May Day Parade
New York – This marcher in the combined Socialist-Communist May Day Parade in New York today, May 1st, adopted this costume to demonstrate his point. 5-1-1936 credit: International News Photo

The original 1936 news caption writer left out one detail about this marcher: Nazi.

Theoretically, communists and socialists are not the allies of fascists. But in the mid-1930s you had a lot of groups in the United States vying for power and political clout creating unusual alliances. So what if a May Day marcher was a communist / socialist / Nazi?

In reality communists were the enemies of the Nazi’s. By the time World War II began in 1939, the Nazi’s and Communist Russia had signed a non-aggression pact. For nearly two years Germany and Russia cautiously watched one another. Hitler broke the pact June 22, 1941 by invading the Soviet Union. The brief coalition of the two competing political systems was over.