It was in the spring of 1931 that the so-called "national opposition" consisting of Hitler's National Socialist Party (NSDAP) and German conservative nationals (DNVP, DVP, and a group referred to as Stahlhelm) proposed to held a plebiscite (Volksentscheid) on the dissolution of the Prussian Parliament to bring about the fall of the government. Initially, the DKP rejected the proposal describing it as "Fascist betrayal of the people." Soviet Communist Party leader Joseph Stalin did not agree with this DKP line. Using the channels of the Comintern, Stalin instructed the German party to adopt a different line. Consequently, the German Communist Party leadership announced on July 22, 1931, that they would join what was now suddenly termed a "Red Referendum."4
In order to achieve a majority vote the Nazis could not do without Communist participation in the referendum. A unique Red-Brown alliance had been formed: both Nazis and Communists marched together in demonstrations against the Social-Democratic government of Prussia.
In his excellent study on the history of the Socialist International, Franz Borkenau, observes:
"This was no longer simply the theory of ‘Social-Fascism,' the belief that there was no difference between Fascism and democracy and that the Social-Democrats were just as bad as the Nazis... Their (= the Communists, V.) participation in the Nazi referendum implied more. It implied the view that to overthrow the last defense of German democracy, the Prussian government, in co-operation with the Nazis, meant progress, that a Nazi régime was preferable to a democratic régime