After a series of financial crises in 1926, 1929 and 1931, public opinion in Europe was certainly radicalising but not to the benefit of left-wing anticapitalist parties. In the weeks that followed Hitler's rise to power in February 1933, the German Communist Party and the Comintern clung rigidly to their view that the Nazi triumph would be brief and that it would be a case of "after Hitler our turn". However, as the brutality of the Nazi government became clear and there was no sign of its collapse, communists began to sense that there was a need for a radical alteration of their stance, especially as Hitler had made it clear that he regarded the Soviet Union as an enemy state.