the USSR. However some American businesses, led by Henry Ford, opened close relations. The Soviets greatly admired American technology and welcomed help in achieving the ambitious industrial goals of Stalin's First Five-Year Plan. Ford built modern factories and trained Soviet engineers. President Franklin Roosevelt recognized the USSR in 1933, in the expectation that trade would soar and help the US out of the depression. That did not happen, but Roosevelt maintained good relations until his death in 1945. Attack social democratic parties In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin insisted on a policy of fighting against non-communist socialist movements everywhere. This new radical phase was paralleled by the formulation of a new doctrine in the International, that of the so-called Third Period, an ultra-left switch in policy, which argued that social democracy, whatever shape it took, was a form of social fascism, socialist in theory but fascist in practice. All foreign Communist parties – increasingly agents of Soviet policy – were to concentrate their efforts in a struggle against their rivals in the working-class movement, ignoring the threat of real fascism. There were to be no united fronts against a greater enemy. Battling Social Democracy in Germany 1927-1932 In Germany, Stalin gave a high priority to an anti-capitalist revolution in Germany. His German Communist Party (KPD) split the working-class vote with the moderate Social Democratic Party. The SPD was the historic social democratic party in Germany, and tempered its Marxism to drop revolutionary goals and instead focus on systematic improvement of the condition of the working-class. This approach ran contrary to the goals and beliefs of the KPD which considered such short term concessions for the working that served only to delay the revolution. In the Reichstag, the KPD sought to overthrow the Weimar regie, which was historically controlled by a moderate coalition of liberals, Catholics, and the social democrats. As the Nazi Party grew rapidly throughout the early 1930s, winning support among Protestant workers and financial capitalists, this system became increasingly undermined by political extremists. There was some fighting between the KPD and the Nazis in Germany's industrial cities. According to George Stein, a secret major military collaboration between Russia and Germany began in the early 1920s. Both sides benefitted from operational activities at the bases of Lipetsk, Kazan, and Torski. When Hitler and his Nazis came to power in 1933, the collaboration ended because Stalin feared the