Читать книгу Militant Anti-Fascism - M. Testa - Страница 11

Struggle, violence and war were at the centre of Nazi ideology and for years the Nazi storm troopers, the SA, had been engaged in a campaign of politically motivated street fighting which left hundreds dead and thousands injured during the final years of the Weimar Republic.

—Richard Bessel in Life in the Third Reich

On January 15, 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the Spartacist leaders of the Berlin uprising, were taken from police custody, assaulted and murdered by the proto-fascist Freikorps. Their bodies were dumped in the Landwehr Canal near where the Bauhaus Archive and the museum to German anti-Nazi resistance now stand. Luxemburg and Liebknecht had split away from the reformist socialists ( SPD), to lead the Spartakists and form the German Communist Party ( KPD). The socialist Ebert, leader of the government coalition, was seen as being too weak by independent socialists, communists, and worker’s and soldier’s councils who were agitating for a revolution. Violence between the left and the Freikorps escalated. The Freikorps were a reactionary street force that mobilised against the growing rebellion, ‘volunteer units raised by the old Army Command and paid by the Prussian War Ministry…[and] led by Imperial officers’.1 Freikorps members were ex-soldiers nostalgic for the camaraderie of the trenches and angry over the ‘stab in the back’ by the politicians who had signed the armistice in 1918; they were also unemployed adventurists seeking excitement and a sense of certainty and belonging; and, as with the Italian fascist squads, Freikorps members were also violent criminals. Like the Italian squads, the Freikorps’ lack of answerability was a cause of worry to watery-kneed conservatives. Political assassinations were to become a characteristic of this proto-fascist activity: Kurt Eisner, who had led the Munich uprising, was murdered in February 1919 by the Freikorps, as were the politicians Matthias Erzberger and Walter Rahtenhau, the ex-foreign minister. Nichols writes that ‘most victims of such violence were men of the left. [Defence minister] Noske’s forces freed Berlin from the fear of a Communist insurrection, but at the expense of working class unity’.2 The police turned a blind eye and the courts were lenient when the subjects of the Freikorps enthusiasms were militant leftists, and few Freikorps faced the consequences: ‘Attempted counter-revolution, political murder and libellous publications were often connived at in the courts because the judges thought the perpetrators more “patriotic”.’3

Via the legal system, political pressure was exerted against militant workers whilst the murderers of Luxemburg and Liebknecht and leading figures of the Freikorps got away with lighter sentences: ‘Yet thousands of workers who had been involved in the fights in the Ruhr and in Central Germany were sentenced to extremely long terms of imprisonment and hard labour’.4

Berlin was not the only city to witness reactionary violence: on 7th April 1919, revolutionaries in Munich proclaimed a Soviet Republic and organized a Red Army as a defence measure. However, on the symbolic 1st of May, the defence minister Noske sent in troops who brutally suppressed the Soviets and imprisoned and executed many revolutionaries without trial. Berlin and Munich were only two of the cities where working-class militancy faced state-sanctioned violence.

In 1919, the Freikorps continued with their ‘punitive expeditions’ against left militants, and thousands were kills in street battles. In Munich on May Day, 1919, workers fought pitched battles with soldiers: ‘About 1,000 people were killed during the battle. Between 100 and 200 revolutionaries were murdered’.5 In the Ruhr, workers armed themselves against proto-fascist militias and ‘the Red Brigades drove the Free Corps and Reichswehr troops out of the district. A united front of all socialist parties and Free Trade Unions was formed’.6 The mix of unity, organized workers, and militancy was seen as key in successful anti-fascist struggle. The Freikorps engaged in scab action against working-class organizations, and in 1921, when Berlin workers went on strike, they acted in a predictable manner: ‘ultra-Right wing students, young engineers and former officers’ formed into strike-breaking Technical Emergency Squads that were maintained and ‘in later years [they were] often used to break the organized resistance of labour’.7

The association with gangster-like behaviour recurs throughout fascist history. Anderson states that the Freikorps were responsible for attacks on and murders of radical workers and ‘were comparable to organized gangsterism in America, except they were much more dangerous’. They made public calls for the executions of prominent radicals on posters reading, ‘Kill their leaders. Kill Liebknecht!’8

After Russia, Germany had the largest working class in the world, and Stephen J. Lee illustrates the left-wing power base in 1920 thusly: ‘Challenges came in 1920 from rail and miner’s strikes, mass demonstrations by the USPD [Independent Social Democrats] and uprisings in the Ruhr from a variety of groups ranging from workers’ self-defence units, USPD activists, syndicalists and communists.’9

The SPD unions were well institutionalised in the factories and they had the advantage over the communists: the KPD had 300,000 members but 80–90 percent of them were unemployed so they lacked the syndicalist potential of the socialists—although the reformist nature of the SPD meant that the syndicalist approach of politically motivated strikes would be used infrequently. The KPD’s forces were best mobilised on the streets. Both the communists and fascists realised there was a potential force otherwise unengaged in the ranks of the jobless, and they both vied for members from there, organizing propaganda that dealt specifically with unemployment issues: ‘the increasing competition between Nazis and Communists to woo those who were out of work led to severe clashes between both sets of activists in front of the unemployment offices’.10 The KPD identified anger and dissatisfaction amidst the ranks of the unemployed and saw that the young were the worst-affected of all. The KPD recruited at the offices where the unemployed attended twice weekly with considerable success: ‘A Red Help organization, special unemployment committees and the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition ( RGO) recruited large numbers’.11

In 1920, left-wing militancy increased and there was fear of a communist coup: ‘A spontaneous strike broke out in the Ruhr in which Independent Social Democrats, anarcho-syndicalists and some supporters of the Majority Social Democrat Party were as important as the Communists. Arms were distributed and barricades erected’.12 Again, the reformist SPD sent in forces to crush the rebellion (which would have a long-term effect on relations with KPD militants).

Despite moves to dissolve the Freikorps following the Munich uprising, the remaining groups who had not been assimilated into formal military structures like the Reichswehr still benefited from the protection of the reinstated Bavarian government. They began operating as Patriotic Leagues, and the army and police supplied weapons, ignoring the typical fascist gangsterism, and protected such murder gangs. The paralegal status of reactionary militias is a constant feature of fascism’s spotty complexion, given to political thuggery and intimidation with the tacit (and not so tacit) support of the state. This was something that Hitler capitalised on, and in 1921, the SA squads were formed and specialised in intimidating workers’ demonstrations, in street violence and in the protection of fascist meetings. Ernst Rohm also bolstered the ranks of the SA with unreformed Freikorps and the disbanded Defence Leagues. Hitler needed to defend his activities against attacks from political opponents and he drew on ‘comrades who had seen active service with [him;] others were young Party members’ for security; he also believed that ‘the best means of defence is to attack, and the reputation of our hall-guard squads stamped us as a political fighting force and not as a debating society’. The SA was used to attack the opposition members and smash up meetings, although they were not the only ones: in Munich in 1921, there was a mass battle as left-wing opposition attacked a Nazi meeting, ‘which was built up into a Party legend’. The SA also continued Mussolini’s tradition of violent censorship and targeted left-wing printing presses and newspapers. Like other fascist leaders, Hitler centralised violence within his ideology, as and when apposite, and the more public the better. This organized violence amplified the physical aspect of the Nazis along with their uniforms, marches, flags and tedious martial music on city streets.13

Militants clearly had to organize physical opposition in order to counter and defeat this concerted right-wing violence, so in 1923 the KPD organized the Proletarian Hundreds, which consisted of ‘several hundred thousand men…ready for the next wave of revolution’.14 SPD members also joined in ‘the setting up of the Proletarian Hundreds in Saxony—these were unarmed contingents which were manned by SPD and KPD activists and were formed to defend Republican institutions against counter-revolutionary activities from the far right’.15 The Proletarian Hundreds also ‘disrupted conservative and nationalist celebrations’, and on one occasion, ‘more than 100 persons from Chemnitz disrupted the parade. Knife fights took place. One of the injured had to go to hospital’.16 The Proletarian Hundreds were eventually outlawed.

In 1923, the SA planned to attack the annual left-wing May Day demonstrations in Munich, partly as a publicity stunt: after all, what use is political violence if no one notices? The SA were armed with machine guns and rifles and this was meant to be more than the routine street fights that many were used to; it was to be a major statement of Hitler’s intentions. However, they were routed by a small detachment of troops and police; so embarrassed was the future Fuhrer that he disappeared from sight for several months after it. After emerging from his self-imposed exile in November 1923, Hitler became the leader of the Kampfbund, a formation of Freikorps, Patriotic Leagues and assorted other violent groupuscules, which he then led into the middle of Munich in an attempted putsch. State forces in much smaller numbers rebuffed them again and they dispersed, only to be reorganized in greater numbers through Nazi mythmaking. Hitler fled the scene, leaving several of his comrades dead on the paving stones.

Anti-Fascist Action

But among the dead were people from the Reichsbanner as well as people of ours,

So we said to the comrades of the SPD:

Are we to stand by while they murder our comrades?

Fight alongside us in the Anti-Fascist Front!

—Bertolt Brecht, ‘When the Fascists Keep Getting Stronger’

Anti-fascist activity was widespread and violent from the start of the Republic. In 1923, fascists ‘faced persistent pressure from the workers’ movement who searched suspects for weapons and disrupted or broke up Nazi meetings’.17 In the town of Werdau, ‘Communists forced their way’ into a Nazi meeting and ‘beat up the National Socialists with clubs and sticks’.18 In Zschopau, in 1930, a Nazi meeting attracted 550 attendees, four hundred of whom were anti-fascists. As tensions increased, ‘the Communists demanded to stay in the hall. At this moment a beer glass flew from the middle of the hall to the stage where the stewards were. A few Stormtroopers grabbed chairs to use them as protection against projectiles. When the brawl started, both sides used chairs, part of chairs, beer glasses, coffee cups, etc. to beat or throw’. The room and many participants ended much the worse for wear.19

The principle anti-fascist groups were Roter Frontkämpferbund ( RFB, Red Front Fighters), AJG (Anti-Fascist Youth Guards), the Fighting Leagues and Anti-Fascist Action ( AFA), all operating in a militant capacity, all aligned with the KPD. The Proletarian Hundreds had been operating since 1923. These groups also worked as propaganda units. The Brownshirts of the SA were also built up, and they increased their policy of encroachment in ‘Red’ areas. In May 1924, the Nazis staged a demonstration in Halle, and despite the Proletarian Hundreds and Red Front Fighters being banned, communist demonstrators violently engaged with the police, leading to several fatalities and the KPD ‘calling on the workers to seek more confrontations with “the fascists”.’20 In a show of strength, the KPD could also mobilise between ‘20,000 and 40,000 uniformed RFB members’ dressed in ‘green Russian shirts, jackboots, army belts, and caps with the red star’.21

The youth wing, Young Red Front ( YRF), could mobilise an equal amount and were well-known for their over-enthusiastic approach regarding both cops and fascists during ‘street patrols.’ There was also a ‘straight-edge’ aspect to the YRF, with a ban on cinema, drinking, smoking and pornography. According to Merkl,

The Communists needed a new and more centralized paramilitary organization that could protect their rallies and speakers, demonstrate in the streets, engage in canvassing and propaganda during elections, and, most of all, stand its ground against the paramilitary shock troops of the right.22

In 1924, realising the escalation of paramilitary organizations on both sides, the SPD organized the Reichsbanner, a physical defence force that recruited members from outside the SPD and grew to a million strong. The Reichsbanner proved to be an effective organization but one whose fortunes varied and were dependent on the political motives of the SPD of the time. By 1928, however, the Reichsbanner had gained a sense of militancy and ‘prepared to wage a much more vigorous battle against Hitler’s SA’.23 And they needed to.

The Reichsbanner ‘was the largest paramilitary army of its time, with between 1.5 and 3.5 million members’ and was set up initially to protect the Republic, as the SPD government could not trust the Reichswehr, the regular army, which was rife with reactionary and conservative forces.24 As things became more violent, the Reichsbanner had to raise their game and ‘organized an elite Protective Formation (Schufo), which could stand up to the Stormtroopers in street fighting and meeting-hall battles’, although they remained unarmed.25 The tone of the SPD’s Iron Front propaganda also shifted focus from defending the Republic to the ‘defense of working class interests.’26

Red Berlin

All through our red Berlin the Nazis strutted, in fours and fives,

In their new uniforms, murdering

Our comrades.

—Bertolt Brecht, ‘When the Fascists Keep Getting Stronger’

Not all towns succumbed to Nazi provocation or their attempts to organize: ‘in 1926, the Nazis in Freiburg admitted that their SA was not able to protect two local party meetings.… Instead the SA was beaten up twice on these occasions by Marxist followers.’27 The Nazis found it hard to make inroads into the working-class areas that were predominantly aligned to left-wing parties. In ‘Red’ Saxony in Central Germany, militant anti-fascism was a considerable force up until 1934. A typical provocation occurred when Nazi fanatic Joseph Goebbels held a meeting in a KPD beer hall in Wedding, which led to fighting in the streets in early 1927. Shortly after, on a train, a brawl erupted between SA and RFB men which destroyed the carriage and led to confrontations throughout the night. The SA suffered a temporary ban.

Control of the Streets

In and around Leipzig…the clashes were at their most severe and took the heaviest toll of human life.

—C.W.W. Szejnmann in Nazism in Central Germany

Nazis faced violent opposition when trying to organize activities in ‘Red’ Leipzig, which ‘tended to turn into wild brawls between the SA and Marxist supporters and the Nazis had to leave again, highly frustrated’.28 Facing either well-organized or violent opposition in the workplaces, the Nazis looked to ‘the home front’ in their recruiting drives: ‘In places where they faced overwhelming resistance they often avoided outright confrontation. As parades or public meetings in the west of Leipzig only fuelled tough resistance from Marxist activists, they preferred to be active “beneath the surface”’.29 Fascists organized a surprise march through Plauen, which meant that the left-wing residents ‘could not demonstrate their skill in building street barricades and limited themselves to throwing beer bottles…[and] the usual shouting of “Red Front!” and “Down! Down! Down!”’30 Even as Hitler edged closer to power, working-class resistance remained strong with one organizer reporting,

The fight in our district is incredibly hard. Marxism defends it as its rightful domain. SA members who walk home alone are attacked; party members, as soon as they are known as such, are watched every step they make; their family members are hounded, even children suffer due to the terror of the red comrades; business people are boycotted…the pack does not even shrink from attacks in apartments.31

On the May Day demonstrations in Wedding in 1928, the SDP police chief demanded that KPD demonstrators disperse; this led to pitched battles and several days of rioting, leaving twenty-five people dead and 160 seriously injured. The RFB were banned. As with most proscribed militant organizations, they simply reformed under another name but also lost significant membership numbers. Following May Day 1928, the SA attempted to march through Wedding and were met with fury. The police stepped in at the last moment to prevent the leftists from attacking the interlopers. Merkl describes the repercussions thus:

There followed other clashes, such as a half-hour street battle involving 100 to 150 Red Fronters near their Sturmlokales Volksgarten and two trucks of SA returning from a campaign in small towns outside Berlin. Pavement stones, beer steins, fence poles, garden furniture, and flag poles served both sides until the Volksgarten was totally demolished, with beer gushing from the smashed counter.32

The Nazis attempted to march through Neukoln in a provocative gesture. The workers reacted with violence, leaving the fascists with serious injuries. Although they were initially repulsed, it was only the beginning of a Nazi incursion into ‘Red’ territory, and in 1928, the SA started setting up the first Sturmlokales, public bars or meeting places in the area. Communists responded by occupying Nazi meeting halls, which caused the predictable battles and also replicated the intrusion tactics of the Nazis: ‘Three times in one week, they tried to storm the Treptow Sturmlokale of the SA, the second time allegedly with 180 men of the elite Liebknecht Hundreds, and under police protection. The third time the RFB completely destroyed the SA hangout.’33

On May Day in 1929, the KPD staged an illegal demonstration, which was attacked by baton-wielding riot police. Hundreds of arrests and many beatings were reported as the police imposed quasi-martial law. Thirty people were killed. The KPD called a general strike for the following day and, in response to this, the RFB, the AJG youth wing, and the newspaper were banned. The KPD viewed this outrage as a ‘confrontation between Social Democrat police and Communist workers’.34 KPD resentment of the socialists was also guided by the rapidly changing and opportunistic foreign policy objectives of Stalin, which lay behind the increased use of the ‘social fascist’ insult, and that culminated in the disastrous ultra-left ‘third period’ strategy, where the KPD saw Social Democracy as no different from the Nazis.

By 1929, KPD leader Ernst Thaelmann and others had increased recruitment amongst the unemployed at the labour exchanges where thousands gathered every day, despite the reservation of the Moscow-dominated Communist International. The SPD was frequently disparaging about the KPD, referring to their ‘Bolshevism, the militarism of the loafers’, and pointing out the fact that 80–90 percent of the communists were unemployed and that the party was not as politically effective in the workplace as the SPD was.35 The KPD was increasingly competing with the Nazis who, being better funded, could offer temporary work for the unemployed. The KPD organized ‘proletarian shopping trips’, where unemployed workers would raid stores and take goods gratis. There was some discussion over how much was being taken and of what kind and if this was a political or a more dubious act: Walter Ulbricht, later leading figure of the DDR and Stalinist henchman in Spain, described these missions, quaintly, as ‘self-help’.

Initially, for the most part, the KPD was involved in defensive rather than offensive violence but soon realised that ‘pre-emptive strikes’ could be politically effective. Defection to the Nazis was not looked upon lightly, and KPD militants often identified transgressors for ‘special treatment’. The violence was not exclusively left/right but also factional. In Leipzig in 1930, a 1,500-strong meeting of the SAJ (Socialist Working Class Youth) was disrupted by two hundred KPD militants. The SPD was also losing members who defected to the KPD, the SAP (Socialist Workers Party) or the Nazis. Not only were the political organizations competing for members, but also ‘the KPD, NSDAP and the Reichsbanner were competing against each other regarding party publicity and propaganda activities. Fighting parades, red days, propaganda rallies…minor incidents often led to clashes’.36 Not all areas were as divided: in Auerbach ‘in contrast to most other places, Social Democrats and Communists often cooperated to secure a socialist majority in the town council or to fight the growing threat of the Nazis’.37

By 1930, both the KPD and Nazis realised that the violence could have a negative impact on electoral returns (although it certainly helped recruitment on the streets). The KPD leadership argued for the cessation of violence between political gangs in the street and was uneasy over socialist/communist alliances engaged in attacks on political opponents at the local level rather than consolidated mass action. The militants felt confident that they could beat the fascists; the youth wing sided with the militants as leadership figures started agitating for the closure of the fighting bodies. Dismantling the militias would leave individuals vulnerable to fascist violence in the streets, but the leadership wanted to rein in any autonomous activities that these non-partisan groups may be carrying out. The KPD eventually reorganized the fighting groups to consolidate militants under a different name but to operate in a similar capacity as before.

In the 1930 election, the KPD received 13.1 percent of the vote and the SPD 24.5 percent, so a potential anti-fascist vote was 37.6 percent in total, but the ideological schisms between the two left-wing parties were deep and savage.38 For some, the fragmentation amongst the left was a defining factor in their defeat: ‘Any realistic chance of winning a physical confrontation with Nazism was destroyed by the lack of a united front on the left, and the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Social Democrats stuck to legal means and tried to avoid any confrontation on the streets.’39

By 1931, the SA had 300,000 uniformed members ready to confront anti-fascist opponents on the streets. The Reichsbanner, representatives of the governing party, began to liaise with police in order to prevent a Nazi coup. In the long term, although there were many militants in the Reichsbanner, it was subject to political machinations out of its control and was neither properly trained nor properly armed. By 1931, the unions had also organized their muscle as the ‘ Hammerschaften, strong-fisted teams of workers in the major plants who would enforce a general strike against management resistance or Communist interference if necessary’.40

Protection of meetings and demonstrations was paramount and the use of firearms became an issue following the May Day violence. In 1931, a Comintern handbook recommended

knives, brass knuckles, oil-soaked rags, axes, bricks, boiling water to pour on the police-beasts raging in the streets of the workers’ quarters, simple hand-grenades made of dynamite, to emphasise only the most primitive of the infinite and ubiquitous possibilities of arming the proletariat.41

Physical resistance and militant street activity was crucial: political dialogue was futile, as evidenced by the fateful meeting when Ulbricht confronted Goebbels on the platform of a Berlin meeting in 1931, which rapidly descended into chaos and ‘which really served to kick off a gigantic meeting-hall battle that three hundred policemen were unable to stop’.42 In the Landtag, the regional parliament, fighting broke out between KPD and NSDAP members and, with superior numbers, the Nazis came out best. Anti-Fascist Action was launched shortly after this with the intention of uniting socialist and communist militants in self-defence of working-class communities, but it was to prove an uphill struggle. Violence increased and according to Szejnmann it was

a crucial part of Nazi, but also of Communist, propaganda…after 1929 the amount of violence between political opponents (particularly between Nazis and Communists), and clashes between demonstrators and police (mainly with Communists) clearly increased. The growing use of knives and firearms made the nature of these fights more and more brutal: twelve demonstrators and two policemen lost their lives in confrontations in northwest Saxony in 1930 and five people died in clashes between political opponents in…1931 alone.43

Control of the streets has always been central to fascist strategy, and the SA’s slogan was ‘Possession of the streets is the key to power in the State’. As the 1930s began, ‘the Communists marched in formation singing down the streets, broke up rival political meetings, beat up opponents, and raided each other’s “territory”’.44 As did the Nazis. The violence had intensified beyond control: ‘Ordinary brawls had given way to murderous attacks. Knives, blackjacks, and revolvers had replaced political arguments. Terror was rampant’.45

In the early 1930s, an era of mass uncertainty and high unemployment, the SA offered potential recruits violent excitement, food, a uniform and even a place to stay in the ‘Brown House’ headquarters. For a few marks, a potential fascist Stormtrooper ‘could sleep and eat in these hostels, which varied widely.… Some of the largest…housed 250 SA men’, and many were paid for by ‘sympathetic businessmen’. A good place for total indoctrination and a free sandwich:

Unemployed young males were put up in dormitories ( SA Heime), where they received shelter and food in exchange for their full-time services as marchers and fighters for the brown cause.46

When the SA was suppressed in 1932, many ended up homeless. As usual, the violence was an attraction for many, and it was in the interests of both the KPD and NSDAP to maintain public visibility and, most of all, street victories to maintain and boost membership. For Merkl, ‘[The] street battles of the S.A., the monster rallies with Nazi speakers, and the meeting-hall battles of the Stormtroopers…uniforms, disciplined marching, flags, and quasi-military behaviour may have been as attractive as witnessing the violent encounters with Communists and the Reichsbanner’.47

The hard core of SA membership ‘consisted of unemployed men who lived in SA messes and barracks’.48 The Nazis continued to set up ‘Sturmlokales’ in ‘Red areas’, which were ‘part dormitory, part soup kitchen, part guardhouse’.49 The Nazis also started to intrude on ‘Red pubs’, which pushed the KPD’s unemployed street fighters out due to their low or no income. Saturation patronage by the Nazis meant that they could take over a tavern and, through economic superiority, guarantee the consumption of so many barrels of beer a week. The owners where unlikely to refuse increased revenue in such dire times, and thus the SA began to take over more venues, whilst the owner could either close in protest or accept the new clientele and their cash.

During the run-up to the election in 1930, street fighting and political agitation increased significantly:

Political mobilization frequently exploded into violence, especially between Nazis and Communists. In late September 1930 there was a typical clash between both sides in Eibenstock: a local Nazi leader had called on his followers to demonstrate against Communist terror. When the 150 Nazis who had turned up met an even larger group of Communists who came marching down the street, a brutal fight developed with stones and picket fences. In the end, there were many injured and a few seriously wounded.50

Smashing up meetings, storming opponents’ pubs, and street brawling were daily occurrences: in 1930 alone there were 23,946 demonstrations, which drew in 25 million people: ‘There was also a dramatic increase in violent incidents: there were 351 reported clashes and verbal abuses in Leipzig alone between 1 August and 20 November, 1932’.51 The scale of activity and associated violence is difficult to imagine: Merkl puts the body count in the hundreds between 1923 and 1933, with many others seriously injured. More specialised and expertly targeted violence was required and hit squads were formed and were involved in activities outside their local areas to avoid identification:

The Stormtroopers were combat units who aimed at defeating their opponents in street battles.… The Communist hardcore reacted to this challenge by taking the counter-offensive with their slogan, ‘Beat the fascists wherever you meet them’.

The SA had grown to over 400,000 members: ‘many hundreds of thousands of SA and SS men every day have to mount on their lorries, protect meetings, undertake marches, sacrifice themselves night after night’.52 Complete control over the SA was something Hitler coveted, and splits amongst the Nazi hierarchy over their function intensified: Hitler, as supreme leader, ordered the SA to avoid street fighting and was keen to stay inside the law in order to avoid being discredited prior to securing political victory. No doubt wealthy sponsors would be getting nervous over continuous political brawling and murder. Given this restriction, the SA, organized as a violent political force, laid mainly idle and without the relief of exciting confrontation. In September 1930, the restless SA smashed their Berlin headquarters over grievances, including pay and political direction, which led Hitler to personally appease their desire for violent action. A few months later it happened again. When the government finally moved in 1931 and banned private armies, Hitler forced the SA to comply in accordance with his new ‘legal’ stance. This was not to last and the ban was lifted again in 1932, which ‘caused an immediate and alarming upsurge in violence. Murderous encounters took place, especially between Nazis and Communists. Deaths were frequent’.53 The record is appalling: the police reported 461 political riots in six weeks with over eighty people killed and many more seriously injured. In 1932, ‘pitched battles took place on Sunday 10 July in which eighteen people were killed. The next Sunday, the 17th, saw the worst riot of the summer, at Altona, near “Red” Hamburg, where the Nazis under police escort staged a march through the working class districts of the town and were met by a fusillade of shots from the roofs and the windows’.54 Nineteen people died and many were seriously wounded. Never being one to miss an opportunity to make propaganda, Goebbels staged large and public funerals of the Nazis killed by anti-fascist actions, using the usual mix of sacrifice and martyrdom to stir his followers’ patriotic blood.

The police operating against the fascists was a relative rarity as they were naturally more sympathetic to the authoritarian Nazis and viewed the left as their main threat, with one noting ‘that the KPD was prepared and determined to use violence right from the start in order to prevent the infiltration of fascists into working-class districts’.55 Not only that, but ‘large sections of the police sympathised with their cause, the Nazis wore down Marxist followers in a brutal battle for control of the streets by the end of 1931’.56

In 1932, despite the changing face of public support for fascism, anti-fascists retained their militancy: ‘Political opponents clashed more frequently too, particularly in strongholds of the KPD and SPD where Nazis faced stiff resistance. For instance, two Nazis were seriously wounded by activists of the Reichsbanner and KPD in Lossnitz, a Marxist bastion’.57 When Nazis tried to march through Red Altona in July 1932, the KPD fired on them, causing an armed police response. The KPD built barricades and the violence ended with eighteen dead, sixty-eight injured and 150 arrested. Later in July, a newspaper reported a clash between KPD and Nazis, which left ‘one of the SA men stabbed to death; another seriously injured’.58 The same paper reported SA men invading an SPD meeting, which turned into a mass brawl as the police completely lost control. In 1932, violence escalated and newspapers reported ‘daily, and even nightly clashes, brawls, assaults, and shootings amongst the huge private armies that has been assembled’.59 The KPD’s hatred of the Nazis was exacerbated by those supporters who had been part of the Freikorps and violently put down workers’ organizations. The KPD had been continually involved in savage and fatal brawls with these fascists for over a decade and ‘armed raids of Nazi formations on political meetings of opponents or on workers’ settlements had become an almost daily occurrence.’60

In Berlin in 1933, KPD and NSDAP continued the attacks on each other’s meeting places and pubs. Guns were increasingly used with attendant fatalities. This was now a coordinated policy of ‘mass terror’ rather than individual terror, ordered by the KPD leadership and responded to in kind by the Nazis. It was a deliberate and violent escalation in response to the failure of communist ‘mass action’ and strikes to make a significant political impact. Factory agitation increased, and workers mobilised and initiated a united front policy with the SPD, formerly ‘social fascists’.

As Hitler was aware, these outbreaks of violent disorder and the expression of more extreme sentiments were doing little to assure the bourgeoisie electorate of Nazi respectability or their suitability to govern. Incidents like that of five SA members kicking a communist miner to death in front of his mother were neither endearing nor placatory. The five were initially sentenced to death although this was later commuted to life imprisonment. Despite their bid for respectability and Hitler’s public entreaties, the Nazis were still openly provocative and sought to control their turf through violent means. In January 1933, they demonstrated outside Berlin’s communist headquarters with Goebbels saying, ‘We shall stake everything on one throw to win back the streets of Berlin.’61 Again, protected by armed police, several thousand fascists held a march through Berlin which culminated in a speech by Hitler. The communists had been banned from counter-demonstrating.

Of all the European street confrontations between anti-fascists and their opponents, the Germans counted the most fatalities and, apart from the state-sanctioned violence of Mussolini’s fascists, made places like the UK seem very modest in their affairs. Hundreds of deaths were recorded and large-scale street clashes were a regular occurrence. Between 1925 and 1933 there were hundreds of violent confrontations between left-wing militants, Nazis and the police, with most occurring in Berlin. By the end of 1933, Hitler became chancellor.

1933 & Beyond

After Hitler seized power in 1933, the police and SA began to seal off workers’ strongholds and carry out mass arrests and house searches for KPD members, weapons and propaganda. When KPD leader August Saihof’s house was searched, a gun and bullets, as well as KPD propaganda ‘of a highly treasonable nature and Bolshevist content’ were found.62 This meant immediate detention. It became increasingly difficult and dangerous for anti-fascists to operate. Once arrested, they could hardly expect tea and sympathy, and many died under torture, which was apparently only used selectively; ‘Under the circumstances, the sharpened interrogation may be applied only against Communists, Marxists, members of the Bible Research Sect, saboteurs, terrorists, members of the resistance movement, parachute agents, asocial persons, Polish or Soviet prisoners who refuse to work or idlers’.63 This list doesn’t leave many out.

By 1935, fourteen thousand communists were in confinement with many more to follow: there were few alternatives to arbitrary arrest apart from fleeing and going into hiding. By 1945, between 25,000 and 30,000 KPD members had either died in the camps or been murdered or executed. The paramilitary nature of the state was enforced by the SA, SS and the regular police. The violence and suppression meted out towards the radical left ( KPD, USPD) was soon focussed on moderate socialist organizations and their assets, such as property and printing presses, which were seized by the Nazis. Meetings were forbidden and the Reichsbanner was forced to disband. All political opposition was made illegal, co-operatives and clubs were outlawed, newspapers were banned, and mass repression began. The SA had been sitting on their truncheons for some time, having been bound by Hitler’s bid for legality, but now they could wreak havoc on opponents, real or imagined. The SA had set up improvised concentration camps and many anti-fascists were abducted, beaten and murdered with the usual fascist mix of sadism and criminality: ‘In Berlin’s Columbia cinema, in Stettin’s Vulkan docks, and in countless other places enemies were incarcerated and tortured in a microcosm of the hell that was to come’.64 This in addition to the setting up of ‘legal’ concentration camps and the activities of the Gestapo (which, according to Eatwell, was set up by leading Nazi Hermann Goering to monitor his rival’s activities). The Nazi strategy legitimised institutional violence and the mass arrests of left-wingers (which led to torture and incarceration in 1933) was overlooked by many voters as it was represented as a determined response to republicanism and the Red Menace.

Local fascists sought revenge on militant anti-fascists who had beaten them from the streets previously. Guilty by association, attacks on families and violent reactions were frequent:

These planned raids, together with threats, insults, beatings and arbitrary arrests, and the spontaneous acts of vengeance and terrorist onslaughts carried out by local SA groups which set up their own ‘private’ concentration camps, created an atmosphere of insecurity and helplessness even in working class strongholds.65

According to Szejnmann, ‘The persecution of Marxists was particularly ruthless in Saxony: more than one sixth of all concentration camps were on Saxon soil in 1933.’66

Shortly after Hitler assumed power, communists organized demonstrations. In Breslau, a general strike was ordered but the SA occupied the muster point and, together with the police, attacked the strikers: ‘the communists scattered, some running up nearby streets and smashing windows of shops selling Nazi uniforms’.67 One communist was killed and subsequent demonstrations were banned. Continued sporadic resistance was evident: shortly after the riot in Breslau, militants fired on the SA from a trade union headquarters, which led to further violence against workers’ organizations.

With the KPD, USPD, SPD, and working-class organizations drastically suppressed, supporters of the left grew demoralised. Remarkably, physical opposition still remained in places:

Approximately 2,000 members of the Kampfstaffeln (Fighting Units) in Leipzig—an SPD organization which had been set up to combat the Nazis by violent means—were prepared to occupy streets and public buildings. After the March 1933 elections, however, they waited in vain for three days for a signal to strike because their party leadership had decided against the use of violence.68

Organization became ever difficult as the arrests increased.

Although the Nazis systematically destroyed all established working-class organizations, they remained concerned that, as a class, workers benefited least from fascism whilst the regime entirely depended on their output in order to maintain itself. According to Tim Mason in Nazis, Fascism and the Working Class, ‘it is not wholly surprising that the regime should have enjoyed the active or passive consent of most sections of the middle class and of the power elites,’ whereas ‘the only tangible benefit for the working class was the increase in employment’—which after years of uncertainty and unemployment was no doubt welcome. Whilst a small percentage of workers did benefit, the vast majority were just able to manage. Increasing rearmament depended on consistent production, and Hitler needed the workers onside. However, work itself had transformed from ‘a social activity into a political duty’ and became ideological—as well as alienated—labour supporting a system that consistently disenfranchised those who maintained it.69

Fascist gangsterism and opportunism was not far behind with many chancers scrambling for positions and seeking influence in the new infrastructures. Nazi purges were carried out: many liberals and leftists were removed from positions of office; cultural and educational institutions, such as the Bauhaus, were closed; and fascist sycophants were all eager to profit from the new Germany. Members of the SA, some of whom had been around since the days of the Freikorps, also sought their rewards, knowing they had a potent militia of nearly three million at their disposal. However, they were resistant to being assimilated into the hierarchy of the regular military, which would rob them of their positions of power. This was not a satisfactory situation for Hitler who now wanted rid of the SA and ‘the “old fighters” who had been useful enough for street brawling, but for whom the party had no further use.’70 On the night of 30th June 1934, the leadership of the SA were assassinated in the Night of the Long Knives, leaving the way clear for the black-shirted SS.

Resistance

Socialists and communists did maintain a clandestine resistance, and though their acts of sabotage achieved little, the latter did develop an effective espionage system.

—Stanley G. Payne in A History of Fascism 1914–45

Given the severe duress under which anti-fascists operated, much activity was concerned with either secretive propaganda distribution or a limited strategy of sabotage, opportunist or otherwise, in the factories. Spies in the workplace and the union hierarchy meant that organization became increasingly difficult, but individual acts of resistance continued. Many people expressed their dissent through apathy at work, slow production, sick leave and absenteeism.

Rote Kapelle (Red Chapel) activists were active in passing information to the Russians and, although for a time it was relatively successful, the group was betrayed by a Russian contact, leading to the execution of seventy-eight anti-fascists. It was not unknown for communists to infiltrate the Gestapo, but the Gestapo more successfully infiltrated the communists and their secret organizations, which led to more arrests and executions. Many militants joined the resistance, and those who did not or could not, according to Detley J.K. Peukert, ‘kept an attitude of sullen refusal which on many cases led to positive acts of opposition’. Peukert also states that three kinds of resistance developed in the early years of Nazi domination: ‘resistance in order to preserve traditions, opinions and cohesion (informal discussion groups, camouflaged clubs and associations); resistance in order to devise plans for a post-fascist democratic state; and resistance in the sense of immediate action…(strike and sabotage)’.71

Adam Wolfram was a salesman who kept in contact with trade unionists and socialists on his travels, collecting and passing on intelligence, a job that was not without danger:

Side by side with this there were also active resistance groups which, at great risk to themselves, distributed information, leaflets and newspapers among the population. Unfortunately, Gestapo spies managed to track down these groups, round up the participants, torture them and send them to prisons and concentration camps.72

Political opponents were not only concentrated in the camps: forced labour and prisoners of war faced unimagined brutality, and punishments were carried out for even the most minor infraction. One unfortunate was caught with ten tins of boot polish whilst others were caught carrying 15 kg of venison and a bag of rabbit fur.73 Others resisted physically: one Russian POW was caught ‘urging the women workers to work more slowly’ and, when reprimanded, the fascist lackey said the POW became ‘abusive and threatened him with his fists…[and] he jumped at me and threw me to the ground.’74 This unknown worker was charged with sabotage, threatening behaviour, physical assault and undermining the guard’s authority. His fate is unknown but it is not hard to guess. German workers were also known to defend foreign workers: at the Duisburg colliery a worker defended a Russian prisoner from harassment by an overseer: ‘[he] turned on the foreman and defended the POW in a manner such as to encourage the latter to strike the foreman on the head with his lamp.… [He] received a gaping wound on the face which has required stitches.’75 The German miner had already spent time in a concentration camp and when reprimanded, boldly stated that he would carry on intervening. These were small acts of resistance but remarkable given the possible consequences.

Far be it from militant anti-fascists to take succour in the words of a former CIA director, but Allen Welsh Dulles supplied information on allied relations to anti-fascists both in exile and within Nazi Germany. Exiled socialists worked with Allied intelligence in addition to supplying propaganda, advice and money to their comrades: SPD, KPD, and other socialist militants maintained links with those still under the Nazi regime. One striking example was the charismatic Carlo Merendorff, a journalist who ‘studied, wrote, worked, laughed, slaved, fought, drank and loved through many a German landscape and was viewed by the fascists as a dangerous influence’.76 He spent between 1935 and 1937 in a concentration camp, but on his release continued his subversive activities before being killed in an air raid in 1941. Merendorff worked with Theodor Haubach, who co-founded of the Reichsbanner, the socialist militia who had once ‘pledged to uphold the Weimar constitution and defend the government against both communists and Nazis’. Merendorff and Haubach had agitated for a united front with syndicalists to oppose the Nazis.77

Informal networks continued even if party organizations were severely compromised by arrests and informants. However unfortunate, a funeral could become the site of resistance and a show of solidarity for anti-fascists: 1,200 showed up in solidarity at the funeral of a prominent member of the SPD who had died after release from a concentration camp. Adam Schaeffer had been imprisoned for political reasons and died in Dachau after attacking an SS guard. He was allegedly shot, although rumours grew that he had been beaten to death, hence the closed casket. Eight hundred people turned up at the funeral, mainly SPD and KPD members and sympathisers. Minor acts of resistance and sabotage affected production: the Albert Baum Group had thirty-two members, many of them KPD, who campaigned over work conditions, spread propaganda, and created informal networks. They had even disguised themselves in stolen Gestapo uniforms in order to confiscate items from the Berlin homes of the rich. Together with other Jewish anti-fascists, they destroyed one of Goebbels’s propaganda exhibits. Baum and others were later arrested, and although Baum was tortured, he never revealed who his accomplices were. Although Mason concedes that many acts of resistance did take place’, he also asks why did it not take place on a larger scale. Workers often enough displayed their lack of enthusiasm for the mass demonstrations of the Third Reich, but they never translated a May Day assembly into a street battle.78 Local circumstances, degrees of solidarity, organization, and opportunism were factors in resistance, but there was also the mitigating factor of terror, the fear of what may happen based on threats, and the knowledge of what had happened to other dissenters and their families. This fear became a pre-emptive tool and enforced compliancy to a regime that gave few concessions to the working class. Demoralization, disorganization and dread became an effective triumvirate to suppress rebellion.

In her autobiography One Life Is Not Enough, Lore Wolf recounts her life as a member of the KPD resistance: ‘I have been called “the White Raven of the Communists”. As a resistance fighter and a refugee I—like many others—always stood with one foot in prison. Twenty times I was caught, nineteen times I got away.’79

After 1933:

Red Aid of Germany was the organization of the oppressed. It cared for the dependents of the politically persecuted and the prisoners, it carried out solidarity actions for the suffering working-class, it agitated, made propaganda and spread information by means of leaflets and illegal newspapers.80

They printed thousands of clandestine newspapers per month and ‘often a single copy went through half the factory—each of the readers contributing some money’.81 They could be caught any time with the papers or be informed on and, although only simple propaganda, they could be subjected to the same punishment as for any other anti-fascist activity: arrest, torture, murder or starvation in a camp. Producing the leaflets was difficult, and paper was bought in many different shops to avoid suspicion. Some were passed on more secretively. In Wolf’s words, ‘there was a tobacco shop near the main station where we could also store brochures and other materials. Close co-operators who bought their cigarettes there collected the texts in small packs and passed them on to trusted colleagues.’82

In 1934, the police called for ‘ruthless suppression of the intense Communist activity promoting propaganda’, the Gestapo warned that the Red Front Line Fighters were reorganizing, and Gestapo goon Reynard Heydrich demanded ‘particular attention to the efforts of Red Aid’.83 The group was ultimately betrayed, and Wolf fled to France and then to Switzerland where she was arrested and deported. Red Aid continued in exile, helping homeless anti-fascist exiles and distributing information. Wolf worked as a courier in Paris until the 1939 mass round-ups of German communists and anti-fascists. She was sent back to Germany to a concentration camp until the end of the war. Wolf’s story is an exemplary account of selfless anti-fascist activity. Despite all the hardships, she retained her sense of dignity and solidarity. It is only one story of many.

Edelweiss Pirates and Others

Now look at the youngsters growing up! They give in to every desire and craving, puffing away at English cigarettes, buy the first tasty titbit, dance, and throw away every activity that requires some effort.

—C.W.W. Szejnmann in Nazism in Central Germany

It is, perhaps, the youth who could often express dissent more effectively, away from illegal political organizations, and remain unknown to the authorities. The enforced tedium of the Hitler Youth with its uniforms, daft songs and marching about was obviously anathema to disenfranchised and more independently minded youths. The compulsory sublimation of sexual appetites—boys separate from girls—whilst fetishizing flags and lederhosen was understandably repellent to many. Smoking cigarettes, getting prematurely drunk, listening to contemporary music and sexual cavorting has always been the prerogative of youth, much more than callisthenics and accordions—as has a natural anti-authoritarianism. The worldview that the Hitler Youth was putting forward was likewise unappetising to many with its focus on war as a natural state, hailing to the leader, and the subordination of individuality. It was inevitable that some youths would rebel.

Reports of brawls with members of the Hitler Youth (especially the disciplinary patrols), of assaults on uniformed personnel, and of jeers and insults aimed at Nazi dignitaries are legion.

—Detley J.K. Peukert in Inside Nazi Germany

Throughout the 1930s, reports of gangs or ‘cliques’ proliferated. They were often comprised of runaways who were avoiding the Hitler Youth or compulsory work schemes: Berlin police patrols would ‘periodically round up whole lorry-loads of youth.… There is a section of youth that wants the romantic life. Bundles of trashy literature have been found in small caves. Apprentices too are disappearing from home much more frequently and are drifting in the hurly-burly of the big cities’.84 It was a common phenomenon and one that worried the fascist establishment who warned that ‘a serious risk of political, moral and criminal breakdown of youth must be said to exist.’85 The spontaneity and informality of these gangs made them difficult to monitor and, as time went on, they became increasingly widespread, militant, and violent.

Get out your cudgels and come into town

And smash the skulls of the bosses in brown.

—Pirate song

The Edelweiss Pirates, the Kittelbach Pirates and the Navajos were all informal gangs that indulged in the standard deviations of sex, drinking, dodging work and avoiding the tedious adult authoritarians. The Edelweiss Pirates started at the end of the 1930s, wore distinctive outfits and emblems, and spent time escaping to the relative freedom of the countryside to party at weekends. Other gangs soon grew to prominence and were tied to a particular area: ‘groups from the whole region met up, pitched their tents, sang, talked and together “clobbered” Hitler Youth patrols doing their rounds’.86 In 1941, one mining instructor reported, ‘They beat up the patrols, because there are so many of them. They never take no for an answer. They don’t go to work either, they are always down by the canal.’87 Compulsive work was viewed negatively by the Pirates and ‘something to be evaded as much as possible by “skiving off,” idling and causing trouble’.88 Work was war work, and the Nazis knew that absence directly affected production; the Pirates could exploit this.

According to Mason,

The few direct armed attacks mounted by German resistance fighters against the hated Gestapo were the achievement of scattered gangs of ‘Edelweiss pirates’: groups of young people, utterly cut off from the inherited organizations and values of the working class movement, who in the last years of the war spontaneously developed into violent anti-fascist assault troops.89

On their rural sojourns, the Pirate gangs could relax, away from the pressure of everyday life, ‘though always on the watch for Hitler Youth patrols, whom they either sought to avoid, or taunted and fell upon with relish’.90 Although not ideologically aligned, the natural anti-authoritarianism of the Pirates began to take on political meaning: everything the Pirates wanted—freedom of assembly, sex, drink, music, travel—was seriously curtailed under the Nazis. If we are defined by our desires, then the Pirates were anti-Nazi by definition. In some cities, once the air-raid sirens had gone off and civilians sought shelter, many young people met up to continue the same kind of activities as at the weekend, unsupervised. These were moments of temporary freedom.

Other gangs were similar to the Pirates, only more politicised from the outset. In Leipzig between 1937 and 1938, working-class youth had been much more influenced by the socialist and communist climate of their communities and took pleasure in ‘their acts of provocation against the Hitler Youth.’ They were given to ‘speculations about the day when the violent overthrow of the regime would come’.91 Provocation was a political tactic at street level for the irate Pirates as they ‘looked for a new hangout in the reddest part of town…there were often massive clashes, and we were exposed to many a danger’.92

When the knives flash

And the Polish coffins whizz past

And the Edelweiss Pirates attack!

—Martyn Housden in Resistance and Conformity in the Third Reich

The Pirates were hardly simple street-corner gangs, and punishment for membership was severe. In 1940, the Gestapo in Cologne arrested 130 Navajos; elsewhere other Pirates were hanged; and in Düsseldorf, 739 were arrested. Also in Düsseldorf, the Edelweiss Pirates battled so frequently with Hitler Youth that in 1942 the latter reported no-go areas. In 1944, the ring-leaders of one Cologne gang were publicly hanged. The Gestapo raided the gangs on Himmler’s orders and arrested hundreds of youths who ended up in special courts, but runaways and deserters increased the ranks of the Pirates as the war went on. In Cologne in 1945, there were reports of twenty groups over one-hundred-strong who raided food stores and attacked and killed fascists. As the war neared its end, some Pirates joined with the resistance, along with anti-Nazi deserters and escapees: ‘They got supplies by making armed raids on military depots, made direct assaults on Nazis, and took part in quasi-partisan fighting. Indeed the chief of the Cologne Gestapo fell victim to one of these attacks.’93

Students also engaged in acts of resistance. Hans and Sophie Scholl organized a small group to distribute anti-fascist leaflets at Munich University, whose alumni mainly consisted of, according to Dulles, ‘girls, cripples and Nazi “student leaders”’.94 They became known as the White Rose group and built a propaganda network in nearby cities as well. The principal protagonists, the Scholls, were caught and executed, and the bravery of these young anti-fascists has been commemorated by a Berlin school and a film. Others fared slightly better on arrest: Anton Saefkow was a member of the communist resistance and a friend of Ernst Thaelmann who was arrested in 1933 and almost tortured to death. Saefkow then spent the next ten years in a camp until he escaped and became a leading figure in the anti-fascist underground.

Make sure you’re really casual, singing or whistling English hits all the time, absolutely smashed and always surrounded by really amazing women.

—Detley J.K. Peukert in Inside Nazi Germany

The Swing Youth were upper-middle-class jazz enthusiasts given over to eccentric dress, a heightened appreciation of the trombone, and resistance through rhythm. Jazz was strictly verboten under Hitler who detested ‘negro music’ and its African-American origins, so adherence to it became a political statement. They faced opposition from the Hitler Youth who reported their ‘long hair flopping into the face…they all “jitterbugged” on the stage like wild creatures. Several boys could be observed dancing together, always with two cigarettes in their mouths’.95 Not only was the music viewed as outlandish but so were the clothes of the Swing Youth: ‘English sports jackets, shoes with thick light crepe soles, showy scarves, Anthony Eden hats, an umbrella on the arm whatever the weather’.96

KPD vs. SPD

One of the most contentious issues in Germany was the relationship between the KPD and the SPD. Both had nothing to gain from the electoral success of the Nazis other than arrest, torture, imprisonment, and death. In 1922, the combined vote of the SPD and KPD was 52.3 percent, which (although dropping later due to rising unemployment, shortage of food and bourgeois reaction) was surely an indication of the potential of left-wing and anti-fascist sentiment. The KPD was opposed to the SPD because the communists were agitating for a revolution, whereas the socialists were in government and had sanctioned state violence to suppress revolutionary activity. It was difficult for KPD to side with the reformist SPD when the socialists had used the police to break strikes and attack workers. During the violence on May Day 1929, the police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators. Not only did this result in twenty-five workers being killed, but it widened the gap between the socialists and communists and saw the communists gain more votes. The SPD police chief was blamed, although it was the police boss on the demo that gave the order to fire.

The split between the SPD and KPD was cultural as much as ideological: it was along lines of unemployed and worker, revolutionary and reformist, younger generation and older, and so on. Members of the KPD were often on the fringes of electoral politics and, like the Nazis, had a particular attraction for the younger and more rebellious elements—something that John Hiden confirms in Republican and Fascist Germany: ‘The KPD supporter was more likely than the SPD follower to be young, unskilled and above all unemployed.’97 These are some of the reasons that a hoped-for left-wing block vote against the Nazis failed to happen.

Endnotes:

1 A.J. Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler (London: Macmillan, 1968), 23.

2 Ibid., 24.

3 Ibid., 47.

4 Evelyn Anderson, Hammer or Anvil: The Story of the German Working Class Movement (London: Victor Gollancz, 1945), 86.

5 Ibid., 60.

6 Ibid., 74–75.

7 Ibid., 85.

8 Ibid., 53–4.

9 Stephen J. Lee, The Weimar Republic (London: Routledge, 1998), 52.

10 C.C.W. Szejnmann, Nazism in Central Germany: The Brownshirts in ‘Red’ Saxony (New York: Berghahn Publishers, 1999), 62.

11 Peter H. Merkl, The Making of a Stormtrooper (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 11.