FOUGHT

Then, from 1945, the twin bureaucracies took control of the labour movement again. This was a key factor in the maintenance of international capitalism.

The beginnings of the break of German labour from bureaucratic control signified most clearly the revolutionary nature of the present period and the tremendous opportunities revolutionary leadership.

The history of Germany from 1933 to 1945 is usually presented on the basis that the mass of the German nation were loyal supporters of Hitler.

The German working class, which up to 1933 voted for the Communist and Social-Democratic Parties by the million, is supposed suddenly to have been hypnotized by Hitler, and swallowed NaziR "ideology' whole.

According to this story, resistance to Nazism was conlined to the churches and a few aristocrats and generals These sections of the ruling class are depicted as paving the way for the 'democratic' Bonn regime after 1945.

To 'explain' how an entire nation can have gone through such a process, sociological analysis of 'authoritarianism', national or racial characteristics of the Germans and psycho-analysis have all been called upon.

Marxists, of course, know this picture to be entirely false. The most highly-developed labour movement in the world was destroyed only because of the treachery of its leadership.

In the depths of the economic crisis, only workers' revolution could have resolved the contradictions of German society and, in doing so, transformed the international situation completely.

But neither of the workers' parties could or would prepare the class for power. For Social Democracy, which had been the main political prop for the German capitalist state since 1918, the question did not even arise.

The Stalinized Communist THREE of the contributions deal with aspects of the bourgeois opposition to Hitler and only one to the labour moveHermann Graml, writing on 'Resistance Thinking on Foreign Policy' and Hans Mommsen on 'Social Views and Constitutional Plans of the Resistance', whatever their intrade unionists: First victims of ERNST WOLF, writing about 'Political and Moral Motives behind the Resistance' somewhat reluctantly demolishes the myth of the Churches opposition to Hitler.

As Professor F. L. Carsten says in his introduction to the book:

'On the Catholic side, the conclusion of the Concordat with the Holy See in the spring of 1933 proved an effective barrier to any opposition.' Individual Catholics and Protestants fell foul of the regime and some were martyred for their refusal to accept Nazism. But Wolff shows how the traditional nationalism and anti-Semitism of the Lutheran churches inhibited opposition to the regime, even when they conflicted with it on church matters.

The Confessing Church' which arose in opposition to the Evangelical Churches support for the regime, was never opposed to . Nazism as such. Its leader, Niemoller, had been an enthusiastic Nazi and even in prison in 1939 applied for permission to rejoin the navy.

HANS - JOACHIM REICHHARDT contributes the most important essay in this book, 'Resistance in the Labour Movement'.

Von Goerdeler Despite all the attempts to build up the legend of a bourgeois resistance, it was only in the working class that active work against Nazism took place.

Confining himself mainly to Berlin, Reichhardt has examined the court records and official reports dealing with underground working - class organizations as they were discovered by the Gestapo. He begins by describing the refusal of the leaders to mobilize workers who were waiting for the call to fight in January 1933.

Members of the Reichsbanner, the workers' defence organization, gathered at their assembly points. Mass demonstrations took place in the main cities. But the leaders silent and 'the will resist slowly languished'. 154.)

Retreating step by step, the Social-Democratic and trade union leaders sought by granting concession after concession to the Nazis to maintain their legality. The result was demoralization and the destruction of the workers' organizations.

Resistance groups formed, but only locally and without national guidance.

Only gradually were illegal methods of work learnt, at heavy cost in arrests and murders. Even where these groups were organized by Social Democrats, they were based on an attempt to break with the past of the discredited Social - Democratic Party (SPD).

One such group described by Reichhardt was the Roter Stosstrupp (Red Shock Troop).

This had its origins in Berlin University in 1932. Like some other left-wing SPD tendencies, these students had begun to prepare for illegal work before Hitler took power.

They were therefore better prepared than the official leaders. The duplicated paper they put out circulated up to 3,000 copies. Its first issue declared in April 1933 :

'We no longer bear allegiance to any party dogma, any party banners: we know only one battle flag: the red flag of socialism, We know only one goal: the proletarian revolution.' (p. 169.)

Determination How clearly this expresses the determination of the working class to fight-and the terrible effects of Stalinist degeneration. For under conditions of illegality, these workers were cut off from the theoretical conquests of the Communist International destroyed by Stalin.

To understand the defeat and build a new party on the basis of this understanding was terribly hard. The Transitional Programme says:

experieroe, And is is precisely experience in mass movements which is lacking in countries of totalitarian despotism.' Only the Fourth International, basing itself on the experience of the Third International, could draw the lessons of 1933. That is why Hitler's victory made the foundation of the Fourth International vital.

By December 1933, the Gestapo had penetrated and destroyed the Roter Stosstrupp.

Meanwhile an émigré SPD had begun to operate from Prague, later moving to Paris. A section of the SPD leaders had opposed even the slightest Reichhardt remarks | that in contrast to its repeated pronouncements, the KPD offered no more than half-hearted resistance to the events leading up to the National Socialist assumption of power'. (pp. 164-165.)

He correctly attributes this to the policy of the Soviet leaders.

'In fact Soviet official policy was characterized by a temporizing, if not a positive attitude, as is evident from the marked failure to break off the close economic and military relations then existing between the two countries' (p. 165.)

He explains how calls for a united front with the Social Democrats could not get a response in view of the previous 'social-fascist' line. Even more important, their own members were utterly unprepared for the victory of Hitler and the persecution that began.

The arrest of Thaelmann, KPD leader, on premises that were supposed to be secret, in March 1933, showed how unprepared the Stalinists were.

The heavy losses of the KPD by murder and arrest were increased when Alfred Kattner, arrested with Thaelmann, gave assistance to the Gestapo and was released. He was shot in his home by a KPD member February 1934. (See Reichhardt's note on p. 263., Ulbricht took over the leadership in emigration later in 1933. The Comintern line was still that 'in spite of the fascist terror, Germany's revolutionary upsurge will continue inexorably. The establishment of open fascist dictatorship which destroys all the democratic illusions of the masses and frees them from the influence of Social Demoçracy speeds up the process of Germany's evolution towards the proletarian revolution.' (Executive Committee of the Comintern, April 1, 1933.) • As a result of this policy, KPD members went out selling literature openly right through 1933. Thousands of Party members were rounded up in such work.

Treachery

Is it not surprising that' some sections of the KPD went over to Nazism?

Reichhardt quotes an account by Gustav Regler of a meeting in the Saar between a Party official and members of the underground in 1934, which heartbreakingly illuminates the relationship between the heroism of the rank and file and the treachery of Stalinism.

came in just in time to hear the final remarks of a young man who had been making a report on the Reich. He took a pamphlet from his pocket and threw it down at the official's feet. "We've been distributing that for months,"

Se sa. alave perein, vin his lot from you people, but this is too much. What's that supposed to be for?" He indicated the despised booklet with his foot and, speaking with the utmost firmness, concluded: "None of us is going to risk the chopper for that tripe."' (p. 171.)

It is unlikely that this of attacking the Social Democrats as the main enemy and demanding revolution immediately, but of abandoning all conception of revolution.

The new policy is described by the Transitional Programme as follows:

'Essentially it signifies the impotent longing for coalition with a non-existent liberal bourgeoisie' Reichhardt, however, sees Popular Frontism only as meaning joint action of KPD and SPD groups. He remarks: 'Even if there were occasional instances of co-operation between Social Democrats and KPD, and although the latter's instructors operating in the Reich were told to encourage it, it remained ineffectual. The Moscow Trials that began . in August 1936, with their shameful spectacle of the liquidation of the old revolutionaries, followed by the Russo-German An anti-fascist demonstration July non-aggression pact shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, destroyed the last hopes of a united front of Social Democrats and Communists in Germany' (p. 173.)

Reichhardt does not mention that many leading KPD members who took refuge in Russia vanished in the purges; that some of those arrested in Moscow were handed over to the Gestapo in 1939; and that almost all the survivors were deported to Kazakhstan as 'enemy nationals' in 1941.

During the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, virtually all KPD activity ceased. Ulbricht and the Moscow members of the Central Committee naturally applauded Stalin's policy.

Decapitation

Reichhardt quotes Dengel as saying (in Moscow!) that 'the comrades working in Berlin need no longer fear decapitation since Stalin would make sure that Hitler kept the terror within certain bounds' (p. 177.)

The official Stalinist 'History of the German Anti-Fascist and E. Wolf.

Batsford. London 1970. 56s.

said talled and al been sentenced to death. Even then, small groups continued to work right up to the end of the war.

According to the 'History of the German Anti- Fascist Resistance Movement' 340,000 members had been sentenced to over a million years imprisonment between 1933 and 1939. Fifty-seven KPD members of Parliament were killed by the Nazis in that period.

Reichhardt does not mention the most famous of the KPD groups, the 'Rote Kapelle' Orchestra).

Schulze-Boysen, it had strong groups in many of the importfactories, carried important espionage work, propaganda activity.

Over 100 of its members were tortured and executed when it was broken up in 1942. The final section of Reichhardt's essay is devoted to the centrist group 'Neu Beginnen'.

This had begun its preparation for illegal work in 1929, working secretly inside the SPD.

Its leaders tried to analyse the failure of the workers' parties and to work for a united socialist party.

Because of even this limited preparation and because it was less publicly known than the main parties, Neu Beginnen was able to work until 1938 fairly successfully. It leaders were then arrested and imprisoned, but further work went on until 1944.

Reichhardt appears to favour the record of such tendencies. But like the Socialist Workers' Party (SAP) of Brandler, groups like Neu Beginnen were based politically on an • evasion of the CriSIS of leadership in the working class.

They condemned the KPD and SPD leaders for failing to in exile in occupied France who published the illegal paper "Arbeiter und Soldat' ('Worker and Soldier') and distributed it in the Wehrmacht. (They were caught by the Gestapo and killed.)

At that time, the Allied propagandists, and above all the Stalinists, were pouring out anti-German (not anti-Nazi) material that frequently reached the level of racialism. This, together with the declaration in January 1943 demanding Germany's unconditional surrender, strengthened support for It was intended to do so. The main factor which determined the policies of the Allied imperialist and the Stalinist bureaucracy at that time was not the desire to defeat Germany-but the fear of German workers' revolution emerging from such a defeat.

The rape of Berlin by the Soviet Army in 1945 was also quite consciously planned to combat the danger of independent class action. When, despite this policy, 'AntiFascist Committees' sprang up, often organized by former KPD members, Ulbricht smashed them up.

Stalinism was the major factor in holding back the German working class when Nazism rose to power.

Then it did its utmost to destroy and demoralize the heroic fighters against the Nazi regime.

After 1945, it was responsible for preventing the development of revolutionary leadership and allowing the utterly bankrupt SPD to regain its position in the labour movement in W Germany.

But today, Trotskyism grows in strength, bringing new forces from the youth into the battle for the German workers' revolution and arming them with the theoretical and historical lessons of the past.

The struggles to organize the workers' movement against Nazism will not have been in vain.