Leipzig Book Fair: No empty years

If you have to look for names of members of the workers’ resistance against German fascism under the current appeal “280 descendants of resistance fighters demand fight against the right” (a third of the signatories are from the nobility, by the way) and under the appeals “Entrepreneurs and unions together against the AfD” only finds something historically harmonious according to the slogan of social partnership, then it is clear: Ulrich Schneider’s book came out at the right moment.

For a long time, West German historiography primarily remembered the Wehrmacht officers who only opposed shortly before the end, the men of July 20th around the assassin Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and other Hitler opponents from middle-class circles. But it was first and foremost members of the labor movement – over 80 percent of active anti-fascists – who opposed the regime at the risk of their health and lives.

Even in current statements from the business world, the role of the economic elites in favor of Hitler is kept quiet, and the trade unions shy away from looking back to May 1, 1933, when they marched together with the Nazis, for which they paid a high price a day later. Afterwards, however, many trade unionists courageously took part in the workers’ resistance against the Nazi dictatorship, which was always a fight against the Krupps, Flicks, Quandts, Thyssens and IG Farben. They left a legacy that is kept secret today. Worker resistance? Unknown.

Ulrich Schneider describes the workers’ resistance against the emerging fascism in the Weimar Republic and does not hide the fact that the division of the workers’ movement hindered their strength. The movements of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Red-Gold (SPD) and the Red Front Fighters’ League (KPD) are remembered, as are non-party-affiliated Antifa actions and the fighting league against fascism, which became necessary because the state was repeatedly communist Organizations were banned and the SA often tolerated murderous actions.

In the chapter “1933 to 1935 – Persecution of the organized labor movement” the author describes the terror of the Nazis. From the very beginning, the workers’ organizations forced into illegality with the establishment of the Nazi regime helped those being persecuted to escape, tried to build networks, educate the population with leaflets, in short: to develop an anti-fascist practice under the conditions of conspiracy.

The following chapter, which sheds light on the years leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, is entitled “Empty years?” This is denied. Even though the structures of the organized labor movement were largely destroyed, resistance continued. Schneider describes the striving for the popular front in exile and the fight for the Spanish Republic, fought by thousands of German workers with weapons in hand. Since the view of the Nazi regime in this country is still on the If the focus is on ‘racial’ persecution, examples of solidarity with the persecuted, such as the KPD leaflet campaign against the ‘shame of the Jewish pogroms’ in November 1938, as well as the declaration of solidarity for the victims by ‘Sopade’, the SPD’s exiled board in Prague, are likely to be mentioned of the raging anti-Semitism of the Nazis can be particularly interesting.

During war, the conditions and perspective of combat changed. »If until now it was essentially about preventing a war, then we had to “The German anti-fascists are now, as a political consequence, campaigning for a military defeat of the German Reich.” The risks increased. The resisters became “traitors,” even in the eyes of many of their fellow human beings. After the “Blitzkrieg” phase and the Wehrmacht’s first serious defeats, the fighting conditions did not improve, but from the spring of 1943 onwards, some Germans did find the anti-fascists’ arguments “more credible,” as Schneider notes. The regime responded by intensifying the reprisals. Listening to and broadcasting foreign broadcasts was often punishable by death.

During the war, in addition to the previous groups from the workers’ parties, cross-party groups also formed. Social Democrats and Communists further developed their analyzes of fascism in exile and drew up plans for an anti-fascist-democratic Germany for the period after liberation.

Schneider also looks at the anti-fascist new beginning, when the lessons were learned from the split in the workers’ movement, which could not prevent fascism from coming to power. This also included overcoming sectarianism – a lesson that once again seems very timely. The author’s comments on the Prague Manifesto of the SPD and the VII World Congress of the Communist International as well as the massive self-criticism of the two main currents of the workers’ movement regarding previous misjudgments and wrong decisions are useful here.

The author ends his book with the call that the women and men who had often opposed the advance of the NSDAP and its establishment of power before 1933 must be seen and honored as part of the anti-Hitler coalition. Their role in the liberation from fascism and war should not be underestimated. Although resistance from the workers’ movement did not force the military surrender of Nazi Germany, the reverse is also true: the Nazi regime was not able to destroy the German workers’ movement as it had intended.

Ulrich Schneider: Workers’ resistance in the Third Reich. Papyrossa, 127 pages, br., 12 €.