Beaten But Not Defeated Read online

  So this section will look in some detail at the tumultuous politics in and around Munich from 1918, through the Kapp putsch and the events of 1923 by when we know Siegi was again in Munich, to when Siegi leaves for Berlin in 1928. Siegi’s personal/political trajectory parallels and illustrates two of the major events in German history between 1918 and 1933 - the revolutionary uprising in Bavaria in 1923 and the failed attempts by the revolutionary left to stop the rise of Nazism in Berlin from 1929/30. The first section will be on the revolutionary left, the second on the rise of the Nazis. We begin with a brief diversion into the birth of the Weimar republic which provides a backdrop to subsequent events.

  On the 29th October 1918, the sailors of the German fleet mutinied when ordered to continue the fight against the British. They took over the naval base and city of Kiel and elected a workers and soldiers council (Hobsbawm, preface to Leviné, 1973).11 On the 9th November, the Kaiser abdicated, handing over government to the Social Democratic, Elbert. The German republic was declared on the 9th November 1918. The army chiefs transferred their loyalty to Ebert but on the condition that he fight Bolshevism. In that they were united. But the army itself had become militant and was not to be trusted, so Ebert turned to the reactionary Freicorps (Hobsbawm, preface to Leviné, 1973). On the 15th January 1919, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, the two great leaders of the German revolutionary left, were murdered, following the failed first attempt at revolution in Germany.

  Munich: the unlikely seat for revolution, 1918/19

  Munich became the fulcrum for the revolutionary left, after the defeats in Berlin. As we know, Siegi witnessed the historic struggles of 1918 and 1919.

  Bavaria, one of the more conservative and Catholic areas of Germany with a population at the time of around 8m, long dominated by the right, was an unlikely place for the revolutionary days of 1918 and 1919. But Krupp had built a new munitions factory, employing 6000 out of its 60,000 population in Munich (Harman, 1982)12, its employees at the forefront of the insurgency. Moreover, it was a staging post for demobbed and often radicalised soldiers: in December 1918, there were about 50,000 of them (Harman, 1982).

  Towards the end of the war, Eisner13, the leader of the Independent Socialist party (USPD),14 called for a general strike in Munich, which was conceived of as political and peaceful (Paul Frohlich). Proletarian workers militias, usually only modestly armed, were formed. On 7th November 1918, the city was paralysed by the strike; Eisner led his units of armed soldiers and sailors to the barracks; many soldiers, with their arms, deserted their barracks and flocked to support the demonstration (Harman, 1997 2nd ed).15 Strikes occurred in Munich, Nuremberg, Fuerth, Schweinfurt, and Ludwigshafen. About 75,000 defence workers participated in the strike, demanding the end of the war. The biggest rally was in Nuremberg, with 45,000 strikers, since MSPD and USPD had called for joint action. In Munich, there were over 10,000, with the USPD enthusiast to continue beyond the agreed time in order to enforce specific policy concessions.

  Workers’ councils and committees were established but were never properly coordinated. Armed groups of workers and militia took over the streets of Munich. In a situation where neither the Soviets nor the Government held power, Eisner briefly formed a left coalition government with the Social Democrats in early January 1919, which survived the collapse of the revolution in Berlin. The soldiers declared they would not oppose a general strike (Harman, 1982). But Eisner was outmanoeuvred, and in February 1919 decided to resign but was murdered on his way to Parliament (Harman, 1982). Workers were in uproar.

  The revolutionary ball kept rolling. Despite the defeats of the revolutionary left elsewhere, in Bavaria, hardly a stronghold of the labour movement, there was continuing revolutionary pressure. In April 1919, the Sparticist leader, Max Levien, declared the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich. Again, workers’ militias were created, especially in the large metalworking companies and working class areas, but this time they were largely defensive. Huffman’s government was declared deposed. (For an analysis post-hoc by Siegi of these events and the attempt to establish soviets, refer to Chapter 8). Lacking a sufficient working class base and any sort of armed insurrection, the soviet stood little chance (Frohlich).16

  Leviné was dispatched by the KPD Central Committee (C.C.) to avoid another blood bath as in Berlin. Harman argues that with Leviné now in leadership and emphasising the role of workers’ councils (though Harman’s use of Leviné - Meyer’s biography, 1973, could be more critical), that the Bavarian revolution entered into a second more hopeful stage. But as Hobsbawm puts it: ‘Leviné…knew all was lost but also that it had to fight.’ Leviné was deeply aware that this was a revolution without working class roots and rightly suspicious of the leading role of the Social Democrats.17 Leviné wrote of how the factories were still working, the press still lying, the military still intact. ‘Noske is already wetting his butcher’s knife’ (Rosa Leviné-Meyer, 1973). Johannes Hoffman, who has already appeared above, fled and began gathering about 8000 troops outside of Munich to attack the Bavarian Soviet Republic. On 7th April, a council republic was proclaimed (Broué, 2005, 280)18 made up of everybody from the Social Democrats to the anarchists and denounced by Leviné as a masquerade and pseudo-council republic. There was a massive general strike in Munich, but nowhere else. Hoffman essentially blockaded Munich which ran out of food. (Was my father’s talk of living of turnips and foraging in the fields as much to do with these days as hardships during the war?).

  On April 13th 1919, after the Soviet republic was declared in Munich the Social Democratic Cabinet under the Bavarian Prime Minister, there was an attempt at a counter-revolutionary coup. Hoffman finally called on the Freicorps to attack the defenders of the Republik.19 (Similar had already happened in Berlin under Ebert when he let loose the Freikorps on the revolutionaries.) Ebert, the SD President of Germany, then gathered 30,000 Freikorps to take back Munich, welcomed by the reactionary Bavarian middle class. The Freicorps clashed and first lost to Ernst Toller’s troops, including army conscripts, at Dachau (Levinée-Meyer, Broué, 2005). But Toller and the communists were bickering. Munich then fell over a couple of days and the Soviet Republic ended on May 1st 1919.

  The repression was brutal; an estimated 700 men and women were captured and executed, including Leviné (Mitchell, 1965, Broué, 2005), including 186 military executions (Harman, 1982). (It was during his ‘trial’ that Leviné said:’ We Communists are all dead men on suspended sentence’ (Broué, 281)). Harman (1982) quotes Frohlich that the Bavarian Republic started as farce and ended as tragedy. Between 1918 and just 1921, Serge estimated that 15,000 workers were killed. The final defeat of the Bavarian uprising was also a defeat in the belief that the working class would take over in Germany. Although it is not possible to know whether Siegi played any part, though only fifteen, the hope of these heady and turbulent revolutionary months appears to have inspired him and influenced his world view for the rest of his life.20

  In the midst of this political turmoil, the KPD was established in Munich in 1919 (Mühldorfer: op.cit) as a loose grouping. But the violent suppression of the “Soviet Republic” in early May 1919 by government troops and the Freikorps squashed the youthful Bavarian KPD (Mühldorfer). The Sparticist leader Max Levien (1885-1937) and the more anarchistically inclined P. Erich (1879-1934) brought their organisations in with the KPD at this point. In 1920, the Independent Socialists, the USPD (see earlier footnote), until then the significantly larger organization, whose stronghold was North Bavaria and who also had a mass base in the local unions, also joined (though one faction refused and later rejoined the SPD). This led temporarily to the KPD having around 200,000 members - but this rapidly declined to around 10,000.

  By 1920, the main grouping in Munich had approximately 500 members.21 Nuremberg, a more developed industrial centre, had 3000 members. These two centres sustained the KPD. Despite the apparent militancy of these years, the character of Bavaria, low industrialisation, the lack of a trad
ition of a working-class movement and its strong nationalist and rural perspectives were not fertile ground. Moreover, many of the leaders of the 1919 uprising had not survived or were in prison, leaving the new movement relatively rudderless (Mühldorfer).

  The level of repression against the Communists and others was acute. From 11.11 23 - 14.2.25, the KPD was banned; there was a state of emergency till 10.19.21 and then again from 9.1923 -2. 25, resulting in the right (often implemented) to ban the press and public meetings which led to further restrictions on KPD activities at the local level (Mühldorfer). Members of the KPD were under constant surveillance by the state security and the police.22 The list of the political prisoners at Dachau concentration camp some years later, also reveal a roll call of Communist members from Munich, including some leading cadres during the period between the failed revolution of 1918/19 and 1928.23

  Nevertheless, there was a small increase in membership in Munich during the mid-1920s, though in northern Bavaria, the number of members halved. Munich and Augsburg (the two cities Siegi was most connected to) remained the cities where the KPD membership was strongest. The membership of the KPD in Bavaria show a gradual but irregular rise: from 3500 in 1919, 10000 in 1921, then a fall to 5000 in 1923, 7000 in 1926, 6000 in 1930, rising to 10,000 in1931 (and an estimated 15000 in 1932). Despite the ban on the KPD, it was allowed to participate in elections in 1920 and 1924 but the Munich election committees were already working illegally. At least the election of deputies to the Reichstag and the Bavarian state parliament gave them a limited immunity to liaise and organise (Mühldorfer:op cit). The Bavarian state elections between 1920 and 32/33 show a similar pattern:1.7% in 1920 (2 seats), 8.3% in 1924 (10 seats), 3.8% in 1928 (6 seats) and 6.6% in 1932 (9 seats) (Mühldorfer:op cit). By 1924, the KPD got a remarkable 8.3% of the regional vote overall, 16% in Munich, 17.5% in Nuremberg, 11.5% in Augsburg24, partly a result of increasing social impoverishment and unemployment.25

  There were also a number of significant KPD associated organisations in Munich. The Young Communists League, led later on by Alfred Andersch (1914-1980), though it was weak, supported Red Aid (see Chapters 3 and 4). (Siegi is only around 20, so quite young enough to have belonged).The League of Struggle against Fascism was banned as a military organisation, as was the Proletarian Freethinkers (another key organisation for Siegi - see Chapter 5) and the community sports Red unit. By the mid-1920’s, there was also the official possibility of being a fellow traveller to the KPD.

  There were also the Red Front Fighters (RFB), initially established in Nuremberg and instantly banned (Again, a possible link with Siegi - see Chapter 5). The attempt to set up a Young Red Storm group in Munich also was unsuccessful. An RFB group also existed in Munich, but it was not large. The RFB was constantly being threatened with being banned. In the summer of 1928 there were 14 branches of the RFB with 800 members, 350 of them registered in Nuremberg - apparently the RFB’s job was even then to protect workers’ sports gatherings, Communist meetings and other such events against the SA and the Nazis. They also leafleted and joined the bike caravans around the rural areas of Bavaria advertising the KPD. During the short time of its legal existence, the RFB played an important role, although its membership would have been under 1000 in Bavaria. Especially after the events of 1919, there were regular clashes with right-wing groups, especially in factories and working class neighbourhoods, which they defended against the Nazis.

  There were also a series of Communist or aligned papers: Neue Zeitung, the Munich based Red Flag, the “North Bavarian People’s Daily “from 1930 and finally, there were the intermittent productions of the “People’s Will” from September 1919 to April 1922, and ‘Red-Flag Bavaria‘ from October 1921 to May 1923 in Augsburg. This plethora of papers and journals give us some small sense of how broad and lively the communist ‘scene’ in Bavaria was at the time.

  As there is no evidence about Siegi’s activities in this period, one can only surmise. But as will be seen in subsequent chapters, Siegi became involved in many of the organisations he will have known about – or encountered - during his time in Munich - the RFB in particular. Another question is whether he felt sympathy with the USPD before it amalgamated into the KPD. In 1918/19, Siegi was only 14/15 but old enough to have got to the declaration of the Soviet in Munich. The USPD was after all the dominant left organisation in Bavaria up till 1920, so Siegi’s introduction to politics was almost certainly via its politics. Did the romance of Toller and the bravery of the USPD during the Munich Soviet and its aftermath capture his youthful imagination? He certainly talked glowingly of Toller, but as a playwright. According to Ken Worpole, Siegi had told him he knew Toller, Ken assumed in Bavaria. Ken’s impression was that this was more than a ‘formal’ acquaintanceship. It is possible therefore that Siegi maintained an attachment to the less ‘Leninist’ politics of the USPD, when he joined the KPD. The USPD contained within it factions with inconsistent tendencies - some looking towards replacing the SPD in the Reichtag, others far more concerned with building it up as a mass party. As will be discussed in the second section of this book, Siegi in his 40’s, was combining (published) left-Keynesian articles with attempts at (unpublished) socialist analysis, in his 60’s, he was combining working for a Labour Government with (unpublished) articles damning the SPD in 1918. Are the tensions in these different positions understandable against the background of an early allegiance to the USPD? Maybe, to again run ahead of ourselves, Siegi’s distancing from the KPD was partly rooted in his early experience of the USPD as a mass party and a consequently more acute awareness of how bureaucratised and unresponsive to its membership the KPD had become by the mid-1930’s, a theme that will be returned to in section 2.

  One personal story: my father used to suggest I read B.Traven’s novels. I did, and loved Traven’s vivid depictions of the daily lives and travails of the exploited Mexican and S. American workers. Having grown up with Traven, I was always nonplussed that so few, even on the left, had heard of him. (Indeed, many still haven’t.) So I was fascinated to discover that Traven was a member of the Soviet Republic in Munich, was arrested on May 1 1919, and then imprisoned. He had been publishing a much censored radical/anarchist paper called Ziegelbenner, or Brickmaker/burner, and fled Germany around 1924.26 Siegi will have come across him and/or his writings when he was himself a youth.

  In fact, Munich despite being at the heart of reactionary Bavaria, had a flourishing and ‘progressive’ cultural scene, which may also have influenced Siegi’s emphasis on culture as being politically of significance. Rilke, whose poetry my father loved so well, lived and worked intermittently in Munich at the turn of the C19/20th. Thomas Mann, whom my father seemed to detest, also lived in Munich from 1891 to 1933.

  Another person Siegi might have come across was Brecht, whom Siegi was to know (and dislike) in Berlin. Brecht was born in Munich in 1898 and lived there till 1924, dates which largely overlap with Siegi’s. Brecht went to school in Augsburg and then enrolled at Munich University in 1917. He became involved in the Workers and Soldiers Council in Augsburg in 1918/19. (Augsburg was also the home of one of Siegi’s rich uncles.) He made frequent rail journeys to Munich to watch and join in the demonstrations there (Rosenhaft: 200627 ). Valentin, an early ‘agit-prop’ artist and clown in Munich, who made fun of employers, influenced Brecht. (Indeed, my parents retained an interest in the clown as a ‘political’ medium.) Brecht later attended lectures in 1928/29 at the Marxist workers college in Berlin, but he never seems to have actually joined the KPD. Even if their paths never crossed, Brecht and Siegi emerged from a similar political/cultural milieu.

  The fate of the left in 1923 in Bavaria will be considered in the next section on the rise of the ultra-right. It is impossible to now know in which ways Siegi’s experience of repression, the crucial strategic debates on the revolutionary left or the combinations of different working class and military actions in 1918/19 and subsequent years influenced Siegi but within a short time of arriving
in Berlin, he had become a leading cadre, which certainly suggests he was already active and probably known to the KPD.

  Bavaria: the birthplace of the Nazis

  Bavaria was the birth place and centre of the far-right after 1919. Indeed, its location - next to Austria, its strong tradition of independence from Germany from before 1914, its deeply reactionary politics outside of the main cities and its failure to industrialise suggests that Bavaria was not at all a typical German state.28 But its historical significance to this story (and to future events in Germany) is great as it was here that the Nazi party was founded, and later the SA as an amalgamation of the Nazis with sections of the violently anti-communist Freikorps (Thomas Grant, 2004).29 The precursor of the Nazi party: The Committee for Independent Workmen, was first set up by Drexler in 1918 in Munich. Hitler joined in 1919. Certain policies were already visible - opposition to the Versailles treaty and the new Weimar republic, a belief in the Germans as an Aryan race, and that the Jews were responsible for international capitalism and war profiteering.

  In 1919, Drexler was involved in creating the ‘German Workers Party’, an essentially secret organisation, out of the original group and another similar organisation. Hitler, who was stationed in Munich, joined the Party (after a debate about Bavaria joining Austria!). By 1920, partly under Hitler’s guidance, the Party had grown from a few dozen to thousands. It also added ‘National Socialist’ to its title (National Socialist German Workers Party or NSDAP or Nazi Party). By the end of July 1921 (Hoser P.30 ) there were nine local groups in Bavaria, by the end of 1922: 44, and in the rest of Germany, by spring 1922: 56, by 1923, there were 178 groups, a remarkably fast expansion. In 1921, the local group in Munich, the Nazis’ main centre, alone was large enough to be divided into seven sections. By 1923, the Nazis already had an estimated membership of 35,000 in Munich, in Bavaria: 150,000. They already relied on their paramilitary organization SA, when they went into the ‘public’. Serge (165+)31 in his remarkable reports from Munich in 1923 written at the time, quotes a German journalist who succeeded unusually in penetrating Hitler’s premises at this time. Even then, Hitler intended to be the Mussolini of Germany and to march on Saxony to root out Marxism. He anticipated that Prussia would then rise in his support. Hitler was already attacking parliamentarianism for ruining Germany. Marxists were Jews and the Jews were responsible for the impoverishment of the masses and for supporting parliamentarianism (Serge: 213).