Beaten But Not Defeated Read online

  The first time that the Nazis as a party entered the public stage in Munich was in the Kapp putsch of March 1920.32 Its aim was the overthrow of Weimar and its government. Kapp, a right wing journalist and politician, received support from one of Germany’s foremost military men, General Ludendorf as well as from the paramilitary Freikorps and many army officers. The military and the Home Guards leadership of the Putsch demanded the Bavarian Government resign.33 Although it is not known how many rallied (Gunther Gerstenberg from Walter Roos 1998, Bavarian archives34 ), there was a call to workers in Munich and Nuremburg to form workers’ militias to counter the Kapp Putsch. The Kapp/Luttwitz Putsch led by the Bavarian Civil Guards and the Freikorps ironically forced the Social Democratic Prime Minister, John Hoffman (1867-1930)35, out of office. So the Kapp Putsch did succeed in Bavaria. But after the Kapp Putsch, both Social Democratic and KPD groups encouraged the formation of workers’ militias and this led to many clashes with the Nazis, including in Nuremberg on 17 March 1920, the murder of more than 20 workers.

  While the middle-class had generally been against the Kapp Putsch, the right were growing in strength, particularly in Bavaria, the one region where the Kapp Putsch had had a lasting impact, throwing out a ‘left’ government and putting into power an extreme right government, briefly under von Kahr succeeding Hoffman. It collaborated with the Nazis and welcomed in every far right group who were banned elsewhere (see endnotes).36 Worried at the NSDAP’s growing influence, especially in Bavaria, the German Social Democratic government tried to ban the NSDAP, but the Bavarian state authorities ignored this (Harman, 1997). In March 1921, the KPD called the ill-fated ‘March Action’. Bavaria then called a state of emergency and banned left wing meetings and papers, but not the ultra-right papers which the Federal Government had previously banned. A variety of ultra-right militaristic organisations, with hundreds of thousands of supporters, took to the streets (Price, 16.9.192137 ). Berlin tried to ban the Bavarian emergency, on the grounds that they were exceeding their powers, but essentially failed. In the following couple of years, the Bavarian army high command secretly collaborated with the NSDAP and other paramilitary organisations (Rose 1999 from Price, 23 November 1922).

  By 1923, the ultra-right in Bavaria was holding power. Van Knilling, the Bavarian Prime minister, had opposed the overthrow of both the German monarchy and of the home-grown Bavarian monarch.38 He and his government loathed the federal Social Democratic government and in effect declared semi-autonomy. Rumours of repeated Nazi putsches rocked Munich. Storm troopers marched through Munich and beat up people they disliked. They did not discriminate between the Social Democrats and the KPD; indeed members of the SPD even manned the barricades in response (Landauer, 195939 ).

  Information on the political turbulence of 1923 can be found elsewhere (see Price in particular). But, briefly, in Munich, the shock waves of the French occupation of the Ruhr had led to a variety of trade-union organisations campaigning to refuse to handle Ruhr coal. To quote from Price’s dispatch of 5 April 1923 (155): Armed Reichswehr troops wearing steel helmets and with a hint of a goose-step in their marching passed. A cluster of…Swastika wearers roaring ‘To Hell with the French beasts!’ ‘Down with the Jews!’ Hitler’s shock troops were daily parading through Munich. Price adds, however, that what united the right was their common purpose to fight organised labour.

  Following on from the strikes and revolts in parts of Germany in early/mid 1923,40 the federal military leadership had declared an emergency ban on demonstrations. But in Bavaria, explicitly anti-Semitic fascist organisations were openly organising and mobilising, unchecked locally or by the national government, to the degree where Serge, an astute observer, saw them as organising for civil war (Serge, 99/100). To quote Serge, 23.9.23, from his International Correspondence: ‘Fascist Bavaria has thus in no uncertain terms put itself at the head of the movement of protest by the bourgeoisie …’

  Price in his January 23rd 1922 dispatch talked of how in Bavaria, from 1921, there was a systematic anti-Semitic campaign (which Price sees as a capitalist conspiracy) by a group called the Constitution Council: ‘With them, Jews are vermin’. Price sees this anti-Semitism as inspiring the murders of Rathenau (see earlier footnote) and Erzberger (see above). This organisation, which Price saw as even to the right of the fascists, also organised against workers’ centres, Jewish shopkeepers, and plundered banks and mail trains.

  Another early example of the strength of the ultra-right in September 1923 was the so called ‘German Day’ in Nuremberg. “German Day” was established as a deliberate provocation to the “red” city workers, in part a response to the attempt to organise a soviet. 100,000s of supporters turned up, including Hitler, Goring, Streicher and Ludendorf. Serge (116) quotes Captain Heis, addressing a fascist meeting on September 23rd in Augsburg (where Siegi’s uncle had his distillery): ‘The time has come for rifles, machine-guns and…cannons [for civil war]. The Bavarian fist will resolve in Berlin the problem of German liberty.’ The Nazi rally was met with resistance and, according to the sources, there was much blood.41

  Von Kahr, on whom the Bavarian government had conferred dictatorial powers, declared martial law and was expected to reach a deal with Hitler and Ludendorf: to strike at Bolshevism and ‘to wring the neck of Ebert’s republic’ (Serge).42 The federal government’s response, under (the ‘Marxist’) Stresemann, was to declare martial law throughout the country (Serge, 115/116).

  The Coalition government’s espoused aim may have been to curb the Bavarian government but it was the ultra-right who benefited from martial law - in Bavaria strikes were banned and the death penalty threatened for acts of sabotage. In October 1923, the next conflict erupted when the Nazis prepared for their “March on Berlin”, inspired by Mussolini’s success in Italy, with Munich as its base. The demand was for Chancellor Stresemann’s resignation.43

  Then at the beginning of November 1923, the Nazis used a patriotic rally in a Munich beer hall to launch an abortive putsch, demanding the regional and national governments, including President Ebert, stand down and the establishment of a right-wing dictatorship, otherwise Bavarian troops would march on the capital in order to install Hitler, von Kahn and Ludendorff. Most of the members of the Bavarian government were there (Price). It was backed by around 600 armed storm troopers. With Hitler, were already Rohm of the Bavarian army, Goring, Hess and others, including General Ludendorf. Fascist forces mobilised for 1 million to march on Berlin, supported by the Stadhelms’ five thousand local groups (Serge, 203pp). The next morning, they gathered something between 2000-3000 supporters to march through Munich. The troops opened fire and 16 Nazis were killed. In the few hours when the fascists held Munich, they ransacked the SPD editorial office, the home of the SPD local leader and arrested, with the intent to execute, the KPD and SPD councillors (Serge, 269pp). Hitler and others were sentenced for treason but received light sentences. The leniency with which the plotters were treated contrasts with the extreme severity of the sentences, including execution, of those on the left who had been arrested.44

  It seems exceedingly unlikely that Siegi would not have been aware of the rapid growth of the extreme right and of the composition of their leadership. Certainly, he talked to me and Richard Kirkwood of the Bier-kellers of Munich, of the gatherings of the early Nazi boot-boys, and of how important it was to understand that the Nazi thugs presented a popular ‘socialist’ programme to appeal to the ‘masses’ but, as was his wont, did not refer to his own involvement. My guess is that he spotted early on that the contradictory nature of the Nazi party-both appealing to the worker but also to German nationalism and the bourgeois right. He used to tell me: Always remember what the name ‘Nazi’ stands for: National Socialist. Siegi’s understanding of Nazism was rooted in his time in Bavaria.

  Despite much effort and the help of the Bavarian library archives, it has not been possible to find any political trace of Siegi till his arrival in Berlin. But Siegi will have been deeply affected b
y the cauldron of revolutionary and Nazi activity in Munich, the unusual level of early political repression, and will have developed roots in Munich’s rich cultural seed bed. The person who arrived in Berlin in 1928 was about to become an active anti-Nazi and revolutionary and at a minimum his experiences in Bavaria had helped form his future politics.

  By 1928, it might have looked as if the worst of the political earthquakes which had almost consumed the Weimar Republic, were over. After the ferment of 1918-23 and the following years of economic depression and stagflation, the economic and political situation had stabilised. In 1928, the NSDAP picked up a mere 2.6% in the Reichstag elections. But the 1929 Wall street crash finally upset the Weimar apple-cart (Hobsbawm, 2003), just in time for Siegi’s arrival in Berlin.

  End-notes

  11. Hobsbawm, Introduction to Leviné.

  12. Harman, The Lost Revolution

  13. Eisner, 1867-February 21 1919, first a member of the SPD, joined the USPD because of his opposition to World War 1 and of war-credits. Sentenced to prison, he was released in 1918. He was shot by Count Arso in February 1919.

  14. The USPD was a break away from the Social Democrats in 1917, opposing its support for Germany in the war. Within months, it had a membership of 120,000 to the SPD’s 150,000 and was a magnet for the striking sailors, as well as thousands of working class activists. But its orientation was as much towards the Reichstag and its main unifying demand was the end to the war (Harman).

  15. Siegi after retirement took to painting. One of his pictures is of the revolution in Portugal in 1974 when the para-militaries led by de Carvalho came out against the right-wing Salazar government. Siegi’s picture shows them on the roof of their barracks, pointing their weapons at the counter-revolutionaries. (I have it up in my bedroom.) Maybe Siegi’s awareness of how crucial which side the armed forces were on, stems from his experiencing this inspiring support of the revolution by these Bavarian soldiers.

  16. If one accepts Rosa Leviné’-Meyer’s version based on her husband, Leviné’s account, there was also acute factionalism between the USPD with Toller, and the Sparticists/KPD.

  17. Although this can only be supposition, Siegi, as we will see in later chapters, never joined, or, as far as I know, was even tempted to join the British Labour Party. Many British ex-comrades since the 1930s have done so and indeed, at least before his time in Durham, his closest friends were in the Labour Party. My hunch is that, as a young man, he had observed how the Social Democrats betrayed the revolution in Bavaria, as well as having the more usual association of the Social Democrats as the killers of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

  18. Broué, The German Revolution 1917-23, trans Archer, ed Birchall and Pearce

  19. In addition, there were the ‘Bavarian white guards’, a force of about 9000, referred to in Price’s submissions to the Manchester Guardian (7. 12.1920). Price argues that France no longer saw the conditions of the Versailles treaty as applying to Bavaria and was giving the White Guards financial assistance. The suggestion is that the ultra-right forces in Bavaria were keen enough on separating from Germany that they were willing to collude with Germany’s enemy. In another instance of Bavaria protecting the ultra-right, Price (in dispatch to the Daily Herald on the 16 September 1921) described the Erhardt Brigade (made up largely of Munich students), responsible for the murder of Ezberger, an influential member of the Centre party who in 1917 unusually called for the ending of the war, and also responsible for the murder of thousands of workers in 1919, which then took part in the Kapp Putsch and had theoretically been banned, as existing illegally under the protection of the Bavarian government and police.

  20. Lukacs too was inspired by similar days in Hungary - I owe this point to David Renton.

  21. Albert Buckman (1894-1973) who had moved to Munich in 1920 and joined the KPD, became its leader from around 1923-1932. Briefly imprisoned, he then became the political director of the Southern Bavarian district from 1929 as well as being a Reichstag deputy 24-32/3was sent to a variety of concentration camps over twelve years but survived to die a natural death.

  22. A fascinating detail which I have not been able to get more information about but the KPD apparently partially relied on bases in England for their Southern Bavarian network (Mühldorfer).

  23. The sole representative of Bavaria in the highest governing body of the Communist Party in 1929, F Stenzer (1900 to 1933) was the secretary of the district leadership in southern Bavaria, also on city council in Chessington since 1932. In 1932 was elected a full member of the Reichstag.In 1933, he was sent to Dachau where he died within the year.

  24. The KPD representatives from northern Bavaria were G. Karl (1882-1964) 1923-1928 Member of Parliament, Communist Party from 1930, J. Schlaffer (1891-1964), member of Parliament from 1924 to 1926 and from the mid-1920s, head of the illegal Communist Party), J.Meyer (1889-1950), political leader of the district from 1924 to 1930, member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1933, and J. Boulanger (1897-1968), political leader from 1930 to 1933, Member of Parliament in 1932, twelve years in concentration camps and jails. In 1932, the Munich locksmith, Hans Beimler, (1895 to 1936), who had been a member of the Landtag and the Reichstag since 1932, and the political leadership of the district of southern Bavaria, fell fighting for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.

  25. The Bavarian KPD was as faction ridden as every other bit of the KPD and was dominated by the squabbles and changes of line of the Comintern. What apparently particularly taxed their members was whether it was right to have delegates in the Reichstag and the local parliament (Mühldorfer).

  26. Nobody is sure who Traven was, as this was a pseudonym and after his German experiences, he seems to have become a bit of a recluse, but he was almost certainly Ret Maput. After he had escaped Germany, his book ‘White Rose’ was published in 1929, a condemnation of capitalism; it is thought its name may have inspired the heroic anti-Nazi ‘White Rose’ group (June 1942-February 1943), who were based at Munich university. A final twist for me is that one of the leading experts on Traven, Michael Baumann, turns out to have been my second cousin on my mother’s side.

  27. Rosenhaft Eve: Brecht’s Germany 1898-1933 in Brecht ed Thompson P and Sacks G.

  28. After a serious flirtation with its neighbour, Catholic Austria, in the C19th, Bavaria joined Germany, but managed to retain, nominally anyway, its own army, post and railways. The demand of independence from the German republic was even used to support their demands by the leaders of the Munich Soviet in 1918/19, such as Eisner.

  29. Grant, Stormtroopers and the crisis in the Nazi movement: activism, ideology and dissolution

  30. Hoser, National Socialist German Workers Party, 1920-23, accessed 11.10.10 http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/suche/abfrage?type=volltext&schnellsuche=Hoser&x=-163&y=-209

  31. Serge, Witness to the German Revolution

  32. Hermann Ehrhardt was one of the leaders of the Putsch and was to be involved in the murder of the Jewish cabinet minister Rathenau in 1922 (a distant relative of Siegi’s wife, Lotte). The Social-Democrat Noske defending Ehrhardt re the Putsch argued for him that he had formed an elite corps which had been highly useful in suppressing Bolshevism. Ehrhardt was sent to prison but escaped, with official collusion (I Birchall’s notes in Serge, 1997).

  33. Bavaria was not their main target - the ultra-right organised an attempted military coup in Berlin, when sections of the military moved on Berlin (and Ebert et al fled) and were ultimately defeated by the trade-unions and workers declaring a general strike. Kapp was ousted and the Social Democratic government then took back the reins of power, only to attack the forces which had protected them.

  34. Roos, Die Rote Armee der Bayerischen Räterepublik in München 1919, (The Red Army of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich 1919, Heidelberg 1998 Accessed 10.10.10 http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/artikel/artikel_44654 (12/11/2009)

  35. Hoffman, who had been a SPD deputy to the Reichstag before WW1,
was Bavarian minister of education/culture under PM Kurt Eisner after the November 1918 revolution (when he removed the Bavarian schooling system from the supervision of the church - another possible ideological link to Siegi’s later interest in the Freethinkers). Hoffman became elected Bavarian President. The Soviet ousted him, but he returned to Munich in 1919 after the crushing of the soviets and briefly resumed being President.

  36. Price writes of Bavaria in January 1923 to Labour Monthly that Bavaria was the area most removed from normal ‘traffic’, where the workers were sparse and scattered and not generally politically effective, the peasants had become landowning junckers, and were ‘boorish, superstitious…and politically backward’. It was a situation easily exploitable by the ultra-right and the army high command.

  37. Price, Dispatches from the Weimar Republic, ed Tania Rose

  38. Crown Prince Rupprecht would have been heir to the Bavarian monarchy, abolished in 1918.

  39. Landauer, European Socialism

  40. The tumultuous months of 1923 when the revolutionary left finally decided to go for revolution is not considered here as it did not impact directly on Bavaria. For those interested, a good starting point is Harman’s The Lost Revolution. For those interested in more detail, go to Broué.