Beaten But Not Defeated Read online

  LaPorte (2002) argues strongly that the third period line, rather than distancing their members from the SPD, actually loosened the influence of the KPD line on its Trade Union rank and file, certainly in Saxony. We will consider the implications of this analysis when examining Siegi’s trajectory in the next chapter.

  There was limited opposition to the Third Period line within the circles of the KPD but Siegi does not appear to have been directly influenced by any of the KPD factions. Very few comrades adopted any sort of true ‘united front’ position from 1929 onwards. A few SPDers who wished to oppose Nazism within a united front joined the SAP (founded in 1931 and also joined by a few dissident communists); a few KPD dissidents joined the Leninbund, (which the former chairman of the KPD Ruth Fischer53 joined) and the KPD Opposition (KPDO), a kind of right wing KPD opposition.54 (For those interested in the minutiae but nevertheless crucial divisions amongst the revolutionary left at this point, please refer to Appendix 6 and endnotes below.)

  Outside the brief of this paper, but worth a mention, is that on December 31 1932, the SAP, Brandler’s KPDO55 and what was left of the Leninbund joined together, calling for the creation of a united defense organization (Weber, 1963). This initiative took place weeks before the January 1933 elections and was too late, even though it provided a challenge to the two ‘parent’ parties. These oppositionists to the KPD and the SPD had had to leave their parent organizations in order to organize against the Nazis. The SPD was so opposed to working with the KPD on an anti-Nazi front, that they would expel anybody who did (Private conversation with Harald Marpe, 11.11.) 56

  LaPorte’s crucial and distinctive argument about how far the KPD line was followed at a rank and file level highlights the importance of the balance of forces and local circumstances. Rudi’s role in the Youth Red Front did not follow closely the vagaries of the KPD line on combating Nazism. Semi-unemployed Rudi, a youth activist in the Red Front, was running a daily campaign against the SA and the police well before 1933, which appeared to be based largely on necessity and experience, rather than the Party line. He was the leader of a group of the Youth Red Front in Wedding, and would have accepted non-Communists if he thought he could trust them against the almost daily onslaught of the SA before 1933. Yet as LaPorte (2002) reminds us, the Party leadership remained focused on ‘destroying’ the SPD in order to ‘clear the path’ for revolution, at the time when local rank and file activists were increasingly confronted with Nazi violence on the streets. (This relative autonomy of the KPD from the leadership has been used by a few historians, eg K. Mallman-see Appendices, to argue against the thesis of the Stalinisation of the KPD.)

  Indeed, it is the ‘exception’ to the absence of joint anti-Nazi activity, which suggests how far local conditions could affect and limit KPD attempted dominance over anti-Nazi activity (though this is not meant to suggest that the Comintern’s line was not a major determinant). In Saxony the SPD’s response to the rise of the NSDAP at local level, particularly after the September Reichstag elections of 1931 was to hold meetings, which attracted considerably more workers than the KPD (LaPorte, 2002:338,339).57 (This position was at odds with the SPD’s parliamentary policy of ‘tolerating’ the Brüning government.) In the localities in which the SPD was almost completely dominant in Saxony, Communist activists took part in political campaigning and genuine joint actions and became involved in umbrella organisations under SPD-leadership to coordinate activity against the Nazis. ‘The KPD leadership’s prohibition on contact with the SPD at any level had an unexpected consequence: as street violence surged and the SPD organized counter demonstrations in middle and working class districts, working-class self-defense often took place under the banner of the SPD’s local organisations,’ (LaPorte, 2002: 338) and, despite the KPD line, a significant number of Communist activists in the neighborhoods joined the SPD’s in countering Nazi terror against workers’ organisations (338).58 As LaPorte (2002: 362) puts it: ‘Nazi violence against organised workers was creating ad hoc co-operation between Social Democrats and Communists outside of the KPD leadership’s immediate control’. Although parts of LaPorte’s analysis of Saxony have a specificity, his emphasis on the failure of the KPD to hold its many of its members to the Third Period line is relevant when we come to analyse Siegi’s activities and attitudes in the next chapter.

  Deadly mis-estimation of NSDAP

  Siegi’s involvement in the Red Front, a leading KPD dominated anti-Nazi organisation, has to be understood within the context that, during 1930/31, neither the Comintern nor even the KPD prioritised the Nazi’s rise or significance. Carr (1982: 15) suggests that in mid-1930, ‘national fascism, the SA and other paramilitary organisations scarcely were mentioned. The Nazis were not taken seriously. Carr (1982) writes that the first articles drawing attention to National Fascism in Germany appear in mid-1930. (One of them is signed just with an S-one possibility is that this was by Siegi.) Social Democracy remained the enemy, with its large membership and roots in the working class, and the NSDAP remained safely unseen in its shadow. Indeed, in one of those classic quotes from after the elections of September 1930, when the NSDAP increased its number of deputies from 12 to 107, the Rote Fahne announced that these elections marked the high point for the Nazis and that they will henceforth decline and fall (Carr, 1982: 25). Indeed Heckert, one of the KPD leaders, attributed the NSDAP’s enormous gains simply to a re-grouping of the bourgeois camp’ (Carr, 1982: 25).

  As late as 1931, at the 11th plenum of the Comintern, held after the Nazis gained almost 20% of the 1930 vote, Neumann, at the time a leading member of the KPD CC and representing the KPD, stated that the main struggle should be directed against the fascist bourgeoisie and its chief supporters, the Social Democratic leaders of the working class, and, he continued, the danger of the actual fascists had to a large extent been removed (Carr, 1982: 36). At the same plenum, Manuilsky, the leading Comintern spokesperson at that point, (and according to Trotsky the originator of the term: Third Period) also equated fascism to a form of bourgeois dictatorship and Thaelmann59 equated it to the Brüning government (though Martynov, Stalin’s ally, was a touch more subtle, describing the Brüning government merely as ‘the carrier of the fascist danger’ (Carr, 1982: 36, 37)). As Manuilsky put it: ‘the central task of the KPD is to win over a majority of the working class from its allegiance to the Social Democrats’ [original italics] (Carr, 1982: 35).

  The profundity of the KPD’s misunderstanding of the balance of power and the role of the fascists is argued by Trotsky (What Next, 1931): ‘On October 14, 1931, Remmel60, one of the three official leaders of the Communist Party, said in the Reichstag, “…once they [the fascists] are in power, then the united front of the proletariat will be established and it will make a clean sweep of everything.” (Violent applause from the Communists) Remmele …thus prepares the way for Hitler’s domination …The united front of the proletariat is achievable – for Remmele, as he has told us – only after Hitler assumes power.’

  But the increasing threat of mass mobilisation by the SA and the rise in street violence in the 1931/2, which their members were actively involved in countering, led the KPD to – briefly - place the struggle against the Nazis as their central goal and to approach the SDP leadership in an attempt to agree joint demands in 1932. Finally, on 25 April 1932 the KPD policy appeared to have taken a sharp U-turn, offering the SPD leader-ships the prospect of ‘fighting together’ against the Nazis. (LaPorte, 2002: 356). This would have given the KPD access to the SPD membership or shown the SPD leaders up as rejecting vital collaboration. However, already by 5th June, the CC insisted that the KPD’s united front offers had been directed at the social democratic workers as individuals, not their ‘reformist’ leaders (LaPorte, 2002: 356). Their presentation of the Social Democratic leadership as actively counter-revolutionary, indeed as ‘social fascists’ seriously undermined the possibility of cooperation.61

  Too late, the Comintern paid heed. A variety of resolutions, decl
arations and articles appeared from the Comintern and the KPD, each one more ambiguous than the last, but which finally emphasised the importance of appealing to social-democratic workers for a united front against Nazism, a marginal move towards recognising a difference between the SPD and the Nazis. But as Carr argues, their overall tone of condemnations of the SPD leadership was only slightly milder than before (Carr, 1982: 57). There was not even a clear - if shifting - KPD line. In May 1932 Thaelmann in a fit of realism rejected the equation between fascists and social fascists. Yet in June 1932, a KPD circular stated that the struggle against the social fascists must not weaken (Carr, 1982: 57). But by June 1932, Thaelmannn was writing that there had not been a shift from the line of the 11th Plenum as one had to attack both the fascists and the social democrats (Carr, 1982: 60). Trotsky on the other hand argued strongly from 1931 for the importance of a united front, and that damning the SPD leadership as social fascist, while calling for a united front, discouraged the SPD membership from any real united front activity.

  KPD functionaries and rank and file were by now confused about the line on the SPD: how far were they supposed to become involved in joint action. Moreover, what was to be made of the KPD conducting negotiations with representatives of the SPD parliamentary fraction in the Prussia Landtag, on the one hand and the Berlin KPD calling on the Iron Front to take part in a joint demonstration on the other (LaPorte, 2002: 359).

  Though the KPD/Comintern by 1932 had become more aware of the Nazi threat, there is no clear break from the basic position held at the beginning of the 1930s. For example the KPD CC was still stating in February 1932 that the SPD and the NSDAP were political twins and equally evil (Carr, 1982: 50). At the 12th Comintern in September 1932 Kuusinen, amongst others, condemned Trotsky for opportunism, for wanting a bloc with the Social Democrats. Two months later, in elections in April 1932, Hitler drew 13.4million votes, Thaelmann 4m. (Carr 1982: 55) suggests that a few millions of previously Communist voters had switched to the Nazis.) Amazingly, four months before the Nazis gained power, Kuusinen still argued that the principal blow should be at social-democracy (Carr, 1982: 66). Manuilsky62 was still claiming that the rise of fascism meant the disintegration of capitalism, and that the German bourgeoisie would not let Hitler gain power (Carr, 1982: 69). Only Ulbricht, Carr (1982) argues, addressed the real situation and called for a broad united front movement, a position the plenum did adopt but not without adding the caveat that this must not detract from the struggle against the SPD, a position Ulbricht agreed with (Carr, 1982: 69).This confusion of policies made effective leadership against the growing Nazi threat near impossible.

  Why the KPD membership went along with the ‘social fascist’ line, insofar as they did, raises questions which largely fall outside this study. But LaPorte’s explanations are distinctive enough to deserve a brief reference. Drawing from Wickham’s research in Frankfurt-am-Main, LaPorte (2002) suggests that the level of unemployed in the KPD separated them out from the SPD dominated Trade Unions and the consequent absence of debate undercut their confidence to challenge the KPD line. He also refers to Stolle’s thesis that the KPD leadership had become isolated and bureaucratised, and introduced the ‘social fascist’ policy as a substitute both for the absence of a mass revolutionary movement and the absence of roots amongst skilled workers. As the KPD’s leadership became increasingly centralised, the KPD became far less aware of what was going on on the ground which repelled its activists. There was also a rapid turnover of members (313) - thousands momentarily passed through the KPD. (In Saxony, there was an 80% turnover of membership in the mid-1930s (313)). The transient nature of the membership and the falling away of many of its activists will have lessened the KPD leadership ability to persuade the rank and file of the third Period line and have its instructions acted upon. Thus the rank and files attachment to the KPD became ever weaker. (Siegi’s relative prominence can also be understood in this context, explored in the next chapter).

  Whatever one’s perspective, the Berlin working class became profoundly divided in the fight against the Nazis. Moreover, the suppression of the different uprisings under the aegis of the Social Democratically controlled government of 1918/19 and the many murders of comrades created a seemingly uncrossable river of blood’ between the KPD and the SPD leaders.

  This is the contradictory background in which Siegi became a Party member. As shown in the next chapter, his involvement in the anti-Nazi struggle from a very early stage was not always online. The KPD leadership as a generalization continued to see the SPD as their main target. It was unusual, at an official level, both within the KPD and the Comintern, to prioritise, as strongly as most commentators think they should have, the fight against Nazism over the fight against the SPD, almost up till 1933. This position undermined the KPD’s leadership’s ability to understand the distinctive threat posed by the Nazis or to develop a coherent strategy against them.

  Indeed, the failure to distinguish the Nazis from other right wing forces helps to explain the KPD’s initial inability to understand the significance of the January 1933 elections. Their analysis, infamously stated by Remmele, one of the KPD leaders, that after the fascists would come the Communist revolution, further debilitated any fight back.

  I emphasise this point here because, unlike what is now often assumed and Hobsbawm, representing a modern Communist view, professed, many people in or associated with the KPD neither were strongly committed to active anti-Nazi struggle-as opposed to holding an anti-Nazi position, nor understood the meaning of the January elections or of Hitler becoming Chancellor. My father did so, and this study examines why.

  End-notes

  45. The history of Saxony in this period is far from typical but important both because it reveals what might have been and also the limits of the KPD. Much of this material will be drawn from LaPorte.

  46. The ‘Centre’ was made up of former ‘lefts’, such as Thaelmannn, Neumann and Remmele, former ‘rights’, such as Heckert, Pieck and Ulbricht (the last two were to launch the ‘Popular Front’ in 1935 and, remaining loyal Stalinists, were to end up as the key leaders of the GDR) and the one genuine leading figure from the centre: Ernst Meyer. During this period of relative calm for the KPD, there was a return to a version of the 1921-23 United Front tactic. Ironically Meyer was the only one of this group to oppose the Third Period line before his death in 1930. (Meyer had been head of the Party with Levi, was the chief editor of Rote Fahne and held a number of top positions. Consistently critical of the ‘ultra’-lefts, including on the Comintern, he had stood down for Brandler in 1923.)

  47. Serge presents this neatly: the fascist movement is born of the wretched condition of the middle class, impoverished by the struggle of the imperialist epoch and disappointed by democracy…and with socialism.

  48. As already noted, the KPD had always seen the Social Democrats as a counter-revolutionary obstacle, given their smashing of the 1918/9 uprising and their behaviour in 1920, 1921 and 1923. Indeed Brandler’s report on 1923 referred to the resultant SPD-led government as having “established fascism in the form of the dictatorship of general Von Seekt” (Von Seekt claimed to be the ‘republican general’). But, even under the Fischer-Maslow leadership, the KPD had continued with the United Front tactic of making formal demands of the SPD leadership for ‘proletarian unity’ against the authoritarian right and against attacks on workers’ living standards. The murders of May 1 1929 only reinforced the social fascist position (see next chapter).

  49. Carr, The Twilight of the Comintern

  50. The effect was that only a handful of right-wing Communists were able to present their factional critique of the KPD’s return to an ultra-left policy – that the effect of the previous left turn under Fischer was to limit their influence on the working class.

  51. LaPorte gives three of the standard reasons, which he is critical of, for the ability of the KPD leadership to shift the line leftwards: ‘the regional weakness of the Right [faction], such
as in the Ruhr; the ZK [CC’s] majority’s rapid control of the Bls [district leadership]; and the view that the new General Line gave expression to strong anti-reformist tendencies long held at all levels’.

  52. The frequent battles between Social Democrats and Red Front/Communists in confirmed in Dewar’s biography.

  53. Ruth Fischer, 1895-1961, joined the Austrian Communist Party in 1918, left for Germany and became leader of the Left Opposition with Maslow. Not always consistently, she tended to support the ‘theory of the offensive’. Supported by Zinoviev and the anti-Brandler current (see endnote below), she reached the leadership in 1924, but was replaced by Thaelmann in 1926, following her ultra-left position of withdrawing candidates from the second round of the Presidential elections. She was expelled in 1926 and founded the Leninbund. She fled to France in 1933 (Broué 2005).and subsequently became rabidly anti-Communist.

  54. In 1929, the CC purged any members of the right opposition who did not sign a solidarity declaration. (What the purge of these right-wing Communist activists did mark, argues LaPorte, 2002, was the KPD’s break with its roots in the German workers’ movement, maintained in certain important localities such as Saxony, which had led them to regard SPD colleagues as potential Communists rather than the social basis of ‘social fascism’.

  55. Brandler almost certainly influenced my parents’ politics, particularly Lotte’s. Lotte, Siegi’s wife, suggested she supported him, if only over his opposition to the forced collectivisation from 1929 in the USSR. The details of Brandler’s position cannot be detailed here but it is worth giving him some attention as he was an influential figure during this decisive period.