Militant Anti-Fascism. M. Testa
—Stanley G. Payne in A History of Fascism 1914–45
Given the severe duress under which anti-fascists operated, much activity was concerned with either secretive propaganda distribution or a limited strategy of sabotage, opportunist or otherwise, in the factories. Spies in the workplace and the union hierarchy meant that organization became increasingly difficult, but individual acts of resistance continued. Many people expressed their dissent through apathy at work, slow production, sick leave and absenteeism.
Rote Kapelle (Red Chapel) activists were active in passing information to the Russians and, although for a time it was relatively successful, the group was betrayed by a Russian contact, leading to the execution of seventy-eight anti-fascists. It was not unknown for communists to infiltrate the Gestapo, but the Gestapo more successfully infiltrated the communists and their secret organizations, which led to more arrests and executions. Many militants joined the resistance, and those who did not or could not, according to Detley J.K. Peukert, ‘kept an attitude of sullen refusal which on many cases led to positive acts of opposition’. Peukert also states that three kinds of resistance developed in the early years of Nazi domination: ‘resistance in order to preserve traditions, opinions and cohesion (informal discussion groups, camouflaged clubs and associations); resistance in order to devise plans for a post-fascist democratic state; and resistance in the sense of immediate action…(strike and sabotage)’.71
Adam Wolfram was a salesman who kept in contact with trade unionists and socialists on his travels, collecting and passing on intelligence, a job that was not without danger:
Side by side with this there were also active resistance groups which, at great risk to themselves, distributed information, leaflets and newspapers among the population. Unfortunately, Gestapo spies managed to track down these groups, round up the participants, torture them and send them to prisons and concentration camps.72
Political opponents were not only concentrated in the camps: forced labour and prisoners of war faced unimagined brutality, and punishments were carried out for even the most minor infraction. One unfortunate was caught with ten tins of boot polish whilst others were caught carrying 15 kg of venison and a bag of rabbit fur.73 Others resisted physically: one Russian POW was caught ‘urging the women workers to work more slowly’ and, when reprimanded, the fascist lackey said the POW became ‘abusive and threatened him with his fists…[and] he jumped at me and threw me to the ground.’74 This unknown worker was charged with sabotage, threatening behaviour, physical assault and undermining the guard’s authority. His fate is unknown but it is not hard to guess. German workers were also known to defend foreign workers: at the Duisburg colliery a worker defended a Russian prisoner from harassment by an overseer: ‘[he] turned on the foreman and defended the POW in a manner such as to encourage the latter to strike the foreman on the head with his lamp.… [He] received a gaping wound on the face which has required stitches.’75 The German miner had already spent time in a concentration camp and when reprimanded, boldly stated that he would carry on intervening. These were small acts of resistance but remarkable given the possible consequences.
Far be it from militant anti-fascists to take succour in the words of a former CIA director, but Allen Welsh Dulles supplied information on allied relations to anti-fascists both in exile and within Nazi Germany. Exiled socialists worked with Allied intelligence in addition to supplying propaganda, advice and money to their comrades: SPD, KPD, and other socialist militants maintained links with those still under the Nazi regime. One striking example was the charismatic Carlo Merendorff, a journalist who ‘studied, wrote, worked, laughed, slaved, fought, drank and loved through many a German landscape and was viewed by the fascists as a dangerous influence’.76 He spent between 1935 and 1937 in a concentration camp, but on his release continued his subversive activities before being killed in an air raid in 1941. Merendorff worked with Theodor Haubach, who co-founded of the Reichsbanner, the socialist militia who had once ‘pledged to uphold the Weimar constitution and defend the government against both communists and Nazis’. Merendorff and Haubach had agitated for a united front with syndicalists to oppose the Nazis.77
Informal networks continued even if party organizations were severely compromised by arrests and informants. However unfortunate, a funeral could become the site of resistance and a show of solidarity for anti-fascists: 1,200 showed up in solidarity at the funeral of a prominent member of the SPD who had died after release from a concentration camp. Adam Schaeffer had been imprisoned for political reasons and died in Dachau after attacking an SS guard. He was allegedly shot, although rumours grew that he had been beaten to death, hence the closed casket. Eight hundred people turned up at the funeral, mainly SPD and KPD members and sympathisers. Minor acts of resistance and sabotage affected production: the Albert Baum Group had thirty-two members, many of them KPD, who campaigned over work conditions, spread propaganda, and created informal networks. They had even disguised themselves in stolen Gestapo uniforms in order to confiscate items from the Berlin homes of the rich. Together with other Jewish anti-fascists, they destroyed one of Goebbels’s propaganda exhibits. Baum and others were later arrested, and although Baum was tortured, he never revealed who his accomplices were. Although Mason concedes that many acts of resistance did take place’, he also asks why did it not take place on a larger scale. Workers often enough displayed their lack of enthusiasm for the mass demonstrations of the Third Reich, but they never translated a May Day assembly into a street battle.78 Local circumstances, degrees of solidarity, organization, and opportunism were factors in resistance, but there was also the mitigating factor of terror, the fear of what may happen based on threats, and the knowledge of what had happened to other dissenters and their families. This fear became a pre-emptive tool and enforced compliancy to a regime that gave few concessions to the working class. Demoralization, disorganization and dread became an effective triumvirate to suppress rebellion.
In her autobiography One Life Is Not Enough, Lore Wolf recounts her life as a member of the KPD resistance: ‘I have been called “the White Raven of the Communists”. As a resistance fighter and a refugee I—like many others—always stood with one foot in prison. Twenty times I was caught, nineteen times I got away.’79
After 1933:
Red Aid of Germany was the organization of the oppressed. It cared for the dependents of the politically persecuted and the prisoners, it carried out solidarity actions for the suffering working-class, it agitated, made propaganda and spread information by means of leaflets and illegal newspapers.80
They printed thousands of clandestine newspapers per month and ‘often a single copy went through half the factory—each of the readers contributing some money’.81 They could be caught any time with the papers or be informed on and, although only simple propaganda, they could be subjected to the same punishment as for any other anti-fascist activity: arrest, torture, murder or starvation in a camp. Producing the leaflets was difficult, and paper was bought in many different shops to avoid suspicion. Some were passed on more secretively. In Wolf’s words, ‘there was a tobacco shop near the main station where we could also store brochures and other materials. Close co-operators who bought their cigarettes there collected the texts in small packs and passed them on to trusted colleagues.’82
In 1934, the police called for ‘ruthless suppression of the intense Communist activity promoting propaganda’, the Gestapo warned that the Red Front Line Fighters were reorganizing, and Gestapo goon Reynard Heydrich demanded ‘particular attention to the efforts of Red Aid’.83 The group was ultimately betrayed, and Wolf fled to France and then to Switzerland where she was arrested and deported. Red Aid continued in exile, helping homeless anti-fascist exiles and distributing information. Wolf worked as a courier in Paris until the 1939 mass round-ups of German communists and anti-fascists. She was sent back to Germany to a concentration camp until the end of the war. Wolf’s story is an exemplary account of selfless anti-fascist activity. Despite all the hardships, she retained her sense of dignity and solidarity. It is only one story of many.
Edelweiss Pirates and Others
Now look at the youngsters growing up! They give in to every desire and craving, puffing away at English cigarettes, buy the first tasty titbit, dance, and throw away every activity that requires some effort.
—C.W.W. Szejnmann in Nazism in Central Germany