In the postwar era, the historical organisation inspired new groups and networks, known as the wider antifa movement, many of which use the aesthetics of Antifaschistische Aktion, especially the antifa moniker and a modified version of its logo. During the Cold War, Antifaschistische Aktion had a dual legacy in East Germany and West Germany, respectively. In East Germany, it was considered part of the history and heritage of the KPD's successor, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. In West Germany, its aesthetics and name were embraced by Maoists and later autonomists from the 1970s.
Background
The late 1920s and early 1930s saw rising tensions mainly between three broad groups, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) on one side, the Nazi Party a second, and a coalition of governing parties, mainly social democrats, conservatives and liberals, making up a third side.[2][3]Berlin in particular was the site of regular and often very violent clashes.[4] Both the Communists and the Nazis explicitly sought to overthrow the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic while the social democrats and liberals strongly defended the republic and its constitution. As part of this struggle, all three factions organized their own paramilitary groups.[5]
Under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann, the KPD became a Stalinist party that was fiercely loyal to the Soviet government. Since 1928, the KPD was largely controlled and funded by the Soviet government through the Comintern.[6] Up until 1928, the KPD pursued a united front policy of working with other working class and socialist parties to combat fascism.[7][8][9][10] It was in this period, in 1924, that the Roter Frontkämpferbund ("Red Front Fighters League"; RFB), the KPD's paramilitary and propaganda organisation and first anti-fascist front, had been formed.[11][12] The RFB was often involved in violent clashes with the police.
However, after The Communist International's abrupt turn in its Third Period from 1928, the KPD regarded the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as its main adversary and adopted the position that the SPD was the main fascist party in Germany.[13] This was based on the theory of social fascism that had been proclaimed by Joseph Stalin and that was supported by the Comintern during the late 1920s and early 1930s, which held that social democracy was a variant of fascism.[14] Consequently, the KPD held that it was "the only anti-fascist party" in Germany[6][15] and stated that "fighting fascism means fighting the SPD just as much as it means fighting Hitler and the parties of Brüning."[16] In KPD and Soviet usage, fascism was primarily viewed as the final stage of capitalism rather than a specific group or movement such as the Italian Fascists or the German Nazis and, based on this theory, the term was applied quite broadly.[17][verification needed]
In 1929, the KPD's banned public May Day rally in Berlin was broken up by police; 33 people were killed in the clash and subsequent rioting. The RFB was then banned as extremist by the governing Social Democrats.[12] In 1930, the KPD established the RFB's de facto successor, known as Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus[de] ("Fighting Alliance against Fascism").[18][19][20][21][22][23][12] In late 1931, local Roter Massenselbstschutz ("Red Mass Self-Defence") units were formed by Kampfbund members as autonomous and loosely organized structures under the leadership of, but outside the formal organization of the KPD as part of the party's united front policy to work with other working class groups to defeat "fascism" as interpreted by the party.[24]
During the Third Period, the KPD viewed the Nazi Party ambiguously. On one hand, the KPD considered the Nazi Party to be one of the fascist parties. On the other hand, the KPD sought to appeal to the Strasserite-wing of the Nazi movement by using nationalist slogans.[6] The KPD sometimes cooperated with the Nazis in attacking the SPD.[25] In 1931, the KPD had united with the Nazis, whom they referred to as "working people's comrades", in an unsuccessful attempt to bring down the SPD state government of Prussia by means of a referendum.[26] In the usage of the Soviet Union, and of the Comintern and its affiliated parties in this period, including the KPD, the epithet fascist was used to describe capitalist society in general and virtually any anti-Soviet or anti-Stalinist activity or opinion.[27]
The 1932 Unity Congress showing in the centre the logo flanked by Soviet banners, to the right imagery of the KPD fighting capitalism and to the left imagery attacking the SPD
The formation of Antifaschistische Aktion in 1932 indicated a shift away from the Third Period policies, as fascism came to be recognised as a more serious threat (the two red flags on its logo symbolized Communists in unity with socialists[28]), leading up to the 1934 and 1935 adoption of a popular front policy of anti-fascist unity with non-Communist groups. In October 1931, a coalition of right-wing and far-right parties established the Harzburg Front, which opposed the government of the Centre Party's Heinrich Brüning. In response, the SPD and affiliated group established the Iron Front to defend liberal democracy and the constitution of the Weimar Republic. Antifaschistische Aktion was formed partly as a counter-move to the SPD's establishment of the Iron Front,[12] which the KPD regarded as a "social fascist terror organisation."[29] However, from the mid-1930s, the term anti-fascist became ubiquitous in Soviet, Comintern, and KPD usage, as Communists who had been attacking democratic rivals were now told to change tack and engage in coalitions with them against the fascist threat.[30][31]
Establishment
Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, the KPD's headquarters from 1926 to 1933 in which Antifaschistische Aktion' logo can be seen prominently displayed on the front of the building
After a brawl in the Landtag of Prussia between members of the Nazi Party and the KPD left eight people severely injured,[12] the KPD under Thälmann's leadership reacted to the establishment of the Harzburg Front and the Iron Front with a call for their own Unity Front which they shortly after renamed Antifaschistische Aktion.[12]
The KPD formally announced the establishment of Antifaschistische Aktion in the party's newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag) on 26 May 1932.[32] The new organisation was based on the principle of a communist front, but it remained an integral part of the KPD.[33][34] The KPD described Antifaschistische Aktion as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD."[1]
How many people belonged to Antifaschistische Aktion is difficult to determine because there were no membership cards. Rather, it developed out of the practical participation.[12] The Red Mass Self-Defense (RMSS) units were absorbed into Antifaschistische Aktion, forming the nuclei of the latter's Unity Committees, organised on a micro-local basis, e.g. in apartment buildings, factories or allotments.[37] As well as being involved in political streetfights, the RMSS and Antifaschistische Aktion used their militant approach to develop a comprehensive network of self-defence for communities targeted by the Nazis such as in "tenant protection" (Mieterschutz), action against evictions.[38] Initially, the RMSS units had minimal formal membership, but in the second half of 1932 local executive boards were created to co-ordinate the activities of the KPD, the Kampfbund, the RMSS and the now illegal Roter Frontkämpferbund, with the RMSS given a more distinct and almost paramilitary defence role, often co-operating on an ad hoc basis with the Reichsbanner.[39]
With Antifaschistische Aktion, the KPD not only wanted to create a cross-party collection movement dominated by KPD, but they also aimed specifically at the Reichstag election on 31 July 1932. The election campaign for the July election is regarded as the most violent in German history. In particular between KPD and Nazi supporters, it came to massive clashes and even shootings.[12] After the forced dissolution in the wake of the Machtergreifung in 1933, the movement went underground.[40]
In the postwar era, the historical Antifaschistische Aktion inspired a variety of different movements, groups and individuals in Germany as well as other countries which widely adopted variants of its aesthetics and some of its tactics. Known as the wider antifa movement, modern antifa groups have no direct organisational connection to Antifaschistische Aktion.[41] Groups called Antifaschistische Aktion, Antifaschistische Ausschüsse, or Antifaschistische Kommittees, all typically abbreviated to antifa, spontaneously re-emerged in Germany in 1944, mainly involving veterans of the pre-war KPD, KPO, and SPD.[36][42][43][44] Some members of other democratic political parties and Christians who opposed the Nazi régime also participated.[45] In 1945, the anti-fascist committee in the city of Olbernhau included "three Communists and three Social Democrats" while the antifascist committee in Leipzig "had nine members, including three liberals and progressive Christians."[45]
In the American, British, and French zones, antifa groups began to recede by the late summer of 1945, marginalized by Allied bans on political organization and by re-emerging divisions within the movement between Communists and others. In East Germany, antifa groups were absorbed into the new Stalinist state.[36] On 11 July 1945, the Soviets permitted the formation of the United Front of the Antifascist-Democratic Parties which included representatives from the "Communist KPD, the Social Democratic SPD, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)."[46]
In the United States, antifa of the early 21st-century has drawn its aesthetics and some of its tactics from Antifaschistische Aktion.[47]
The Communist Party of Germany was a major far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West Germany during the postwar period until it was banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956.
Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann was a German communist politician and leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1925 to 1933.
Weimar paramilitary groups were militarily organized units that were formed outside of the regular German Army following the defeat of the German Empire in World War I. The most prominent of them, the Freikorps, were combat units that were supported by the German government and used to suppress uprisings from both the Left and the Right. There were also Citizens' Defense groups to maintain public order and paramilitary groups associated with specific political parties to protect and promote their interests.
The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany was a centrist Marxist political party in Germany. It was formed as a left-wing party with around 20,000 members which split off from the SPD in the autumn of 1931. In 1931, the remnants of the USPD merged into the party and in 1932 some Communist Party dissenters also joined the group as well as a part from the Communist Party Opposition. Nevertheless, its membership remained small. From 1933, the group's members worked illegally against Nazism.
Social fascism was a theory developed by the Communist International (Comintern) in the early 1930s which saw social democracy as a moderate variant of fascism.
Albert Hensel was a German Communist executed under the Nazis. He was a member of the Communist Party of Germany and along with numerous other resistance fighters was executed by the Nazis. Hensel was born in Dresden where he and fellow communist members began their work against the Nazi regime.
The Roter Frontkämpferbund, usually called the Rotfrontkämpferbund (RFB), was a far-left paramilitary organization affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the Weimar Republic. A legally registered association, the RFB was banned in 1929 after violent clashes during May Day demonstrations in Berlin, but continued its work illegally.
The Iron Front was a German paramilitary organization in the Weimar Republic which consisted of social democrats, trade unionists, and democratic socialists. Its main goal was to defend social democracy against what was seen as anti-democratic, totalitarian ideologies on the far-right and far-left. The Iron Front chiefly opposed the Sturmabteilung (SA) wing of the Nazi Party and the Antifaschistische Aktion wing of the Communist Party of Germany. Formally independent, it was intimately associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The Three Arrows, originally designed for the Iron Front, became a well-known social democratic symbol representing resistance against monarchism, Nazism, and communism during the parliamentary elections in November 1932. The Three Arrows were later adopted by the SPD itself.
Franz Jacob was a German Resistance fighter against Nazism and a Communist politician.
The Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists (VVN-BdA) is a German political confederation founded in 1947 and based in Berlin. The VVN-BdA, formerly the VVN, emerged from victims' associations in Germany founded by political opponents to Nazism after the Second World War and the end of the Nazi rule in Germany.
Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were opposed by many countries forming the Allies of World War II and dozens of resistance movements worldwide. Anti-fascism has been an element of movements across the political spectrum and holding many different political positions such as anarchism, communism, pacifism, republicanism, social democracy, socialism and syndicalism as well as centrist, conservative, liberal and nationalist viewpoints.
Ferdinand Jung was a German Communist activist who resisted the Nazi government in the 1930s and spent a good deal of time in prisons and concentration camps. In later life he found himself in the political mainstream in his country's second one-party dictatorship and became a senior politician.
Willy Leow was a German communist politician and activist.
Post–World War II anti-fascism, including antifa groups, anti-fascist movements and anti-fascist action networks, saw the development of political movements describing themselves as anti-fascist and in opposition to fascism. Those movements have been active in several countries in the aftermath of World War II during the second half of the 20th and early 21st century.
The Three Arrows is a social democratic political symbol associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), used in the late history of the Weimar Republic. First conceived for the SPD-dominated Iron Front as a symbol of the social democratic resistance against Nazism in 1932, it became an official symbol of the Party during the November 1932 German federal election, representing their opposition towards monarchism, Nazism, and communism.
Blutmai was an outbreak of political violence that occurred in Berlin from 1 to 3 May 1929.
Antifa is a political movement in Germany composed of multiple far-left, autonomous, militant groups and individuals who describe themselves as anti-fascist. According to the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the use of the epithet fascist against opponents and the view of capitalism as a form of fascism are central to the movement. The antifa movement has existed in different eras and incarnations, dating back to Antifaschistische Aktion, from which the moniker antifa came. It was set up by the then-Stalinist Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the late history of the Weimar Republic. After the forced dissolution in the wake of Machtergreifung in 1933, the movement went underground. In the postwar era, Antifaschistische Aktion inspired a variety of different movements, groups and individuals in Germany as well as other countries which widely adopted variants of its aesthetics and some of its tactics. Known as the wider antifa movement, the contemporary antifa groups have no direct organisational connection to Antifaschistische Aktion.
Walter Husemann was a German communist and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. As a young man, Husemann trained an industrial toolmaker, before training as a journalist. He became interested in politics and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). With the arrival of the Nazis in 1933, he became a resistance fighter and through his wife, the actor Marta Husemann, he became associated with an anti-fascist resistance group around Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Gestapo. Along with John Sieg whom he met in the KPD and Fritz Lange, Martin Weise and Herbert Grasse he wrote and published the resistance magazine, The Internal Front Die Innere Front.
Fantifa is an umbrella term for anti-fascism movements centering on women as a branch of the feminist movement. The term mostly refers to a formal movement of feminist anti-fascist groups that emerged from German-speaking countries in 1985 but also encompasses historical German groups such as the 1925 Rote Frauen und Mädelbund and broader European groups such as the 1930s Spanish anarcha-feminist group Mujeres Libres, the 1934 French women's branch of the World Committee Against War and Fascism, and the 1942 Yugoslavian partisan group Women's Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia. The main fantifa movement holds an anarcho-communist philosophy and is specifically an anti-fascist variant of anarcha-feminism, as is sometimes represented in the use of a purple and black flag with a symbol derivative of that of the men's antifa group Antifaschistische Aktion.
Erich Ernst Kops was a German politician, diplomat, and Holocaust survivor.
References
1 2 Stephan, Pieroth (1994). Parteien und Presse in Rheinland-Pfalz 1945–1971: ein Beitrag zur Mediengeschichte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mainzer SPD-Zeitung 'Die Freiheit'. v. Hase & Koehler Verlag. p.96. ISBN9783775813266.
↑ Dirk Schumann: Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918–1933: Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War, Berghahn Books, 2012, ISBN9780857453143.
↑ Bois, Marcel (30 April 2020). "'March Separately, But Strike Together!' The Communist Party's United-Front Policy in the Weimar Republic". Historical Materialism. 28 (3). Brill: 138–165. doi:10.1163/1569206x-00001281. ISSN1465-4466. S2CID219055035.
↑ Grenville, Anthony (1992). "From Social Fascism to Popular Front: KPD Policy as Reflected in the Works of Friedrich Wolf, Anna Seghers and Willi Bredel, 1928–1938". German Writers and Politics 1918–39. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp.89–102. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-11815-1_7. ISBN978-1-349-11817-5.
↑ Fippel, Günter (2003). Antifaschisten in 'antifaschistischer' Gewalt: mittel- und ostdeutsche Schicksale in den Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur (1945 bis 1961). A. Peter. p.21. ISBN9783935881128.
↑ Rob Sewell, Germany: From Revolution to Counter-Revolution, Fortress Books (1988), ISBN1-870958-04-7, Chapter 7.
↑ Richter, Michael (2006). "Die doppelte Diktatur: Erfahrungen mit Diktatur in der DDR und Auswirkungen auf das Verhältnis zur Diktatur heute". In Besier, Gerhard; Stoklosa, Katarzyna (eds.). Lasten diktatorischer Vergangenheit – Herausforderungen demokratischer Gegenwart. LIT Verlag. pp.195–208. ISBN9783825887896.
↑ Lokatis, Siegfried. Der rote Faden. Kommunistische Parteigeschichte und Zensur unter Walter Ulbricht. Böhlau Verlag, Köln 2003, ISBN3-412-04603-5 (Zeithistorische Studien series, vol. 25). p. 60.
↑ Moreau, Patrick; Schorpp-Grabiak, Rita (2002). 'Man muss so radikal sein wie die Wirklichkeit': die PDS: eine Bilanz. Nomos Verlag. p.166. ISBN9783789079290.
↑ Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists?: The German Communists and Political Violence 1929-1933, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 81.
Karl, Heinz; Kücklich, Erika, eds. (1965). Die Antifaschistische Aktion. Dokumentation und Chronik, Mai 1932 Bis Januar 1933(in German). Berlin: Dietz.
Knütter, Hans-Helmuth (2010). Antifaschismus: der geistige Bürgerkrieg(in German). Foreword by Heinrich Lummer. Hamburg: Die Dt. Konservativen e.V.
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