The German occupation of Luxembourg in World War II began in May 1940 after the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was invaded by Nazi Germany. Although Luxembourg was officially neutral, it was situated at a strategic point at the end of the French Maginot Line. On 10 May 1940, the German Wehrmacht invaded Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. Luxembourg was initially placed under a military administration, but later became a civilly administrated territory and finally was annexed directly into Germany. The Germans believed Luxembourg to be a Germanic state, and attempted to suppress what they perceived as alien French language and cultural influences. Although some Luxembourgers joined the resistance or collaborated with the Germans, both constituted a minority of the population. As German nationals, from 1942, many Luxembourgers were conscripted into the German military. Nearly 3,500 Luxembourgish Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. The liberation of the country by the Allies began in September 1944, but due to the Ardennes Offensive it was not completed until early 1945.
Clara Zetkin was a German Marxist theorist, communist activist, and advocate for women's rights.
Franz Erdmann Mehring was a German communist historian, literary and art critic, philosopher, and revolutionary socialist politician who was a senior member of the Spartacus League during the German Revolution of 1918–1919.
The Communist Party of Luxembourg is a communist party in Luxembourg. Ali Ruckert is the current chairman of the party.
The Communist Workers' Party of Germany was an anti-parliamentarian and left communist party that was active in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. It was founded in April 1920 in Heidelberg as a split from the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Originally the party remained a "sympathising member of Communist International." In 1922 the KAPD split into two factions, both of whom kept the name but are referred to as the KAPD Essen Faction and the KAPD Berlin Faction.
Paul Levi was a German communist and social democratic political leader. He was the head of the Communist Party of Germany following the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919. After being expelled for publicly criticising Communist Party tactics during the March Action, he formed the Communist Working Organisation which in 1922 merged with the Independent Social Democratic Party. This party, in turn, merged with the Social Democratic Party a few months later and Levi became one of the leaders of its left wing.
Gustav Simon was a Nazi Party official who served as Gauleiter of Gau Moselland from 1931 to 1945 and, from 1940 until 1942, as Chief of Civil Administration in occupied Luxembourg.
Die Rote Fahne was a German newspaper originally founded in 1876 by Socialist Worker's Party leader Wilhelm Hasselmann, and which has been since published on and off, at times underground, by German Socialists and Communists. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg famously published it in 1918 as organ of the Spartacus League.
Paul Frölich was a German journalist and left-wing political activist and author, a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany and founder of the party's paper, Die Rote Fahne. A Communist Party deputy in the Reichstag on two occasions, Frölich was expelled from the Party in 1928, after which he joined the organized German Communist Opposition movement. Frölich is best remembered as a biographer of Rosa Luxemburg.
The Workers' Weekly was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, established in February 1923. The publication was succeeded by Workers' Life in January 1927 following a successful libel action against the paper. This was in turn replaced by The Daily Worker on the first day of January 1930.
The Hungarian-German Social Democratic Party was a social democratic political party in Slovakia. It was founded in 1919 by social democrats from ethnic minority communities. The party had a German and a Hungarian section. The German and Hungarian social democrats in Slovakia had developed an antagonistic relationship with the Slovak social democrats, who had merged into the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers Party as Austria-Hungary was broken up after the First World War. Issues of contention between Hungarian/German and Slovak social democrats included views of the February Strike of 1919 and the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
During the nine decades since its establishment in 1919, the Communist Party USA produced or inspired a vast array of newspapers and magazines in at least 25 different languages. This list of the Non-English press of the Communist Party USA provides basic information on each title, along with links to pages dealing with specific publications in greater depth.
When Luxembourg was invaded and annexed by Nazi Germany in 1940, a national consciousness started to come about. From 1941 onwards, the first resistance groups, such as the Letzeburger Ro'de Lé'w or the PI-Men, were founded. Operating underground, they secretly worked against the German occupation, helping to bring political refugees and those trying to avoid being conscripted into the German forces across the border, and put out patriotic leaflets encouraging the population of Luxembourg to pull through.
Der royter shtern was a Yiddish-language newspaper published from the Soviet city of Vitebsk between 1920 and 1923. It was the organ of the Jewish Section of the Communist Party Committee of the Vitebsk Governorate. The first issue was published on August 19, 1920. It was published as a daily newspaper for about a year, and then became a weekly. Between the 9th and 10th congresses of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks), 268 issues of Der royter shtern were published. It had a circulation of around 4,000.
The Spartacus League was a Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I. It was founded in August 1914 as the International Group by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin, and other members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) who were dissatisfied with the party's official policies in support of the war. In 1916 it renamed itself the Spartacus Group and in 1917 joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), which had split off from the SPD as its left wing faction. During the November Revolution of 1918 that broke out across Germany at the end of the war, the Spartacus Group re-established itself as a nationwide, non-party organization called the "Spartacus League" with the goal of instituting a soviet republic that would include all of Germany. It became part of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) when it was formed on 1 January 1919 and at that point ceased to exist as a separate entity.
Mathilde Jacob was a German typist and translator who during the First World War became politically involved, working with the anti-war Spartacus League and as a founder member of the German Communist Party. She came to politics through her work for Rosa Luxemburg, whose friend and close confidant she became. Although Mathilde Jacob continued to be politically engaged in the 1920s, her greater contribution to history comes from her having smuggled Luxemburg's letters and documents out of Luxemburg's prison cell during her friend's various incarcerations during the 1914–1918 war. She then preserved much of Luxemburg's written legacy after the latter's murder.
Der Veker was a Yiddish language newspaper published from Minsk 1917–1941. Initially a Bundist publication founded in the midst of the 1917 revolutions, it continued publishing as a Communist Party organ until 1925.
Siberi Tööline was an Estonian language newspaper, published from Omsk and Novonikolayevsk, Soviet Russia 1920-1922.
The Central Bureau of the German Sections of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (German: Zentralbüro der deutschen Sektionen beim Zentralkomitee der Kommunistischen Partei Rußlands (Bolschewiki)) was a structure within the organization of the Bolshevik Party, coordinating the activities of ethnic German sections of the party.
