Abstract
It is perhaps one of history’s more tragic ironies that the organised German working class, which Lenin had expected to be the spearhead of revolution in the advanced industrialised states of Europe, and which was confronted in the early 1930s by a conservative reaction whose hostility to the organised labour movement was uniquely unambiguous, was never able to present a united opposition to Nazism and was to suffer one of the greatest political defeats in the history of modern labour movements. This chapter explores three themes: first, the failure of the social democratic and communist parties in Germany to present a united opposition to Nazism before 1933; second, the process whereby these parties were eliminated as political forces to be reckoned with; and, third, the extent to which the two parties of the Left were able to maintain underground resistance to the National Socialist regime after March 1933.
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Notes
J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds) Nazism 1919–1945. 1: The Rise to Power 1919–1934 (Exeter University Press, 1983), doc. 60, p. 83;
Helmut Drüke et al., Spaltung der Arbeiterbewegung und Faschismus. Sozialgeschichte der Weimarer Republik (Hamburg, 1980) table A19, p. 196.
Timothy W. Mason, Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich. Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft (Opladen, 1977) pp. 42–69. Regional studies have emphasised the failure of the NSDAP to win the support of industrial workers before 1933. See, for example
Wilfried Böhnke, Die NSDAP im Ruhrgebiet 1920–1933 (Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 1974).
Dick Geary, European Labour Protest 1848–1939 (London, 1981) p. 168. On the general development of the KPD during the Weimar Republic see:
Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus. Die Stalinisierung der KPD in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt/Main, 1969);
Siegfried Bahne, Die KPD und das Ende von Weimar. Scheitern einer Politik (Frankfurt/Main, 1976).
Ibid., p. 169. On the ban of KPD-organised demonstrations, see: Eve Rosenhaft, Working-class Life and ‘Working-class Politics: Communists, Nazis and the State in the Battle for the Street, Berlin 1928–1932’, in R. J. Bessel and E. J. Feuchtwanger (eds), Social Change and Political Development in Weimar Germany (London, 1981) pp. 207–40, here pp. 224ff. On the SPD during the Weimar Republic, see:
R. N. Hunt, German Social Democracy 1918–1933 (Chicago, 1970);
W. L. Guttsman, The German Social Democratic Party 1875–1933 (London, 1981);
Hagen Schulze, ‘Die SPD und der Staat von Weimar’, in Michael Stürmer (ed.), Die Weimarer Republik. Belagerte Civitas (Königstein, 1980 ) p. 272–86;
Hans Mommsen, ‘Die Sozialdemokratie in der Defensive: Der Immobilismus der SPD und der Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus’, in. Hans Mommsen (ed.), Sozialdemokratie zwischen Klassenbewegung und Volkspartei (Frankfurt/Main, 1974);
Erich Matthias, ‘German Social Democracy in the Weimar Republic’, in Anthony Nicholls and Erich Matthias (eds), German Democracy and the Triumph of Hitler (London, 1971 ) pp. 47–57;
Heinrich August Winkler, ‘Spielräume der Sozialdemokratie — Zur Rolle der SPD in Staat und Gesellschaft der Weimarer Republik’, in Volker Rittenberger (ed.), 1933. Wie die Republik der Diktatur erlag (Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, Mainz, 1983) pp. 61–75.
Detlev Peukert, ‘Zur Rolle des Arbeiterwiderstands im “Dritten Reich”’, in Christoph Klessmann and Falk Pingel (eds), Gegner des Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt/Main, 1980) pp. 73–90, here p. 78.
Mason, Sozialpolitik pp. 89–98; Geary, European Labour Protest pp. 170f Sidney Pollard, ‘The Trade Unions and the Depression of 1929–1933’, in Hans Mommsen, Dietmar Petzina and Bernd Weisbrod (eds), Industrielles System und politische Entwicklung in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1974) pp.237–48.
A. J. Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler (London, 1968) pp. 135f The standard work on party politics during the final years of the Weimar Republic and the triumph of National Socialism is
Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (eds), Das Ende der Parteien 1933 (Düsseldorf, 1960), see Morsey’s essay on the Zentrum, pp. 281–453.
Rudolf Morsey, ‘The Centre Party between the Fronts’, in The Road to Dictatorship. Germany 1918–1933 (London, 1970) pp. 77–92, here pp. 77f
J. Noakes, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, 1921–1933 (Oxford, 1971);
Ian Kershaw, ‘Ideology, Propaganda and the Rise of the Nazi Party’, in Peter D. Stachura (ed.), The Nazi Machtergreifung (London, 1983 ) pp. 162–81.
Ibid., pp. 139–44; Martin Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers. Grundlegung und Entwicklung seiner inneren Verfassung (Munich, 1969) pp. 82–108.
This is the essential argument of Mason, Sozialpolitik. See also, Tim Mason, ‘The Workers’ Opposition in Nazi Germany’, in History Workshop Journal vol. 11 (Spring 1981) pp. 120–37.
Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933–1945 (Oxford, 1983) pp. 72–95;
Detlev Peukert, Die KPD im Widerstand. Verfolgung und Untergrundarbeit an Rhein und Ruhr 1933 bis 1945 (Wuppertal, 1980) pp. 204–18.
On the two parties after 1933, see Peukert, Die KPD im Widerstand; Horst Duhnke, Die KPD von 1933–1945 (Köln, 1971);
Hermann Weber, ‘Die KPD in der Illegalität’, in Richard Löwenthal and Patrik von zur Mühlen (eds), Widerstand und Verweigerung in Deutschland 1933 bis 1945 (Berlin/ Bonn, 1982) pp. 83–101; Patrik von zur Mühlen, ‘Sozialdemokraten gegen Hitler’, in ibid., pp. 57–75.
Detlev Peukert, ‘Der deutsche Arbeiterwiderstand 1933–1945’, in Karl-Dietrich Bracher, Manfred Funke and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (eds), Nationalsozialistische Diktatur 1933–1945. Eine Bilanz (Bonn, 1983) pp. 633–54, here pp. 639f.
Peukert, ‘Der deutsche Arbeiterwiderstand’, pp. 642ff; Peukert, Die KPD im Widerstand pp. 116–93; Gunther Plum, ‘Die Arbeiterbewegung während der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft’, in Jürgen Reulecke (ed.), Arbeiterbewegung an Rhein und Ruhr. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung in Rheinland-Westfalen (Wuppertal, 1974) pp. 355–83, here pp. 371–8; Duhnke, Die KPD von 1933–1945 pp. 199ff.
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© 1987 Helen Graham and Paul Preston
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Salter, S. (1987). The Object Lesson: The Division of the German Left and the Triumph of National Socialism. In: Graham, H., Preston, P. (eds) The Popular Front in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10618-9_2
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