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i
la
resrstancetn
barricadepublishingp.o. box 199
eastbrunswick,3057melbourne, australia
First pulrlished in Black Elag#2A0 Sep.1990)
Anarchist
Nazi Germany
Albert Meltzer
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For years researchers'of he academickind
maintained there was never an anarchist
movement in Germany, apart from literally one or
two names.After WWII, the police archiveswere
taken by the Americans and when these were
opened to schofars they found that German
anarchist resistance hrough the ageshad been
extremely large. There had been an extremelyactive
and influential working classanarchist movement
in a line from that under Bismarck to that under
F{itler. It had been ignored by historians because
workers in general, like women in particular, only
exist for them in relation to power politics or
intellectual currents (alsoperhaps,becauset entails
some real research as distinct from looking up other
people'sbooks).Here we can only give some
pointers to research.
Much of the old anarcho-syndicalist
movement in the FAUD, was centred in the
Rhineland and the Ruhr, where it had been a base
in the mines and in heavy industry and had built on
the experienceof workers councils n 1918. nBavaria, the workers movement was much more
fickle. Bavarian nationalism obscured the issue: n/'
Municlu people turned out almost in mass to
mourn the death of the local hereditary petty ruler,
I
but within months they were rising in massagainst
the bourgeoisie and upper class, hough perhaps
some saw it as againstPrussiandomination. A
'soviet' was formed-with the participation of
anarchist ntellectuals-tobe crushedby the vicious
Christian dictatorship.Hitler's new party was in due
coursesubiect o these luctuationsof sympathy, atfirst because t was th<lught o be Bavarian
monarchist'.Its comic-opera ising in L923was
mildly put down by the samegoveffunent which
had massacredthe workers in the Commune of
Munich.
In some places ike Wurttenburg there were
under the Weimar Republic active sectionsof the
FAUD, mainly railway workerswho had escaped
from Munich. In Berlin, the anarchosyndicalists
were part of a much wider anarchist movement and
operated within a distinct socialistic culture, bitterly
divided between orthodox socialistsand
communists which minimised the effect of
anarchism.
The success f Hitler's party had a shattering
and paralysing effect on the working class
movement. For years t had been thought, even by
thosewho opposed the Communist Party, that its
Iled Front/Army would put up a fight. It was
expected hat the strugglewould comewith its
success, ot with its failure. This attitude was
ingrained even with those who advocatedsocialist-
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communist unity against Nazism. Though working
class ormations had long since battled in the streets
againstHitlerism, nobody anticipatedthe struggle
would be given up without a shot or a blow.
In a town like Cologne, only months before
Hitler took power, anarchosyndicalists ad
organiseda demonstratiory receiving huge popular
support against he visit by Dr. Goebbels,vho
bitterly complained he was 'chasedout of his native
town like a criminal'. It urasa challenge o the larger
tendencies,who felt obliged to organisesimilar
demonstrations,making Nazi propaganda t<lurs,at
the height of the Depression (and thereforen'hen
'historians' ater claimed they were building
support) risky in the extreme. litler took to
travelling by plane (then consideredhazardous)as
the lesserdanger.
In Berlin, marchesby Nazis were surrounded
and heavily protectedby police (like fascistmarches
in Britain). Isherwood, as a young observer a few
months before the Nazis took power, noted how the
hostile crorvds n the Moabit working classdistrict
laughed when an elderly and portly SScaptaincould
not sustain the pace and finding himself on his
owl1 fra4tically tried to catch up with the protective
cordon.
(A few months later and that captain would
probably be invested with the power and life over
the scclffers).
The Nazi murder gangs attacked individual
opponents out on their own (something n the
nature of contemporary gay-bashers)but shied in the
main from open confrontation. (The gang to which
Horst Wesselbelonged tried it on and he becamea
Nazi martyr). The Nazi (pre-power) jew-baiting
activitieswere againstprofessionalpeople or
writers, often when sitting around in cafes,and petty
shopkeepers, n their own. It never occurred to
people, least of all organised workers living in
proletarian districts, there they too would become
isolated.
After Hitler took power-was handed power by
Hindenburg, with the tacit approval of most parties-
the power of the SSdramatically increased.Almostovernight the top-heavy organisationof the workers
collapsed with the wholesale arrests, quite illegal, of
their leadership.Nothing disappeared more
ignominously than the Red Front Army, one day
parading through the streetswith its Moscow-
trained generals, the next day languishing in holes
and cellars in the hastily formed concentration
camps (at first, converted derelict warehouses)without striking a blow (the despised Austrian
reformist Social-Democratsat least fought it out to
the ast againstDolfuss).
The Communist Party became llegalised, the
socialists and trade union movement tried to make
their peace and niche and were slowly illegalised-
after which social democracyhad nothing to offer.
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Trade union leaders sought to transfer their funds to
war veteransorganisations(where for ideological
reasons he Nazis could not sequestratehem, but
controlled them anyway).The working classas a
whole was stunned at the fact that the entire defence
they had built around themselveshad gone with the
wind.
This overcame the German anarchists too,
and with the exceirtion of the Rhineland, it became a
marginalised dissent movement, unable to speak
and therefore to grow. The Rhenish workers were
slower to accept the situation, and they were not
initially provoked to industrial action by the Nazis,
but aspropaganda and contactsvanished, they too
succumbed(though never completely)' During the
twelve years of Nazi dictatorship, a few isolated,
especially ndustrially basedgroups, remained
constant.But any concertedaction was never
possible, though in Madrid during the civil war
people queued to seea dud German shell displayed
in the window of a large store, bearing a messafIel
'Comrades!The shells make do not explode" (It
may have been indicative of sabotage,which
certainly went on, or it may have been propaganda
set up in Spain-who can te11?)
Where the German anarchists, and the
council-communists (who during the I'Jazi period
sunk their differences, never great) resisted was by
individual action. It is one of the ironies of history,
I
though typical, that the only attempt against Hitler
thought worthy is by the upper classgeneralswho
backed his war effort until it was losing (while such
individuals as Rudolf Rocker and Augustin Souchy
within the International Workers Association
declined after the war to support documentation on
anarchist attempts on Hitler's life on the
undoubtedly true grounds that 'such activity is what
brings the anarch ist movement into disrepute!').
Nobody ever assumed hat the assasinationof
Hitler would entail automatic defeat of Naz ism. But
such was the concentrated hero worship of the
Fuhrer, it would have destabilised the entire Nazi
Party, and given a revival of confidence to the anti-
Nazi majority to assert tself once more, if merelydefensively.
There were never as many at tempts on Hitler
as on Mussolini by the Italian anarchists,but far
more than generally supposed. Orly a few are listed
here, and we have not even (for want of detailed
knowledge) touched on other aspectsof the
resistancesuch"as that of the anarcho-syndical ists at
Duisburg. No attempt has ever been made ingenuine research by those in a position to carry it
out (lest t detract from the last ditch plot, to save he
Reich, or the generalsand the Prussianaristocrats?)
The pioneer attempt (in fact, the destruction
of the Reichstag,not an assasination lot) was that
of van der Lubbe, a council'communist. He thought
f
I '
)
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l i
that the burning of the Parliament of Nazis and
thosewho had ceded them victory would be a signal
for the proletariat to rise.Though successful o far as
the burning went, he was disowned and denounced
by world communism and its liberal a1liesas a Nazi
agent.The suggestionwas that the Nazis did it
themselves o discredit the Communists (a typical
tiberal response o action).
The Schwarzrotgruppe, originally based in
Dusseldorf,was the first and most persistentof
groups advocating and planning the assasinationof
Hitler. They felt that the mistake made in the
Reichstag ire was the involvement of a man of
Dutch origin, bearing in mind the hatred of
foreigners presumed to be growing in Germany with
Nazi brainwashing (though in a totalitarian country
one is inclined to think that everyone else is
thinking and acting the same).
Th"y fwice set up near-successful ttempts,
once in the Munich beerhall where the non-event
of the Nazi putsch of 1923was being celebrated,
another time at the Nuremberg opera. Both were
failed at the last moment, but as the perpetrators
escaped.Those concerned fled to Glasgow (where
they were'given shelterby the late Frank Leech,a
well-known anarchist, n whose house I met them
:,:i.1,937).hey deemed it prudent to go to
Birmingham (which had an interesting sequel
I
when, a generation later, the German police by someconfusion (no doubt causedby the lossof their mainfiles to Washington) thought the Red and BlackGroup (Englishanarcho-pacifist)hen existing wasthe samegroup as the Schwarzrot (BlackRed) group,long sincedead or dispersed,and named them, totheir intensesurprise,as responsibreor the killingof an ex-Nazibanker.
T'herewas an immediate response o thesetwo failed attempts n an entirely individual plot toshootHitler at a rally in Cologne,but as the manresponsible was caught, there may be no record. ThisIed to massarrestsamong Rhenishworkers andcauseda paralysis n activity. Of the many other
attempts that were alsomade, one of which we havemore facts s that of Hilda Monte.
She was both in the anarchist and council_communist movements, and had been active in twoor three of the active resistanceunits. An extremelydetermined person,she was disappointed that theSchwarzrotpeople had not used her (they felt her
Jewish origin would be exploited by the Nazis, as t
certainly was in the later caseof Herschel Grynszpeinwhose assasinationof vom Rath led to thenotorious 'CrystalNight,pogrom). In order to workmore freely, she becamea British subject,by thedevice of marrying a gayactivist, John Old,ay,who,though a German resident from birttu had a Britishpassportthrough a canadian ather.
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She was involved in plans for another
attempt on Hitler's life at a rally and narrowly
escaped o England. Olday was deported as a
result.There he group with which she had been
involved formulated the plans which they had been
thwarted by mere chance(I{itler hadn't turned.up).T'heywere funded originally by a wealthy
industrialist, GeorgeSkauss,a Labour Mp (later
Father of the House).Hilda Monte returned to
Germany, but presumably the plan went wrong and
she arrived back n London just before war broke
out. '
The authorities were suspiciousof a German
who had turnedup
justbefore hostilities, eventhough she had a recently acquiredBritish husband
with whom she had never lived! She was interned,
and like many anti-fascists, elt the humiliation
keenly. Contacting British anarchists, she felt sure
her plan would go through if shecould get back
again.Skaussby now had backedout of the
associatiory hough his connectionswould have
been useful (he possibly thought he was being
inveigled into a nazi plot, though after the war he
acknowledged his earlier help). The person Hilda
Monte found, by coincidence, who was prepared to
back her fihancially and with personal contacts was a
film star (whq whether by chanceor discovery, was
aJsasinated y the Nazis in Portugal).She was
allowed to return (how, I have no means of
,t"
- . - - -.t
knowing) where she contacted her group, but was
captured by the Gestapoand murdered, tarrly
'horribly,one assurnes.A socialistcomrade informs
me that Det Sgt |ones, of SpecialBranclu spoke to
him during the war of his concern about the reckless
way in which Hilda had been allowed to return and
his admiration for her audacity. It would seem
Intelligence decided to clear her of any suspicion of
wanting to help Hitler, and let her get on with her
own thing. She s not mentioned in any list of
Allied agents sent into Germany (some suggest
becauseof her racial origiry or becauseof her sex, but
i more probably becauseshe was independent of
i Government service):her action is commemorated
in Israel (where archives on her case are kept)
though she was never a Zionist.
During the war when Hitler met Franco there
was another plan to assassinate he pair of them
together, by Spanish anarchists this time, though
with some French and German involvement. This
certainly would have changed the course of history,
and certainly would have been a highspot of
anarchist resistance,had it been successful.Thosewho sneer at such attempts as amateur should bear
in mind that those concerned were not professional
assasinsbut ordinary workers living under
intolerable oppression. At the very least, these
events should be made public and not hidden. They
were representative of the real feelings of German
workers during the years of classdefeat when their
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