in a predictable manner: ‘ultra-Right wing students, young engineers and former officers’ formed into strike-breaking Technical Emergency Squads that were maintained and ‘in later years [they were] often used to break the organized resistance of labour’.7
The association with gangster-like behaviour recurs throughout fascist history. Anderson states that the Freikorps were responsible for attacks on and murders of radical workers and ‘were comparable to organized gangsterism in America, except they were much more dangerous’. They made public calls for the executions of prominent radicals on posters reading, ‘Kill their leaders. Kill Liebknecht!’8
After Russia, Germany had the largest working class in the world, and Stephen J. Lee illustrates the left-wing power base in 1920 thusly: ‘Challenges came in 1920 from rail and miner’s strikes, mass demonstrations by the USPD [Independent Social Democrats] and uprisings in the Ruhr from a variety of groups ranging from workers’ self-defence units, USPD activists, syndicalists and communists.’9
The SPD unions were well institutionalised in the factories and they had the advantage over the communists: the KPD had 300,000 members but 80–90 percent of them were unemployed so they lacked the syndicalist potential of the socialists—although the reformist nature of the SPD meant that the syndicalist approach of politically motivated strikes would be used infrequently. The KPD’s forces were best mobilised on the streets. Both the communists and fascists realised there was a potential force otherwise unengaged in the ranks of the jobless, and they both vied for members from there, organizing propaganda that dealt specifically with unemployment issues: ‘the increasing competition between Nazis and Communists to woo those who were out of work led to severe clashes between both sets of activists in front of the unemployment offices’.10 The KPD identified anger and dissatisfaction amidst the ranks of the unemployed and saw that the young were the worst-affected of all. The KPD recruited at the offices where the unemployed attended twice weekly with considerable success: ‘A Red Help organization, special unemployment committees and the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition ( RGO) recruited large numbers’.11
In 1920, left-wing militancy increased and there was fear of a communist coup: ‘A spontaneous strike broke out in the Ruhr in which Independent Social Democrats, anarcho-syndicalists and some supporters of the Majority Social Democrat Party were as important as the Communists. Arms were distributed and barricades erected’.12 Again, the reformist SPD sent in forces to crush the rebellion (which would have a long-term effect on relations with KPD militants).
Despite moves to dissolve the Freikorps following the Munich uprising, the remaining groups who had not been assimilated into formal military structures like the Reichswehr still benefited from the protection of the reinstated Bavarian government. They began operating as Patriotic Leagues, and the army and police supplied weapons, ignoring the typical fascist gangsterism, and protected such murder gangs. The paralegal status of reactionary militias is a constant feature of fascism’s spotty complexion, given to political thuggery and intimidation with the tacit (and not so tacit) support of the state. This was something that Hitler capitalised on, and in 1921, the SA squads were formed and specialised in intimidating workers’ demonstrations, in street violence and in the protection of fascist meetings. Ernst Rohm also bolstered the ranks of the SA with unreformed Freikorps and the disbanded Defence Leagues. Hitler needed to defend his activities against attacks from political opponents and he drew on ‘comrades who had seen active service with [him;] others were young Party members’ for security; he also believed that ‘the best means of defence is to attack, and the reputation of our hall-guard squads stamped us as a political fighting force and not as a debating society’. The SA was used to attack the opposition members and smash up meetings, although they were not the only ones: in Munich in 1921, there was a mass battle as left-wing opposition attacked a Nazi meeting, ‘which was built up into a Party legend’. The SA also continued Mussolini’s tradition of violent censorship and targeted left-wing printing presses and newspapers. Like other fascist leaders, Hitler centralised violence within his ideology, as and when apposite, and the more public the better. This organized violence amplified the physical aspect of the Nazis along with their uniforms, marches, flags and tedious martial music on city streets.13
Militants clearly had to organize physical opposition in order to counter and defeat this concerted right-wing violence, so in 1923 the KPD organized the Proletarian Hundreds, which consisted of ‘several hundred thousand men…ready for the next wave of revolution’.14 SPD members also joined in ‘the setting up of the Proletarian Hundreds in Saxony—these were unarmed contingents which were manned by SPD and KPD activists and were formed to defend Republican institutions against counter-revolutionary activities from the far right’.15 The Proletarian Hundreds also ‘disrupted conservative and nationalist celebrations’, and on one occasion, ‘more than 100 persons from Chemnitz disrupted the parade. Knife fights took place. One of the injured had to go to hospital’.16 The Proletarian Hundreds were eventually outlawed.
In 1923, the SA planned to attack the annual left-wing May Day demonstrations in Munich, partly as a publicity stunt: after all, what use is political violence if no one notices? The SA were armed with machine guns and rifles and this was meant to be more than the routine street fights that many were used to; it was to be a major statement of Hitler’s intentions. However, they were routed by a small detachment of troops and police; so embarrassed was the future Fuhrer that he disappeared from sight for several months after it. After emerging from his self-imposed exile in November 1923, Hitler became the leader of the Kampfbund, a formation of Freikorps, Patriotic Leagues and assorted other violent groupuscules, which he then led into the middle of Munich in an attempted putsch. State forces in much smaller numbers rebuffed them again and they dispersed, only to be reorganized in greater numbers through Nazi mythmaking. Hitler fled the scene, leaving several of his comrades dead on the paving stones.
Anti-Fascist Action
But among the dead were people from the Reichsbanner as well as people of ours,
So we said to the comrades of the SPD:
Are we to stand by while they murder our comrades?
Fight alongside us in the Anti-Fascist Front!
—Bertolt Brecht, ‘When the Fascists Keep Getting Stronger’
Anti-fascist activity was widespread and violent from the start of the Republic. In 1923, fascists ‘faced persistent pressure from the workers’ movement who searched suspects for weapons and disrupted or broke up Nazi meetings’.17 In the town of Werdau, ‘Communists forced their way’ into a Nazi meeting and ‘beat up the National Socialists with clubs and sticks’.18 In Zschopau, in 1930, a Nazi meeting attracted 550 attendees, four hundred of whom were anti-fascists. As tensions increased, ‘the Communists demanded to stay in the hall. At this moment a beer glass flew from the middle of the hall to the stage where the stewards were. A few Stormtroopers grabbed chairs to use them as protection against projectiles. When the brawl started, both sides used chairs, part of chairs, beer glasses, coffee cups, etc. to beat or throw’. The room and many participants ended much the worse for wear.19
The principle anti-fascist groups were Roter Frontkämpferbund ( RFB, Red Front Fighters), AJG (Anti-Fascist Youth Guards), the Fighting Leagues and Anti-Fascist Action ( AFA), all operating in a militant capacity, all aligned with the KPD. The Proletarian Hundreds had been operating since 1923. These groups also worked as propaganda units. The Brownshirts of the SA were also built up, and they increased their policy of encroachment in ‘Red’ areas. In May 1924, the Nazis staged a demonstration in Halle, and despite the Proletarian Hundreds and Red Front Fighters being banned, communist
