with “the fascists”.’20 In a show of strength, the KPD could also mobilise between ‘20,000 and 40,000 uniformed RFB members’ dressed in ‘green Russian shirts, jackboots, army belts, and caps with the red star’.21
The youth wing, Young Red Front ( YRF), could mobilise an equal amount and were well-known for their over-enthusiastic approach regarding both cops and fascists during ‘street patrols.’ There was also a ‘straight-edge’ aspect to the YRF, with a ban on cinema, drinking, smoking and pornography. According to Merkl,
The Communists needed a new and more centralized paramilitary organization that could protect their rallies and speakers, demonstrate in the streets, engage in canvassing and propaganda during elections, and, most of all, stand its ground against the paramilitary shock troops of the right.22
In 1924, realising the escalation of paramilitary organizations on both sides, the SPD organized the Reichsbanner, a physical defence force that recruited members from outside the SPD and grew to a million strong. The Reichsbanner proved to be an effective organization but one whose fortunes varied and were dependent on the political motives of the SPD of the time. By 1928, however, the Reichsbanner had gained a sense of militancy and ‘prepared to wage a much more vigorous battle against Hitler’s SA’.23 And they needed to.
The Reichsbanner ‘was the largest paramilitary army of its time, with between 1.5 and 3.5 million members’ and was set up initially to protect the Republic, as the SPD government could not trust the Reichswehr, the regular army, which was rife with reactionary and conservative forces.24 As things became more violent, the Reichsbanner had to raise their game and ‘organized an elite Protective Formation (Schufo), which could stand up to the Stormtroopers in street fighting and meeting-hall battles’, although they remained unarmed.25 The tone of the SPD’s Iron Front propaganda also shifted focus from defending the Republic to the ‘defense of working class interests.’26
Red Berlin
All through our red Berlin the Nazis strutted, in fours and fives,
In their new uniforms, murdering
Our comrades.
—Bertolt Brecht, ‘When the Fascists Keep Getting Stronger’
Not all towns succumbed to Nazi provocation or their attempts to organize: ‘in 1926, the Nazis in Freiburg admitted that their SA was not able to protect two local party meetings.… Instead the SA was beaten up twice on these occasions by Marxist followers.’27 The Nazis found it hard to make inroads into the working-class areas that were predominantly aligned to left-wing parties. In ‘Red’ Saxony in Central Germany, militant anti-fascism was a considerable force up until 1934. A typical provocation occurred when Nazi fanatic Joseph Goebbels held a meeting in a KPD beer hall in Wedding, which led to fighting in the streets in early 1927. Shortly after, on a train, a brawl erupted between SA and RFB men which destroyed the carriage and led to confrontations throughout the night. The SA suffered a temporary ban.
Control of the Streets
In and around Leipzig…the clashes were at their most severe and took the heaviest toll of human life.
—C.W.W. Szejnmann in Nazism in Central Germany
Nazis faced violent opposition when trying to organize activities in ‘Red’ Leipzig, which ‘tended to turn into wild brawls between the SA and Marxist supporters and the Nazis had to leave again, highly frustrated’.28 Facing either well-organized or violent opposition in the workplaces, the Nazis looked to ‘the home front’ in their recruiting drives: ‘In places where they faced overwhelming resistance they often avoided outright confrontation. As parades or public meetings in the west of Leipzig only fuelled tough resistance from Marxist activists, they preferred to be active “beneath the surface”’.29 Fascists organized a surprise march through Plauen, which meant that the left-wing residents ‘could not demonstrate their skill in building street barricades and limited themselves to throwing beer bottles…[and] the usual shouting of “Red Front!” and “Down! Down! Down!”’30 Even as Hitler edged closer to power, working-class resistance remained strong with one organizer reporting,
The fight in our district is incredibly hard. Marxism defends it as its rightful domain. SA members who walk home alone are attacked; party members, as soon as they are known as such, are watched every step they make; their family members are hounded, even children suffer due to the terror of the red comrades; business people are boycotted…the pack does not even shrink from attacks in apartments.31
On the May Day demonstrations in Wedding in 1928, the SDP police chief demanded that KPD demonstrators disperse; this led to pitched battles and several days of rioting, leaving twenty-five people dead and 160 seriously injured. The RFB were banned. As with most proscribed militant organizations, they simply reformed under another name but also lost significant membership numbers. Following May Day 1928, the SA attempted to march through Wedding and were met with fury. The police stepped in at the last moment to prevent the leftists from attacking the interlopers. Merkl describes the repercussions thus:
There followed other clashes, such as a half-hour street battle involving 100 to 150 Red Fronters near their Sturmlokales Volksgarten and two trucks of SA returning from a campaign in small towns outside Berlin. Pavement stones, beer steins, fence poles, garden furniture, and flag poles served both sides until the Volksgarten was totally demolished, with beer gushing from the smashed counter.32
The Nazis attempted to march through Neukoln in a provocative gesture. The workers reacted with violence, leaving the fascists with serious injuries. Although they were initially repulsed, it was only the beginning of a Nazi incursion into ‘Red’ territory, and in 1928, the SA started setting up the first Sturmlokales, public bars or meeting places in the area. Communists responded by occupying Nazi meeting halls, which caused the predictable battles and also replicated the intrusion tactics of the Nazis: ‘Three times in one week, they tried to storm the Treptow Sturmlokale of the SA, the second time allegedly with 180 men of the elite Liebknecht Hundreds, and under police protection. The third time the RFB completely destroyed the SA hangout.’33
On May Day in 1929, the KPD staged an illegal demonstration, which was attacked by baton-wielding riot police. Hundreds of arrests and many beatings were reported as the police imposed quasi-martial law. Thirty people were killed. The KPD called a general strike for the following day and, in response to this, the RFB, the AJG youth wing, and the newspaper were banned. The KPD viewed this outrage as a ‘confrontation between Social Democrat police and Communist workers’.34 KPD resentment of the socialists was also guided by the rapidly changing and opportunistic foreign policy objectives of Stalin, which lay behind the increased use of the ‘social fascist’ insult, and that culminated in the disastrous ultra-left ‘third period’ strategy, where the KPD saw Social Democracy as no different from the Nazis.
By 1929, KPD leader Ernst Thaelmann and others had increased recruitment amongst the unemployed at the labour exchanges where thousands gathered every day, despite the reservation of the Moscow-dominated Communist International. The SPD was frequently disparaging about the KPD, referring to their ‘Bolshevism, the militarism of the loafers’, and pointing out the fact that 80–90 percent of the communists were unemployed and that the party was not as politically effective in the workplace as the SPD was.35 The KPD was increasingly competing with the Nazis who, being better funded, could offer temporary work for the unemployed. The KPD organized ‘proletarian shopping trips’, where unemployed workers would raid stores and take goods gratis. There was some discussion over how much was being taken and of what kind and if this was a political or a more dubious act: Walter Ulbricht, later leading figure of the DDR and Stalinist henchman in Spain, described these missions, quaintly, as ‘self-help’.
Initially, for the most part, the KPD was involved in defensive
