Guilty by association, attacks on families and violent reactions were frequent:
These planned raids, together with threats, insults, beatings and arbitrary arrests, and the spontaneous acts of vengeance and terrorist onslaughts carried out by local SA groups which set up their own ‘private’ concentration camps, created an atmosphere of insecurity and helplessness even in working class strongholds.65
According to Szejnmann, ‘The persecution of Marxists was particularly ruthless in Saxony: more than one sixth of all concentration camps were on Saxon soil in 1933.’66
Shortly after Hitler assumed power, communists organized demonstrations. In Breslau, a general strike was ordered but the SA occupied the muster point and, together with the police, attacked the strikers: ‘the communists scattered, some running up nearby streets and smashing windows of shops selling Nazi uniforms’.67 One communist was killed and subsequent demonstrations were banned. Continued sporadic resistance was evident: shortly after the riot in Breslau, militants fired on the SA from a trade union headquarters, which led to further violence against workers’ organizations.
With the KPD, USPD, SPD, and working-class organizations drastically suppressed, supporters of the left grew demoralised. Remarkably, physical opposition still remained in places:
Approximately 2,000 members of the Kampfstaffeln (Fighting Units) in Leipzig—an SPD organization which had been set up to combat the Nazis by violent means—were prepared to occupy streets and public buildings. After the March 1933 elections, however, they waited in vain for three days for a signal to strike because their party leadership had decided against the use of violence.68
Organization became ever difficult as the arrests increased.
Although the Nazis systematically destroyed all established working-class organizations, they remained concerned that, as a class, workers benefited least from fascism whilst the regime entirely depended on their output in order to maintain itself. According to Tim Mason in Nazis, Fascism and the Working Class, ‘it is not wholly surprising that the regime should have enjoyed the active or passive consent of most sections of the middle class and of the power elites,’ whereas ‘the only tangible benefit for the working class was the increase in employment’—which after years of uncertainty and unemployment was no doubt welcome. Whilst a small percentage of workers did benefit, the vast majority were just able to manage. Increasing rearmament depended on consistent production, and Hitler needed the workers onside. However, work itself had transformed from ‘a social activity into a political duty’ and became ideological—as well as alienated—labour supporting a system that consistently disenfranchised those who maintained it.69
Fascist gangsterism and opportunism was not far behind with many chancers scrambling for positions and seeking influence in the new infrastructures. Nazi purges were carried out: many liberals and leftists were removed from positions of office; cultural and educational institutions, such as the Bauhaus, were closed; and fascist sycophants were all eager to profit from the new Germany. Members of the SA, some of whom had been around since the days of the Freikorps, also sought their rewards, knowing they had a potent militia of nearly three million at their disposal. However, they were resistant to being assimilated into the hierarchy of the regular military, which would rob them of their positions of power. This was not a satisfactory situation for Hitler who now wanted rid of the SA and ‘the “old fighters” who had been useful enough for street brawling, but for whom the party had no further use.’70 On the night of 30th June 1934, the leadership of the SA were assassinated in the Night of the Long Knives, leaving the way clear for the black-shirted SS.
Resistance
Socialists and communists did maintain a clandestine resistance, and though their acts of sabotage achieved little, the latter did develop an effective espionage system.
—Stanley G. Payne in A History of Fascism 1914–45
Given the severe duress under which anti-fascists operated, much activity was concerned with either secretive propaganda distribution or a limited strategy of sabotage, opportunist or otherwise, in the factories. Spies in the workplace and the union hierarchy meant that organization became increasingly difficult, but individual acts of resistance continued. Many people expressed their dissent through apathy at work, slow production, sick leave and absenteeism.
Rote Kapelle (Red Chapel) activists were active in passing information to the Russians and, although for a time it was relatively successful, the group was betrayed by a Russian contact, leading to the execution of seventy-eight anti-fascists. It was not unknown for communists to infiltrate the Gestapo, but the Gestapo more successfully infiltrated the communists and their secret organizations, which led to more arrests and executions. Many militants joined the resistance, and those who did not or could not, according to Detley J.K. Peukert, ‘kept an attitude of sullen refusal which on many cases led to positive acts of opposition’. Peukert also states that three kinds of resistance developed in the early years of Nazi domination: ‘resistance in order to preserve traditions, opinions and cohesion (informal discussion groups, camouflaged clubs and associations); resistance in order to devise plans for a post-fascist democratic state; and resistance in the sense of immediate action…(strike and sabotage)’.71
Adam Wolfram was a salesman who kept in contact with trade unionists and socialists on his travels, collecting and passing on intelligence, a job that was not without danger:
Side by side with this there were also active resistance groups which, at great risk to themselves, distributed information, leaflets and newspapers among the population. Unfortunately, Gestapo spies managed to track down these groups, round up the participants, torture them and send them to prisons and concentration camps.72
Political opponents were not only concentrated in the camps: forced labour and prisoners of war faced unimagined brutality, and punishments were carried out for even the most minor infraction. One unfortunate was caught with ten tins of boot polish whilst others were caught carrying 15 kg of venison and a bag of rabbit fur.73 Others resisted physically: one Russian POW was caught ‘urging the women workers to work more slowly’ and, when reprimanded, the fascist lackey said the POW became ‘abusive and threatened him with his fists…[and] he jumped at me and threw me to the ground.’74 This unknown worker was charged with sabotage, threatening behaviour, physical assault and undermining the guard’s authority. His fate is unknown but it is not hard to guess. German workers were also known to defend foreign workers: at the Duisburg colliery a worker defended a Russian prisoner from harassment by an overseer: ‘[he] turned on the foreman and defended the POW in a manner such as to encourage the latter to strike the foreman on the head with his lamp.… [He] received a gaping wound on the face which has required stitches.’75 The German miner had already spent time in a concentration camp and when reprimanded, boldly stated that he would carry on intervening. These were small acts of resistance but remarkable given the possible consequences.
Far be it from militant anti-fascists to take succour in the words of a former CIA director, but Allen Welsh Dulles supplied information on allied relations to anti-fascists both in exile and within Nazi Germany. Exiled socialists worked with Allied intelligence in addition to supplying propaganda, advice and money to their comrades: SPD, KPD, and other socialist militants maintained links with those still under the Nazi regime. One striking example was the charismatic Carlo Merendorff, a journalist who ‘studied, wrote, worked, laughed, slaved, fought, drank and loved through many a German landscape and was viewed by the fascists as a dangerous influence’.76 He spent between 1935 and 1937 in a concentration camp, but on his release continued his subversive activities before being killed in an air raid in 1941. Merendorff worked with Theodor Haubach, who co-founded of the Reichsbanner, the socialist militia who had once ‘pledged to uphold the Weimar constitution and defend the government against both communists and Nazis’. Merendorff and Haubach had agitated for a united front with syndicalists to oppose the Nazis.77
Informal
