Anti-Nazi Germans

Anti Nazi Germans

Enemies of the Nazi State within the Working Class, Merilyn Moos

German Volunteers in the French Resistance, Steve Cushion

              Book launch - 29th November 2020, 2pm

This book may come as a surprise to many readers. We are brought up to believe that the Nazis came to power in Germany with the overwhelming support of the people and that the French Resistance was like an overlong episode of “Hello Hello”. 

As Merilyn Moos argues, “It is a commonly held myth ... that there was little resistance in Germany to the Nazis. In fact, there was a wide diversity of opposition to the Nazi state: initially from within the working class movement and, later, from different sections of the State, judiciary and also the army.”

 

Close to one million Leftists were imprisoned in Germany between 1933 and 1945, of whom 200,000 were killed.

 

Of those who escaped this fate, around 5,000 German and Austrian exiles fought against Franco’s fascism in the Spanish Civil War as members of the Ernst Thälmann and Edgar André Brigades. Many of them were Jews.

 

After escaping from Germany with their lives many were not so lucky and died at the hands of Francos forces. Those who survived fled north into France and continued their anti-fascist struggle as part of the French Resistance.

 

This book is a harrowing account of what it meant to be a German anti-fascist. In Germany imprisonment, torture and death were the expected fate of resistors, but even so as late as 1943 strikes took place in the Ruhr mines and sabotage was reported inside armaments factories.

 

There was even an alternative to the Hitler Youth , the Edelweiss Pirates. Girls and boys managed to hold together as an anti-Nazi force at a time when resistance had become close to impossible. “They wore unconventional clothes, sang anti-militaristic songs, assaulted Hitler Youth patrols, insulted uniformed officers and party functionaries and even purchased illicit firearms"… Some of them carried out sabotage, derailed ammunition trains, distributed anti-Nazi leaflets and hid Jews.

 

A 1943 Nazi report from Düsseldorf admitted the appearance of "Down with Hitler’ graffiti and that however often it was removed, it would quickly reappear, especially during air-raids. The report goes on to admit these actions negatively affected the morale of some soldiers, who were even beginning to congregate among the Pirates.

 

The book gives detailed accounts of these anti-Nazis and is a powerful acknowledgement of a tradition of German anti-fascism that goes back to Rosa Luxemburg, the Spartacists and the Bavarian Revolution.

 

In post-war Germany anti-Nazis remained criminalised. As one working class resistor, Gertrud Koch, said "After the war there were no judges in Germany so the old Nazi judges were used and they upheld the criminalisation of what we did and who we were".

 

In post-war France, Steve Cushion explains, “Charles de Gaulle was committed to reconstructing French imperialism and wanted to stress the part that the French had played in liberating themselves from German occupation. The presence of German anti-fascists contradicted this account and they were ignored.’

 

Hidden too long from history this book is a valuable homage to anti-Nazi Germans and recognition that Trotsky was right when he said that ‘fascism is capitalism going to the dentist’. But, as with all dental visits, many refuse to open their mouths.

Zoom log in details; Topic: Mary Quaile Club public meeting 

Time: Nov 29, 2020 02:00 PM 

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Three Jewish Tailors from Stepney

In July 1936 three Jewish tailors from Stepney, East London, set off for Barcelona. Nat Cohen, Sam Masters and Allick Sheller cycled there to witness the People’s Olympiad. Six thousand athletes from 22 nations registered after the games had been hastily organised. 

This was the Spanish Republic's response to the racism and propaganda being spewed out by the Nazi regime as a build-up to the Berlin Olympics, due to open six days after the end of the People's Olympiad.

When the tailors entered the city, there was a feeling of euphoria. 20,000 tourists had come to Barcelona to see the 'alternative Olympics'. They arrived to witness a vibrant city in turmoil: the dockers were on strike, anarchist demonstrators were in the streets and walls were plastered with political slogans, alongside bright posters advertising the games. 
 
But the tailors never got to see the People's Olympiad. The city's euphoria was replaced with fear about a possible military coup. On their first morning in Barcelona, the tailors woke up to gunfire and sirens. The Civil War had begun. They decided to stay in Spain and join the resistance to Franco's fascists. 
 
6,000 to 8,000 of the 40,000 International Brigades' volunteers are estimated to have been Jewish, including nearly half the Poles, over one-third of the Americans and around 20 per cent of the Britons. They came from 54 countries to fight in what was to become ‘the first battle of the Second World War’. 
 
The leadership of the International Brigades considered forming an entirely Jewish battalion but, because the Brigades were used as shock troops with high casualties, this idea was rejected. A Jewish contingent, the Naftali Botwin Company, was set up within the Polish Palafox Battalion.

Gerben Zaagsma, author of Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War, claims the motivations of Jewish fighters were complex, especially as the situation of Jews in Eastern Europe was considerably different from those Jews in Britain or the United States. But as one recruit from the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, the unit of American volunteers, wrote, ‘I am a Jew and that is the reason I came to Spain. I know what it means to my people if fascism should win.’

Like the three tailors, George Nathan was a working-class Jew from the East End of London. He had joined the Brigade of Guards in the First World War, but left the army in disgust during the General Strike of 1926 after hearing fellow officers discuss shooting ‘dockland scum’. 
 
As Major Nathan, he became a much-respected Chief of Staff to the commander of the XV International Brigade. He died fighting in July 1937 during the battle of Brunete, alongside the men of his British battalion. Gold-tipped swagger-stick in hand, Nathan was hit by shrapnel and buried beneath olive trees on the banks of the Guadarrama River.

William Herrick, born William Horvitz, was among the first US recruits to fight in Spain. As his train left the Gare de Lyon in Paris bound for Barcelona, the recruits sang “The Internationale” and “Hatikvah”. His parents had fled Tsarist Russia and covered the walls of their apartment with pictures of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky. In his youth, Herrick had been active in the Young Pioneers and had helped organise unions amongst black sharecroppers in the Deep South. 
 
Herrick was wounded and returned to the US to write his book, Hermanos! which has been described as ‘the fictional counterpart to Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia'. Later he went on to write Jumping the Line: The Adventures and Misadventures of an AmericanRadical.

Moishe Stern, a Ukranian Jew, arrived in Spain with a forged Canadian passport. He adopted the name Emilio Kléber and became second-in-command to André Marty, the International Brigade’s commander. When Madrid was surrounded on three sides and expected to fall into Franco's hands in November 1936, Kléber led the XI International Brigade’s heroic efforts to save the Spanish capital. Initially feted in Soviet propaganda as the ‘Saviour of Madrid’, he later became a victim of Stalin's paranoia and died in a Soviet Gulag. 
 
Nat Cohen, one of the tailors who'd set off for the Olympiad, took part in the failed attempt to liberate Majorca from Franco's forces. He was also responsible for assembling the Tom Mann Centuria, the first effort to bring British volunteers into one unit.

The Spanish Civil War was a defeat for those who bravely stood up against fascism. It marked the start of a wider world war. The victory over Hitler and fascism involved great suffering until the bitter end. In the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto the Jewish resistance leader, Marek Edelman, was following in the footsteps of Jews who had fought in Spain from 1936 - 1939. Together, the vision, hopes and struggles of these freedom fighters centred on the liberation of all mankind through socialism. 
 
Their sacrifice was a far cry from the pernicious nationalism of those they had fought against and the Zionists who today falsely claim them as their own.

David Wilson & Anne Aylor

New Francos

“The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family's security.” David Cameron. These words could have been said by General Franco – just replace 'Republicans' or 'Reds for The Labour Party. Even some Tories understand this – David Davis has attacked the trade union bill as being 'Franco-style'. Last night at the Jeremy Corbyn celebration at London's Forum Mark Steel said,  "What has happened is exciting. It's marvellous but it is also daunting because all of us have to do what we can do to protect Jeremy - not just Jeremy, but the ideas that he stands for ... there's been a movement building and it's been looking for someone, some thing, somewhere to attach it to. They found it a bit in Scotland and with Caroline Lucas and people like that - and now very much with Jeremy. It's a fantastic movement which we've got to protect." The last place this movement will affect will be in Parliament – just look at the glum faces and silence on the Labour benches yesterday. Never thought I'd say this, but join Mark Steel and join the Labour Party. Be a part of the Corbyn protection. Be active against the new Francos. 

children and war

 “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” Martin Luther King Jnr.

Here are two pics from children in war (Spain in the 1930s and Bosnia Hercegovina 60 years later) - separated by time and place, but united in their suffering.

I hope "Left Field" breaks a lot of silences.