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Home , Karl Liebknecht, Paul Levi

COMMUNISM IN UNDER THE IN GERMANY UNDER THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

Ben Fowkes

M MACMILLAN PRESS WNOON © Ben Fowkes 1984 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1984 978-0-333-27270-1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission

First published 1984 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world

ISBN 978-0-333-27271-8 ISBN 978-1-349-17373-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17373-0 Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps Vlll

Preface lX

List ofAbbreviations Xl

The Maps xu

1 THE PREHISTORY OF GERMAN COMMUNISM and in the Nineteenth Century 1 Left Radicalism and the Marxist Centre before 1914 4 The Impact ofWar 8 Spartacus and the USPD 10 The November Revolution and the Council Movement 15 The Founding of the of Germany (KPD) 19

2 FROM RADICAL SECT TO MASS PARTY, 1919 TO 1920 The Protest Action ofJanuary 1919 24 The Campaign for 'Socialisation' and 27 The End of the Council Movement 30 's Fight against Putschism in the KPD 34 The Defeat and Expulsion of the Semi-syndicalist Opposition 3 7 The Uneasy Relationship with the USPD 40 The Crushing of the 44 The Campaign to Win the USPD for Communism 49

v VI Contents

3 FORCING THE PACE OF REVOLUTION The Unification Congress 54 The Italian Problem 58 The March Action 63 The Loss of Paul Levi 68

4 THE REFLUX OF REVOLUTION The Emergence of the United Front Policy 74 Ernst Meyer and the Heyday of the United Front 79 'Workers' Government' and Ruhr Invasion 84

5 THE FAILED OCTOBER The Conflict between Heinrich Brandler and the KPD Left 91 The Twin Crises of Passive Resistance and Inflation 95 Revolution in the Offing 99 A Disastrous Denouement 104

6 COMMUNIST DEFEAT AND CAPITALIST STABILISATION Recriminations in Moscow 110 The Triumph of the KPD Left 114 The Flight from the Trade Unions 119 Ultra-left Politics and Friction with the Comintern 122 Steering a Course to the Right 125 The Tenth Party Congress 129 The Fall of Ruth Fischer 132 The Party under Ernst Thalmann 13 7 The Expulsion of the KPD Left 140 The Pseudo-concentration of Forces 142

7 ROUTE TO CATASTROPHE Stalin Intervenes Decisively 145 The Open Letter against the Right 151 The Barricades of May and the Twelfth Party Congress 153 '' and Genuine Fascism 157 'Anti-Fascist Action' in Theory and Practice 166 Contents Vll

8 SOME STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF THE KPD Sociology 172 Organisation and Discipline in the KPD 183 The International Dimension 189 Conclusion 198

Appendix 1 The Sources for the Study of German Communism 202

Appendix 2 Statistical Tables 204

Notes and References 209

Index 237 List of Illustrations and Maps

ILLUSTRATIONS

1 A detachment of the 'Red Army of the Ruhr' 48 2 Pro-Kapp troops firing on demonstrators in 48 3 Five early leaders of the KPD (, , , Paul Levi, Heinrich Brandler) and 69 4 Ernst Thalmann in RFB uniform 136 5 Communist poster of February 1933 for the last Weimar election 170

MAPS

1 Distribution of the KPD vote (average of three elections, May and December 1924, May 1928) Xll 2 Places of significance in the history of German communism Xlll

The first four illustrations are reproduced by courtesy of Dietz Verlag, Berlin, and the fifth by courtesy of Bundesarchiv, Koblenz.

viii Preface

This book is an account of German communism in its organisational embodiment, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Dissident groups of communists (and there were many) are for this reason excluded from the story, except where they achieved a sufficiently powerful impact to affect the way the KPD itself behaved. This kind of interaction occurred rarely, perhaps only once: in the case of the earliest, and proportionately strongest, group of dissidents, who formed themselves into the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD). Subsequent groups had a minimal impact on the party, once expelled. Even the defection of many leading trade-unionists in 1921 and again in 1928 was insufficient to deflect the party from its chosen course. For most of its history the KPD inhabited a self-sufficient world, which made it immune even to the powerful arguments advanced by the Trotskyist opposition of the early 1930s. When top party leaders fell foul of the Co mintern (as they so often did) their departure caused scarcely a ripple among the ordinary members of the party. The 'communism' I propose to investigate is therefore 'orthodox communism', the communism of the KPD, from its foundation in 1919 to its suppression by the Nazis in 1933. The chronological limits are conveniently determined by the transition from legality to illegality. I have concentrated on the activities and aims of the party's leaders, saying little of the middle cadres, let alone the ordinary members. The party was organised in such a way as to ensure that the political line was taken from the top and that individual initiatives did not take place. Even so, it would have been of interest to build up a picture of the average party member, his or her state of mind, the instinctive hostility to Social Democracy, the faith in the and in the , to enter the obscure world of the 'communist subculture', to observe the exhausting round of activities and

ix X Preface

meetings required of a militant. I have not felt equal to this task, so brilliantly performed by Annie Kriegel for the French communists. 1 At the other end of the spectrum one might have looked at the contributions to Marxist theory which emerged from within, or alongside, the KPD. But this would in practice have meant writing part of a history of Marxism in the twentieth century. The present work has the modest objective of providing a connected account of the party's history, both as a case study in the internal evolution of the communist movement, and for its contribution, which was at times very significant, to the contemporary German political scene. The research pursued for over thirty years by scholars inside and outside Germany has been almost exclusively centred on the 'high politics' of the KPD, as is only natural given the character of the main sources. 2 But even within this broad area ditierent approaches are possible. One may concentrate attention on the party's internal faction fights. 3 One may study day-to-day communist policies and their relationship to the broader political context,4 and finally one may take the theoretical standpoint and look at the theory and practice of socialist revolution as exemplified in the KPD.5 All these approaches have their value, the first perhaps more for periods of political stagnation, the second for the occasional moment of revolutionary paroxysm, when the party's decisions could actually change the course of history, the third as a key to understanding the reasons behind the twists and turns of policy at a level deeper than that of power struggles between individuals. I have tried to achieve a harmonious compromise between all three. The book is cast in the form of a chronological history of the KPD, but the final chapter shows that the party was also a living organism, with its own internal laws of development, a micro• society like all communist parties, embedded in the soil of capitalism yet not entirely one with it. The companion volume of documents, The German Left under the Weimar Republic, is intended to bring the reader into closer contact with the sources, and in particular to explore the whole problem of the division of the German working-class movement into mutually hostile parties and the consequences following from this. I should like to thank the Stiftung, Bonn, and the Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, for allowing me access to certain documents. List of Abbreviations

ADGB Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (General German Confederation) BL Bezirksleitung (District Directorate) ECCI Executive Committee of the Communist Intern a tional OMS Otdel Mezhdunarodnoy Svyazi (International Relations Section) PEUVAG Papiererzeugungs-und Verwertungs-Aktiengesellschaft (Paper Production and Utilisation Company) RF Die Rote Fahne (Berlin) RFB Roter Frontkiimpferbund (League of Red Front Fighters) RGO Revolutioniire Gewerkschaftsopposition (Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition) RILU Red International of Labour Unions RSB Roter Soldatenbund (League of Red Soldiers) SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands ( of Germany) USPD Unabhiingige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany) VKPD Vereinigte Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (United Communist Party of Germany) ZA Zentralausschuss (Central Commission) ZK Zentralkomitee (Central Committee)

xi ~:

~ "' ~ ~

~ 2-5 p&f cent c::J 5-10 per cent ITIIIIIII 10- 15 per cent emil 15-20 per cent [:::::J ov& r 20 per cent

MAP 1 Distribution of the KPD vote (average of three elections, May and December 1924, May 1928) •Mansfeld Halle• • ~ Hamborn. •Gelsenkirehen • •Essen "' Mlilheim ~ Limbach• • ~ Chemnitz ""

eHanau

•Ludwigshafen

5: MAP 2 Places of significance in the history of German communism