Communism in Germany

Communism in Germany
Author: Adolf Ehrt
Publisher: Blurb
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2018-01-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781388963484

Contrary to post-war propaganda, it was not the Nazis who terrorized Germany prior to 1933, but the far Left. This book, based on original police case files from the time, shows how the far Left and their socialist party allies waged a campaign of violence, terrorism, armed uprising, forgery, subversion, and espionage from 1918 to 1933. It was the Left's violent attacks on ordinary Germans which forced the Nazis to develop their self-defense units, the Brownshirts (S.A.)-who are nowadays quite falsely portrayed as the aggressors. This illustrated work shows that the Communist conspiracy to create a 1918-style Bolshevik Revolution in Germany was very far advanced. Arms had been stockpiled in secret underground armories in the Communist Party headquarters. Bombings, assassinations, and a planned list of murders and street violence were already underway when the Reichstag arson-also now commonly falsely attributed to the Nazis-took place as part of their plan to create a Soviet Germany. A fully documented and fascinating study of an important period in history which definitively exposes the lies of postwar propagandists. From the book: "No fewer than 200 S.A. men fell whilst defending Germany against the Communist Internationale; 20,319 S.A and SS men were beaten and injured for life by the Communist terrorist troops, or otherwise wounded or seriously wounded. The fight in which they fell was no less honorable and vital that the German defensive war of 1914-1918, with the difference that the other sides of the barricades were not manned by honorable soldiers of a foreign nation, but by criminal gangs of the lower orders and misled members of our own people in the service of a rootless, international group of Jewish and Marxist intellectuals." An exact reproduction of the 1933 edition issued by the American section of the International Committee to Combat the World Menace of Communism, complete with all original illustrations.

Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918-1933

Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918-1933
Author: Norman Laporte
Publisher: Studies in Twentieth Century C
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781910448984

25 years after the archives were opened in Berlin and Moscow, the German Communist Party is the subject of new studies. This book makes this scholarship available in English for the first time.

A Jewish Communist in Weimar Germany

A Jewish Communist in Weimar Germany
Author: Ralf Hoffrogge
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 654
Release: 2017-07-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004337261

Walter Benjamin derided Werner Scholem as a ‘rogue’ in 1924. Josef Stalin referred him as a ‘splendid man’, but soon backtracked and labeled him an ‘imbecile’, while Ernst Thälmann, chairman of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), warned his followers against the dangers of ‘Scholemism’. For the philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem, however, Werner was first and foremost his older brother. The life of German-Jewish Communist Werner Scholem (1895–1940) had many facets. Werner and Gerhard, later Gershom, rebelled together against their authoritarian father and the atmosphere of national chauvinism engulfing Germany during World War I. After inspiring his younger brother to take up the Zionist cause, Werner himself underwent a long personal journey before deciding to join the Communist struggle. Scholem climbed the party ladder and orchestrated the KPD's ‘Bolshevisation’ campaign, only to be expelled as one of Stalin's opponents in 1926. He was arrested in 1933, and ultimately murdered in the Buchenwald concentration camp seven years later. This first biography of Werner Scholem tells his life story by drawing on a wide range of original sources and archive material long hidden beyond the Iron Curtain of the Cold War era. First published in German by UVK Verlagsgesellschaft as Werner Scholem - eine politische Biographie (1895-1940), Konstanz, 2014.

The Last Revolutionaries

The Last Revolutionaries
Author: Catherine Epstein
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674036549

"The Last Revolutionaries" tells a story of unwavering political devotion: it follows the lives of German communists across the tumultuous twentieth century. Before 1945, German communists were political outcasts in the Weimar Republic and courageous resisters in Nazi Germany; they also suffered Stalin's Great Purges and struggled through emigration in countries hostile to communism. After World War II, they became leaders of East Germany, where they ran a dictatorial regime until they were swept out of power by the people's revolution of 1989. In a compelling collective biography, Catherine Epstein conveys the hopes, fears, dreams, and disappointments of a generation that lived their political commitment. Focusing on eight individuals, "The Last Revolutionaries" shows how political ideology drove people's lives. Some of these communists, including the East German leaders Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, enjoyed great personal success. But others, including the purge victims Franz Dahlem and Karl Schirdewan, experienced devastating losses. And, as the book demonstrates, female and Jewish communists faced their own sets of difficulties in the movement to which they had given their all. Drawing on previously inaccessible sources as well as extensive personal interviews, Epstein offers an unparalleled portrait of the most enduring and influential generation of Central European communists. In the service of their party, these communists experienced solidarity and betrayal, power and persecution, sacrifice and reward, triumph and defeat. At once sordid and poignant, theirs is the story of European communism--from the heroic excitement of its youth, to the bureaucratic authoritarianism of its middle age, to the sorry debacle of its death.

Between Reform and Revolution

Between Reform and Revolution
Author: David E. Barclay
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 634
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781571810007

Twenty-three chapters by American, British, and German scholars explore the meanings of German socialism and communism from a variety of methodical and thematic perspectives often influenced by feminist and poststructuralist theories. Among the topics explored are: the Lassallean labor movement; depictions of gender, militancy, and organizing in the German socialist press at the turn of the century; communism and the public spheres of Weimar Germany; cultural socialism, popular culture, mass media, and the democratic project, 1900-1934; unity sentiments in the socialist underground, 1933-1936; population policy in the DDR, 1945-1960; the post-war labor unions and the politics of reconstruction; communist resistance between Comintern directives and Nazi terror; and the passing of German communism and the rise of a new New Left. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The East German Church and the End of Communism

The East German Church and the End of Communism
Author: John P. Burgess
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 198
Release: 1997
Genre: Church and state
ISBN: 0195110986

Drawing on his own research in East Germany and relying primarily on sources published in East Germany itself, author John Burgess demonstrates the roots of the church's theology in Barth, Bonhoeffer, and in the Barmen declaration, which in 1934 pronounced Christianity and Nazi ideology to be incompatible.

Bowling for Communism

Bowling for Communism
Author: Andrew Demshuk
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501751670

Bowling for Communism illuminates how civic life functioned in Leipzig, East Germany's second-largest city, on the eve of the 1989 revolution by exploring acts of "urban ingenuity" amid catastrophic urban decay. Andrew Demshuk profiles the creative activism of local communist officials who, with the help of scores of volunteers, constructed a palatial bowling alley without Berlin's knowledge or approval. In a city mired in disrepair, civic pride overcame resentment against a regime loathed for corruption, Stasi spies, and the Berlin Wall. Reconstructing such episodes through interviews and obscure archival materials, Demshuk shows how the public sphere functioned in Leipzig before the fall of communism. Hardly detached or inept, local officials worked around centralized failings to build a more humane city. And hardly disengaged, residents turned to black-market construction to patch up their surroundings. Because such "urban ingenuity" was premised on weakness in the centralized regime, the dystopian cityscape evolved from being merely a quotidian grievance to the backdrop for revolution. If, by their actions, officials were demonstrating that the regime was irrelevant, and if, in their own experiences, locals only attained basic repairs outside official channels, why should anyone have mourned the system when it was overthrown?

Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism

Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism
Author: Anna Holian
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2011-08-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472117807

In May of 1945, there were more than eight million “displaced persons” (or DPs) in Germany—recently liberated foreign workers, concentration camp prisoners, and prisoners of war from all of Nazi-occupied Europe, as well as eastern Europeans who had fled west before the advancing Red Army. Although most of them quickly returned home, it soon became clear that large numbers of eastern European DPs could or would not do so. Focusing on Bavaria, in the heart of the American occupation zone, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism examines the cultural and political worlds that four groups of displaced persons—Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish—created in Germany during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The volume investigates the development of refugee communities and how divergent interpretations of National Socialism and Soviet Communism defined these displaced groups. Combining German and eastern European history, Anna Holian draws on a rich array of sources in cultural and political history and engages the broader literature on displacement in the fields of anthropology, sociology, political theory, and cultural studies. Her book will interest students and scholars of German, eastern European, and Jewish history; migration and refugees; and human rights.

Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution

Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution
Author: Ralf Hoffrogge
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014-09-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004280065

Richard Müller, a leading figure of the German Revolution in 1918, is unknown today. As the operator and unionist who represented Berlin’s metalworkers, he was main organiser of the ‘Revolutionary Stewards’, a clandestine network that organised a series of mass strikes between 1916 and 1918. With strong support in the factories, the Revolutionary Stewards were the driving force of the Revolution. By telling Müller's story, this study gives a very different account of the revolutionary birth of the Weimar Republic. Using new archival sources and abandoning the traditional focus on the history of political parties, Ralf Hoffrogge zooms in on working class politics on the shop floor and its contribution to social change. First published in German by Karl Dietz Verlag as Richard Müller - Der Mann hinter der November Revolution, Berlin, 2008, this english edition was completerly revised for the english speaking audience and contains new sources and recent literature.

The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism

The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism
Author: C. Fischer
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1991-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN:

An investigation into how the public brawling between communists and Nazis during the Weimar era masked a more subtle and complex relationship. This work suggests that the communists were forced into compromising strategies to counter the popularity of the Nazis at every level of society.