ADVERSARIES OF HITLER

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 November 1933, Page 4

ADVERSARIES OF HITLER

THEIR DIFFICULT TASK There is not effective opposition to Germany, nothing that can, as yet hold up the Nazis in their advance or prevent them from consolidating their victory. Nevertheless the German labour movement is not dead. It has begun a new life under conditions of poverty, danger, and hardship wholly different from those of the'past. One day, perhaps, it will be strong enough to shake the Dictatorship, but it is far from being so as yet. All it can hope to do for the time being is to elude the enemy and' gather organised strength underground for the struggle that will surely come some day,- says the “Manchester Guardian.”

The German Labour movement is now made up of fragments of former working-class organisations —the Communists (K.P.D.), the Communist Opposition (K.P.0.), the Socialist Labour Party (S.A.P.), the Social Democrats (S.P.D.), and the Socialist Labour Youth (S.A.J.). The German trade .unions have ceased to exist, and there is no sign and no likelihood of their revival. Nor is there any kind of liberal opposition. The Communists have just suffered a smashing defeat at the hands of the gestapo (the “Geheime iStaatspolizei” or the German “Cheka”). They were able to maintain a skeleton organisation in most industrial towns, despite the Terror. The “Rote Fahne” reappeared illegally soon after the Dictatorship was established. Innumerable printed or hectographed leafllets were circulated in the factories or sold surreptitiously in the streets. Great heroism was shown and hundreds of Communists suffered arrest, imprisonment, torture, or death.

But the chronic weaknesses of the German Communist Party have reasserted themselves, and more disastrously than ever. The party has always been sectarian rather than political, and therefore incapable of change. An entirely new situation has arisen, and yet the whole Communist propaganda in Germany to-day is hardly distinguishable from that of a year ago, or, for that matter, of ten years ago. But Communist courage and the mere fact that the Communists were ahead of all the other opposition in doing something may have won ovei' many workmen from the ranks of the Socialists and perhaps of the Nazis. But their propaganda in itself has little or no appeal—it belongs to a dead past. The German Commpnists are soaked in the so-called “ideology” that prevails in Moscow. The Russians —as their commentaries on the German situation show —have, fanciful notions of what is happening in Hitler’s “Third Realm.” The Russian Revolution, as conceived by Russian Communists (most .of whom now belong to the post-revolutionary era), has become a-legend that is but a distant and distorted simulacrum of the truth. Moreover, that Revolution occurred in conditions very different from those that exist in a modern and highly industrialised country and would, even if realistically apprehended, be no model at all for a future German revolution. Thus there is a permanent drag on the Communists that, despite their physical audacity, holds them back in a world of dead sectarian illusion.

Thej’ have, also suffered disaster because they have far more unreliable persons in their midst than any other working-class party. For years Communists passed over to the Nazis and Nazis to the Communists in continual ebb and flow. In the ranks of the Communists there are innumerable semiNazis, and in the ranks of the Nazis there are innumerable semi-Commun-ists. A multitude of Communists went over to the Nazis when the Dictatorship was established, and many former members of the “Red Fighting Front” wear the brown uniform of the Storm troops. The Communists have never been free from an abnormally high proportion of members with low ethical standards. Thus they suffer from continual betrayals, and whenever a few Communists come together there is always a danger, far greater than in any other party, that there are informers amongst them. They have had a start over the Socialists in so far as they are not new to illegal work. They formed their “Groups of Five” long ago, on the assumption that there must be at least fiVe men of indubitable loyaltj’ in

every district. ' But this device has only had partial success —again and again it has been found that one of the five has been an informer. Thus the Communists have suffered frightful losses —they have been and are still being arrested in multitudes, and the Gestapo has of late broken right into their innermost organisation.

LONGING FOR UNITY It is true that their courage has exposed them to great risks, but. the main reason for their enormous casualties is that they are riddled with informers. There is a great longing for labour unity amongst the'German workmen, but the other oppositional groups who have tried to co-operate with the Communists have thereby opened their own ranks to informers. Besides, whereas all the other groups have ceased attacking one another, the Communists miss no opportunity of attacking the Socialists, "which is the inevitable consequence of their sectarian and non-political character. The Communists can only conceive of a “united front” under Communist leadership. This attitude—which is proclaimed quite bluntly in the “Rote Fahne” dated “middle of July”—is also inherent in the sectarian character.

! The K.1’.0. began to form “Groups I of Five” over a year ago. They are a very small group, but are much less doctrinaire without being less audacious than the K.P.D. Their losses have been slight. They have their d|wn agents amongst the Brown Shirts, while the Brown Shirts have none in the K.P.O. Bui the.v are desperately poor, and are able to produce hardly any printed matter. Their tj’pewritten or hectographed leaflets are eagerly read, workmen often paying more for I them than the fixed price. The S.P.D. are still in a condition of disarhiy. Thej’ were able to save a large part of their Lunds. The executive was transferred to Prague, but their contact with the Socialist workmen in Germany is still slight. The new “Vorwarts,” of which an edition so small that it can be enclosed in an ordinary letter is printed and smuggled into Germany, is beginning to have a circulation, but it is not read nearly as much as Ihc “Rote Fahne.”

The S.A.P. arc a small group who broke away from the S.P.D. over a

year ago. They almost faded away, but have had a slight revival under the dictatorship.