THE FEAT OF THE GERMAN "YOUNG GUARDS" IS 70 YEARS Two years ago I happened to take part in a seminar for teachers of the German language "Culture and art in the city of Munich". While visiting the University of Munich, I was struck by a story about the White Rose resistance movement: how could such a youth political movement arise in the very heart of Germany, where fascism was born? I want to introduce you to the history of these courageous young people.
Article by Alexander Pavlov The student anti-fascist organization "White Rose" for the Germans is the same as the "Young Guard" for those who were born in the USSR. The German youth has its own "Young Guard", about the feat of which the young citizens of Germany begin to tell, perhaps not in kindergarten. The White Rose Resistance movement, of course, was not as numerous as the Krasnodon organization of young anti-fascists, but this is not important for the Germans. The country that unleashed one of the bloodiest wars in the history of the twentieth century is proud of the seven heroes, thanks to whom, as well as thousands of Germans like them, Germany managed to kill the demon of Nazism in itself. It has been 70 years since the defeat of the White Rose. All members of the resistance were executed. The head for the fight against Nazism was laid down by: students of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Munich Christoph Probst, Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell and Willy Graf, student of the Faculty of Philosophy Sophie Scholl, student of the Faculty of Chemistry Hans Leipelt, and Professor of Philosophy Kurt Huber. All the “Belarusians” at the time of execution were from 21 to 25 years old, with the exception of Professor Huber, who by that time had turned 49.
Sophie Scholl
Christoph Probst
Alexander Schmorell at a lecture
Hans Scholl
Willy Graf
Kurt Huber
Although the heroic story of the "White Rose" ended before it really began (the organization lasted a little more than six months), the memory of the feat of the young Munich residents is honored sacredly, and in the truest sense of the word - last year one of the "Belarusians", a native of Russia Alexander Schmorell, canonized as a locally venerated saint of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Both squares in front of the main building of the University of Munich (Geschwister-Scholl-Platz and Professor-Huber-Platz) are named after Hans and Sophie Scholl, who are considered to be the main activists of the movement in Germany, as well as Professor Huber.
And in front of the university building, the leaflets of the "White Rose" are forever immortalized
In addition, in the Munich campus, all the streets bear the names of the band members. "White Rose" was formed in June 1942. A little earlier, in the winter of that year, the students met the artist Manfred Eikemeier, who told them about the Jewish ghettos and the mass extermination of Jews. The students were outraged by the racist policies of the authorities. It was then that they had the idea to create an organization to combat the existing regime. The romantic name for the movement was not chosen by chance - that's exactly what, "White Rose", was the name of the anti-fascist novel by the American writer of German origin Bruno Traven. The purpose of the movement was to bring to the ignorant population information about the crimes of the Third Reich against humanity. In one of the first leaflets written by Alexander Schmorel, it was written: “No, we did not want to write about the Jewish question in this leaflet, not to compose a speech in defense of the Jews - no, we only wanted to cite the fact that since the conquest Poland, three hundred thousand Jews in this country were killed in the most brutal way. In this we see a horrendous crime against the dignity of people, a crime that has not been equaled in the entire history of mankind. The guys delivered the first batch of leaflets to German and Austrian cities, placing them selectively in mailboxes. Then they sent out leaflets in letters to various addresses. When the stamps for the envelopes ran out, the Belorozovites began to lay out leaflets in the porches and yards, telephone booths and shops. “We are your conscience,” was written in the leaflets. “White Rose will not leave you alone!” The police quickly found out about the leaflets - many recipients, out of harm's way, hurried to hand them over there themselves. However, they could not catch the “Belarusians” for a long time. Soon, the students became so bold that they began to make night trips to the city, during which they left on the walls of the houses the inscriptions “Down with Hitler!”, “Hitler is a murderer!” etc. And a few weeks later, intoxicated with success, forgetting about the precautions and dangers, the guys began to lay out leaflets in the classrooms at the university.
Letter from Hans Scholl from the Eastern Front. It is an exhibit of the museum in the building of the university.
On February 18, 1943, hundreds of leaflets thrown by Sophie Scholl from the top floor of the main building scattered around the courtyard of the University of Munich. In fact, this demarche was not included in the plans of the “Belorozovites”: Sophie and her brother Hans had already laid out packs of leaflets with appeals to their classmates near the classrooms on the ground floor and were about to leave the main building. But for some reason they suddenly decided to climb higher in order to put the remaining copies there. The students were sure that they would go unnoticed, but they were seen by a university locksmith, who, in the end, handed over the guys to the Gestapo. Why did the participants in the resistance take such a rash step, which ultimately led to their death? “These questions will forever remain unanswered,” says historian Ursula Kaufmann of the White Rose Foundation of the latest action of the German “Young Guards”. Surely, it's all about enthusiasm and "total exhaustion," says the historian. “Of course, it would have been better if they hadn’t gone upstairs that day - until that day the Gestapo could not get on their trail,” Kaufman said. In her opinion, some euphoria could also play a role due to the gradually loosening power of the National Socialists and the previous successful actions of the White Rose. However, the participants in the resistance themselves may have been guided by other motives. “Someone must finally start this process,” Sophie Scholl said a few hours before her execution, in February 1943, when asked about the motives for her actions. Interest in the feat of the "White Rose" has not weakened to this day, especially among students and schoolchildren. After all, many young Germans associate themselves with members of the resistance movement, says Hildegard Kronawitter, chairman of the board of the White Rose Foundation. “The white rose symbolizes purity – including purity of conscience,” Kronawitter says. And the student association of the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich has long, although so far unsuccessfully, been fighting for the renaming of its alma mater to the Scholl Brother and Sister University.
The party underground was active in the enemy's rear. From the first days of the war, under his leadership, militant anti-fascist Komsomol and youth underground organizations and groups were created in Baranovichi, Orsha, Grodno, Gomel, Bobruisk, Brest, Mogilev, Mozyr and many other settlements. Some organizations managed to form in advance, others - after the seizure of the territory by the Wehrmacht troops.
At the end of June 1941, the first underground organizations were created in Minsk, which were led by the Minsk Underground City Committee of the CP(b)B under the leadership of the courageous patriot I. Kovalev. The anti-fascist underground united more than 9 thousand residents of the city of thirty nationalities, as well as representatives of nine European countries. During the years of occupation, the underground fighters brought more than 10 thousand families of Minsk residents into partisan detachments, including about a thousand families of suicide bombers from the Minsk ghetto.
On June 30, 1941, the Central Committee of the CP(b)B adopted Directive No. 1 "On the transition to underground work of party organizations in areas occupied by the enemy." It defined the tasks of the underground, the forms of construction and communication, and emphasized the need to observe the strictest secrecy.
The underground members of Minsk were the most active. They staged explosions, arson and other sabotage on the enemy's communications, took out the wounded soldiers and commanders of the Red Army from the encirclement, assisted them, and distributed leaflets.
In the summer - autumn of 1941, underground anti-fascist groups began to operate in Grodno under the leadership of N. Volkov, K. Vasilyuk, N. Bogatyrev, V. Rozanov. The members of the groups helped the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, who were in Nazi captivity, recorded and distributed reports of the Soviet Information Bureau.
During the battles near Moscow in December 1941, sabotage at the Minsk railway junction reduced the capacity of its highway by almost 20 times. In Gomel, the underground blew up a restaurant with German officers who were there. K. Zaslonov's group was active in the Orsha railway depot. With its help, several dozen steam locomotives were put out of action, and the operation of the station was repeatedly paralyzed.
The underground struggle was a difficult and at the same time a responsible task. Difficult - due to novelty, lack of personnel with experience in illegal activities; responsible - since the party underground was to become the direct organizer and leader of the people's struggle behind enemy lines.
The underground paid great attention to agitation and propaganda work among the population behind enemy lines. In January 1942, the publication of the periodical "Herald of the Motherland", the newspaper "Patriot of the Motherland", and leaflets was organized in Minsk. By the end of the year, about 20 underground newspapers were being published in Belarus. In May 1942, the newspaper Zvyazda (an organ of the Minsk City Underground Committee of the CP(b)B) was published. It was edited by V. Omelyanyuk (died on May 26, 1942). The newspaper “Savetskaya Belarus”, the propaganda poster “Let's crush the fascist reptile!”, the front-line newspaper “For Savetskaya Belarus” were delivered in mass circulation to Belarus. On January 1, 1942, the radio station "Soviet Belarus" began to work. On January 18, 1942, an anti-fascist rally of the Belarusian people was held in Moscow, which was broadcast on the radio. Writers M. Tank, K. Chorny, secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol S. Pritytsky and others spoke at it.
Great tasks were assigned to the underground fighters: reconnaissance, distribution of leaflets, newspapers and proclamations, familiarizing the population with the appeals of the party and government of the USSR, acts of sabotage at industrial enterprises and transport, organizing sabotage, all possible assistance to the partisan movement.
The work of the underground workers was fraught with extreme dangers, since enemy garrisons, headquarters, intelligence and counterintelligence agencies were located in the settlements. Each wrong step could lead, and sometimes led to the death of an underground worker and even to the disclosure of the entire organization. Therefore, it was necessary to act, observing the strictest secrecy, alone or in small groups, each of which specialized in a single business: either printing and distributing leaflets, or intelligence, or terrorist actions and sabotage.
The first military winter and spring of 1942 turned out to be the most difficult for the underground workers. Lack of experience, disregard for secrecy led to the failure of many underground organizations. Serious violations in illegal work were committed by members of the underground organization "Military Council of the Partisan Movement", who worked in close contact with the Minsk City Party Committee. Contrary to all the rules of conspiracy, its leading core issued written orders, established vigils at the headquarters, which means that most of the members of the organization knew each other. All this made it possible for an enemy agent who penetrated into its ranks to identify many underground workers. As a result, the Minsk underground suffered enormous damage: in March-April 1942, the German secret services arrested over 400 people, destroyed a printing house, and many safe houses. Irreplaceable were the losses in the leadership of the underground. The Germans seized members of the city committee of the party S. Zaits and I. Kazints, secretary G. Semenov. Until the beginning of May, the Nazis subjected those arrested to sophisticated torture. Soon, the residents of Minsk saw a terrible picture: 28 leading workers of the underground were hanged on trees and telegraph poles. 251 underground workers were shot. Large failures were also noted in other places.
Often, on the instructions of underground party organizations or partisan command, underground workers got jobs in the military and administrative institutions of the enemy, demonstrated ostentatious loyalty to the “new order”. This allowed them to ferret out secrets of a military nature, identify traitors to the Motherland, provocateurs and spies, warn the population about impending raids, and partisans about punitive actions. The most terrible thing for the underground was not even the constant risk, but the knowledge that everyone around them considered them traitors. But for the sake of victory over the enemy, the patriots took such a step.
The first serious tests did not break the underground. They increasingly adapted to extremely dangerous conditions, acting both alone and in small groups. According to the rules of conspiracy, their members were no longer informed of the passwords and appearances of other groups. Underground workers began to receive tasks along a chain through a leader associated with an authorized person from the center. The functional distribution of responsibilities within organizations was worked out. All this increased the combat capabilities of the underground and its stability.
In 1943, the anti-fascist movement intensified in Germany and in the countries allied to it. As long as the Wehrmacht was victorious in the war, the Nazi leadership managed to influence the majority of the Germans and subordinate them to their crazy plans for world domination. However, heavy defeats on the Soviet-German front, the loss of North Africa and the capitulation of Italy led to the fact that the population of Germany was losing faith in victory. The huge losses of the Nazi troops in the East, the continued total mobilization, the growing shortage of food and other goods, the Anglo-American air raids led to the growth of anti-fascist and anti-war sentiments not only among the working people, but also among representatives of some bourgeois circles.
Assessing the situation, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany, W. Ulbricht, wrote: “The resistance of the working people to Hitler's fascism will grow. The conditions for the organizational rallying of the anti-fascist forces in Germany became more favorable" (1166) .
The aggravation of internal political relations in Germany contributed to the growth of the activity of the communist and social democratic parties. Under the exceptionally difficult conditions of the Hitlerite dictatorship, the Party organizations that survived the defeat and were newly created during the war waged a selfless struggle against fascism and the war.
Resistance organizations were strengthened. New fighters poured into them. The number of illegal leaflets and other anti-war propaganda materials distributed has increased. The struggle of the patriots against the war and Nazism was led by the Communist Party of Germany, which sought to unite all sections of the German people in a single anti-fascist front. In his speech at the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic, L. I. Brezhnev emphasized: “The best sons of the German people - the communists, anti-fascists carried through the entire Second World War, through terror and persecution, through torture in fascist prisons and concentration camps, loyalty to proletarian internationalism, love for the Soviet Union - the birthplace of socialism "(1167) .
An important milestone in the anti-war and anti-fascist movement of the German people was the creation, on the initiative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany in July 1943 in the USSR, of the National Committee "Free Germany" (NKSG), which included prominent political figures W. Pick, W. Ulbricht, V. Florin, writers I. Becher, V. Bredel, F. Wolf, progressive prisoners of war soldiers and officers. The Soviet government supported the committee in every possible way. He published his own special newspaper and had a radio station. The Free Germany movement united representatives of various segments of the population into a single national front. It had a significant impact on the German prisoners of war who were in the Soviet Union, on the personnel of the Wehrmacht, the German people. In September 1943, at a conference of delegates from POW officers near Moscow, the Union of German Officers was founded. As its platform, the Union adopted the NCSG program and joined it. General W. von Seydlitz, former commander of the 51st Army Corps, was elected chairman of the Union. The Union of German Officers appealed to the German generals and officers. Under the leadership of the KKE and following the example of the NKSG, the Free Germany movement subsequently arose in Denmark, France, Greece, Great Britain, Yugoslavia, Latin America, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA and other countries, which contributed to the intensification of the struggle of German anti-fascists against the Nazi regime.
Assessing the fact of the creation of the Free Germany National Committee, the Pravda newspaper of August 1, 1943 wrote: accidental and temporary failures, as the German fascist leaders repeated in every way, but with inexorable logic follow from the entire course of the war, from the change that has taken place in the balance of forces of both warring camps ... ".
The underground communist organizations operating in Germany explained to the population the possibilities and ways of withdrawing the country from the war. The organization, headed by A. Zefkov, F. Jakob, B. Bestlein, was especially active, striving to restore the central leadership of the communist underground. During 1943, she managed to contact the underground of Leipzig, Dresden, Bautzen, Erfurt, Weimar, Jena, Gotha, Hamburg, Hanover, Magdeburg, Düsseldorf and Innsbruck (Austria). From the second half of 1943, it actually becomes the anti-fascist center of the country (1168).
In November, under the leadership of the Central Committee of the KKE, the operational leadership of the party and the illegal anti-fascist struggle in Germany itself arose. It included A. Zefkov, F. Jakob, T. Neubauer, G. Schumann and M. Schwantes. The political activities of the operational leadership of the KKE were carried out on the basis of the directives of the Central Committee of the party. “As a result of the creation of a unified leadership of the largest organizations of the party and the resistance movement and the establishment of constantly growing ties throughout Germany, a significant upsurge in the anti-fascist struggle began” (1169).
The Anti-Fascist German People's Front (ANF) organization, which arose in Munich at the end of 1942, was headed by communists and representatives of the radical Christian party of workers and peasants. By the end of 1943, it had extended its activities to the whole of South Germany (1170) . Closely connected with the ANF was Germany's largest underground organization of Soviet prisoners of war and workers, Fraternal Cooperation of Prisoners of War (BSV), which had organized groups in a number of camps.
The expansion and strengthening of the network of the anti-fascist underground in Germany contributed to the organization of the struggle of foreign workers and prisoners of concentration camps. In the districts of Berlin, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Debeln, Soviet underground groups, with the help of German anti-fascists, carried out a series of sabotage at enterprises. Soviet people were at the forefront of the struggle of the prisoners of the fascist camps. In order to coordinate their actions, the camp organizations, with the help of the German communists, established close contacts with each other. Escapes from fascist hard labor became more frequent, and sabotage at enterprises employing foreign workers became even more widespread and effective. The widely ramified network of the BSV was of particular concern to the fascist authorities. The punitive organs in the summer and autumn of 1943 carried out mass raids and searches not only in Germany, but also in Poland and Austria. Hundreds of active members of the organization ended up in the hands of the Gestapo. Despite a number of failures, the struggle of the prisoners continued. She diverted the forces of the Nazis, created an alarming situation in the country.
The growth of the anti-fascist struggle in Germany was still hindered by the powerful, widely ramified mechanism of the Gestapo-police apparatus, and unbridled national-chauvinist propaganda. A significant part of the leaders of the German resistance movement was forced to stay outside the country.
The activity of the Austrian anti-fascist underground increased. On November 16, the Nazi newspaper Neues Wiener Tageblatt wrote: "You will not find a single enterprise where there were no production failures ... In 108 Viennese enterprises with a number of workers of 47 thousand, 54,366 cases of production failures were registered." The connections of the Austrian underground with foreign workers expanded. Underground groups of the Austrian Front helped hundreds of foreign concentration camp prisoners escape to Switzerland and Slovakia. The underground itself began to switch to methods of armed struggle.
The defeats of the Wehrmacht on the Soviet-German front and in North Africa led to profound changes in the internal political situation of Italy - the closest ally of Nazi Germany. Neither terror nor the demagoguery of its rulers could stop the growing mass anti-war, anti-fascist movement in the country.
The consolidation of anti-fascists was facilitated by powerful strikes that swept in March 1943 throughout all the cities of Northern Italy. At the same time, the main force of the anti-fascist movement, the Communist Party, faced serious difficulties at that time in its attempts to create a united front of struggle. At the end of June, a meeting of representatives of the anti-fascist parties was held in Milan: the Communist, the Socialist, the Proletarian Unity Movement for a Socialist Republic, the Action Party, the Liberal Reconstruction group, and the Christian Democratic Party. The Communists proposed the creation of the National Action Front (1171). A month later, the Committee of Anti-Fascist Opposition Parties was formed, which, along with other parties, included Catholics and liberals. But, apart from the Communists, not a single party took practical steps to prepare mass uprisings against fascism.
After the overthrow of Mussolini, the Badoglio government set the task of withdrawing Italy from the war, preventing popular unrest and revolutionary uprisings. The attitude towards the new government among the opposition parties was different. The Action Party and the Socialists even objected to temporary cooperation with Badoglio. The communists proceeded from the need to unite all forces in order to achieve priority tasks - the conclusion of peace, the struggle against the threat of enslavement of the country by Nazi Germany and against fascism. Speaking for the democratization of the government, they did not demand the immediate liquidation of the monarchy and agreed to cooperate with figures such as Badoglio (1172). When on September 8 the Italian command announced the surrender agreement and the Nazi troops went on the offensive, the leaders of the bourgeois parties abstained from organizing resistance to the Nazi troops who occupied Italian cities. The organizers of the people's fighting squads, which in a number of localities acted together with military units, were communists, socialists and representatives of the Action Party. However, the pockets of resistance were few in number and still insufficiently organized. Therefore, already two days after the announcement of the armistice, the entire territory of Italy, except for the southern tip of the peninsula, was at the mercy of the Nazis.
A new stage began in the history of the Italian anti-fascist movement - the deployment of a mass armed struggle against the invaders and Italian fascists. On September 9, the Roman Committee of Anti-Fascist Opposition Parties decided to transform into the Committee of National Liberation (CLN). The Rome KNO officially recognized the need for armed resistance to the occupiers, but the predominance of conservative elements in it led to the fact that in fact the Committee took a position of waiting. The Christian Democratic and other right-wing parties called for "passive resistance" in order to "reduce the sacrifices of patriots and Christians to a minimum" (1173) . The true leader of the Italian resistance movement soon became the Committee for the National Liberation of Northern Italy, located in Milan. In northern Italy, where the bulk of the Italian proletariat was concentrated, the initiative of the left parties, especially the communists, played a decisive role.
With the beginning of the occupation, many Italians left the cities and hid in the mountains. But by the end of September, only 1.5 thousand of them could be considered active partisans (1174). These were primarily anti-fascist communists, members of the Action Party and socialists. Under their leadership, "political detachments" were created, which played a decisive role in the Italian Resistance.
Numerous formations were also stationed in the mountains, calling themselves "independent" or "military". They consisted mainly of soldiers and officers of the disintegrated Italian army. These detachments were much better armed than the partisan detachments led by the leftist parties, but their morale was low.
At the end of September, the Nazi command began operations against the main areas of concentration of partisans. During these battles, the Italian patriots suffered significant losses. Many "independent" partisan formations ceased to exist: the tactics of waiting and the desire to organize a tough defense, which were adhered to by the officers who commanded them, did not correspond to the nature of guerrilla warfare.
The Italian Communist Party resolutely embarked on the path of organizing mass armed struggle. She believed: "Only a struggle, an open and merciless struggle without delay or compromise, could lead to the liberation of Italy" (1175). On September 20, in Milan, led by L. Longo, the military command of partisan detachments began to function, which began to form military brigades named after Garibaldi in the mountains. In order to develop the struggle in the cities, the communists began to organize combat groups of patriotic action, which carried out raids on enemy headquarters, sabotage, and the elimination of prominent fascists. In the same period, the headquarters of the partisan detachments of the Action Party was created. The well-known anti-fascist figure F. Parry became its leader. The detachments of these parties, which were later joined by the socialists, formed the core of the emerging partisan army.
The difficulties that increased with the onset of cold weather did not stop the growth of the partisan movement in Italy. Partisan detachments in December 1943 numbered about 9 thousand people (1176).
Under the influence of the victories of the Soviet Army and as a result of a further deterioration in the situation of the working people, the anti-war and anti-fascist movement in the countries of Eastern Europe that were part of the Nazi bloc intensified significantly.
Despite the repressions of the fascist authorities, the struggle of the Bulgarian people expanded. The Bulgarian Workers' Party (BRP) and the Workers' Youth Union (RMS) made great efforts to popularize the program of the Fatherland Front among the population and especially in the army, where party and RMS cells played an important role. The radio stations Khristo Botev and Naroden Glas, as well as the newspaper Rabotnichesko Delo, other newspapers and leaflets published by the Central Committee of the BRP and its local committees, were engaged in explaining this program. Letters were sent to progressively minded soldiers and officers, which revealed the treacherous policy of the ruling monarcho-fascist clique, which was pushing the country into the abyss of a military catastrophe. Anti-fascist sentiments penetrated widely into the army; it became an ever less reliable support for the monarcho-fascist regime (1177).
In various parts of the country, committees of the Fatherland Front arose, which united representatives of non-fascist parties and organizations. In August 1943, the National Committee of the Fatherland Front was formed. It included representatives of the Bulgarian Workers' Party, the left wing of the Bulgarian Agricultural People's Union, the People's Union "Link", the left wing of the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party, the Radical Party, the Union of Craftsmen, the Workers' Youth Union, trade unions and other public, cultural and educational organizations ( 1178) . Participation in the Fatherland Front of various parties significantly expanded its social base, attracted new fighters against fascism to the ranks of front organizations. But this also created certain difficulties associated with the hesitations of the leaders of some parties, in cases where a decisive policy and active actions were required.
By the end of 1943, the fascist elite had to admit that an internal front had formed in the country, which threatened the existence of the regime. As V. Kolarov wrote, Bulgaria "became the scene of a civil war" (1179). The number of acts of sabotage has increased. If in April - June 340 actions of partisans and combat groups were registered, then in July - September - 575 (1180). The number of partisans increased. Their actions became more active. In March-April 1943, a harmonious military organization of the forces fighting against monarcho-fascism was created. The Central Military Commission under the Central Committee of the BRP was transformed into the General Staff, which carried out the development of military operational plans on a national scale, and the People's Liberation Insurgent Army (NOPA) was created. The territory of the country was divided into 12 rebel operational zones (1181). The total strength of the People's Liberation Rebel Army by the end of the year reached 6 thousand people (1182). During the period from April to December, SPPA forces carried out 774 military actions (1183).
At the risk of their lives, Bulgarian workers organized the escape of Soviet people from Nazi captivity, sheltered them, and helped to contact partisan detachments. Bulgarian military personnel also provided assistance to Soviet prisoners of war. Often, when the lives of Soviet citizens were in danger, Bulgarian soldiers and progressive officers rescued them. The first Soviet fighters joined the Bulgarian partisan detachments in the autumn of 1943 (1184) .
An internal political crisis was also brewing in Hungary. The attempts of the Hungarian ruling circles to place the hardships of the war on the working masses to an even greater degree caused the growth of the anti-war and anti-fascist movement. In the summer of 1943, cases of sabotage were noted in the mines of Varpalota. In August, only 2.5 thousand workers left the metallurgical plant of Manfred Weiss, which carried out military orders. In an attempt to counteract the large turnover of agricultural workers, the government on June 25 introduced a law on their forced labor. Increasingly, it came to open anti-war actions of the working people. On September 9, an anti-war demonstration was held by more than 2.5 thousand workers of the Dnoshdyorsky metallurgical plant (1185).
Anti-fascist sentiments penetrated deeper and deeper into the environment of the Hungarian prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. In 1943, the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam opened several anti-fascist political schools for prisoners of war. Subsequently, many listeners joined the Soviet partisan detachments and fought heroically against the Nazis. Others assisted the political agencies of the Soviet troops in carrying out explanatory work among the Horthy troops at the front (1186).
Under the influence of the growing crisis in the country, an alliance of opposition parties was formed in August - the independent party of petty proprietors and the Social Democratic Party. However, the assurances of their leaders that at an opportune moment the Hungarian government would allegedly break with partners in the bloc seriously hampered the unification of the patriotic forces of the people. The leader of the anti-fascist struggle in the country was the Communist Party, which operated deep underground. The communists opposed the participation of Hungary in the predatory war of Nazi Germany, demanded that the country withdraw from the aggressive fascist bloc and go over to the side of the anti-fascist coalition.
On May 1, the Communist Party of Hungary came up with the program "Hungary's Path to Freedom and Peace", in which it called on the workers, peasants, intelligentsia, anti-fascist bourgeoisie, progressive democratic parties and the population of the regions captured by the Horthys to unite in a single national front. The program demanded the immediate withdrawal of Hungary from the war on the side of the fascist bloc, the restoration of the country's independence and the implementation of democratic reforms (1187). It provided for the release of political prisoners, the abolition of forced and free labor, the complete equality of national minorities, the division of large landlord estates and the transfer of land to those who cultivate it. The Hungarian working class, it was said in the program, has the historic task of mobilizing the country's political forces and leading the struggle for Hungary's independence.
In an effort to withdraw the Communist Party from the blows of the Horthy and Hitlerite authorities, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Poland in June 1943 adopted a fictitious decision to dissolve the Communist Party, which was published in a specially issued leaflet. In reality, the Communist Party was preserved, but for the purpose of secrecy, it became known as the Peace Party. "The very name of the party emphasized its main combat mission, which was then on the agenda - the task of fighting for the country's exit from the Nazi war, expressed the desire for peace of the overwhelming majority of the population" (1188). However, this tactic did not achieve its goal. It was not possible to hide the communist character of the Peace Party. Because she continued the policies of the CPV, the authorities severely persecuted her.
Despite the terror of Antonescu and his clique, the anti-fascist movement of the Romanian people intensified. In the summer of 1943, under the leadership and with the participation of the Communist Party of Romania, the Patriotic Anti-Fascist Front was created. It also included the Front of Farmers, the Union of Patriots, the Transylvanian Democratic Union of Hungarian Workers in Romania (MADOS). Later, some local organizations of the Social Democratic Party and the Socialist Peasants' Party joined it. The platform of the Patriotic Front was the declaration of the Communist Party of September 6, 1941, which demanded the overthrow of the Antonescu regime, the formation of a truly national government from representatives of all patriotic parties and organizations, an immediate withdrawal from the war on the side of Nazi Germany, the conclusion of peace with the Soviet Union, England and the United States, the accession free and independent Romania to the anti-fascist bloc, arrest and punishment of traitors led by Antonescu, recognition of the equality of national minorities (1189).
The Communist Party tried to involve the bourgeois-landowner parties in the Patriotic Front, followed by certain groups of the population. However, the leaders of the National Liberal and National Tsaranist parties refused to cooperate with the Communists and actually supported the annexationist policy of the Antonescu government towards the USSR. The communists initiated the creation of patriotic combat units, which subsequently played an important role in the overthrow of the Antonescu regime.
At the initiative of the Communist Party, the Patriotic Front organized and led strikes of workers in Galati, Brasov, Aradi, speeches at the pyrotechnic factory, the Rigel factory, the nitrogen plant in Trnavena, the Resita factories, among the railway workers of Grivitsa, Prahov, Brasov, miners of the Jiu valley. In Constanta, workers sabotaged the repair of submarines, in Targovishte they blew up a military depot, in Resita they disabled a power plant, and organized arson at the Prachov oil fields. The railroad disrupted the schedules of the movement of military echelons. Small partisan groups and sabotage detachments were created in the regions of Oltenia, Banat, Argesh, in the mountains of Karash, Vrancea and other regions of the country.
Thousands of Romanian soldiers and officers who were captured on the Soviet-German front chose the only correct path - the path of fighting fascism. With the help of the Soviet government, the formation of the Romanian Volunteer Division named after Tudor Vladimirescu (1190) began in October.
The formation was formed according to the state of the Soviet rifle division and was fully equipped with Soviet weapons and military equipment. The news of the creation of the division caused a huge uproar among the Romanian prisoners of war. In just three days, 12,000 applications were submitted. 90 percent of the prisoners of war soldiers expressed a desire to become its fighters. The division was staffed mainly by Romanian soldiers and officers taken prisoner near Stalingrad. One of the first to enter it were Romanian anti-fascist emigrants, among them communists who fought in the international brigade in Spain - P. Borile, M. Burka, M. Lungu, S. Muntyan, G. Stoica and others (1191).
Growing anti-war sentiment in Finland. They also infiltrated the ranks of the Social Democratic Party. The newspaper Suomen Socialidemokraatti wrote in August: "Discontent among the workers in our country is already very deep and embraces a large mass of people." An expression of anti-war sentiment was a memorandum of 33 political and public figures, most of whom were deputies of the Sejm, demanding Finland's withdrawal from the war (1192). “... In the country,” noted O. Kuusinen, “a political struggle is developing against the anti-Soviet war of the Finnish government. This struggle is waged by groups of the underground Communist Party and other anti-fascist circles” (1193) .
The echo of the Battle of Stalingrad, the victories of the Soviet Army near Kursk and on the Dnieper echoed in Europe with new successes of the anti-fascist forces.
Cīņa) - one of the organizations of the anti-fascist underground on the territory of Riga during the period when the Latvian capital was the administrative center of the General Commissariat of Latvia as part of the large territorial formation "Ostland".Qinya, an anti-fascist underground organization, functioned during the late period of the Nazi occupation, from 1943 to 1944. It was during the last year and a half of Nazi domination that numerous partisan movements in the territory of occupied Latvia noticeably intensified.
Translated from the Latvian language Ciņa means "Fight". For the most part, members of the underground movement were students of the Latvian Academy of Arts, as well as a number of actors from some Riga theaters. In particular, the active members of the underground organization "Tsinya" were the artists of the Riga theaters: stage art teacher and one of the leading actresses of the Workers' Theater Olga Fritsevna Bormane (1893 - 1968), Arveds Karlovich Mikhelson, who performed under the stage name Rutku Tevs (1886 - 1961 years), who played the main roles in the Main Art Academic Theater of Latvia, as well as the actor and director Teodors Kugrens (? - 1945).
The leaders of this cell of the anti-fascist underground were the former director of the Art Theater, People's Artist of the Latvian SSR Leonid Yanovich Leimanis (1910 - 1974), who acted as the actual founder of this underground organization, as well as a student of the Latvian Academy of Arts Komsomol member Olgerts Urbans (1922 - 1977), who in the post-war years was destined to become a portrait painter. In fact, "Qin" consisted of art students and Riga actors.
Basically, the members of this anti-fascist organization were engaged in the distribution of propaganda posters and leaflets - they voiced a call for sabotage at Riga industrial enterprises, the vast majority of which were forced to serve the interests of the military industry of the Third Reich. Also, "Qinya" was engaged in the collection of weapons and sending them to combat partisan detachments of various organizations of the Latvian resistance movement. In the early spring of 1943, a secret printing house was set up in secret apartment No. 6 in house No. 3 on Vidus Street under the guidance of Leonid Leimanis, a graduate of the drama studio of the Riga Folk Higher School, which managed to print 19 anti-fascist appeals of various content before the day of the liberation of Riga on October 13, 1944, which were promptly distributed by Qini members with a circulation of 780 to 2800 copies.
Antifascism: On the history of the concept
An illustration from the anti-fascist comic "Kur-Fascist". Artist Erdil Yasaroglu
Author - Anson Rabinbach Professor of Contemporary European History at Princeton University, co-founder and contributor of the journal New German Critique and author of numerous publications, including books In the shadow of disaster. German Intellectuals between Apocalypse and Enlightenment (1996, in English) and Motor Man. Energy, Fatigue and the Origin of Modernity (2001, in German)
Anti-fascism.
Epochs in the development of one point of view
The harshness with which the anti-fascism legacy is currently being debated stems in large part from a lack of agreement on its historical role as a political and cultural movement. In contrast to Italian fascism and German National Socialism, which were considered militarily defeated and politically discredited after 1945, the reputation of anti-fascism increased enormously, because it was surrounded by the halo of the victorious resistance movement and the Soviet triumph. The communist parties and regimes of the post-war period, and to a very special extent in the GDR, saw their legitimation in the sacrifices made by heroes and martyrs - those whose names stood at the center of state-sanctioned myths and rituals until 1989. While some historians have identified anti-fascism with the defense of Western culture and democracy and given it a positive connotation, others - due to its connection with communism - have considered it a manifestation of extreme corruption.
An example of this contradiction is provided by the positions of two prominent historians. Both are veterans of the anti-fascist movement. British historian Eric Hobsbawm Hobsbawm E. The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century (1914-1991). M., 2004. speaks of the triumph of anti-fascism in the 1930s: the left has said goodbye to its utopias, recovered from heavy defeats, opposed the cowardly and dishonest policy of "appeasement" and in many places created a broad coalition against fascism, in which included conservatives, liberals, socialists and communists. On the contrary, the French historian François Furet Furet F. The History of an Illusion. M., 1998. sees in anti-fascism nothing else but the new face of Stalinism - a mask with which the European communists, as they say, overnight could turn from zealous Bolsheviks into respected freedom fighters, full of hatred for Hitler and united under the banner of humanism and democracy.
None of these approaches will succeed either in understanding the concept of anti-fascism in the full breadth of its spectrum, or in being able to rise to the height of the diversity of possibilities for interpreting this phenomenon. The collective concept of anti-fascism was to include both the official statements of the Communist International (Comintern), which explained fascism as the “overflowing banks” of monopoly capital, and the journalistic activity of prominent representatives of the intelligentsia, for example, Romain Rolland or Heinrich Mann, motivated by moral considerations. At the highest point of its popularity, in the 30s, anti-fascism was the slogan of the left. It represented a compromise formula and a common denominator of the common struggle against National Socialism. On the one hand, the anti-fascist movement in many places has achieved significant support among the population. On the other hand, however, it formed a fatal force of blindness that clouded the ability of many Western intellectuals to make decisions. Ultimately, many of these active participants in the anti-fascist struggle drifted into the "double life" defined by the secret service of the Stalinist regime.
Therefore, it is necessary both to engage non-communist anti-fascism on a broader basis, and to go beyond parties and organizations in order to equally gain a look at the diverse ideas, the activities of the most diverse intellectuals, the polyphonic journalism, the activity motivated by religious considerations and everyday life. At the same time, such a broad approach in no way excludes the understanding of anti-fascism as an inclusion-oriented picture of the world, which, despite all the various forms and motivations, found its minimum common denominator in a fundamentally hostile position towards fascist ideology. It is therefore appropriate to distinguish between the official anti-fascism of the Comintern, the anti-fascism of local initiatives, émigré intellectuals, and non-communist resistance groups. After all, behind the concept of "anti-fascism" there is undoubtedly a diverse phenomenon that encompasses a wide range of beliefs, hopes and emotions. The history of this moral-political point of view, which was characterized by an extreme degree of variability, can be outlined in the form of three phases.
Anti-fascism before Hitler's "seizure of power" (1920-1933)
The brutal violence against the Italian socialists and communists, which the fascists resorted to even before the seizure of power by Benito Mussolini in October 1922, at first did not cause much concern in the ranks of the Italian Communist Party (CPI). The founder and leader of the party, Amadeo Bordiga, could not recognize the fundamental difference between bourgeois democracy and fascist dictatorship. Convinced of the impending collapse of capitalism, he considered the greater danger to be the establishment of a social democratic government after the overthrow of the dictatorship. In 1922 in the form Alleanza del Lavoro ("Union of Labor".- It., approx. per. ) was founded, probably the first anti-fascist organization, based on a more or less spontaneous coalition of socialists, republicans, trade unionists and communists.
This early anti-fascism was apparently diverse, both in terms of its ideological motives and political aims. At the head of the parliamentary opposition was, until his death in 1926 following a beating, Giovanni Amendola, a brilliant journalist who protested against the prohibition of opposition parties and coined the term "totalitarian" to describe Mussolini's system. Catholic, socialist and communist opponents of the dictatorship, who in 1924 after the assassination of the reformist socialist Giacomo Matteoti withdrew from parliament, founded Aventine Secession It is named so in memory of the protest of Gaius Gracchus in Ancient Rome. ("Aventine block".- It., approx. per. ).
In the following years, anti-fascists were blackmailed, arrested, forced to emigrate and killed. The philosopher Benedetto Croce, who represented the voice of Italian liberalism, withdrew his initial support for Mussolini and published his landmark "Manifesto of the Liberal Intelligentsia" on May 1, 1925, demanding "a deeper and clearer understanding of the virtues of the liberal position and right." Originally published in "Il Mondo" , 1.5.1925. . After 1926, the CPI, led by Antonio Gramsci, who was arrested on Mussolini's orders in 1926, and the party leader in exile, Palmiro Togliatti, became more critical of the Italian dictatorship. Both leaders, however, took the position that fascism, at least in its early years, was a truly revolutionary movement.
No other Italian resistance movement had such an influx and support as the underground communist organization. At the same time, the communists in exile were weakening the Italian Resistance because they did not participate in it. Under the leadership of the socialist Pietro Nenni, an association was created in Paris in 1927 « concentration Antifascista» ("Anti-Fascist Concentration".- It., approx. per.). The largest anti-fascist organization in exile was „ Jiustizia e Liberta“ ("Justice and Freedom".- It., approx. per.). Its founder, Carlo Rosselli, advocated liberal socialism as an alternative to the rubble pile left behind by divisions on the European Left. Many of Italy's prominent anti-fascist writers, such as Carlo Levi, Cesare Pavese, and Ignazio Silone, played prominent roles in the Parisian exile community. But after the murder in 1932 of the brothers Carlo and Roberto Rosselli, the Italian anti-fascist emigrants increasingly lost their influence on the situation in their homeland.
At the same time, Soviet foreign policy in the 1920s was the most controversial. The USSR maintained friendly relations with Musolili and sought with all its might, especially after the conclusion of the Rapallo Treaty in 1922, the favor of the nationalist right-wing forces in Germany. In 1924, Stalin proclaimed the new policy of the Comintern: “Social Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism… These organizations do not negate, but complement each other. These are not antipodes, but twins ”Stalin I.V. Works. T. 6, M., 1947, p. 282. . For tactical reasons, the Communists and National Socialists in 1931 and 1932. at times even made real alliances, as, for example, in the course of this, the International Congress against Fascism and War, held a few months earlier, could not achieve a principled condemnation of the fascist movements in Germany and Italy.
Anti-fascism in the era of Hitler and Stalin
Until 1934, the Italian socialists in exile formed, together with the Austrian and German Social Democrats, the spearhead of the opposition movement directed against Mussolini and Hitler. After the Reichstag fire on February 28, 1933, about 5,000 communists were arrested. Somewhat later followed the ban and defeat of the Communist Party of Germany with its 100 million members and almost 6 million voters. However, even before January 1934, the Red Army maintained friendly relations with the German Reichswehr. In addition, the USSR concluded a trade agreement with Germany. Leading Soviet politicians, however, began to ponder at the same time whether an alliance with France and Great Britain might not have been more expedient than efforts to preserve the deteriorating German-Russian relations. Finally, in May 1935, the Soviet Union signed secret mutual assistance treaties with France and Czechoslovakia, signaling a turn in foreign policy.
Meanwhile, events in France contributed to the fact that the anti-fascist movement gained growing support among the population. The revolt of the nationalist "leagues" on February 6, 1934, led to powerful left-wing counter-demonstrations on February 12, the same day that the Social Democratic uprising against the government led by Chancellor Dollfuss broke out in Vienna. In addition, a joint anti-fascist statement was signed by intellectuals with different political views, including the surrealists André Breton, René Crevel and Paul Eluard, the writer André Malraux and the radical philosopher Emile Chartier.
At a congress in June 1934, the communist Maurice Thorez told his supporters that the choice was not between communism and fascism, but between fascism and democracy. Denis Peschansky. Et pourtant ils tournent. Vocabulaire et strategie du PCF, 1934-1936, Paris, 1988. . In 1930 there were only about two hundred active communists in the Loire department; in 1935 their number increased to 5,000 in 77 local anti-fascist committees. The communist idea reached not only the working-class districts of Orleans, but also rural areas, where the left traditionally had hardly any influence. It remains unclear to what extent this pressure from below prompted the French Parti Communiste(Communist Party. - Fr., approx. Lane) to the turn that took place on July 27, 1934 - the day it signed the declaration of unity with the socialists.
This pact anticipated, no doubt, the strategy of the "broad anti-fascist Popular Front" proclaimed on July 25, 1935 at the 7th Congress of the Comintern. The head of the Comintern was Georgy Dimitrov, from the moment of the accusation brought against him during the Leipzig (1933) trial of setting fire to the Reichstag, he had the status of a hero. Dimitrov's Comintern formula, named after him, defined fascism from now on as "an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of finance capital" Resolutions of the VII World Congress of the Communist International, [M.], 1935, p. ten. .
This alliance of the left was cemented as a result of the creation, following the results of the parliamentary elections in May 1936, of the government of the Popular Front, headed by the Socialist Prime Minister Leon Blum. The number of communist deputies increased seven times, and the socialists received 146 mandates (instead of the previous 97). During the strike wave of 1936, however, tensions arose in the Blum government. The predominance of communists in anti-fascist organizations in France, in turn, alienated them from anti-fascists at the local level and resulted in a rapid loss of votes at the bottom.
German social democrats and communists in exile failed to organize a joint resistance, even if there were individuals like the communist Willi Münzenberg or the social democrat Rudolf Breitscheid in both groups who tried to establish such a connection between the two parties. Münzenberg and his "lieutenant" Otto Katz orchestrated campaigns, congresses and committees for the release of Ernst Thalmann, which attracted everyone's attention. But anti-fascist activity was not at all under the dominant influence of the communists. If we compare the number of publications of German communist and non-communist emigrants, it turns out that bourgeois-liberal authors published three times more than communist ones. Thus, the anti-fascist culture of the 30s. characterized by social openness, political flexibility and, last but not least, a lack of ideological precision, which can be traced with particular clarity in the example of the concepts of "fascism" or "fascists".
Popular Front organizations supported the anti-fascists in every possible way, from helping intellectuals such as Romain Rolland, André Gide and Heinrich Mann, to preparing speeches by Soviet artists, readings with the Archbishop of Canterbury and tea parties in support of the Spanish Republicans. This activity, which gave the impression of something rather harmless, often hid an uncritical admiration for the events that took place in the Soviet Union, and its subjects, in part, even often turned a blind eye to the crimes committed in that country. At the height of the Spanish Civil War and the Great Terror in the Soviet Union, however, the pro-Soviet stance meant neither support for communism nor rejection of liberalism. “The anti-fascist movement,” recalled, for example, historian George L. Moss, “had for us in the 30s. independent political and cultural value; admiration for the solitary resistance of the Soviet Union to the policy of appeasement, as well as the materialistic perception of history, but at the same time, the rejection of communism and Bolshevism as a system, could be attributed to him. ”George L. Mosse. Aus grossem Hause. Erinnerungen eines deutsch-judischen Historikers. Munich, 2003, S. 176. .
Consequently, anti-fascism was a complex mixture of ideas, images and symbols, which ultimately divided the world into two warring camps, and every political assessment was subject to Manichaean logic. In the whirlwind between "fascism" and its enemies, in a world divided between the forces of progress and reaction, friends and enemies of culture and civilization, there was no place for a middle ground or neutral point of view of a person who did not participate in the struggle. Historian Richard Cobb, who lived in the 30s. in Paris, describes in his memoirs how France experienced a kind of mental, moral war, during which it was necessary to decide in favor of fascism or communism Cf. Richard Cobb. A Second Identity. Essays on France and French History. London, 1969. .
According to this "logic of enemy and friend," the anti-fascist myth of masculine innocence was projected especially on male heroes. “Better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward” was an oft-quoted adage of the time. The core of this myth of heroic innocence was formed by the book published in 1933 in Paris. "The Brown Book on the Reichstag Fire and the Hitler Terror", one of the bestsellers of international communism and equally "the bible of the anti-fascist crusade" by Arthur Koestler. Autobiographische Schriften. bd. I: Fruhe Empörung. Frankfurt am Main, 1993, S. 416. . She painted an image of National Socialism that, in its moment of triumph, not only camouflaged the defeat of Communism, but rather accurately illustrated the essence of National Socialism: an image of a regime that lacked popular support, relied on terror, conspiracy and extortion, and which was ruled by "feminized » Homosexual degenerates, drug addicts, sadists and corrupt officials.
Numerous volunteers from different countries, at the high point of the anti-fascist movement during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) who went to this country, really felt that they did not belong to any nation or class, party or movement, represent the doctrine or metaphysics, but defend a united humanity, all of whose supporters spoke the same Spartan language, made equal sacrifices, and fought together for the unification of the world. Writer Milton Wolf joined in 1937 the so-called "Lincoln Brigades" (actually the Lincoln Battalion. - Note. per.), consisting of 3 thousand American volunteers. Later, in the third person, he wrote about his experiences in the Spanish Lesson: “In 1936 he went to Spain because he was an anti-fascist. He thought, though he was not quite sure of it, that fascism would overwhelm the whole world if it was not stopped in Spain. Arriving in Spain, he did not at first know what to do. He certainly knew nothing about fighting, killing or dying. But he was a volunteer. In Spain, he met people for whom anti-fascism was life, sleep and food, who worked tirelessly for this goal” Milton Wolff. Spanish lesson. – Alvah Cecil Bessie (Hrsg.) Heart of Spain. Anthology of Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry. New York, 1952, pp. 451-453. . This rhetoric of innocence and the innocence of anti-fascist rhetoric might explain why anti-fascism appeared so "pure" in the eyes of its veterans. In his classic "My Catalonia"(1938) George Orwell argues that this illusion was in fact the correct "anti-fascist position" propagated systematically and carefully to mask the true nature of civil war within George Orwell's civil war. Mein Catalonia. Berichtüber den Spanischen Bürgerkrieg. Zürich, 1975. .
A real slap in the face for Hitler's opponents was the non-aggression pact signed on August 23, 1939 by Foreign Ministers V.M. Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Although Stalin had already begun to move away from the Spanish conflict, although information about a possible rapprochement with Hitler had been circulating since 1937, and although the Anglo-French alliance never became a fact, no one considered possible what seemed impossible. While most communists quickly capitulated and abandoned their anti-fascist stance in favor of a pro-Soviet one, a minority of intellectual dissidents - Willi Münzenberg, Manes Sperber, Arthur Koestler, Gustav Regler, Ignazio Silone and Hans Saal - broke with the Stalinist belief system in order to remain anti-fascist how they understand this position. Forced to make a choice between loyalty to communism and opposition to Hitler, these writers realized that the forces of Machiavellianism, as Manes Sperber characterized, united in the totalitarian alliance of Mannès Sperber. Bis man mir Scherben auf die Augen legt. Erinnerungen. Wien, 1977, S. 224 ff. . Then, for the duration of the Hitler-Stalin pact, the word "fascism" completely disappeared from the communist lexicon.
If the Hitler-Stalin pact destroyed the hope of European anti-fascists for a speedy end to fascism, then the attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 partly strengthened it. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to think that the policy of the Comintern during the war, which was again terminated in May 1943, would again be able to revive the broad anti-fascist consensus of the Popular Front era. Stalin opposed the idea of propagating a war between National Socialism and the Soviet Union as fundamentally an "anti-fascist war" and instead demanded the creation of a broad "national front" of all patriotic forces intending to fight against the Germans. The "Great Patriotic War" became a national symbol and a national myth in the Soviet Union, continuing to live even after the collapse of communism.
Anti-fascism after fascism
After the Second World War, anti-fascism became a myth associated with the creation of new "people's republics" throughout Eastern Europe. The expansion of the sphere of Soviet domination was celebrated as a victory over fascism, the elimination of private property was justified as a "precautionary measure" against the resurgence of "imperialism" and "militarism". During the Cold War, West Germany and the United States were seen as symbols of this ostensible renaissance. The GDR, anti-fascist and post-fascist according to its respective claims, was based on a complex "fusion" of myths that legitimized themselves, but above all on the assertion that the KKE led a significant resistance movement against National Socialism, and it was the victorious history of this movement that culminated in the end with the creation "the first socialist state" on German soil. The anti-fascist myth lived primarily through its stereotypical exaggeration of the heroes of the Resistance, the solemn exaltation of the sacrifices made by the Soviet Union and the "lives of the saints" that served as the basis for the texts of textbooks, monuments and rituals. Arrested in 1933 and murdered in the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944, the former leader of the KPD, Ernst Thälmann, was turned into a central figure in this official veneration of saints - countless poems, books and songs were dedicated to him.
This ostensibly anti-fascist German state granted a significant amnesty to a mass of former members and supporters of the NSDAP. The anti-fascist narrative made it possible to hide the wide support of the NSDAP and Hitler by the population and indiscriminately free him from any association with the recently defeated National Socialist regime. Collective memory in the GDR was subjected to manipulation, ritualization and censorship to such an extent that it existed and had the right to exist only one authorized version of the history of anti-fascism. Especially in the 50s. The KKE was presented as the only leading and effective force of the anti-fascist resistance in Germany. In eight large volumes of the official from the point of view of the party "History of the German Labor Movement" Autorenkollectiv. Walter Ulbricht et al. Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung. 8 Bde., hrsg. v. Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED, Berlin (Ost), 1966. no mention was made of key figures in the German anti-fascist movement such as the disfavored Willi Münzenberg, and it goes without saying that she avoided mentioning the approximately 3,000 émigrés who fell victims of the "great terror" in the USSR.
Under the conditions of Stalinism, one's own biography was pure chance. Formulating a biography and then modifying it so that it contains the "correct" anti-fascist background and writes down the correct points on the author's account was condition sine qua non(sine qua non. – Lat., approx. translation.) climbing into the ranks of the party elite. The state-sanctioned myths of anti-fascist resistance often collided with the real life experiences of individuals and groups who, as just described, actually experienced events elevated to the rank of stylized memory. Among them were, for example, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, although they became objects of worship in the pantheon of heroes, they were often perceived as a danger to official memory. Their experience with the Spanish military police, anarchist repression and the "Trotskyist" POUM Note. per.), as well as their knowledge of what the writer Bodo Uze called "the arrest there" (in the Soviet Union), had a deep distrust of them on the part of the party cadres.
In 1953, the OLPN (Association of Persons Persecuted under Nazism) was suddenly dissolved in the GDR, as there were constant frictions between members of the association and the regime. Some members of another highly respected group - the communist functionaries imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp - were later found to be involved in extremely dubious events as "red kapos" (camp policemen). However, the experience of imprisonment or emigration in the Soviet Union led among party members not, say, to about more doubts, but on the contrary, increased loyalty to the cause and distrust of comrades who could abuse this loyalty.
From the very beginning, active "fighters against fascism" occupied a higher position in the official hierarchy of memory than the survivors of the Holocaust or Jehovah's Witnesses, who were only not without hesitation recognized as "victims of fascism." Communist survivors of the war in Western exile were placed under surveillance because—and partly with good reason—their adherence to ideology was questionable. Until the beginning of the 60s. most left-wing intellectuals of Jewish origin, including philosopher Ernst Bloch, literary critic Hans Mayer or publicist Alfred Kantorovich, who after 1945 settled in the Soviet occupation zone, and then in the GDR, moved to the West.
In 1948, the Soviet Union began a campaign against prominent representatives of the Jewish people, which began with the assassination of the actor Solomon Mikhoels, the world-famous activist of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee ( CM. Mikhoels was the chairman of the JAC from the moment of its creation in 1941, he was killed on January 13, 1949, after the liquidation of the committee in November 1948 and the subsequent arrests of a number of future accused and victims.- Approx. per.). In August 1952, 15 Soviet Jews, including five well-known writers, were secretly accused and executed.
In December of the same year, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Rudolf Slansky and 13 other defendants (including 11 Jews) were found guilty of espionage in Prague. Finally, in 1951, preparations began in the GDR for a trial against "cosmopolitans" (an anti-Semitic euphemism). The target of the trial was Paul Merker, a member of the SED Central Committee, who lived in Mexico during World War II. Although the trial against Merker did not take place after Stalin's death, contrary to what had been planned, Merker was accused as an agent of the "imperialist intelligentsia" and a "Zionist" because he advocated compensating the Jews for the suffering caused to them by the Germans. The process created a milestone in Holocaust remembrance in East Germany. With few exceptions, such as Jurek Becker's novel "Jacob the Liar"(1969), the topic of the murder of European Jews remained taboo in the GDR until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.
Official anti-fascism was nothing more than a cult around state-sanctioned nostalgia and an image of history imbued with attempts at legitimation. This cult culminated metaphorically and in real politics with the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, which was even called the "anti-fascist defensive rampart." The institutionalized memory of anti-fascism made the mass murder of Jews marginalized, since this mass murder was a solid scheme that went beyond the realm of the "eternal struggle" between communism and fascism and therefore threatened to destabilize the official masterful narrative.
The post-1989 efforts of well-meaning scholars and intellectuals to separate the "genuine" anti-fascist testament or "sense of life" from the official rituals of the state politics of remembrance could not, in retrospect, separate what had previously been inseparably linked. To realize this is probably bitter for the adherents of widely interpreted anti-fascism. While not all anti-fascists were involved in communism and its crimes, anti-fascism as an ideology and state-sanctioned memory can never be seen in complete isolation from its legacy.
