Anti-Comintern

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The Anti Comintern was a National Socialist propaganda organization that was founded in autumn 1933 after the " seizure of power " . Their designation aimed at a perception as the opposite pole to the Communist International (Comintern). Already in 1932 by Eberhard Taubert association founded General Association of German anti-Communist unions served as a facade, in fact, the Anti-Comintern was a department of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda , was in the Eberhard Taubert speaker for "opponents fighting".

The anti-Comintern propaganda was directed against the Soviet Union and Bolshevism and was intended to win sympathy for the Nazi state . Anti-Semitic elements played a central role , in line with the thesis of the “ Jewish-Communist world conspiracy ”, according to which Jews had invented Marxism and communism as a means of achieving world domination. In addition, communists were dehumanized as pests, insects or bacilli in the publications. Russian emigrants as well as former socialists and communists who had turned away from their earlier ideology often acted as authors. The works were published by Nibelungen Verlag, which was founded especially for the Antikomintern.

After the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939, the Anti-Comintern ceased its activities. However, it was resumed after the attack on the Soviet Union as part of the "General Section East" in the Propaganda Ministry. After 1945, Eberhard Taubert continued the anti-communist propaganda in the Volksbund for Peace and Freedom , although he renounced the anti-Semitic elements.

Goal setting

The Antikomintern was supposed to coordinate the propaganda campaign of the National Socialist German Reich against the Soviet Union .

The National Socialists hoped to gain sympathy abroad by reinforcing anti-Soviet propaganda and developing the image of Germany as a bulwark that defends Europe from Bolshevism .

The initiative to found it came from the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . The aim of the “general association” was to unite all organizations, associations and people who were opposed to Soviet communism in the “ideal struggle” (quote from the draft statute).

Chairman Adolf Ehrt

On September 7, 1933, Adolf Ehrt became the first chairman of the general association. The organization's activities were fully financed by the Propaganda Ministry. Eberhard Taubert was the head of the Anti-Comintern department in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda .

Due to a power struggle with the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP (Head: Alfred Rosenberg , Head of the Eastern Department: Georg Leibbrandt ) and a decree by Reinhard Heydrich , Ehrt resigned on March 17, 1937.

After the end of the war, Ehrt, like other members of the former East Economic Staff of the High Command of the Wehrmacht , worked for the British Secret Intelligence Service on economic affairs in the Soviet Union. In 1956 this working group was merged with the " Organization Gehlen ", with which Ehrt stayed until his retirement.

activities

The Nibelungen Verlag

To carry out some of the propaganda activities, the Propaganda Ministry founded the anti-Comintern's in-house publishing house, the Nibelungen Verlag, based in Berlin and Leipzig, on August 4, 1934. Eberhard Taubert was the managing director. In order to be recognized internationally as a serious publisher, the publisher was the first to publish in 1935 the memories of the incumbent British Foreign Minister Samuel Hoare of his time as head of the British secret service in Petrograd in 1916/17 under the title "The fourth seal".

The “General Association of German Anti-Communist Associations e. V. “observed and translated, for example, the press and radio broadcasts appearing in the Soviet Union, collected reports from sources there, reports from domestic and foreign news agencies ( it received confidential raw material from Deutsche Nachrichtenbüro GmbH ), v. a. on the administration, economy and culture of the Soviet Union, the Comintern and the allied opponents of the war.

General

The association also published various circulars (e.g. “Anti-Comintern News Service”, also in other languages, e.g. about the Spanish Civil War ) and numerous anti-communist and anti- Jewish pamphlets, several of them in collaboration with the “ Institute for Research” the Jewish question ”.

In 1933 there was a print run of 250,000 copies by Adolf Ehrt on an alleged communist insurrection plan in which the Soviet Union is said to have been involved. ("Armed insurrection! Revelations about the attempted communist coup on the eve of the national revolution") The book excludes the fire in the Reichstag , "so as not to anticipate the process".

In the same year the English translation Communism in Germany was published. Sales in the US were funded by the National Civic Federation , a conservative think tank founded by Ralph Easley in 1900.

The book The betrayed socialism by " Karl I. Albrecht " (a pseudonym for Karl Matthäus Löw, a former senior functionary of the Soviet Union) found the greatest distribution (circulation over 2 million copies ).

In 1934 the Comintern changed its previous focus on social democracy as the main enemy (thesis of “ social fascism ”) and placed National Socialism at the center of its propaganda activities. The anti-fascist forces were supposed to unite in “ popular fronts ” and thereby end the diplomatic isolation of the Soviet Union. As a result, the Nazi government's propaganda efforts intensified from mid-1934.

On August 4, 1934, the Propaganda Ministry founded the “Nibelungen-Verlag GmbH” (based in Berlin and Leipzig) as the house publisher of the “Antikomintern”, with Eberhard Taubert acting as the publishing director.

From 1935 (7th Comintern World Congress in Moscow), Hitler began increasingly to address anti-Bolshevism, especially at the Nazi party rallies in 1936 and 1937.

The plan was to hold an anti-communist world congress in return. In preparation for this, the publishing house published Der Weltbolschewismus: An international joint work on Bolshevik subversive work and the attempts at overthrowing the Comintern in all countries in 1936 .

In 1936 Eberhard Taubert founded the magazine Contra-Komintern (editor-in-chief: Melitta Wiedemann , the daughter of a Russian-German businessman, under Goebbels editor-in-chief of the attack ).

Also in 1936, the Anti-Comintern organized the anti -Bolshevik exhibition "Bolshevism without a mask" in the Deutsches Museum in Munich together with the NSDAP gauleitung Munich-Upper Bavaria , which was then shown as a permanent exhibition in the Reichstag in Berlin. In 1938 the accounts of the former KPD Reichstag deputy Maria Reese were moved to Moscow .

In August 1939, after the conclusion of the non-aggression pact with Stalin, anti-Soviet lectures, films, press articles and books were banned by the Propaganda Ministry . The Anti-Comintern was dissolved, the permanent exhibition in the Reichstag was dismantled and the magazine Contra-Comintern was renamed Die Aktion (subtitle: "Kampfblatt gegen Plutocracy und Völkerverhütung ").

After the attack on the Soviet Union , the ban changed again: in 1941 the Nibelungen-Verlag published the justification Why War with Stalin? The Red Book of the Anti-Comintern was released, although it no longer existed. Other writings from the Antikomintern have now also been reprinted in large editions. The book by "Karl I. Albrecht" z. B. reached 1 million and was sold through the bookstore Antikomintern founded by the successful author.

During the bombing of the Reich capital by the Allied Air Forces in 1943, the main building of the Propaganda Ministry, the Anti-Comintern fund, the Anti-Comintern bookstore and the Nibelungen-Verlag office including the publisher's files were destroyed. Almost all books burned at the second publishing house in Leipzig. Only a few files from the Ministry of Propaganda on Anti-Comintern have been preserved and are now in the Federal Archives in Koblenz.

The association also founded what is known as an Institute for Scientific Research into the Soviet Union , which has also been published by the Nibelungen Verlag since 1934, z. B. an anti-comintern service or news service and numerous propaganda publications.

Until 1937, the seat of the general association (along with other NSDAP organizations) was the building of the “Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation” ( Institute for Sexology ) in Berlin, Beethovenstrasse 3 / In tents 10 and 9a, which was confiscated in 1933 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Martin Finkenberger: Antikomintern. In: Wolfgang Benz : Handbook of Antisemitism , Volume 5: Organizations, Institutions, Movements . de Guyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, pp. 28–30.