German Popular Front
The German People's Front , also points Group Ten called, was a company incorporated in 1936 and 1938 battered mainly influenced by social democratic resistance group to Hermann Brill against the Nazi regime .
Foundation and goals
Influenced by the events abroad, a number of social democrats who had not emigrated met in Berlin on December 21, 1936 to work out a founding document for the German Popular Front. Among these were Otto Brass , Hermann Brill , Oskar Debus , Franz Petrich , Fritz Michaelis , Johannes Kleinspehn and Otto Jenssen . It is not clear whether the envoy of the Communist International in Berlin, Elli Schmidt , was involved.
The group's manifesto contained ten items - hence the name of the association. The aim was to create a platform for all liberal, democratic, socialist and communist groups in Germany. The group aspired to a Germany of political, social and economic democracy. Foreign policy should be geared towards peace and reconciliation. In the area of economic policy, the group called for an end to the National Socialist Reichserbhofgesetz , the division of large estates and the nationalization of large-scale industry.
The leading figure in the group was Hermann Brill. The central theoretical writings “German Ideology” (1937), “Justification of a German Popular Front Program” (1937) and “Freedom” (1938) came from this. In the writings he rejected a deterministic Marxism and spoke out in favor of a spiritual renewal: “ A new person arises, critical, active in thinking and doing, creative and tragic in experienced humanity. "
Effect and smash
The group had sporadic contacts to the exile executive committee of the SPD and the Socialist International in Brussels , but also to the group New Beginning . The Popular Front rejected contacts with the exiled KPD in Moscow. The compulsion to conspiracy , however, prevented the group from having any appreciable effect in Germany . It was too weak for direct resistance and therefore planned for the time after the collapse of the Nazi regime.
In 1938 the group was broken up by the Gestapo . Some of its members were arrested in 1939 and sentenced to long prison terms.
Popular Front Efforts in Exile
Initiatives for a popular front from the SPD and KPD have existed for a long time. In 1935, the Communist International and the KPD in particular called for unity of action between the two parties. The exile SPD rejected this after the experience during the Weimar Republic . Influenced by the model of the Popular Front governments in France and Spain, a committee was formed in Paris in 1936 to prepare a German Popular Front, the so-called Lutetia Circle . Among others, Willi Munzenberg , Heinrich Mann , Rudolf Breitscheid , Walter Ulbricht , Paul Hertz , Arnold Zweig , Lion Feuchtwanger and Georg Bernhard were involved .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Laurenz Demps , Ingo Materna : History of Berlin, from the beginnings to 1945. Dietz, 1987. ISBN 978-3-320-00829-1 (p. 665)
- ^ Overesch, Deutsche Volksfront, p. 195.
literature
- Manfred Overesch : German Popular Front . In: Wolfgang Benz / Walter H. Pehle (Ed.): Lexicon of German Resistance . Frankfurt am Main, 1994. ISBN 3-596-15083-3 , pp. 194-196.
- Manfred Overesch : Hermann Brill in Thuringia 1895-1946. A fighter against Hitler and Ulbricht, Bonn 1992. ISBN 3801240363
- Hartmut Mehringer : Social Democratic and Socialist Resistance . In: Peter Steinbach / Johannes Tuchel (Hrsg.): Resistance against the National Socialist dictatorship. 1933-1945 . Bonn, 2004. ISBN 3-89331-539-X , pp. 73 f.
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