Germany reports from Sopade
The Sopade Germany Reports are a political exile magazine . They appeared from May 1934 to 1940. Based on an extensive network of informers from the Reich , they represent an important source for life and the attitude towards the regime in National Socialist Germany .
prehistory
After the beginning of National Socialist rule, the Sopade, an exile organization of the SPD , formed in Prague . From the beginning, the party collected reports from the Reich and published them. In the beginning these were often nothing more than rumors. With the Germany reports, the collection of news was operated and evaluated more systematically.
With the so-called border secretaries, the Sopade had people who were supposed to maintain contact with certain areas of the SPD in Germany. Since 1934, the border secretaries have become the most important collection points for all kinds of information from Germany.
The reports, which were also called “green reports” because of the color of their cover, were largely carried by Erich Rinner . Next to him, Fritz Heine was the editor of the reports. Heine was primarily responsible for distributing the reports. The compilation was mostly done by Rinner. In addition to the border secretaries and informers from the Reich, there were reporters for the analytical overviews.
Information acquisition and evaluation
Initially, the exiles' illusions were also reflected in the reports. The backing of the regime was underestimated and the scope of the resistance overestimated. From the end of 1934 the reports became more objective. When gathering information, Rinner urged “ruthless openness”, even if the news were directed against the opinion of the Sopade.
According to Rinner, the reports reached their peak in terms of scope and quality in 1937.
For the sake of standardization, Rinner designed an interview scheme that the border secretaries should use to interview couriers or other cross-border commuters. The majority of the informers probably came from the working class, but people from other classes were also represented. To protect the informants, places, companies and other references were concealed.
The questionnaire according to scheme A, which was also reflected in the structure of the reports, initially asked about the general situation in the respective district, about the economic situation, agriculture, trade and commerce, corruption, military associations, Nazi organizations, administration, justice (including Terror and political persecution), cultural issues, youth and armaments. In some cases, these areas were further subdivided. In the course of time, the questionnaire was changed a little depending on the current situation.
The raw reports were evaluated and compared. Rinner was of the opinion that a large number of individual reports could provide a reasonably reliable overview of the actual situation. He called the procedure “mosaic process.” This summary, partially supplemented by press evaluations, appeared as Part A with between 70 and more than 100 pages.
Part B in the form of background reports supplemented the news from Part A. The quality of the analyzes also increased on the basis of the better source situation. Questions of the border secretaries according to Scheme C, which concerned the state of the party in the Reich and the resistance , were not published.
Importance and Development
In addition to the exile community, the Germany reports, which are mostly published monthly in German, English and French, have become an essentially reliable source for governments and journalists from Western Europe about life in Germany and the attitude towards the regime.
The Germany reports did not receive any noteworthy subsidies from the party executive. They essentially had to finance themselves through their sales. The print run was 500 copies in 1934 and subsequently increased to around 1,700 copies.
From 1937 the work of the Sopade in Prague became more and more difficult. The National Socialist government put pressure on the government in Prague, not least because of the Germany reports. The organization moved to Paris in 1938 . In addition, the Gestapo succeeded in discovering parts of the informing system in the Reich. As a result, the quality of the reports deteriorated. The problems were exacerbated by Sopade's poor financial situation. It also became increasingly difficult to smuggle the reports into Germany.
Despite all the difficulties, the Sopade stuck to the concept of the Germany reports. With the occupation of France and Rinner's flight to the USA , the publication of the reports on Germany also ended.
In 1980 the Germany reports were reissued by Klaus Behnken with the publishers Petra Nettelbeck and Zweiausendeins .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Voges, p. 335
- ↑ Bavaria in the Nazi era, vol. V: The parties KPD, SPD, BVP in persecution and resistance. Munich, 1983 p. 357f.
literature
- Klaus Behnken (ed.): Germany reports of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sopade) 1934–1940. 7 volumes as reprint; Verlag Petra Nettelbeck, Zweiausendeins: Salzhausen, Frankfurt am Main 1980
- Rudolf Stöber: The nation seduced by success. Germany's public moods 1866-1945 , Steiner, Stuttgart 1998 ISBN 3-515-07238-1 p. 52ff.
- Michael Voges: Class struggle in the "Betriebsgemeinschaft": The "Germany reports" of Sopade (1934-1940) as a source for the resistance of industrial workers in the Third Reich In: AfS 21/1981 pp. 329–383