International Communists of Germany (1933)

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International Communists of Germany is the name that the ( Trotskyist ) Left Opposition of the KPD (Bolshevik-Leninists) , German section of the International Left Opposition , adopted in October 1933 after its members had decided not to be an opposition in the KPD on its reform to work towards it, but to take a course towards building a new revolutionary party. In 1938 the IKD took part in the founding of the Fourth International .

History of the IKD

In Germany, by 1936, most of the local groups and the central structures of the Left Opposition, which had between 600 and 1000 members, or the IKD were smashed by the Gestapo; Groups or cells could hold or reorganize themselves. a. in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Dresden, Leipzig, in the Ruhr area and in Hamburg. The resistance activity of the IKD took place regionally partly in close cooperation with the SAPD and the Leninbund ; Fields of activity were v. a. the company work but also intellectual groups, Jewish youth organizations and church groups. There was also a German-speaking Trotskyist cell of the IKD in Buchenwald concentration camp (in addition to a French-speaking one) , which also included members from Austria and Poland as well as the former Reichstag deputy Werner Scholem . Many members of the IKD, including the entire domestic leadership (including Hans Berger and Heinz Leidersdorf ), were murdered by the National Socialists.

The IKD published the newspaper Our Word in exile ; the first issue appeared in Prague in March 1933, the last in New York in June 1941. The IKD leadership in exile ("Foreign Committee") around Josef Weber emigrated to the USA around 1940, increasingly distanced themselves from Trotskyism and then from 1947 published the magazine Dinge Der Zeit .

From May 1943 to July 1944, under the German occupation, members of the IKD in France, along with French Trotskyists, published leaflets and a newspaper Arbeiter und Soldat , with which they addressed the workers among the German soldiers. The head of this group, Viktor, was arrested by the Gestapo on July 13, 1944 and killed a few days later.

After the collapse of the Nazi regime, the IKD was reorganized by returning emigrants such as Georg Jungclas and cadres who had survived fascism in Germany such as Oskar Hippe (Berlin), as well as helpers from other countries. These efforts were soon suppressed in the Soviet occupation zone; Hippe was arrested in Halle on September 12, 1948, and then spent eight years in a prison and labor camp.

In 1951, the IKD and former KPD members founded the Independent Workers' Party of Germany (UAPD), which was dissolved again in 1952 despite support from Yugoslavia.

The IKD followed the majority decision of the World Congress of the Fourth International in 1953 to work on the development of a left, revolutionary wing in the social democratic and communist mass parties of their countries (“ entryism ”) instead of relying on themselves as a small “splinter group” of a mass party to develop. The IKD then no longer appeared as an independent organization.

Members of the group, now known as the “German section of the Fourth International”, worked with left-wing social democrats such as Peter von Oertzen and Theo Pirker , the Korsch supporter and Lower Saxony SPD member of the state parliament Erich Gerlach, and independent Marxists such as Wolfgang Abendroth on the publication of the magazine Socialist politics (1954–1966), later the newspaper express international . As a responsible press law for the past editions of the Socialist policy drew Peter von Oertzen. Jakob Moneta became editor-in-chief of Metall , IG Metall's newspaper .

The section played an important role in supporting the Algerian liberation struggle against French colonialism. Some of its members were involved in setting up a secret FLN arms factory in Morocco . The magazine Free Algeria , whose editor ("editor") was Georg Jungclas , served for political education work .

The revolutionary events of 1968, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam , the Paris May and the Prague Spring , plus the development of the student movement, the radicalization of the SDS and the radicalization of youth in general, led the German Trotskyists to a. on the previous entry policy between 1969 and the beginning of 1971 and under the name Gruppe Internationale Marxisten (GIM) and Revolutionary-Communist Youth (RKJ) on the one hand as well as International Communists of Germany (IKD) (the old name was now used again) and Communists Youth organization (KJO) - the Spartacusbund (SpaBu) emerged from both organizations in 1974 - on the other hand, to appear again openly.

Before that, there was an attempt to involve leading representatives of the SDS in a joint project with the newspaper what do . However, this project failed after the assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke and in the course of the political disintegration of the SDS, in which there were already different and opposing factions. On the one hand there was a demarcation from the emerging Maoist , Stalinist groups referring to Marxism-Leninism , and on the other hand from the “spontaneousist” groups. The newspaper was do then only appeared as a newspaper of the GIM or its youth organization of the Revolutionary Communist Youth.

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Alles: On the politics and history of the German Trotskyists from 1930. ISP-Verlag, Frankfurt (Main) 1987, ISBN 3-88332-129-X .
  • Georg Jungclas , 1902–1975: From the proletarian freethinker movement in the First World War to the left in the 1970s . A political documentary. Hamburg: Junius-Verlag 1980. ISBN 3-88506-106-6
  • Oskar Hippe: ... and our flag is red. Memories of sixty years in the labor movement . Hamburg: Junius-Verlag 1979. ISBN 3-88506-102-3
  • Wolfgang Alles (Ed.): Against the current. Texts by Willy Boepple (1911-1992) . Cologne: Neuer ISP-Verlag 1997. ISBN 3-929008-77-7
  • Karl Retzlaw : Spartacus. Rise and fall. Memories of a party worker . Frankfurt: New Critique Verlag 1971 (5th edition 1985).
  • Peter Berens: Trotskyists against Hitler . Cologne: New ISP-Verlag 2007. ISBN 978-3-89900-121-1
  • Claus Leggewie : porter. The Algeria project of the left in Adenauer Germany , Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag 1984