Red fighters
The Red Fighters were a syndicalist , councilor communist organization and resistance group against National Socialism .
The group was founded in 1931 or 1932. Among the founders were former members of the KAPD (Essen direction) as Arthur Goldstein , Bernhard Reichenbach , Alexander Schwab and Karl Schroeder , who meanwhile entristisch had worked in the SPD. Other members came from the Social Science Association , a non-partisan Marxist educational association founded in Berlin in 1924 ; other members (especially in the Ruhr and Saxony) came from the left wing of the SAPD and the SAJ . The members also included the writer Franz Jung , the officer Harro Schulze-Boysen and initially also the later North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Heinz Kühn . The group comprised a total of around 400 members, with a focus on Berlin, Saxony and the Ruhr area.
The Red fighters were even before the seizure of power of the NSDAP worked on 30 January 1933 in secret. It published the bimonthly circular The Red Fighter , which was renamed The Worker Communist in the spring of 1936 .
The Red Fighters remained undetected by the Gestapo until the end of 1936 due to their strictly conspiratorial way of working . In 1936 and 1937 the group was broken up, 150 of its members were arrested and many of them were deported to concentration camps or prisons . Arthur Goldstein was murdered by the SS in French exile during the war , and Alexander Schwab died in Zwickau prison .
After 1945, most of the former members of the group stayed in the western zones or the western sectors of Berlin. Some remained politically independent. This includes Willy Huhn , who was in a leading position as a journalist for the magazines Neues Beginnen - Blätter Internationale Sozialisten (1947–1950, 1951–1954), Pro and Contra (1950–1954) and Funken (1951–1959). Other former members of the Red Fighters joined the SPD. These included Erwin Lange , who later became a member of the Bundestag, and Fritz Riwotzki, who later became the chief of police in Dortmund .
literature
- Olaf Ihlau : The Red Fighters. A contribution to the history of the labor movement in the Weimar Republic and in the “Third Reich”. Meisenheim am Glan 1969.
- Peter Friedemann / Uwe Schledorn : Active against the right. The Red Fighter - Marxist Workers' Newspaper 1930–1931. Essen 1994, ISBN 3-88474-033-4 .
- Jan Foitzik : Between the fronts. On the politics, organization and function of left political small organizations in the resistance from 1933 to 1939/40. Bonn 1986. ISBN 3-87831-439-6
- Hans Manfred Bock : Syndicalism and Left Communism from 1918 to 1923. On the history and sociology of the Free Workers' Union of Germany (Syndicalists), the General Workers' Union of Germany and the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (Marburger Abhandlungen zur Politischen Wissenschaft, Vol. 13) . Meisenheim / Glan 1969
- Hans Manfred Bock: History of the 'left radicalism' in Germany. One try. Frankfurt / M. 1976.
- Diethart Kerbs: Alexander Schwab (1887--1943). Architectural theorist, political educator, councilor communist, writer and resistance fighter, in: Internationale Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbew Movement, 41 (2005), No. 4, pp. 487–495.
- Frits Kool (ed.): The left against party rule. (Volume 3, of the 'Documents of the World Revolution') Olten and Freiburg 1970.
- Philippe Bourrinet : The Dutch and German Communist Left: A Contribution to the History of the Revolutionary Movement, 1988–1998
- Sarah M. Schlachetzki: "The question belongs here, but no longer the answer" - Alexander Schwab, business journalist and architecture critic in gloomy times , in: Work - Movement - History , Issue I / 2018, pp. 63–75.