Red soldiers' union

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The Red Soldiers' Union (RSB) was founded on November 15, 1918 by the Spartakusbund .

During the time of its existence it was involved in various fights before it formally dissolved itself again in June 1919. A self-dissolution, which is controversial, however, whether its actual implementation. The RSB is largely continued in the Proletarian Hundreds and from 1924 in the Red Front Fighter League (RFB).

prehistory

The first period of the Weimar Republic was characterized by a large number of defense and protection groups from all political directions, some of them organized as paramilitary groups. While the history of most of these associations begins beforehand, a not inconsiderable number arose from the unclear and revolutionary situation. Probably the first formation with military goals and procedures on the part of the left was a group around the Berlin chairmen. It was formed after the January strike in 1918 to deal with "the systematic procurement of weapons and the establishment of illegal weapons stores". They were called black cats. Nothing else is known about the group's activities. On October 7th of the same year the Spartacus group decided at their Reich Conference together with the Bremen left-wing radicals "to form illegal combat groups and obtain weapons". estimates the number of members in 1918 at several hundred to several thousand. A third group of the far left scene has been identified as the radical left. Her main focus was in Bremen under the leadership of Johann Knief and Paul Frölich (magazine Arbeiterpolitik ). They were particularly close to the Russian Bolsheviks and through Karl Radek , who had lived in Bremen for a long time, had connections to the Russian leadership clique (cf. Angress, pp. 35f and passim; also Ruth Fischer, passim). An important branch was located in Hamburg, led by Heinrich Laufenberg . From November 1918 the radical left called themselves International Communists of Germany based on Marx's Communist Manifesto . The model was the Russian Red Army. The theoretical basis was the military program of Lenin's proletarian revolution, written in German in October 1917, which "became known through the youth international illegally expelled in Germany" and "made a decisive contribution to the reorientation of the military-political work of the Spartacus group". Less than a month later, on November 9th, 1918, Karl Liebknecht's idea had expanded when he also envisaged the establishment of a Red Guard in the course of the proclamation of a Socialist Republic of Germany, supported by Lieutenant Dorrenbach . On the following day the Spartacus group made it clear with a program of action for the revolution in the Red Flag that they wanted to lead the “soldiers to the revolution” and make them “their pillars”. However, after the general assembly of the Berlin workers' and soldiers' councils on the same day made their armed power available to the majority Social Democrats and in the evening also the new Quartermaster General Groener with the remnants of the old army of the new government, another appeal by the Executive Council of the Workers' and soldiers' councils in Berlin on November 12 to form a Red Guard revoked the following day.

The Red Soldiers Association

On November 15, four days after Rosa Luxemburg's left officially called itself the Spartakusbund, its headquarters founded the Red Soldiers' Union (RSB). The chairmen, who were recruited from members of the Spartakusbund, were Karl Grabusch, the pioneers Willi Budich and Karl Schulz (editor in charge of the federal organ Der Rote Soldat), as well as Christel Wurm and, since mid-December, Albert Schreiner . In the 13-person headquarters of the Spartakusbund, Budich, the central figure in the founding of the RSB, was responsible for the agitation among the soldiers. The Red Soldiers' Union was divided into districts and local groups. Schreiner indicates the existence of the organization in Königsberg, Kiel, Hamburg, Bremen, Essen, Braunschweig, Berlin, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Dresden, Munich, Stuttgart, Ulm and Friedrichshafen as verifiable. In addition, RSB people are said to have passed in: Bamberg, Burglengenfeld, Düsseldorf, Elberfeld, Frankfurt (Oder), Freiberg (Saxony), Gumbinnen, Guben (Niederlausitz), Halberstadt, Halle (Saale), Insterburg, Kattowitz, Luckenwalde, Mellen bei Zossen , Memel, Rastatt, Stettin, Tilsit and Zossen. In the KPD's illegal magazine “Vom Bürgerkrieg” (responsible Ernst Schneller ) in 1924 the number of members of the RSB at the height of its development was given as 12,000. However, this information should be viewed with caution. The headquarters of the RSB was in Berlin. However, the RSB initially had "no fixed organization, rather a loose association of revolutionary soldiers". Schreiner also describes the form of organization as "loose".

The RSB's political objective, according to an appeal by the Red Soldier's editorial team on November 23, 1918, was "to steer the soldiers' movement in decidedly proletarian-revolutionary paths". Only “a consistent policy of the proletarian class struggle” guarantees “the elimination of the capitalist economy, the complete implementation of the socialization of all means of production, the socialist republic and with it real freedom”. The Red Soldier should appear three times a week. By the end of the year 14 issues had appeared, the number of which increased to 26 by May 1919. The highest circulation was around 15,000 copies. During the dispute over the First General Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, which was supposed to meet on December 16, there were three large gatherings of soldiers at the front on December 6, 1918 under the topic of the disqualification of soldiers from the front by the Greater Berlin Soldiers' Council. The speakers were RSB members Budich, Rohne and Schulz. After a demonstration in which around 2,000 people took part, there were armed clashes between the troops that Ebert and Groener had called up and the Executive Council and the Spartakusbund, in which the RSB also took part with weapons for the first time. Sixteen demonstrators were killed and twelve seriously wounded in the firefight. RSB members Behrend and Jörgensen were among the dead, Budich was seriously injured. Eight days later, on the occasion of the presentation of the Spartakus program, Rosa Luxemburg demanded, among other things, the establishment of a workers' militia - probably in order not to isolate her own federation as a “party army”. In addition to the battles of December 6th, it was the so-called Christmas battles , which also pointed the way for the military position of power within. The remaining troops that had not yet been demobilized also included the roughly 1,000-strong People's Navy Division that had come to Berlin in the November days. After the government ordered the People's Representative to vacate their quarters in the Berlin Palace and relocate it to the Marstall building, the sailors feared for their wages, which they wanted to collect by force. The increasing importance of the Kampfbund was evident at the founding party congress of the KPD from December 30, 1918 to January 1, 1919, when 83 delegates from the Spartakusbund 29 of the IKD and one representative of the youth were also present, as were three from the ranks of the Federation. The RSB also took an active part in the January fights in Berlin. Its chairman Karl Grabusch was one of the seven forward parliamentarians killed. In addition, the RSB took part in the armed conflict in Stuttgart, "in the course of which, among other things, the printing works of the largest bourgeois newspaper came to be occupied," and in the protest of 2000 workers in Kiel on the occasion of the march of the Freikorps Gerstenberg Bremen Soviet Republic on February 5, 1919.

Prohibition or dissolution of the RSB

Although the federal government is said to have been banned after the January fighting, its members are said to have continued to be active until it was dissolved by headquarters in May / June 1919. On February 15 (one day after Hindenburg's "appeal against Bolshevism"), 80 members of the Red Soldiers 'Union were arrested in Berlin, and in the March fighting in Berlin in 1919, "the Red Soldiers' Union was again in the forefront". In a new draft of guiding principles on February 20, 1919, in addition to the “elimination of the capitalist military organization”, among other things, the “formation of a Red Army to secure and support the proletarian revolution.” And also in the battles of the Munich Red Army The Soviet Republic from April 13 to May 1, 1919, the RSB was involved. In April 1919, a Red Soldiers' League was formed in Bremen, which was supposed to unite "all armed workers". The military leader is said to have been Seekamp, ​​who was also on the "21 Committee". The former Vice Sergeant Fritz Kassenau was responsible for registering the members. Vice Sergeant Otto from Hanover was named as the founder of the RSB. According to the police report, the cashier was "a certain Cassow" and as a district manager "a certain stone". The meetings took place at the landlord Nordmann on the corner of Nordstrasse and Hafenstrasse and in a bar at the terminus of the Bremen tram in Gröpelingen. Another federal leader is said to have been a deputy sergeant Fritz Meyer. The secretary or adjutant of the former city commandant, a certain Walter, “is said to have been there”.

While in Leipzig in the same month the founding was only called for, there was already a plan on June 4th to prepare a survey. That the "self-dissolution" of the RSB was only a formal act of the Berlin headquarters, which should have an external effect, revealed the further development. At the beginning of September 1919, the re-establishment of “branches and branches” of the dissolved RSB in the form of the Revolutionary Sailors' Union, which “consisted of supporters of the former People's Navy Division and the Republican Army , was established in“ all larger cities ” . While the headquarters were again in Berlin, further local groups were identified in Kiel, Bremen, Hamburg and Schwerin. ”Of the activities in Hamburg, a“ very well attended ”general meeting of the Association of Inactive Naval Teams on the 26th of the month in the union building is documented which the police report established as having "a certain political inertia" on the part of the members when the planned connection between the Kiel association and the Hamburg association for October 15 was discussed. The headquarters should be in Hamburg. The first chairman Vogler put the number of members at 19,000. A last message from November 10, 1919 reports the laying of a wreath by the Association of Inactive Naval Teams called the Revolutionary Sailors' Union at the Ohlsdorf cemetery. The RSB assumed more and more the character of a secret organization. Parts of the RSB organized themselves in the so-called combat organization (KO). Organized in groups of ten, she worked largely illegally. In Berlin alone the KO had around 2000 to 3000 members (K)

Other paramilitary groups on the side of the communists?

It is probably a result of the not yet consolidated structure of the “Red Soldiers' Union” that different terms appear in the sources and in later comments and analyzes. In the case of the Munich Soviet Republic, for example, there is talk of a "Red Army". It is similar with the Red Ruhr Army . In addition, other terms appear. Liebknecht and others speak z. B. from a "guard". The KPD's "apparatus" with its subdivisions was more important. Already at the beginning of 1919, almost with the founding of the KPD, the M-Apparat was built parallel to the RSB . Willi Budich was also its director. The task of the M apparatus was, on the one hand, to develop extensive agitation and propaganda activities together with the party and remnants of the RSB and to invade other opposing formations conspiratorially. It has not been established whether a model in this regard was adopted by the revolutionary chairmen movement during this time. Even before the outbreak of the council movement, they had "started to buy weapons and to form secret military departments known as The Apparat". What is certain is that the KPD took over the system to which a communications apparatus (N apparatus) for espionage and defense had already been assigned before 1921. The military apparatus (M apparatus) was intended for the training of combat groups that had formed in different places in Germany, but were "without effective coordination" of the headquarters. At that time, however, the machine was unlikely to have come to work because of various difficulties. There were differences resulting from regional differences as well as from fundamental differences of opinion about the area of ​​responsibility. If the illegal groups felt responsible for the storage of weapons and ammunition, the headquarters tried to limit actionism with theoretical discussions about military theories. In addition, the members were used as folders at party events.

Mind games after the end of the RSB

In addition to the aforementioned concrete approaches by military units in connection with the idea of national Bolshevism, which emerged for the first time, the year 1919 brought theoretical thought games. In an attempt to bridge the extremes of left and right and create a national popular front, the bourgeois-democratic republic and the Entente powers were common opponents. A potential ally was Soviet Russia, which was highly respected on both sides. The leading propagandists were the Hamburg communists Heinrich Laufenberg and Fritz Wolffheim. Their goal was to set up a Red Army for a "Jacobean revolutionary war" on a voluntary basis, which should also be open to the nationalist free corps and, together with the French and Belgian workers, should break the chains of the Versailles Treaty. The party started a second national Bolshevik agitation in the spring / summer of 1923. In addition to a “work plan for recruiting officers”, a circular from a group of communist officers in Germany was sent to officers of the Reichswehr and the police. In the eight-page paper u. a. claims that the KPD consists of 80% former soldiers from the front, and the expected national liberation struggle was defined as a comprehensive guerrilla war, as a result of which the proletarian revolution would break out. As an aid to argumentation for the officers, the circular claimed, according to Oswald Spengler, “Prussianism” is “socialism” and the council system is a “Prussian idea based on the concepts of elite, responsibility and collegiality”.

The slow way to the proletarian hundreds

In the period that followed, the communist movement was mainly self-absorbed. Different wing battles and divisions such as the formation of the KAPD shaped the picture. Left military formations only reappeared conspicuously after the Kapp Putsch. The most sustained was the formation of the Red Ruhr Army, in which the KPD only played an outsider role. Mainly unorganized anarcho-syndicalists or members of the KAPD, USPD and even SPD were involved in the "very rapid" formation of these troop units . Like other attempts at insurrection in parts of central Germany, the "uprising in the Ruhr" was put down in the first week of April. In July / August 1920, at the II World Congress of the AI ​​in Petrograd and Moscow, the formation of illegal organizations to carry out systematic underground activities was fundamentally decided. Police actions on January 19 and February 3, 1921 brought to light material about the existence of a Red Army, the smuggling of weapons and explosives, and the financing of illegal communist activities in Germany and other parts of Europe by the Soviet mission. "Explosives, weapons and other military equipment" were found in further police operations during the month of February. Despite the apparent preparation for an uprising, the Communist Party again proved to be a 'verbal radical paper tiger'. When the uprising broke out in March, no Red Army appeared anywhere in Germany. After the occupation of the Ruhr area by French troops on the 7th of the month, an attempted attack on the Berlin Victory Column on March 13th formed the argument for the government to occupy parts of central Germany.

Although Die Rote Fahne repeatedly urged workers to arm themselves, the party's successes were relatively small. During the fighting that followed, Hugo Eberlein , the new head of the M apparatus, developed a scenario that was as obscure as it was unsuccessful.

Only the political adventurer Max Hoelz was successful . With the weapons from the depots, which had been hidden there after the Kapp Putsch and the subsequent unrest, Hoelz managed to assemble a small army. The horde roamed the country for ten days, plundering and robbing, but failed not least because of the lack of cooperation between the various left groups.

Even during the fighting on March 23 and 24 in Hamburg, no orderly military action was discernible. Only the use of the unemployed as raiding parties of the KPD was common practice throughout the March movement. While most shipyards began to work again on March 29, the security police, supported by an artillery battalion of the Reichswehr, took the Leunawerke by storm. The numbers involved in the uprising vary between 200,000 and a million.

The result of the March uprising was, in addition to a drastic reduction in membership of the KPD and a wave of convictions before the special courts set up on March 29, a first purge within the leadership of the KPD.

literature

  • Werner T. Angress: The time of struggle of the KPD 1921–1923. Düsseldorf 1973.
  • Hermann Dünow: The Red Front Fighter League. The revolutionary protection and defense organization of the German ...
  • Kurt Finker: History of the Red Front Fighter League. Dietz, Berlin (East) 1981.
  • Ruth Fischer: Stalin and German Communism. Volume 1: From the emergence of German communism to 1924. Berlin 1991.
  • Ruth Fischer: Stalin and German Communism. Volume 2: The Bolshevikization of German Communism from 1925. Berlin 1991.
  • Roland Grau: On the role and importance of the Red Soldiers' Union. In: Journal of Military History. 1968, No. 6, pp. 718-723.
  • Helga Grebing: History of the German labor movement. Munich 1975, p. 146ff.
  • Werner Hinze: The sounds of shawms in the torchlight. A contribution to the war culture of the interwar period. Tonsplitter, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-936743-00-2 (= Tonsplitter, Archive for Music and Social History, Volume 1), also: Bremen, Univ., Diss., 2002.
  • Werner Hinze: Bloody days. A contribution to “finding the truth” or: From the “Hamburg uprising” of the KPD to the “Altona Blood Sunday”. A civil war strategy. Hamburg 2013.
  • Werner Hinze: The shawm. From the emperor's signal to the marching song of the KPD and NSDAP. Plain text. Essen 2003, ISBN 3-89861-113-2 (= Writings of the Fritz-Hüser-Institute for German and Foreign Workers 'Literature of the City of Dortmund, Series 2: Research on Workers' Literature, Volume 13), also: Bremen, Univ., Diss., Part 2.
  • Bernd Kaufmann (head), Eckhard Reisener, Dieter Schwips, Henri Walther: The KPD's intelligence service 1919–1937. Berlin 1993.
  • Rosa Luxemburg: “What does the Spartakusbund want?” In: Die Rote Fahne. No. 29, December 14, 1918 (here based on Angress, p. 37ff.)
  • Karl Rohe: The Reich Banner Black Red Gold. Düsseldorf 1966.
  • Arthur Rosenberg: Origin of the Weimar Republic. Frankfurt a. M. 1971.
  • Arthur Rosenberg: History of the Weimar Republic. Frankfurt a. M. 1972.
  • Albert Schreiner: The Red Soldiers Association. In: Contributions to the history of the (German) labor movement. 1960, pp. 819-819
  • Kurt GP Schuster: The Red Front Fighter League 1924–1929. Contributions to the history and organizational structure of a political fighting union. Droste, Düsseldorf 1975, ISBN 3-7700-5083-5 (= contributions to the history of parliamentarism and political parties, volume 55), also: Göttingen, Univ., Diss.
  • Hermann Weber: The change in German communism. The Stalinization of the KPD in the Weimar Republic. 2 volumes. European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1969.
  • Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Munich 1998 (revised edition).
  • Heinrich August Winkler: From Revolution to Stabilization. Workers and labor movement in the Weimar Republic 1918–1924. Berlin 19852.
  • Otto-Ernst Schüddekopf: Left people from the right. The national revolutionary minorities and communism in the Weimar Republic. Stuttgart 1960;
  • Karl O. Paetel: Temptation or Chance. On the history of German national Bolshevism 1918–1932. A report. In: Foreign Policy. Volume 3, No. 4, April 1952, pp. 229–242
  • Armin Mohler: The Conservative Revolution in Germany 1918–1932. Outline of their worldview. Stuttgart 1950, pp. 59-65 and passport.; Klemperer, pp. 139-150;
  • Erich Müller: National Bolshevism. Hamburg 1933, Angress, p. 61ff. and pp. 348-412.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The so-called "self-dissolution" is dated differently. Schuster, p. 51 gives the beginning of June as the date, Schreiner, p. 817, on the other hand, gives the end of June. Grau, who refers to KPK (Communist Party Correspondence), vol. 1, No. 11, from June 25, 1919, p. 16, dated May / June.
  2. ↑ Little has been published about the RSB. Either it is not mentioned in the literature or it is dealt with very briefly, as in Hermann Dünow, p. 20, who devotes only one page to the RSB. A first compilation about the RSB was in an article in the irregularly published illegal military-political magazine of the KPD, Vom Civil War, 2nd year, issue 17, November 1924. According to Schreiner, the magazine was published from 1923 to 1926. In 1960 Albert Schreiner wrote The Red Soldiers Association. In: Contributions to the history of the (German) labor movement, 1960, pp. 809–819. Roland Grau essentially refers to Schreiner: On the role and importance of the Red Soldiers Association. In: Journal of Military History. 1968, No. 6, pp. 718-723. An essay dominated by propagandistic phrases that does not provide any new knowledge. For the establishment of the RSB cf. also Schuster, p. 51. In the Bremen State Archives there is a file on the RSB, StaHB 4.65-1217, and one on the Red Sailors Association (RMB), StaHB 4.65-1219. Dünow, p. 20, like Schreiner, p. 813, assigns the suggestion for founding Leo Jogiches. Unless otherwise stated, my remarks about the RSB relate to this work. For the establishment cf. also Schuster, p. 51.
  3. ↑ Werner Hinze: Shawm sounds in the torchlight. A contribution to the war culture of the interwar period. Hamburg 2002, p. 50ff .; Albert Schreiner: The Red Soldiers Association. In: Contributions to the history of the (German) labor movement. 1960, p. 811 mentions the Spartacus group as "initiators and main sponsors of this work". see also Angress, p. 35 / note. 19; Winkler, p. 37.
  4. ↑ See also Angress, p. 24f .; Angress, p. 42
  5. ↑ Schreiner, p. 812; see also Grau, p. 719.
  6. ↑ S. Schreiner, pp. 811f. reports that he himself also “familiarized” himself with the military writings of Engels, Mehring, Clausewitz and Delbrück.
  7. ↑ Schreiner, p. 812 refers to the illustrated history of the German Revolution. Berlin 1929, p. 34. He blames the "soldiers 'councils influenced by Social Democracy" for the failure, especially "when the Ebert-Hindenburg plot against the soldiers' councils began to have an effect."
  8. ↑ Cf. Roland Grau: On the role and importance. P. 719.
  9. ↑ Winkler, 1998, p. 31ff. u. 38f .; see. Rosenberg, Geschichte, p. 241; s. also Helga Grebing: History of the German labor movement. Munich 1975, p. 149.
  10. ↑ Schreiner, p. 813.
  11. ↑ Grau, pp. 719f.
  12. ↑ Schreiner, p. 816; The documentation “1918. Uprising of the Sailors "by arte and N3 from October 25th and 30th, 2018 shows a film excerpt in which sailors or soldiers lift up a large sign that read:" Red Soldiers Association "
  13. ↑ Grau, p. 720 with reference to Der Rote Soldat. No. 6, Berlin, December 5, 1918
  14. ↑ From the Civil War. 1923, p. 28. The article was only signed with K., here after Schreiner, p. 816. The periodically illegal magazine “Vom Bürgerkrieg” was published from 1923 to 1925. In it the experiences of the different civil wars and civil war-like struggles were recorded processed in order to learn for the civil war to be striven for, which was to lead to revolution. The successor to these issues was probably the magazine "Oktober" until 1932. At least in 1931 it appeared under the camouflage title “New Architecture” published by “Architect Otto Diebel” from Zurich. Otto Braun (1900–1974) hides behind the abbreviation “K” or “WK” as “Karl”. See also Weber, pp. 145ff .; Hinze, Bluttage and LAS 309-228 13 - 16/3
  15. ↑ Schuster, p. 51 after Retzlaw, K., Spartakus, p. 116. Schreiner, p. 816 also describes the form of organization as “loose”.
  16. ↑ Schreiner, p. 816.
  17. ↑ The Red Soldier. No. 1, November 23, 1918, here after Schreiner, p. 813.
  18. ↑ Schreiner, p. 813; Grau, p. 721.
  19. ↑ See “November Revolution ”; Winkler 1998, p. 49 names "Members of replacement battalions of the infantry regiment 'Kaiser Franz', sailors of the People's Navy Division and members of a student armed forces". See also Rosenberg, pp. 40f.
  20. ↑ Schreiner, p. 817. Grau, p. 722. In his presentation, Grau (note 23) refers to: Wrobel: Willi Budich - an indomitable revolutionary. In: ZMG. 7th year, 1968, p. 593f. See also Winkler 1998, p. 49f.
  21. ↑ Rosa Luxemburg: What does the Spartacus League want? In: The Red Flag. No. 29, December 14, 1918 (here based on Angress, p. 37ff.)
  22. ↑ Winkler 1998, p. 53f. Rosenberg, Geschichte, p. 44ff. Grau, p. 723.
  23. ↑ Grau, p. 721; Angress, p. 46f. also sees in the decision of the founding party congress to boycott the elections on January 19, in addition to a “rejection of Rosa Luxemburg's basic concept”, also “suggestively” the beginning of a “putschism”.
  24. ↑ S. Schreiner, p. 817; Grau, p. 723 also mentions the 7 parliamentarians "who were supposed to negotiate with the noske troops about the surrender" of the occupied forward building; Angress, p. 52.
  25. ↑ Schreiner, p. 817. On the fighting in Bremen see also Winkler 1998, p. 60f.
  26. ↑ Schuster, p. 51 chose the imprecise formulation “forced into illegality”. In any case, the Red Flag was forbidden from March 3rd to April 20th and May 10th to December 12th 1919 (see Angress, p. 61). The so-called "self-dissolution" is dated differently. Schuster, p. 51 gives the beginning of June as the date, Schreiner, p. 817, on the other hand, gives the end of June. Grau, who refers to KPK (Communist Party Correspondence), vol. 1, No. 11, from June 25, 1919, p. 16, dated May / June.
  27. ↑ Schreiner, p. 818.
  28. ↑ The Red Soldier. February 20, 1919, here based on Schreiner, p. 818.
  29. ↑ Grau, p. 720 refers to the article, which is only signed with a "K", The Red Soldiers' Union. In: From the Civil War. 2nd year, 1924, issue 17, p. 23ff., In particular p. 28, Angress, p. 59 Note 57 describes the months March to April as a “time of ongoing political street fighting”. Angress, p. 61 leads the unrest to the strikes of February 1919, unemployment and price increases in various parts of the country, which particularly affected Central Germany and spread to Berlin. There there was a general strike and street fighting, which had been stopped by the military on March 8, during which Leo Jogiches was arrested on March 10 and shot by a police officer.
  30. ↑ StaHB 4,65-1217, sheet 1, April 11, 1919 and a supplement of April 23, 1919.
  31. ↑ StaHB 4,65-1217, sheet 1, April 11, 1919 and a supplement of April 23, 1919.
  32. ↑ StaHB 4.65-1217, sheet 5a / b; StaHB 4.65-1217, sheet 6/7.
  33. ↑ StaHB 4.65-1219, sheet 2-6. Sheet 1 also reports on a Huebner, a member of the revolutionary sailors' union, who used to belong to the People's Navy Division and "has repeatedly appeared in meetings of the KKA". He reported to a Nowack, landlord in Berlin-Tegel and “confidante of the sailors 'union”, that “in Braunschweig, a certain Leonhardt bought 2 armored cars and 1,000 rifles for the sailors' union. The transport is arranged by the Sterndampfergesellschaft on September 15. expected in Tegel. "
  34. ↑ StaHB 4.65-1219, sheet 4, Pol.B No. 171, September 27, 1919.
  35. ↑ StaHB 4.65-1219, sheet 6.
  36. ↑ Kaufmann, p. 19f. refers to SAPMO BArch, ZPA, NL 36/492 and Hugo Egerlein: MP. In: The Red Flag. December 28, 1921.
  37. ↑ Angress, p. 141. The apparatus was headed by Ernst Däumig , who in the summer of 1918, while still a member of the USPD, took over the management of the stewards. Emil Barth and Richard Müller worked as directors with him.
  38. ↑ According to Angress, p. 142, both devices also had the task of "establishing contact with Russian agents who were illegally traveling through Germany". Ruth Fischer, p. 174 also mentions Z groups (decomposition groups) that were supposed to infiltrate opposing political and military organizations, as well as T groups (terror groups) for sabotage and liquidation of traitors. According to Angress, p. 141, note 3, these two organizations are also mentioned by Buber-Neumann ( From Potsdam to Moscow. Stuttgart 1956, p. 68). Only the point in time of the establishment seems disputed.
  39. ^ Angress, p. 141.
  40. ^ Angress, p. 142.
  41. ↑ Fischer, pp. 173-174.
  42. ↑ Cf. on this Otto-Ernst Schüddekopf: Left people from the right. The national revolutionary minorities and communism in the Weimar Republic. Stuttgart 1960; Karl O. Paetel: Temptation or Chance. On the history of German national Bolshevism 1918–1932. A report. In: Foreign Policy. 3rd year, No. 4, April 1952, pp. 229-242; Armin Mohler: The Conservative Revolution in Germany 1918–1932. Outline of their worldview. Stuttgart 1950, pp. 59-65 and passport.; Klemperer, pp. 139-150; Erich Müller: National Bolshevism. Hamburg 1933. Angress, p. 61ff. and pp. 348-412.
  43. ↑ Angress, p. 67 also points out that Radek was initially fascinated by this idea, but Lenin rejected the concept in 1920.
  44. ↑ Here it was especially the appeal to Schlageter. Angress, p. 384 believes that the Schlageter course was supported by the entire party, since it was only "a question of tactics and not a doctrine".
  45. ^ According to Angress, p. 377, the work plan had been found in arrested communists.
  46. ^ S. Angress, p. 377.
  47. ↑ Staatsarchiv Düsseldorf, No. 16964, B 1. 83–86, quoted from Angress, p. 378.
  48. ↑ cf. Angress, p. 69.
  49. ↑ Angress, p. 72. An appeal by the EKKI on March 25th called on the German proletariat to take up arms and fight (cf. Angress, p. 94).
  50. ^ The Second Congress of the KI Minutes of the negotiations from July 19 in Petrograd and from July 23 to August 7, 1920 in Moscow. Hamburg 1921, pp. 758-759, here based on Angress, pp. 340f.
  51. ↑ Angress refers to “Report of the Prussian State Commissioner Dr. Weismann, February 3, 1921 ", Foreign Office, Germany, microfilm, container 1405, frame D 552184 - D 552193. Angress p. 141 refers to plans for the formation of a Red Army and other military preparations made by the police on the occasion of the Ruhr Uprisings were secured (further references there). See also Fischer, p. 173.
  52. ↑ Ibid.
  53. ↑ See Angress, p. 161ff. The Free States of Thuringia and Saxony and the Prussian province of Saxony formed an industrial area that was comparable to the importance of the Ruhr area and Upper Silesia. The area was known for a traditionally strong and radical labor movement (e.g. the wave of strikes in the Mansfeld coal field in January 1910). After the November Revolution, the region was a stronghold of the USPD. With the worsening economic conditions, the KPD gained increasing popularity. The elections to the Prussian state parliament on February 20, 1921, brought the party 197,113 votes in the Halle-Merseburg constituency, while the SPD only received 70,340 and the USPD 74,754 votes (Angress, p. 162). According to Angress, p. 169, the police occupation began on March 19. Two days later, 11 people were arrested in Berlin who allegedly confessed to planting the bomb. Some of them are said to have had a KAPD membership card with them. (Angress, p. 166)
  54. ↑ In the evening edition of the Red Flag of March 18, 1921 it says u. a .: "The weapon makes the decision [...] Every worker doesn't care about the law and buys a weapon wherever he can find it!" and on March 20, 1921: "The weapons in the hands of the workers!" (quoted from Angress, p. 176ff). Hugo Eberlein, known as Hugo with the fuse according to Ruth Fischer, Volume 1, p. 226, was considered an experienced sabotage specialist. According to Angress, p. 181f. he was sent to Central Germany on March 22nd, where he was planning acts of violence "that could then be blamed on the police" in order to "shake the workers out of their passive attitude". He wanted to fake kidnappings and z. B. blowing up a police ammunition train and later accusing the police of carelessness in the communist newspaper Klassenkampf in Halle. Angress draws most of its information from documents taken from Klara Zetkin on her trip to Moscow in the summer of 1921. The documents were published in several forward editions in November 1921 (cf. Angress, p. 179, note 15) and in: KPD. The revelations about the March fights: what was revealed and what was not. Hall 1922.
  55. ↑ See Angress, pp. 183-186; Ruth Fischer, Volume 1, pp. 168-177 and pp. 225-230.
  56. ↑ Angress, pp. 191ff. and note 33.
  57. ^ Angress, p. 197.
  58. ↑ Angress, p. 202, note 72 considers Malzahn's figure of 200,000 throughout the Reich to be appropriate, Flechtheim, p. 73, gives 300,000 and Brandler ( Was the March Action a Bakunist Putsch?, P. 22) gives a million . With regard to the armament, Angress refers to Drobnig (Annex 13, o. S.), who counted the prisoners and deaths for Central Germany. He reports the confiscation of 1,346 rifles and 34 machine guns.
  59. ↑ According to Angress, p. 205, the membership decreased from approx. 350,000 before the uprising to 180,443 in the summer of 1921. Angress, p. 204 estimates 3000 years in prison and penitentiary for around 4000 rebels.