Red raiding party

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The Red Shock Troop was one of the first, largest and longest active left-wing socialist resistance groups against National Socialism .

It was founded in July 1932 as a reaction to the Prussian strike by Rudolf Küstermeier and some of his friends from the “Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus”, the German University of Politics in Berlin and the socialist student body . The Red Shock Troop developed into one of the largest resistance groups within a few months. Over 90% of the estimated 500 active members in 1933 were Social Democrats from the left wing of the party. The comparatively young workers , employees and students criticized the insufficiently combative attitude of the SPD, KPD and trade unions in the fight against German fascism . A left united front was propagated by the leadership of the resistance group, the so-called Red Staff, which was supposed to overthrow the NSDAP government through a proletarian revolution . The Red Assault Troop strove for close cooperation between all anti-nationalist forces. The group maintained good contacts above all to critical and dissident members of the SPD , SAJ and KPD and to smaller left groups such as the SAPD , the KPDO and the ISK , but also to people from the bourgeois parties and even to opposition National Socialists such as Otto Strasser . There was close organizational cooperation with the Quaker office in Berlin , where one of the group's reproduction machines was located.

In 1933, the upper floor of Luisenstrasse 19 in Berlin-Mitte, which had already been expanded at that time , was the dormitory of the socialist student body managed by Karl König . In the house was one of the first illegal printing locations for the Red Shock Troop newspaper. Numerous leading functionaries of the resistance group of the same name lived there.

When setting up the resistance structures, the Red Staff oriented itself towards Lenin's idea of ​​an authoritarian cadre network. Lenin published his idea in 1902 in the brochure “ What to Do ?”. The first edition of the “Red Strike Troop” in April 1933 was headed with these two words. The group published 27 issues of the magazine of the same name at weekly intervals until November 1933 and sent them to almost all parts of the Third Reich and abroad. The publication had a left-wing revolutionary, anti-capitalist and anti-nationalist focus and reported early on. a. about corruption and lies of the Nazi elite as well as about torture rooms and concentration camps . At the end of 1933 the newspaper had a circulation of 1,500 copies per issue in Berlin alone. Due to the subversive five-member system with which the resistance group worked, it can be assumed that the newspaper had up to 7,500 readers at the end of 1933. This would have made the Red Shock Troop one of the largest illegal newspapers that were not produced and distributed by the party leadership of the SPD and KPD. The resistance organization succeeded u. a. thanks to the newspaper, to set up various local groups in the German Reich within a few months (for example in Bielefeld , Brüel , Kassel , Pirmasens and Stettin ). In addition, there were contacts in dozens of other cities and neighboring countries.

At the beginning of December 1933, the Gestapo succeeded in arresting around 150 members and sympathizers of the resistance group. At least 61 were sentenced in 1934 and 1935 to prison and penal terms, some of which were long. In Berlin, among other places, there were two trials against readers and distributors of the newspaper before the Kammergericht and one trial against the Red Staff before the People's Court . The trial of numerous senior officials of the resistance group in August 1934 was only the second trial before the People's Court. The indictment had previously been drawn up by the Reichsgericht Leipzig. Allegedly at the express request of Hermann Göring , the change to the special court was then carried out.

After a brief period of waiting, some undiscovered members of the resistance group met again in Berlin. In addition to networking, they concentrated on providing physical and psychological support for the prisoners and their families, providing lawyers and collecting the money they need to help. The aid fund was able to fall back on structures that had existed since mid-1933. At that time, couriers were sent abroad by the Red Staff to improve the organization's border work and at the same time solicit support and cooperation from international workers' organizations - for example the International Transport Workers' Federation , the SoPaDe , the Labor Party and the Socialist Workers' International .

From the aid fund, a reorganized group was formed in Berlin, which from 1934 continued the illegal work under the direction of Kurt Megelin . Until at least 1935 the group published the newspaper Der Rote Shocktrupp in an unknown edition at irregular intervals . The New Red Shock Troop retained the ideological line of the founding group and referred to their work. At the same time, under the leadership of the emigrated Robert Keller, a further structure emerged in Czechoslovakia , called the New Red Shock Troop. Together with, for example, the Revolutionary Socialists of Germany ( Siegfried Aufhäuser and Karl Böchel ) and the Neu Beginnen group ( Karl Frank ), the New Red Shock Troop attempted to set the SoPaDe on a united front course. At the same time, the exile executive, headed by Otto Wels , was denied the right to represent the German social democracy and demanded access to the party assets, some of which had been rescued abroad. The New Red shock troops gained with its cadre, antitrust and network policy temporarily influence in the social democratic emigration: Robert Keller and his friend Franz Osterroth talked from 1934 in Czechoslovakia a cadre school and supplied by wide there parts of the former Saxony and Anhalt with illegal written material . At the same time they traveled illegally to the German Reich and received visitors from there. The SoPaDe, among others, was interested in the information obtained in this way. Although Robert Keller repeatedly criticized and questioned the exiled party executive, the SoPaDe financed the activities of the New Red Strike Troop . In 1935 there was a large wave of arrests in, for example, Eilenburg , Halle and Leipzig . Robert Keller's liaison officers were among those arrested. As a result, the influence of the New Red Shock Troop in emigration declined . By 1937 at the latest, this branch of the Red Shock Troop disbanded.

In Berlin, Kurt Megelin and a few others succeeded in maintaining resistance against National Socialism until at least 1944. The group increasingly refrained from external propaganda and concentrated on decomposition and protection work. Among other things, the Red Shock Troop hid racially and politically persecuted people, including Inge Deutschkron and her mother. With the beginning of the Second World War, the last remaining organizational part of the Red Strike Troop pushed its alliance policy. The group entertained u. a. Connections to the Kreisauer circle , to the communist resistance, to the group around Carl Goerdeler , but also to oppositional Wehrmacht circles . As with the founding group under Küstermeier, the range of contacts of the group around Kurt Megelin ranged from structures of the KPD to opposition National Socialists. Many of the acquaintances in the socialist resistance camp resulted from the time before the transfer of power . Kurt Megelin, for example, had known Wilhelm Leuschner since 1931 . On the earlier joint work with the new leaves for socialism was about Curt Bley from the Red bar with Theodor Haubach , Carlo Mierendorff and Adam von Trott friends. Despite these extremely prominent friendships and relationships, the impression remains that the Red Shock Troop, as an organization, did not have any notable influence on concrete reorganization concepts for a Germany liberated from National Socialism.

Known lawsuits against leaders, members and supporters of the Red Strike Force

  • Against Otto Eckert and 22 other readers and distributors of the "Red Strike Troop" before the Berlin Superior Court (indictment on February 12, 1934 / verdict on May 26, 1934)
  • Against Hermann Köpcke and Adolf Böse before the Berlin Superior Court (indictment on March 20, 1934 / judgment pronounced on May 29, 1934)
  • Against Bruno Senftleben and 26 other readers and distributors of the "Red Strike Troop" before the Berlin Superior Court (indictment on April 30, 1934 / judgment pronounced on May 24, 1934)
  • Against the Red Staff, the leadership group of the Red Strike Troop (proceedings against Karl Zinn and others), before the Reichsgericht in Leipzig (indictment on May 15, 1934 / judgment pronounced by the People's Court on August 27, 1934)
  • Against René Bertholet and others (including Karl Mülle an important member of the Red Strike Troop) before the Berlin Superior Court (indictment on June 6, 1934 / judgment pronounced on September 19, 1934)
  • Against Rudolf Preuss from Bielefeld before the Hamm Higher Regional Court (indictment on March 14, 1935 / judgment pronounced on April 2, 1935)
  • Against Hans Köpcke and Rudolf Wendt before the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court (indictment September 2, 1935 / verdict October 10, 1935)

Well-known members and supporters of the Red Strike Troop

literature

  • Dennis Egginger-Gonzalez: The Red Assault Troop. An early left-wing socialist resistance group against National Socialism. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3867322744 [Presentation and analysis of the group with over 200 short biographies and numerous facsimiles of the resistance newspaper of the same name].
  • Dennis Egginger: The Red Assault Troop. In: Hans Coppi , Stefan Heinz (ed.): The forgotten resistance of the workers. Trade unionists, communists, social democrats, Trotskyists, anarchists and forced laborers. Dietz, Berlin, 2012, ISBN 978-3320022648 , pp. 91-106.
  • Rudolf Küstermeier : The Red Strike Squad. Berlin 1972. (Report from a former member of the group's management, as PDF file ( Memento from July 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ))
  • Hans-Rainer Sandvoss : The “other” capital of the Reich. Resistance from the labor movement in Berlin from 1933 to 1945. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2007 (pp. 76–84) ISBN 3-936872-94-5 , ISBN 978-3-936872-94-1 .
  • Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz, Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Berlin 2008, pp. 144–189, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 [illustration of the group with numerous biographies and documents]