Web hosting Custom Email SiteBuilder

CHAPTER I

ALIEN LAND

THE number of victims sacrificed during the early stages of our work was out of all proportion to the results accomplished. We all knew that. Our activity during the first weeks was confined almost entirely to printing and distributing illegal literature, and pamphlet in the pocket might mean death. But we knew too that only through this work could the Party be held together and reorganized on an illegal basis.

Every day comrades were being dragged off, man-handled, murdered. Police trucks sped through the streets, carrying workers under arrest to the torture chambers of Hedemann- and Friedrichstrasse. We grew accustomed to the idea that sooner or later the same fate would overtake us.

Eva's arrest in mid-April cut us off for a time from contact with the district leadership. We decided to get out a newspaper of our own, that we might keep the comrades and sympathizers of our subdistrict informed as to the more important developments at home and abroad. Most of our material we borrowed from the Basel Rundschau, which Werner stole from his father's files The English and French press also supplied us with valuable news items that had been rigidly suppressed by the coordinated German papers. Anna cut the stencils on her office typewriter; Martin and I worked the mimeograph machine, which we managed to get out of harm's way in the nick of time.

The workers hungered for news of the Party, of the general economic situation, of foreign opinion on Hitler's accession to power. But the distribution of literature became increasingly difficult. One was never safe from the house searches and block raids by the SA ² and SS ³ troops. Under the brutal reign of terror instituted by the government, people shrank from any display of sympathy with us. The lists we had drawn up of sympathizers in our district had lost their value. Many of those who, during former election campaigns, had hung up red flags and pasted our placards in their windows, had moved to sections of the city where they were unknown. Some deserted to the Nazis and informed against our comrades. Most of them pleaded with us to bring no more forbidden literature into their homes.

Early in May the leaders of the adjacent subdistrict were arrested-through the agency, it was said, of a spy among the UB ⁴ functionaries. This was probably true. But more formidable than the work of spies within our ranks was the spy-psychosis, which we found it necessary to combat with every weapon at our disposal, for it threatened to cripple the activity of the comrades and to demoralize the Party. It was quite apparent that the Nazis were working in this direction. They had be gun with newspaper reports that the Komintern had removed Ernst Thaelmann from office and replaced him as leader of the CPG ⁵ by Heinz Neumann, and that Thaelmann himself had fled to Denmark. This was followed by the rumor that S., one of the most devoted functionaries in the Central Committee, was actually a police spy-a second Azev. Suspicion fell on comrades in our very midst. Surrounded as we were by uncertainty, a single remark was enough to stir doubts which we had great difficulty in quieting.

The habits of a lifetime were altered by our illegal status, which developed in us perceptions hitherto dormant. Peril lurked in factory and underground, street and café-dogging our every footstep. Never had I scanned the faces of the people about me so attentively. If I caught a glance I didn't like, I left the place at once. I never went near my rooms until late at night, and varied my homeward route and the routine of my return as much as possible. I pricked up my ears for the sound of footsteps behind me and of windows opening overhead, and ran my eye over every doorway before venturing to pass it. My flat still bore the nameplate of its former occupant, and I hadn't yet presented my card of identity, signed by the landlord, at police headquarters Despite all these precautionary measures, however, I still felt unsafe at home. My rooms seemed to be a mouse-trap.

Each of us evolved his own methods of guarding against the danger of being trailed. The subway and the huge department stores were admirably suited to the business of shaking off spies. If you waited till your train

was actually under way before you stepped off, no one could possibly follow you from the compartment unseen. The department stores, with their swarms of people, were as huge conduits through which you let yourself be carried. To get momentary relief from the constant pressure on all my senses, I liked to spend my free evenings at a small movie, to which the Nazi films hadn't yet got around. The gloom of the interior, and the presence of people whose attention was concentrated on the screen, had a soothing effect. Once, and once only, I let Werner talk me into going with him to the Ufa Palace near the Zoo, to see Brandt, the SA-man. As the Nazi orchestra, which preceded the film on the program, broke into the strains of the Horst Wessel song, the audience rose to its feet. That was enough for me. The moment the theater was dark I got up and left.

For a while we met mostly in cafes, but we soon had to give that up. The Brown Shirts were combing the eating places, demanding the name, address, and occupation of everyone present. One evening I was walking along Kleiststrasse on my way to meet Martin and Werner at a cafe which had hitherto been unsuspected when, a few paces ahead of me, I caught sight of a former sympathizer, accompanied by two Brown Shirts. Positive that I had seen them first, I stopped in front of a bookshop to widen the distance between us. They took their time, strolling along without any apparent aim. I waited till they were well past the cafe before going in. Martin and Werner had not yet arrived. Hardly had I seated myself at the table when a door opened to admit the deserter and his companions. I promptly picked up my hat and coat and walked to the rear exit which, for some reason was bolted. I turned and made for the front door by way of the narrow passage adjoining the kitchen. I had gone half way when I saw the deserter coming toward me. It was too late to turn back. Thrusting my hands into my pockets, I headed straight for him, conscious, as we neared each other, that the skin over his cheekbones was drawn taut with nervousness. We were still a couple of paces apart when his gaze left mine and shifted aside. I held my breath involuntarily as we passed each other. The next moment I plunged into the thick of the street traffic. Even a spy's trade has to be learned, I reflected. It requires strength of purpose and a steady morale-which can come only with training. Beginners must find their last remnants of decency an embarrassing handicap.

Later I had another narrow escape. I had arranged to call the home of a comrade one evening for some paper on which to print our bulletin. Getting paper had become a complicated process, now that the Secret Police had passed a regulation to the effect that any private citizen purchasing that commodity must explain to the shopkeeper what he wanted it for.

I reached the house shortly before eight and climbed to the top floor, where the comrade lived. After ringing several times without reply, I decided I'd better not wait and descended the stairs again, only to find the outer door locked; the porter had closed the entrance to the house while I was upstairs. There was nothing to do but to ring someone's doorbell, and ask to be let out. The two tenants I tried on the first floor did not dare to open their doors. Who was there? they inquired from within. What did I want? No, they couldn't open the door for me; they'd gone to bed. (It was just a few minutes past eight!) There was something wrong here. Finally a man on the second floor consented to come out and escort me downstairs. We were nearing the bottom of the stairway when he turned to me and asked, "Whom did you come to see?"

"Kerich," I replied.

He stopped short and shot me a strange glance.

"But he was arrested today."

"Don't talk about it!" I said. "We want to catch a few more birds in that nest. I'm from the Secret Police."

He ran forward ahead of me in his slippered feet, eager to get the key into the lock, flattered and delighted to help me.

"Good night, Herr Kommissar," he said, bowing low.

For three months I had managed to avoid saluting the swastika flag. It was true that after May 1 the Hitler-greeting was obligatory in the factory, and the NSBO ⁶ saw to it that the workers and clerks raised their right arms in salute as they entered each morning. But you could always steer clear of SA parades and demonstrations by turning off into a side street or a restaurant. I tried it once too often, however, and got myself into needless danger through my none too clever behavior. Toward the end of May I had made a street appointment with two of our subdistrict functionaries to discuss the reorganization of various units. As I neared our meeting place, I caught sight of an approaching procession of Nazi nurses, carrying banners. Without stopping to think, I turned my back on it and walked in the opposite direction, only to face four Brown Shirts crossing toward me from the other side of the street.

"Trying to get out of it?" said one. "Arm up! And now-?"

"Heil Hitler," I said.

I could have spit at myself as I strode past the procession with arm uplifted.

For months before Hitler's accession to power, the Party had already issued instructions that a courier service was to be organized, the cells broken up into smaller units, lodgings cleared of all incriminating material, and rooms provided for underground work. Matters were to be arranged so that every subdistrict and, wherever possible, every cell could continue its work independently, even if contact with the Central Committee should be temporarily severed. But it was one thing to prepare for approaching illegal activity; it was quite another thing to be driven overnight into the most complete illegality. The tremendous Party apparatus, with more than a quarter of a million members, and thousands of factory and street cells, had to elude the grip of thc Nazi state power the morning after the Reichstag fire. It was clear that the incendiaries intended to follow the fire up with a wave of terrorism directed against the Party and all the workers' organizations.

The transition to illegality cost us many victims, for which our own lack of training was largely to blame. It was hard to part from the painfully acquired works of Lenin, from the theoretical journals we had accumulated, from the documents dealing with the Party history. Against our better judgment, we kept them on our bookshelves, till we learned that another comrade had been caught. Then we weeded them out. But what was harmless today became high treason within a week. We weeded them again and again till the entire library had been burned and our empty bookshelves stacked with cheap love stories and rubbish.

I packed my most precious books into two boxes, which I hid in the cellar until the time when I could convey them to safety.

We "searched" our comrades' rooms to make sure that they had carried out the Party's instructions. Some times we came across instances of incredible carelessness in the matter of holding on to forbidden material. It was particularly important to gain prompt access to the rooms of comrades after they had been arrested. We had to remove all clues suggesting Party work or leading to the trail of other comrades. At the time when the Party had been organizing the Home Defense Squads against surprise attacks by the Brown Shirts, we had had skeleton keys made to the rooms of comrades. This precaution now proved very useful. Our "searches" saved a number of comrades from certain death. On one occasion Mother Hannchen carried from the rooms of an RFB-man ⁷ a full clothesbasket of weapons, covered only by a few towels; this was done in broad daylight.

It was now more important than ever-in view of the flood of Nazi propaganda, verbal and written-to impress upon the minds of the comrades the principles of Marxism-Leninism. But the educational work in our subdistrict presented serious difficulties. Private homes could not be used for large classes without attracting attention. When the warm weather came, we met outdoors in groups of five to ten. I remember that on the day of the big auto races along the Avus highway we lay in the wood that borders the race course. Thousands of spectators lined the road. We were discussing the Marx-Lenin theory of the state, and agreed that never before had the state's role in class society been more strikingly illustrated than now in the Third Reich. Only a few months earlier, huge SPG ⁸ placards had shouted from the advertising kiosks: "STATE, ACT'' The SPG appealed to the Weimar Republic to protect the people; the "democratic" state was supposed to act against the rising Nazi menace. Now the state had acted; it had destroyed the workers' organizations, torn the last shreds of democracy from the machinery of oppression, and was making merry over the fools who had deluded themselves into the belief that you could break the little wheels, one by one, from a rolling mill.

We were having trouble with Martin. The boy, formerly a devoted Party worker, was weakening under the constant pressure of danger and had begun to drink For a while he seemed to take our remonstrances to heart, and promised to quit. But things went from bad to worse. He was no longer dependable, and after he had failed to show up again one day-for a street appointment at that, where punctuality was of the utmost importance-I told him I would have to report him to the Party.

"As you like," he said. "The whole thing is over anyway."

I looked at him, speechless.

"Karl, don't deceive yourself," he said. "We are beaten. We can't even save the pieces."

"So that's it! You want to get out of it? Now, when everything is at stake! Now, when every man is indispensable to the Party you want to make your peace with the Nazis?"

"There's no point to it any more," he said. "It's hopeless. What can we do? Get out a few measly sheets when their papers circulate by the millions? Keep a few thousand comrades together in the Kampfbund,⁹ when the SA has over a million members? Fight with revolvers against tanks and airplanes?"

"We don't have to fight against tanks and airplanes today. When we do, we'll have tanks and airplanes too. The point now is to show the masses that we-"

He stopped me with a weary gesture.

"I'm so sick of the sound of the word 'masses,' Karl. It's no use. It's no use discussing it with me any longer, either. You may be right. But I can't start all over again from the beginning. I had imagined everything quite differently."

"We don't have to start all over again from the beginning. And a few months from now you'll be ashamed that you wanted to throw up the sponge."

"Maybe. But my heart's not in it any more. It hasn't been for weeks. I just didn't have the courage to tell you and the others."

"I suppose you know what you are doing, Martin. I can't force you. Only I thought you were a better Communist."

He shrugged his shoulders unhappily. We parted with out shaking hands.

It was a pity. He had not been a bad comrade; not long enough in the movement; not enough political experience. But was it any wonder, in this witch's cauldron of terror and demagogy, that comrades should go astray? They saw the outward impotence of the Party, functionaries hunted down, workers either wearily resigned or bending their ears to the promises of the new prophets. To save oneself from being confused and blinded by the effective mass management of the new regime one needed not only conviction and strength of character; more than anything else one needed an indestructible scientific insight into the mechanism of class relationships.

Martin's defection was followed shortly by another blow. After contact with the district leadership had been restored, Werner had been sent to reorganize the district of G., where, one after another, three groups of functionaries had been arrested. Werner, who had been invested with special powers by the Party, was to build up a new corps of functionaries. Barely a fortnight had elapsed when he too was arrested. The papers carried a brief notice to the effect that the Communist Party had been growing very active again among the miners of G. and that the authorities had succeeded in apprehending several of its leading members, who were now faced with prison terms of from three to ten years.

I saw Anton almost every week. He was in charge of anti-fascist work among the intellectuals, and gave me a far from encouraging picture of conditions in the colleges and universities and among the former liberal intelligentsia generally. The students were for the most part ardent Nazis; the professors except for those who had previously committed themselves as anti-Hitlerites-had lost no time in jumping on the bandwagon to save their jobs. A few only had resigned rather than submit to spiritual Gleichschaltung. Much the same situation existed among the doctors and lawyers, the artists and writers. So great was the dread of persecution and unemployment that most intellectuals feared to continue even their personal contacts with former radical friends. They were, like the good Lord, on the side of the heaviest artillery. Anton told me they were failing us on all sides. It was no unusual thing for him to telephone a former sympathizer, only to be answered by the faint click of a cautiously replaced receiver. If they were asked to hide a hunted comrade in their rooms it usually turned out that every corner of the house was unfortunately occupied.

However, they were not all like that. Many colorless middle-class families, to whom we had formerly paid scant attention, acquired political convictions in the course of these months and helped us with more than sighs and empty phrases. A Catholic engineer fed and lodged a Party functionary in his home for three months and supplied us with funds to help other comrades to safety. A young tutor with whom Anton had engaged in many futile discussions on "social reform versus revolution" came to him of his own accord, and told him that he could no longer close his eyes to the necessity of a proletarian revolution. He became one of our best workers among the students in his college.

The Nazis took advantage of the summer months to secure the ground they had won. They forced the German Nationalists ¹⁰ out of all important government positions, tried to ingratiate themselves with the Reichswehr, and split the air with their programs for re employment, salvation of the German peasantry, labor camps, and the national community. The peasants hoped, the workers waited; but the campaign of propaganda, conducted on a colossal scale and backed by all the re sources of government power and government funds, met with a rapturous response from the youth of the middle classes.

I came originally from that milieu myself, but for years I had lost all touch with it. The enthusiasm of these young people reminded me of I914~ and it made me sick. The sight of their marching columns conjured up the image of these blindly bleating calves being led to the slaughterhouse which the stay-at-homes would once more call "the field of honor." I felt contempt for their readiness to sacrifice themselves-for what? I hated them as the embodiment of petty bourgeois stupidity, as docile cannon-fodder, as submissive slaves to the masters of the moment.

Political brawls and battles had served as my only point of contact with them. Anton tried to persuade me that these misled young people, with their idealistic leanings, formed the strongest bulwark of fascist ideology. Through them, he insisted, you could best study the political strength and weakness of the Nazis, and the contradictory currents within their movement. They constituted the sensitive barometer by which the hopes and disappointments of the Nazi mass following could be gauged. He insisted that I ought to meet some of the students and young clerks who were heart and soul with the new regime, and when I declined he called me a sectarian with organic leanings toward left deviations."

I arrived at his office one day to find Franz Helling there, whom I had not seen in months. Helling had, under Party instructions, been working within the Nazi organization for years. Illegal existence was nothing new to him. His double life had given him not only vast experience in underground activity, but a realistic sense which I lacked. I preferred to make a wide detour around every brown uniform I saw-not out of fear, but scorn and loathing. He was always in the midst of SA- and SS-men. I hated them. He not only hated them-but understood them.

You've got inhibitions," he said to me, when Anton broached the subject again. "You work with your emotions when you ought to be using your brains. Come along with me tonight, so you can see them as they are among themselves."

There was no gainsaying Franz. The principle of leadership, he declared, had soaked into his blood. Anton and I were more inclined to call it his Berlin brass. He took me along to a book dealer's, where a group of young people met regularly. There were eight or ten young men present when we arrived. Most of them bowed with a slight, cultured click of the heels when Franz presented me under a false name. A tall, flaxen-haired young man in his early twenties, the openness of whose expression was heightened by his thin, threadlike eyebrows, gave an enthusiastic account of his aviation experiences. As he told them, they were like stale echoes of the reports sent from the front by war correspondents about the "happy" and "tragic" adventures of the soldiers which the German newspapers used to run under the standing caption: "Incidents Grave and Gay of Our Boys in Gray." With the authority of an expert, he discussed the strength of the French, British, and Soviet air fleets, and how long it would take Germany to equal and surpass them. Helling lured them into a political discussion by professing grave concern over the possibility of a military alliance against Germany.

"Impossible," said the flaxen-haired youth. "England will never fight us till the Bolsheviks are overthrown She knows perfectly well that such a step would give the Reds control not only in Central Europe but in Asia too."

"And suppose she toes fight us?" another interposed. "We fought the whole world once and beat them on the battlefield. If it hadn't been for the treachery of the Novembrists " He did not have to finish. Every body knew what he meant.

"Well," grinned Helling, "we mustn't be ungrateful. The good old SPG's built a few fast pocket cruisers and sanctioned some nice military budgets too."

The argument now raged hot and heavy. One of the Nazis, who had been turning the pages of a book, rose and advanced to the center of the room.

"Have you ever," he exclaimed, "known any party, either inside or outside of Germany, as spineless as the SPG? Have you ever in all the world's history come across statesmen so utterly lacking in statesmanship? Whatever they did, they did with an uneasy conscience. Everything had to be squeezed out of them-whether it was sanctioning a few armored cruisers or raising the tariff. And then they had to have a little political con cession here and a fat private bribe there to appease their international-pacifist souls. There wasn't a single principle they didn't violate. Real politik a la Stresemann, they called it."

"That's true," said the book dealer. "I never could understand why all those millions of workers stuck to them to the bitter end."

"Because," replied the student, "they played on the people's basest instincts. They turned the nation into a stockholder's company. They couldn't express their mercenary ideals except in marks and pfennigs. They debased their former revolutionary principles to the stomach and wage level. It's incalculable, the harm they've done to the racial substance of our people.

"Yes, and don't forget the harm the others have done," one of his friends reminded him. "The reactionary groups who, when they spoke of the Fatherland, meant their own pockets; and finance capitalists that didn't give a hang about the people's needs except as they contributed to their own profits. The Marxists didn't have ~o invent the class struggle to set us at each other s throats. The yoke of interest-bearing capital was a fact. They all felt for their "fellow countrymen." Carried away by honest enthusiasm, they would have liked to include the peasant and worker, the soldier, the scientist, nd the private employer in their fraternal embrace.

On the way home I met a crowd of people emerging from the Sport Palace, where they had been attending a political rally. Noisy and gay, their faces radiant, they were looking toward the dawn of a new era. These were the people Hitler meant when he said, "They have found happiness again."

Back to Table of Contents

Foward to Chapter Two

Back to Sam Foote's Page of Important Political and Cultural Texts

http://victorian.fortunecity.com/holbein/439/fathch01.html | koba79@hotmail.com | 10.31.98