Web hosting Custom Email SiteBuilder

CHAPTER VIII

UNITED FRONT

THE work was having its effect on the prisoners. Those who had been unemployed for years had an opportunity at camp to use the skill their fingers had all but forgotten. In the satisfaction of working they lost sight of the fact that they were doing forced labor, that sentries with cocked guns were standing behind them, that instead of going home at night they would find themselves being driven back to the dark cellars.

Nowhere was this condition more clearly apparent than in the shops. The imprisoned carpenters, shoemakers, mechanics, and barbers were glad to be able to put their minds on their work. They enjoyed showing that they were adepts at something, and professional pride sometimes made it difficult for them to obey the unwritten law of the CPG in camp: Practice sabotage wherever possible. As a matter of fact, the situation developed a certain community of interest between the prisoners in the shops and the lower ranks of the Black Shirts. The prisoners were glad to escape the heavy outdoor work which, with the approach of cold weather, grew harder and harder to bear; the Black Shirts appreciated the fact that they were getting service for nothing.

The incident of the town delegates was characteristic of the whole situation. When the Hubertshof Nazis first heard that their old wine cellars were to be turned into a concentration camp their enthusiasm knew no bounds--first, because of the honor being shown their town, and second, because of the business they hoped to reap. There would be visitors--for the prisoners as well as the Black Shirts--who should prove a source of profit to the inns and shops; and a permanent SS guard of over a hundred and fifty men--not to mention all the officers--was bound to spend plenty of money in town.

But a shadow fell over their rosy hopes when the camp started setting up its own shops. Instead of patronizing the local barbers at twenty pfennigs per head the Black Shirts were shaved in camp free of charge. They took their boots for repair to the camp shoemaker and their belts and holsters to the camp saddler. The camp tailors mended and pressed their uniforms and the camp machine shop not only repaired the cars of the Black Shirts but was soon getting outside trade as well. Instead of developing into a source of revenue for the tradesmen of Hubertshof the camp became a competitor--a cutthroat competitor at that, since it paid no wages.

The patriotism of the Hubertshof tradesmen turned sour. Complaints that the Black Shirts neglected to pay their bills at the cafes, and that Hubertshof young ladies were pregnant, multiplied. One day a deputation from the local chamber of commerce appeared at camp to lay its grievances before the commandant. Raising their hands in the Nazi salute and opening their petition with "Heil Hitler!" they asked that the camp shops be abolished. The commandant had them locked up, kept them in camp for forty-eight hours, and threatened them with six months' "protective arrest" if they should ever again dare to criticize his camp arrangements. The guards carried the tale to the camp shops, and prisoners and Black Shirts rejoiced together over the rout of the Hubertshof petty bourgeoisie.

The Communists were fully aware of the dangers attendant upon any indefinite period of incarceration. They realized the importance of upholding the prisoners' morale, of seeing that they never lost sight of the fact that every stitch of work they did was done for Hitler. The workers' fighting spirit was best kept alive by organized sabotage, which was practiced in every conceivable form-working at the slowest possible tempo, damaging tools, loosening nails from the tracks so that the handcars would overturn, releasing the handcars too abruptly so that they jumped off the tracks and sank into the mire of the slopes. This sabotage was practiced under the very eyes of the guards. The workers, thoroughly conversant with tools and material, knew how best to render them useless.

A prisoner's political quality could be judged by his attitude toward the work. Given that touchstone you needed no other gauge to determine which were Communists, which Social-Democrats, which politically undeveloped. In sabotage as in everything else, the Communists formed the active, the Social-Democrats the passive or at any rate the hesitant-element ­ and it was not long before my new squad was going through that same sifting process which was characteristic of all the work squads.

In reorganizing the outdoor squads the administration had deliberately shuffled us about to prevent the cementing of new bonds between prisoners and guards. Since supervision was more rigid, political migrations from group to group were barred for the time being. Of the nine men in our squad five were Communists, three Social-Democrats, and one a nonparty student who had been arrested in the course of a block raid in his home town when the police discovered in his room several copies of the pacifist periodical Die Weltbuehne. The squad members were strangers to one another. During the first few days scarcely a word was exchanged save what the work necessitated. Yet by the end of- a week the political line of demarcation had been drawn with the sharpness of a knife stroke. Berger and Petersen, who worked side by side, were the first to clash.

"You slave as though you were being paid for it," said Berger.

Petersen, although not a very bright fellow, was certainly not toiling away at his job in order to make a good impression on the guards. He worked as he had always worked-speeding up his tempo without realizing what he was doing and thus forcing his neighbors to keep pace with him. That happened once, twice, three times-till finally Berger felt himself compelled, as a matter of principle, to counter with passive resistance. Two or three others followed suit. When the suspicions of the guards were roused and the comrades were compelled to abandon their sabotage, they flew into a rage and called Petersen a strikebreaker. Petersen became stubborn, and called Berger a loafer. Berger replied that he was proud to be a loafer, here in camp. "A loafer's a loafer," rejoined Petersen, "here or outside."

"That else do you expect from a Reichsjammer man?" jeered Berger. That was the cue; the Communists took sides with Berger, the Social-Democrats with Petersen.

Relations between the two groups became strained. It was a matter of pride with Petersen to shovel up ten extra carloads daily, while Berger looked daggers at him and muttered threats. The two factions sat apart during the rest periods, munching their larded bread. The pacifist student, not knowing whom to join, sat now with one group, now with the other, trying to make peace between them.

"There's nothing to discuss," Berger said to him. "Just as these boys voted for Hitler in the Reichstag, so they're making common cause with the commandant here. Maybe someone'll drop them a few kind words for faithful service."

Berger's feeling about the Social-Democrats was shared by the other Communist prisoners. The persistently treacherous policies of the SPG had resulted in an accumulation of bitterness, which they vented not only on the Social-Democratic leaders but on the party members as well. Social-Democrat-whether functionary or ordinary member-was to them a concept. A Social-Democrat worker had ceased to be a worker in the true sense of the word. Workers who tolerated Noske and Zoergiebel and Severing and Scheidemann-and not only tolerated them but followed them as leaders-had nothing more in common with the workers' movement. And hand in hand with their hatred of the counter revolutionary SPG went their personal contempt for proletarians who hid from Hitler behind Hindenburg's skirts and watched like old women while their dreams of bourgeois democracy and capitalist international cooperation collapsed.

It was this indeed which constituted the most striking difference between SPG and CPG prisoners. The Communists had no feeling that they had been beaten. They had realized all along that, unless the workers succeeded in establishing a united proletarian fighting front, Bruening, Papen, and Schleicher would prove to be Hitler's forerunners. They had seen that fascism in its purest form would prove to be the logical outcome of the SPG policy of the "lesser evil." Hadn't they said so a hundred times over to their Social-Democratic colleagues? The concentration camp merely confirmed the accuracy of their political predictions.

For the Social-Democrats, however, a world had gone to pieces. They felt that they had been betrayed--betrayed by Hindenburg, their candidate for the presidency, whom they had been taught to revere as the prototype of the upright, incorruptible German. Many of them were beginning to doubt the wisdom of the policy their leaders had pursued and a few frankly admitted that their leadership was bankrupt. But, they declared in the same breath, so was the CPG bankrupt. A new workers' party would have to be formed-a party free of the illusions of the SPG, but free also of the CPG's slavish dependency upon Moscow. They would have bitten off their tongues before confessing to Communists how complete the failure of the SPG had been.

A situation typical of the worker's movement in Germany made its reappearance in camp. The Communists were on the offensive, the Social-Democrats on the defensive. It was not the numerical superiority of the CPG workers which determined the attitude of each but the logic of the political situation. Serious discussions were rate-not only because of the strict supervision (which could have been evaded while we were at our outdoor work)-but because the Social-Democrats were loath to defend a position which was all to their discredit, and of which the Communists would have taken ruthless advantage.

Discrepancy in age was another factor. The Social-Democrats were mostly older men, over forty, while almost all the younger prisoners belonged to the CPG. An older Social-Democrat-particularly a German Social-Democrat who recalled with pride that his party was backed by a tradition of sixty-five years-did not relish taking instructions from a younger Communist.

Petersen, for example, had been affiliated with the SPG since I902. He felt that he was a veteran of the workers' movement; even before the war he had been thrown out of factories and blacklisted by employers for the sake of his party. And how a youngster of twenty-six like Berger came along, and wanted to tell him what class consciousness was! He who had been fighting when the CPG did not exist! It was ridiculous.

I often found myself thinking what first-rate workers these Petersens were going to make after the revolution. Conscientious, hard-working, well-trained-ideal shock brigadiers for the building of the German socialistic society, yet willing truck horses for the Third Reich too. Their class consciousness had been swamped in the decade-long opportunism of their party.

Though they had bracketed both parties as "Marxian-Jewish" the Nazis made a sharp distinction between SPG and CPG. The differing standards by which the Nazis judged the two groups spoke louder than any words on that score. Of the seven hundred to twelve hundred prisoners in camp-the number varied with admissions, transfers to prisons and other camps; and releases-not more than a hundred to a hundred and fifty were Social-Democrats. Social-Democrats were arrested not in their capacity as members of the SPG but as heads of factory councils, as town councillors, as trade-union secretaries, and so forth - except for a few cases which involved personal malice or business rivalry. The Communists were arrested as Communists - not as well-known functionaries but simply as members of the CPG. It was true, of course, that the Secret Police were always on a feverish hunt for CPG functionaries, and a question which recurred at all examinations and which the prisoners evaded, wherever possible, because of its consequences, was: "Your function in the Party?" The mere fact that a man was a Party member or suspected of sympathizing with the CPG was sufficient to warrant arrest.

There was a marked contrast, too, in the treatment accorded the prisoners. Non-Communist lawyers, physicians, and other professional men--unless they were Jews--had nothing to fear in the way of "coordination." The commandant was uncertain as to just what attitude he ought to take toward these people. They had connections at home and abroad and you never could tell when they might get the administration into a mess. After all, the government must have had its reasons for pensioning Noske and for letting Loebe and Severing run around loose, giving interviews to foreign correspondents. These intellectuals were assigned to easy indoor jobs-a Social-Democratic lawyer had been installed in the office to work on briefs for the Black Shirts, and a well-known writer was acting as bookkeeper for the Mail Department. They were zealous in the performance of their duties and had no special cause for alarm, unless, as I said, they were Jews. Jews, whether Communists, Social-Democrats, or pacifists, were treated with impartial cruelty and isolated like pests.

Apart from the Jews, the hatred of the SS officers was focused upon the Communist intellectuals. They regarded them as the most formidable corruptive element among the German people; they had delivered into the hands of the workers the intellectual weapons for the class struggle and were hopeless material for the National-Socialistic training. Communist intellectuals were "coordinated" with particular ferocity and assigned to the heaviest outdoor tasks, the guards were ordered to keep an eagle eye on them, and they were held responsible for all breaches of camp discipline, no matter who committed them.

There were exceptions to this rule. Some of the SS officers were especially bitter in their persecution of the pacifist intellectuals. "Scum," they called them, and "seditious conspirators." To many of these mercenary types, Germany's "emasculation," as a consequence of the Social-Democratic pacifist "fulfillment" ¹ policy, was the worst crime perpetrated by the November criminals. Some of the officers were readier to overlook an RFB-man's possession of an army revolver than the discovery of a copy of Die Weltbuehne in a student's library. They sometimes went so far in their admiration of the manly conduct as to show a certain respect for the Communists, who had stood up to their opponents in countless clashes at political meetings and demonstrations, refusing to retreat either before the SA or the Social-Democratic police. One day when a cache of arms seized from the Communists was being hauled into camp, an SS officer, eyeing the weapons, was heard to remark, "Those fellows have guts, at any rate. You've got to hand them that much!" But they laughed the "Reichsjammer" and SPG to scorn-"heroes of the ballot box," they called them.

There was, on the whole, little difference to be noted in the treatment accorded the various political groups by the lower ranks of the Black Shirts. Uneducated, lacking all knowledge of or interest in politics, trained to blind obedience, most of them were fit for nothing but flogging, rifle practice and beer swilling. Their conversation was concerned exclusively with wages, furloughs, saloons, and women. Except when they were being hounded by the officers they left us in peace during working hours. Many of them were perfectly willing to let us loaf on the job. They were not interested in helping the private contractors-who hired us from the camp at fifty to eighty pfennigs per head-to get rich on the proceeds of our labor.

Yet we were never safe from their brutality. The most fantastic rumors of plans for revolt or assassination sufficed to transform them into wild beasts. In a state of permanent uneasiness as to what was going on in camp and in the minds of the prisoners, and with the need of silencing by renewed demonstrations of courage both their secret misgivings as to their "revolutionary" activity and their fear of its consequences, they responded automatically to every provocative scheme devised by the officers. Schinderknecht-who enjoyed a minimum of authority over them-had only to go storming about the yard in the morning before we were marched off to work, shouting that he had got wind of an escape to be attempted that day, and the guards would be reduced to frenzy for a week. Then they would drive us to work at the points of their rifles, deny us permission to urinate save at a distance not to exceed five paces from the spot where we were working, and forbid all conversation.

The fact that the camp inmates included both Communists and Social-Democrats from the same towns and factories--workers and functionaries who knew and hated each other from of old-formed another obstacle to any understanding between SPG and CPG. There was one Social-Democrat, for instance, who in his capacity as president of the factory council in a large machine shop in Central Germany had made it his business to drive all Communists from the factory and to throttle every attempt of the personnel toward strikes. He had been branded repeatedly in the Communist press as a strikebreaker and agent of the bosses, and the Communists had never forgotten it. Exchange so much as a word with a scoundrel of that caliber? Not if they knew it!

Still greater was their loathing for an SPG prisoner who had formerly been a high government official, executing the emergency decrees of the Bruening-Papen regime. His Communist fellow townsmen in the camp recognized him the moment the Secret Police brought him in, though he presented a far more proletarian appearance than in the good old days when he had been drawing down a monthly salary of a thousand marks and had cut unemployment relief from ten to six marks a week. Yes, it would have been an easier matter to discuss the past calmly, to join hands in preparing for the future, had it not been for those hated faces which kept conjuring up afresh the bitterness of the last few years.

When a well-known SPG functionary was released the Communists liked to speed him on his way with ironic comment: "One hand washes the other," and "Honor among thieves"-which incensed the Social-Democrats. Hadn't they been languishing in protective custody as long as the Communists? Hadn't they gone through the same "examinations" and "coordinations"? Hadn't the Brown Shirts and the Black Shirts routed them out of their beds and dragged them off with equal brutality? In many of the smaller towns and villages, where the Reichsbanner had been composed of workers and led by workers, the fight against Hitler had been conducted under Social-Democratic leadership. They had thrashed the Nazis in meeting-hall battles. Their leaders had been arrested with them and were sharing their present lot. Were they to permit the Communists to sling mud at them? Hadn't well-known Communists, as well as Social-Democrats, obtained their release from "protective custody"? Hadn't B. himself, a close associate of Thaelmann, gone free?

The SPG prisoners were right in that respect. Release, as a rule, proved nothing conclusive about the character of the man released, but served only to emphasize the utter confusion prevailing among the Secret Police and in the Prussian ministry of the interior. For months we tried to figure out, on the basis of such releases as were being put through, the general rules that were being applied to the suspension of custody, till we finally reached the conclusion that there were no rules. How else explain the fact that certain well-known Communists were set free at the expiration of eight weeks, while non-party workers and middle-class people were held for eight months?

If, however, there seemed to be no centralized system, we did in time become familiar with the routine of individual cases.

Prisoners who were turned in by the Secret Police might be set free at the end of a few months-provided there was no evidence on which charges of high treason, seditious conspiracy, or breach of the peace could be lodged against them. Prisoners arrested either by the local SA groups or the local police-the latter under the jurisdiction of the district prefect-found themselves wholly at the mercy of Brown Shirt malice.

Despite Herr Diels' ² statement that members of the secret political police must be imbued with a proper passion for their calling, the Gestapa remained a bureaucratic organization, which in the course of a few weeks had swelled to such proportions that no official could possibly find his way through the welter of accumulated documents, orders, and counter orders. Attempts at cooperation with the regular police failed. Working side by side, the various departments of the Gestapa knew neither plan nor system. One department would release prisoners who were being frantically sought by another. It was impossible for the officials to follow up every case. If they failed to unearth evidence for court proceedings they crammed the prisoners into the concentration camps for safekeeping; if the camp examinations like vise failed to produce anything concrete, Herr Diels' impassioned manhunters would lose interest in the case. There was richer prey to be stalked.

The Gestapa then had to be reminded that Prisoner X had been under protective arrest for so and so many months.

This procedure opened up vast fields of activity to the Nazi lawyers. Having made sure that the case would in no wise endanger their own position, these servants of justice declared themselves ready to take over the prisoner's "defense"-in consideration of a fat fee. The money of Jewish families did not stink in their pockets, and they reaped rich harvests from the hunger and privations of working women. If there was no one to interest himself in a prisoner he was a man buried alive.

The fate of those arrested by the district prefects or the local Nazi groups was still more uncertain. The prefect was anxious to impress his chiefs in the ministry of the interior as a "strong man"; he did not care to jeopardize his reputation in his district by recommending more releases than did his colleagues in theirs. He had, besides, to secure the consent of the district leader of the Nazi party, who in turn must apply for the sanction of the local group.

This was where the petty bourgeoisie got their chance to exercise executive authority. They felt that the weal and woe of the new commonwealth had been placed in their hands and, brimming with a sense of their responsibilities, they set about their task of judging the proletariat.

They reveled in the intoxication of unaccustomed power. It would not have been the German petty bourgeoisie-that pulpy class which has never been capable of acquiring power, which was steeped in the servility of generations of oppression passively endured-if they had not taken the most merciless and unscrupulous advantage of the "rights" entrusted to them. At last they were in a position to give full vent to every impulse of personal spite and neighborly vindictiveness.

Our company included three Social-Democrats from the same town, who had been in custody since March though there was not the shadow of a political charge against them. A had been manager of the workers' cooperative store, B a small innkeeper, C had no distinguishing mark, political or professional. He was one of those old-time Social-Democrats whose political activity had been confined to drinking a few glasses of beer at party meetings for the collection of dues held in B's inn. The other inn of the town, however, belonged to the Nazi groupleader, who had proceeded without a qualm to place his troublesome competitor B under protective arrest. The position of the cooperative-store manager had meantime been filled by another Nazi. All the efforts of the prisoners' families, all petitions to the ministry had shattered against the "No" of the local Nazi group, which also declined to pardon C, the third man, lest the arrests be stripped of their flimsy political character.

The Social-Democrats at camp suffered under the political criticism of the Communists-under thc allusions to special privilege, under the suspicion that in their heart of hearts they would prefer a united front with the SS rather than with the Communist--all of which they considered bitterly unjust. They stuck closer than ever to each other. SPG and Reichsbanner workers, who had long since washed their hands of Loebe and Severing, who had really rid themselves of their democratic delusions, were unwilling to break their connections with their former comrades or the party to which they had belonged for years. When a Social-Democrat was assigned to work in the shops he tried to draw his party comrades in after him. The same thing held true of the Communists, though it did not strike me until later that throughout my time with the old Dyke Squad Number Two there was not a single Social-Democrat among the thirty-five men in the squad.

One rainy day my new outfit sought shelter in the little construction shack. The guard was warming himself at the fire built by the neighboring squad and the pacifist student felt that here was his chance to establish that harmony within the working class which we all wanted, which we all maintained was imperative, and which seemed to recede farther and farther the more it was discussed.

"If I were a worker," he began diplomatically, "I'd be ashamed to give the SS such an impression of the working class."

Silence.

"You've brought things to such a pass that now you've got to let yourselves be bossed around by twenty-year-old squirts."

"That's still the lesser evil, Michaelis," Berger said to the student.

Petersen promptly swallowed the bait. "Yes-and I'd still rather be here than in Moscow."

"That's all we wanted to know," Berger jeered.

The student eyed Petersen reproachfully. "How can you talk like that!"

"You see how it is, my boy," said a Communist, thumping the student's shoulder. "Bruening was the lesser evil, Hindenburg was the lesser evil, Papen and Schleicher were the lesser evil, and now at last they're coming out with the whole truth-Hitler himself is the lesser evil. The greater evil-the evil of all evils is the proletarian revolution."

Though they did not like Petersen's comment the other two Social-Democrats remained silent. The student Michaelis tried his luck a second time.

"How do you ever expect to get anywhere if you can't come to terms even here, with the Black Shirts on top of you both?"

"They don't want to come to terms with us," said one of the Social-Democrats bitterly. "We're the arch-enemy of the working class."

"You're the arch-enemy within the working class," Berger corrected him.

The Social-Democrat ignored him. "We're the chief support of the bourgeoisie. We're twin brothers to the fascists, social-fascists. Why form a united front with blackguards like us?"

"Oh, don't start in on that old tripe again!" Michaelis protested.

"That's not old tripe. That's the official Moscow opinion.

"There's just one small point you're overlooking," a Communist interposed. "We've never called the Social-Democrat workers social-fascists only the Severings and the Brauns and the Grescinskys and the Zoergiebels. ³ We were always ready to form a united front with the Social-Democrat workers."

"Yes, yes-that's what you say now. Yet you talked like that not only about our leaders but about the whole party. To you, we functionaries were the little Zoergiebels. But what's the use of discussing all that? I just want to tell you one thing, and you can tell it back to your comrades in Moscow. You may be able to catch the Russian peasants with your lying policies, but not the German workers. You're not interested in any united front-all you want is to finish off the SPG.

That's your main object-before Hitler and after Hitler."

"Damned right it is!" Berger said. "We know that as long as the SPG's free to deceive the workers there'll never be any revolution. That's why we've got to fight you."

"Is that so? Then I'd like to know why you keep on bellyaching about a united front-offering us one hand and cracking us in the jaw with the other!"

"Yes-that would suit your leaders very nicely-if we'd just keep our mouths shut and not tell the workers they were being betrayed. They'd like to make a non-aggression pact with us. But they won't fight the fascists with us."

"There's no point in talking to you people-you don't tell the truth. Your whole united-front policy has just one object-to break the SPG's neck. It wasn't the fight against Hitler you cared about most, but the fight against us. You said you wouldn't deal with our party leaders. A united front, yes-but only from below. No negotiations with the top. That was the Rote Fahne's daily cry."

"That's a lie! Didn't the CPG Central Committee turn to your leaders as early as July '32, when Papen threw Braun and Severing out of the government, and propose joining forces in a general strike? And in January '33, when Hitler was made chancellor, didn't the Central Committee call on the SPG then to rally the working class to a common standard?"

"Yes, you're making an awful hullaballoo about those two offers, after you slandered our leaders day in and day out, and dragged our party through the mud. You thought if you just painted their leaders black enough that the SPG workers would come running over to you. But you found you were mistaken."

"Listen to him--gloating because the workers didn't follow us and didn't beat Hitler! You remind me of little Moritz-perfectly willing to get his neck broken and die, as long as his brother catches hell for it!"

"This chatter's enough to drive a man mad!" cried the student in despair. "Can't you admit that both your parties made mistakes? Bury the past. Put your minds on what's to come."

"Listen," said Berger. "We haven't waded through all that much without learning a thing or two. The SPG leaders betrayed the I918 revolution; they armed the first fascist volunteer corps against the Spartacus League; they killed Rosa Luxernburg and Earl Liebknecht; their police presidents had our comrades shot down; for fourteen years they fought with the bourgeoisie against us; and they'd have made a pact with Hitler too if Hitler'd been willing. And now they complain that we don't trust them!"

The third SPG worker, who had been listening in silence up to that point, now broke in.

"There's nothing to be gained by shooting your mouths off," he said, and the dispassionateness of his tone contrasted sharply with the heat and violence of the others. "I could give you a list of your own sins that would be just as long. And so we could go on villifying each other till tomorrow, and when we got through we'd be clutching tighter than ever to our own ideas. You're convinced that Social-Democracy and the whole Second International is counter revolutionary, and must therefore be destroyed. Good. Let's assume you're right. At the same time you realize that these counter revolutionary organizations still have the support of millions of workers-a majority of the factory workers, as far as Germany's concerned. Without these workers-or against them, rather, there can be no revolution. That you know. And you know too that these workers weren't revolutionary. They were strongly influenced by the bourgeoisie-labor aristocrats, you call them. All well and good. But one thing they weren't-fascists. And you could have won them to the fight against the Nazis if you hadn't employed the stupidest tactics conceivable. When you saw that the workers refused to be stirred by your slogans--when even in July the SPG workers stuck to their old leaders-you might have realized that you'd have to abandon your united--front policy, 'only from below,' and negotiate with the central leadership of the SPG and the trade unions. For that was your only chance-there was no other possible way of reaching the workers. And you certainly had no more time to lose.

"You underrated the strength of the SPG and its trade unions. You went raging around about their social-fascist leaders, but you couldn't convince the workers in those organizations that you were right, because you couldn't show them who was really for and who against Hitler except by fighting Hitler fascism."

"Oh, it's our fault then that the SPG workers didn't follow our lead?"

"Of course it's your fault," said the Social-Democrat, his tranquillity unimpaired. "Fault, not in the sense of bad will, but of incompetence. Which, in politics, has the same results."

"So you think we should have formed a united front with Severing and Leipart?"

"Even with Severing and Leipart, if that was your only chance of reaching the workers who were your chief concern. The evidence of your weakness lay in the fact that you couldn't get around Scvering and Leipart. And a further evidence of your weakness lay in the fact that they could flatly refuse to cooperate with you -that they could treat you like people whom they weren't obliged to take seriously. You can't take liberties like that except with those whose weakness you've gauged."

Berger could stand it no more.

"You sniveling hypocrites!" he shouted. "First you spend years painting us as criminals and ruffians, do everything in your power to malign us to the workers, and then you get a good laugh out of it because they didn't follow us."

"I'm not laughing at the fate of the working class," the Social-Democrat replied. "At its leaders perhaps, yes-at the miserable cowardice of ours and the stupidity of yours. To laugh at them is the only way to stave off suicide."

His obvious sincerity mollified even the pugnacious Berger for a moment.

"Go to hell!" he muttered.

"And what do you think's going to happen next?" Michaelis asked the Social-Democrat.

"It's happening already. The workers' movement isn't dead, after all. The CPG's working and many of our small groups are working. The work's bound to bring them together, despite all the stumbling-blocks placed in their way by the bureaucrats of both parties."

"Yes, your Linden Street ⁴ heroes safe in Prague now-they're doing a lot to help," Berger said. "I got hold of a copy of your Neuer Vorwaerts. I saw how they were fighting fascism. Then the Nazi dictatorship's overthrown, good old democracy's got to rule in Germany again. No dictatorship of the proletariat, no Soviet Germany. These scoundrels are laying their plans already to betray the revolution again."

"I have no illusions about Wels and Stampfer and Breitscheid," the Social-Democrat replied. "It's not a question with them of betraying the revolution, because they've always been openly opposed to the revolution. It's merely a question of whether or not they'll ever be able to gain such influence again with the working class as to continue in their old roles."

"That gang's played out," Berger said. "If only because they're incapable of building up an underground party now and heading the revolution with it later, so they can throttle it again as they did in I918. If Social Democrats are doing illegal work against Hitler today, it's no longer for the sake of some wishy-washy Second Republic. No proletarian's going to risk his hide a second time for red, black, and mustard. ⁵ We're organizing and leading, the underground fight. We'll lead the revolution, too."

''That suits me," said the Social-Democrat gravely.

Back to Table of Contents

Foward to Chapter Nine

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

http://victorian.fortunecity.com/holbein/439/fathch09.html | koba79@hotmail.com | 10.31.98