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The story of Germany's anti-fascist fighters

  (The following article is from the September 16-30, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Hanne Gidora

On my recent trip to Berlin, Germany, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting organized by the Rotfuchs, a progressive magazine. Retired general (and last Minister of Defense of the socialist German Democratic Republic, GDR) Heinz Kessler gave the keynote address on "German Anti-Fascists at the Side of the Red Army". It was a most interesting speech about a little known aspect of German resistance against Nazism.

     Comrade Kessler described how he, as a young soldier in the German Wehrmacht, learned about the planned attack on the Soviet Union the night before it took place. His regiment was stationed in occupied Poland, about 20 km from the Soviet-Polish border. A high-ranking officer came to their camp and informed them that they were to pick up their weapons and gear to cross the border river Bug that night. Everything was prepared well in advance, and they encountered little resistance until they had entered quite deeply into Soviet territory.

     This was the first time Kessler had seen dead and wounded people, and it had a lasting effect on him. He had been raised in a communist family. In 1941 his father had already spent seven years in fascist jails and concentration camps, and his mother was living in hiding. On the same day Kessler chose to cross the line, defect, as some might say, to the Soviet army, his mother was captured and taken to the women's concentration camp Ravensbrueck.

     Kessler spoke about several groups of Germans who chose to work with the Red Army. One group consisted of people like him, who were drafted into the fascist army and escaped at the earliest opportunity. There were also the children of exiled Germans in the Soviet Union who volunteered for the Red Army. Then there were Soviet Germans who joined the partisans behind the Nazi fronts.

     The German anti-fascists worked mainly in two areas: POW camps, and directly at several fronts. At the fronts they would often be in the foremost trench, speaking to the German troops through megaphones. There were also loudspeaker trucks, and double-decker planes equipped with loudspeakers and bundles of leaflets to be dropped. In some select circumstances the anti-fascists would even leave the trenches and approach the German troops directly. The message was "end this war", by surrendering or rising up against the Nazis. Kessler admitted those actions were not entirely successful as they did not lead to mass capitulations, but for many German soldiers it started a thought process that in some cases led them to join the progressive movement at some later time.

     The work in the POW camps was also very important. Nazi soldiers had been told by their superiors that the Soviets would torture and shoot their prisoners, or at the very least send them to Siberia. The first eye-opener for many German POWs came when these threats failed to materialize. One of the methods employed by the Soviets and their anti-fascist allies was to speak to captured soldiers and officers, urging them to use their influence to put an end to the war, and then send them back to their troops.

     Another revelation, especially for higher ranking officers, was to witness the "scorched earth" policy employed by retreating Nazi troops. Kessler told a personal story about a captured officer who refused to believe that "German officers could give such orders." Kessler invited him to a drive to the front to see for himself. During the drive the officer kept muttering to himself "this is impossible; this can't be". When they arrived at the front, it turned out that the commander on the other side was this officer's brother. The officer asked for a megaphone and spoke at length to his brother and his troops, asking them to surrender and put an end to this war.

     The work in the camps led to the establishment of anti-fascist schools which helped to consolidate the work among the anti-fascists. In 1943 it was decided to form one organization, the National Komitee Freies Deutschland (NKFD), or "National Committee Free Germany". A few months later this was followed by the founding of a special organization for German officers. This may be difficult to understand, but German militarism was such that it divided the troops and officers sharply along class lines. Officers and "common men" were not prepared to work together as equals, but in this way they were able to work towards the common goal of ending the war.

     The committee began to publish a paper, Freies Deutschland (Free Germany), that was distributed along the front. It also had a radio station that could broadcast deep into Germany. The assassination attempt against Hitler of July 20, 1944, has taken on an almost mythical character in German historiology. It is commemorated each year, as it should be, but there is no mention of the many other resistance actions, including and especially those of anti-fascists at the fronts.

     Kessler read an article he had written for Freies Deutschland on August 20, 1944. In it, he acknowledged the courage of the officers who tried to kill Hitler, and the fact that their success could likely have ended the war, although he did point out that they were only interested in achieving this aim along the Western front. He also thought a successful assassination could have been the signal for a national uprising against Nazi rule. This is in sharp contrast to official German historians who commonly accuse communists of a lack of respect and appreciation for the July 20 action.

     All in all, the activities of the German anti-fascists may not have had significant influence on the course of WWII, but they served to convince some people of the anti-fascist cause, as well as to unite anti-fascists in an organization that played an important role in the Soviet occupied part of Germany after the war. Many of the members became high-ranking functionaries in Eastern Germany and later the GDR. The committee's slogan "Never again shall war erupt from German soil" became official GDR policy. But most of all to Kessler, the work of the German anti-fascists served to preserve the pride and dignity of the German working class in the face of Nazi rule and war.

     (Note: During the discussion after the talk, a woman asked Kessler why as defense minister he didn't use the army to prevent the counter-revolution which destroyed the GDR in 1990. His answer was quite revealing. Earlier on he said that when the Nazi army invaded the USSR, the sight of dead bodies was an experience that stayed with him his whole life. At no time, he said, was it ever considered to use the army against GDR citizens, a clear relation to the slogan that never will there be war starting in Germany. The GDR government allowed the system to collapse rather than use force against their own people. Contrast this to Boris Yeltsin, who used brutal military force against the Russian Parliament in October 1993 to kill Communists and other elected MPs for resisting his capitalist policies.)