The German Communist Resistance 1933-1945 - T. Derbent

<p>According to most historians, "until 1938, there was no organized resistance in Germany". &nbsp;Its birth in 1939 is often attributed to aristocrats and the big bourgeoisie. &nbsp;As for the workers, according to David Schoenbaum, "they failed, in any effective sense, to produce resistance. &nbsp;Their marginal protest in the years 1933-39 was economic, not political, a matter of wages and hours not, it seems, of fundamental opposition."</p> <p><br></p> <p>So what happened to the powerful German Communist Party then? &nbsp;When the KPD was banned, its paramilitary formations numbered over 100,000 members. &nbsp;The Antifa league had 250,000 members. &nbsp;Nazi repression left activists who had been unable or unwilling to leave Germany with a choice between three mindsets. &nbsp;Some, discouraged by the terrible defeat of the communist movement, deprived of leadership and intimidated by state terror, abandoned the struggle, and a small number collaborated with the regime. &nbsp;But tens of thousands of communists adopted a position of resistance. &nbsp;Party structures crumbled, cadres were imprisoned or exiled, sympathizers were watched. &nbsp;But clandestine Party organizations were reconstituted very quickly, to be generally just as quickly dismantled...and rebuilt again. &nbsp;This book tells the forgotten story of this communist resistance. &nbsp;</p>