Abstract
Abstract This article examines grassroots communist antifascist politics in Germany during the final years of the Weimar Republic. In contrast to most studies on Weimar’s street politics, which focus on political violence, this research demonstrates that daily life, political culture, and gender relations shaped the communist antifascist movement in working-class neighborhoods. It argues that daily conflict with distinct political overtones or undertones increased steadily in the early 1930s. As a result, quarrels between neighbors were often colored with political narratives, and sometimes ordinary disputes escalated into political conflict and even violence. Political culture inflamed the tensions, particularly when Nazis and communists littered proletarian boroughs with their symbols. Women were often at the center of the conflict. Many joined the frontlines of communist antifascist struggle, where they faced widespread discrimination from male comrades who, flaunting a militant hypermasculinity, insisted that women belonged only in the rearguard.
Highlights
The year 1929 marked a pivotal moment in the Weimar Republic
In contrast to most studies on Weimar’s street politics, which focus on political violence, this research demonstrates that daily life, political culture, and gender relations shaped the communist antifascist movement in working-class neighborhoods
A comprehensive examination of antifascist activities shows that daily life, political culture, and gender relations all contributed to the growing tensions in working-class neighborhoods
Summary
The seeds for establishing the communist antifascist movement were planted in 1929 after a three-day insurrection in Berlin. Communists immediately began to convene antifascist committees and demonstrations, but throughout 1929 and 1930, the movement remained marginal.[16] The Nazis’ success in the September 1930 Reichstag elections, prompted the kpd to take more concerted steps to organize Days later, it founded the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus [Fighting League against Fascism].17. By 1932, antifascist protests took place nearly every week In smaller cities, they usually attracted about one hundred people; other demonstrations were massive, such as the one in Berlin on 3 July 1932, which Die Rote Fahne reported assembled over 100,000.19. Weitz, ‘Reflections on the Origins of the “Third Period”: Bukharin, the Comintern and the Political Economy of Weimar Germany,’ Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989), 387–410; Norman LaPorte, German Communist Party in Saxony, 1924–1933 (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 237–298; Hermann Weber, Hauptfeind Sozialdemokratie: Strategie und Taktik der KPD 1929–33 (Dusseldorf: Dorste, 1982). Despite the enmity between communists and social democrats, there were instances when they joined together against Nazism, at the grassroots level, for many social democrats ‘yearned for unity’ in their antifascist struggle, as Donna Harsch maintains.[26]
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