Anti Nazis - Germany

Germany

In the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, Communist Party and Social Democratic Party members advocated violence and mass agitation amongst the working class to stop Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party and the Freikorps. Leon Trotsky wrote:

"fighting squads must be created ... nothing increases the insolence of the fascists so much as 'flabby pacifism' on the part of the workers' organisations ... political cowardice without organised combat detachments, the most heroic masses will be smashed bit by bit by fascist gangs."

Among the anti-fascist organizations formed to counter the Nazis was the Rotfrontkämpferbund (English:Red Front Fighters' League), which was created in 1924. The Rotfront was a paramilitary organization affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany that engaged in street fights with the Nazi Sturmabteilung. Its first leader was Ernst Thälmann, who would later die in a concentration camp and become widely honored in East Germany as an anti-fascist and socialist. After German reunification in 1990, many anti-fascist groups formed in reaction to a rise in far right extremism and violence, such as the Solingen arson attack of 1993. According to the German intelligence agency Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, the contemporary anti-fascist movement in Germany includes those who are willing to use violence.