The Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellenorganisation (National Socialist Factory Cell Organization) was a workers organization in Nazi Germany.
In 1927, some NSDAP workers in large factories, located mostly in the Berlin area, joined together as an alternative to democratic and Christian labor unions. The NSBO was established in 1928 by these groups.
On January 15, 1931, the NSBO was declared a "Reichsbetriebszellenabteilung" (German Reich Factory Cell Organization) of the Nazi Party. It began to increase its membership by means of aggressive campaigns, which included both propaganda and violence, under the war-cry: "Hinein in die Betriebe!" (Into the Factories!), which was shortened to "Hib".
The NSBO had overall little success among German organized workers, except in certain regions where they supported strikes, such as the transport strike in Berlin. As a result of the "Hib" campaign, the NSBO increased its membership to only about 300.000 by the end of 1931, while the Democratic and Christian labor unions had still well over 5 million members.
Some sections of the NSBO had an ideology similar to National Bolshevism. They believed that after the "national revolution" occurred, a "social revolution" had to follow, to do away with the existing elites. This attitude earned them sympathies in some places, like in Nordhorn, a textile industrial city in the county of Bentheim, where the NSBO defeated the formerly strong Communist labor unions in the industrial worker council elections in 1933. The NSBO's methods then included using armed violence in order to offset a salary reduction in a particular factory.
After all non-Nazi trade unions were oulawed by decree on the May 2, 1933, the NSBO became the only official workers' organization in Germany. This moment of glory, however, was short, for the German Labour Front (DAF) was established a few days later. More organized and better represented at national level, the DAF ended up absorbing the NSBO in 1935.
Famous quotes containing the words national, socialist, factory, cell and/or organization:
“Success and failure in our own national economy will hang upon the degree to which we are able to work with races and nations whose social order and whose behavior and attitudes are strange to us.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“I pass the test that says a man who isn’t a socialist at 20 has no heart, and a man who is a socialist at 40 has no head.”
—William Casey (1913–1987)
“... you can have a couple of seconds to rest in. I mean seconds. You have about two seconds to wait while the blanker is on the felt drawing the moisture out. You can stand and relax those two seconds—three seconds at most. You wish you didn’t have to work in a factory. When it’s all you know what to do, that’s what you do.”
—Grace Clements, U.S. factory worker. As quoted in Working, book 5, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The Red Cross in its nature, it aims and purposes, and consequently, its methods, is unlike any other organization in the country. It is an organization of physical action, of instantaneous action, at the spur of the moment; it cannot await the ordinary deliberation of organized bodies if it would be of use to suffering humanity, ... [ellipsis in original] it has by its nature a field of its own.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)