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:
“A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“I nearly always find, when I ask a vegetarian if he is a socialist, or a socialist if he is a vegetarian, that the answer is in the affirmative.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means—from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)
“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)
“Unless a group of workers know their work is under surveillance, that they are being rated as fairly as human beings, with the fallibility that goes with human judgment, can rate them, and that at least an attempt is made to measure their worth to an organization in relative terms, they are likely to sink back on length of service as the sole reason for retention and promotion.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)