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/Historian Doug Enaa Greene, as part of the Center for Marxist
Education's Red History Lecture Series, speaks on "Communist Resistance
in Nazi Germany"./
By *Doug Enaa Greene*
October 29, 2014 -- /Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/
-- In 1943, a member of the Communist Party, sentenced to die for
resistance activities as a member of the Red Orchestra, wrote these
final words to his father:
/Be strong! I am dying as I lived: as a fighter in the class war. It
is easy to call yourself a Communist as long as you don't have to
shed blood for it. You only show whether you really are one when the
hour comes when you have to prove yourself. I am one, father...The
war won't last much longer and your hour will have come. Think of
all those who have already travelled down this road that I must go
down today and will still have to travel down it and learn one thing
from the Nazis; every weakness will have to be paid for with ...
blood. So be merciless! Remain hard/![1]
I think these words express the spirit that motivated thousands of
communist resisters to Hitler: a hardened sense of responsibility,
militant anti-fascism and a readiness to sacrifice everything. It is a
chapter of our history that too many Marxists and communists have
forgotten and, if nothing else, I want to tell this story of communist
resistance against all the odds.
From 1933-1945, the Communist Party of Germany maintained the most
sustained resistance to Nazism and as a result at least 25,000 party
members were killed. While there were plenty of heroes and martyrs among
the Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany, the party made a number of
deadly mistakes both before Hitler's rise to power and afterwards. We
need to ask ourselves what these errors were and understand them in
order to utilise the lessons for current struggles.
Full article and video at http://links.org.au/node/4122
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