In previous episodes I’ve given a quick rundown of the German Revolution, hyperinflation, political violence, and took a look at a small organization called the National Socialist German Workers Party – or Nazi’s for short.
If you haven’t listened to any of those don’t worry. You don’t have to!
You can pick up the story here if you want. Or if you want to take a bit after this one to catch up by my guest.
Now let’s step into history.
When we last left off, Hitler attempted his ill-conceived coup which landed him in prison for five years.
Today we’ll explore what fueled this nationalist hatred of the Left.
First we’ll touch on is the big threat. We’ve all heard about them. The evil red menace lurking in the shadow waiting to steal your property and retirement account:
The Communists!
Since so many people have forgotten what the term actually means they have vilified it into dystopian proportions.
So! Let me cut through all the crap and explain it. Communism is an economic-political theory in which private property is abolished and workers have an equal say in the rules and practices of a workplace and receive a share of the profits.
So, why the whole ‘abolish private property’ thing?
In 1800s central and eastern Europe, factory and farm workers basically owned the clothes on their backs and the tools they worked with. They rented apartments in slums owned by wealthy landlords. To many private property meant exclusion and degradation.
Now, why was Communism so popular during this timeframe?
Conditions in the workplace were even worse. Few laws would protect you inside the factory or textile mill. Shifts could be 10 or 12 hours a day six days a week on your feet doing hard labor in unsanitary conditions.
Most of the chemicals you work with:
Sulfuric acid, ammonia, chlorine gas; all which will cause skin burns, eye and lung damage, the list goes on.
Lead oxide was used in ceramics and paint, causing nerve damage, cognitive decline, and infertility in high doses.
In the workplace of the industrial revolution, you’d breathe it all day every day. You get a short break for lunch and maybe Sundays off for Church.
And if you’were injured on the clock; guess what? You’re now unemployed and likely unemployable in the future. There is no workers’ compensation to help with the bills while you recover.
And! While you suffer your boss and landlord sit in a clean office and collect outrageous salaries while they pay you a few coins for the effort.
Sounds like a dystopian nightmare, doesn’t it? World War 1 made it worse.
Communists believed the bosses and those in positions of power would never relinquish control over their quotas and profit margins. For a time they were right.
But with the proclamation of the German Republic, the ruling social democrats signed the 8-hour workday in 1918. All Germans were granted the right to vote including women. Laborers could legally form unions and floor councils to ensure grievances about workplace safety, scheduling all that jazz made it to the shift bosses and management.
The social democrat party put all the best parts of Socialism into their new Republic.
But it wasn’t enough for the German Communist Party, or KPD for short. They launched their uprising weeks after the Republic was proclaimed.
This Spartacus Uprising failed. It’s leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibnick were captured, beaten, and murdered by the Freikorps. We talked about them in an earlier episode. The KPD was banned for a couple year following the revolt but in the meantime, they went underground printing leaflets and recruiting new members.
Simultaneously the Russian Civil War is inflicting horrors and nightmares across Ukraine, the Baltics, Siberia causing a massive refugee crisis out of the country. All brought with them stories so shocking it was almost beyond belief.
Many refugees settled in Germany. And why not? Living was cheap. And conservative papers all over the country paid for stories about Bolshevik secret police, torture, and later weaponized famine.
The various left-wing parties printed commentaries of their own. Many attacked the very long laundry list of Bolshevik abuses of power as venomously as the right-wing papers. Others explained away the stories as hearsay or exaggerations.
Few understood just how far the Bolsheviks perverted and weaponized the writings of Marx.
In the meantime their members worked hard to bring aid and charity to the poorest of neighborhoods. Many sympathetic doctors, lawyers and other intellectuals took cases pro-bono or reduced rates to help. Others funded or set up soup kitchens, coat drives, and other donations for those most impacted by the hard times.
To many people, especially those most affected by the financial crises, looked at these early communists and thought they were the only ones still sticking up for the little guy.
These feelings exploded in 1923. Twice. Once in Saxony in the ballot box, a second as a violent insurrection in Hamburg.
In Saxony, the Social Democrats and the KPD formed a coalition government. The objective was a united front against the rising threat of fascism from Bavaria.
The government in Berlin didn’t like that one bit. It wasn’t they wanted fascism to gain a foothold in Saxony. The problem Berlin had is the deal was made with the communists.
What was their solution?
- Declare an emergency
- Send in the army.
While millions of German citizens lived under French occupation in the west – millions more were under occupation by their own army in the East. Unbelievable!
Weeks later the KPD in Hamburg launched a rebellion.
Let’s take a step into history and see what this looked like first hand, shall we?
We live in a working-class neighborhood called Barmbek are bundled up in our coats heading down the sidewalk to the nearest café to spend a few billion reichsmarks on a cup of hot coffee.
A gift from God in these times.
There’s shouting down the street. People carrying red flags, holding banners, chanting slogans march up toward us. But this isn’t the usual group of protesters armed with brass knuckles and clubs. These people march with rifles.
We watch them storm the police station across the street. Shouting. Many police are removed from the building and collected on the street at gunpoint. Rebels emerge from the station distributing weapons liberated from the police armory.
Once the unceremonious transfer of weapons is complete the rebels send the police to carry on with their duties.
Residents of the neighborhood come out of their homes in droves cheering and waving red handkerchiefs. Men and women climb on park benches and balconies to deliver rousing speeches to the masses. Larissa Reissner, communist revolutionary, remarked later on that barricades went up like they grew out of the soil.
The thrill is short lived. Government soldiers quell the uprising in a few days.
Despite these revolts and other acts of violence – it was the outreach programs which had the most benefit for the people and the Party. Over the coming years the KPD will win seats in the Reichstag. Economic downturns inflated the communists popularity. By 1932 it controlled 17% of the German government.
The Communist Party was on a mission to reshape society.
But society was already being reshaped from the ground up.
The incorporation of the Rittenmark stabilized the German economy enough to attract investors and secure long-term loans.
Prices fall. They plummet really. Shops start putting up notices in the winows with the two most beautiful words in any German has heard since 1914. “Peacetime Prices.”
If you were a German, maybe it might feel like peacetime, too.
Experimentations in the fields of science and technology electrified the masses. Unsupervised dating and courtship worried conservative parents. New fashions, music, products began jumping the Atlantic and finding the Germans hungry for it all.
Geoffrey Cox, a British national, said about the times:
Quote:
“The great thing in Germany today is the emergence of a new type of person. Men wear soft shirts without ties. Even without shorts! Girls wear no stockings.”…
End Quote
Can you imagine the scandal!
Cindy Hamilton, another visitor to the Germany, recalled the shock she saw at a public swimming lake.
Quote:
“The young men of the party were clothed [only] in trunks. Of the girls, one wore shorts and a bra…the other only wore bathing bottoms and was naked from the hip upwards.”
End Quote
New technologies like film drew thousands to the cinemas. For a time, believe it or not, Germany was the world capital for experimental and bold themes. Nosferatu, released to the silver screen in 1922, captivated audiences with its revolutionary camera angles and directing giving an entire generation nightmares.
Metropolis, released in 1927, presented the audience with an allegory for capitalism with a Romeo-Juliette love (without the teen suicide) between the working class man and a well-to-do young lady…in the backdrop of science-fiction setting.
Cox loved this newfound freedom Germany adopted. There were subsidized tickets to countless entertainment venues like the theater, opera, and cinema. Films imported from America and the Soviet Union received full houses.
Traditional symphonies played Beethoven, Back, Chopin, Strauss, to the masses.
Foreign nationals and students alike from far away nations like Afghanistan, Turkey, the Americas, and many more found a thriving and welcoming people. They settled and opened restaurants, small businesses, and assimilated into German society.
German-Jews enjoyed newfound freedoms and equality under the law and constitution. They were no longer barred from holding public office or going into certain professions.
Islam found a home in Germany during this period too. Students from the Middle East, intellectuals and artists found inexpensive living and more freedom than they’d experienced in their home countries. Berlin’s first mosque was built in 1925. Its community began with only a few thousand members, most students and eventually left but over the decades has built itself up.
Nightlife was the great melting pot. After work the KPD activists, supporters, Jewish-intellectuals, Nazi stormtroopers filled the stools and tables of the traditional beer-hall, wine shops, and nightclubs.
A new trend in music arrived from the West. It was called Jazz and it took the world by storm. It was unlike anything heard before. New instruments coming together teasing your body to move and hold your partner close until your heads nearly touched.
New dances arrived with it. The Shimmy and Charleston made you sway and shake your shoulders and hips – both movements your parents would faint watching you do. It was intoxicating!
Think of rap or hip-hop today. Conservative politicians have been pointed to it for years as a source of cultural decline. I won’t say who because I don’t want to get sued but just google it and you’ll see what I mean.
Premarital sex and cohabitation increased in major cities. Single-mother pregnancies and divorce rates shot up also.
Berlin had a large LGBTQ culture in the Republic, as well. Bars catering specifically to the community sprang up in major metropolitan centers like Berlin.
Research into the concepts of gender and sexuality at the Institute for Sexual Sciences was ahead of its time. Its founder, Dr. Hirschel, approached what are still taboo topics:
- gender affirming care to transgender patients
- counseling and therapy for members of the queer and homosexual community
- advocated decriminalizing homosexuality
LGBTQ+ community for the first time had their own spaces to be themselves.
Now I know what you’re thinking
Hold on a sec, Jay! Just a minute ago you said homosexuality was criminalized.
Well, it was a designation in the criminal code, but enforcement was sporadic and uneven.
Like today drag queens would perform hit tunes in their finest wigs and dresses to the roaring cheers of the audience. Two women would dance a close waltz together or two men can hold hands in the corner smiling and having a drink without anyone batting an eye.
If you’ve ever seen the series Babylon Berlin, it has a great scene where the lead detective stops into a drag bar. The drag queen on the stage is singing in Spanish, a sombrero wearing orchestra plays a fun waltz – men dancing with men. Women with women. The bartender, efite and helpful, is black.
Another melting pot is the cabaret. We’ve all seen the move with Liza Minnellli or the award-winning theatrical production.
In a smoked filled room with tables and chairs crowded with laborers, writers, shopkeepers, every rank and file of society could claim a favorite one. Performers would dance and sing about unemployment, rebellions, local arrests, political critiquing, you name it they probably did it.
Josephine Baker, an African American performer from St. Louis, Missouri – found a second home on the stages of Europe. This American woman sold out houses with her sensual voice and exotic movements she driving men wild!
Everyone is dressed to impress in evening gowns, mink fur scarfs, tuxedoes, the works.
Just about everything I’ve discussed up to this point has given the very large conservative faction an absolute heart attack. Old-school values like service to the state, loyalty to the workplace, self-sacrifice for the public good – all that was the proper way of things.
Fighting the encroachment of the Communist and liberalism which they saw as destroying the fabric of proper, German culture!
Majority of Germans – particularly those living in the thousands of small towns and villages scattered through the green fields and rocky mountains knew of these societal advancements and scorned nearly each and every one.
Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Times 