Ernst Thälmann
63-768: Albert Grzesinski Karl Zörgiebel Blutmai (English: Bloody May , lit. ' Blood May ' ) was an outbreak of political violence that occurred in Berlin from 1 to 3 May 1929. It occurred when the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) held May Day marches in defiance of a ban on public gatherings in Berlin ordered by the city's police chief Karl Zörgiebel of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The Berlin Police responded with an immediate and harsh crackdown. Often without regard to whether
126-643: A "chronic danger of famine" in 1928-1929. The Left Opposition had opposed the continued marketization of agriculture through the NEP, and, since 1924, had repeatedly called for investment in industry, some collectivization in agriculture and democratisation of the Party. Threatened by the growing power and revolt from the countryside led by the Kulaks and the strengthening bourgeoisie, the Fifteenth Congress of
189-707: A "favourable wind" for the Nazi Party . On 30 April 1929, police traffic officers were attacked at various places in Berlin by members of the RFB and the Young Spartacus League, the children's and youth organisation of the KPD. On the same day leaflets appeared with the report that the ban on demonstrations on 1 May had been lifted, a report which was also spread by the Communist newspaper Welt am Abend . While
252-566: A German television series set during the Weimar Republic that premiered in 2017, includes an in depth depiction of the Berlin police using excessive force and killing unarmed bystanders during Blutmai and the official cover up by the ruling SPD. Albert Grzesinski Albert Carl Grzesinski (28 July 1879 – 12 January 1948) was a German SPD politician and Minister of the Interior of Prussia from 1926 to 1930. Grzesinski
315-565: A class". A distinction was made between the elimination of the Kulaks as a class and the killing of the individuals themselves; nevertheless, at least 530,000 to 600,000 deaths resulted from dekulakization from 1929 to 1933, and Robert Conquest has estimated that there could have been as many as five million deaths. Kulaks could be shot or imprisoned by the GPU , have their property confiscated before being sent into internal exile (in Siberia ,
378-690: A general strike on 2 May in response to the police violence, but as with the May Day turnout, it met with limited success. The KPD claimed that 25,000 people went on strike in Berlin on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of May and that an additional 50,000 walked out in sympathy elsewhere in Germany. On 2 May, and again on the third, the police combed through the workers' neighbourhoods, searched flats and arrested many people. Armoured vehicles with machine guns were used and several people were shot. The RFB, previously operating underground in fear of outright proscription, joined
441-494: A history of clashing with police. Like the Nazi Party 's Sturmabteilung (SA), the RFB operated in small mobile fighting squads, trained to various degrees in street fighting. In late 1928, four people had died in fights between opposing paramilitary groups. In December 1928, Berlin's police chief Karl Zörgiebel issued a ban on open-air political gatherings in Berlin, citing a recent stabbing involving RFB members. On 21 March 1929, Prussia's interior minister Grzesinski extended
504-481: A resolution calling the rioting "a turning-point in political developments in Germany... The preconditions are appearing for the approach of an immediately revolutionary situation, and with its development, an armed uprising must inevitably step onto the agenda." The justification of the police violence by leading representatives of the SPD served as confirmation for the KPD that they were social fascists . The events deepened
567-473: A seven-week ban on the primary Communist newspaper Die Rote Fahne ('The Red Flag') as a consequence of its incitement and also to hinder news of the high number of civilian casualties from spreading. In the Reichstag, KPD member Wilhelm Pieck condemned Zörgiebel as a "common murderer", while the SPD defended police leadership. Although Zörgiebel called on the police to show moderation, he contributed to
630-629: Is an ideological concept adopted by the Communist International (Comintern) at its Sixth World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928. It set policy until reversed when the Nazis took over Germany in 1933. The Comintern's theory was based on its economic and political analysis of world capitalism , which posited the division of recent history into three periods. These included a "First Period" that followed World War I and saw
693-470: The Comintern was that after the "First Period" of revolutionary upsurge in 1917 and the following years, a "Second Period" had followed in which capitalism stabilised itself and the international proletariat was pushed onto the defensive. In foreseeing a "Third Period", Bukharin sketched out the weaknesses inherent in capitalism which would lead to renewed class conflict. Principal among these, he argued,
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#1732780057805756-631: The Reichstag , no action was taken against the Berlin Police. The events of Blutmai deepened the split between the SPD and KPD, the two major left-wing parties of the Weimar Republic , making a united stand against the growing strength of far-right parties more difficult. After the 1928 Reichstag election , the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) with 54 seats remained one of the largest and most politically potent Communist parties in Europe. It
819-471: The "Nazi wave will ebb", as evidenced by Grezesinski lifting the ban on Adolf Hitler speaking publicly in September 1928. According to Chris Bowlby, "hysterical assessments" by SPD politicians of the threat posed by the KPD in combination with the militant nature of the Berlin police meant that conflict and even violence between the two groups was probable if not inevitable. Season 1 of Babylon Berlin ,
882-498: The "unrestrained [propaganda] attacks by the KPD" had forced the Social Democrats to fend off the attacks and stand by the ban on demonstrations. The fear that their own supporters might follow the KPD's calls was unmistakable. The KPD turnout on 1 May was not particularly large. Around 8,000 people, mainly in Berlin's working-class districts of Wedding and Neukölln , gathered in groups of 50 to 500 people, far fewer than
945-408: The 47 police officers injured, ten were hospitalized and none suffered from a gunshot wound. The Frankfurter Zeitung reported: There was no question of combat-style fighting during the entire operation. The police did not have to return any fire from rooftop shooters. The police were dominated by the military attitude that they were dealing with an opponent who was to be treated as an enemy. There
1008-712: The All-Union Communist Party passed resolutions that supported for some of the planks of the Opposition's platform, and on paper, the Congress' views appeared very left, politically. However, the Left Opposition was expelled. The new policies of industrialisation and collectivisation now adopted were given the slogan " socialist accumulation ". The Communist party had publicly proposed collectivisation to be voluntary; however, official policy
1071-715: The Comintern felt that conditions were strong enough, it demanded that its political positions within the workers' movement be consolidated and that all " reactionary " elements be purged. Accordingly, attacks and expulsions were launched against social democrats and moderate socialists within labour unions where the local CP had majority support, as well as Trotskyists and united front proponents. The All-Union Communist Party also encouraged armed rebellion in China , Germany , and elsewhere. Although shortcomings and crippling ideological vacillations brought this Period to an end,
1134-453: The Comintern's work because they entailed different tactics on the part of communist parties outside the USSR. The "Second Period" was characterised by the " united front " policy (1923–28) within which communist parties strove to work together with social democratic parties to defend the wages, jobs and rights of working-class people and build the political basis for the future dictatorship of
1197-557: The KPD had expected and the police had feared. Most businesses operated normally. SPD-affiliated trade unions held their own peaceful, well-attended meetings in closed assemblies. The Berlin police, which had mobilized between 13,000 and 16,500 officers, dispersed small street gatherings either by giving the order for them to do so or, more frequently, with the use of batons. Warning shots were also fired. Officers were at times insulted and provoked, and some demonstrators attempted to stop traffic by cutting tram lines and throwing obstacles into
1260-473: The KPD was seeking to intentionally sacrifice supporters' lives, saying that the party would have to "reckon with" 200 dead. SPD support for the ban, however, was not unanimous, given that a social democratic government was preventing public gatherings on an international holiday for working people. The Nazi newspaper Der Angriff declared in April 1929 that the SPD and KPD fighting among themselves represented
1323-404: The KPD, were killed, 200 injured, and over a thousand people taken into police custody, many of whom were also not involved in the initial KPD rallies. Only 66 of those arrested were charged and 44 convicted. Ten policemen were hurt badly enough to be hospitalized, although none of them suffered from a gunshot wound. In spite of a considerable outcry in the left and liberal press, and angry scenes in
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#17327800578051386-463: The Neukölln district (another KPD stronghold) around Hermann Square, the fighting lasted into the evening. The police used personnel carriers and armoured cars, occasionally aiming their weapons at residences and firing on civilian onlookers. On 2 May Interior Minister Carl Severing met with his Prussian counterpart Albert Grzesinski and Prussian Minister President Otto Braun. They immediately imposed
1449-564: The North , the Urals , or Kazakhstan ), or be evicted from their houses and sent to work in labour colonies in their own district. There is debate amongst historians as to whether the actions of the Kulaks and their supporters helped lead to famine, or whether the policy of collectivisation itself was responsible. (See Collectivisation in the USSR , Holodomor .) In the West, the crisis of capitalism
1512-763: The Third Period occurred at the 9th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (E.C.C.I.) in February 1928. This helped in dovetailing the "Left" of the All-Union Communist party with that of the Comintern itself. To the Comintern, a decisive and final revolutionary upheaval was afoot and all its sections had to prepare for the immediate advent of world revolution . As part of this theory, because
1575-516: The Third Period towards the establishment of radical dual unions under communist party control rather than continuation of the previous policy of attempting to radicalize existing unions by "boring from within". The rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany in 1933 and the annihilation of the organized communist movement there shocked the Comintern into reassessing the tactics of the Third Period. From 1934, new alliances began to be formed under
1638-523: The Third Period. Some authors like Robin D. G. Kelley and John Manley have penned local histories that portray Communist Party members as effective activists, heroic in many cases because their revolutionary zeal helped them confront extremely adverse circumstances. Despite the shadow of Stalinism , in this perspective, the important positive contributions Communist organizers made in working class history should not be discounted. Critics of this perspective argue that these histories gloss over or ignore both
1701-585: The Wedding and Neukölln districts. Grzesinski extended the ban on the RFB from Berlin to all of Prussia, and by 15 May the RFB and its youth wing, the Rote Jungfront (RJ), were illegal throughout the country. The interior ministers of the German states also discussed banning the KPD but considered it too problematic. Police conducted house-to-house searches in Wedding and made further arrests, heightening
1764-604: The aegis of the " Popular Front ". The Popular Front policy was formalized as the official policy of the world communist movement by the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in 1935. Although the term "Third Period" is closely associated with Stalin, it was first coined by Bukharin in 1926, at the Seventh Plenum of the ECCI to describe the conditions for further revolutions outside Russia. The view of
1827-441: The assemblies joined the demonstrators; thousands gathered between Alexanderplatz and Potsdamer Platz . Law enforcement handled the defiance of the ban on open-air gatherings as if it were the popular revolt the Communist press had called for rather than the confused and haphazard act of civic disobedience that it was. The police soon cleared the streets in central Berlin. In the Wedding district, home to many Communist supporters,
1890-415: The ban on May Day demonstrations had been lifted in some parts of Prussia and the rest of Germany, Zörgiebel reaffirmed its validity for Berlin. The KPD stuck to its call for demonstrations, even "if Zörgiebel dares to shed workers' blood on 1 May". On 28 April, Zörgiebel used the SPD's Vorwärts to call for workers not to follow the KPD's announcements. He stated once again that the numerous bloody clashes in
1953-427: The capitalist status quo. Their perception was reinforced by the explicit anti-Communist views of numerous SPD politicians in the German and Prussian governments, including Chancellor Hermann Müller , Interior Minister Carl Severing , Prussian Minister President Otto Braun , Prussian Interior Minister Albert Grzesinski and Berlin Police chief Karl Zörgiebel. The Berlin Police used military-style training and
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2016-403: The clashes in Wedding during the afternoon of 2 May, once more constructing barricades in largely spontaneous defensive actions. The Communist militants and the police exchanged gunfire in the streets. The police also enforced a general curfew, leading to confused confrontations in the darkness. By the afternoon of 3 May, the fighting had ended, and on 6 May the Berlin Police lifted martial law in
2079-412: The escalation by placing large parts of Berlin under a state of emergency: "Persons walking on the street without a destination will be arrested. Three or more people are not allowed to walk together ... All persons who do not comply with these orders will put their lives at risk." A curfew was also imposed, street-facing windows had to be closed and lights were not allowed in rooms. The KPD had called for
2142-685: The faction of the Party led by Stalin had supported the continuation of the New Economic Policy (NEP). However, in the cities, industry had become undercapitalized, and prices were rising. In the countryside, moreover, the NEP had resulted in an enrichment of certain privileged sections of the Russian and Ukrainian peasantry (the Kulaks ) because of deregulation of prices for grain. These events were leading to growing economic and political instability. The towns were being threatened with
2205-537: The first list of Germans who were arbitrarily officially denaturalised according to a new law, which also ensued in the seizure of all his property in Germany, Grzesinski became stateless . He fled to Switzerland in 1933. He then emigrated to France , and in 1937, to the United States . In exile, he was active in anti-Nazi organisations. He died in Queens, New York. Third Period The Third Period
2268-465: The first of May, KPD-affiliated newspapers urged members and sympathizers to take to the streets. They exhorted workers to defy the ban and organize peacefully, but to be prepared to strike on May 2 "if Zörgiebel dares to spill workers' blood". The newspaper Die Rote Front stressed "the sharpened movement of the power organs of the capitalist state against the proletariat" in describing potential police violence against Communists. The Internationale ,
2331-433: The highest individual sentence was nine months. Eight of the civilians killed were women and 19 were residents of Wedding. Of the first 25 victims, two were SPD members and 17 belonged to no party; none were KPD members. Police found no evidence that the demonstrators who took to the streets were prepared for an armed insurrection, since the house-to-house search in Wedding produced mostly souvenir weapons from World War I . Of
2394-485: The order. He was removed from his position following the 1932 Preußenschlag ( Prussian Coup ), when he was succeeded by the police chief of Essen, Kurt Melcher . According to Christopher Clark , he referred to Hitler as 'the foreigner' and found it 'lamentable' that he should be negotiating with the government 'instead of being chased away with a dog whip'. Following the Nazi rise to power, and with his name appearing on
2457-427: The past had forced him to ban demonstrations and that the KPD, by planning riots on Moscow's orders and being willing to accept many deaths, had contributed to the ban. The statement was widely publicised under bold headlines in the social democratic press. According to historian Thomas Kurz, the Social Democrats and trade unions had difficulties explaining the break with the tradition of May Day parades. Kurz wrote that
2520-428: The people they found there. They then fled into the side streets and waited for the police to leave. The newspaper criticised the police for going far beyond what was necessary. When the indoor gatherings dispersed and the attendees took to the streets for home, the police arrested people merely because they were on the wrong side of a police checkpoint or were swept up while fleeing a police sortie. Some of those leaving
2583-433: The persons involved were demonstrators or bystanders, they forcibly and sometimes violently dispersed the crowds that formed. As the day progressed, street battles developed between the protestors and the police, who used firearms and armoured cars. The violence lasted until the afternoon of 3 May, mostly in the working-class neighbourhoods of Wedding and Neukölln . An estimated 33 civilians, none of whom were involved with
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2646-688: The political tension produced by the riots. The harsh police suppression led to a furor in the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag , with heavy media coverage by both independent and partisan newspapers. It was determined that between 32 and 38 people were killed, all civilians, and all by police firearms save for one individual who was struck by a speeding police van. Around 200 were injured and approximately 1,200 arrested, of whom only 66 were ever charged. Among them, 44 were later convicted and imprisoned, including five RFB members. The total of all sentences passed down came to around ten years in prison;
2709-450: The prohibition to the whole of Prussia on similar grounds. Two days later he threatened to ban the KPD and its organisations if they did not renounce violence. The bans appeared to affirm the official Communist Party line that capitalism had entered its Third Period , and the state would therefore become more draconian in obstructing efforts to organize the proletariat. In the lead-up to the 1929 celebration of International Workers' Day on
2772-562: The proletariat . The Third Period, in contrast, saw a sharp turn against these tactics in favour of "class against class" (1928–34); here communist parties actively rejected collaboration with social democrats, attacking them as "social fascists" or, in Stalin's own formulation, "the moderate wing of fascism". In December 1927, the All-Union Communist Party held its Fifteenth Party Congress ; prior to this Congress,
2835-407: The revolutionary upsurge and defeat of the working class, as well as a "Second Period" of capitalist consolidation for most of the decade of the 1920s. According to the Comintern's analysis, the current phase of world economy from 1928 onward, the "Third Period", was to be a time of widespread economic collapse and mass working class radicalization. This economic and political discord would again make
2898-737: The rise of Nazism because it precluded unity between the German communists with the German Social Democrats . Hitler's rise to power, consequently, was also a reason for the abandonment of the policy in favor of the Popular Front strategy because Germany became the biggest security threat to the Soviet Union. Historians of the left have debated the contribution made by Communist activism in North America during
2961-462: The social consequences. According to figures given by Deutscher, the peasants opposed forced collectivisation by slaughtering 18 million horses, 30 million cattle, about 45 per cent of the total, and 100 million sheep and goats, about two thirds of the total. Those who engaged in these behaviours, deemed Kulaks, were dealt with harshly; in December 1929, Stalin issued a call to "liquidate the Kulaks as
3024-554: The split between the labour parties and ultimately benefited the National Socialists. The SPD had an equivalent to the KPD's social fascism claim in its leaders' anxieties over a new Spartacist uprising . Although the KPD did desire to overthrow the Weimar Republic , extremist parties did not have the same appeal they had after the Great Depression of 1929 hit Germany. The SPD government was convinced that
3087-560: The street. The police took action against anything that looked like a protest rally. They used rubber truncheons, water hoses and increasingly also warning shots against demonstrators and – without distinction – the curious and passers-by. Their actions often resulted in the mistreatment of bystanders, about which the liberal press reported in detail over the next few days. According to the liberal newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung , police cars continually rushed to Hermann Square in Neukölln, where officers jumped out and immediately began beating
3150-506: The theoretical journal of the KPD, announced that the "revolutionary élan and will to fight among the German working class will show the Social Democratic police minister of the bourgeoisie [that] the proletariat cares nothing for their bans! ... Communism ... will stride with a sure and firm step over even Grzesinski's laughable fascist gestures." The SPD newspaper Vorwärts reported SPD politician Franz Künstler's belief that
3213-399: The time ripe for proletarian revolution if militant policies were rigidly maintained by communist vanguard parties , the Comintern believed. Communist policies during the Third Period were marked by pronounced hostility to reformism and political organizations espousing it as an impediment to the movement's revolutionary objectives. In the field of trade unions , a move was made during
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#17327800578053276-546: The tone of the "Third Period" resonated powerfully with the mood of many militant workers of the time, especially following the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the ensuing crises of the 1930s. In many countries, including the United States , local Communist Parties' membership and influence grew as a result of the "Third Period" policies. One notable development in this period was that Communists organized
3339-503: The unemployed into a political force, despite their distance from the means of production . Another distinguishing feature of this policy was that Communists fought against their rivals on the left as vehemently as their opponents on the right of the political spectrum, with special viciousness directed at real or imaginary followers of Leon Trotsky . Social Democrats were targeted by Communist polemics, in which they were dubbed " social fascists ." Trotskyists have blamed Stalin's line for
3402-425: The violence gradually escalated into ongoing street combat, which included civilians erecting barricades. The police resorted to firearms, with one of the first victims a man who was watching from his window. Two other victims were shot through doors, including an 80-year-old man in his apartment. Most of the fighting was limited to Kösliner Street in Wedding, and by midnight most of the area was under police control. In
3465-426: Was a struggle for markets which would lead to intense pressures to reduce costs of production. These reductions would involve Taylorism as well as longer shifts and wage-cuts, driving wages down and unemployment up. The consequent lowering of living standards amongst the working class would lead to the intensification of class struggles and greater support for communism. These periodic distinctions were important to
3528-443: Was almost always ignored in practice; threats and false promises were used to motivate peasants into joining the communes. Eventually, in what Issac Deutscher calls "the great change", the policies of industrialisation and collectivisation were carried out in a ruthless and brutal way, via the use of the security and military forces, without the direct involvement of the working class and peasantry itself and without seeming regard for
3591-634: Was born Albert Lehmann in Treptow an der Tollense , Germany , the illegitimate son of a maid, and grew up with grandparents. He assumed the name of his stepfather in 1892. He became a member of the SPD in 1897. In 1919, he became Under-Secretary of State in the Prussian War Ministry . He declined the position as Reichswehr Minister (Defense) in 1920. From 1922 to 1924, he was chief of the Prussian Police , and from 1925 to 1926, he
3654-592: Was chief of the Berlin Police . Grzesinski's tenure as Minister of the Interior was marked by his efforts to promote democracy, and by the political violence in Germany at the time, especially the violence committed by the communists and hostility between the communists and the social democrats. In 1929, he banned the Rotfrontkämpferbund ( Red Front Fighter's League ) in Prussia. In May 1929 he
3717-454: Was coming to a head with the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, and the Communist International 's Sixth Congress viewed capitalism as entering a final death agony, its "third period of existence" where the first had been capitalism during its rise prior to World War I , and the second was the short period after the crushing of the post-World War I revolutions when capitalism seemed again to have stabilised. The formal institution of
3780-508: Was criticized both for its reactionary culture and for acquiring army weapons and equipment. The police were regularly involved in political violence throughout the 1920s, including against Communist dissidents. It led to a willingness among the Berlin Police to use "a military advantage to inflict a decisive defeat on the 'proletarian enemy ' ". The KDP had a paramilitary wing, the Roter Frontkämpferbund (RFB), which had
3843-584: Was involved in the violent police suppression of illegal open-air communist rallies in Berlin meant to celebrate May Day , which led to several days of rioting known as Blutmai . Over 30 civilians would be killed and over a thousand arrested, leading to widespread criticism over the government response. Grzesinski resigned on February 28, 1930, for personal reasons. From 1930 to 1932, he was again chief of police. In 1931, as Berlin's police chief, he tried to gag Adolf Hitler , ordering him deported as an undesirable alien, but Chancellor Heinrich Brüning did not sign
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#17327800578053906-488: Was led by Ernst Thälmann , who supported a close alignment with the Soviet Union and the Communist International (Comintern). At the time, the Comintern held the position that social democracy was social fascism and that it frustrated rather than helped the proletariat . As a result, the KPD under Thälmann had a hostile, confrontational attitude toward the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as defenders of
3969-523: Was no official investigation into the police assaults and no police officer was charged. A session of the Prussian state parliament led to a bitter dispute between the SPD and KPD. Motions of no confidence in the government and to dismiss Zörgiebel were defeated. The debate remained without result. A little over a month after the Blutmai events, the KPD held its Twelfth Party Congress in Berlin. It passed
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