Communist Party of Germany (Opposition)
독일 공산당 반대파
A communist opposition organisation founded in Berlin on 30 December 1928 by Heinrich Brandler, August Thalheimer and their supporters as they were being expelled from the Communist Party of Germany. It opposed the Comintern’s ‘ultra-left’ line and the theory of social fascism and called for a workers’ united front against Nazism, describing itself not as a party but as an ‘organised tendency’ within the communist movement. After 1933 it worked underground and in exile until it effectively dissolved around 1939–1940.
In depth
After the Comintern’s Sixth Congress in 1928 the KPD turned to an ‘ultra-left’ line that directed its ‘main blow’ against the Social Democrats. The same year Thälmann, who had covered up embezzlement by the Hamburg district secretary, was removed by the Central Committee and then reinstated by the Comintern Presidium. Thalheimer and Brandler, who had been in Moscow since 1924, returned to Germany in May and October 1928 respectively and rallied supporters against the new line; they were expelled from the KPD in December and from the Soviet Communist Party and the Comintern in January 1929. The organisation was launched at a national conference in Berlin on 30 December 1928 (74 delegates from 16 districts, according to the German-language source) and published the theoretical journal Gegen den Strom and, from 1 January 1930, the daily Arbeiterpolitik.
The opposition held that the labour movement was on the defensive rather than the offensive and, rejecting the KPD’s separate red unions and lists, worked inside the existing trade unions. The sources differ on its size: the English-language source gives about 1,000 members after the expulsions and the 6,000 claimed by Roy in autumn 1929, while the German-language source gives 3,000–4,000 at first, up to 6,000 at the end of 1930 and about 3,500 at the end of 1932. It belonged to the International Communist Opposition (IVKO), ran its own candidates in some elections, and backed Thälmann in the 1932 presidential election.
The opposition called for an anti-fascist united front of the Social Democrats, the Communists, the trade unions and the Socialist Workers’ Party (SAP). In January 1932 a minority around Paul Frölich and Jacob Walcher, which wanted to join the SAP, was expelled and went over to it.
After the Nazis took power in 1933 the opposition went underground at once. According to the German-language source, a Foreign Committee including Brandler and Thalheimer was formed in Strasbourg on 4 March 1933, a Berlin Committee led the work at home, and the Gestapo did not destroy most of the domestic organisation until February–March 1937. The English-language source says members who went to the Spanish Civil War fought in the International Brigades; the German-language source says they fought in the POUM militia. In 1938–1939 it broke with Lovestone’s American group and a minority split away, and when war began in 1939–1940 the leadership abroad was interned in France. The English-language source says the organisation was effectively dissolved at this point; the German-language source says a new Berlin Committee kept its cohesion until 1945. Brandler and Thalheimer spent the war in exile in Cuba, and the Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik, founded in 1947, carried on the opposition’s tradition.