Letter from Henri Simon

Dear Frank Girard,

The following text is about workers resistance to Nazism. You can of course use it if you want in the Discussion Bulletin.

Yours fraternally,
Henri Simon from Echanges

          In Discussion Bulletin, March/April 2001, in the presentation "About this issue" and as a complement of the second article of New Democracy (July/August) "Facing History: How working class Germans fought the Nazis" you mentioned a short text by Tim Mason available online. Tim Mason, an historian from Oxford, made extensive and thorough research in the Nazis archives and wrote several books and articles on this question of workers resistance in the Third Reich. The most important one is in German:"Sozial Politik im Dritten Reich. Arbeit Klasse und Volksgemeinshaft" (Opladen Westdeutscher Verlag, 1977). Most parts of this book were translated into English only in 1993 "Social Policy in the Third Reich. The working Class and the 'National Community' " (Berg. Providence. Oxford) . Another book in English "Nazism, Fascism and the working class" (Cambridge University Press contains various essays by Tim Mason and was published later in 1995. These two last books appeared only after the death of Tim Mason who committed suicide in 1990. The discovery of his research and the publishing of their results were so explosive - even more than thirty years after the end of the war- that even fifteen years elapsed after the German publication before a publication in English could be available.

          The question we can ask is why? It is easy to understand in Europe but I don't know if this explanation is true for the USA or other parts of the world. Who could guess the ideological weight, social pressure imposed, sometimes with the utmost violence by this "unique thought" about the culpability of the whole German people developed by all political parties, the stalinist communists and the Israeli world organisations being on the front line?

          Because Tim Mason's research were accurately and strongly advocating against such an ideological domination (which could explain many things as the war political orientation supporting the war strategy), he was at the centre of fierce, sometimes tricky and treacherous polemics and the focus of some pretended infamous accusations, all things which perhaps partly led him to kill himself.

          Even fifty years after the end of the last war - half a century - fierce polemics are still persisting between pro - Semitics and anti - Semitics around what is called "negationism" but, curiously, not by chance, these polemics completely ignore the rank and file resistance of German workers to Nazism.

          I want to bring in this debate and in support of Tim Mason's books the evidence given by an old militant ( who died years ago) who was deported for two years in the concentration camp of Oranienburg ( near Berlin) and was affected with quite a lot of other prisoners in a working commando in a Heinkel factory ( aircraft factory). He wrote after the war some articles about this question of the "responsibility of the German people". I want to quote only a part of one of these writings relating the events in 1944/1945:

          "...And the workers who struggled daily against the Nazi dictatorship. In our Halle 2, in the Heinkel factory, they were a score of organised workers amongst around 200 German civilian workers and more than double of this figure of unorganised German workers , perhaps less courageous, but among whose nevertheless we have found good friends when after a long period of working together they had learned to know us better. Could these workers be considered as "responsible" for the Nazis crimes?

          "The comrade prisoners of the Kolonne 8 in our workshop at Heinkel certainly will remember for a long time of the German comrade Paul W. ( I call him comrade because it would be impossible for me to give him another name) , who from the first day of work in this "commando" tried to look for political left militants. And if he did everything to help us as his comrades in other Kolonnes in the hall did it with other prisoners, it was not for pity's sake, as some Nazi supporters, but for solidarity. The loaf he brought once a week for all the prisoners French, Polish or Russian working with him, the share of his daily sandwich he left deliberately for us, the German or French daily papers he put in our pockets or in our drawer, all that with the constant risk to join us in the camp, can we forget it? And he knew ( he did not hide this fact from us militants) that most of the prisoners working with him would have hanged him once the war were over only because he was a German. One day he had a row with some patriotic petty bourgeois telling them he did not like at all patriotism from any country.

          Could we forget this good old riveter in our Kolonne 8 later moved to the Kolonne 2 who brought every time the first fruits from his garden, and many other things? He was yet rather a fearful man but he managed anyway to bring us daily papers.. And again in this Kolonne 8, this old German craftsman mobilised in this factory, who took the side of the prisoners several times when they were treated badly by the "vorarbeiter"; he also left part of his poor sandwich and dared to tell us his hate for the Nazis though not a member of the anti - nazi organisation in the factory.

          And at the other end of the Kolonne this brave but a bit crazy worker who was so nice with us and with whom I could talk very openly in total brotherhood; and this young worker of the Kolonne 6 who was arrested when he tried to post a letter for a prisoner and got 6 months in jail and all the night workers from other parts of the factory who at midnight brought full pans of soup to the prisoners working with them.

          And F., who when he had become confident enough to explain that Hitler had come to power with the help of workers divided, and recall this communist vote with the Nazis to pull down the socialist government in Berlin. Most of these German workers had a financial interested in our work but very few pushed us to work more. Only the middle management, most of them Nazis hidden in the factory, party members and some sympathisers tried to push us to work harder. All other German workers were constantly lectured by the Nazi leaders of the factory, by the leaders of the Labour Front , by the foremen, all party members. Very often , the civilian German workers told us to beware of some worker who was more or less an informer.

          And yet they always had to be very careful not to become too confident because they knew that amongst the prisoners there was some criminals, members of the lumpen proletariat and some young aristocrats for whom any worker even of their own nationality was scum. Even so , they helped us...."