Issued by the Central of the Communist Party of Germany in the midst of the crisis of 1923, a crucial year in German history that ended in failed fascist and Communist risings.

‘The Communist Party of Germany on the Imminent Fascist Danger’ from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 3 No. 51. July 19, 1923.

We print below a Manifesto recently issued by the Central of the Communist Party of Germany, which will serve to inform our readers as to the very critical situation which at present exists in Germany, in view of the open and active preparations being made by the Fascist elements, backed up by large capital, to seize absolute power, and the grave and serious view of the position taken by the leaders of the Communist Party. (Ed.)

To the Party!

Cuno’s cabinet is bankrupt! The internal and external crisis threatens to lead to an acute catastrophe within a very short time. Reports accumulate showing that in the occupied territory, all preparations have been completed by the Rhenish-Westphalian separatists for the separation of the Rhenish-Westphalian buffer state from Germany. Were it not that, at the moment, the leaders of these strivers after separation in the pay of France are quarreling among themselves over the distribution of jobs, the first action for the realization of their plans would have taken place on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Action has merely been postponed for some weeks. If all proletarian forces are not at once brought to bear against these traitors, then we shall have the Rhineland Republic more quickly than we imagined.

The South German Fascisti, who have a hand in the game, and a part of whose leaders like the Dorten set are maintained by French money, have resolved at their conferences to utilize the occasion of the proclamation of the Rhenish-Westphalian buffer state to secede from the Republic themselves, immediately after the harvest, on the pretext of assuming the leadership of the active struggle against the invasion by the French. The marching plans of the “Fatherland Leagues” are complete to the last detail. Ludendorff and Hitler have made all preparations to march against Saxony and Thuringia. The North German Fascist organizations, the associations in Pommerania, Upper Silesia, and East Prussia, have made all preparations for the military subjugation of Berlin and Hamburg. Troops of Fascist horse are being formed in Mecklenburg, the province of Brandenburg, Pommerania. On the Warthe and the Oder pontoons are held ready for the constructions of bridges for the Fascist shock troops. The officers of the Reichswehr give the Fascisti military training. Leading elements of the Reichswehr work hand in glove with the Fascisti. The connection of the Reichswehr with the Fascisti is the military mainstay of the counter-revolution; while the bourgeois parties without exception support Fascism, in order to carry out the Stinnes program against the proletariat.

The Social-Democratic government offices, the deputies in the Reichstag and in the Diets, have mountains of material regarding the preparations of the Fascisti and Reichswehr officers for civil war. They are too cowardly to publish the material, and call upon the workers to resist. They know that the attack is imminent; they are trying, with a part of the German bourgeoisie, to prepare the Great Coalition, in order to present the legalization of Fascism to the proletariat as the lesser evil. Party comrades!

Severe struggles lie before us! We must hold ourselves in complete readiness for action. No reliance can be placed on the Social Democracy and Trade Union bureaucracy. As in all previous defensive struggles of the revolutionary proletariat against the counter-revolution, the social-democracy and trade union bureaucracy will, on this occasion also, betray the workers and leave them in the lurch.

The Fascist attack need not take the form of the Kapp putsch; it may begin in action by the Reich against Saxony and Thuringia; it may commence by the proclamation of the Rhenish-Westphalian Republic or by an attack on the defence movement of the workers. Even an attack upon the wage struggles of the workers may be the signal for the Fascist advance. At the moment of the outbreak of the counter-revolution, the S.P.D. will doubtless lament loudly, and give expression to radical sentiments. But the Party must realize that the S.P.D. and the trade union leaders will fail completely in a serious revolutionary defensive struggle against Fascism; that they are unworthy of consideration as leaders of the working class.

We Communists can only be victorious in the struggle against counter-revolution, if we succeed, without and against the traitorous Social Democratic Party and trade union bureaucracy, in leading the social-democratic and non-party working masses into our common struggle.

To this end all preparations must at once be made for an effective defence action.

The Control Committees must make immediate preparations for providing the industrial fighting districts with food, with the aid of the impoverished small dealers and small peasants, as well as of the agricultural workers, and in opposition to the big profiteers, the wholesale dealers, and the large agrarians.

The Common Proletarian Defence Organizations must forthwith be organized from the factories and workshops, despite all opposition.

The Party districts, where the work of forming factory nuclei is not yet complete, must, in the next few days and with a minimum of delay, create efficient factory nuclei.

The communications of the District Lead with the Local Groups of the districts, and with the National Central, must immediately be organized with the greatest care; the same applies to the courier service.

The Party must make its organization such a striking force, that, even in open civil war, not a single district fails it. Should the ordinary means of traffic, such as the railways and the post, be paralyzed by a general strike, or by military struggles, communications between the organizations must be secured, as well as the printing and distribution of propaganda material, etc.

The Fascist plans are, militarily, thoroughly worked out. They have issued the slogan: civil war, to be conducted with the utmost brutality and violence. All workers who resist the Fascisti, shall, on being taken prisoners, be shot. In order to crush the strikes, every tenth man among the strikers is to be shot. It is only possible to crush the Fascist rising by opposing Red Terror to White Terror. If the Fascisti, who are armed to the teeth, slay proletarian fighters, then the workers must pitilessly exterminate all Fascisti. If the Fascisti shoot every tenth striker, then the revolutionary workers must shoot every fifth member of the Fascist organizations.

The Fascist associations are fully armed. The workers, who still have no weapons today, must know where and how they can procure arms in case of an attack. Generally speaking, the unarmed workers will at first only be able to crush the heavily armed Fascisti by force of numbers; they will have to seize the weapons of the Fascisti in open fight, and so equip themselves that they can follow up their victory.

Our comrades in the old and newly occupied territory will have to bear the heaviest blows. Deserted by the German bourgeois parties; betrayed by the Social Democracy and trade union bureaucracy; under the heel of the violent French Militarism, which brutally and mercilessly pursues its own ends, the Communist Party will have to repel the attack unaided. Since it cannot oppose an armed force to French Militarism, it must make all the greater use of the weapon of the political mass strike.

The C.P. of Germany must lead the whole proletariat into the struggle under its flag. It must, therefore, immediately exert every endeavour to win the social democratic, Christian, and non-partisan working masses for the energetic defensive struggle against the formation of a Rhenish-Westphalian buffer state. The Party must, however, also make up its mind that, under certain circumstances, it will alone issue the call to battle and will alone undertake the leadership of the struggle.

This action signifies at least the raising of the standard of revolutionary resistance to Entente Imperialism, a resistance which, in alliance with Soviet Russia, prepares the victorious defensive struggle against French Imperialism and which has for its end, the emancipation of Germany.

We are facing decisive struggles. We must prepare ourselves and the masses, calmly, without nervousness, and with clear heads. The appointed time for opening the attack may again be postponed. That in no way alters the danger of the situation.

Party Comrades!

The Communist Party is to-day, as never before in the German Revolution, a factor of power. Throughout the country, new members, new readers of the Party press, are streaming to us in thousands and tens of thousands. In the very near future, the Party will have to undergo an ordeal of fire. If we succeed in mobilizing the broad masses of workers who today are ready to fight, if we succeed in giving them a clear-sighted lead, then this struggle can only end with the victory of the working class over counter-revolution.

Only if we have the will to victory and for the assumption of power, only if every communist is ready to sacrifice his all for the salvation and emancipation of the working class, only then will our Party be the Party of victory. Only then will it set up the revolutionary Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, which by the seizure of real values and control of production at the expense of the great capitalists, will save the working class, clerks, officials and hard-pressed middle class from ruin and enslavement, and will oppose to French Imperialism a militant and united Nation.

The Party is ready to fight shoulder to shoulder with all those who, from within and without, will resolutely and sincerely fight under the leadership of the proletariat.

Up, close the ranks of the vanguard of the German proletariat. Let us fight in the spirit of Karl Liebkniecht and Rosa Luxemburg!

Berlin, July 11. 1923.

The Central of the Communist Party of Germany. (Section of the Communist International.)

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1923/v03n51[30]-jul-19-1923-Inprecor-loc.pdf