Founding the Party #1: Commemorating the 11th Anniversary of the Armistice
Has it really been eleven years already?
Despite the tremendous chaos that had erupted only yesterday, the headlines of every June 28 newspaper were still devoted to the anniversary of the armistice. It was genuinely hard to believe that much time had passed. It felt like only yesterday that the general strike had ended and I sat on the street with the workers, eyes fixed on the sky for the first bundles of newspapers to be tossed from the trucks. And now that moment was already eleven years behind us. Time really does fly.
As expected from the Frankfurter Zeitung, Germany’s largest establishment paper, it offered nothing but the usual platitudes. The scars of the Great War, the pain of Versailles, and the solemn duty of every German to overcome both through democracy. In January 1919, after the revolution that winter had collapsed, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in Paris on June 28, formally ending the war.
The name was the same as the treaty I remembered from my previous life—the one that stripped Germany of everything and planted the seeds for another world war—but the contents differed in many important ways. For one thing, Germany had not lost nearly as much. The Habsburg imperial house had been preserved, and territorial losses were minor outside of Hungary and Poland. Strangely, in this world the German throne belonged to the Habsburgs. There was no separate Austria; instead the German Empire encompassed what had been Austria, Belgium, and the Czech lands in my old world, making it considerably larger.
That August, Kaiser Karl I—successor to Franz Joseph I, who had died during the war—formally declared in Frankfurt that he would transfer legislative authority to parliament. Germany became a constitutional monarchy. As an ordinary German citizen it was welcome news, yet it left a bitter taste in my mouth. After all, the 1919 revolution had failed. Once Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were assassinated, the workers had no choice but to return to their factories.
Still, the Frankfurt Declaration allowed Friedrich Ebert of the Social Democratic Party to become Germany’s first democratically elected Chancellor. Several reforms benefiting the working class followed. Of course, whenever the SPD lost power afterward, workers still had to strike and demonstrate before the government would listen. Beyond that, quite a few other points of history had diverged from the past I remembered. If I had known this would happen, I told myself, I should have studied more history in my previous life. Then again, perhaps it was better that I hadn’t. Remembering the old timeline too clearly would only have made learning this new one more painful.
After that childhood general strike I joined the Communist Party at once. I was only a provisional member at first because of my age, and later transferred to the newly formed youth section, but from that day forward I was a Communist. The party used its funds to teach me everything I lacked. My only prior knowledge had been how to read German and whatever fragments I retained from my Korean schooling in my previous life. With the party’s help I entered university and received a proper education. Having neither family nor a home, the KPD’s Ruhr district office in Essen became my real home.
In that way I grew into an adult for the second time, this time as a politician. And now here I was.
I closed the newspaper. Bright sunlight greeted me. German summers are pleasantly cool; though days like today could be sunny, most were overcast. It was nothing like Korea, where the sun already blazed in early June. On such days I liked to sit on a street bench and read the papers.
But today the street was unusually loud.
“How can this be allowed? How can a Chancellor abandon the people and simply resign?”
“I told you the Social Democrats could never be trusted.”
“All talk and no action, the lot of them.”
“There must be more to the story, so don’t be too harsh. Anyway, with the Chancellor gone there will be a by-election. That will be our moment.”
“Even then, it’ll be the Social Democrats, the Center Party, or the Democrats who win. Is there really no place for our side?”
“There’s the Communist Party. But we can’t even agree among ourselves—getting the KPD elected would be like plucking stars from the sky.”
“The whole political world has gone mad. The Social Democrats need to wake up!”
“What can you expect from people who already threw away the Chancellor’s seat once?”
“Still, the only hope we have is for the Social Democrats to come to their senses. They need to move beyond words and take real action.”
The street was filled with workers furious at the established parties. Yesterday—June 27, 1930—Hermann Müller of the Social Democratic Party had resigned after serving only two of his four years as Chancellor. I had heard the details from comrades inside the party. Müller’s government had never been a pure SPD cabinet; it was a coalition that included the German People’s Party and several others. After winning in 1928 the coalition had functioned reasonably well, until the global economic crisis of October 1929 changed everything. It was the event my original world had called the Great Depression.
It had begun in the United States across the Atlantic. Because of the interconnected free-market system, American capital had flooded Britain, France, and Germany. When America collapsed, the others fell like dominoes. In simple terms, it was the inevitable breakdown of a system that left everything to the market.
Capitalists and factory owners produce profit, but the people who are supposed to consume that profit do not receive enough money to do so. As consumption shrinks, the capitalists cannot realize the profits they counted on and must sell their goods more cheaply. The cheaper the goods, the smaller the workers’ share. The cycle repeats. The purchasing power of money—soars. With no government intervention, nothing stops the spiral. The market stagnates. Capitalists who can no longer pay wages fire their workers. The newly unemployed cannot consume, and the economy collapses.
The American economy that had once glittered with unimaginable luxury disintegrated overnight. The renowned Viennese writer Max Adler called it “capital’s long-predicted failure.”
The Great Depression split Müller’s cabinet in two. The Social Democrats demanded expanded welfare and unemployment support to restore consumer purchasing power. The People’s Party and the Center Party insisted on cutting subsidies and raising taxes to restore the national budget. The two sides could not agree. Fed up, Müller resigned yesterday.
“Still, resigning seems a bit extreme,” I muttered—my honest opinion. Of course two parties now pulling in completely opposite directions could never have cooperated for long… but they might at least have tried to endure.
“It must have been an impossible situation. I probably would have resigned too.”
While I was still scanning the paper for more details, Anna appeared behind me. She was a friend I had met through party work; we had known each other for years. We had even attended the party’s university courses together.
“Even so, if they had held on somehow they would still have had the Reichstag’s support. The Social Democrats are still the largest party.”
“True, but they were the ones who formed the coalition in the first place. They can’t just abandon it now. The fire’s at their feet. They wouldn’t have been able to work together anyway. The Kaiser was probably pressuring them too.”
Anna pulled up a chair and sat beside me.
“What brings you to the party office?”
I had just returned from the street where I had been listening to workers vent their anger and frustration. The Ruhr district office of the German Communist Party had become my destination once more.
“Nowhere else feels quite like home yet.”
“Didn’t you resign from the party?”
“I did, but I haven’t severed all ties.”
In April I had left the KPD. There had been no pressing reason to abandon a functioning party, but no one had stopped me, and there would be no penalty if I ever returned. I simply wanted to try something new.
“Liling! Heinz! So this is where you were.”
While Anna and I were talking, a familiar voice called out. Ernst Thälmann strode toward us.
“It’s been a while, Thälmann.”
“Ah… especially you, Heinz. It really has been a long time.”
Thälmann greeted us both with genuine warmth, but his expression grew slightly awkward when his eyes met mine. I had been the one whose departure he regretted most. Ernst Thälmann, current leader of the Communist Party and a member of the Imperial Reichstag in Frankfurt. With Müller’s resignation the parliament had been temporarily suspended; that must be why he was back in the Ruhr.
“Almost four months now, yes.”
“Exactly. After you left the party I’ve been stuck in Frankfurt the whole time. Honestly, I missed you.”
Thälmann gave an embarrassed laugh.
“Leaving the party wasn’t easy for me either. I’m glad we can still maintain this kind of relationship.”
“Haha, then I’m relieved. I hear you’re founding a new party?”
“How did you know?”
Thälmann knew more about my recent movements than I had expected.
“The younger comrades told me you left to establish a new party.”
“Ah…”
I had spent years inside the KPD; of course word had spread.
“So I have a proposal,” Thälmann said, his voice growing firmer, the revolutionary fire I remembered flickering behind his eyes. “We will help you found it. Why not work together with us?”