User:Kinglurch

The Red Shock Troop (Der Rote Stoßtrupp) is a so far little noticed left socialist resistance group against National Socialism. Compared to the far more known groups such as the ‘White Rose’, the ‘Edelweiß Pirates’ or the ‘Socialist Front’ 'The Red Shock Troop' was in its effectiveness as important as the afore mentioned groups.

The ‘Red Shock Troop’ was founded in July 1932 as a reaction towards the so-called ‘Preußenschlag’ (‘Preußen Coup’) by a small number of intellectuals who belonged to the literary environment of the ‘Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus’ (New Journal for Socialism). Within a few months the ‘Red Shock Troop’ developed to a resistance group with good relations to and effectively networked with nearly all other anti-nationalist movements.

Its supporters – mostly Social Democrats – came from all social classes. The group understood itself as a leftist collective movement and criticised particularly the party leaderships of Social Democratic Party and Communist Party because of their inapt strategies to resist and to combat National Socialism.

The ‘Rote Stab’, the executive committee, co-ordinated resistance work which consisted primarily of distributing a newspaper named after the group and secondly of establishing branches in the German Reich. The paper propagated a socialist revolution and the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’. At the end of 1933 the periodical had an estimated readership of 7 500 persons. At this time the Gestapo was able to arrest dozens of functionaries of the organisation. In 1934 and 1935 61 persons were in at least six trials sentenced to mainly long terms of imprisonment in penitentiary or jail.

From 1934, however, the illegal activities of the ‘Red Shock Troop’ could be continued in two successor organisations. Immediately after the partial destruction of the organisation remaining members formed a support group for prisoners and their next of kin and relatives. They called themselves the ‘New Red Shock Troop’. Its work was defined by its role of opposition to and confrontation with the exile party executive of the Social Democratic Party, because the new group did not recognise the executive’s claim to sole representation or an exclusive authority claim concerning German social democracy.

Regardless of this conflict another successor organisation operated from 1934 to at least 1944 in Berlin. Thus the ‘Red Shock Troop’ was not only one of the first but also one of the longest lasting active anti-National Socialist resistance groups.