Biography

You were born Wilhelm Münzenberg on 14 August 1889 in Erfurt, in the Prussian province of Saxony. The son of a tavern keeper, you grew up in poverty and only attended village school irregularly. After one year in a middle school in the town of Gotha, you began an apprenticeship as a barber but broke that off to work from 1904 to 1910 as an unskilled worker in a shoe factory in Erfurt.

As a young man, you became involved with trade unions and in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In 1906 you joined a workers’ education association and became its director within one year. You renamed the association Free Youth Erfurt and affiliated it with the SPD-aligned North German Youth Association. You had already emerged as a popular agitator, but the result was that no factory in Erfurt would hire you so that you had to leave town to make a living. Between 1910 and 1913 you worked as an assistant in a pharmacy in Zurich, Switzerland, where you joined a socialist youth organization. Here, too, you quickly rose to leadership and in 1912 you were elected a member of the executive of the socialist youth organization and editor of the monthly magazine Die Freie Jugend [Free Youth]. However, you had a strong leaning towards the anarchist circles popular with adolescents, reading works by Peter Kropotkin, Max Stirner, and Johann Most.

During the Great War, you directed the International Youth Secretariat in Bern, Switzerland, where you also came to know Lenin, who was living in Swiss exile. Your open opposition to the war and support for the Russian Revolution landed you in Swiss jail. You were released following the November Revolution in 1918 but immediately deported as “an undesirable foreigner” and “supporter of the [Russian] October Revolution.” Upon returning to Germany you joined the revolutionary Spartacus League in Berlin and became a founding member of the KPD. You were also made the head of the Young Communist International (YCI) and the delegate of the YCI to the Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920.

Communist internal politics have caused your position within the party to move unpredictably. Gregory Zinoviev, head of the Comintern, removed you as head of the YCI in 1921, but, Lenin immediately gave you a private assignment—the organization of the International Workers’ Relief (IAH) for the Soviet Union. This assignment granted you great autonomy.

You were also able in 1924 to found the illustrated Sowjetrussland im Bild [Soviet Russia in Pictures], which became the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung [AIZ—The Worker’s Illustrated Newspaper] in 1926—now the most widely read socialist pictorial newspaper in Germany.

In 1924 you took over the New German Publishing Company for IAH; the director of the publishing house is your romantic partner Babette Gross.

You were simultaneously elected to the central committee of the KPD and to the Reichstag in 1924 and have served there ever since. You are in fact one of the few KPD leaders of working-class origin, a source of immense pride for you. You also have additional clout among your comrades in that you have personally met not only Lenin but Stalin. You have also consistently proven absolutely faithful to Moscow.

Most importantly, though, you have earned the reputation of a brilliant propagandist as well as organizer. Your first major success was an effort to raise money and food for the victims of the Russian famine of 1921. Through the Berlin-based IAH, you are reputed to have sent millions of dollars in aid to the Soviet Union. In addition, you continue to work closely with the Comintern and the Soviet secret police (the OGPU) to advance the communist cause internationally.

After directing the Comintern’s handling of the Sacco and Vanzetti case in 1925, you took charge of the League Against Imperialism, created in Brussels in 1927. You are now planning a World Congress Against War for the near future.

In order to broaden the Comintern’s influence, you have created numerous front organizations, which you have termed Innocents’ Clubs. These front groups, such as the Friends of Soviet Russia, the League against Imperialism, as well as the IAH, are superficially devoted to an undeniably benign cause such as famine relief, anti-imperialism, or peace, but you created them to enlist the support of liberals and moderate socialists in defending the Bolshevik revolution. As you have told a fellow Comintern member, “These people have the belief they are actually doing this themselves. This belief must be preserved at any price.”

The front organizations, in turn, help to fund the acquisitions of the Münzenberg Trust, a collection of small newspapers, publishing houses, movie houses, and theatres in locations around the world. Indeed, you have now acquired the second largest press empire in Germany second only to Hugenberg (DNVP). Your papers include Welt am Abend, Berlin am Morgen and of course Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung. Thoroughly engaged with modern culture, you have also created a communist movie industry, including the Prometheus Film Company and the Movie Cartel World Cinema Company. The fact that this media empire is privately held, rather than by the KPD, has given you freedom to address workers as you see most effective. While every item published is in line with KPD doctrine, you are able to speak in a less theoretical and doctrinaire manner—to great propaganda success.

However, for all your communist sincerity, you hardly lead a proletarian life. Your apartment is luxurious and in a bourgeois neighborhood (the building is actually owned by the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld). You also have acquired a luxury car for your business—a giant Lincoln Limousine. Indeed, many in and out of the KPD refer to you as the Red Millionaire. But what of it? The point is that you are able to reach millions of workers (and others) with a communist message. Inside the party, and as a member of the KPD’s Reichstag delegation, you will unflinchingly toe the party line and defend the party’s stance on every issue. Personally, you also happen to take great delight in every defeat of Hugenberg—if only to show that his press empire is not more significant than yours….

Objectives

The Constitution and the Republic

The government must be overthrown. It is neither democratic nor socialist but instead a veneer for the continued domination of the capitalists, the remnants of the feudal Junker class, and militarists, propped up by the SPD.

The goal is simple—Germany must finish what was started in November 1918. Germany must follow the example of the Russian Revolution and have a second revolution that sweeps away all of the rubbish of the old order—aristocrats, military elites, capitalists. The threat has grown more severe since the rise of fascism. Mussolini has shown in Italy what fascists do in power; this must not be repeated in Germany. Thus, your primary enemy is the NSDAP. How is this done? Every speech on every issue must serve the purpose of denouncing the NSDAP and promoting revolution. The KPD paramilitaries, the recently banned Red Front, must defend itself in the street battles against the NSDAP.

However, you are just as opposed to the SPD on almost every issue. After all, the SPD sided with the conservatives in 1919 to slaughter workers in the streets, including assassinating party founders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The SPD is functionally no different from the NSDAP.

Instead, they are a form of social fascism—deliberately misleading workers and paving the way for compromises with capitalism that will only lead to the victory of the political fascists. Therefore, there can be no talk of an alliance with the SPD, no United Front that would only undermine the resolve of young communists. Indeed, there may even be times when you would vote with the NSDAP against the SPD; after all, the SPD is worse in its betrayal. Therefore, the NSDAP is preferable to the SPD to clear the way for true revolution.

However, the rank and file members of the SPD share the basic goals of the KPD, and even if the leadership is smitten with the allure of liberal power, the common members are still comrades who must be convinced to leave the SPD.

In fact, it may be preferable to vote tactically with the NSDAP in opposing the SPD. This is not an alliance with the fascists—they will be dealt with later. But occasionally voting with them to defeat the pro-Republican forces is a means to an end—that end being the communist revolution.

Some Reichstag members have been discussing the possibility of rule by presidential decree. You are aware of its inherently authoritarian nature. It would be absurd to think that a militarist Junker such as von Hindenburg can be trusted to defend the interests of workers, and no such arrangement can be tolerated. Indeed, the KPD should plan on winning the Reich presidency in the next election.

Others have talked about banning a particular party; naturally banning the NSDAP would be acceptable, but what would prevent this same tactic from being turned on the KPD? After all, it was not that long ago that the German state attempted to destroy socialism with the Anti-Socialist Laws and there is little love for the KPD in any of the other parties.

Of course, once in power you will not hesitate to ban any parties that oppose socialism—after all, it is not a matter of the principle of civil liberties but of the situational tactics necessary to secure the socialist revolution.

Regarding the NSDAP, the NSDAP is merely using its Legality Strategy as a fig leaf to cover its real intentions of seizing power and establishing a right-wing dictatorship. That the judiciary refuses to prosecute conservatives engaged in open calls for sedition exposes the need for a thorough revolution to finish what was begun in 1918.

Foreign Relations (Foreign Ministry)

Freedom Law and Young Plan

German foreign policy today is still about imperialism. Your top priority is to defend the interests of the USSR as the only truly socialist government in the world. The KPD leadership therefore just adopted the following stance specifically in regards to the Young Plan and the Treaty of Versailles generally:

“The complete annulment of all debts, the Bolshevik liquidation of the Versailles Treaty and the Young Plan through the overthrow of the bourgeois [state], the setting up of a socialist, Soviet Germany and an alliance with the Soviet Union and the revolutionary workers of all countries.”

In effect, all international treaties conducted by imperialist powers are illegitimate—a revolution is the only answer.

The Young Plan is nothing more than a plot to promote fascism. The SPD supports it, and that in itself reveals that it is a betrayal of the working classes. Why should workers be expected to suffer the burdens of war reparations when it was the capitalists and Junkers who caused the war? War reparations will only be paid on the backs of workers through their taxes. The Young Plan only benefits international creditors and banks. It should be defeated. However, you do not want to end up voting with the NSDAP. A boycott of the vote is therefore an option.

On the Freedom Law, you can be flexible—you can support it to humiliate the government but you are cautious about an alliance with the nationalists at this point. Perhaps abstaining is best.

The Treaty of Versailles embodies imperialist interests. The Young Plan is simply part of that policy.

Liquidation Treaty with Poland

You oppose the Liquidation Treaty. There is no reason whatsoever to trust the intentions of either the current government or that in Poland.

Why, in a time of austerity, should Germany pay one billion RM for citizens in another state? Further, any reconciliation between Poland and Germany only allows Germany greater freedom to try to remilitarize for another war. First must come a proletarian revolution then borders can be addressed in a spirit of proletarian solidarity.

Military Affairs (Defense Ministry)

The question of the autonomy of the Reichswehr needs resolution. In order to preserve the Republic in its early years, the SPD made a compromise with the Reichswehr that the government would not interfere in the military in exchange for military support. That was a fatal decision that showed the true colors of the SPD. The Reichswehr has shown nothing but contempt for workers. It should be completely reinvented as an institution subordinate to the working class, be purged of its undemocratic officer corps, and be opened to becoming a people’s army.

Naval Bill

The proposal for naval expansion to build armored cruisers is an abomination. More money for aristocratic imperialists in the military?

How absurd—especially at a time of economic disaster when the clear choice should be to spend money on the needs of citizens, not feudal elites seeking to start another war! The hypocrites in the SPD ran just one year ago in 1928 on a platform of “Food for children, not armored cruisers!” Now they talk of compromise? They are again showing how they are class traitors and social fascists—you must expose their duplicity if they support the funding now.

Paramilitaries

The paramilitary of the NSDAP, the SA, should be banned. They are nothing more than remnants of the death squads and Freikorps that have put down every workers’ insurrection in Germany. They consist of little more than street thugs who murder workers. At the same time, the recently banned Red Front paramilitary is an essential guardian of the workers against these forces, especially given the hostility of the Reichswehr. Therefore, there should be no generalized ban on paramilitaries, just on those working against workers.

Importantly, since you see the Republic as illegitimate, defending workers against SA attacks is an essential tactic to fight fascism, to show the broad base of support for your party, to win over working-class members of the passive SPD, to show that the Republic cannot or will not defend workers, and, if necessary, to fight against right-wing coup attempts and to prepare for the revolution. The Red Front must be allowed to operate and the ban lifted.

Eugenics and Sexuality (Justice Ministry)

Sterilization

Regarding race hygiene (eugenics), you champion welfare for mothers and children, healthcare, and improved maternity benefits for working women, and your support of motherhood. You support increased availability of birth control options, which should be subsidized and available to all.

You believe that policies should focus on improving the quality of life of working-class women and their families—and large families born into poverty only increases misery. You draw support from Principles of Communism when it rails against the capitalist use of the wife as a “mere instrument of production.” Women have a right to self-determination. You support the National Association for Birth Control and Sexual Hygiene, founded in 1928. This body sees birth control as a way of showing responsibility for the genetic soundness of the nation and the working class. The goal is healthier, sounder children and women. Lecture titles include “Race Hygiene, Eugenics, and Sterilization” and “The Extermination of Unfit Life.” However, you do not support the idea that sterilization should be mandatory under capitalism—after all, the current state would only use it to discipline and punish the working classes, whom they already deem unfit based on their class alone. Sterilization now is wrong, but perfectly acceptable in a communist state where working people will make decisions.

Mothers’ Day

Motherhood as it is currently defined embodies bourgeois exploitation of the proletariat. Motherhood under capitalism is a sham foisted upon proletarian women to force them to bear the full costs of raising the next generation of workers. It only serves to subsidize the profits of the bourgeoisie. This so-called Mothers’ Day is a con job by the florist industry to sell more flowers; it has also been hijacked by right-wing eugenicist to force women into a race-based patriarchal slavery. You oppose Mothers’ Day in this context and support International Women’s Day.

Race and Culture (Interior Ministry)

Jews (Antisemitism Option)

On all matters of civil liberties, there can be no debate. Citizenship does not distinguish between races, religions, or any other characteristics except to restrict the overweening power of the capitalists. Thus, Jews must have full rights.

Censorship

Regarding All Quiet on the Western Front, as a communist, you can identify with the culture of front comradeship of Paul and his comrades within your party and paramilitary organization. But you cannot agree with Paul’s passivity. You might echo virtually every critique in the novel, but you rail against Remarque for stripping his protagonist of any political consciousness that involves action. You agree that the old elites betrayed Germany and that the war was a crime. But now the soldiers need to come home and smash that old order that had sent them to the slaughter for the interests of international capital and feudal Junkers. Because Remarque failed to take the next step and make Paul aware that the only solution was a communist revolution, the book and movie only reinforce the pacifist and compromising ideas of liberals and social democrats. Fascists and nationalists call for censorship of art.

Perhaps this debate should be taken up, but turned on its head. It should be the fascists and social-fascists, with their war-mongering hate speech, who are censored!

Industrial Relations (Economic Ministry)

Austerity

The growing severity of the economic crisis means that austerity at the expense of social spending will only hurt German workers and their families. Instead of austerity, grain tariffs should be ended, the military budget slashed, and taxes raised on the wealthy. Under no circumstances should unemployment benefits be cut—rather, it must be expanded. No austerity—that is nothing but class warfare against workers. The coziness of the SPD leadership with business and agricultural elites is truly disturbing.

Nationalization

Nationalization of banks and key industries is necessary to place the economy in the people’s hands. Private property is the root of all economic injustice; nationalization, assuming the nation is in the hands of the people as in the USSR, is an essential step towards ending capitalism and human misery.

Agricultural Affairs (Food Ministry)

Marxism is quite clear that feudal agrarian society is an outmoded means of production doomed to wither away with the advance of industrial capitalism. Neither the Junker elite nor the poor peasantry will shape tomorrow. They are both reactionary classes tied to the conservative past.

Agrarian Tariffs

Protectionist agrarian tariffs do nothing to address the underlying problems (Germany’s agriculture has to modernize). Further, agrarian tariffs mean higher food prices for workers. In the end, only wealthy Junkers benefit and workers’ families suffer. You oppose agrarian tariffs as a relic of the Kaiserreich and its support for the feudal elite.

Small Farmers’ Relief

As for land reform (redistribution), that can be used as a class weapon.

It might bring some of the peasantry to support the KPD and create work for many of Germany’s workers. Why not throw the aristocratic Junkers off their hereditary estates and redistribute it to the working masses of the countryside? The landed exploiters have sucked the life-blood out of the peasantry long enough. You support land reform.

Debt relief, on the other hand, only prolongs the inevitable decline of the agrarian classes. Agriculture has to modernize, and inefficient farms should be allowed to go under. The future will then be efficient state and collective farms rather than either small peasant holdings or exploitative large estates. You oppose debt relief.

Other Issues

Special Note on Noble Names

Several characters have the title of “von” or “zu” in their family names and often insist on its usage. You see no need to continue any such recognition of aristocratic privilege!

Stability Index

Desiring, as you do, the demise of the Republic, the lower the Stability Index (-50 or lower) the more victory points you will be awarded.

Presidential Election in 1932

You will support KPD leader Thälmann.

Committees of Inquiry

The parliamentary system is a sham in any event. Of course you should investigate corruption and violence since it is always done by the elite against the workers. Most of the victims have been Marxists, after all.

The committees should be used as a forum to expose the pernicious influence of the Reichswehr and the national conservatives and their National Socialist allies who murder workers in the streets and bribe their way to power.

Responsibilities

Coordinate with members of your faction to determine party positions/votes ahead of time.

Represent the interests of the Soviet Union.

Denounce capitalism on every issue and link it to militarism and imperialism.

Denounce the SPD as social fascists on every issue.

Powers

Red Press Empire

You may announce that your KPD press empire is launching a propaganda campaign. You may direct the campaign to focus on any specific issue in the game (not an election). To exercise this option, you must write an article that explicitly addresses that issue (this may be one of your set assignment speeches). At the Reichstag session when you make your speech, you may then do one of the following (inform the GM in advance of which option you are using):

If there is a vote on that issue that session, you may command the votes of 20 Indeterminates on that issue.

Or, you may choose to alter the Stability Index +/- 20 points based on whether your speech is fundamentally pro- or anti-Republic.

You may use this option twice starting with the second session.

Party Discipline

The KPD is a highly organized and disciplined party. As a result, at any time you may call for a vote in the party demanding that all members vote as a block on a specific issue. A simple majority is required.

If a member then votes against the party line in the Reichstag, they may face internal discipline. Such discipline is again determined by a majority vote of the party and may include any or all of the following (in increasing severity):

Verbal reprimand

Removal from all party offices (head of the RGO, head of the Red Front, cabinet position)

Reduced influence in party (up to one third of a member’s member of the Reichstag may be removed and distributed to other members of the KPD as determined by the non-sanctioned members)

Expulsion from the party

Any of these options carries some danger to the party, though, in that the sanctioned member may decide to leave the party and possibly take other members with him. Expulsion will inevitably have this effect.

However, the party can only operate well if loyalty to the core identity of the party is maintained.

Appeal to Comintern

If a member of the KPD is deviating from communist orthodoxy, you may appeal to the Comintern for intervention. You write a letter to the Comintern (the GM) explaining your concerns and requesting a course of action. The Comintern may call for any of the actions listed under Party Discipline. Keep in mind, though, that the Comintern may disagree with you and instead forward your letter to the party member you seek to discipline—giving them a chance to attack you. Nonetheless, if the party is obviously deviating from communist policies, this power can serve as the only way to correct deviationism.

Communist Revolution: see addendum

Victory Goals Summary

Note: The Victory Points system is part of the full game and is not used in this course’s abridged three-session simulation.

NB: Faction and personal victory goals may conflict.

FACTIONAL VICTORY GOALS

Absolute Victory: The Republic is overthrown; KPD establishes a Soviet state.

Absolute Defeat: SPD or NSDAP is in cabinet or in power in any way; OR KPD ceases to exist.

Stability Index Goal = LOW (-50 or lower)

Presidential Election = Thälmann (or highest-ranking KPD member)

Type of Government = a soviet-style workers’ state

Indeterminates/Splinters = convince to join your faction

Mandatory Agenda Items

PERSONAL VICTORY GOALS

Absolute Victory: Censorship defeated; austerity defeated.

Absolute Defeat: Censorship passed; OR austerity passed.

Stability Index Goal = LOW (-50 or lower)

Discretionary Agenda Issues

Censorship No censorship