Berlin's Bloody May

The 1st of May 1929 is known as Blutmai (« Bloody May ») in Berlin's history. That day, Communist demonstrations in Berlin led to several days' street fighting.

Already in November 1928, Adolf Hitler had delivered a speech in Berlin (at the Sportpalast) after many years of being banned in the capital. That led to political agitation and in the end Police Chief Karl Zörgiebel (a Social Democrat) banned all open air demonstrations in Berlin, including the traditional ones on Maj 1st. Social Democrats (SPD) respected the prohibition and had theirs indoors (at theSportpalast, incidentally). The vice-chief of the police was Bernhard Weiss (see link).

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But KPD (Communist Party) challenged the ban. Many thousands came downtown mainly from the working-class suburbs of Wedding and Neukölln. In the days that followed, between 15 and 30 civilians were killed by police action.

Bloody May as seen in the TV-series Babylon Berlin

Babylon Berlin, the TV-series

Communists hailed events as an heroic feat, in which lessons had been learned for the ‘final struggle’ to come; the SPD hailed a decisive victory over Bolshevik aggression. Liberals were concerned by the severity of police action; Nazis were satisfied, seeing the preliminaries of the disintegration of social and political stability. Above all, the dramatic events of May reinforced the emotional tension in the Weimar Republic which partly explains the final collapse of 1933.

Bloody fights between Communists and the police had been common in the 1920s. And the police which was much of the time at the orders of Social Democrats. The worst episode was that of Bloody Week of January 1919, where a Communist attempt to seize power in Berlin (at that time still known as Spartakists) was fought down by the police but also by paramilitary forces. During that week, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered, allegedly by orders of Gustav Noske, a Social Democrat minister.

One should keep that in mind when analysing the relationship between the two parties of the German left, Communists and Social Democrats, under the Weimar Republic. Later on in the 1930s, those two tendencies would collaborate in other european countries, to form Popular Fronts (France, Spain, for instance). But in 1929 they considered each other as an enemy. Had they united to fight the Nazis, the Third Reich would maybe never have existed. But they preferred to fight each other.

It is true that whereas today’s communist parties believe in parlamentarism and their fight is mainly an electoral one, back in the 1920s the stalinist organizations believed in the necessity of aa armed revolution. They were no easy allies to have and they weren’t especially interested in any alliances. In their view, the socialist society would soon come and they had no time to lose in republicans or democratic dreams, such as the Weimar Republic.

It has been said that Weimar was a republic without republicans : neither the Communist nor the Nazis believed in it, both wanted to replace it by an authoritarian régime. It was also the case of most of the « civilized » Right, who wanted to bring the Kaiser back and put an end to the Republic. As a matter of fact there were only three parties, representing less than half of the electorate, who defended the Republic : Social Democrats, Catholics and Center-Liberals (DDP). Enough to keep it alive during 14 years, but no longer.