Red Orchestra by Anne Nelson Page B

project, an illegal newspaper called the
Neuköllner Sturmfahne
(Neukölln Storm Flag). Grasse printed the paper secretly in Otto Dietrich's home in an unassuming building a short walk from Sieg's apartment. 14 “Newspaper” was something of an exaggeration; the
Sturmfahne
involved a few crude mimeographed pages featuring clumsy illustrations and hand-lettered text. The “news” consisted of denunciations of Nazi officials and urgent KPD concerns, such as the ongoing imprisonment of Ernst Thälmann, information that was censored from the state-controlled press. It was a challenge for the group to distribute the copies to moribund Communist cells; anyone caught producing, disseminating, or even in possession of such literature was severely punished.
    Sieg was glad to find people who were taking action, in contrast to the millions of Germans who succumbed to Nazi propaganda or sank into passivity. As the Nazis intimidated and took over the country's mainstream news organizations, the underground press served notice that Nazi control was not absolute.
    Sieg needed more than an outlet for activism—he was also broke. Through the Neukölln crowd, John Sieg met Karl Hellborn, a trade unionist who worked for the Reichsbahn, the state railway. The railway workers' union had been subjected to
Gleichschaltung
by the Nazis, but the old union networks survived in secret. Hellborn promised to try to get Sieg a job through his connections. 15 In the meantime, Sieg had to settle for odd jobs and construction work, as he once did in Chicago and Detroit.
    Sieg and his friends found that even mundane political transactions were painfully difficult. It was no longer possible to exchange information in accustomed ways. Meeting halls, party newspapers, and even cabarets were closed down or converted to fascist use. The neighborhoodsNeukölln, “Red Wedding,” and Wilmersdorf continued to brew opposition activity, but they were also rife with informers. The Gestapo lacked vast numbers of agents, but it received ample assistance from ordinary Germans who were all too eager to spy on their neighbors.
    The antifascist opposition had few resources to counter the regime's propaganda machine, which now turned to the mass production of hatred. The Nazis used every means at their disposal to blame the country's problems, past and present, on “Bolsheviks” and “Jews,” suggesting the two were synonymous. Ubiquitous caricatures showed Jews as hooknosed businessmen clutching their moneybags or as glowering, lurking
Ostjuden
in long black robes. Leftists were bespectacled, effete intellectuals who trafficked in the politics of “complexity,” instead of subscribing to Hitler's simplistic gospel of national unity. 16 The Bolshevik was portrayed as a swarthy proletarian (often with vaguely Asian features) in a cloth cap with a menacing scowl, sowing chaos in an orderly land. 17 Thanks to the machinery of
Gleichschaltung,
these vicious images were multiplied in street posters, textbooks, Nazi newspapers, feature films, and cartoons.
    Only a few years earlier, the Communists had answered Nazi propaganda with its own mass media, employing some of the best minds in the business, notably Willi Münzenberg. The epic film
Kuhle Wampe
raised the bar. The Communist melodrama depicted the suicide of a handsome young worker, driven to desperation by unemployment. But his family and friends (including the teenaged Marta Wolter) triumph over adversity by uniting in proletarian solidarity. Just as the plot threatens to completely disintegrate, the joyous Communist youth of Berlin assemble for wholesome athletic contests and elaborate bicycle formations. Many of the movie's elements were to reappear, with polish, in future Nazi films.
    One early imitation came quickly on the heels of the takeover in 1933. The plot for
Hitlerjunge Quex
was based on the story of a Hitler Youth who had been killed by Communists in a street brawl the previous year. The film