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Blutmai: Sozialdemokraten und Kommunisten im Brennpunkt der Berliner Ereignisse von 1929
German
177 pages, Perfect Paperback
Published January 1, 1988
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May 24, 2024
On May 1, 1929, Berlin's social democratic police chief banned all demonstrations. Over the next three days, the cops fired 10,981 rounds of ammunition and massacred 33 people — half of them inside their homes!
Fifty years later, a student of the center-left historian Heinrich August Winkler published a definitive scientific account of the "May Events" — refreshingly concise for a dissertation, at just 150 pages. With the help of archival material, Thomas Kurz refuted the conspiracy theories even more definitively. In the days before May 1, the Communist Party had consistently called on workers to defy the ban with legal demonstrations, and to react to police attacks with caution and restraint. Numerous social democrats — including officials in the interior ministry as well as Carl Severing — had called on Grzesinski, the police chief, to lift the ban for May Day, because they knew it would lead to a bloodbath. If this was a "communist insurrection," it's noteworthy that of the 1,228 people arrested, less than 10% were members of communist organizations. Arrest warrants were issued for just 13 communists, all of whom were under 25.
It is all the more astounding that there has never been any accountability for this — Berlin museums like the Mitte Museum and the Police Museum repeat blatant lies in order to justify this massacre. In historical memory, it often seems like the "Social Fascism Thesis," with which Stalin claimed that social democrats were actually "social fascists," was a response to Bloody May Day. Kurz, however, explained that Stalin's policy had been announced several years earlier. The massacre helped the Stalinists win support for their false analysis, with its disastrous political consequences.
Fifty years later, a student of the center-left historian Heinrich August Winkler published a definitive scientific account of the "May Events" — refreshingly concise for a dissertation, at just 150 pages. With the help of archival material, Thomas Kurz refuted the conspiracy theories even more definitively. In the days before May 1, the Communist Party had consistently called on workers to defy the ban with legal demonstrations, and to react to police attacks with caution and restraint. Numerous social democrats — including officials in the interior ministry as well as Carl Severing — had called on Grzesinski, the police chief, to lift the ban for May Day, because they knew it would lead to a bloodbath. If this was a "communist insurrection," it's noteworthy that of the 1,228 people arrested, less than 10% were members of communist organizations. Arrest warrants were issued for just 13 communists, all of whom were under 25.
It is all the more astounding that there has never been any accountability for this — Berlin museums like the Mitte Museum and the Police Museum repeat blatant lies in order to justify this massacre. In historical memory, it often seems like the "Social Fascism Thesis," with which Stalin claimed that social democrats were actually "social fascists," was a response to Bloody May Day. Kurz, however, explained that Stalin's policy had been announced several years earlier. The massacre helped the Stalinists win support for their false analysis, with its disastrous political consequences.
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