A Life for Freedom: German Anarcho-Syndicalism and Transnational Antifascism, 1918-1951

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the “long” history of interwar German anarcho-syndicalism and its international connections, from the German Revolution in November 1918 until the crystallization of a new global order at the onset of the Cold War. It is a historical study based on archival sources about German, European, and American anarcho-syndicalism. The organizations studied in this work are the Free Workers’ Union of Germany (FAUD), the International Working Men’s Association (IAA, the Anarchist International), the Group of German Anarcho-syndicalists in Exile (Gruppe DAS), the Free Society Group of Chicago, and the Anarchist Red Cross. Some of its individual protagonists are Rudolf and Milly Rocker, Augustin Souchy, Boris Yelensky, G.P. Maximoff, Helmut Rüdiger, and Gerhard Wartenberg. The dissertation’s main finding is that anarchist internationalism took on a new lease on life as a global antifascist movement in response to the political radicalization in interwar Europe. This dissertation documents anarchists’ disillusionment with Bolshevism and Germany’s leading role in creating the first Anarchist International, founded in Berlin in 1922. It recovers the history of the anarchist resistance to Nazism and the extensive support of the exiled FAUD to the Republican Block in the Spanish Civil War. The archival evidence brings to life an entire cast of female anarchists whose intellectual output and political agency are entirely unknown. The dissertation highlights the legacy of anarchism as a critic of right- and left-wing authoritarian politics, an advocate for individual freedom, and a champion of federalism.