“Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.”
~ Leon Trotsky
Night was settling over Berlin.
Gerda squeezed Rosa’s hand tightly, the infant child wailed in protest. Election day had been and gone, and yet the demands of the party only ever seemed to increase. Hitler's Berlin operation was certainly better organised than Ruth Fischer's had been but Gerda found it increasingly hard to look after both her daughter and ferment a revolution. Hitler had made it that the lives of her and her comrades revolved around the party, mere satellites to the movement that he envisaged. She couldn’t believe that it had merely been a few weeks since she had cursed the lack of organisation in the party, now she only wanted a rest.
The fatigue left less time for her to spend with her daughter and although her role doing administrative work for the party was now official it was also not much more than she had received when relying on charity for her comrades. All that had changed was that she was now conjoined to the party, and if the leadership expected her to devote herself even more to the cause she was in a weak posiiton to disagree. Arguably this is was the "Wage Slavery" that the party often railed against, but what truly kept her motivated was the hope that for all of her work, she could create a better future for Rosa.
Her daughter’s previously fair hair had now gone dark like hers, although the little girl’s almost perpetual wide eyed expression was very different from anything Gerda had felt in the last five years. The things she had seen and done were only a part of this, she knew now that she had a better understanding of the world, what it might become, or what it could be otherwise.
The street lights brought the city back to life, revealing the many posters that her comrades had put up, new posters all in red and black, portraying the new leadership, the men who had fought against the French, those who would now fight against the class enemy and herald in the socialist utopia. Gerda could see Berlin in a communist society, what a paradise it would be, not unlike the city she had first seen at the end of 1918. Or at least what it had promised. Gerda could not help but also remember seeing the city under the control of the Freikorps, the steel capped, jackbooted nightmare, which would drag Germany back into a new dark age if they were given the chance.
Germany needed strength against such forces of reaction, people who would not only keep the nightmare at bay but also bring in the new age. She knew she could be one of those people, if only for her daughter. Men like Rosa’s father would be no help at all.
---
Outside of Cologne, German Workers Republic, 1936
Rosa’s anticipation grew as the train began to screech to a halt, the Power Through Joy camp awaited. She held the book her mother had given her closely, as it if was an extension of the woman who had given her so much in life.
It was a book that her mother already owned, and as a good communist she would usually have forbidden herself from indulging in such needless waste, nonetheless, Rosa expected her mother had a reason for doing so.
Unser Kampf was the written word of the Volksfuhrer, Comrade Hitler, a man who been leading the German revolution for over a decade. He had written his book at the very beginning of that period, and Rosa felt special for living in an age where it was still possible to see the theories and predictions unfold before her eyes, after having witnessed the defeat of the reactionary enemies of the German worker, and the traitors who claimed to be their ally.
Her mother had been with the Volksfuhrer from the beginning and whenever her comrades would come to the house to the coffee she would remind them of how incompetent the party had been before he had assumed leadership, and how the worker’s cause would not be served at all by complaining. Some of those friends had stopped coming to the house since the workers state had been established and she couldn’t help but wonder if their endless complaining had been exposed for the damage it was doing.
Just outside of the train station, Rosa noticed several new rail lines being laid by men in what seemed to be prison uniforms. She supposed this was a re-education squad, and the guard standing over them seemed to confirm her suspicions. The large group of men and smaller number of women appeared to be ill at ease in their new environment, one red faced man was covered in sweat to the extent that similar black patches had appeared all over his blue tunic, it made the patch crudely sewn onto the back of his uniform stand out all the more:
6079 - Goering H.
Manual labour was part of the re-education that many Germans needed to go through to adjust to the new worker’s state, for within those who complained there was usually a bourgeois attitude that required the liberation of class consciousness to make them properly understand the goals of the society that was being built. The obese man named Goering didn’t seem to have got the idea into his head yet, as the guard berated him for his idleness. Rosa tried not to feel any sense of ill will towards these people, they were comrades in the making after all.
If they could help build it then they would realise their stake in it, and stop complaining.
“But why do we need so many new railway lines?”
Rosa put the thought out of her mind, such questions were merely disruptive to the great economic plans being unveiled around Germany. The plans that had helped to create Power Through Joy would also enable the conditions for the revolution to be spread into both east and west when the time was right. Those who built those railways would be able to enjoy the benefits of the new society just as much as anyone thanks to the opportunities that their re-education allowed them.
As the train finally came to a halt she tried to put the thoughts of the coming revolutionary struggle out of her mind. That was a thought for the future, no matter how close it felt.
---
The still is from the Soviet film,
The Cranes Are Flying.
