Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is opposition to fascism. Notable anti-fascists include Georgi Dimitrov, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin, among others. The history of anti-fascism is a long one, and has existed as long as fascism has.[1]
History of Anti-fascism
The term Anti-fascism was officially firstly used in the year of 1920, in Italy during the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. During the 1920's, the Term was adopted by the Comintern and also began to become popular in the Weimar Republic especially during the years of the early 1930's election. In Germany, the Communist Party of Germany founded the Anti-fascist action in June 1930 during the a KPD congress of the Central Committee. The Anti-fascist action was a revolutionary organization to fight against Hitlerite fascism inside Germany. The Anti-fascist action was lead by workers' and peasants' and by members of the Communist Party of Germany.
Anti-fascism during the Nazi-era
When the Nazis seized power in 1933, one of their first targets was the organized working class. Both Social Democrats and Communists were subjected to brutal repression. The Hitlerite regime unleashed a systematic crackdown on the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), arresting and persecuting countless militants and revolutionaries, including its leader Ernst Thälmann. Anti-Fascist Action, along with the KPD itself, was outlawed and driven underground.
By the 1940s, many of these anti-fascist militants carried their struggle beyond Germany’s borders. Veterans of Anti-Fascist Action joined international brigades fighting in Spain, most famously the Ernst Thälmann Battalion, which fought under the command of the Spanish Republicans. In this way, German communists continued the fight against fascism as part of the broader international struggle. The anti-fascists action was also involved in the Yugoslav Partisans, which was a armed resistance group that fought against the so-called Ustase regime which was lead by Ante Pavelic, a well known Croatian anti-communist,fascist.
In 1944, the Hitlerite regime seized Comrade Ernst Thälmann, the steadfast leader of the Communist Party of Germany, and imprisoned him in the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp. For over a decade he had already endured Nazi captivity, yet even behind bars he remained a symbol of proletarian resistance. His transfer to Buchenwald marked the regime’s determination to silence one of the most uncompromising voices of German communism, a figure who embodied the unity of the working class against fascism.