75 years after the triumph over Nazism, we look back to when socialists gave birth to Antifa.
The origins of the word “antifa”—shorthand for decentralized, militant street activism associated with its own aesthetic and subculture—might be murky to most readers. Even in Germany, few know much about the popular forms of antifascist resistance that coined the term.
The movement’s short but inspiring political legacy proved too uncomfortable for both Cold War-era German states, and was ignored in schools and mainstream history. Today its legacy is almost entirely lost to the Left.
Out of the Ruins
By 1945, Hitler’s Third Reich lay physically destroyed and politically exhausted. Basic civil society ceased to function in many areas, as the Nazi grip on power faltered and regime supporters, particularly in the middle- and upper classes, realized that Hitler’s “final victory” was a fantasy.
On the Left, many Communists and Social Democrats had either been outright murdered by the Nazis, or died in the ensuing war. The unimaginable human and material destruction wrought by Nazi rule killed millions and turned German society upside down, decimating the labor movement and murdering most of the country’s Jewish population. Millions who had supported or at least acquiesced to the regime—including many workers and even some former socialists—now faced a new beginning in unknown political terrain.
