Eichler was a leading member of ISK who campaigned tirelessly against the Nazis and for a united front, finally fleeing France to the UK in 1938. He deserves to be better known.<\/p>\n
Eichler joined the SPD in 1923 but then became actively involved in the ISK, its chair and editor of Der Funke, its anti-Nazi paper. It published an \u2018Urgent Call for Unity\u2019\u2019 in June 1932 between the SPD and the KPD. (Amongst the many signatures were Einstein, Kurt Hiller (see other biography), the artist Kathe Kollwitz,\u00a0the writers Heinrich Mann and Arnold Zweig and Ernst Toller (see separate biography)!)<\/p>\n
Eichler fled to France\u00a0in 1933 where he continued to campaign actively for a united front and produced underground materials.1<\/sup>\u00a0The\u00a0International Transport Workers’ Federation,\u00a0<\/em>because of their network, in particular of former trade-unionists, were able to distribute illegal material and gather information in Germany.2<\/sup>\u00a0This included the monthly ISK periodicals\u00a0Reinhart letters\u00a0(<\/em>Reinhart Briefe) and the\u00a0Socialist waiting room<\/em>.\u00a0(Socialistische Warte) which were produced by the international board of the ISK in Paris and were then smuggled into Germany via Basel or Cologne with the help of the ITF.<\/p>\n It was mostly a four-page thin-print pamphlet that the comrades were instructed should be swallowed in an emergency.\u00a0Apparently, in March 1934, Hans Jahn complained to Eichler that the leaves could not be swallowed and smaller, thinner sheets were necessary ( International Youth Federation (IJB) \/ International Socialist Struggle Association (ISK), file group: ISK, correspondence B (1933 – 1946), p. 4, March 30, 1934, Hans Jahn to Eichler).<\/p>\n In addition, the Rhine boat men helped maintain contacts in Germany. Eichler wrote in a report to Edo Fimmen General Secretary of the ITWF, in March 1936:\u00a0A number of seafarers and inland boatmen who had previously worked under the leadership of the so-called<\/em>\u00a0Red International\u00a0have disgustedly turned away from their practices and readily submitted to the ITF.[International Transport Workers]\u00a0I have been with them in Rotterdam and Antwerp half a dozen times and have the fullest trust in the people.\u00a0They are honest proletarians and through them we have good connections today on 96 German seagoing vessels and over 100 Rhine barges and tugboats<\/em>\u00a0(Gottwaldt 2009, p. 86, ISK – receipt of illegal material via ITF – Reinhardt letters and socialist control, redistribution).<\/p>\n The railroaders distributed the material in towns where they were bases, such as G\u00f6ttingen and Hannover, where around 300 to 400 copies each seem to have been picked up at the station.<\/p>\n The ITF railroad workers deposited the smuggled pamphlets in the sleeping cars of the express trains.\u00a0The local ISK members, who miraculously knew the exact train and its number, then\u00a0pulled\u00a0the pamphlets out when the train stopped. Others smuggled the newspapers in a briefcase with a secret compartment.<\/p>\n In April 1938, Eichler was expelled from France because of his political activity, but found asylum in London, where he headed a small ISK group and published ISK journals and pamphlets. In 1941 Eichler and his Combat League joined the Union of German Socialist Organisations\u00a0\u00a0 and inaugurated unification with the SPD which finally succeeded in August 1945. He also became a member of the National Group of German Labour Unionists in Britain.<\/p>\n At the same time, apparently, Eichler pressured George Pratt of the US Labour Department into sending left-wing activists back into Germany. Eichler-correctly – feared the resumption of capitalism as normal after Nazism\u2019s defeat. The first to be sent were Jupp Kapius (see separate biography) and Willi Drucker, with Hilde Meisel (see separate biography)\u00a0 and Anne Berger as couriers. \u00a0Eichler also worked at the\u00a0BBC making broadcasts aimed at German workers and published\u00a0Europe Speaks<\/em>.\u00a0Eichler \u2018returned\u2019 to Germany at the beginning of 1946.<\/p>\n 1<\/sup>\u00a0The following invaluable material comes from\u00a0http:\/\/www.stadtarchiv. 2<\/sup>\u00a0The ITF\u2019s participation in the Second World War was openly anti-Nazi and pro-Allies .\u2019Its task was to\u2026 encourage the sabotage which everywhere harassed the enemy, \u2026 to strengthen the morale of our own people and undermine that of the enemy\u2026\u2019 \u2018it was engaged in a fight to the death against \u2018the Nazi and Fascist r\u00e9gimes which had crushed the free labour movements\u2026 , which had persecuted, imprisoned and murdered so many of its [the ITF\u2019s] friends, and which aimed to enslave the workers of the world.\u2019 ( from\u00a0Dieter Nelles<\/strong><\/a> Eichler was a leading member of ISK who campaigned tirelessly against the Nazis and for a united front, finally fleeing France to the UK in 1938. He deserves to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community-languages.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNationalsozialismus Im Unterricht Der Sekundarstufe)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"