Күрт Шумахер: Нацистерге қарсы күрескен неміс саяхатшысы

German politician (1895–1952)
the German politician

Curt Ernst Carl Schumacher, better known as Kurt Schumacher (13 October 1895 – 20 August 1952), was a German politician and resistance fighter against the Nazis. He was chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1946 and the first Leader of the Opposition in the West German Bundestag in 1949; he served in both positions until his death. Upon Adolf Hitler's seizure of power, he was imprisoned for ten years in various Nazi concentration camps. After World War II, Schumacher was one of the founding fathers of postwar German democracy. Throughout his life, he opposed reactionary and revolutionary forces, including the Nazi Party and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). He described the KPD as "red painted Nazis".

Schumacher was born in Kulm in West Prussia (now Chełmno in Poland), the son of a small businessman who was a member of the liberal German Free minded Party and deputy in the municipal assembly. The young man was a brilliant student, but when the First World War broke out in 1914, he immediately abandoned his studies and joined the German Army. In December, at Bielawy west of Łowicz in Poland, he was so badly wounded that his right arm had to be amputated. After contracting dysentery, he was finally discharged from the army and was decorated with the Iron Cross Second class. Schumacher returned to his law and political science in Halle, Leipzig and Berlin from which he graduated in 1919. Schumacher was elected to the state legislature, the Free People's State of Württemberg Landtag in 1924. He transferred to the local republican organisation "Schwabenland" in the new founded democratic combat organisation Reichsbanner Schwarz Rot Gold. Schumacher became chairman of the Stuttgart Branch of Reichsbanner. Schumacher was arrested in July 1933, two weeks before the SPD was banned, and was severely beaten in prison. Schumacher was given the opportunity to sign a declaration in which he renounced any political activity if released, but unlike Fritz Bauer and seven other political prisoners, he refused to sign it. He spent the next ten years in Nazi concentration camps at Heuberg, Kuhberg, Flossenbürg, and Dachau. In 1943, when Schumacher was near death, his brother in law succeeded in persuading a Nazi official to have him released into his custody. Schumacher was re arrested in late 1944 and was in Neuengamme when the British arrived in April 1945. In January 1946, the British and the Americans allowed the SPD to reform itself as a national party with Schumacher as leader. As the only SPD leader who had spent the whole Nazi period in Germany without collaborating, he had enormous prestige. He was certain that he had earned the right to lead the new Germany. However, Schumacher met his match in Konrad Adenauer, the former mayor of Cologne, whom the Americans, not wanting to see socialism of any kind in Germany, were grooming for leadership. Adenauer united most of the prewar German conservatives into a new party, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). Schumacher campaigned throughout 1948 and 1949 for a united socialist Germany and particularly for the nationalisation of heavy industry, whose owners he blamed for funding the Nazis' rise to power. When the occupying powers opposed his ideas, he denounced them. Adenauer opposed socialism on principle and also argued that the quickest way to get the Allies to restore self government to Germany was to co operate with them. Schumacher wanted a new constitution with a strong national presidency, a post that he was confident he would win. The first draft of the 1949 Grundgesetz provided for a federal system with a weak national government, as was favoured both by the Allies and the CDU. Schumacher refused to give way and eventually, the Allies, keen to get the new German state functioning in the face of the Soviet challenge, acceded to some of Schumacher's demands. The new federal government would be dominant over the states, although the president would have limited powers. Despite his speeches against Nazism, Schumacher had a mixed record on the denazification program:"Like his CDU rival, Schumacher spoke out against the sweeping nature of the Allied denazification program and the shortcomings of the Allied war crimes trials. He realized the need to incorporate 'small Nazis' especially former members of the Hitler Youth into the state, going as far as to demand inclusion of members of the Waffen SS. He also supported Adenauer's Law 131' from 1951, which granted pensions and voting rights to former NSDAP bureaucrats, policemen, and other officials. He even protested the execution of the last major Nazi war criminals in Landsberg in 1951."

The Federal Republic's first national elections were held in August 1949. Schumacher was convinced he would win, and most observers agreed with him. But Adenauer's new CDU had several advantages over the SPD. Much of the SPD's prewar power base was now part of the Soviet Zone, and the most conservative parts of prewar Germany, such as Bavaria and the Rhineland, were in the new Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, the American and the French occupying powers favoured Adenauer and did all they could to assist his campaign though the British remained neutral. Further, the onset of the Cold War, particularly the behaviour of the Soviets and the German communists in the Soviet Zone, produced an antisocialist reaction in Germany as elsewhere. The SPD could very plausibly have won an election in 1945, but the tide had turned against it by 1949. That came even as the SPD became increasingly critical of the new East German government. Schumacher was especially critical and once called the communists "red painted fascists". Schumacher attempted a heavy distinction in the public consciousness between his vision of "democratic socialism" and the realities in East Germany but still found his party partially damaged by association. Another factor was the recovery of the German economy, mainly because of the currency reform of the CDU's Ludwig Erhard. Matters were further complicated by Schumacher's declining health. In September 1948, he had one of his legs amputated. Although Schumacher's SPD won the most seats of any single party in the election (though the CDU and its sister party, the CSU, together won more seats), the CDU was able to form a centre right coalition government with the Free Democratic Party, the Christian Social Union, and the German Party. Adenauer was elected chancellor, a shock for Schumacher. He refused to co operate in parliamentary matters and denounced the CDU as agents of the capitalists and foreign powers. Schumacher opposed the emerging new organisations of European co operation: the Council of Europe, the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Defence Community. He saw them as devices to strengthen capitalism and to extend Allied control over Germany. That stand aroused the opposition of the other Western European socialist parties, and eventually, the SPD overruled him and sent delegates to the Council of Europe.

During the remainder of Adenauer's first term in office, Schumacher continued to oppose his government, but the rapid rise in German prosperity, the intensification of the Cold War and Adenauer's success in gaining Germany's acceptance in the international community all worked to undermine Schumacher's position. The SPD began to have serious doubts about going into another election with Schumacher as leader, particularly after he had a stroke in December 1951. They were spared having to deal with this dilemma when Schumacher died suddenly in August 1952. Schumacher had formulated the preamble of SPD program for the party convention in Dortmund in September 1952. He wrote: "Only a Germany, supported by civic consciousness and social justice, can be successful in fending off totalitarian tendencies."