European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

learned all the basics if they wanted to become a functionary of the labour movement.

So they were not only practical experiences that were being reflected,

but we also had seminars learning to deal with the political opponent.

For example, it was obligatory for a functionary of the socialist youth

to have read Hitler’s book ‚Mein Kampf’.

We could tell the Nazi officials, who didn’t know as well as we did, what the real aims were.

They did not believe that Hitler wanted war.

We kept hearing again and again:  „They will not be so stupid to go against the whole world on their own.”

But we were able to quote from ‚Mein Kampf’ that the annexation of new living space in the east

was one main issue of the Nazis’ fight.

If we were able to bring the better arguments into discussions with the Nazis,

in the companies, in the schools or wherever, it would have an effect on the undecided.

But still the Nazis became stronger and stronger;

for one, because of the social problems and for two,

because the imperial German broadcasting service had an immense influence.

Many Germans did not speak Czech,

but you could hear the broadcast stations Königs Wusterhausen and Seesen, the two Nazi stations, well.

This influence, in which social problems were misleadingly passed off as national problems, were surely effective.

Antifascist poltics in CSSR