- Sopade
Sopade (also called SoPaDe) was the name of the exile organization of the
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). It operated inPrague from1933 to1938 , from1938 to1940 inParis and till 1945 in London/USA.After the occupation of the trade union houses by the Nazis on 2 May
1933 , the party executive committee decided that some particularly endangered members of the board would immediately have to flee from the grasp of the Nazis.Otto Wels ,Paul Hertz ,Friedrich Stampfer ,Erich Ollenhauer and others were assigned to build up a foreign party structure in Prague.When the Sopade could not reach an agreement with the remaining party executive committee in Berlin about
Paul Löbe against Hitler's peace resolution, which was interpreted as sanctioning the fascist foreign policy by the SPD, nothing could prevent the break between Berlin and Prague, which came two weeks later, in the mid-May 1933. Because of the final Nazi prohibition of the SPD on22 June 1933 it no longer came to a split between the home and foreign SPD.With the cooperation of
Rudolf Hilferding the Sopade published "Germany Reports" through a secret correspondence system. These dealt with the situation inNazi Germany . The reports appeared in published form from April/May1934 to December1936 under the title "Germany Report of the Sopade ", from January1937 until April1940 under the title of “Germany Reports of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (Sopade)”, by order of the executive committee in exile of the SPD, edited byErich Rinner , until March1938 in Prague, from May 1938 inParis .Under pressure from the intra-party opposition groups "
Neu Beginnen " and "Revolutionäre Sozialisten Deutschlands " the Sopade in1934 published the Prague Manifesto, penned by Rudolf Hilferding. This document called for the revolutionary overthrow of the Hitler regime.Bibliography
*"German Reports of the Sopade". From the copy in the “Archives of Social Democracy” of the
Friedrich Ebert Foundation given change and with a register provided by Klaus Behnken in the Petra Netelbeck publishing house, Salzhausen and Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt am Main, 1980 (7 volumes).External links
*de icon [http://library.fes.de/sozialistische-mitteilungen/ Online publication: Socialist reports released by the SOPADE, 1939 - 1948]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
