![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Union-Germany.jpg\")
Source: screenshot of German TV: https:\/\/www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de\/gewerkschaften-und-rechtspopulismus-wird-die-arbeiterbewegung-rechts-100.html<\/p>\nSource: screenshot of German TV: https:\/\/www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de\/gewerkschaften-und-rechtspopulismus-wird-die-arbeiterbewegung-rechts-100.html<\/p>\n
With the rapid advance<\/a> of Germany\u2019s extreme right<\/a> and adjacent neo-Nazis, a serious challenge<\/a> for Germany\u2019s trade unions \u2013 organized within Germany\u2019s peak body, the DGB \u2013 has emerged.<\/p>\n The outlook for German trade unions will be even more grim in the upcoming works council<\/a> elections to be held in spring 2026. German trade unionists are already preparing defensive strategies against the onslaught of the anti-democratic and anti-union AfD, its far-right members, and their counterfeit, pretend-to-be unions.<\/p>\n Since the end of Nazism in 1945, German trade unions have operated under the one-union principle, in which members of all political parties are united as union members within a single trade union. This might be called \u201cone-unionism\u201d or \u201cunitary union\u201d principle.<\/p>\n The German concept should not be confused with the idea of the \u201cOne Big Union<\/a>\u201d (IWW<\/a>) that originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The One Big Union concept is designed to unite the interests<\/a> of workers and offer solutions to all labour problems.<\/p>\n Yet it also sought to overcome the fragmentation of the working class into a multitude of competing trade unions. Germany\u2019s idea of \u201cone-unionism\u201d is radically different.<\/p>\n Yet, with the rise of the deeply anti-democratic AfD<\/a>, the principle of unifying all union members \u2013 regardless of their political affiliations and party politics \u2013 within one trade union may need to be reconsidered.<\/p>\n In other words, the principle of a unitary union might, in the future, constitute a grave danger to German trade unions, since it allows far-right pseudo-unions such as the AfD<\/a>\u2019s so-called \u201cCenter<\/a>\u201d to gain a foothold inside Germany\u2019s trade union and labor relations structures.<\/p>\n In short, what was once designed to strengthen German trade unions \u2013 organizing all workers in one trade union regardless of their political attitudes \u2013 might now be used by the anti-democratic AfD<\/a> and its pseudo union<\/a>-like organizations to infiltrate, undermine, and potentially destroy German trade unions.<\/p>\n Historically, the invention of worker-like organizations by Germany\u2019s far right and the Nazis to undermine and destroy the working class is nothing new. Just as the terms \u201csocialist\u201d and \u201cworkers<\/a>\u201d in the official name of Hitler\u2019s Nazi Party in the 1930s \u2013 the National \u201cSocialist\u201d German \u201cWorkers\u201d Party<\/a> \u2013 as well as the color red in the Nazi flag, were mere deceptions designed to con workers into supporting the Nazis. Today\u2019s AfD and its phony \u201cCenter\u201d [Zentrum Auto] are not trade unions either. They are mere deceptions intended to con workers.<\/p>\n One might speculate that the neo-fascist AfD<\/a> assumes that what worked so well as a Nazi con in the 1930s might also work again in 2026 \u2013 and that enough workers will support the AfD\u2019s far-right organizations currently infiltrating workplaces and challenging German trade unions.<\/p>\n Historically, there was a strong anti-fascist element in the unitary \u201cone-unionism\u201d principle of Germany\u2019s trade unions. After Nazism, German trade unions learned from previous mistakes. Such post-war unity was intended to work against Nazism \u2013 should it ever reappear. Preventing a re-emergence of Nazism during the immediate post-war years \u2013 which was by no means an illusion<\/a> \u2013 was a core element from which Germany\u2019s one-union principle emerged.<\/p>\n Over time, and given its success in post-Nazi Germany, this unitary principle developed into a taboo. It allowed for union members to belong to various political parties. Throughout Germany\u2019s post-war history, these political parties were democratic parties.<\/p>\n With the rise of the neo-fascist AfD, this is no longer the case. This is particularly true given that voter support for the AfD currently stands at around 25\u201327<\/a> percent. In other words, roughly a quarter of all Germans support the AfD. Sadly but inevitably, among them are workers and trade union members.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the unity principle is generally regarded as an outcome of the experience of Nazism, which had eliminated trade unions<\/a> \u2013 often brutally, through torture, murder, and concentration camps.<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s resistance fighter and trade unionist Wilhelm Leuschner<\/a>, for example, is regularly quoted in trade union halls. Leuschner<\/a> is said to have remarked \u2013 shortly before his execution by the Nazis in 1944:<\/p>\n \u201cTomorrow I will be hanged; create unity!\u201d<\/strong> His words alluded to the fact that unity among German workers \u2013 without the destructive infighting between socialists and communists<\/a> during the 1920s and early 1930s \u2013 might have prevented Nazism.<\/p>\n Similarly, the Buchenwald<\/a> Concentration Camp Committee, consisting of members of the communist KPD, the social-democratic SPD, and the conservative CDU, stated in its resolution of 19 April 1945 that one of the upcoming tasks of a newly founded union movement was the \u201cformation of an anti-fascist unitary union\u201d.<\/p>\n However, all of this may \u2013 historically speaking \u2013 only tell half the story. The historical fact is that the concept of a unitary union ultimately prevailed in the western parts of Germany \u201conly\u201d at the instigation of the Allied Forces<\/a>.<\/p>\n It is revealing that the very same Allied power advocated the exact opposite in Italy. The USA<\/a> feared that a unified trade union in Italy would become communist-dominated. In Germany, the situation was assessed differently. Yet the goal was the same: to integrate Germany and Italy into the West while eliminating anti-capitalist tendencies.<\/p>\n With most communists murdered by the Nazis and the emerging Cold War reinvigorating anti-communist<\/a> ideology, a unitary union system was seen as a bulwark against communism, militant workers, and union radicalism. It would support rather than challenge capitalism \u2013 an economic system imperative to US dominance in Europe.<\/p>\n The constellation of powerful forces shaping Germany\u2019s union movement was intended to create a trade union system reflecting the policy objectives of the three western (that is, pro-capitalist<\/a>) occupying powers: France, the UK, and the USA.<\/p>\n In the wake of these interests, the foundation of West Germany\u2019s peak union<\/a> body \u2013 the DGB \u2013 took place in October 1949. Even then, the Western Allied Forces remained hesitant in their recognition of German trade unions, particularly regarding supra-regional union networks.<\/p>\n To retain a free hand in the \u201cemerging conflict<\/a>\u201d with the Soviet Union (read: well choreographed and ideologically legitimized) \u2013 that is, securing US dominance in Europe \u2013 German actors such as trade unions and the labor movement were to be kept small, manageable, and above all controllable.<\/p>\n Their intended function was to integrate West Germany into the Western (capitalist) system and not, for example, to encourage workers to strike \u2013 lest such actions damage the carefully designed myth<\/a> of the Wirtschaftswunder<\/a>, showcasing capitalism\u2019s supposed superiority over \u201cevil\u201d communism.<\/p>\n Yet it was the general strike against price rises shortly after the introduction of the Deutsche Mark (DM) in the Anglo-American zone in autumn 1948 that threatened to escalate labor\u2019s struggle<\/a>. In those days, US tanks<\/a> fired on striking workers in Germany\u2019s southern city of Stuttgart<\/a>, among other places.<\/p>\n This made it seem reasonable to the Allies to recognize a central negotiating partner \u2013 not only \u201con behalf\u201d of workers but also to channel worker protest into institutions designed to secure the survival of post-Nazi capitalism. The idea was to suppress radical workers<\/a> by merging them into a unitary trade union in which more moderate workers would form the majority.<\/p>\n With great difficulty, Germany\u2019s re-emerging trade unions \u2013 managed and controlled by Allied Forces in the immediate post-Nazi years \u2013 succeeded in channeling sometimes violent (and, God forbid, uncontrolled<\/a> and \u201cspontaneous<\/a>\u201d) strike actions into officially recognized unions. The aim was to pacify workers who fought against price rises and the whims of the capitalist commodity market.<\/p>\n According to a trade union representative at the time, this was about disciplining trade unions and enforcing restraint. Trade unions were expected to appease workers who had lost their savings during the DM currency<\/a> reform.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, factory owners kept their factories, but the value of workers\u2019 wages diminished \u2013 capital won, while workers<\/a> lost. Many of those newly impoverished workers stood in front of freshly stocked shop windows with empty purses. In other words, even consumer capitalism can fail.<\/p>\n At the time, it should not be forgotten that another, far more troubling historical institution already existed as a unifying labor organization. The idea of a unified trade union umbrella was not foreign to German workers.<\/p>\n The German Labor Front (DAF<\/a>) of the Nazis (1933\u20131945) was such a unified organization. It organized German labor (defined racially as Aryan) and capital under Nazi Party<\/a> control, in support of a Volksgemeinschaft<\/a> preparing for a war that soon spread across Europe and beyond.<\/p>\n Within Germany\u2019s resistance to Nazism, it was above all former SPD Reichstag members Julius Leber<\/a> and Wilhelm Leuschner who developed the concept of a unified union.<\/p>\n The conservative-authoritarian and deeply militarist circle around Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg<\/a>, by contrast, had no trade unions in mind. Had their assassination attempt on Hitler succeeded, these hawkish military men envisioned something closer to Hitler\u2019s DAF \u2013 an authoritarian, military-led post-Hitler dictatorship intended to end a war already lost by July 1944.<\/p>\n While rejecting Nazi anti-Semitism and seeking to close Auschwitz, these Wehrmacht<\/a> officers were by no means trade unionists and were hostile to labor organizations.<\/p>\n Since unity is a resource of power, Stauffenberg\u2019s militarists were not concerned with unitary unionism. Nevertheless, the idea emerged as a founding myth in the immediate post-Nazi years.<\/p>\n Today, in the context of a possible anti-fascist resistance<\/a> against the neo-fascist AfD and its apparatchiks seeking to undermine trade unions, the unitary union is first and foremost an internal trade-union concept.<\/p>\n It ensures that workers are not isolated under the prevailing ideology of individualism<\/a>. Set against the atomization of workers, it organizes them collectively so that they, in turn, cannot be isolated by corporate management at company, industry, regional, or national levels.<\/p>\n In all of this, the concept of \u201corganizational power\u201d remains central. The associated rule is simple: the more unity, the more organizational power. Expressed differently<\/a>: united we bargain \u2013 divided we beg.<\/p>\n Many trade unionists recognize that struggle or negotiation with overwhelmingly powerful capital \u2013 backed by an array of institutions \u2013 can only be conducted in this way. This is why the principle of a unitary union remained largely uncontested in Germany.<\/p>\n It is supported by conservative union members, syndicalists<\/a>, and progressive trade unionists alike. Virtually all agree that it is a \u201cOne Big Union\u201d that can stand up to capital. This is exemplified by the tradition of French syndicalism, particularly the Charter of Amiens<\/a> of 1906, pioneered by the CGT, which emphasized worker unity regardless of political affiliation.<\/p>\n It advocated a trade union independent of party organizations and party disputes. Hence trade unions were described as the \u201cparty of labor\u201d. The party of labor<\/a> is exactly what the term implies: the unification of workers into a homogeneous bloc \u2013 the autonomous organization of the working class on an economic basis.<\/p>\n This independence was recognized by Germany\u2019s Social Democratic Party in the 1906 Mannheim<\/a> Agreement. Unfortunately, this also ended debates on the general strike. The SPD had convinced itself that it lacked the power to initiate such a strike, leaving it instead to the trade unions.<\/p>\n Rosa Luxemburg<\/a> \u2013 one Germany\u2019s finest<\/a> \u2013 strongly disagreed. In short, French syndicalists advocated a unified union opposed to political parties; German syndicalists<\/a> argued for independent unions; and the majority of social-democratic union members supported the concept of a unified union.<\/p>\n With Luxemburg murdered by proto-fascist death squads and Nazism ruling from 1933 to 1945, the idea of a unitary union was not invented in 1945 but gained renewed momentum in the immediate post-Nazi period.<\/p>\n In Germany and elsewhere, competition between trade unions remains manageable. Competition from Germany\u2019s progressive FAU<\/a> or the right-wing CGB poses no serious threat to the DGB unions.<\/p>\n This may change, however, with the rise of the AfD<\/a>\u2019s crypto-unions and the far-right \u201cCenter<\/a>\u201d promoted by right-wing media.<\/p>\n Even if the AfD\u2019s pseudo-unions<\/a> are unlikely to match the organizational strength of DGB unions, they nonetheless challenge and undermine Germany\u2019s established labor-relations regime.<\/p>\n Even in states and industries with multiple trade unions, a dominant majority union typically emerges, enjoying a quasi-monopoly on worker organization. These are democratic unions \u2013 not AfD pseudo-unions<\/a>.<\/p>\n It is reasonable to assume that when workers organize, they follow the logic of power resources and thus the principle of unity. Whether a union adopts a social-partnership orientation or embraces class struggle depends largely on concrete circumstances. Recent strikes<\/a> in Germany have demonstrated precisely this.<\/p>\n Yet none of this diminishes the threat posed by AfD pseudo-unions seeking to undermine German trade unions \u2013 and, more dangerously, to gain influence in the crucial works councils<\/a> during the elections scheduled for spring 2026.<\/p>\n Subscribe to Our Newsletter<\/p>\n Get the latest CounterCurrents updates delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n Thomas Klikauer<\/strong> was born half-way between Castle Frankenstein<\/a>, the place where Johannes Gutenberg<\/a> invented the printing press, and Karl Benz<\/a>\u2019s garage where the first motor-car was developed. Educated at the TU Darmstadt<\/a>, Bremen<\/a> University, Boston<\/a> University, and Warwick<\/a> University, Thomas Klikauer<\/a> teaches MBA students<\/a> and supervises PhD<\/a>s at the Sydney Graduate School of Management (SGSM<\/a>) at Western Sydney<\/a> University, Australia. Among his 1,130 publications are 17 books<\/a> \u2013 including on book on Germany\u2019s the neo-fascist AfD<\/a>. He writes for ZNet<\/a>, Cross Border<\/a> Talks and Countercurrents<\/a>. His homepage is: klikauer.wordpress.com<\/a>. He lives in Sydney\u2019s beachside suburb of Coogee<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Source: screenshot of German TV: https:\/\/www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de\/gewerkschaften-und-rechtspopulismus-wird-die-arbeiterbewegung-rechts-100.html With the rapid advance of Germany\u2019s extreme right and adjacent neo-Nazis, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-695088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}