Altona Bloody Sunday (nonfiction)

Gedenktafel für August Lütgens, Walter Möller, Karl Wolff und Bruno Tesch am Ort ihrer Hinrichtung hinter dem Amtsgericht Altona

Altona Bloody Sunday (German: Altonaer Blutsonntag) refers to a violent confrontation between the Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS), the police, and Communist Party (KPD) supporters on 17 July 1932 in Altona (now in Hamburg, at the time a part of Schleswig-Holstein, which was part of Prussia).

The riots left 18 people dead.

Following a policy of appeasement to the Nazi Party, Franz von Papen's government on 28 June 1932 lifted a ban on the SA and SS which had been in place since April. This led to recurrent riots and open street fighting between Nazis and Communists.

In July, an SA and SS demonstration through the workers' quarter of Altona was approved by Social Democratic police president Otto Eggerstedt, despite warnings by the Communists. Eggerstedt himself was on an election trip, and his deputy was on vacation.

As expected, the march triggered a major confrontation between 7,000 National Socialists and Altona's Communist residents, leading to massive police intervention. Eighteen people, including two SA members, were killed, most of them by police bullets.

The riots were used by Papen as an excuse for his Prussian Coup on 20 July.

When the Nazi Party seized power in Germany in May 1933, 15 Communists who had been arrested were tried for murder.

Some of the accused received prison sentences. Four were sentenced to death and beheaded on 1 August 1933.

In the 1990s, the Federal Republic of Germany reversed these convictions, declaring the convicted men innocent.

See also: The Axe of Wandsbek, a 1951 film by Falk Harnack related to the confrontation.

Fiction cross-reference

• National Razor

Nonfiction cross-reference

External links:

• Altona Bloody Sunday @ Wikipedia
• Altonaer Blutsonntag @ de.wikipedia.org