6 - The decapitation of the MLL Front leadership (1942)

At the beginning of 1942, the MLL Front had travelled a long road. Theoretically, it had broken with the old RSAP. Politically, it had made the choice of isolation in order to defend revolutionary principles. This isolation inevitably led to splits both within the MLL Front, and outside in the milieu which it influenced. It broke with its sympathisers of ‘De Vonk’, which after 22nd June 1941 advocated support for the allied camp as the ‘lesser evil’.78

But it was precisely in Spring 1942, that repression decapitated the MLL Front. The whole leadership of the Front - with the exception of Stan Poppe - was arrested: Sneevliet, Dolleman, Menist, Gerritsen, de Haan-Zwagerman, Koeslag and Schriefer were all condemned to death for sabotage. Before being executed at Amersfort, they sang the hymn of the cause for which they had sacrificed their lives: The International.79

Despite the blow to the Front, the struggle against the war, the struggle for internationalism, continued. The ‘Communistenbond Spartacus’ (Spartacist Communist Union) took up the reins from the MLL Front. A new page in the council communist movement opened up.

Notes

78. Cf. Wim Bot, op. cit., p. 81-84.

79. Sneevliet and his comrades were arrested after an ex-member of the OSP turned Nazi denounced Gerritsen (a member of the Central Committee) to the Germans. Before a German tribunal Sneevliet made a political speech in which he attacked National Socialism and Stalinism, condemning nationalism and the Orange resistance. Placing himself in the line of Marx, Lenin and Luxemburg, he rejected the accusation of ‘sabotage’ brought against him by the German military tribunal.