Edit: found the german source I was looking for. I really hope someone translates this into english http://antifaeu.blogsport.de/images/80J_AA_web.pdf

I had to crudely translate all this in the past

The KPD reacted to these developments with the call for "United Front Action", which shortly afterwards in "Antifascist Action" was renamed. The reason was a brawl between members of the Nazi party and Communist MPs in the Prussian state parliament on May 25, 1932, which resulted in eight seriously injured people. The next day the headline in the Red Flag was: “Cowardly attack by the Nazis in the state parliament on communists - anti-fascist action - appeal by the central committee of the KPD to the German working class”. Over the next few weeks took place all over the empire District congresses of the anti-fascist action take place. This coincided with developments at the grassroots level. It was the Nazis which KPD, SPD and other leftists, so to speak beat in a front. On the street, people often stood together without paying attention to their party affiliation, simply because of that Situation. KPD members, most of whom were unemployed, organized house protection squadrons27 anti-fascist self-help, in which of course all concerned took part. So the practice was often different than the party line. However, the assumption goes that the pressure of the grassroots would have prevailed in the KPD - which then with to have contributed to the establishment of the anti-fascist action - past reality. In 1932 the KPD was through and through the Stalinist party, grassroots influence over the party leadership was ruled out. The genesis Rather, the anti-fascist action took place in the well-known content / strategic concept of the “united front policy” according to the Comintern's specifications and did not mark a break with the anti-social-democratic line. Obviously Was the anti-fascist action a communist counter-foundation to the Iron Front?

This can easily be proven with the proclamations and papers of the anti-fascist action. It is worth mentioning here the brochure Ernst Thalmann's answer to 21 questions from SPD workers, which was distributed in a mass edition by the KPD and represents something like a basic paper for the anti-fascist action should. According to legend, 20 Social Democrats from different districts met with Ernst Thälmann on July 8, 1932 in the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus in Berlin. A little later, the question and answer game appeared in the named one Notebook. In terms of content, the publication consists of a series of phrases. One searches in vain for the concrete answer to just one single question.

As an example, Thälmann's reply to whether the anti-fascist Action about a "communist party shop" is reproduced: “It is a non-partisan collecting tank for all workers who are willing to fight ruthlessly against fascism. It is not an organization, but a mass movement. She is the stream into which all the fighting forces flow which is really the struggle, the mass attack against the current government, which is the immediate erection of the fascist To operate a dictatorship, to want to implement it. The leadership of the special unity committees in the factories, in the streets the stamp points etc., must of course be in the hands of the workers themselves willing to fight. ”28

Finally, on July 10, 1932, the campaign led to a "Reich Unity Congress" in Berlin Philharmonic. According to KPD information, 1550 delegates were present, 379 of them Communists and 132 SPD members (including members of the Reichsbanner) and 954 non-party members. To what extent these numbers, especially with regard to the SPD members who corresponded to reality are difficult to verify in detail. Like everything else with that Antifascist action has to be done because there were no membership cards. The anti-fascist action emerged from the practical participation. The congress decided on a »vow of anti-fascist action« and a manifesto.

This manifesto has the same diction as the Thälmann brochure. On the meaning of the anti-fascist action can be read: "The anti-fascist action does not want to tolerate the establishment of a fascist dictatorship over Germany, that the class organizations of the proletariat have been smashed and forbidden, that all rights of the working class have been trampled upon, that social security and all the gains of the labor movement will be eradicated. The anti-fascist action organizes in the broadest united front the closed red mass self-protection of workers, unemployed and working people in whole Germany. The anti-fascist action wants the mass struggle of all class-conscious workers, all anti-fascists Freedom fighters for the crushing defeat of Hitler's fascism, for the recapture of millions of working people betrayed by the National Socialists. ”29

The "Red Mass Self-Protection" mentioned here had been proclaimed analogous to the hammer shanks of the Iron Front. With the anti-fascist action, the communists wanted both the party base of the SPD and the Include the NSDAP in their policy against the system. In this context, the joint BVG strike from RGO and NSBO ​​(National Socialist Company Cell Organization) on display in November 1932. It came then to demonstrative appearances and speeches by members of the SPD and the Reichsbanner, now and then SA men on the podium and declared their cooperation. The emblem with the double flags, the KPD and SPD (of course only meant the SPD base, not the party as such) in a lifebuoy with the inscription "Antifascist Action" symbolized, From then on it appeared in virtually all KPD publications and demonstrations. The design came from the graphic artists Max Keilson and Max Gebhart, members of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists in Germany (BRBKD) 30 were. From this point on, the KPD's propaganda was in full swing. The party tried to present a successful initiative with posters, newspapers and special supplements. Indeed it succeeded, especially SPD members with the Address anti-fascist action. To this extent the policy of the KPD was successful, which primarily continues directed against social democracy. The SPD, on the other hand, made no distinction between Nazis and Communists, which meant that every SPD member who wanted to take part in the anti-fascist action had to stand against his own party.