[1][2] Bittel was a volunteer contributor to the "Freiburger Volksstimme", a local newspaper at the popular end of the political spectrum, and served between 1913 and 1916 as Secretary for Consumers Club in nearby Esslingen.
[1] He became a lecturer at the Party Main Academy in Jena in 1920, and then editor of a Chemnitz based newspaper called "Kämpfer" ("Fighters").
[1] In 1928 he took charge of the administration office for Soviet trade representation, and then, from 1930 till (formally) April 1933 at the Berlin-based successor Soviet-German organisation known as DEROP AG.
Unlike many Communists, he was able to remain in Germany during the twelve years of Nazi rule, but there is no evidence of his having engaged in any sort of political activity during this time.
In addition, in 1946 he co-founded a Communist Newspaper based in Offenburg, entitled "Unser Tag" ("Our Day"), becoming "licence holder" and editor in chief of the publication till 1948.
[1] By 1949 it had become clear that whatever the future might hold for Germany, the portion of it under Soviet administration was developing very differently from the zones occupied by the other three victorious wartime powers.
As the Soviet blockade of West Berlin was lifted, in May 1949 the US, British and American zones were combined and re-founded as the German Federal Republic.
[1] Bittel was one of a small but determined group of like-minded historians who promoted the orienting of historical seminars and institutions according to the precepts of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED / Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands).
This was seen as necessary because, especially in the early years of the German Democratic Republic, the country's mainstream historians were drawn, for the most part, from outside the Marxist historical tradition.