«Esli by tol'ko russkie mogli otkryt' svoyi arhivy». O zamshelyh marksistskyh tchudishchah, istoriografitcheskih mifah i vetchnoy otchuzhdennosti Rossii. Poslesloviye k novomu russkomu izdaniyu, in Призывая Гитлера (Prizivaya Gitlera) (Moscow and Ekaterinburg: Kabinetnyy Uchenyy-Armchair Scientist, 2016). http://www.armchair-scientist.ru/

‘If Only the Russians Could Open their Archives’ Of Vetero-Marxist Ogresses, Historiographic Myths, and the Perennial Remoteness of Russia — An Afterword to the New Russian Edition of Conjuring Hitler ~Guido Giacomo Preparata

Moreover, Russia is too big a tangle for us to unravel alone alluring mystery that Russia is to us— is trying to compose without the Germans, and without hard work. a veracious reconstruction of these fundamental past Dostoyevsky, The Possessed (I,i) events in view of the (as I now sense them, sinister) transformations that await the world at large. —L’imagination assemble et compare; elle ne crée jamais, The stupidities in question are those of Western répliqua sèchement sainte Catherine. Anatole France, L’Ile des Pingouins Marxism, or more to the point, of that presently threadbare fringe of diehards Marxists, and their scattered …The interests of a class most directly refer to standing and epigones, who survive sparsely on both sides of the rank, to status and security […]; they are primarily not economic Atlantic. Like the overwhelming majority of Europeans, but social. despite some (literary and historiographic) reading and the Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation1 occasional trip (to Moscow and St. Petersburg), I am, alas, profoundly ignorant of Russia. Under these premises, since Introductory: the Failure of the Fathers I cannot anticipate the reaction of a Russian reader to these few introductory lines, I am in no position to In the preface of Anatole France’s now forgotten calibrate the nuances of my meaning. For, clearly, 1908 parody of France’s Third Republic, L’Ile des Pingouins Marxism, for good or ill, has meant “something” to (“The Isle of the Penguins”), the novelist indulges, briefly, Russia’s recent past; and that “something” was, for a half a in a consuetudinary tirade against the painstaking century, sold to us westerners as one of the only two compulsion to re-write history; do not try to surprise the (political) totems —the other being U.S. Liberalism— reader, admonishes France, for the latter “ne cherche jamais round which we were politically allowed to cluster. So, in dans une histoire que les sottises qu’il sait déjà”: because he only principle, it would seem incongruous that I should address looks for the stupidities he already knows, the reader is a Russian audience by telling it about a “current” that we, likely to take anything novel —i.e., not suffering from the at one point of our history, were being, de facto, lectured precut biases of the discursive game— as an intolerable upon by the Russians themselves. But, being “politics” the insult to “his beliefs.”2 deceit that it is, my telling the Russians my side of the In this essay, much as I have done in the German “Russian story” is not as incongruous as it may sound; and Afterword versus the academic custodians of Liberal this is so because of two central hindrances —discursive imperialism (“Four Years Since,” 2009), I would like to the one, geopolitical the other—that have hitherto address another set of formidable sottises directly pertaining impeached a fluid exchange between our “blocs,” and to our topic that have held sway in the West for over half a more crucially, a common imaginarium wherein to frame century. These imbecilities, and the purported sediment of our discussion. “beliefs” accrued to them, did, at some point, gain wide The first is the spuriousness of Marxism-Leninism currency in that they were in strict compliance with the as the new-fangled liturgical Esperanto of Soviet Russia. It game of (specious) polarization which the Cold War had is as though we were speaking in tongues to one another foisted on the world. Thus, the topic touches Russia, and when referring to “those days,” the westerners having to her history, directly, or as directly as it may, through the vocalize every sentence in terms of a nondescript notion of faltering argumentation of a West-European such as “freedom,” and the Russians having to reply with myself, who was born in the median stages of that Cold soundbites of an idiom issued from a narrative made of Game, and who —in the looming shadow of this grand, 1

*«Если бы только русские могли открыть свои архивы». О замшелых марксистских чудищах, историографических мифах и вечной отчужденности России. Послесловие к новому русскому изданию. Hegelian pseudo-spiritualism and Ricardian economics that broodings such as those of Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of was utterly alien to their cultural substrate. For one, so- the Masses (1930): called Soviet socialism was but a profoundly inefficient form of State-capitalism, period. If we concur, then, that Russia is Marxist more or less as the Germans our lines of communication have been systematically of the Holy Roman Empire were Romans. New undercut and disabled by and through the forcible peoples have no ideas; […] they disguise diffusion of sterile and sterilizing speech, which themselves in the ideas of [older civilizations]. development has predictably led to a gigantic Here is the camouflage and the reason for it […]. The only thing one can assert is that Russia misconstruction of our social phenomenology, we may will require centuries before she can aspire to then move ahead, and re-establish contact, by excorticating command. Because she is still lacking in these crippling verbalizing prosthetics from our minds and commandments she has been obliged to feign mouths. Inauthentic as it might have been, however, the adherence to the European principles of Marx Marxist-Leninist pretense was sustained in Soviet Russia […]. Something very similar is happening with effectively and long enough, all the more so as excoriated New York.3 societies which find themselves re-engineered under the duress of geopolitical exigencies ne peuvent parler qu’avec la We know it: politically, what came to pass in langue de bois. Despite the monstrous transmogrifications of Russia after the czardom was snuffed out in 1917-1918 such surgeries, the malleability of all things human, for was not the bloody harvest of unfulfilled market reforms, good or ill, consents these artificialities and mimicries to neither was it a “Marxist” golpe, nor the inexorable succeed —the recent “theocratic” constructions of outcome of “dialectic materialism,” but rather the “Islamism,” starting with Khomeini’s “revolution” of contingent fruit of “Shigalovism,” to cite Dostoyevsky’s 1978-79, are but another instance of this “re-suture” of visionary evocation in The Possessed (1872) of the nihilist decapitated bodies assisted by the re-wiring of the body drift within the tornado that would wholly disfigure an social’s speechifying faculties with a variety of Newspeak already emaciated nation: i.e., the chiliastic promise of (in the case of Islamism, a mishmash of modernizing perfect equality wrought through pure violence by an pandects more or less freely elaborated from the Koran, intelligentsia comprising ten percent of the population the Sayings of the Prophet, and the Shar’ia). The strength lording it over the remaining, beastly, bottom-feeding of Marxism resided in its being a discursive apparatus of a ninety percent. And it was historically and practically sealed totalizing character; it was a system —doubtless the work of via the strictures of an inefficient apparatus of State extraordinary talent—, the first of its kind in which, (capitalist)-enterprise. evidently, everything —sociological, political & cultural (as Dismally, the whole shebang was already superstructure), historical, and, above all, economic—could outmoded even before it came into being: be fitted. The disciple needed to look no further: ‘twas all in there (in das Kapital, the Grundrisse —Marx’s complete So, too, the poor old Russians, always oeuvre…and in the apostles’ commentaries). Political behindhand, always holding the world back. mouvances of all kinds, if they are to succeed and eventually First they “afterbirthed” the Economic Industrial Revolution, when for a generation it acquire momentum, need at the very minimum an had already miscarried in the Economic- authoritative “book” —or, in the case of Liberalism, keen industrialized countries, and then had to make as it is on its “pluralistic” looks, a variegated yet their Lenin into a mummied Pharaoh and, homogeneous bibliographic compendium (by the finally, call back the Greek Orthodox Church. “Founding Fathers,” or “the classics”)— and a pro-active, Slow movement and coda […].4 pharaonic prophet; the latter is generally the choice of seasoned casting directors; he is the revolutionist with the If the first obstacle to unfettered communication physique du rôle; as for the “book,” the procedure requires is, then, the feat of linguistic sabotage that has structurally one to identify a “tradition,” retain the style, and simply forced us all to misconstrue entirely our theorizing of the update it: viz. make it Marxism-Leninism (and onto Neo- socio-political realm, the second one, instead, is the Marxism and so forth), to cover whatever went on after perennial constraint, or rather the impediment that has the Messiah’s death in 1883. Considerations of this sort become a durable fixture of the westerner’s mental and are, clearly, nothing new; they relay, for instance, cogitative space ever since the Anglo-American Commonwealth has conceived of the so-called “Eurasian

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Embrace” as the greatest menace to its expansionary factions, todos juntos, should unquestionably be flushed designs. It has been somehow decreed: Europeans are not down the chronicles as insignificant pantins grotesques who to consider Russians Europeans like themselves; they are understood not a thing either of their era or of the political rather to view them as some kind of odd and unsavory game the Parties made them play, the pro-Soviet “Asiatic” hybrids, which are better kept as further afield as cheerleaders of the Left, whose political substantiveness possible, cordoned off, that is, by a glacis of otherwise resided entirely and exclusively in the strength of the decent and presentable neighbors such as, say, the Poles or “Party,” clearly were, vis-à-vis their opponents, at a the Czechs (and someday, with a little push and some disadvantage. The Leitmotif of “artificiality” re-emerges more luck, the Ukrainians) —all of them purportedly rated here. Culturally speaking, the leftists were manifestly the by the Anglo-Saxon arbitrium far fitter than the Russians in falser character of the two, for —pro-worker democrats in point of European pedigree. All of which has thus good standing that they proclaimed to be— they professed conspired, outlandish though it may sound, to render the to venerate a core, the Soviet one, which they intimately Russians, in the eyes of us (Southern) Europeans, a knew to be wholly foreign, tyrannical, pauperizing, dreary, faraway and exotic nation of aliens, so much so that, not and inefficient —this last being not a minor shortcoming, knowing what our common ground may be other than given how deeply consumeristic, i.e. western, their “common sense” (whatever that is), one is not too sure of appraisal of life’s material ends was. Nevertheless, while how best to phrase and intone before a Russian readership the going was still good, the Communist bourgeois kept his version of certain “Russian facts.” Nevertheless, on raising their left fist and singing the praise of Lenin and such an auspicious occasion as a new Russian edition of Mao, and, if sufficiently wealthy, they also sent their sons Conjuring Hitler, I will take my chances and run my Russian and daughters to study (English & finance) in Britain and story by the Russians, trusting, in the worst case scenario, vacationed anywhere but the Eastern bloc (too squalid by that its interpretative licenses would elicit the leniency their own admission—improponibile). Though xenophiles presumptively due to a Westerner’s “Slavonic romance” like their enemies, the centrists, however —by hanging on, with little or no tangency to the truth of Russia, or to what tentatively, to a few indigenous props such as Catholic the Russians know to be true of this whole story —of sentimentalism, or il lusso of the fashion industry—, could Hitler, Barbarossa, Communism, etc. If only, then, the stand behind their vociferous defense of private property Russians and ourselves could draw closer, we might also be with a straighter face than that affixed by their affluent able to a look at their archives, if only they would open Communist counterparts whenever these were compelled, theirs (because we are certainly not opening ours) and, by Party discipline, to melt in a panegyric of Russia’s possibly, come to a common understanding on the collectivized system or late invasion of Afghanistan. question of historical truth surrounding the origins of An account of Europe’s cultural history in the key WWII. Wouldn’t this be sensational? of political partisanship cannot be sketched, let alone In returning to address the sottises of the Western detailed, in this postscript; suffice it to say that, when the Marxists, I should set down, as an aesthetic proposition, catafalques of the Cold War were finally dismantled after that, politically and spiritually speaking, I hold the 1989, all these little cold warriors could be seen reeling generation of my fathers, men born in the 1940s, in from yesteryear’s stupor. On the Center-Right, while most, profound disesteem. For nearly two decades, at the height uncomprehending as ever, thought themselves vindicated of the Cold War’s finale, I have watched them screaming at by the “End of History,” a trickle defected to Marx (!) and and tearing each other apart. Buttressed by their wives, environmentalism; but it was on the other side of the they spat their slogans, brandished their icons and mascots, barricade, for the reason just adumbrated, that the most and clashed over every conceivable public issue fed to intriguing developments took place. While not a few them by a likewise polarized press, while, in the 1970s, former orthodox Marxists went so far as to embrace the segments of those ten years their juniors beat and shot one Neo-Austrian worship of the free-market and Straussian another from opposing phalanxes, which the Parties (and philosophy, the bulk of the ex-Communist intelligentsia, the “political bureaus” of the Police)5 periodically deployed for its part, converted en masse to “Social-Democracy”: no in the streets; bourgeois the ones bourgeois the others, more hammers & sickles, no more campy busts of Lenin pro-U.S. Christian-Democrats and “centrists” vs. and Marx. Yesterday’s educated compagni, Genossen, Communists; pro-capitalists contra Marxian, pro-Soviet camarades, y compañeros were all Liberals now. The majority Marxist-Leninists (and a fistful of “Socialists” treading of this core, which had most acrimoniously “manifested” gingerly in the middle). Now, for as much as both mass- against “American Imperialism” in the cortèges of the

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1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, turned into the most enthusiastic the venues of higher learning, both in Europe and in the supporters of America’s cultural hegemony, all of it —the United States (though more in the former than the latter), “democratic” credentials, the entrepreneurial dynamism, is because, in the final analysis, their vision perfectly the zealous crusading for “human rights,” Apple & complemented, or rather, supported that of Liberalism in Microsoft, burgers & hotdogs, and U.S. foreign policy & driving home one essential tenet, namely that all human militarism, too, for in the end, as in a package, the former action is the historical fruit and impersonal summation of cannot be had without this last. This cohort, which now economically-driven aspirations. If this is held to be true, rallies electorally to Europe’s Democratic pole, is then, political responsibility/agency is at best an essentially made up of all those European bleeding-hearts epiphenomenon, i.e. “superstructure,” and, at worst, an who, among other devotions, publicly cried tears of bliss irrelevance, and, therefore, the national honor of the powers when Barack Obama became President of the United involved is, in any case and under any possible theoretical States in 2008. To these former worshippers of Lenin, and hypothesis, safe. their offspring, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is presently the A few years ago, a project was afoot to launch a enemy. In keeping with this new alignment, the revised edition of Conjuring Hitler accompanied by a series predispositions to which had been latent during the Cold of testimonials and endorsements of known scholars. The War, a conspicuous segment of the Liberal conversos has initiative ran afoul of an anonymous referee report (yet perforce come to espouse, in militant fashion, the another one), whose author, most presumably a British postmodern ethos and the associated “politics of Vetero-Marxist, enjoined the chief editor, in deep and diversity.” Other erstwhile Marxians, an exiguous apprehensive earnest —out of heartfelt and anguished minority, have, in varying degrees, relaxed their former concern, as it were, for Pluto Press’s reputation and the doctrinarism by re-directing their theoretical focus to anti- overall fate of Anglophone Leftism—, not to proceed with oligarchism, while, in fine, a not inconsiderable portion of the new edition. And so it went. As I had come to the Old School, mostly universitarians who were once part experience over the years, the list of criticisms and attacks of that formidable contingent that had largely and contained in that report were, de facto, standard Vetero- tyrannously predominated in European academia for the Marxist fare; I had heard them before, in various whole duration of the Cold Game (courtesy of the formulations, some of them exceedingly vehement if not, centrists), were left to cling to their endowed chairs, in one instance, as I recall, almost violently hostile; but the barking like in the old days, and tutoring the occasional substance was in every case the same. I would not bother postmodernist to fixate on material (economistic) the reader with what could be taken as a sort of lengthy conditions alone. It is to this faction that this essay is open letter to settle petty scores with a handful of petty addressed. This group is, thankfully, on its way to pedants, if I did not believe that the subject matter of the extinction, though it is matter of complex deliberation to dispute and its controversial traceries did not offer a conclude that its influence was, and has been, less favorable opportunity to reprise certain crucial passages of pernicious for the critical faculties of the newer our common history and, through added insights and generations, than that presently wielded, with no less vigor further discussion, shed new light on fundamental issues and ambition, by postmodernism’s regime of discursive and problems that still afflict us all. Finally, a note on my terror. Be that as it may, the point is that there still exist in choice of the word “ogresses” to characterize these the system of academic validation enduring incrustations Vetero-Marxist critics of Conjuring Hitler. First, it must be of old-time Marxists, whom I will call, using an Italian that diligent habituation to, and gradual proficiency in the neologism of the eighties, “Vetero-Marxists.” Marxist way of thinking —totalizing, self-contained, and Why these dogmatists have risen to such obsolete as it is— has the chief and preliminary effect of prominence in the past era, and, to this day, though garnishing the psyche of the Vetero-Marxist with an auto- decimated, manage to survive mostly through postmodern suggestion of economistic omniscience, which suggestion, hybridizations (especially in post-colonial studies, which precisely because economics is in Marx’s methodological combine ethnicity and exploitation) rather than through hierarchy paramount, fortifies the conviction of being the breeding of young orthodox epigones, who are now technically infallible. Second, if idolatrous credence, rare, is sufficiently known. Aside from the symmetrical especially of the postiche sort, such as, say, the syncretistic dictates of the Cold Game, which required a “bourgeois divinization of a bi-dimensional and exotic monstrosity like epistemology” to antagonize a Marxist one, the reason why Lenin, is layered upon this psychic undercoat of delusional Marxists were once afforded such extraordinary latitude in infallibility, the Vetero-Marxist’s aboriginal feelings of self-

4 righteousness —for, of all scholars, he alone cares about cosmic, battle against the Anti-Christ and his angels of the masses— are likely to calcify beyond salvage any death, i.e. Hitler and the SS. Orthodox Marxists, for their remaining capacity for objective discernment. Therefore, it part, will not suffer such folklore to contaminate their is patent that the production of a “tool” as perfectly analysis, because their sensitivities are imbued, instead, inadequate for the pursuit of disinterested inquiry as the with a religiosity that is somewhat akin to Sunnism, in fact; Vetero-Marxist academic could only be warranted within they have a God, Marx, and his prophet, Lenin; in this type the rhetorical confines of the power play that was staged of dispensation, then, evil assumes the contours of an during the Cold War. It is, then, only logical, that, presently impersonal, de-personalized nuisance, a nasty haze, with orphaned of the once massive supporting structure of methods of its own, which makes good things Communism’s longa manus, these petulant derelicts, who providentially happen —as in the case, e.g., of paroxysmal never had sufficient ego to exist for themselves, seethe in bourgeois exploitation ushering into revolution. their lair out of which they occasionally thrust to chew out Second, WWI for DDR historians is not a turning and snarl biliously at whoever dares to contradict them — point, but merely a conspicuous phase of the inexorable like ogresses. struggle for the emancipation of the working class. The only caesura they acknowledge is the Bolshevik Revolution The Dispute of October 1917,7 which marks the calendar of pious Vetero-Marxists as discontinuously as does Christmas Day In this section I will outline the gist of the Vetero- or the Hejira for their adversarial, opium-eating Marxist arguments against the drift of Conjuring Hitler, and religionists. proceed to respond, point by point in successive parts By and large, the judgment which the DDR dealing in turn with the myths of Marxism-Leninism, the historians have passed on any single aspect of this entire debate on World War I, an addendum to my discussion of story is, for the Vetero-Marxists of the world, apparently the Russian Civil War, Stefan T. Possony’s biography of even to this day, the ultimate fount of authority. It is the Lenin, the question of the relationship between Nazism Gospel; it is the law. and German capitalism, and the Russo-German military Now let us turn to the elements of the Vetero- entente. Marxist review of Conjuring Hitler, as they appeared in the By way of introduction to the dispute, let us say said anonymous report. that, in perfect line with the forcible dichotomy of the 1) In brief, the chief proposition that informs the Cold War, the German treatment of the Nazi question — overall critique is that “the West always played a role in origins, development, and demise— was appositely bolstering Germany as an anti-communist force (and anti- apportioned between two rival parties. One was the former French force).” DDR school of historiography, which was condignly I believe this to be entirely false; my thesis is that entrusted with “die marxistische Geschichtsschreibung” (Marxist Germany was, for good or ill, the aggressed target in both historiography) and whose rhetorical task it was to run the world wars. Which is not to say, speaking of Primitivität, other, i.e. “die reaktionäre westdeutschen Geschichtsschreibung” that I thereby “root” for Germany —I do not (why would (reactionary West German historiography), into the I?). I suppose, deep down, what all these miserable little ground. Two remarks, before proceeding. deacons of the Liberal Right and the Vetero-Marxist Left First, with regard to Hitlerism, what Communist have found unforgivable in my narrative is that it features no historians despise of their adversaries, most of all, is their heroes, yet only villains, one more abominable than the alleged “Primitivität”; in other words, they despise the sort other. I, for my part, have observed the unfolding of of intellectual coarseness which brings the bourgeois events and simply read and re-arranged them in the key of historian to demonize obsessively Hitler’s personage, geopolitical interest —in this case, that of Britain, which overcharging it, as it were, with historical significance, was/is paramount. The side-advertence to the (victimized) while disregarding entirely, and culpably, “all other history- involvement of France, on the other hand, is thoroughly shaping forces and the inherent laws that set them in inane, for this country, as is patent even today, only played motion.”6 Now, that the Liberals would affect in this a subservient role, and a persistently mischievous one at respect such Primitivität is hardly surprising, considering that, to the intrigues of the bigger schemers. I shall briefly that in their Puritanical imaginary, they see themselves as advert to this point in the excursus on the Russian Civil God’s avenging angels of light; they know in their hearts to War. have been the ones ultimately chosen to wage, and win, a

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2) According to this ogress, once the above recounts “the history of Montagu Norman and his summarizing proposition is upturned, as it is in Conjuring manipulation of global finance in the interwar years [is] Hitler, it becomes ipso facto “conspiracy theory,” in other interesting […]; the strongest, the only possibly viable part words, the worthless screed of a crypto-Fascist lunatic. In [of the book]. However,” he balks anew, “the way this is the subsequent line I am resultantly accused of being then connected to the rise of Hitler is completely over the “happy to quote figures like Anthony Sutton and other Far top.” Again, it is the trope of the “remote control”: in Right U.S. pamphleteers who claim that the East Coast Marxist historiography, heroes and anti-heroes must be establishment, in order to unload enormous armaments construed as curiosa; in themselves they cannot achieve costs on the American people, themselves engineered the much, especially if their deeds, no matter how malevolent, Russian revolution, German fascism etc.” The censure is are stacked against the self-evident inertia of de- identical to that of the Liberal imperialists, and the knee- personalized history, which is fashioned by the “great jerk animadversion that underlies it is manifestly lit up by a currents of humanity”; a story which so moves the Liberals detection of both unpatriotic and anti-“Leftist” as well, all of them. It is that grand ébauche in which the insubordination; the key expressions in the passage being elites ultimately count for nothing; a sociological miracle. “Far Right” and “the Russian revolution.” That powerful Indeed, the fer de lance of the DDR School is the ensemble Western Interests were heavily involved in this story is well of the numerous monographs and finicky archival known and incontrovertible —and we shall see below how collations dedicated to the capillary description of the DDR theologians themselves deal with this reality— Germany’s capitalist anatomy and its purported but the mere fact that I questioned the genuineness of relationship to the political establishment, and the Nazi Lenin and his “revolution” is sufficient grounds to lay out leadership in particular. In extreme synthesis, the in full a mini-inquisition. explanation is here, quite evidently, that Hitler was a 3) Having thus failed from the outset to honor the puppet of Germany’s steel industry, nothing more: “what code in point of Liberal patriotism, which demands else would you expect?” queries the ogress. The names unconditional belief that Germany alone is evil and dropped in this connection are those of the usual East culpable of everything, and ruined forever my status as a German doyens: Gossweiler, Stegmann, Czichon, Sohn- progressive by doubting the spontaneous nature of the Rethel. And that is to suggest that all these authors Russian revolution (I have, indeed, insulted “their beliefs”), propose, chorally, a reading of the actual connections I must then come to doubt my own capacity to think: “Of between Nazism and “capital,” or better said, the course,” gibes the ogress, “you must have a pretty Monopolbourgeoisie (the corporate monopolists of the convoluted understanding of what societies are and why bourgeoisie) —the only connections having etiological they change to think you can bring about revolutions by worth— that is solid and cogent, unlike, i.e., the thesis of remote control.” Clearly, I do not understand (societies), Conjuring Hitler, in which, says the critic, all is “reduced to a but I thank God the Vetero-Marxists and their Liberal plot by Kurt von Schröder.” I will respond to this critique brethren do. in the conclusive section of the essay. 4) Then comes the passo obbligato of the 6) The collapse of the Credit Anstalt. I am faulted bibliographical dressing-down: “[I am] not aware,” howls for presenting, unjustifiably, this Krach, purportedly the the ogress, “of the vast literature on the origins of the First trigger of the systemic banking debacle of 1931, as World War,” above all of Fritz Fischer’s “monumental “mysterious” in order “to evoke conspiratorial work” Griff nach der Weltmacht (Germany’s War Aims in the explanations.” There is no mystery, retorts the referee, it so First World War). “No serious historian, Left or Right,” happened that “it was France which withdrew all its short- continues this critic, “will endorse [my] thesis [on the term deposits in protest over the Mitteleuropa-Union as part origins of WWI]. It is based on NOTHING.” Incidentally, of a struggle with Germany over control of Eastern notice how I have inadvertently been given points here for Europe (Poland, Yugoslavia etc.) in which Austrian banks having distanced myself not just from the Left but from were pivotal and which as Alice Teichova documents, the Right as well: isn’t this a positive thing, after all? I raged throughout the interwar years, and was only settled hereafter discuss Fischer’s book in the segment devoted to by WW II and Soviet post-WW II bloc formation.” To WWI. [this Vetero-Marxist’s] knowledge “this is standard stuff 5) The support of Hitler by German industry. The [and he] can't believe how somebody can gloss over this.” reviewer concedes, and he does it only once, that chapter 4 Personally, I have not been able to find any account, of Conjuring Hitler, “Death on the Installment Plan,” which neither in the referenced piece by Teichova8 nor anywhere

6 else, describing the withdrawal, exclusively and entirely, as rise and muster sufficient force de frappe wherewith to a French operation of the sort relayed by the critic; and knock Kapital’s arch-villainous avatar, the Monopolbourgeoisie, even if this were the case, which poses no problem dead, and thereupon seize power. In the German context, whatsoever to my analysis, the timing of the withdrawal simply put, the villains were the industrialists, while the still remains suspect. All the more so as among the heroes were the militant voters of the KPD, Germany’s investors of the Credit Anstalt “were 130 of the most Communist Party, the only party which, in the standard important […] British and American banks, [which] account of Vetero-Marxism, stood fast against fascism in provided the majority of credits to [it].”9 Therefore, given defense of the people’s rights.10 this bank’s particular shareholding composition at the time, In this script, worthy at best of a mid-afternoon TV I highly doubt that France would have taken the liberty to show, the sycophantic, two-faced recreant is “the Social- shake it down single-handedly and on her own exclusive Democrat Union leader”: professedly a revolutionary, he initiative. is, deep down, a creature cravenly dependent upon the 7) In the coda comes the impassioned plea in the capitalist master and thus duplicitously complicit until sacred name of progressivism: “In [the case of the book’s (what, then, unfolded as) the bitter end, viz. Hitler’s rise to editorial relaunch], adjures the ogress, “I think Pluto will power. In World War One, this “Social traitor,” aided by suffer reputation-wise because this is simply a line and style the press and the churches, is said to have misled the masses of argument that has never taken root in Europe, it “into succumbing to a chauvinistic propaganda campaign belongs to a tradition that is now in the Tea-Party, anti- that gave German aggression the appearance of a war of Establishment etc., and spoils the game for those who defense against Tsarist Russia.”11 This is the focal aspect of seriously look for the implication of Anglo-American the treatment: what Leftist true-believers cannot come to influences that helped Hitler to power (against, not WITH terms with is the adamancy wherewith history has the USSR of course--what a joke!).” The give-away here is mercilessly confuted the Marxist prognostication of the term “anti-Establishment”: one, then, wonders whose guaranteed mass uprisings at the end of a (loosely defined) game my book is really spoiling. As for the “joke,” a critical cycle. The reality is that the masses, de facto, have cursory reappraisal of the main elements of the case such never rebelled; certainly never on the palingenetic scale as they will be exposed in the discussion that follows, will dreamed by Vetero-Marxist scholiasts. Lenin himself was tell us where the actual punchlines are and how to cue the reputedly “stunned”12 by the patriotic eagerness of laugh track accordingly. Germany’s organized working classes —“theoretically” the 8) And, in fine, the sentence of the Marxist most “class-conscious” masses one could find in prosecutor: “the author is not a leftwing person at all.” Europe— to go to war in the summer of 1914; and this So what am I? A fascist? The inquisition has found was no idiosyncratic effect of Germany’s dynastic animus, heresy. Burn the witch. for the proletariat of any other belligerent nation comported itself likewise. Which goes to prove, moreover, The Misery of Sociology that Lenin, as outrageous as it may sound, had no intimate notion whatsoever of what mass dynamics, in Wilhelmine The aesthetics of Marxism-Leninism is of a dreary Germany or elsewhere, consisted of: in truth, “this greatest infantilism. of all revolutionaries” —and we shall have more to say on The way in which its bards recount the story for the his psychological profile hereafter— never magnetized a period that interests us is the following. At the turn of the large crowd, from the ground up, to lead it anywhere per twentieth century, das Kapital, i.e., the disembodied demon virtutem suam. Because the masses are, spiritually speaking, of Marxist mythography, is said to have reached the “third inherently conservative, they do not, nor can they, as a rule stage” —that of “imperialism”— in which a nation’s rebel and rise up. Thus, in the Marxist’s irrefragable productive equipage coils into an apparatus of colonialist defense of his creed, someone, something must have conquest: in its insatiable thirst for profit, the monster perforce corrupted and debauched the masses, misleading regroups to spew its flames outwards. At this time, thereby their revolutionary spirit from its aboriginal course however, the extreme maturation of the nefarious forces of —hence the acrimonious vilification of the “Social capitalist exploitation had likewise entailed a proportionate Democrat.” reinvigoration of the antagonism of the laboring masses; as Herein lies Marxism’s sociological wretchedness; in these had been gradually elevated to that clairvoyant stage its utter insensitivity to psycho-sociological drifts, which of perfect “class-consciousness,” they could be expected to prevents it, bound as it is in the torturous schematisms of a

7 simplistic narrative core, to comprehend the subtleties of totalitarianism,” sentences Fischer, “has been the major collective motion. I will never tire of reiterating how in conflict of our time.” With a mere pretense of equanimity, Chapter VIII of his masterpiece, The Theory of the Leisure he then concedes: “No Allied power was quite free of Class (1899), Thorstein Veblen had superbly accounted for some measure of responsibility […] for the outbreak of the the inured conservatism of the masses by positing as the war in one respect or another,” though Germany —such chief cause of such conservatism the psychological process seems the implicit intimation from there on— was, in the of spiritual debilitation which these masses suffer, on the final analysis, the sole, evil culpable alpha of the grand one hand, through conventional economic deprivation at disaster all the way to 1945 —again, standard Liberal the hands of the masters and, no less significantly, through historiographic fare. the imitative practice of their masters’ predatory lifestyles The documentation, aside from its orthodox bias, and barbarous ethos, on the other.13 There is no such thing offers a few occasions, on the other hand, to redirect the as class consciousness. There is class, there is the mystery drift of the discussion by focusing on the fundamental of the psyche, and there is the even deeper enigma of the undercurrents of this affair. And in my view nothing is factors controlling the transition from the psyche of the more important, and disquieting, than the fratricidal hatred individual to that of the mass. Setting the ogresses aside for “the Slav,” which seemed to have laid a visceral hold of for a moment, I wonder why radical dissenters all over the (a preponderant segment of) the German elite. It is one of world are taking so awfully long to acknowledge Thorstein the superstitious roots that have led to the matricide of Veblen as their guiding light, and The Theory of the Leisure Europe, which I date to June 22, 1941, the German Class as their sacred text. invasion of Russia (Barbarossa). Wilhelm II thought peace between Germans and Slavs “completely impossible”; World War I similarly, the otherwise highly educated and hyper-sensitive Chief of the German General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke Though stylishly written, Fritz Fischer’s Germany’s (the younger) brooded in February 1913 that a European War Aims in the the First World War is hardly an unbiased war would have boiled down to “a struggle between Teuton book. It comprises the usual mythographic brew of pro- and Slav.” British adulatory andantes and stylized self-deprecation, Further along his exposé, Fischer banks which German intellectuals have had, since the Fall of considerably on documental evidence according to which, 1945, to inject in their work, in token of their contrition. blinded by such hatred and bent on winning at any cost, Nothing less could have been expected from a History Germany sabotaged every single offer of peace mediation, Professor at the University of Hamburg, who could also which is alleged to have been initiated, on virtually every vaunt a membership of the Institute of Advanced Studies single occasion, by the peace-prone civility of Britain. The at Princeton University. argumentation is, of course, thoroughly unconvincing “It is not for the historian to accuse or to defend because a counter-lectior of this sort of reconstruction — […],” sentences Fischer in the preface, “but merely to from Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia to Pope Benedict XV’s establish facts.” For his part, Fischer, at best, establishes negotiating attempt in September 1917— shows just as facts by half, and therefore ends up accusing much. The crisply that Britain was no less determined not to yield a book is, by the author’s own admission, one-sided: the single inch to the Germans: as I have argued, Britain had focus is exclusively on German and Austrian diplomatic studiously prepared for more than a decade for this documents. Clearly, for a study that, de facto, submitted its confrontation and had, to this end, primed Belgium in candidacy for becoming some kind of adjudicating view of Germany’s fully anticipated invasion of King standard in the historiographic arena of war guilt, to Albert’s kingdom; her dissembling bravura, of course, was excavate diligently one archive while leaving the other to act as if, on repeated occasions, she were genuinely closely shut may be legitimately taken as a symptom of seeking peace in the face of an unbearably truculent obnoxious partiality. Be that as it may, the problem seemed Teuton otherwise bent on rebuffing her at every turn. to have been one of space: “a discussion and appreciation Britain’s “peace offers” were evidently spurious: they were of the origin […] and significance of the war aims of the knowingly couched in terms Germany, blinded though she Entente powers,” Fischer explains demurely, “would was, would not accept. [however] exceed the limits of [his focused inquiry].” The In sum, this conventional propagandistic collation mystical premises of the analysis are, typically, those of of archival material, reveals, if anything, what I have Liberal teleology: “The struggle between democracy and repeatedly emphasized in my work, and that is the tragic

8 ineptitude of the German group-spirit at the a time when Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg to his predecessor von the latter might have been able to shape Europe into Bülow in August 1914).17 Of course: Germany had wanted “something else,” and utterly failed (Veblen beautifully war from the very beginning (of her imperial ascendancy); frescoed in 1915 the forthcoming spiritual downfall of the this was never disputed; yet the war she had so insanely Fatherland in his Imperial Germany and the Industrial wished for was going to be a fateful engagement of which Revolution).14 Instead, what the world came to witness — she understood nothing: under no condition and at no and the profusion of testimonies (biasedly) produced by time would Britain “settle” with the Central Powers; and Fischer merely corroborates the point at hand— is a blind, least of all could Germany foretell that the war she would frenetically disorderly rage on the part of Germany’s be finally served was not hers, but Britain’s. For, in the final dynastic elite to make and unmake, to think and un-think analysis, Britain was, for the sake of imperium, bent on and rethink, through war, of a Middle-European space abetting a world holocaust (10 million dead for WWI) far unavoidably and unconditionally arrayed against Russia. (“Middle more tenaciously, in fact, than barbarous Wilhelmine Europe,” purportedly Walther Rathenau’s brainchild, Germany herself. Strategically, this appears to be the most which was conceived in invidious emulation of the United salient reality, which mainstream historiography, Marxist or States of America, would have consisted of a piecemeal otherwise, will not abide. composition of Germany, Austro-Hungary, and a That the censorious tongue of a Vetero-Marxist longitudinal swath from the Baltic to the Balkans, would cite Fischer, whose book is manifestly Anglophile, including a forkful of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria; this with a view to blight the reputation of Conjuring Hitler is grand enclosure was so laid out as to merge, with colonial symptomatic of this particular critic’s true patriotic colors design, into the oriental extension of the Ottoman Empire, since, in fact, most DDR historians, to whose authority the and project its rule over the Baltic Sea, shining like a leftist ogresses of the West otherwise defer most domineering sun upon the Scandinavian seaboard, the devotedly, regard Britain’s participation in the World War Crimea, Greece, and, in fine, Rump Russia).15 Germany’s merely as that of a capitalist power no less culpably hallucinated craving for a middle European cradle to be motivated than the others in seeking the elimination of a savagely carved out of Slavic flesh and dirt (did not Hitler’s rival —in the case of Britain, Germany.18 As shall be seen, Barbarossa “crusade,” after all, derive inspiration from the the DDR perspective on Britain changes radically, self-same maniacal fount?) finds a poignant —and, in its however, with respect to the latter’s role in WWII. twisted perspective, eerily prophetic— expression in a memorandum drafted on January 23, 1918 by the then The Russian Civil War (in the South) German Ambassador in Vienna, Georg von Wedel: What is most striking of the bad faith displayed by An imperialist Russia could perhaps make the critics of Conjuring Hitler, be they Vetero-Marxist friends with Germany, if we do not rob her of fanatics or Liberal imperialists (it’s all the same), is the her coast, but never with Mittel-Europa. In my repugnant omertà with which they pass over in silence some opinion, we must therefore stake everything of the most extraordinary events of this story, which, in on the other card, the disintegration of Russia their rawness, resoundingly disprove their historiographic […]. If Russia is reborn, our descendants will probably have to fight a second Punic War constructs. For the purposes of this Afterword, these against another Anglo-Russian coalition; then major sets of events are, above all, the dénouement of the the furthest eastward our position extends, the Russian Civil War and all the occurrences surrounding the better for us.16 dissolution of the Russo-German entente (1921-1933) all the way to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. A basic, linear This is the crux of the entire quaestio. Not whether recounting of these facts as they are chronicled in all Germany was more or less culpable of triggering the war, versions reads, in itself, as a merciless arraignment of the for such is an aspect no longer burdened by the weight of West’s duplicitous and incurably cynical determination, controversy; it is known: the early orientation of wherever and however it can, to foment and set up the Germany’s chancellorship in respect of the coming conditions for bloody conflict, if it profits in any way its conflagration was, ideally, to fight a three- to four-month elite to do so. On the count of the Russian Civil War, I “violent” blitzkrieg “against the Russian colossus,” crush believe enough is related in Conjuring Hitler in support of the latter, and thereafter find a speedy, “friendly” my thesis. However, the topic is so important, and its settlement with France and Britain (as confided by legacy so far-reaching, that I should like to go over it once

9 again, by drawing on some additional sources on the ogresses, such as William A. Williams, known in his time as British intervention in Russia during the year following the “the dean of Left-wing historiography,” likewise sentenced Armistice of November 11, 1918, especially in the categorically that the Allied intervention in Russia was southern theater of the war, which I had not originally unquestionably anti-Bolshevik. 21 included in the narration. The only enigmatic question in this episode is First of all, when reading western accounts of that whether the Reds were, in fact, supported by the Allies also fratricidal hecatomb, what strikes the reader is the through the direct provision of military and logistical unchallenged position of command that Britain seemed to support during the conflict itself. Which is highly plausible: have enjoyed over the entire Russian exchequer at the time if only the Russians could open their archives on this of the Tsarist overthrow: in other words, Britain deports period, we would in all likelihood find much to satisfy herself, yet is also doubtlessly regarded by all other forces, ourselves with. With typical uncandidness, Ullman and by Russians in primis, as the unquestioned comments in this respect that London, for its part, had plenipotentiary and ultimate umpire for the entire Eurasian “no overt official source of information about conditions space: from Murmansk to Vladivostok by way of on the territory controlled by the Soviet regime.” “There is Transcaucasia, not a soul, in any capacity, dares to move no evidence in the archives,” he further avers, “that much without first ascertaining where Britain stands. This fact was made of Sir Basil Thomson’s Directorate alone is sensational. Yet this is not brought into relief by Intelligence.”22 Frankly, that British Intelligence knew little mainstream historians, who tend to preface their accounts, of the military conditions of Trotsky’s army, and that the instead, with a note of caution. Says, e.g., Richard H. War Office did not “make much” of that information is Ullman in his Britain and the Russian Civil War: “the story is highly unlikely. If only the British could open their complex and confusing.”19 It is neither. Extraordinary, for archives, too. sure. The story of the White debacle on the Southern To repeat, what drove the British intervention was Front issued from an Anglo-French Convention drawn up the fear not of a “German-Bolshevik entente” but of a in Paris on December 23, 1917, whose purpose was “the German-White Russian alliance. It is known that at least delineation of a ‘sphere of action’ in Russia for France and since December 1917, the British, keen and alert as ever, England so that they could continue the war against established contacts with both Red and Whites, the Germany on the Eastern front and also combat the Russians regrouping of Germany in the East being always their that disagreed with them.”23 The French took the Crimea, the chief, obsessive preoccupation. It was patent, and Foreign British the Caucasus. So the strategy was clear: support Secretary Arthur Balfour said so explicitly, that a Russian forces so long as the German peril persisted and “reconstituted Tsarist regime would be a natural ally for [a discard them should the danger cease; quash any dissent. dynastic] Germany.” Hence Britain’s “two-track British So, after having logistically hamstrung Denikin’s Whites in policy of wooing both Bolsheviks and anti-Bolsheviks for every possible way since December 1918, the French the sake of mobilizing them against Germany to whatever suddenly bowed out of Odessa the following March, extent might be possible.”20 sequestering, as they went, Crimean State funds destined to From the historiographic viewpoint, the loyal the (White) Volunteer army and relieving Bolshevik forces archivists of the West have faced a difficult task; they have for a concerted attack. The British, for their part, went had, in other words, to fudge the story as much as possible about the same business far more obliquely, however, in order to attempt to efface what is manifest, namely especially as their foreseeably longer-term commitment Britain’s deliberate decision to hand over Russia to the and attendant strategic tasks were going to demand more Bolshevik fundamentalists with a view to creating, contra careful maneuvering. From Britain, Denikin allegedly Germany, a gigantic Eurasian ridge, east of which an obtained “vast quantities of all sorts of materials,” yet was (ideological) “enemy” could be bred and, in time, deployed never awarded the infantry and artillery that was actually for sealing the unfinished business with Germany. That requisite for waging proper warfare against the Reds.24 So much is clear, and the backstabbing of the Whites is, in while they appeared to be giving with one hand, the British this connection, logical. America’s exposure in this grand withdrew even more with the other, such as when, say, treachery was far less conspicuous than Britain’s, though they requisitioned supplies from the Whites and she, too, like the other Allies, was indubitably complicit, so transferred them to Denikin’s local adversaries, Georgia much so that similar patriotic apologias may be found even and Azerbaijan (which Britain would officially recognize in the leftist camp of U.S. academia, some of whose

10 on January 10, 1920), ever playing one indigenous faction Bulgaria —protesting the latter’s former enemy status— versus another along lines of ethnic antagonism. not only from eagerly assisting Denikin with the provision Eventually Denikin, and Wrangel after him, were of 40,000 fresh troops, but also from receiving Bulgaria’s lamed in their attempt to capture Moscow by a three- excess war material.30 Likewise, Britain spurned a similar pronged maneuver, which for all intents and purposes was offer of main forte to Denikin from Serbia. In the North, orchestrated with impressive savoir-faire by British lest they should have fallen into Red hands —so the strategists (and to a minor degree by their French British had mendaciously told the Whites, who had begged partners—viz. the maneuver in Poland, see below). First, them not to do so—, the British destroyed and dumped on the northern front, they forestalled the Finns from into the Dvina “guns, motor lorries, and millions of backing White commander Yudenitch by withholding “the rounds of ammunition, […] while the Russians, guarantee of Allied support”; realizing that, with Finland’s [powerless], grimly watched.”31 assistance, the Whites could have easily seized Petrograd, Britain overtly encouraged the Baltic countries, in October Propaganda & Public opinion 1919, to “make an arrangement with the Soviet Authorities,”25 Second, in Siberia, they neutralized Kolchak The pattern that emerges from the chronicles of so as to allow Trotsky’s Red Army to transfer men from Russia’s civil confrontation is, despite the superficial the Siberian front to the South. And, third, upon the “complexities,” unmistakable: the closer the Whites certainty that a White-Polish alliance would have been advanced to their strategic objectives —and win they conducive to the certain rout of the Reds, they incited patently could, this much seems beyond dispute— the Polish commander Joseph Pilsudski to betray Denikin’s more hurriedly British strategists set forth to sap them with Volunteer Army by signing a truce with the Bolsheviks.26 a shifting array of devices, not the least of which was the Patsies love to take credit for cosmic occurrences; that is pretext that the extension of military aid ultimately what they do. So Lenin, of course, claimed that the Reds depended on the goodwill of a “public” —Britain’s— won because the Allied quarreled amongst themselves notoriously exigent when called upon to assess the (which was nonsense), though he was candid enough to democratic fitness of a foreign petitioner. In this ordeal concede, on December 2, 1919, that had the Allied, at that we already observe in prototypical form the keen rhetorical juncture, poured into Russia “but a fraction of the gigantic game of “political correctness,” whose addressee is, in the armies that were released after the defeat of Germany,” first instance, “public opinion,” of course, though, “we [the Reds] should not, of course, have been able to probably, the Whites themselves were, in some fashion, at hold out.”27 the receiving end, as well. I say “probably” for though one Meanwhile Britain restlessly applied herself to must assume that the Whites obviously relied on direct sabotaging as thoroughly as she could any conceivable channels of communication with the British, and were, chance the Whites might have had to reverse the military ipso facto, above propagandistic bemusement, they — outcome of the confrontation. To begin, after Germany seasoned soldiers that they all were— nevertheless seemed surrendered, half-a-million Russian POWs became to have been unwitting of being double-crossed. This, at deployable in the conflict, and not by chance did Britain least, is what transpires from western accounts; which proceed to repatriate these men to Bolshevik- rather than leads one, then, to argue that Britain’s cant was directed as White-held Russia. To sustain the pretense of her alleged much to her people as it was to the Whites. It is difficult to support of her former allies, Britain fielded “C” class say what was exactly being leveraged here, whether the soldiers (unfit for battle) in unimportant theaters, such as Russians’ inferiority complex before the towering presence in the North and Siberia, to fight diversionary, decoying of Britain’s imperial paramountcy, which was plied to skirmishes.28 When Denikin launched his decisive addle and make them confound martial preeminence with offensive on July 3, 1919, “a British tank battalion and two moral superiority, or something altogether different. squadron of the Royal Air Force played important roles,” Britain’s appeasing masquerade of the 1930s immediately and, needless to say, with air cover, the push was comes to mind in this regard. efficacious, but, in the last stretch, the bombing of In any case, this game of deception envisages a Moscow “was denied them” for Britain’s War Office simple form of theatrics, whereby the imperial executive alleged there “was no military value in this operation.”29 sunders into two factions: a minority of stalwarts The same, pedestrian deceit was employed in the final “opposing” a majority of pragmatists. The polemical antics stages of the war (January 1920), when Britain vetoed of the former (the “conservatives”), who are summoned to

11 impersonate “the noble spirit of the old soldier,” allow the necessity to come to terms with the Bolsheviks latter (the “progressives”) to wheedle the desired effects somehow.36 out of the situation. (This conventional role-playing is a To return to the dupery of public opinion and the common feature of all political grandstanding and it is bamboozlement of the Whites, the latter were told, at this every citizen’s duty to take it at face value on pain of being juncture, that Britain was indeed riddled with “anxieties” as called a “conspiracist”). The rhetorical charade in respect to what sort of “political order” the Russians would of the “Russian question” ran its course by casting the War establish in the conquered Red-free zones; for, clearly, the Office in the role of the curmudgeonly anti-Bolshevik likely prospect that the former Tsarists would reflexively party and the Foreign Office (and the Premiership) in that restore “the oppressive, discredited monarchical regime,” of its possibilista “antagonist.” Denouncing what appeared which was “considered the antithesis of the Englishman’s to be a manifest desertion of Britain’s anti-Bolshevik conception of liberty,” would be abhorrent to the political allies,32 one of the most capable stewards of the British susceptibilities of Britain as a whole. In sum, the haggard Empire, Lord Alfred Milner, who was serving at the time and discombobulated Whites were pressured to as Secretary of State of the War Office, fired the opening understand, factor in, and reckon with the stringent shot by expostulating on December 18, 1918, that “it exigencies of British “public opinion”: the manifestly would be an abominable betrayal, contrary to every British “autocratic,” “focally anti-Semitic,”37 and incorrigibly instinct of honor and humanity [to abandon the Whites] to “reactionary” bent of Russia’s warrior-aristocrats was the tender mercies of their and our enemies [: it is] debt of rather the sort of item, as the latter were now told by their honor that we [have] to discharge.”33 Thereafter, the British military “advisers,” that people “at home” (i.e. course of British intervention in Russia has often been Britain) found downright unpalatable. This was in 1918- portrayed as an embroilment between the Foreign Office 1919. Not that the thoroughly “autocratic” and racist and the War Office, though, in fact, says Ullman, “there disposition of Russia’s officer caste had, in any way, really was no contest.”34 There was no contest for the marred the delicacy of Britain’s Foreign Office (and least vocal cheerleading of the anti-Bolshevik Party, of all that of its “public”) when the latter sought an alliance subsequently taken up by Winston Churchill —Milner’s with the Tsar against the Central Powers in 1907; successor at the War Office— never rose beyond the presumably, moods and circumstances had irremediably studied bluster of an isolated and dissonant voice shifted. Which was to say, in any event, that, in the descanting against what was de facto the chorality of impending fight against the Reds, logistical support, Government policy. Again, this was an act that Churchill, armored vehicles, manpower, and ammunition would no donning the same anti-Bolshevik vestments, would replay longer be forthcoming —despite any lesion the “British not long after this Russian interlude on the German scene instinct of honor and humanity” would putatively suffer as as a post-Versailles “appeaser” (“peace with honor”). It is result of such a disconcerting afterthought. Similar interesting to notice how on this occasion Churchill and considerations were said to be also behind Britain’s alleged former Premier David Lloyd George, who, in the case of “reluctance” to grant full recognition to Kolchak.38 Russia, had been Churchill’s official antagonist, regrouped Dissemblance, all of it. Truly, Old Russia was no longer of to play good cop to the Germans (Conjuring Hitler, p. 231): any use. From Britain’s viewpoint, gifting Eurasia to the magick of political theatrics. Notice, moreover, how Lenin’s pazzi made far more geopolitical sense. the key phraseology of contemporary (Liberal) historiography is almost entirely made up of the Post-Versailles with the USSR in the Offing pronouncement of the politicos that are called to the stahe at the decisive junctures: it was indeed Churchill that, in his In December 1919 David Lloyd George “factional opposition” to the Foreign Office, declaimed on contemplated putting an end to the Allied blockade against 11 March 1919 that “by combating and being a bulwark Russia, which in any case had not been cutting deep into against Bolshevism, […] a way of atonement [was] open to the metabolism of a blighted country already fully alienated Germany.” He was then typically countered by a voice of from Europe. Thereafter, inspired by a recent memoir of the Foreign Office suggesting that “it would be better that the Food Ministry that had suitably landed on his desk, the Petrograd should not be captured at all than it should be Prime Minister threw his weight behind a refreshing captured by the Germans.”35 And Prime Minister Lloyd initiative to engage Soviet agricultural cooperatives in a George systematically sealed the round by advocating the business partnership with His Majesty’s Government. The Russians, via their Foreign Minister, Chicherin, responded

12 eagerly.39 This was the seminal entente between Soviet Ah, here was, then, a pregnant instance of that Russia and Britain that would have burgeoned into a full- proverbial “British instinct of honor and humanity”… fledged trade agreement, the so-called Anglo-Soviet Pact of March 1921.40 As for the Anglo-American “feeding” and nurture of the Soviet upstarts, this is a story that Lenin, this “Complicated Primitive” would continue with the 1922 intervention of Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration (ARA); the ARA [Verhovensky:] “A few more groups, and I should would “help end the famine” and lead to the establishment have money and passports everywhere; so much at of conditions such that “for the Soviet Union, America least. Suppose it were only that? And safe places, [would become] the largest source of imports in 1924-1925 so that they can search as they like. They might and 1930-31, and the second largest in the years in uproot one group but they'd stick at the next. We'll set things in a ferment...Ah, what a pity there's no between.” In sum, the Allies passed on to the Soviets the proletariat! But there will be, there will be; we are bulk of their technological know-how by implanting on going that way..." Soviet soil myriads of firms, which stood ready to provide Dostoyevsky, The Possessed (II, viii) “all the technical assistance.”41 In his recollection of the post-Versailles talks of As mentioned in the Introductory, a great deal of December 1919, which were held in London, Lloyd Vetero-Marxism’s detestable pedantry issues from its George unexpectedly reveals what was being factually puerile idolatry of a mythographic fabrication such as the concerted among Europe’s elder statesmen in respect of cult of Lenin. Therefore, I could not, on the occasion of the Russian situation. Attributing the line of reasoning to this Muscovite edition, pass off the opportunity to spend a France’s Prime Minister (possibly, by projection, for this few words on this personage. My exclusive source is Stefan had been Britain’s strategic intention from the outset),42 T. Possony’s Lenin, The Compulsive Revolutionary. Possony, a Lloyd George relates that Clémenceau remained far more Viennese, appears to have been an operative deep into the apprehensive about Germany’s precarious post-armistice secret of the Intelligence princes: after serving with the status than he was of Bolshevik stirrings, so much so that psychological warfare section of the French Foreign Office the line of strategic expediency he came to advocate was in WWII, he came to the United States, where he lectured not to contain Russia, but rather “to restore [the latter] as a in a variety of military institutions of higher learning before counterweight against Germany.” The like prescription was becoming a professor of international relations at recommended for Poland, whose joint task, for her part, Georgetown University. The book is rich and sufficiently was to “to provide a check to Germany” in addition to fascinating in its own right as not to require here additional “damming up” the Russians.”43 bibliographical abutment. Granted, it runs along the track Even before it officially came into being as the of militant partiality (no hint whatsoever even at the U.S.S.R, by British decree as it were, Bolshevist Eurasia was possibility of Anglo-American king-making, however faint, born as the bulwark against Germany —not the other way around can be hoped for in such a work), but the credentials of its (which contention was, as said, a scripted line vulgarized authors are such that a commented recital of its contents by Churchill). Small wonder, then, that the USSR will be satisfactory within the economy of this essay. imploded when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Lenin is an object of teratological curiosity. He is We may fittingly conclude this section by evoking congealed hate, the congealment of that “unsurpassable a tasty vignette that appears in a side-note to this story. It hatred against the Tsarist regime and its supporters” that refers to the last stage of the grand betrayal (January 1920), seemed to have formed the lymph of his extraordinary at which time, Sir Halford Mackinder, the very man who tenacity, despite an overall precarious physical condition, academically codified Britain’s imperial stakes in this which would lead to an untimely death at age 54. What his geopolitical madness, was operationally deployed to the life’s story brings out in extraordinary relief is the South front as Special British High Commissioner. As ontological puppet-likeness of certain classes of politicos, carnage was raging in Russia’s every corner, and the Whites especially the so-called “revolutionists”: nothing illustrates seemed irretrievably lost, Mackinder was dispatched to more vividly the case of history creating the personage (vs. Denikin to assure the general on behalf of the British the personage creating history) than their vicissitudes. government that “all available ships [would] be used to What is astounding of Lenin’s progression is how piloted it evacuate the wives and families of Russian officers.”44 was within the confines of a nebulous aggregation such as was the international Social Democratic Party, whose 13 nature, history, and inner mechanisms appear, in the final local aristocrats, formidable countesses, a director of a analysis, to matter far more than the (puppet-like) regional bureau of statistics, wealthy wives of senators, a “personalities” that came, in turn, to front it. What is translator of Kant, an industrialist living in England, a astounding of Lenin’s now mythical revolutionary persona “foreign group” (?), an unknown “L.L.,” the Japanese is his career; it is the fact that, until he “revolutionized,” he (1905), the Austrians (1908), Parvus & the Germans (1917- had been every step of the way under the surveying gaze of the 1918), American financiers (said the London Times), a police and intelligence services of a dozen nationalities. A “French firm,” eccentric millionaires, wealthy electrical quintessential tyrannous type, he is the least democratic engineers, and a foremost industrialist. “How much money figure one could think of: “totally unforgiving, […] he Lenin received is not known, nor are the methods of managed to impress his followers as a beneficent human transference clear —he was shrewd in these matters.”47 A leader.” A power-driven “schizoid,” he rises as the chief deep mystery. doctrinaire of a segment’s of the Party’s organism through In the ceaseless struggle for a Russian sliver of a highly tenacious appropriation of Marxian discourse, Party leadership, Lenin waxes and wanes, rising fast, whose morphological declensions he re-arranges and descending faster, in cycles, feared far more than loved, screws together as if building up a scaffold for himself; he mostly detested. He comes, goes, agitates, strains himself, does not study to learn or to know. He seeks to exercise falls ill, and travels to Switzerland or Finland to recuperate, power through a virtuosic command of verbalisms. To in the green, in the cool, and so on —biding his time “publish” is, in this context, essential, even if only few read waiting for the propitious occasion, waiting to use or comprehend what he writes.45 Marxist discourse is whatever secret service wants to use him. In 1904 he acquired as a verbalist prosthetic needed for the happens to encounter in Lausanne, through the common assemblage of a personage, of a type that is requisite for acquaintance of yet another formidable countess, the the animation of the Party’s transnational nebula. prototypical hierophant of Nazism, i.e. the “man who gave Exclusively preoccupied with violent revolution, “the Hitler the ideas,” Jorg Lans von Liebenfels. What an society of the future [does] not particularly interest him.” encounter. In the conversation’s finale, Ulyanov tells the “Rather than being the leader of proletarians, he, with a Austrian: “Your ideas are right but before they win, our staff of middle-class intellectuals,” conducts his battle for counter-ideas will prevail. For Christians and Aryans on the control of the nebula by commanding “a group of whom you rely no longer are Christians and Aryans but juvenile delinquents” —renegadoes, like Stalin. The swine.”48 Possibly, Lenin had an original thought this one criminological drift of this fellowship runs along the lines time. of an exploitative reliance by a tenacious “coward” (i.e. What an easy and thrilling life of subversion these fearful of death),46 such as Lenin was, of low-tenacity revolutionaries, Red or otherwise, had (and still have), deviants not uncommonly prone to death (bandits); the after all: fake identities in passports of all hues provided by leader being the obverse of the followers, yet all of them Russian Intelligence whenever and wherever needed; sharing a crucial strain of barbarousness: violence, which is police-funded “revolutionary” newspapers/journals galore predatory brutality for the others, hatred/vengeance for with print shops everywhere —Nachalo, Zvedzda, Iskra, him. Vperyed (Japanese intelligence), Pravda, Nash Putj, Rabochi It is so-called “Police Socialism” that gestates Lenin Putj, Volya Rossii (German intelligence)…; necessarily and his likes. “Police Socialism” was a creation of the plenty of cash, to spend in an endless to and fro, crossing Tsar’s Intelligence Service by which it sought, via the and re-crossing borders, pausing by the lakeside to catch manipulation and infiltration of organized labor to control their breath, and then on the road again, resuming their strikes, and eventually suppress them violently. In this frenetic safari of the geopolitical grid as they pleased and framework of scientific provocation, Lenin’s agitprop was saw fit: Berlin, Prague, Geneva, Zurich, Paris, London, not only tolerated, but actually encouraged, possibly to Zakopane, Stockholm, Lausanne, Vienna, Helsinki, Capri, discredit the rest of the Party —at a time when, on the Warsaw, Leipzig…And back and forth, and up and down, other hand, the pacifist writings of Tolstoy were from East to West, from West to East, and back again, confiscated by order of the self-same political organs that several times around; networking, pamphleteering, plotting were facilitating Ulyanov’s ascent. and counter-plotting, in conferences, meetings, secret This giant, tentacled transnational Party and its caucuses, and congresses everywhere, with the Okhrana, rabid propagandists: who paid? The financial backers of and a slew of other Intelligence squads in their train, Russian nihilism form a queer brigade comprising princes, helping always to “manage things” —bontà loro. Fantastic.

14

The deeper thesis. Possony seems to be to themselves), lift him, wrap him, load him onto a train, intimating, in a nutshell, that it is the Russian Free-Masons and ship him straight to St. Petersburg, where, wonders of that are nourishing Revolution’s mastodon; it is they who all wonders, the crowd of the day acclaims him as “the fund the nebula, blackmailing, pressuring, as it were, the leader of the Petrograd masses, workers, soldiers, and Tsar into making modernizing concessions. In vain. sailors.” Yet, at the elections that are held shortly Chronology and pattern. Arrested in 1895 for thereafter, the Bolsheviks, who “expected a comfortable revolutionary activity, he is incarcerated in St. Petersburg majority and posed as champions of democracy,” poll a for two years before spending three more in Siberia; once disappointing 24 percent of the ballot, vs. 54 percent of out, he moves back into the “Party” and advances through the Social Revolutionaries, the election’s victors. Though capable “handling of funds” (from unknown sources). In he survives the attentat on his life on 30 August 1918, from 1905, on the occasion of the Russo-Japanese War, he is then on Lenin is nonetheless physically and politically primed for the first time as an indigenous fount of political spent; it is all Stalin’s tale thenceforth. Meanwhile, after his destabilization by Motojiro Akashi, an “outstanding death in 1924, it became imperative to segment Lenin’s officer” of Japanese Intelligence. Russia loses the war and brain into a myriad of filmy slices to individuate the core Lenin does not conclude much, but Akashi intuits Lenin’s of his extraordinary genius and mummify the corpse with enormous potential and ideal suitability for the game. In tallow and wax for the purpose of public necrolatry. An the ensuing upsurge of 1905 Lenin plays no decisive role; annotated account of the post-mortem adventures of by 1908, at age 38, he is politically defeated, profoundly Lenin’s remains would require a volume unto itself. mistrusted by Party members, encircled by a minute and Under Lenin, in the mythical beginning of the lukewarm retinue, and his “doctrines” generally out of workers’ revolution, the Bolsheviks, writes Possony, favor. At which time, incidentally, “it would seem as “abolished the institutions through which the economy though the Bolsheviks [are] little more than an operational had been directed, but were unable to invent better arm of the Okhrana.” As these creatures thrive in chaos, instruments. They advocated self-determination but did the prodromes of war logically galvanize their lot. New not permit it. They adopted the agricultural program of the beginnings. So in 1908, in view of the forthcoming Social Revolutionaries, but did not fulfill this program confrontation with Russia over Austria’s annexation of either; yet they destroyed genuine agrarian reforms which Bosnia, he is deployed anew as a strategic asset, this time had been accomplished by the Tsarist regime […]. They by Austrian intelligence (whose officers were mostly Poles even betrayed their soldiers: though they released many and Ukrainians) and the General Staff, his communications from duty, they failed to tell them that this act was at with Russia being “handled in part through [Joseph] Germany’s bidding […]. The Bolsheviks were terrified of Pilsudki’s network” —the self-same Polish commander free debate and abolished free speech without delay. […] who, not by chance, would betray Denikin in the Civil In December 1917, Lenin signed a decree for the War (see above); meanwhile, in Russia —and this is nationalization of banks and trusts […]. Subsequently, he puzzling— the Okhrana continues actively to fuel the regretted many radical measures of the early decrees that publication of Pravda. Then, things finally come to a head were written for the most part by Mikhail A. Larin, a in August 1914. Possony asserts that the destabilizing former international Menshevik […], and an associate of effect sought by the Austrians, as they fomented continual Parvus.”49 waves of strikes in Russia through the conduits of the local The culmination of it all was, among other Social Revolutionaries in their pay, was to deter Russia’s disasters (not to mention the Civil War), the famine of military mobilization and weaken the Russo-French 1921, which, as said, the Americans, of all “enemies,” alliance by “demonstrating” thereby to France how feeble proceeded to alleviate. and unreliable her eastern ally was. But Russia, despite the evidence and despite the pleas of Rasputin, persevered and Nazism & German Heavy Industry “accepted the Austro-German challenge”: than to make even the puniest of pluralistic concessions, Russia would As was mentioned, the Monopolbourgeoise is, in the much rather go to war, and lose it if need be: to hell with the reconstruction of the DDR school, the villain. If one is to Duma. The rest, as they say, is history. When Kerensky is suppose that “financial oligarchy” alone is in control of falling, in April of 1917, our compulsive revolutionist is, as politics, it logically follows that Hitler and Fascism can known, sitting like a lame duck in Zurich; and like a only be the organic expression of these economic interests: package, the perennially catastrophic Germans (above all they “are merely personifications of economic relations.”50

15

The 1929-1933 crisis (“Krisenzyklus”), which brought these Schroeder, whose banking house, J. H Stein of Cologne, developments to a boil, is described by Marxist-Leninists was the German branch of London’s Schroeders, and, as the result of the incestuous fusion of bureaucratic allegedly, —making it all magically click into place— the apparatus and monopolistic capital. And seeing how strong most important financial connection between the steel Germany’s working mass had become by 1932, the only concern and (a particular branch of) the electro-chemical solution was a fascist dictatorship. Hitler wanted war and sector.55 war meant profits, so industry helped; in exchange, the The Schleicher intermission receives a revelatory Führer offered his popular charisma to shield the treatment at the hands of the DDR ogresses. Schleicher’s industrialists from the “battle-readiness” of the plan of National Emergency —which contemplated the Communist masses (Kampfbereitschaft)51 and to bridge the nationalization of steel concerns; cooperation with usual rifts within the Monopolbourgeoisie and between the France’s coal and potash cartels; the apportionment of the latter and the agrarians. The villain’s single-mined Junkers’ East Elbian estates and redistribution thereof to a objectives were, then, salary-compression and renovated guild of small farmers (a so-called process of emasculation of the masses on the home front, and the “internal colonization” on behalf of the Bauernschaft); an annihilation of the Soviet Union on the international entente with Röhm and the Nazi Left-wing; and State- front.52 Within this miserable narrative structure, DDR managements of the unions— is taken to be an integral historians inscribe the existence of an acrimonious feud component of a greater and clearly heinous plot to wage a between heavy industry (Thyssen, Krupp) and the massive and genocidal crusade against the Soviet Union; chemical industry (I.G. Farben), steel vs. dyes, which also and this plot is, in turn, circumscribed within a grander translated into Dresdner Bank vs. Deutsche Bank, with conspiracy to conquer the world in competition with the I.G. Farben being pro-France, and Steel, temporarily USA in a global contest for world hegemony.56 represented by Schacht, pro-U.S.53 In explanation of the In the DDR story, Hitler and the clique around 1934 Blood Purge, the Marxist-Leninists further claim that von Papen both envisaged, for their part, the anti-French Röhm’s Brown-shirts were a paramilitary ancilla of I.G. creation of Mittel-Europa,57 but before they could set out Farben: with the Night of the Long Knives, the steel cartel to implement that vision, they had to mollify the Anglo- purportedly repulsed I.G.’s bid for domination and Americans in order to unshackle Germany from its asserted the predominance of Anglo-American interests. 54 indebtedness, hence the temporary prominence of the Unlike their Liberal brethren, who are bound by a “pro-American” Schacht, who succeeded in obtaining the patriotic oath, the Vetero-Marxists do not have, by default, approval of the Bank of International Settlements to to throw themselves into a frenzied and shameless Germany’s rearmament program. Once granted the right negation of Anglo-American agency in German affairs; to rearm, it was this clique’s conviction that Germany rather, they explain it away and grind it into semi- could stand her own ground versus France, the Anglo- insignificance through the monotonous application of the Americans, and the Soviet Union. So when Germany self-same economistic schemata: which is to say that finally matured into a full-blooded “imperial power” keen foreign intercourse, in their view, is merely the result of on the conquest of world supremacy (“die Eroberung der capitalism’s inherent drive to expand; once autochthonous Weltherrschaft”) —and the rise of Nazism is supposedly capitalist forces monopolize the home turf, they reputedly there to attest it—, she was automatically propelled to crave, in organic fashion, to proliferate outside the national attack her “natural” foe: the Soviet archangel in the East. confines. This would account for the propagation of the But, then, lo and behold, contrary to Marxism-Leninism’s chemical pole toward France, and that of steel toward the biblical prognostications, this gigantic anti-Soviet coalition United States, and vice versa, if envisioned from either the of Western bourgeois fronted by Germany’s Nazi ramrod French or American perspective. In the so-called “third never came to pass. No, in fact, it so happened that the stage” of capitalist progression, each nation, solo or Anglo-Americans sided with Soviet Russia, the arch- federated, is eventually led to war by its Monopolbourgeoise enemy, to eliminate, a former “confederate,” Nazi against one or more foreign rivals. Squaring the circle, Germany, that had become too ambitious. Indeed, claim DDR historians claim that the British, in fine, were the DDR ogresses, after some time, the British brought later into the game so as to mediate in the rivalry Monopolbourgeoisie had become alarmed at the intrusions of between Germany’s pro-French and pro-American German imperialism into areas of Western concern.58 And factions: hence the sensational appearance, shortly before so it was that the Allies “were forced to ally themselves Hitler’s elevation to the chancellorship, of Kurt von with the Soviet Union to safeguard their survival, protect

16 their interests, and eliminate the dangerous rival that very model whose implementation Soviet planners were Hitler’s Germany was.” Nothing personal, really, just catastrophically failing to effect. But, far more importantly, business: “the Western powers,” conclude the Vetero- the instant rise and fall, and subsequent liquidation of Marxists, “wished only to weaken an imperialist power Schleicher, along with his fedelissimo von Bredow (and [which] had become excessively strong.”59 The good old, Gregor Strasser), is crucial in that it points to that other trusty “bulwark against Soviet Russia” had become the climactic chapter of this entire saga, which is the Russo- besieged citadel in the end. What a story. German (secret) collaboration: Schleicher could not have How this historiographic basura, which, been bent upon riding rough shod over Russia for he, aesthetically, is even harder to stomach than the official along with a select few others in the highest echelons of refuse that the West passes off as “history,” could have Germany’s military and Intelligence circles, had been for a gained intellectual acceptance among grown men, past the decade the heart and soul of that pact of military exchange days of the Cold War (when its institutionalization, then, and secret rearmament between his country and the Soviet was a bad enough thing), can only be chalked up to its Union. elementariness, or better to the very Primitivität of its childish narrative structures. It is a simple fable for simple The Secret Russo-German Entente of Köpfe. First of all, there was no transcendental Zyklus afoot 1921-1933 behind the economic vicissitudes of Weimar; the story told in Conjuring Hitler shows this clearly (esp. Chapter IV, the “Whereas DDR authors make much of the ties “good one,” as conceded by our critic). Second, the entire between the [German Army] and the secret rearmament fabulistic sub-feuilleton of “steel versus chemicals,” of carried on in Sweden and Spain, they pass over in silence “Thyssen vs. Farben,” etc., is entirely specious in the important assistance rendered to the Reichswehr by the accounting for Hitler’s rise to power, considering that, Soviet Army.” 62 Although it is difficult to say which while it stood monolithically in place throughout the nadir constitutes, among their many omissions omertose, the most of the crisis (1931-1933), German industry, to the extent flagrant evidence of the Vetero-Marxists’ bad faith, one that it actually could, never did convey the absolute may single out their measured sidestepping of Stalin’s majority to the NSDAP; far from it, in fact: 37.3 percent purge of the Red Army and appeasement of Nazi was the best the Hitlerites could pull off in the worst (best Germany, for the two are connected, as possibly the most for them) possible socio-economic conditions. Schacht culpable. “What a joke!” sneered the critic at the was no simple “American” pawn; indeed, he was, also suggestion that Soviet Russia de facto participated in this through his association with Norman, of course, much grand cozenage of Germany. But the facts speak clearly. closer to British Interests, which were by no means For years, Soviet Russia had shipped substantial loads of brought into the game at a “later date”: they were there war-essential materiel to the Reich; that it did so up until to from the very beginning, i.e. since November 1918. the very eve of Germany’s penetration of Belarus in June Moreover, the suggestion that Britain and the United 1941, is a matter of common notoriety —which, per se, is States pursued economic objectives that set them at evidently no element sharp enough to graze the faith of the political variance on the German chessboard is utter ogresses; nor, alas, is the reality of these transfers nonsense, especially in light of the dealings of key players sufficiently glaring as to inhibit the Liberals, on the other such as, say, the Dulles Brothers, whose white-shoe law hand, from advancing their typically inane sophistries to firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, conducted business on behalf evade what is cogent. Namely that the Nazis, fiendish of both I.G. Farben and the Schroeder group.60 As for the though they might have been, had been durably duped into Blood Purge, no such demonstrable community of fighting another two-front war by a factual entente among interests existed between the electro-chemical pole and the the Anglo-Americans and the Soviets, which must have Stormtroopers.61 been reached at least since Hitler’s accession to power. Finally, the claim that Schleicher’s Plan was Stalin did not appease Hitler, as the Liberal “rationale” ultimately aimed at genocide in Soviet Russia is cretinous goes, because he wished “to keep the Nazis at bay,”63 but hyperbole thoroughly unsupported by fact; if anything, this to deceive them, instead, i.e. by making them believe that, nasty insinuation seems rather inspired by the miffing spite unsuspecting of their designs (“Barbarossa”), he would that the DDR ogresses must have felt upon realizing that honorably “feed the eagle” in keeping with the letter of the Schleicher’s fascistoid blueprint for State Socialism was in Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. No less culpable are, in this actuality an efficient and thought-out expression of the regard, Marxist and Liberal historians alike in glossing over

17 the exceptionally queer circumstances leading to the Conclusion: Loyal Propagandists, the signing of that pact, chief amongst them Britain’s dispatch Ones and the Others, Together of a second-class delegation to Moscow in August 1939 (Conjuring Hitler, 244-254). If only the Russians would open The facts of the dispute illustrate that, by virtue of their archives, we could begin to understand the intricacies the discursive complementarity they exhibit vis-à-vis one of this pivotal phase. another, the Vetero-Marxist reading of history and the Directly related to Stalin’s appeasement are the official line of Liberal historiography reinforce one another execution of Tukhachevsky and the subsequent in what appears a joint effort to obfuscate the main decapitation of his General Staff, both of which are events outlines and true strategic stakes of the power-games of such enormity that it would seem unthinkable that they played by the West. The ones speak only of class and could ever be given short shrift, or no mention monopolistic exploitation, the others of chance and whatsoever, in a standard account of Hitler’s rise to power. democratic triumph; the dynamics are always de- It is manifest that, in a full reversal of the policy of personalized; and, unless it is a foreign autocrat, no actor, cooperation between the Armed Forces of Germany and politically defined, is ever portrayed in this diptych as wielding of the Soviet Union, the elimination of Tukhachevsky in power purely and simply. The discursive affinity between 1937 mirrored that of his German counterparts in 1934. the political pieties of Marxism and Liberalism is, on the These were the officers that, in 1921, had set up “Group one hand, given away, so to speak, in the various R” in Germany’s Defense Ministry for the purpose of conciliatory finales of DDR “scholarship,” in which rearming in a collaborative effort with Soviet Russia. The Communist historians eventually acknowledge that, when headquarters of Group R in Moscow were in the secret it was all over and done with, the United States and the office of the Reichswehr on Vorovskoyo Street. Present at United Kingdom had “made great sacrifices and the inauguration of the venture were Karl Radek, one of contributed ‘essentially’ to the victory over the fascist Lenin’s companions on the fateful 1917 voyage across block.”66 By defeating Nazi Germany, and thereby Germany, Schleicher and Bredow, Hammerstein, removing “the most immediate threat to the new Soviet Tukhachevsky, and Guderian. The Nazis would shut down State,” the ogresses graciously concede that the Allied the operation in September 1933, eight months after their Powers of the West had “served as the instruments of take-over.64 social progress.”67 Amen. On the other hand, there is no The intrigue against Tukhachevsky was apparently mystery in the fact that Marxism and Liberalism, both of initiated in Paris by Skoblin, a former White General which are jointly arrayed in their common objurgation of working as a double-agent for Moscow and taking his cue “conspiracy theory,” may come to bolster one another from the GPU. It so seems that the Soviets, by way of politically for the simple reason that they themselves are Skoblin, lured Nazi intelligence into buying “precious antagonistic conspiracy theories cut from the same information” according to which Tukhachevsky was discursive cloth. planning on overthrowing Stalin’s regime with the backing “The liberal myth of the collectivist conspiracy,” as of the Red Army. Enticed by what they took as an Karl Polanyi brilliantly argued in The Great Transformation, opportunity to weaken Russia (militarily), Hitler and “has it that protectionism was merely the result of sinister Himmler encouraged Heydrich to proceed with the interest of agrarians, manufacturers, and trade unionists, “transaction”: all the Russians were asking was to supply who selfishly wrecked the automatic machinery of the Stalin with “evidence” of Tukhachevsky’s past treasonous market.” The Marxists merely reversed the conspiratorial activity with the German High Command and of his terms of this yarn to derive a “crude class theory of social forthcoming coup. Lending itself to the machination, development,” for which, “pressure for markets and zones Heydrich’s Sicherheitdienst joined forces in 1937 with three of influence was ascribed to the profit motive of a handful Soviet agents, who were de facto in charge of the of financiers[; and] imperialism was explained as a capitalist operation, to forge, in Berlin, the documents that Stalin’s conspiracy to induce governments to launch wars in the inquisitors would use as incriminating evidence during the interest of big business, […] in combination with Purge. 65 armament firms who miraculously gained the capacity to drive whole nations into fatal policies, contrary to their vital interests.” It is essentially the same story with the antagonism inverted (pro-market entrepreneurs vs. a class- conscious proletariat, and vice-versa): “the liberal

18 economic outlook thus found powerful support in a narrow class theory. Upholding the viewpoint of opposite classes, Parapolitics, Carl Schmitt, and the National Security Complex liberals and Marxists stood for identical propositions.”68 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012): 213-272. And with this, for the time being, I consider my 6 Kurt Gossweiler, Der Putsch der keiner war. Die Röhm-Affäre cumulative work of refutation against the critics of 1934 und der Richtungskampf in deutschen Faschismus (Cologne: Conjuring Hitler satisfactorily discharged. PapyRossa Verlag, 2009), 204, 381, 427; Andreas Although the present situation does not appear Dorpalen, German History in Marxist Perspective. The East promising in the least, we in the West continue to hope German Approach (London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Publishers, that there might be peace and union across Eurasia, and Ltd., 1985), 362. thereupon, all around the world not too far in the distant 7 Dorpalen, German History, 284 future. And we wonder; again, what a courageous gesture, 8 Alois Mosser and Alice Teichova, “Investment Behavior what a lesson in geniality it would be if the Russians would of Industrial Joint-Stock Companies and Industrial Share- unlock the portals to their archives so as to let everyone Holdings by the Österreichische Credit-Anstalt: know what really went down in those terrible years. If the Inducement or Obstacle to Renewal and Change in Russians would open their archives, they would have the Industry in Interwar Austria?” in Harold James, Hakan opportunity to show the world who is the better people, Lindgren and Alice Teichova (Eds.), The Role of Banks in the for we westerners appear to be beyond salvage. Of course, Interwar Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, to do so, Russia would have to let go of the “Great 1991). Patriotic War” and the late hero-worship of Stalin. Is it too 9 Aurel Schubert, The Credit-Anstalt Crisis of 1931 much to ask? Is it feasible? Would it of itself be sufficient? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 11, 44. Who knows? We shall see. 10 Kurt Gossweiler, Aufsäzte zum Fascismus (Berlin : To conclude in epigraphic fashion, I would like to Akademie-Verlag, 1988), 317, 320, 333-334, 335. cite a line from an interview of a few years ago, of Pete 11 Dorpalen, German History, 287. Townshend, the guitarist and front-man of the legendary 12 Stefan T. Possony, Lenin, The Compulsive Revolutionary British rock band, The Who, who had the following to say (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964),158-159. about this whole story: 13 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class. An Economic Study of Institutions (New York: Macmillan, 1899), We still don’t know what happened in those 188-211. two last big wars […]. All we know is the way 14 Thorstein Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial that it ended. And it ended with this fucking Revolution (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915). huge bomb. 15 Fritz Fischer, Germany’s War Aims in the First World War

(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1967 [1961]), Rome, March 2016 iv, xxi, 33, 63, 68, 87, 88, 247, 302, 416-419, 580, 607.

16 Ibid, 500. 17 Fritz Fischer, World Power or Decline. The Controversy over Endnotes Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1974 [1965]), 28-29; Fischer, 1 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation. The Political and Germany’s War Aims, 92. Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968 18 Dorpalen, German History, 285; Dorpalen refers here in [1944]), 153. particular to the works of Joachim S. Streisand and Fritz 2 Anatole France, L’ile des pingouins (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, K. Klein. Éditeurs, 1980), iv. 19 Richard H. Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917-1921 — 3 José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: Britain and the Russian Civil War, 1918-1920, Vol. II W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993 [1930]), 137, 138. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 172. 4 Gerald Heard, Doppelgangers —An Episode of the Fourth, the 20 Ilya Somin, Stillborn Crusade. The Tragic Failure of Western Psychological, Revolution of 1997 (London: Cassel, 1965), 101. Intervention in the Russian Civil War (New Brunswick, NJ, and 5 For a an account of Italy’s civil war of the 1970s and its London: Transaction Publishers, 1996), 7, 10, 15, 18, 28- effects on Italian society, see Guido G. Preparata, “A 29, 38, 39, 40, 51-52, 53, 54, 65-66, 84, 109, 136, 139. Study in Gray: The Affaire Moro and Notes for a 21 Ibid. 82. Reinterpretation of the Cold War and the Nature of 22 Ullman, Britain and Russian Civil War, 173. Terrorism,” in Eric Wilson (Ed.), The Dual State: 19

23 John Reshetar, The Ukrainian Revolution. A Study in 55 Ibid., 263. Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 56 Ibid., 398. 1952), 234, emphasis added. 57Dirk Stegman, “Mittel-Europa, 1925-1934: Zum Problem 24 Ullman, Britain and Russian Civil War, 50. des Kontinuität deutschen Aussenhandelspolitik von 25 Ibid., 265, 281. Stresemann bis Hitler,” in Dirk Stegmann, Bernd-Jürgen 26 George A. Brinkley, The Volunteer Army and the Allied Wendt, and Peter Christian Witt (Eds.), Industrielle Intervention in South Russia, 1917-1920. A Study in the Politics Gesellschaft und Politisches System. Beiträge zur Politischen and Diplomacy of the Russian Civil War (South Bend, IN: The Sozialgeschichte (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft GmbH, University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 125-136, 151, 189, 1978), 220. 207-210, 270. 58 Dorpalen, German History, 431, emphasis added. 27 Somin, Tillborn Crusade, 15, 179. 59 Ibid., 445. 28 Ullman, Britain and the Russian Civil War, 30 60 Nancy Ligasor and Frank Lipsius, A Law Unto Itself. The 29 Ibid., 215-216. Untold Story of the Law Firm Sullivan & Cromwell (New York: 30 Ibid., 320-321. William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1988), 126, 139. 31 Ibid., 197. 61 Dorpalen, German History, 406. 32 Ibid., 305. 62 Ibid., 348. 33 Ibid., 60, 305 63 Ibid., 342, 437. 34 Ibid., 302. 64 Hans Magnus Enzensberger, The Silences of Hammerstein – 35 Ibid., 258, emphasis added. A German Story (London: Seagull Books, 2009 [2008]), 88- 36 Ibid., 50, 60, 153, 161. 100. 37 Peter Kenez, Civil War in South Russia, 1919-1920 (Los 65 Wilhelm Hoettl, The Secret Front. The Inside Story of Nazi Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), 172-173. Political Espionage (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 38 Ullman, Britain and Russian Civil War, 216, 260. 1953), 80-86. 39 Ibid., 310, 317, 318. 66 Dorpalen, German History, 445. 40 Richard H. Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, Volume III, 67 Ibid., 331. The Anglo-Soviet Accord (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 68 Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 151. University Press, 1972). 41 Frank Costigliola, Awkward Dominion. American Political, Economic and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1918-1933 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984), 90. 42 Ullman, Britain and Russian Civil War, 314. 43 Ibid., 312-318. 44 Ibid., 325. 45 Possony, Lenin, 392 46 Ibid., 388. 47 Ibid., 80-81. 48 Wilfried Daim, Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab (Wien: Verlag Carl Ueberreuter, 1994), 111. 49 Possony, Lenin, 257-258, 259, 278. 50 Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism (London: CSE Books, 1978), 16, 17, 32. 51 Eberhard Czichon, Wer verhalf Hitler zur Macht? Zum Anteil der deutschen Industrie an der Zerstörung der Weimarer Republik (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1967), 13, 55. 52 George W. F. Hallgarten and Joachim Radkau, Deutsche Industrie und Politik, von Bismarck bis heute (Cologne: Europäische Verlaganstalt, 1974), 200-220. 53 Gossweiler, Der Putsch, 33, 89, 90, 136, 202. 54 Ibid., 173, 263-264, 344, 381, 397, 398.

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