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Note a Soviet-German Military Collaboration Throughout

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Note a Soviet-German Military Collaboration Throughout NOTE A SOVIET-GERMAN MILITARY COLLABORATION THROUGHOUT this period, the secret military agreements formed the hard kernel of Soviet-German relations. Since only those im­ mediately concerned were initiated into the details of this collaboration, and the records, at any rate on the German side, were systematically destroyed, information about it is intermittent and imperfect. Colla­ boration in aeronautical matters is the best documented, and was probably the most important. Early in 1924 a crisis occurred in the affairs of the Junkers aircraft factory at Fili, operated under a concession agreement from the Soviet Government. 1 The Reichswehr demanded a large expansion of the Fili enterprise and the association with Junkers of another firm specializ­ ing in the manufacture of aircraft engines (apparently the Bayerische Motorenwerke) - a project which from the outset encountered strong opposition from Junkers.2 As a result of negotiations a new agreement was signed on May S' 1924, between Sondergruppe R. of the Reichswehr Ministry, the Junkers firm and the Soviet authorities. Under this agreement, or on the occasion of it, the Reichswehr promised to Junkers a further subvention of eight million gold marks, in addition to four millions already advanced, for the extension of the factory at Fili; the Soviet authorities promised to place a large order for aircraft for the Red Fleet.J The shortage of Soviet orders for Fili was one of a list of grievances put forward by Brockdorff-Rantzau in an interview with Trotsky a month later.4 But the question of the supply of aero­ plane engines remained acute; and in June 1924 Rozengolts was trying I See The Bolshevik Revolution, I9I7-I9Z3, Vol. 3, p. 436. • Letters of February 29, 1924, from Junkers to the military authorities were published in Die PJiilzische Post, October II, 1928; aicraft engines were at this time being purchased by the Soviet Union in Germany (Auswiirtiges Amt, 9524/671391-2). 3 The agreement was first disclosed in a Social-Democratic Party pamphlet of March 1927 Sowjetgral!aten, translated in C. F. Melville, The Russian Face oj Germany (1932), pp. 178-204. (This book, while journalistic in style, and sometimes vague and inaccurate in detail, was the first serious attempt to collect and publish comprehensive information about Soviet-German military col­ laboration.) Details of the agreement are taken from Seeckt's letter of August 18, 1924 (see p. lOll, note 2 below; for a later statement of Seeckt in April 1926 see Auswlirtiges Amt, 6698/105414-6). 4 For,the report of this conversation see p. 61, note I above. 1010 PT. V SOVIET-GERMAN COLLABORATION IOII to persuade Bayerische Motorenwerke to set up a factory to produce them in the Soviet Union. I Relations between the Reichswehr and Junkers also continued to be difficult, and provoked an angry letter from Seeckt to Professor Junkers, the head of the firm, on August 18, 192 4 : The march of events in Russia [wrote Seeckt] has proved that only a concentration of all industries interested in air armaments can satisfy the needs of the Reich. It is only on a broad financial basis that it is possible to keep alive in Russia a branch of industry which can serve our rearmament. It would be a fatal error on your part to imagine that the Sondergruppe will continue to invest substantial sums in a purely economic enterprise. A complete modification of the methods of work adopted in Russia is inevitable and urgent.2 Whatever the immediate results of this letter, friction continued. By the beginning of 1925 the factory, which in the previous year had employed 1000 workers, German and Russian, was said to have been " almost at a standstill ". On the other side complaints were made that the Soviet Government had failed to carry out its promise to provide living quarters for the German workers. 3 In May 1925 the Soviet authorities proposed that they should take over the factory at Fili, Junkers undertaking to supply in future only technical help and advice; and Junkers and Fischer, the representative of the German Ministry of War who was then in Moscow, were inclined to agree.4 But the German Government evidently rejected the plan. In the spring of 1926 the Junkers firm, unable to obtain satisfaction of its claims against the German Government or, in view of the peculiar status of the enterprise, to take legal action, circulated a memorandum of its grievances to Reichstag deputies and other prominent persons.s Thereafter the affair was hushed up. The factory continued to operate, though it does not appear that the difficulty of manufacturing engines there was ever solved.6 The Reichswehr gradually became less I Auswiirtiges Amt, 4564/162746. Z Seeckt's letter was published in Vorwiirts, October 12, 1928. 3 Pravda, March 23, 1926 - one of the rare published Soviet sources for these transactions. 4 Auswiirtiges Amt, 4564/162784, 162796-7. 5 Much detailed information about this affair not directly relevant to German-Soviet relations will be found in the archives (see especially a memo­ randum by Seeckt in Auswiirtiges Amt, 6698/105414-6); for references to it see also C. F. Melville, The Russian Face of Germany (1932), pp. 71-73. It appears to have been one of the bases of the revelations in the Reichstag in December 1926, which will be discussed in a subsequent volume. 6 For a statement by Hilger to this effect see The Bolshevik Revolution, I9I 7-I 9z3, Vol. 3, p. 436, note 5; G. Hilger, WiT und deT Kreml (1955), p. 196, speaks of .. the not unjustified reproof that his firm [i.e. Junkers) had been guilty of a breach of contract through having failed, contrary to the obligation 1012 FOREIGN RELATIONS PT. dependent on its products, and it was eventually sold to the Soviet Government. 1 Meanwhile in 1924 the business of building aeroplanes was supple­ mented by a new and more promising development. A large airfield was placed at the disposal of the German air arm at Lipetsk in central Russia north of Voronezh. This had two functions: the training of German pilots in military aviation, and testing of modern military planes - neither of these things being possible on German soil under the restrictions of the Versailles treaty. A certain amount of minor manufacture and repair work was apparently also undertaken. The establishment was an entirely German creation. The Russians, according to the German account of the matter, contributed nothing but the building materials - timber and stone; everything else was transported from Germany. Training began in 1925, and was in full swing by 1926. The permanent staff of the establishment amounted to about 60. In the summer flying season, about 50 pilots and from 70 to 100 technicians came from Germany for training. Secrecy was maintained without great difficulty. The major part of the material was transported by sea from Stettin to Leningrad in order to avoid the embarrassment of customs inspection on intervening frontiers. The personnel travelled as tourists. 2 The part played by these arrangements in the development of German military aviation is evident. But the advantages on the Soviet side were also substantial. At first, the Rus­ sians had everything to learn. The establishment at Lipetsk remained purely German, and no Soviet aviators were ever trained there. But elsewhere, in Soviet flying schools, " with the knowledge and approval of the German Government, former officers, sometimes removed from the active list specifically for this purpose, acted as instructors with the Red air force".3 undertaken by it, to put in operation the manufacture of aeroplane engines". According to Pravda, March 23, 1926, the factory .. almost entirely failed to equip itself for the production of engines ". I According to C. F. Melville, The Russian Face of Germany (1932), p. 77, it .. became the property of the Soviet Government" at some unspecified date - apparently not later than 1926; Kostring, in an oral statement of 1948, gave the date of the sale as 1929 (Les Relations Germano-Sovietiqlles, ed. J.-B. Duroselle (1954), p. 197). F. L. Carsten in Survey, No. 44-45, October 1962, p. 122, quoting the Seeckt archives, states that it was" closed down" in 1927. 2 An article by General Helm Speidel in Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte (Stuttgart), i (1953), 17-45, gives a full account of Lipetsk; Speidel was closely associated with the training of flying officers. He does not mention the Junkers' factory, and was less familiar with other aspects of German-Soviet military collaboration; some statements about them in the article are inaccurate. But his account of Lipetsk is probably reliable. 3 Auswiirtiges Amt, 4564/163630; for the beginning of the Soviet air force see Vol. 2, pp. 419-420. v SOVIET-GERMAN COLLABORATION 1013 Of the other aspects of military collaboration less can be recorded. The manufacture of shells for the Reichswehr in Soviet factories con­ tinued, and caused a scandal when it came to light in December 1926. A German factory in Moscow manufactured 30-mm. guns for the Reichswehr and presumably also for the Red Army.1 The factory for tanks at Kazan was supplemented by the establishment of a tank training school on the river Kama (which gave its name to the estab­ lishment) to the east of Kazan.z It was apparently modelled on Lipetsk except in one respect: at Kama Soviet officers went through the courses side by side with the Germans.3 The work on the equipment of a poison gas factory at Trotsk in the province of Samara was subject to constant delays and interruptions. Rumours of Soviet-German collaboration in preparing for chemical warfare reached the Polish authorities and found their way into a semi-official Polish publication; and Trotsky, in a speech of May 19, 1924, combined a specious denial of them with a reference to the German raid on the Soviet trade delegation in Berlin.4 In July 1924 the equipment, according to a confidential note by Krasin, " has in part been despatched from Ger­ many, and in part is there awaiting despatch".
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