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"FIGHT FOR FREEDOM" Editorial Board

LUIS ARAQUISTAIN CAM!LLE HUYSMANS JOSEF BELINA PROFESSOR A. PRAGIER JOHN BROWN M. SLUYSER CURT GEYER RENNIE SMITH W . W. HENDERSON MARY E. SUTHERLAND,7 j.P. GERMAN COMMUNISTS

by ./ SPARTAKUS

Foreword by ALFRED M. WALL

Translated from the German by. E. Fitzgerald TO THE MEMORY OF PAUL- LEVI -

SPARTAKUS has lived in Germany all. his life andIeft shortly after Hitler came.,.10 power. ' From his youth he has worked in the German Labour Movements-Socialist and Communist. He was one of the early "Spartakists" in the last war and he is still . today . a devoted fighter against German aggression and ' from whatever source it may spring. . CONTENTS

PAGE . FOREWORD 4

PART l THE SPARTACUS LEAGUE 1914-1918 7

PART II

THE 1919-1933 22

THE PARTY AND THE VERSAILLES TREATY 22 THE KAPP "PUTSCH" 28 THE OF GERMANY 30 THE W..ARCH ACTION . 34

THE NATIONALISTIC LINE ...... ' 36 THE RAPALLO TREATY' 38 THE 39 SCHLAGETER 42 CORRUPTION 45 THE UNSUCCESSFUL RISING OF 1923 46 THE DECLINE OF THE GERMAN COMMUNIST PARTY 48 GERMAN MILITARY EXPENDITURE 53 "THE HORNY-HANDED SON OF TOIL". . 57 THE :FRONT FIGHTERS' LEAGUE (R.F.B.) . 61 POCKET BATTLESHIPS AND THE YOUNG PLAN 64 UNITED FRONT, BUT WITH WHOM? 65 COMPETmON IN NA110NALISM 66 THE TERRORIST ELEMENTS . 69 ALSACE-LORRAINE 75

PART III

, , WAS HITLER'S VICTORY 'INEVITABLE ? 78

THE ATTITUDE OF .THE COMMUNIST PARTY 80 NOTIllNG HAS CHANGED THEM . 82 AND GOERING LAUGHED. .• . 84 "JOIN THE NAZI ORGANISATIONS!" 84 AND , EVERYTHING REMAINS AS IT WAS BEFORE 86 3 FOREWORD Whenever somebody undertakes to write about a section of the he runs the risk of being accused of hostility to the Soviet system or ofattacking the policy ofthe Russian Government if he adopts a critical attitude. If he is sympathetic he is likely to be accused of being a Bolshevik. This danger has been lessened to some extent since the dissolution ofthe Comintem, with its implication that the largest section of that International, the Russian Communists themselves, no longer consider it to be useful. But there is nevertheless still a danger that a critical exami­ nation of the activities of the German Communist Party will be read by those self-constituted protectors of German as inspired by hostility to the Russian Government. Nothing can be done about this but to let the facts speak for themselves. This is what the writer of this pamphlet has done. The history recorded in these pages makes sad reading. Its lessons are not for the German Communists only, or Communists exclusively anywhere: no section of the working-class movement of Germany, or elsewhere, can be singled out as congenitally worse or better than any other section. All of them, like sheep, have gone astray: . The central fact which this record brings clearly into sight is that, contrary to the general belief which the Communist Party in Germany has striven to foster, that Party did not show an inter­ national spirit. It was certainly not the Party of Rosa Luxemburg, nor the Party of Karl Liebknecht, the two radical socialists mur­ dered by the Republican Government's troops in . The pages devoted by the writer to the origins of the German Communist Party disclose some facts which are not widely known. It is shown that Rosa Luxemburg opposed not only the nationalistic tendency of some of her co-operators, but was also opposed to the creation of the Comintern. Contrary to her view, after a certain period the' German Com­ munist, Party realized that the German people are nationalistic, imbued with the military spirit, and cannot conceive the life of the nation without it. Such an attitude is utterly inconsistent with the spirit of internationalism. As yet there is unhappily no evidence that the German Communists have changed their attitude in this respect. It is on record that in recent meetings called in support ofwhat is called the FREE GERMAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE, a German Communist leader expressed views which implied accept­ ance of the old Imperial of Germany, the -White-Red symbol, deeply hated by every German anti-militarist, as a banner under which.they could serve if it led them into the struggle to rid Germany of Hitler. Alliance with anybody and everybody with 4 . whom co-operation seemed possible, not in the interests of inter­ national , but to serve the purposes ofGerman nationalism, came easy to the German Communists in the years between the tW9 wars. It is on record too, that in December 1936 after three years' experience of Hitler's rule, they, issued a call to German workers of all shades of opinion, German Social-Democrats, German Catholics, German Nationalists, even National Socialists, to unite under their banner to save Germany. It is from the standpoint of their history that the policy of German Communists today must be interpreted. As I understand the purpose ofthis pamphlet, its publication at this time, reluctantly decided upon only after very serious consideration, is to enablethe British people, and especially the British Labour and Movement, to understand and appreciate properly present-day developments in the policy of the Communist Party of Germany. It is necessary to have this historical background in order to under­ stand the significance of the creation of the National Committee for Free Germany, referred to as one of the latest developments in the policy of the German Communist Party, It is one thing that such instruments may be used to overthrow the Hitler regime, and quite another thing if they are used as instruments in post-war Germany for such a policy as the German Communist Party followed in the period between the two wars. For British readers this record will bring vividly to mind the many "clashes" in the British working-class movement from 1920 onwards. Here, too, the demand for the absolute rule of a perfect .elite was put .by our Communist Party with the usual vigorous slogans. And from the extreme Right parties all the way through to the extreme Left, various types ofpolitical "intellectual" emerged who were always ready, and very willing, and by any means, to become the Rulers of the Masses-the perfect elite. Mosley was a typical specimen of these political adventurers. He graduated from Right Wing Toryism to , from rebellion within the to Blackshirts, cudgels and ' violence, in an endeavour to establish his domination over the masses. And on the extreme Left there were those who advocated Red Fronts, Red Front salutes, Red Front uniforms, and all the other paraphernalia of streetfighting in order to prove by violence that they were better fitted than any others to become the perfect governing elite. Looking back over the 'record 'of the British Trade Union and Labour Movement in the difficult period from , 1920 to 1939, one cannot help being thankful that the common sense of the Move­ ment's rank and file, and particularly that of the trade unionists, outwitted and out-manceuvred all who through enthusiasm or for other less meritorious reasons would have divided it into warring sections-s-ideological divisions based on this, that, or the other crazy theory. , The British Labour Movement, although at times badly shaken, , ,. remained true throughout to its democratic principles. And let it not be forgotten that had it not done so Hitler would have won. ,Not the smallest service rendered by the publications of "Fight for Freedom" ~ including this latest pamphlet in the series, is that it has given us the factual and historical material which shows where and how the various political parties in Germany went astray-s-and teaching us how to avoid all such mistakes by remaining faithful to democratic principles, as the British Movement, .on the whole, has. tried to do. When the testing time came we can say that it was British Labour, by "sweat, blood and tears", that enabled Britain to stand alone, in the crisis of the war, against the common enemy of all mankind. In saying this I am not claiming that the intelligence of the British workers is superior to that of. workers of other countries. Our avoidance of errors committed by workers in other countries ' arose from experience. British democratic institutions have a long record of trial and error-but we ·passed through the infantile stages many years ago. . That we have all made mistakes is beyond dispute. What really ­ matters now is 'whether we have learned anything from the errors of the past. We can only hope that the German worker; who will again'see his country defeated, will learn his Jesson better than those converts of militarism and .aggression who led them, astray and whom they have followed after the last war. We have, I think, to learn many things. And chief among them is the knowledge that there is no hope for mankind in reliance upon an elite of any Party or combination of parties-national or international. Rather we must rely upon democracy, expressing itself through the-institutions of free citizenship and in resistance to dictatorships and regimenta­ tion either from above or below. • . , . ALFRED M. WALL. London, February 1944. PART I

THE SPARTACUS I.;EAGUE, 1914-1918 THE Communist Party' of Germany (K.P.D.) developed out of the (S.P.D.). The founders and officials of the Communist Party were Deputies, editors and other important members and officials of the Social Democratic Party and of the trade unions. The split in the German working class first showed itself on August 4th, 1914. It had fateful consequences. It was on this day that the hopes attached not only by the German workers, but by the progressive section of the German people as well, to fifty years of steady development on the part of Germany's working-class organizations were seen to be illusions. On that day all the loudly proclaimed principles ofSocialism, international agreement between the peoples, and international peace were abandoned with a lack of scruple which demonstrated how little founded they were in . reality in the hearts and minds of those who had proclaimed them. - The Social Democratic group in the Reichstag based its decision to vote for war credits first of all on the contention that Germany had been attacked and was therefore waging .a ar of defence, and secondly on the theory that in view of the dangers of any war .and the consequences of defeat, any war must necessarily be a defensive war for the German people quite irrespective of whether the war in question had been brought about.by Germany's ruling classes or not. At a-meeting of the group prior to the Reichstag debate only 14 out of a total of 110 Social Democratic Deputies opposed the decision to vote for war 'credits, 18 members being absent. . From the very beginning of the .war opposition arose inside the Social Democratic Party against the pro-war policy of its leaders, and in the course oftime this opposition led to the founding ofnew working-class parties. The common object ofthe opposition was to resist the so-called August 4th policy and to counteract the nationalist fever which had seized on the German working-class movement. This oppositionwas based on the tradition ofradicalism in the Social Democratic Party, and at its height it embraced the "Marxist Centre", whose leaders were the Social Democrats, Haase, Hilferding and Kautsky, and the "Marxist Left", amongst whose leaders were people who later played a considerable role in the founding and subsequent history of'the Communist Party of Germany, for instance, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, , , , and Ernst Meyer. 7 In the main the opposition consisted of those Social Democrats who at the last congress of the -Social Democratic Party in had opposed the Party's consent to the so-called Defence Contribution, a war tax to the amount ofa milliard Reich's Marks, and had found themselves in a minority. In 1917 this group which formed "the Opposition" then founded the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (U.S.P.D;). The leaders of the "Marxist Left", and in particular Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, worked within the general -framework of the opposition, and later, within the framework of the Independent Social Democratic Party. In 1915 the "Marxist Left" founded the "Gruppe Internationale", which in 1916 took the name "Spartacus League". Towards the end of 1918 this Spartacus League broke away from the Indepen­ dent Social Democratic Party and founded the Communist Party of Germany (Spartacus League), as the third political working­ class party in Germany. In 1920 the Independent Social Democratic Party split into a Right and a Left wing. wing continued to exist until 1922 as the Independent Social Democratic Party, whilst wing amalgamated in December 1920 with the Communist 'Party of Germany (SpartacusLeague) to form the United Communist Party of Germany (Section of the Third International). After a split had taken place, the next congress of the United Party deleted the word "United", and from 1921 onwards the Party was known as the Communist Party of Germany (Section of the Third International). - The "Marxist Left", which later became the Spartacus League, occupied a special position inside the general opposition movement. This group developed in the years which immediately preceded the outbreak of war, and was under the intellectual leadership of Rosa Luxemburg, who had come into the German Social Demo­ cratic movement from the Polish . As a result of her experiences in the Russian Revolution of 1905 she was firmly convinced that Germany was faced with the immediate prospect of a socialist revolution. Even when the German Social Democratic movement in general had come to the conclusion that not even a pre-revolutionary situation existed in Germany, not to mention a revolutionary situation, she still believed that all that was necessary "to bring the revolutionary forces of the German to an explosion with elementary violence" was the organization of mass action. - Rosa Luxemburg had always the example of the Russian Revolution of 1905 before her eyes, and it coloured all her political ideas. Based on the Marxist theory of , she developed a new theory of imperialism, and the main object of the of the "Marxist Left" was to popularize this theory and secure its acceptance by the German -working class. The attitude of this group to the war resulted from this new theory of imperialism. According to this theory , every war is an imperialist 8- war, a necessary and inevitable phase in the developm nt of imperialism. For the proletariat as the decisive opponent of imperialism it was quite immaterial which of these imperialist States were the attackers and which the attacked. The proletariat recognized no right ofself-defence, no "defence of the Fatherland", where imperialist and capitalist States were concerned, and its task in all the belligerent countries was summed up in the phrase "revolutionary defeatism". Proceeding from this theoretical basis, the group waged a consistent struggle against German imperialism throughout the 1914-18 war with a view to bringing about its defeat. However, rom the same theoretical basis developed an equally consistent anti-English policy. Its first open representative was Paul Lensch, a prominent member of the "Marxist Left" who went over in 1915 to the extreme national-socialist wing ofGerman Social Democracy, where he used theoretical ,weapons from the ,arsenal of Rosa Luxemburg to prove that Germany was playing a revolu­ tionary role in the war against British imperialism, and was thus a pioneer of . After the defeat of Germany and under the influence of the Russian Communist Party the German Communist Party took over this anti-English tendency and pursued a consistent anti-British policy under the slogan "Down with Western Imperialism !"-:..so much so, in fact, that the Communists' became involuntary helpers of German imperialism which was rapidly recovering its strength and engaging in systematic prepara­ tions for a war ofrevenge. It is interesting to note that the political conception of world revolution was set 'up simultaneously by a revolutionary socialist, , who greatly influenced the German anti-war opposition, and a German imperialist, Paul Lensch, who began in the socialist-anti-war opposition and ended in nationalism. Despite all the sacrifices made on its behalf, theopposition against the pre-war policy of German Social Democracy bore little fruit. It failed to prevent the restoration of to power and office after the so-called revolution of 1918, and still later it failed to wean the German people away from nationalism. The Independent Social Democratic Party disappeared in 1922, and the Comniunist Party ended as shamefully in the Second World War as German Social Democracy had ended in the First. On July 25th, 1914, Vorwaerts, the central organ of the Social , Democratic Party of Germany, published an appeal against the war which then threatened to break over Europe. This last) unanswered appeal, which was directed clearly and unambiguously against nationalism and war, declared; "The fields of the Balkans are still steaming from the blood of thousands who have been murdered; the ruins of devastated towns and wrecked villages are still smoking; hungry masses of unemployed men, widowed women and orphaned children 9 are still wandering through the countryside looking for help, but once again Austrian imperialism is preparing to let loose the horrors ofwar, a war which will bring death and destruction to the whole ofEurope. "Whilst exposing the machinations of the Pan-Serbian nationalists we cannot but 'severely condemn the frivolous war provocations of.the Austro-Hungarian Government, The demands made by this government are more brutal than any ever made in world history to an independent State, and they . can only be deliberately calculated to provoke war. "In the name of humanity and culture the class-conscious proletariat of Germany passionately protests against the criminal activities ofthe war-mongers. It categorically demands of the German Government that it use its influence on the Austrian Government in favour of the maintenance of peace, and that in the event of its being unable to prevent the outbreak of this shameful war it should itself refrain from 'any warlike intervention. Let not a drop of German blood be sacrificed , to the power lust of Austrian officials and to the imperialist profit interests behind them. . "Comrades, we appeal to you to demonstrate immediately in mass meetings the unshakable determination of the class­ conscious proletariat of Germany to preserve peace. The hour is serious; 'more serious than any during the past ten years. Danger is ahead. World war is threatening. The ruling classes who gag, exploit and despise you in peace are now about to misuse you as' cannon-fodder in war. Let their ears resound everywhere with the shouts: ' "We don't want war! Down with war! "Long live the international brotherhood of the peoples! (Sig.) The Central Committee of the I ' Social Democratic Party, , July 25th, 1914." . And condemning those who now raised the old slogan of"Down with Czarism!" Vorwaerts wrote as late.as July 28th, 1914: "At the moment it is not Czarism which represents the greatest danger of war, but ill-advised Austria." On that day anti-war meetings took place in Berlin. However, the leaders of German Social Democracy had already established secret contact with the government and were taking an active part in the preliminaries which led up to the outbreak of war. The go-between -of the Imperial Government and the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party was Deputy Suedekum. In his memoirs Clemens von Delbrueck, the Imperial Reich's Minister of the Interior of the day, states that before the order for 10 general mobilization was issued he negotiated with ' Suedekum to secure Social Democracy's support of the war and its approval of the war credits. Speaking at ' a meeting of the -Prussian Cabinet on July 30th, 1914, the Imperial Reich's Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg declared: I "Judging from the negotiations which had taken place with Deputy Suedekum he felt entitled to assume that there was little to fear from Social Democracy and the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party. .There would be no question of any general or even partial strike." In Chemnit~ two editors of the Social Democratic newspaper Chemnitzer Volksstimme. .Kuttner and Heilmann, issued a leaflet on July 28th in which they declared that war had now become inevitable as a result of the Russian attitude, and on July 30th Chemnitzer 'Volksstimme published an article by Heilmann in which he declared : "War is now inevitable. Do we want victory? The answer can only be: Yes!" On July 31st and August Ist various 'Social Democratic news­ papers published an 'article by Friedrich Stampfer containing the following passage : - "When the fateful hour strikes the workers will stand by the promise given on their behalf by their .representatives ; the 'men without a Fatherland' will do their duty, and in this they will let themselves be outdone in no way by. the patriots." , On August. 2nd, i914, leading representatives of the German Trade Unions held a conference and decided that all wage move­ ments should cease for the duration of the war and that no further strike funds should be paid out. On the same 'day a meeting of the Central Committee 'of the Social Democratic Party took place to discuss the question of war credits, No decision was arrived at, but On August '3rd when a meeting of the Social Democratic parliamentary group took place to discuss the same question, 78 Deputies voted in favour of supporting the government's war credits and only 14 against. Amongst those 14 was Karl Eieb­ knecht, who was later to be one of the founders of the Communist Party of Germany. ' On August 4th the Social Democratic parliamentary group voted in the,Reichstag in favour ofthe war credits, and from then on there was no appreciable difference in tone between the Social Democratic Press and the other warlike newspapers in Germany. There was no distinction between one sort of German and the other, and no discussion about the existence of "two sorts of German", and the spirit of the day is best exemplified in a letter written by a "Comrade" who had taken part in the German invasion ofBelgium. This letter was published in the Social Democratic Arbeiter- 11 Zeitung'lof in September 1914, and contained the follow- ing illurhinating passages: . "In the beginning the population was vile; German troops were shot at all over the place, but then the' military made short shrift of them and put the brutes against a · wall .and shot them down. The guilty villages were burned to the ground; that helped. ••.I think we'll give that lot what they're asking for before we've finished." . ' . However, it was not the nationalist- excesses of individuals, although they took place on a -mass scale, which rendered such decisive support to the German Government in its prosecution of the war, but the fact that all the organizations of the German working class, the Social Democratic Party itself, the Trade Unions, etc., were placed in the service of the Imperial war effort.' Speaking on just this point Professor Hans Delbrueck, the famous historian, declared in' 1914:. "Imagine that we hadn't these great, working-class associa­ tions, and that the millions of workers stood towards the State only as individuals: in such circumstances it would be very probable that amongst them many would not be affected by the general movement and would actively or passively resist their call-up. In 1870 mobilization had to be carried out in quite a number ofcases by force. It even happened occasionally in 1813. This,time nothing whatever of the sort has occurred." The Social Democratic Party .and the Trade Unions were fully aware of the' role they were playing, and the Social Democratic Volksstimme in Frankfort-on-Main wrote on August 18th, 1914: "In 1866 it was said that the victory of the Prussian troops was the victory of the schoolmasters. This time they will have to talk of the victory of the Trade Union officials." . . It was not long before the real character of Germany's war became visible. The slogan of Social Democracy. v''Down with Czarism 1:' and the talk of a war of defence were abandoned, and the slogans became: "Down.:with the World Market Despot, England!" "Gott strafe England !"and one of the leaders of , German Social Democracy, Paul Lensch to whom we have already referred, wrote:* "The German Army is fighting for World Revolution against British imperialism!" And August Winnig, the leader of the German buil'!ing . - workers, wrote :t .

• Paul Lensch, Krieg and Weli reuolutibn; Berlin, 1915. t Dr. Friedrich Timme, Der Krieg und die deutschen Geuierkschaften, "'lin,1915. . 12 "The working class cannot oppose Germany's imperialist development, for .that development is conditioned- by strong, even compelling, economic necessity." , German Social Democracy promptly declared the compulsory measures which the war made necessary, such as rationing, to be "Socialism", and, for example, the Metallarbeiter-Zeitung, the official organ ofthe German Engineering Workers' Union, wrote: "A new day has dawned. In a very short space of time the war has made new men of us all. That is true of everyone without exception, high and low, rich and poor, for private individuals and for servants of the State. . .• .Socialism wherever we tum our gaze." \ At the beginning of the war the Central Committee of the German Social Democratic Party even sent prominent Socia1 Democrats into neutral countries where they carried on German propaganda in the service both ofthe Imperial German Government and of the Social Democratic Party. . When Germany declared war in 1914 a state of martial law was declared throughout the country. at the same time. General mobilization prevented Socialists from keeping in touch with each other, and the imposition of martial law forced into illegality those few who had successfully withstood the wave of nationalist senti­ ment and who now began to work against the war. However, despite all the difficulties these men and women at once began to organize an active opposition against war. As early as September 1914 Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin published a protest in SwissSocial Democratic Newspapers against the pro-war policy ofGerman Social Democracy and against the journeys abroad of prominent members of the Central Com­ mittee ofthe German Social Democratic Party in the interests of German propaganda. - The first public action of the opposition to attract international attention took place on December 2nd, 1914, when Karl Liebknecht voted against war credits in the Reichstag, He declared: "From the standpoint of the world armament race this is a preventive war brought about jointly in the darkness of 'semi­ Absolutism and secret diplomacy by the German and Austrian war parties. This war is not a war of defence for Germany. Only a peace based on the internationalsolidarity ofthe working class and on the freedom of all peoples can be a lasting peace. As a protest against the war, against those responsible for it, against its managers; against the capitalist policy which caused it, a ainst the capitalist aims which it serves, against the annexations it plans, against the violation of Belgian and Luxemburg neutrality, against the military dictatorship, and against the neglect of their social aI)d political obligations by \ 13 . ' the government and the ruling classes, a neglect of which they continue to be guilty today, I reject the war credits." The mouthpieces of the Party and the State howled "Traitor" and "Discipline breaker". P.ersecution began, and the Trade Union leader Karl Legien was the first to demand Liebknecht's expulsion. In March 1915 when war credits again came up for discussion Liebknecht was joined by Ruehle, and they both voted against ­ them. In April 1915 the opposition issued the first and only number of its publication Die Internationale. The military authorities immedi­ ately suppressed it. Rosa Luxemburg, who wrote its leading article, was arrested. The article began with the words: "On August 4th, 1914, German Social Democracy abdicated politically, and at the same time the collapsed." - - An oppositional group rallied round this one and only number of Die Internationale, and from it they took their name "Gruppe Internationale". "This was the nucleus of what later became the Communist Party of Germany. ' In May 1915 when Italy entered the war ' on -the side of the Allies a new wave of nationalism swept through Germany, and Liebknecht countered it by illegally distributing a leaflet in which he declared: "The chief enemy of the German _people is in Germany itself: German imperialism, the German war party, German -secret diplomacy. This is the enemy the German people must fight." " . In the meantime the opposition to the pro-war policy of the Social Democratic Party had extended, and on June 9th, 1915, the leaders of the opposition were able to send a letter to the Central Committee of the Party signed by almost a thousand party officials throughout Germany. The letter declared:' "With August 4th, 1914, the parliamentary and national leadership -of German Social Democracy began a policy which led not only to the failure of the Party in an incomparable historical moment, but, since then, to a more and more definite abandonment of all its previously held principles. .. -. The overwhelming mass of Party members both at home and in the field now expects that after ten months of a terrible war whose length and result are alike unforeseeable, the Reichstag group of the Party should issue a very definite and express demand for the speediest possible conclusion of peace thereby expressirig the determined will of the Social Democratic Party. • .. We warn you against a continuation of the policy of August 4th. . •• The responsibility for everything which 14 comes about will rest on those who drove the Party on to this downward path and continue to urge it on." At the same time Kautsky, Bernstein and Haase published a manifesto in the Social Democratic Leipziger Volkszeitung in which they declared that the war was being waged by, Germany as a war of conquest, and demanded that Social Democracy should refuse to grant any more war credits. The leaders of the radical opposition also attempted to organize their struggle against the German Government and against the pr e-war policy of the German Social Democratic Party on an international scale. Under the leadership of Clara Zetkin an international women's conference took place in Berne in March 1915. The conference issued an appeal declaring: "Not the defence of the Fatherland but the extension of its frontiers is the aim of this war. . . . The workers have nothing to gain from this war, but they have everything to lose which is dear to them." "Down with the war! Forward toSocialism !" An international conference of Socialists took place in Zimmerwald in Switzerland from September 5th to 8th, 1915, and issued an anti-war manifesto. Representatives of the German anti-war opposition took part. The differences which existed between the anti-war Socialists of the various countries represented, and amongst the- anti-war Socialists of Germany themselves, were cleatly visible at this conference. The Russian Socialists (Bol­ shevists) under the leadership of Lenin did their best to force their opinions on to the conference, but they were not successful. They represented unconditional revolutionary defeatism. Amongst the German opposition it was only the."Gruppe Internationale" which shared their views, whilst the others, and later the Independent Social Democratic Party as a whole, were in favour in principle of the defence of the Fatherland. That -is to say, they drew a dis­ tinction between wars of attack and wars of defence, though they freely admitted the guilt of Germany in the war then being waged. Lenin attempted to secure international acceptance for his theory of the necessity of splitting the working-class movement, and of the particular organisational principles held by his Party. Whereas the great majority of theGerman anti-war opposition was eager to win over the masses of the German working class, Lenin put forward the Bolshevist theory of" an elite. According to this theory it is impossible to organize the majority of the working class successfully under capitalism, and therefore.the size of an organiza­ tion was not the important point, but the content of its policy. A progressive elite must represent the interests of the masses, not the false interests they often feel to be their real interests, but the real interests of the masses as correctly recognized by the elite. 15 Lenin violently attacked the great majority of the German anti­ war opposition and abused its leaders vigorously. The representatives of that tendency which later developed into the Independent Social Democratic Party were anxious to win over the Social Democratic Party .for their policy and to avoid splitting. the Party. However, the split did take place later on owing to the fact that the Right-wing of the Party drove the opposition out of the 'Party ranks altogether. The representatives of the "Gruppe Internationale", however, .accepted the theory of an elite, and 'on January 1st, 1916, at a conference which was attended by oppo­ sitional Socialists from all parts of Germany, the Spartacus League was founded. This Spartacus League was not intended to be a party in the ordinary sense, but an. organization of the elite. Towards the Social Democratic Party, and, in particular towards the growing big opposition party, the Independent Social Demo­ cratic Party of which it was apart. it assumed the role which the Communist Manifesto laid down for the Communist towards the 'working class as a whole. It claimed to be the true and only . legitimate leadership of the masses. It was a cell of a party of the Leninist type, a new and strange phenomenon in the German working-class movement. • .A further development of this conference was the issue of the famous "Spartacus Letters", which waged a ruthless struggle against. the pro-war policy of German Social Democracy. As a permanent motto the "Spartacus Letters" printed at their head the decision of the conference which founded the Spartacus League: "The obligation of carrying ou the decisions of the Inter­ national must have priority over all other organizational obligations." In the meantime the opposition movement within the Social Democratic Party extended rapidly. In March 1916, 18 Social Democratic Deputies under the leadership of Deputy Haase voted against the granting of further war credits, whereupon they were expelled from the' Social Democratic I parliamentary group and formed a group of their own called the Social Democratic Working Group (Sozialdemokratische Arbeitsgemeinschafts, On May 1st, 1916, the Spartacus League organized an anti-war demonstration on the in Berlin. Karl Liebknecht, who took part in the demonstration, was arrested and sentenced, first to two years and six months' imprisonment, and then, in a second trial, to four years' hard labour. At his trial before thecourt, a military one, he declared: "Better insurrection, betterrevolution, than war." Almost all -the leaders of the Spartacus League were under arrest or on the run. The first conferences of those Social Demo­ cratic youth organizations whichflung in their lot with the Spartacus League took place at Easter 1916 and in the following October. 16 ' ' The Spartacus League wrote, protested and agitated against the war. It was particularly active in its campaign against unrestricted submarine warfare, and it also obtained information concerning the real military situation from neutral countries and arranged for its dissemination inside Germany. When the Bolshevists seized power in Russia they sought a separate peace with Germany. Although the Spartacus League immediately declared itself in complete solidarity with the Russian .Revolution its leaders protested to the Bolshevists against the proposal to conclude a separate peace. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who were both in prison, and Leo Jogisches, who directed the work ofthe Spartacus League in their absence, immedi­ ately recognized the danger 'of isolation for Russia which might result from the conclusion ofa separate peace, and in addition they feared that a German victory over the Western Powers might result . if the German Army was withdrawn from the Eastern Front. They realized that if Germany was victorious in the West in this way, the ,German Army would then turn against Russia once more. However, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was drawn up, and when it came up for discussion in the Reichstag the representatives of ' German Social Democracy , did not vote against it although ' its provisions were far more onerous than the subsequent Treaty ofVersailles. - In August 1918 the German war machine collapsed. It is of primary' importance to remember that it was this collapse of the German Army which led to the formation of the German Republic and not the so-called November Revolution. At the time. of the collapse the Social Democratic leaders were taken into the govern­ ment in order that they should bear their share of the responsibility for the collapse and in order that they should cover .those people responsible for the war. . On October 1st, 1918, the Spartacus League held a conference which was attended by delegates from all parts of Germany. The conference issued a proclamation calling .for the overthrow of the government, the immediate conclusion of peace, the expropriation of the banks, the mines and the furnaces, and large-scale landed property, and the annulment of all war loans. 'Spartacus wanted revolution. However, the counter-revolution marched into Germany with the very first detachments of homecoming troops. It was the Social Democratic leader Ebert, by this time Chairman of the Council of People's Representatives, the first government of the German Republic, who issued the slogan which was later made _the motto for renewed armaments and a war ofrevenge. In taking, the salute as head of the government when the troops of General Lequis marched into Berlin in December 1918 Ebert declared: "You have returned to your homes undefeated in the field." It must not be thought that Ebert was the only prominent 17 . Social Democratic leader who talked like this. In , Laufenberg, the leader of the' "Left-Radicals" and Chairman of the Workers Council, delivered a speech to the men of a Hamburg regiment on the occasion oftheir return from the front in December 1918, in which he declared: "We have fought honourably, and although we have not been victorious, nevertheless the army~ and the German people may say that they have emerged from the titanic struggle undefeated. The enemy may now be at our frontiers, but the German people have not been defeated." Laufenberg joined the Communist Party when it was founded in Berlin two weeks later. At this period the Spartacus League had certainly not more than 40,000 members throughout the country, and it was in such a hopeless minority that none of its leaders, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg or , was elected into the responsible bodies of the new Republic, whilst even in the Workers Councils they received only very few votes. It is true that tens of thousands joined the Left-wing parties, and hundreds of thousands streamed into the Trade Unions, but at the same time there were innumerable people, very often the very same people, in fact, who proudly decorated their homes with war mementos ofall kinds, who applied for belated war decorations, who joined ex-soldiers' associations and regimental old comrades' leagues and thus lovingly upheld Prusso­ German military traditions. At the same time, however, the air resounded with loud oaths of "Never again war!" After the November Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty the influence of the Russian Communist Party on the Left-wing of the German working-class movement increased enormously. Its influence was strongest, of course, on the Spartacus League, so strong, in fact, that it went over the heads of the leaders of that body, who were still-in prison. In the revolutionary period this influence became still stronger. The ideas and plans ofKarl Liebknecht and Rosa Lux "mburg themselves were crowded out by the ideas ofLenin and the plan's ofthe Russian Communist.Party. Rosa Luxemburg, the intellectual leader of the Spartacus League, set down the points at which she was atvariance with the Russian Communist Party in a brilliant fashion, but it was nevertheless the Russian Communists who won control of the Spartacus League, and not its Ieaders.

r August 4th, 1914, was the day on which the leaders of the "Marxist Left" received their first thorough disillusionment. They firmly believed that proletarian class-consciousness was stronger than nationalism, that the one excluded the possibility of the other. Events taught them differently. ' In the period of opposition to the war they had "laid claim to the leadership of the Left-wing of the German working-class movement, but the Left-wing grew and organized itself without them and even against them. In the . 18 revolutionary period they ~ere compelled to recognize not only the weakness of the revolution itself, but also their-own weakness in the revolutionary camp. On the other hand there was the example of the Bolshevists who had succeeded in conquering power despite the fact that they represented only a minority in the Soviet Congress,. a result due in their opinion to the fact that their organizations were prepared with a coup d'etat in view from the beginning. Impa- ' tiently and repeatedly the representatives ofthe Russian Communist Party demanded that the leaders of the Spartacus League should ' finally cut themselves loose from the so-called "Centrists", i.e. the Independent Social Democratic Party, and form a 'party along Bolshevist lines. Finally the leaders of the Spartacus League gave way, but ./not in any .consciousness . of their strength, rather in ·

I desperation. In this way the first split in the "Independent Social Democratic Party took place and the Communist Party ofGermany was founded. The inaugural congress of the Communist Party of Germany . took place on December 29th arid 30th, 1918, and the programme'it adopted contained the following illuminating passages: "The bloody illusion of world dominance'carved out by the Prussian sabre collapsed on the battlefields of . The . gang of criminals who had set fire .to the world and driven Germany into an ocean of blo_od had come to the end of their tether. The German people, deceived for four long years and made to forget culture, honour and humanity in the service of Moloch, and,to let themselves be misused for any and every shameful deed, now stands before the.abyss. "The Hohenzollerns were never more .than the managing agents of the imperialist and the Junkers. .•. "With the result of the world war the system of bourgeois class dominance has lost all right to exist. • • • "Either Socialism or a descent to barbarism!" In order to forestall any lying agitation and accusations of terrorism the programme declared: , - "The ' does not need terrorism to attain its ends. It hates and.abominates the shedding ofhuman blood. It does not need such methods because its struggle is directed against institutions and not against individuals." The programme then recommended the following immediate measures: ' "Disarming ofthe whole police force and ofall officers. . . • , The disarming of.all members of the ruling classes. The setting up of a revolutionary tribunal to trythose primarily responsible . for the outbreak of the war and for its perpetuation .• '. the two Hohenzollerns, Ludendorff, Hindenburg, Tirpitz and their accomplices." 19 "The expropriation of all large-scale and medium landed properties. . .. The expropriation of the banks, mines,' heavy industry and of all large-scale undertakings in commerce and industry. ••~ . The expropriation of the whole transport system. tt . - After enumerating these main slogans of the Spartacus League, now become the Communist Party, the programme went on to declare: . "The Spartacus League will never take over goverment power except in accordance with the clear and definite will of the great majority of the proletarian masses .of the whole of Germany." ~ It is important to note that although this programme expressed the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg, it did not meet the political opinions and desires of the majority of the newly formed Party. It is true to say that this programme contained nothing which fundamentally distinguished Communists from Independent Social Democrats, nothing which explained or justified the necessity of the split. The formation of the new Party proved a defeat for Rosa Luxemburg. Its first essay into practical politics was made against her will-and in defiance of her programme. The new Party decided not to take part in the coming elections to the German National Assembly, and to seek to prevent by force the holding of the elections. In vain Rosa Luxemburg warned ', them: "Machine-guns against universal suffrage is a very bad slogan." The dazzling example of the Russian Revolution caused her warnings to be ignored. The members of the newly formed Communist Party realized that if they took part in the elections they , would receive only an insignificant minority of the votes cast, and they therefore decided to ,break up the elections as the Bolshevists had broken up the Russian Soviet Congress in which they had no majority. It wasthe Bolshevist example which encouraged the Communists to resort to putsch tactics. It had its effect not only on the Communists, but also on the Left-wing of the Independent Social Democratic Party. Very soon after the formation ofthe Communist Party therefore, in January 1919, the so-called "Spartacus Putsch" took place in Berlin. Rosa Luxemburg was greatly opposed to it, but she had already lost control of the Party, and the Putsch was ' carried out_against her will and although it had not the slightest prospect ofsuccess. It was rapidly crushed. The formation of the ' so-called Noske Guards, the notorious counter-revolutionary Free Corps, followed. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were both .... brutally inurdered by gangs of these government guards. A few weeks later Leo Jogisches, who took over the leadership of the Communist Party after the slaughter ofLiebknecht and Luxemburg, was himself murdered. Paul Levit who became Chairman of the Communist Party in succession to Jogisches, was in .prison, 20 . Thousands were killed in the fighting or were murdered by the government forces. The slaughtered leaders could not be replaced, , and the Communist Party then succumbed completely to the influence ofthe Communist International. From this point onwards the representatives of the Com­ munist International, were always' able 'to impose their will on the German Communist Party, even against the will of its leaders. Up to 1924 the chief representative of this influence in German­ Communist affairs was Karl Radek, who had belonged, before the outbreak of the world war, to the "Marxist Left", and who now appeared in post-war Germany as a member of the Communist International to guide the 'policy of the newly formed Communist Party of Germany. _ - Both the supporters oftheSpartacus League and the members of the Independent Social Democratic Party were .firmly ofthe opinion . that the world war would be followed by a world revolution. ' In the .very first days of the German revolution this 'belief gave rise to very dangerous illusions. For instance, the German Left-wing as a whole fell victim to a series of fantastic rumours such as that the British Fleet had hoisted the red flag 'and mutinied, and that revolutionary revolts had taken place in the French Army. The ' conclusion that the faithful drew from this sort of report was that the revolution in the West needed their immediate assistance, and it was Karl Radek, who; under the influence of such illusions, first developed the idea that the Russian Red Army and the army of the German revolution must unite on the Rhine to fight the. decisive battle of the world revolution against Western capitalism. A wave of revolutionary" optimism and illusions about the imminence of world revolution swept through the ranks of the German revolutionary Left. "A similar situation arose in all the belligerent countries which had been defeated in the war. This atmosphere of revolutionary optimism even-survived the collapse ' of the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the bloody overthrow of the Munich Soviet Republic in the spring of 1919. These illusions cherished by the German revolutionary Left applied not only to the prospect of revolutionary victory in Germany, but also to the spread of the world "revolution by violence to the countries of the West. "Western Capitalism" (in other words, Great Britain and France) was the chief enemy. This attitude was vigorously. en­ couraged by the newly founded Communist International. The C.I., as it came to be known, was founded in March 1919. Rosa Luxemburg had-been opposed to the idea altogether. She was very critical of Bolshevist aims and methods, and she feared 'the growth of Bolshevist influence in her own movement. Her death removed the last hindrance to its successful spread. In defiance ofthe written instructions of Rosa Luxemburg, the representative of the German . Communist Party, , did not vote against, but withheld his vote on the resolution to found the new International. This International propounded two doctrines which determined 21 . the policy ofthe Geiman Communist Party from the very beginning - of its activity down to its collapse in 1933: the doctrine of the necessity of world revolution, and the doctrine of the necessity of a joint struggle on the part of the Colonial Peoples for their . . emancipation from imperialism. The 'joint insurrection of 'the Colonial Peoples was even regarded as the decisive instrument of world revolution. This latter doctrine was propounded in : a pamphlet written by the Chairman ofthe Communist International, Gregory Zinoviev, and distributed in Germany. It argued that all the .Colonial Peoples must now unite to overthrow imperialism. Germany had become a colonial people and been made tributary to Western Capitalism. A revolutionary Germany must therefore take part as an ally in this insurrection ofthe colonial peoples against Western Imperialism. This doctrine laid the basis for the subse­ quent nationalistic policy of the German Communist Party. What the German Communists imbibed of it was not so much the necessity ofworld revolution as the encouragement to cherish'hatred and enmity against the West. Thus this doctrine became the basis for the decided anti-British and anti-French policy of the German Communist Party. During the First World War the attention of the members of the Spartacus League was directed to fighting its enemies within Germany. Now, however, under the influence ofthe mere existence of Soviet Russia and under the direct influence of the Communist International they began to regard their policy as' lying in the sphere of power politics on an international scale. This political departure found its first tangible expression in the rejection of the Versailles Treaty by the Communist Party.

1 .

PART · II

THE COMMUNIST PARTY, 1919-1933

. THE PARTY AND THE VERSAILLES TREATY

IN the nine months which passed between the foundation of the Communist Party of Germany (Spartacus League), the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, and the first split in the Party in October 1919, the Party membership grew very consider­ ably• . Despite this, however, it was not easy to estimate what influence the Party exercised _on the mass of the population in general because following on the decision of its inaugural congress the Party took no, part whatever in parliamentary or municipal elections. Further, the members who now swelled the ranks of the ' Party no longer came from the ranks of other working..class .22 Parties, but consisted largely of people who had taken no previous part in political life. In addition, the Communist Party'had very little time to train these new members in-Socialist ideas. When the split came in October 1919 it lost more than half its membership. . A part of the dissident membership went off under the leadership ­ of Laufenberg and Wolfheim of Hamburg to found the uItra­ radical Communist Workers Party of Germany (K.A.P.D.); . another part wentback either to the Independent Social Democratic Party or even to the Social Democratic Party, and a still further part relapsed into political indifference. b· The first six months of 1919 saw bloody struggles which proved decisive for the final fate ofthe Communist Party, and, incidentally, of the as well. The world has been informed "ad nauseam that in the first six months of 1919 the Weimar Republic defeated Spartacus, but what it has not so often been told is some­ thing equally true, namely that in the same period the military _ counter-revolution defeated the Weimar-Republic. Immediately the text of the proposed draft of the Peace Treaty became known discussions began in the 'Communist Party on the question of its rejection or acceptance, on nationalism, militarism, trade unionism, parliamentarianism, and kindred topics-dis­ cussions which -had arrived at no final and satisfactory conclusion when world war number two put at least a temporary end to them. . At this period the Communist Party of Germany had been declared an illegal body. Those leaders of the Party who had survived the slaughter were condemned to watch the course of events from their hiding-places, .In the end the Central Committee of the Party. decided to oppose the signing and fulfilment of the Versailles Treaty. With this decision the Communist Party left the ranks of those who stood in decided opposition to German nationalism and came near the post-war attitude of the Social Democratic Party. . -, Within the Social Democratic Party itself there was an extreme nationalist tendency which also opposed.the signing of the Treaty, and the Social Democratic leader, Scheidemann, who at this time ' was even German Reich's Prime Minister, declared on May 12th, 1919, during a speech at Berlin University on the draft Peace Treaty: . "This horrible and murderous witches' hammer which is to "be used to blackmail "a great people into admitting its own unworthiness, into consenting to its own merciless dismember­ ment, into expressing agreement with its own enslavement and helotry. This book must not become the statute of the future. . .. May the hand which signs itself and us into this slavery first wither." Speaking in the name of the Prussian Government and referring to the Versailles Treaty, the Social Democratic leader, Hirsch, who was 's Premier, declared : 23 ~ "Sooner death than slavery !" Stampfer, the chief editor of Vorwaerts, went even further and wrote: "Only by compelling the brutality ofour opponent to develop to the point where it frightens even himself shall we succeed in accelerating the coming of our hour. "The enemy will attempt to occupy parts of Germany and to compel the remainder to surrender by starvation. "We must compel him to make a complete job of it; let him find himself forced to occupy the whole of Germany and to make it into a colony of his so-called League of Nations, and then let us wait and see how long his external. and internal unity lasts. " "A colony of his so-called League of Nations"-it is interesting to note how the extremes of Social Democratic nationalism and the Colonial Peoples' theory of the Communist International .meet in their attitude to the Treaty of Versailles. In the end the Social Democratic group in the German National Assembly decided by a great majority to vote in favour of accepting the Versailles Treaty. However, the nationalist tendency to oppose ( the Treaty nevertheless remained the emotional basis of the Social Democratic attitude. Later a noteworthy difference developed between the attitude of the Social Democratic towards the Versailles Treaty and that of the Communist Party. Whereas in its practical political activity German Social Democracy worked -partly for the fulfilment of Germany's obligations under the Versailles Treaty, the Communist Party joined the reactionary German Nationalists and Imperialists as an ally in all phases of the struggle which raged around the fulfilment of Germany's obligations under the Treaty. The Independent Social Democratic Party was the only one of the three German working-class Parties which immediately came out in favour of accepting and signing the Peace Treaty without delay. The Chairman of the Party, , declared: "Our people need peace, immediate peace." Shortly .afterwards Haase was assassinated, and his murderer was declared to be of unsound mind. • Now this attitude of the Independent Social Democratic Party towards signing the Peace Treaty did not prevent the Party's _ suffering from the illusion that the world revolution was imminent, and attacking "Western-Imperialism" as did the Communists and the Social Democrat, Stampfer. The Chairman of the Independent Social Democratic Party, Arthur Crispien, who succeeded Haase, declared to a congress ofhis Party towards the end of 1919 : , 24 "The victorious capitalists want to weaken Germany economically to such an extent that she can no longer play any " serious role in the struggle to conquer world economy.... "The imperialist proclaimers of the modern rights of man do not hesitate for a moment to massacre their own peoples when they dare to go against the capitalist grain.... "The victorious imperialists, these -founders and supporters of the so-called League of Nations, who have rejected all the peace offers of the Russian Soviet government with mockery and contempt, who are rallying their armies for a hunt against Soviet Russia, who are working for the ruin of Russia, Germany and Austria in order to enslave their peoples, they are the real wBolshevism" demon­ strated clearly what a short distance lay between this attitude and authentic Nationalism. The strange phenomenon of appeared hi two variations: a reactionary Nationalist version, and a Communist Nationalist one. The leading repre­ sentative of the former brand was the Right-wing Professor Paul Eltzbacher, whilst the leading representatives of the latter brand were the Communists Laufenberg and Wolfheim. The aim of the first group was to harness Bolshevism to the interests of German Nationalism, whilst the .second group wished to harness German Nationalism to the interests of Bolshevism. The final result was that both parties strengthened German Nationalism. I In April 1919 Professor Eltzbacher issued a pamphlet on National Bolshevism whose ideas were taken up by Laufenberg and Wolfheim and disseminated in the ranks of the Communist Party. Eltzbacher wrote: . "The. poverty-stricken mediocrities who now direct the fortunes of the Reich are at their wits' end... '. We must act with daring .and forestall the evil with which Bolshevism threatens us; in order to avoid enslavement at the hands of our enemies we must ourselves unanimously see to it that Bolshevism comes. "Instead of trying to -frighten the Entente with Bolshevism as the menacing writing on the wall, we must accept Bolshevism ourselves in .the conviction that if, in addition to Russia and Hungary, Germany too accepts Bolshevism, the Bolshevist wave will sweep inexorably over the countries of Western Europe as well .and submerge Clemenceau and -Lloyd George, and all those others who are not satisfied that the people of our day are sufficiently miserable. 25 "But even ifBolshevisni should not sweep over thevictorious Western Powers as well, the advantages for Germany will still be great enough; the Entente could not force milliards every year out ofa Bolshevist Germany, no complacent administration would be available, and they would think twice before they ventured to use force all the time for fear of infection." Eltzbacher gave a sketch of the operation of Bolshevism in Russia, and of its programme and methods in order to reassure his friends that it was quite possible to live satisfactorily under such a system. There need also be no fear that the conditions of life would get much worse than .they already were (in 1919), and the crisis of transition would not last very long. ' Eltzbacher was also one of the first to launch a campaign of incitement against the new State growing up in Poland and to demand an alliance with Russia. "The link-up with Russia is necessary," he declared, "in order to overcome the Polish danger." When the Communist Party was formed the group of Left Radicals in Hamburg led by Laufenberg and Wolfheim submerged itself in the new Party. It was from this group that the first wave of Nationalism within the Communist Party developed. Laufenberg and Wolfheim declared that the chief task of the Communist Party was to fight against the Versailles Treaty, and, like Walther Rathenau before them, they demanded. "armed resistance of the whole people against the imperialism of the Entente". The main points of the programme 'drawn up by Laufenberg and Wolfheim were the adoption of National Bolshe­ vism, the uncompromising rejection -of the Versailles Treaty, the abolition of parliamentary government, and the suppression of,the Trade Unions. In place of parliamentary government there were to be elected councils? or Soviets, and in place of the Trade Unions there were to be factory organizations of a syndicalist character. The attitude of Laufenberg and Wolfheim was nothing but a logical development of the doctrines taught by the Communist International in Germany, and' of its hostility to "Western Imperialism". However, the direct consequence which the Communist National Bolshevists drew from " these doctrines interfered very considerably with the policy of the leaders of the Communist International, with the result that they published an open letter appealing to the followers ofLaufenberg and Wolfheim : "Laufenberg. and Wolfheim spread the poisonous illusion that the German bourgeoisie could become the ally .of the proletariat out of nationalist hatred. If the German proletariat permitted itself to be taken in by-this chaffit would soon become the cannon-fodder ofGerman capitalism fighting under the mask of a- pseudo-Soviet Republic and exploiting the German proletariat for a war against the Entente, after which it would - '26 abandon all disguises and build up capitalist society once . again." It was in this connection that Lenin Wrote his famous pamphlet "Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Sickness'. Referring to the attitude of the German Communists to the Treaty of Versailles he , wrote : - "It is not enough to dissociate oneself from the hair-raising absurdities of 'National Bolshevism' as preached by Laufenberg and others, who have gone so far as to demand a block with the German bourgeoisie for war against the Entente in the present conditions of international proletarian revolution. . "The situation at present is obviously such that the Com­ munists in Germany should not bind their hands in advance and promise that in the event of the victory of Communism the Treaty of Versailles will be rejected unconditionally and definitely. That would be folly." . Lenin believed that a revolution in Germany would be possible only if foreign-political complications could be avoided, and he was therefore in favour ofcompromising: / _ "The overthrow ofthe bourgeoisie in any ofthe big European countries, including Germany, would be such a gain for the international revolution that one should be 'prepared if necessary to accept a long-protracted existence of the Versailles Treaty on its account." The German Communists never understood Lenin's policy, which was unhesitatingly prepared to sacrifice any principle what­ ever to its will to power, and, if necessary, what might look like ordinary common sense into the bargain. The open letter of the Communist International reproduced in part above did not prevent a split taking place in the Communist Party ofGermany (Spartacus League). As we have already pointed out, more than half the membership left the party, many of them to go with Laufenberg and Wolfheirn and found the ultra-radical Communist Workers Party of Germany (K.A.P.D.). Although this party was thus a split off from the orthodox Communist Party the Communist International nevertheless maintained repre­ sentatives of the K.A.P.D. in Moscow for two years, presumably in preparation for a possible veer of its policy in the direction of NationalBolshevism, However, when later on its policy did , in fact veer sharply in this direction it found it more convenient to use not the K.A.P.D., but the newly founded United Communist Party of Germany. What remained of the Communist Party of Germany (Sp.artacus League) after this severe split immediately suffered a new and serious crisis. The Party, and with it the whole German working class, was called upon to make heavy sacrifices as a result of the of March 1920. . .. 27 THE KAPp PUTSCH

The German Army was to be radically cut down in accordance with the demands of the Entente Powers and there was a serious danger that tens of thousands of professional officers would have to .look around.for a civilianoccupation. In addition, the Entente Powers demanded the extradition of about 900 war criminals for . trial. As a result, the waves of nationalism in Germany swept up to new heights of fury. The establishment of the notorious "Free Corps" under various names was only one of the means by which the Republic sought to evade the military provisions ofthe Versailles Treaty. , The situation in Germany was greatly worsened by the fact that the inevitable consequences of war" such as food supply diffi­ culties and wide-scale unemployment amongst demobilized soldiers, were aggravated by deliberate sabotage on the part of those elements who had once exclusively-ruled the country. Nationalist propaganda sought to convince the German people-that the food difficulties were the result ,of the blockade by the Entente Powers, which was, allegedly, still being maintained. The truth was, however, that the owners ofbig landed estates destroyed a consider­ -able part. of the 1919 harvest, slaughtered cattle and poured milk into the gutters with a view to keeping up prices and to worsen the situation in the industrial centres. On their part the industrialists violated the law and employed their workers for eleven and twelve hours a day, and refused to co-operate in securing the employment­ of demobilized men. The government declared that it was helpless in face of such sabotage. ' At the same time Germany's Generals were busily training the old units of the army which had remained intact, together with the new military associations, and establishing I arms dumps throughout the country. They also orgariized so-called Fehme murders to dispose of those who interfered with their plans, including well-known anti-militarists. By March 1920 they felt themselves strong enough to take over all power once again with the assistance of the agrarian Junkers and the industrialists. The Generals put their demands before the government, and amongst them were: "No reduction in the strength of the , and no surrender of arms and ammunitio~ to the Entente Powers." Under the political , leadership of the pan-German ex-official Wolfgang Kapp, the Generals, with Luettwitz and Ludendorff at their head, struck, and declared the Reich's Government and the governments of the various German States deposed. The Ebert­ Noske Reich's Government fled to South Germany. A of workers- and officials was proclaimed and carried out practically all over Germany. The weakness of the Communist Party was clearly revealed during the Kapp Putsch. In Berlin, fer instance, the most important 28 centre of Germany, the party had retained only about a thousand members after the split in October. When the Kapp Putsch first broke out those members of the Central Committee of the Party who were stilI at liberty declared the party to be "neutral", and in their view the Party could not possibly fight for the Ebert-Noske Government. However. the following day this decision was reversed by the Chairman of the Party, Paul Levi, who was then in prison. By means ofa letter smuggled out ofprison he vigorously condemned the attitude of the members of the Central Committee and secured a reversal of their decision. The Communist Party then declared itself in support of the general strike. The Kapp Putsch collapsed, and the Social Democrat Noske, who had given the Generals a free hand, had to go. In the Ruhr District the workers had risen against the Free Corps Putschists and defeated them. but when the armed workers of the Ruhr refused to surrender their arms and demanded that revolutionary consequences should "follow from the defeat of Kapp the "Reich's Government sent the Reichswehr and the reactionary Free Corps detachments against them. Thousands of workers. who were usually described as "Communists", were murdered. and thousands of others fled from the Ruhr district into the areas occupied by the Entente troops to find safety from the counter-revolutionary soldiery. The following letter written by a student with one of the Free Corps shows how the campaign was conducted against the workers who had'defended the Republic and thelegal government against its putschist enemies: "I joined my company yesterday morning. and at one o'clock we made the first attack. IfI were to -tell you everything that happened you'd think I was lying. No pardon is given at all. loNe shoot even the wounded. The enthusiasm is tre­ mendous. almost incredible. Our battalion has had two dead so far. The have lost between two and three hundred dead. All of them who fall into our hands are first bashed with the rifle-butts and then finished off with a bullet. I thought of hospital station "A" during the fighting; that was because we shot ten Red Cross sisters out of hand because each of them carried a pistol. We were delighted to shoot these shameless wenches. And how they cried and begged us to spare their lives! Nothing doing. Whoever we find with arms is our enemy and learns all about it. We were much more humane against the French in the field. How's everybody at the hos­ pital? The loca l population "gives us all we want. Sometimes twenty or thirty men are treated at a time in the locals. My address is Corporal Max Ziller, Student 11 Company, Brigade Epp. Post Rokow in:." None of the responsible Generals was punished in any way, and the Republic continued to pay them their pensions, which were 29 . fixed at an even higher rate than that paid to the retired Generals ofthe Entente Powers.

, THE UNITED COMMUNIST PARTY OF GERMANY

. At this period' the Communist Party of Germany '(Spartacus League) had ceased to be a real Party at all. Far from being the leader of the German working class, as it claimed to be, it was faced with bitter hostility on all sides due on the one hand to the arrogance with which it claimed the leadership, and on the other hand to its attitude during the Kapp Putsch. In the meantime the . Party -had abandoned its original decision not to take part in elections, and it put forward candidates in the Reichstag elections on June 6th, 1920, and received 589,000 votes as against 5,047,000 votes for the candidates of the Independent Social Democratic Party, and 6,104,000 votes for the candidates of the Social Democratic Party. The Communist Party (Spartacus League) was eventually saved from complete degeneration into a negligible sect by its amalgamation with the Left-wing of the Independent Social Democratic Party. ' During and after the revolution the 'Independent Social Democratic Party came very close indeed to accepting 'the teaching of the Communist International. At the congress of the Party in December 1919 the Chairman, Arthur Crispien, declared: "The League of Nations propagated by the Imperialists is nothing but the alliance of the last remaining victorious capitalists at which they are aiming; it is nothing but the international ruling organization of international capitalism for the oppression of the peoples of all countries... .' The struggle of.the Imperialists to rule the world has caused the proletarian world revolution to break out. • .. The world revolution is historically necessary to overcome capitalist anarchy and bloody imperialist domination which have become a curse to the peoples of all countries. . ... Two powerful movements are locked in a life and death struggle: that of the capitalist .world conquerors, and that of the Socialist .world liberators. The 'League of Nations' of the Imperialists means - unbelievable power and unbelievable riches ' for a finance­ capitalist clique and a permanent Golgotha for the peoples of the world." . This was the doctrine on which hostility to the "Imperialist West" was based. The Left-wing of the Party came to the con­ clusion that the Party must turn towards co-operation With Soviet Russia: ex oriente lux. The leaders of the Left-wing saw the revo­ lutionary weakness of the German workers. They believed that the affiliation of the Party to the Communist International would 30 exercise an electrifying effect and result in a great accession of strength, so that the second, the real, revolution would then become possible. They believed that the Red 'Army .would develop into an instrument of world revolution. On the one hand they saw the­ German revolution petering out miserably and on the other they \ saw Soviet Russia victoriously maintaining herself in civil war and in the struggle against capitalist intervention. In the summer of 1920 they saw the Red Army advance against the West until itstood before the gates of Warsaw with its advance guards in the Polish Corridor, and they decided to affiliate to the Communist Inter­ national at all costs. On the other hand the Right-wing of the Party adopted a sceptical attitude towards the Communist Inter-

national from the beginning. ' "\ . In the meantime the leaders ofthe Communist International had realized that in founding the Communist Party (Spartacus League) . they had split the revolutionary wing of the German working-class movement at the wrong spot. They saw the ineffectiveness and weakness of the Communists ori the one hand, and the tremendous increase in influence and prestige of the Independent Social Democrats on the other. The results ofthe 1920 Reichstag elections left no further room for illusions, and they therefore now attempted to approach the , revolutionary masses of the German workers through the Left-wing of Independent Social Democracy. They decided to create another split, but this time the split was to be .between the "Left" wing and the "Centrists". In this way the Independent Social Democratic Party was 'broken in two at the congress in 1920 on the question of accepting. or rejecting the famous "Twenty-One Conditions" which the Communist International had laid down for the admission of the Independent Social Democratic Party into its ranks. . The Independent Social Democratic Party was a democratic mass Party, but the Communist International demanded that it should accept the Leninist principle of so-calledDemocratic Cen­ tralism. Behind this expression "democratic centralism" lies the well-known leadership principle, that is the dictatorship of leaders. The leaders ofthe Left-wing Independent Social Democrats accepted the principle, partly because'they believed that this form oforganiza­ tion would compensate for revolutionary weakness, and partly because they believed that they would be able to keep their end up against the leaders of the Communist International. Thus it came about that not only the Communist Party (Spartacus League), but also the majority of the Independent Social Democracy became organized according to Leninist principles. After the majority of the Independents had accepted the famous twenty-one conditions, the Communist International ordered the unwilling Communist Party (Spartacus League) to , amalgamate with them. The "unification congress" tookplace from December 4th to 7th, 1920, and no preparatory discussion of its ,programme was arranged. With this congress a new chapter was opened in 31 the history of the Communist Party, and the pendant (Spartacus League) was dropped in its title, which now became the United Communist Party of Germany. Numerous Independent Social Democratic Party groups did not wait for the unification congress but joined the Communist Party weeks, and sometimes months before. The leadership of the new United Party reckoned its membership, based on the figures given by each of the amalgamating Parties, at approximately 500,000. However, numerous members ofthe Independent Social Democratic Party who had voted for unification with the Communists did not, in fact, take part in the organizational amalgamation, and these members, generally speaking, drifted away into political indifference. Later investigations made by the Communist International showed that at the height of its power and influence the United Communist Party of Germany had about 350,000 members. It was seen once again that when a split takes place numerous members drift away altogether, abandoning both the one group and the other. . The unification congress did not adopt any special programme, but issued a manifesto instead, which sketched what was to be the future policy of the United'Party. In his speech to the congress on the manifesto, Paul Levi declared : "We shall tolerate no nationalism from whatever side it may come." Various earlier decisions ofthe Communist Party were annulled, and a declaration was adopted to the effect that when the Social Democratic Party and the Trade Unions displayed any serious desire to socialize industry, etc., they would be able to rely on Communist support. The decision to participate in elections was confirmed. The Trade Unions, the congress·declared, had become part and parcel of the capitalist social order, but nevertheless it was necessary for a Communist to be a member of his Union, and for Communists to work within the Unions. At this period the German Trade Unions had approximately nine million members. The main political demand of the new Party was for the establish­ ment of a German Soviet Republic and the proclamation .of a proletarian dictatorship. With the formation ofthis United Communist Party ofGermany the Communist International now disposed of a powerful German section. In fact the new Party was its strongest Party outside the Russian Communist Party. The leaders of the Communist International' were well aware that the democratic traditions of the organization of most of the members of the new Party would mean difficulties in the way of their dictatorship. Froin the beginning they had regarded Rosa Luxemburg as a heretic because she dared to stand up for her own ideas and had a will of her own. They now came into almost permanent conflict with Paul Levi.-who had 32 been the Chairman of the Spartacus League after Leo Jogisches, 'and had become Chairman of the new Party. Levi was a man of intelligence and character, and he was unwilling to sacrifice either to the dictates of Moscow. . The leaders of the Communist Inter­ national also anticipated conflicts with the leaders of the Left-wing Independents. They therefore adopted Leninist methods to secure their ends.

. ( THE MARCH ACTION Negotiations took place in London in February and March 1921 . which led to the conclusion of the London Agreement on repara­ tions. The German Government was successfully engaged in sabotaging the fulfilment of its reparations ,obligations under the ' Versailles Treaty, and it was exploiting every possible opportunity that arose in order to split up 'the Entente. In his pamphlet "The Break-up of the Modern State" published in 1921, Professor M. J. Bonn describes how during the negotiations in Spa concerning the coal deliveries to be made by Germany under the Versailles Treaty, the German coal interests .under the leadership of Hugo Stinnes, tried to persuade the German representatives, of whom Professor Bonn was one, to reject the Entente demands and thus compel the French to march into .the Ruhr, Stinnes and the other big indus­ trialists were of the opinion that if France occupied the Ruhr she would be abandoned by Great Britain, and that Germany would then have a heaven-sent opportunity to deal with France on her own. ,With this the Entente would be broken up and the Anglo­ French Alliance at an end. ' The German Government and its parties whipped up such a powerful wave of nationalist excitement that it almost endangered the existence of the government itself. At the beginning ofMarch, whilst the negotiations in London were still proceeding, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued the following slogans: "Down with the Double Yoke of Foreign and German Exploitation 1" "Long Live a Defensive and Offensive Alliance with Soviet Russia I" "Establish a Working Economic Agreement with Soviet Russia I" - , The Communist International judged that the time. was ripe to launch an armed insurrection in Germany for the overthrow of the government. The economic consequences of the system known as 34 War 'Communism, and the effects of the civil war were making themselves felt with great severity. In this situation Jhe strategists of the Communist International decided that a diversion was necessary in the interests of the world revolution. Their emissaries therefore ordered the Central Committee of the German Com­ munist Party to prepare an insurrection, '-A servile member of the Central Committee of the Party' promptly worked out the theory on which the actionwas to be based. His effort came to be known as the Offensive Theory. Writing in , the theoretical publication of the German Communist Party, dated , March 29th, 1921, he declared: ~ "The government is weaker today than at any time during the past two years. . .. The government can be overthrown by a fairly hard jolt now, and whatever government follows, no matter what its character may be, will be of advantage to the

I Revolution because it will clarify the situation. Thus if any possibility exists for launching .such a blow a revolutionary party must do so. Under these circumstances the United Communist Party of Germany decided to take the offensive." The action began with attempts to blow up public buildings and railway stations in Central Germany, and Silesia. The emissaries of the Communist International fondly imagined that these explosions would be the signal for the masses of the German working class-most of whom were in reality very much opposed to the Communist Party-to join in' the insurrection. Serious fighting took place only in Central Germany, where the in­ surrectionaries were very soon defeated by detachments of armed police. Itwas never necessary at any time to call on the Reichswehr for assistance in the task. The exact number of workers who lost ­ their lives in this action has never been satisfactorily arrived at, but over 7,000 subsequently received prison sentences of varying degrees ofseverity. This artificially created action caused violent opposition from the majority of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which not orily protested against the action itself, but also against" the fact that it had been ordered directly by the Presidium of the Communist' International without consulting the central Com­ mittee as a whole, and without even informing it of what was to take place. The minority of the Central Committee responsible . for launching the "Action" defended themselves against the angry reproaches of the majority by pleading that the orders of the Communist International had to be obeyed. However, the matter was too serious for glossing over and the conflict broke out in full public. It ended, as might have been expected, with the victory of the Communist International and the expulsion of the 'opposition members of the Central Committee. ' , Tens of thousands ofparty members, including the best officials 35. ofjhe Party, left with them. The outcome of this conflict marked / a decisive stage in the history of the German Communist Party. From then on the Presidium' of the Communist·International had its way where the policy of the German Communist Party was concerned without too much further difficulty. The Central Committee which was appointed after this conflict .obeyed all its instructions with such slavish submissiveness and ,such a complete lack of any critical faculty that Lenin hiinself was shocked at the deplorable result of his organization principles and coined 'the pregnant phrase "obedient nitwits" to describe the intellectual helots'who were left at the head of the Party. However, that was merely a blemish, and the 'way was now clear for the nationalistic . policy the Communist International envisaged.

THE NATIONAUSTIC, LINE The London negotiations of 1921 ended with a new ultimatum to Germany, but it did not put an end to the sabotage of the Versailles Treaty on the part of the German Government. In 1923 this persistent sabotage led to the occupation ofthe Ruhr by French troops. The.German Government and its supporters worked very cleverly and exploited every possible opportunity to divide the Entente and to secure the widest possible acceptance' of its propa­ ganda picture of Germany as ill-treated, poverty-stricken and worthy of the deepest sympathy. The ' process of inflation was pushed to extremes, loans were accepted with the firm intention of never paying them back, and expressions of sympathy with Germany were organized all over the world-the were, in short, very successfully engaged in winning the peace as very tangible consolation for having lost the war. ., The German Communist Party shifted the main weight of its . political activity to the foreign political field, becoming more and more nationalistic in the process. After the London Agreement came the , and later the Locarno Agreement and the Young Plan, all of which engaged the interest of the 'Communist Party almost to the exclusion ofGermany's internal social problems. The negotiations in connection with all these agreements resulted in definite German successes, and the Versailles . Treaty was 'gradually whittled down. No one spoke any more about the First World War, Germany was too busy preparing the second, and today occupied France pays as much to Germany in 48 days as Germany paid to the Entente during the whole fourteen years the Versailles Treaty lasted. Long overdue political and economic reforms were postponed again and again in Germany on the pretext of foreign-political . difficulties and the oppressive burden of reparations payments. At the same time military pensions were increased and German imperialism, now going rapidly from strength to strength, expended 36 . enormous sums for illegal :armaments, propaganda abroad, espionage, and the organization of what is now called the "Fifth Column" in other countries. However; even then the militarists were not satisfied with the rate of progress being achieved, and through their so-called Fehmeorganizations they carried out the murder of people, including even high officials and Ministers of the Republic, who they felt -were standing in their path. . The leaders of the Communist International recognized more clearly than the German Communists themselves that the great masses of the German workers were still largely under the influence of nationalism. The conclusion that they drew from this fact was not that an intensified struggle against nationalism was required, ' quite the contrary; they fell into line with this nationalism. They were unwilling to make the attempt to swim against the powerful nationalist stream, and they preferred to swim with it. There is no doubt that it was Lenin's organizational theory with its contempt. for humanity in general and for the masses of the working class in particular which led to the adoption of thisextraordinaty policy. According to his theory, it is the advance guard, the elite, which represents the real interests of the masses. The masses are always backward, never in a position torecognize their own real interests, and always under the sway of some false ideology. This false ideology itself must therefore be used to win the masses and subordinate them to the will of the elite. What the masses them­ selves think is immaterial and of no political importance provided they obediently follow the leadership of the advance guard which is guided by a true recognition oftheir interests. . In pursuance of this theory the leaders of the Communist International decided that the masses of the German workers could be best caught through their nationalistic instincts. They calculated that the German masses would sooner follow a leader who took their . nationalism into favourable account than one who fought against .. it. The one truth was that the German masses are nationalistic and therefore more likely to be influenced by nationalistic propa­ ganda than any other. However, the nationalistic propaganda of the German Communists merely resulted in strengthening the nationalism of the masses of the German workers. German nationalism turned out to be a much 'stronger force than the social­ revolutionary ideology of the Communist International. And in the end the German 'Communist .Party became a downright party of German nationalism instead of a social-revolutionary party. No one will ever be in a position to determine' how far German nationalism developed from a means of propaganda into a belief for the leaders of the German Communist Party, just as no one will ever be in a position to know exactly how far the -leaders of the Communist International were moved by a desire to strengthen German nationalism with a view to exploiting it for 'their own power-political ends. In any case the result was that by 1933 many, many Com- G .C. - 37 -B* munists no longer felt any qualms about'going over to the National Socialists. The leaders of the German Communist Party should have seen from the beginning that this would .inevitably be the result of their nationalistic policy. All Germany's political parties organized protest demonstrations against the "London ultimatum". A leading Communist official, Otto Graf, appeared at one such meeting organized in Munich by the notorious "Voelkische" (Aryan) movement of nationalistic students, and declared himself in complete agreement with the meeting and its protest. Quite apart from this incident, Graf co­ operated closely with the German Nationalists. He and his assistant, Thomas, maintained close relations with the Free Corps ·" Oberland", one ofthe most debased and at the same time cowardly and brutal groups of the notorious Fehmic murder organizations of the German Right-wingers. At the time of the Upper Silesian insurrection Social Democratic and Communist workers fought in the Free Corps side by side with extreme German Nationalists against the Polish insurgents. . Otto Graftook over the Neue Zeitung, the organ ofthe murdered Bavarian Social Democratic Premier, Kurt Eisner, who was in office from to his assassination in February 1919. This paper was certainly not financed by the Communist Party, and Graf edited it in the spirit of Eltzbacher's National Bolshevism of 1919-20 with a strong anti-Semitic note. The leaders of the Free Corps "Oberland" and other extreme German nationalist organizations sympathized with Graf because they, too, wanted a dictatorship, but it was their own dictatorship they had in mind, and because they believed that tension between Soviet Russia and the Western Powers would make it easier for Germany to rearm. In the end, in 1922,Graf was expelled from the Communist Party. He was a' little before his time; two years later that mishap could never have come about.

THE RAPALLO TREATY The main stages of Germany's subsequent foreign policy were: the Rapallo Treaty with Soviet Russia in 1922, the occupation of the Ruhrby the French in 1923, the Dawes Plan in 1924, the Locarno Treaty. in 1925, the Berlin Agreement with Soviet Russia in 1926, and Germany's entry into the League of Nations. These were all German successes; and they broke up the Entente, and created the basis for the economic, political and military re-armament of Germany. From the beginning of 1921 onwards the Central Committee of the German Communist Party made the slogan "Alliance with Soviet Russia:' the main plank in its foreign-political agitation• . When the Rapallo Treaty was signed between Germany and Soviet Russia the Communist leaders first heard about the event from the 38 morning newspapers. In this treaty Germany and Russia mutually surrendered their claims against each other for war damage. The Communist Party Press praised the treaty as a diplomatic success for Soviet Russia and as a political success for their own agitation. However, the Communist Party was not strengthened politically in any way whatever as a result of the treaty. . On the other hand the German Government felt itself strength­ ened in its policy ofsabotaging the Versailles Treaty. The so-called "Eastern orientation of German foreign policy" dates from the signing of the Rapallo Treaty, but it was never motivated by any sympathy for Soviet Russia. After the signing of the Rapallo Treaty the foreign political attitude of the German ' Communist Party was more vigorously opposed than ever to any understanding with the Western Powers, and the Party did its utmost to secure acceptance for the contention of the Communist International .that any negotiations amongst the Western Powers themselves, and any steps taken by the Entente against Germany, were in reality directed against Soviet Russia. In the years that followed this attitude developed into a sort of persecution mania. Meetings and demonstrations were organized. all over the place at the slightest provocation or without any provocation at all, under the slogan "Defend Soviet Russia!" In this way the policy of the German Communist Party did much to assist in the creation .of a suitable atmosphere for the nationalist excesses which burst out during - . the period of the Ruhr occupation.

THE OCCUPATION OF THE RUHR From 1920 onwards the German Government lagged behind with its reparations payments under the Versailles Treaty. In almost permanent negotiation it became all too clear, that the German Government, egged on by the big industrialists under the leadership of Hugo Stinnes, Thyssen, , von Bohlen, Halbach, Roechling, etc., was deliberately sabotaging the payments in order to provoke measures against Germany stem enough to win for her the sympathy of the thoughtless world as part of the deliberate and planned attempt to "organize sympathy". . On January Ll.th, 1923, French and Belgian troops marched into the Ruhr. The German Government immediately organized both active and passive resistance on the widest possible scale and at a cost which would have been more than sufficient to meet her current reparations obligations. All political parties joined in the campaign and a wave of nationalist incitement was whipped up such as Germany had not 'experienced since the first days of the war. The only difference between the Communist Party and the other German parties in this respect was that it added to the slogan "Defeat Poincare in the Ruhr !"-a pendant "And Cuno on the Spree!" . 39 The Communist Party did not protest against the nationalist provocations and the war-mongering incitement of the German Government and the nationalistic organizations; all it protested against was what it declared to be the feeble way in which the struggle' against the Entente was being conducted; declaring that "a revolutionary government" would lead the fight much more vigorously. However, as its attitude showed, the Central Committee of the Germari Communist Party had not:remotely grasped the significance of the German Government's foreign ' policy. It foolishly believed that the .government had suffered the invasion because it was too weak to prevent it or do anything about it, that, in fact, once again the German bourgeoisie and German capitalism were face to face with disaster. The conclusion it drew from this entirely erroneous assumption was that the Communist Party must take up .the struggle for power in the Ruhr district at once as the weakest point of German capitalism, in order "to place itself at the head ofthe struggle against French imperialism". In a leading article on January 24th, 1923, the Rate Fahne, the central organ of the German Communist Party, declared: . • I "The German nation will be pushed into the abyss unless the proletariat saves it. The nation will be sold and destroyed by the German capitalists unless the working class steps in. The German nation will either starve and break . up under the dictatorship of French bayonets or it will be saved by the dictatorship of the German proletariat. . Either chaos under French Generals and German reactionaries or order under a German workers' government." Almost the whole working class of the Ruhr district, and all the officials went on strike. The general strike in the 'mines was complete. The German Government continued to payout wages and the Trade Unions distributed the money amongst the strikers. All parties and all shades of opinion unanimously testified that the working class was the heart and soul of the whole resistance. However, as far as the workers were concerned it was a battle fought on the cheap. The methods of the Entente were not German and they had no Noske. With State support and full wages the workers would willingly have gone on striking for ever and a day. It was the German Government which got frightened first at the"results of its own action. Germany's currency began to topple, and its collapse was .deliberately organized by those who had provoked the occupation of the Ruhr, the big industrialists. Some ' of the industrialists themselves, however, began to put on the brakes. On April 1st, a most suitable day, the RotePalme declared in a leading article: "The nation is breaking up. The German bourgeoisie is no longer in a position to defend the frontiers ofits own Father­ land. True, it raises its hand aloft in Ruetli oaths, but immedi­ . 40 ately afterwards it crawls before the bayonets of Poincare. It swears it is ready to sacrifice all it has for the Fatherland', but when the Fatherland calls for subscriptions for a dollar loan at a high rate of interest it closes its pockets. To pay, to suffer and to fight is not the right sort of thing for a capitalist. That's '" all right for workers. The nation is breaking up. The heritage of the German proletariat, created by the sweat of generations of workers, is threatened by' the military jackboot of French soldiery and by the cowardly, profit-hungry weaklings of the German bourgeoisie, Only the working class can save the nation'. It preserves and earns its heritage by fighting for it, . by, at long last, constituting itself as the ruling class. Therefore r:, the government which defies Poincare can only be a revolu­ tionary government, a government of the working class, born and supported by the fighting proletariat." ' This utterance of the central organ of the Communist Party of Germany is in itself sufficient to .prove what a big share of respon­ sibility for the outbreak of the Second World War must be placed at the door of the party. What the Rote Fahne preached then was preached by the Nazi, Goebbels, later on when he attacked what was known as "the fine geritlemen" in order to whip up the nationalism of the masses to still greater heights. . With very little alteration this leading article of the Communist Rote Fahne would make a fine Hitler speech and no one would notice the difference. All the traditional props of Hitler's propaganda are there-even the shifting of responsibility for a German war of revenge on to the shoulders of Erenoh imperialism. The charges made by the Rote Fahne against the German ruling classes were not that they had deliberately provoked the Ruhr battle, and deliberately organized the process of inflation to enrich themselves at the cost of the lower classes whom they crushed into misery and poverty, ,but that they had not proceeded against Poincare with sufficient energy. In order to extend the struggle in connection with the occupation of the Ruhr to the international field the German Communist Party in co-operation with the Communist International and the Red Trade Union International called a conference in Frankfort-on­ Main. The expressed aim of this conference was to secure the abrogation of "the robber treaty of Versailles". -D elegates were also present at the conference from the various countries of the Entente, and the presence of British, French and Russian delegates was ' declared to be of tremendous significance. The report of the conference shows that resolutions were adopted stressing the desire ofthe revolutionary workers for peace and declaring that they would resist _any new capitalist war with all the strength at their command. The "revolutionary workers of Germany, it declared, were prepared to purchase peace at the price of the greatest possible material sacrifices if that were necessary "to obtain a breathing .space in which the building up of the proletarian power could take 41 place. They would be prepared to this end to throw the wealth confisca ted . by them from the German bourgeoisie into the maw of French imperialism. But should international capitalism not be prepared to grant -a revolutionary Germany peace even at a high price, and should Entente imperialism refuse to abandon its attacks on a Germany ruled by the workers, then revolutionary Germany togetherwith revolutionary Russia and the revolutionary working class in the countries of the Entente would know what to . do to ward off this counter-revolutionary attack and win victory. The Ruhr struggle was a continuation of the silent war which had been going on between the imperialist robbers over the division of the German booty since the end of the mass slaughter of the people in 1918. The decisions of the conference were extremely contradictory. Not a word was said about the sabotage organized by the German war-mongers. The formation of a German revolutionary workers' government, if it had come about, would, of course, have created a completely different foreign-political situation, and the material sacrifices which it was prepared to make in the interests of peace would certainly have sufficed to prevent the adoption of violent measures by the Entente Powers, for anti-war feeling and a desire for peace were certainly very much stronger there at this stage than they were in Germany. The decisions of the Frankfort conference were the preliminaries to a new attempt to seize power on the part of the Communist Party of Germany. The attempt was made in the autumn of 1923, and like all other actions ofthe Communists, both before and after, it was a failure.

SCHLAGETER

A sort of alliance between the Communist Party and' the German Nationalists was formed in connection with the Schlageter affair. Who was ·Schlageter? After the war Schlageter served as a member of a Free Corps and took part in the suppression of working-class disturbances in the Ruhr and in Silesia. Subse­ quently he opened a business, but soon gave it up. According to his own evidence before the French court martial which tried him, he joined the sabotage organization "Heinz" at the beginning of the Ruhr struggle "because he needed money". This organization was .engaged in carrying out acts of sabotage. Schlageter became the leader ofa special group. After having carried out a number of acts of sabotage he was arrested by the French, sentenced to death and shot. Schlageter was betrayed into the hands of the French by a member of his own group for monetary reward, and at his trial he, in his tum, betrayed the names often other members ofhis group to the French. This wretched, treacherous, cowardly; creature was turned into anational hero, a monument was set up in his honour 42 and German streets have been named after him. Schlageter's building up as a hero was first started by Karl Radek,-the repre­ sentative of the Communist International in Germany, ably supported by the German Communist Party. Speaking on May 20th, 1923, at a session ofthe Enlarged Executive ofthe Communist International, Radek declared: . "The fate of this martyr of German nationalism\should not be ignored, nor dismissed with a contemptuous phrase. It has much to tell us, and much to tell the German people. ... "Schlageter, a courageous soldier of the counter-revolution, deserves to be -honestly and frankly appreciated by us, soldiers of the revolution. Schlageter fought in the ranks of the Free Corps Redem which stormed Riga. They wanted to earn the approval of the Entente Powers by offering hangman's service against the Russian people. Against whom do the German \ extreme nationalists want to fight, against Entente-Capital, or against the Russian people? With whom do they wish to ally themselves? With the Russian workers and peasants in a joint effort to .throw off the yoke of Entente Capital, or with Entente Capital for the enslavement of the German and the Russian peoples? - "Schlageter regarded 'the working class as a mob to be ruled. And.he was certainly of the same opinion as Count Reventlow, who declared calmly that no struggle against the Entente was possible until 't he' internal enemy had been settled. For Schlageter this. internal enemy was the revolutionary working class. He could see how the deep division in the nation paralysed its defensive power. • .. We shall do everything possible to s~e that men like Schlageter, who are prepared to go to their deaths for a common cause; are no longer adventurers , into nothingness, but adventurers into a better future for the whole ofhumanity." And a month later, on "June 26th, when resistance in the Ruhr district was beginning to flag; the Rote Fa/me; wrote : "Now that German resistance ... has become a mockery we ask the honest, patriotic masses who want to fight against the French imperialist invasion: how will you 'fight? To whom can you look for support? The fight againstEntente imperialism is a war everi if the guns are silent. Nowar can be fought at the front when the rear is in revolt. A minority in the rear can be held down. Unless the patriotic circles of Germany 'decide to make the cause of this majority ofthe nation.their own and thus form a front against the Entente and German capital, then Schlageter's adventure was into nothingness, and Germany would become a cockpit of bloody conflicts in the face of foreign invasion-and it would be easy for the eneiny to defeat and dismember it." 43 The German Communist Party organized numerous meetings' on the theme, "What did Schlageter die for?" At one of these meetings, held specially for extreme nationalist students, whose representatives were assured unlimited freedom of discussion, a prominent member of the Central' Committee' of the German Communist Party declared that further resistance to French imperialism was absolutely necessary, and that for this reason the Communist Party' needed

"heroes, men who, like Schlageter, are prepared to sacrifice their lives on the altar of the Fatherland for freedom and for their people. The German Reich, Germany's community of culture, the unity of the -nation, can only be saved if you gentle­ men on the extreme German nationalist ('Voelkische') side . recognize that you 'must fight together with the masses who are organized in the Communist Party of Germany. You protest against Jewish capital, gentlemen. Let me tell you that whoever protests against Jewish capital is a .class fighter already whether he knows it or not. . You are opposed to Jewish capital, and you want to fight against the stock-exchange jobbers. Bravo! Tread the Jewish capitalists underfoot, hang them on lamp­ posts, trample on them. By all means. But how do you stand with regard .to the big capitalists, Stinnes, and Klockner ? Gentlemen, we can show you the positive way to the struggle for freedom from French imperialism. This French imperialism is now the greatest danger in the world. France is the country of reaction. Gentlemen of the extreme nationalist" side, only in alliance with Russia can the German people drive' French capitalism out of the Ruhr district." .

Perhaps it is interesting to note in passing that this member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party ofGermany was of Jewish descent and Austrian nationality, On June 18th, 1923, the Rote Fa/me wrote encouragingly to the same address: I

"We are even prepared to work together with the men who murdered Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg if they want to join our ranks."

That was typical of so many other stupid, debased and useless appeals. The people in question had no such desire. They wanted to destroy not only the Communist Party but all the other organiza­ tions of the German working class, and in the end they succeeded, because, as the Rote Fahne had pointed out, they were unwilling . to tolerate a minority in the rear when the day for Germany's war of revenge came, and at .that time they were already busily engaged in preparing for it. 44 CORRUPTION In the end the German Government called off the "passive .resistance" it had ordered to counter the Franco-Belgian invasion of the Ruhr; it had never openly admitted having offered any active resistance. The action of the German Government in the Ruhr conflict not only caused tremendous nationalistic confusion in the minds of the people, but it also resulted in material corruption on a scale unknown until then. The working class and its Trade Union organizations were unfortunately also victims of this cor­ ruption. All political parties, Communists, Social Democrats and . Nazis, were of one accord in praising the working class of the Ruhr district as the heart and soul of the national resistance. Unfor­ tunately that was quite true, and the workers now imagined that they had won a great victory. Miners' canteens, workers' meeting halls and locals, etc., were ornamented with patriotic photos . showing workers. folding their arms before French soldiers, and so on, in the same patriotic strain. .. The whole of the working-class movement in the Ruhrdistrict was degraded into a toolof nationalist incitement . wielded by German heavy industry in its struggle against the Entente, and against France in particular, and the deplorable consequences of this can still be seen to -this day. Incidentally, passive resistance was a piece of very profitable business for German heavy industry, Germany's industrialists received over 800 million marks, ap­ proximately forty million pounds sterling gold, from the Stresemann Government as "compensation". During the Ruhr conflict large sums also found their way into the treasuries of the Trade Unions, and in consequence the Unions felt little inclination to protest against this monstrous gift to heavy industry at the expense of the German taxpayer. · . . . The unity between extreme Right and extreme Left revealed in this period of mass nationalistic incitement encouraged the Central Committee of the German Communist Party to intensify its policy of seeking contacts with extreme nationalist organizations. As it had got used to regarding all forms of "resistance to Entente imperialism" as "revolutionary" it apparently felt no misgivings. The representative of the Communist International, Karl Radek, carried on a public discussion with the extreme nationalist leader Count Reventlow, officials of the Communist Party invited extreme nationalists to speak at Communist meetings, and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party even spoke of a Nazi meeting. ' He achieved nothing at all and neither did Radek, but the ideological damage this campaign did was devastating and has never really been made good dowri to this day. It does not matter in the least now what the various extremist nationalist organizations concerned called themselves at the time, the fact remains thattheywere the organizations which came together in 1925 to form the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or, in short, the . 45 THE UNSUCCESSFUL RISING OF 1923 In the summer of 1923 the Central Committee of the German Communist Party decided to make yet a further attempt to conquer political power in Germany by violence. Not only the Communists, but also the National Socialists and their miscellaneous following of extremist nationalist organizations, and parts of the regular and 'irregular army (the so-called Black Reichswehr) were firmly con­ vinced that the German Government was sufficiently weak and compromised to make its overthrow a comparatively easy matter. The resignation of the Cuno Government and the formation of the Stresemann Government did nothing to modify this opinion,and the three main groups involved all began to prepare feverishly for the struggle for power. There was no organizational connection between them, and statements to the contrary, have never been supported with any proof whatever. However, it is true that a number ofBavarian officers belonging to extreme nationalist organizations ("Voelkische") seemed, oddly enough, to have greater confidence in the strength ofthe Communist Party than in that of the Nazi movement, which was split up at . that time, plus Ludendorff and their miscellaneous following. Encouraged by the policy and language ofthe Communists during the "Ruhr battle", these officers sought contact with the Communist Party with a view to organizing a joint insurrection. A number of meetings took place at which the military situation and the military measures it called for were discussed at great length. The officers in question took the matter very seriously. They ­ came to the discussions armed with General-Staff maps, explained the development which would take place, and the probable course of the struggles which might be expected.' The trouble, however, was that the Communist Party was not an army and had no fighting forces at its disposal, whilst on their part the officers were unable to offer more than to take over "the military leadership". They were unable to say whether any troops would be available from their side. The negotiations with these officers were carried on with the full knowledge and consent of the Commuriist International. The Chairman of the Communist Party, Brandler, who was the chief -negotiator on the Communist side, had previously journeyed to the Presidium of the Communist International to discuss the plans for insurrection with its members. He returned complete with the detailed advice of the Communist International and a little pointed beard a fa Lenin which he had grown in the meantime. ."However, in the event neither the one nor the other proved sufficiently potent to give the Communist Party victory. Many weeks passed in preparations for the .great event. A centrally led "Military Organization" was formed, whose detach­ ments were called "Red Centurions". Leading members of the Communist Party were -nominated in accordance with the consti- 46 tution as ministersin the governments of the Free States of Saxony and . With this the insurrectionary preparation of the Party were to enjoy a State fulcrum. This time the Communist leaders were very sure of themselves, as the following incident shows. The "Information Service" of the Communist Party reported that a big arms dump of the extremist Right-wing parties, or perhaps of the Black Reichswehr, was hidden on an estate in Pomerania. ...A proposal to inform the government, which was led by Social Democrats, of the existence of this dump was rejected by the -Communist leader, Brandler, on the ground that "as we're going to strike shortly we'll take the arms for ourselves". However, time passed and nothing happened-except that the owners of the dump (it may have been the -government itself) decided for some unknown reason to shift it somewhere else, with the natural conse­ quence that the Communist Party was deprived .of the arms dump which proved in the upshot to' be of very little consequence indeed. The Communist International had also set great store by the , success ofthe proposed insurrection, and it had seconded numerous coadjutors and experienced technicians to the German Communist Party to render assistance. All possible developments were dis­ cussed. It was feared that Poland and Czechoslovakia might intervene, and international measures were taken to guard against ­ this eventuality. The Communist Parties in the neighbouring lands were instructed to use their influence on the governments of their countries to dissuade them from any hostile intervention against the German revolution, At this time the Reichstag passed an Enabling Law with a view to disposing the more rapidly of certain important working-class gains, such as the eight-hour day. In order to be prepared for all eventualities the government proclaimed fa state of emergency throughout Germany, and Ebert, the Social Democratic Reich's President, transferred executive power to the Reichswehr Generals, who ordered, with the President's consent, their 'troops to march into Saxony and Thuringia. . The invasion took place and the Saxon Government, including the Communist Ministers, were deposed. In Thuringia the Communist Ministers had to resign. TheReichswehr troops, feeling themselves no doubt more or less in enemy territory, conducted themselves as derman troops are wont to do in such circumstances, with the result that numerous civilians were shot out of hand and there were bitter complaints about the brutal license of the soldiery. The Communist Party felt that the time was now ripe to strike its blow, and the rising began- in Hamburg. The fighting there lasted several days. It was quite bloody and ended in the usual defeat of the Communist Party. The expected spread of the rising to 'the rest of Germany did not take place, but it was extremely interesting to note that the real spirit ofthe average German worker was once again clearly demonstrated. The insurrection was carried out by about 300 men (this was the figure given later in a . 47 report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party), but over a thousand trade unionists alone volunteered to join the auxiliary police to assist in suppressing the Communist rising. At a time when Germany's currency was rushing swiftly down­ hill to absolute worthlessness, when the German workers received less and less in return for their labour every day, when hundreds of thousands ofworkers were unemployed and in receipt ofridiculously small sums in relief, when tens of thousands of small . business­ men, shopkeepers and lower-middle-class people were being robbed oftheir life's savings, and although it was quite clear that this misery was being deliberately engineered by a small clique of capitalists and militarists, the German working class in the mass did not support the Communists, but rather assisted in their suppression. . The average German worker is very eager to demonstrate his "legality". ' . However, the passive attitude of the mass of the German workers in face of the Communist attempt at a rising was not really astonishing. Before the rising took place the "Military Organiza­ tion" issued asort of questionnaire to all District Leaders to sound them on the preparedness of their districts. Out of 26 districts, 4 replied that they were prepared for action, the others prophesied what in the event actually happened. Despite the very unfavour- ' able result of the questionnaire, the Central Committee of the Communist Party decided to make the attempt because the situation offered some sort of a chance at last, or they thought it did, and, in addition, the Communist International seemed to believe the proposed insurrection was a very important matter indeed, and was pressing for action. However, the military capacities' of the nationalist offiCers never had a chance to display themselves. The Communist Party had nothing whatever to do with the Putsch carried out by detachments of the Black Reichswehr in Kuestrin at the beginning of October 1923. The Reichswehr Minister of the day, Gessler, declared the Putsch to have been the work of "National-Communist Groups", but he was well aware that this was untrue. The people who carried out the Putsch were his own men. They had got fed up with him; he was too dull for them. They wanted action-action not only against the internal enemy, but action against the enemy abroad. It was a foolish affair altogether, carried out by men ofa-very low degree ofpolitical intelligence, and it was suppressed with ease and rapidity. The course of Hitler's beer-cellar Putsch, the third action, is well known. Hitler was the only one to draw practical conclusions from the happenings of 1923.

THE DECLINE OF THE GERMAN COMMUNIST PARTY

After "the October Defeat", as the unsuccessful Putsch of October 1923 was later officially called in Communist Party jargon, 48 the Party leadership was at first unwilling to recognize either that there had been a defeat at all or that the situation-had in any way changed. It continued its preparations for an insurrection right up to April 1924 before it was finally forced to the conclusion that its efforts were hopeless. A change in Party policy then came about. During this period, from October 1923 to April 1924, the Communist Party was again illegal and a state of emergency still prevailed in various parts of Germany. Numerous members and officials of the Communist Party were arrested and brought to trial for various offences; in all over 6,300 persons were tried and sentenced to a total of 4,700 years' imprisonment and hard labour. A discussion began jn the German Communist Party and in the Communist International concerning the causes of the defeat which the Party had suffered in the autumn of 1923. This discussion dragged on for years and it subsequently affected the discussions of the Russian Communist Party's own policy. The Central Com- .mittee of the Communist Party of Germany led by Brandler and Thalheimer was deposed by the leaders of the Communist Inter­ national, and the leaders of the so-called "Berlin Opposition" Fischer and Maslow, and the leader of the Hamburg Communists, Ernst Thaelmann, were appointed in their places and formed a new Central Committee. The new leadership once again concentrated the main political activity of the Communist Party on foreign­ political affairs. Neither Maslow nor Fischer were born in Ger­ many, and the representative of the Communist International who guided the foreign policy of the Party was not German either. All three had come into the working-class movement straight from the university just afterthe war. The happenings ofthe winter of 1923-24 fundamentally changed not only the political situation in Germany, but the political constellation throughout the whole of Europe as well. Two of the most important of these happenings were the stabilization of Germany's currency and the introduction of the Dawes Plan. The stabilization of Germany's currency was a technical measure for the German Government, and it was followed with surprising rapidity by considerable 'economic improvement in Germany, which was encouraged in addition by the Dawes Plan. The Dawes Plan also led. to the fall ofPoincare, a fall which was at the same time a signal defeat for France. The path was now open for Germany to recover her position as a great Power once again. She was in a position to take the initiative and launched a policy which led, in 1925, to the conclusion of the Locarno Treaty. Soviet Russia was very much disturbed by Germany.'s new political line, and the Soviet Government repeatedly warned the German Government against its continuation, whilst at home the German Communist Party vigorously attacked the government and still more vigorously the Western Powers. In 1924 in connection with the discussions on the Dawes Plan the Central Committee of the German Communist Party issued a.pamphlet on the reparations / 49 ' • r problem which was signed by a certain Z. Leder. This was, in fact, a pseudonym which concealed the identity ofa leading official ofthe Communist International. This pamphlet contained the following passages : "In bloody contempt of all pronouncements concerning 'the Rights of Man', ·'a democratic peace', 'a League of Nations', and other deceitful slogans, defeated Germany felt the enemy's knee on her chest and his thumbs at her eyeballs. In this way she was ·forced to sign the shameful Treaty of Versailles, to recognize her 'war guilt', and to agree to pay 'reparations'. It is true that the imperialist German robbers were guilty, but so were the imperialist British, French and American robbers. "The war-mongers in France, Belgium, Great Britain, Italy and Poland were never tired of telling the masses of the people in their countries that the 'Boche' would pay everything. "One thing was clear; reparations payments would force the German people into slavery on behalf of international capital, millions of German proletarians would be forced to toil for decades under the bayonets ofFrench militarism. ... "We must realise that a victorious proletarian revolution in Germany will have to buy breathing space from the imperialism of capitalist countries at the cost of great material sacrifices. ' But in Western Europe, and in America, too, the proletarian revolution is a dire necessity, and therefore the proletarian solution of the preparations problem, the solution by revolu­ tionary means, is the most sure and certain solution. In this sign, and only in this sign, will the German working class be victorious." .. There is little here of the responsibility of Germany's military caste, of Germany's guilt for the outbreak of war. There is no word of the systematic incitement conducted for years and years by the Kaiser and his Generals before the war finally broke out. There is no word of German brutalities during the war, brutalities pre­ viously unknown to the civilized world. There is no word of the way Germany flagrantly violated international agreements and treaties. The tone ofthis pamphlet was not in any way exceptional. The whole of the writings of the German Communist Party Press and that of the Communist International were In the same strain. This political line of the Communists certainly suited the book of the German nationalists. They were able to point tothe writings of the Communists in justification of their own secret armaments. However, despite this it must not be thought for one moment that they ever entertained the idea ofjoining hands with the Communists in any way; they still regarded Communists as "anti-militarists") and "November criminals". The loud protests of the Communist Party did, not, of·course, 50 prevent the adoption of the Dawes Plan. In the Reichstag the two Communist Deputies chosen to represent the Party, Fischer and Thaelmann, spoke against the acceptance of the Plan, and in the session ofAugust 25th, 1924, Fischer.declared: "During the London Conference Mr. MacDonald interrupted the negotiations to take the delegates as his guests to see a reyiew of,the fleet as a symbol of the new pacifism he had in mmd.... _ "At the Wembley Exhibition there is a new bomber on view, which is said to be the last word in technique. Of course, this bombing-tplane is intended only to cast copies of the latest manifesto of universal peace over the people of poor, unfor­ tunate Europe." Fischer then addressed an appeal to the German National Party, which at that time led the Right-wing in Germany, including Nazis and the other extremist nationalists:

"Gentlemen ofthe German National Party, what IS the sense of your obstructionism? . For the German working class there is no other solution but to understand finally that no sub­ mission to Western Capitalism, but only an alliance with Russia" can create the power-political atmosphere which will offer it the possibility of improvement. ... "Salvation will be brought by Moscow, not by London." On August 28th, 1924, the Communist Deputy, Thaelmann, read a declaration in the Reichstag to the effect that the Reichstag group of the Communist Party, speaking in the name of 3,700,000 electors, rejected all laws based on the Dawes Report, and that the decisions ofthe Reichstag would not be binding for the Communist Party. No government had the right to sell the working masses of Germany to international capital. When the Communist Party finally took over responsiblity it would declare all such laws null and void and refuse to pay a penny piece. The workers should oppose the carrying out of this slave law with all their energy. Thaelrn:ann then declared that the Dawes Plan was the greatest crime ever committed against any people, and concluded his speech with the words: ' "Today Germany and its government are nothing but prisoners of the Entente bourgeoisie. Russia has simply tom up all obligations towards the Entente, and in particular towards the French." Speaking in the Reichstag on August 26th the Communist Deputy, Koenen, declared that the Dawes Report would be destroyed in alliance with the Soviet Power, and the Communist Deputy, Katz, declared: 51 "With the adoption of this law Germany ceases to be an independent country; and becomes a country like Egypt." The Communist Deputy, Rosenberg, even appealed to the solidarity of the soldiers of the Reichswehr with the workers, whilst in order to create the right sort of atmosphere the ,Communist Deputy, Florian, described to the House how two English detectives had arrested and tortured a German worker in Cologne in order to' extort false evidence from him. He was, however, not in a position to bring forward any proof in support of his highly coloured assertions. These and other speeches delivered by the Communist . leaders on the Dawes Plan were then published in a pamphlet entitled "London or Moscow?" the preface to which contained the following: - - "The comedy of deciding was played to its conclusion in the Reichstag towards the end of August -in the -framework of the struggle which has been raging around the international robber pact. From the beginning the Reichstag was condemned by the Imperialist Powers to say 'yea' and 'amen' to the Dawes Report." Many years later, more or less the same people who spoke and talked in this fashion arranged an exhibition of Communist propa­ ganda publications in London, and described themselves for the benefit of a gullible public as "Allies inside Germany". It was during the present war. . What was the reaction of the population in general and of the working class in particular to this policy ofthe Communist Party? Truth to tell, they displayed very little interest and still.less sympathy with the Communists. The election results offer a-tangible means oftesting the support accorded by the population to the Communist Party at the polls and a fair measure for judging Communist policy. The Reichstag was re-elected twice in 1924, in May and in December. In May the candidates of -the Communist Party polled 3,700,000 votes, or 12 per cent ofthe total poll, as against 6,008,000-votes, or 21 per cent of the total poll, for the Social Democratic candidates. In the December elections, after all the sound and fury, the Com­ munist poll dropped by approximately a million votes to 2,700,000, or 9 per cent of the total poll, whilst the' Social Democratic poll increased by approximately a million and a half votes to 7,800,000, or 26 per cent of the total poll. _ , Compared with the Reichstag elections of 1920 the two German working-class parties suffered heavy losses. In 1920 the Social Democratic and Independent Social Democratic candidates received a total of 11,500,000 votes, whilst Communist candidates polled another 590,000 votes, so that together Germany's working­ class parties polled about 12 million votes or 41 per cent of the total poll, whereas in 1924 their joint poll amounted to only 34 per cent of the total poll. This was a loss of almost two million votes. In the. 52 same period the German Nationals and extreme nationalists , ("Voelkische") won approximately 2,800,000 votes. The membership figures of the Communist Party declinedto an even greater extent. According to a report of the Presidium of the Communist .International issued in 1926, the Communist Party of Germany had only about 150,000 members left by the winter 1924-25, ,and·had thus lost approximately 200,000 members. At this time the Social Democratic Party had about 850,000 members, whilst the Free Trade Union had approximately 6',000,000 members, having lost several,million members. At the second poll for the Reich's presidential elections on April 26th, 1925, the Communists lost about 800,000 more votes, their candidate Thaelmann polling only 1,931,151 votes as against 14,655,000 for Hindenburg and 13,751,615 votes for Marx. The defeated General of the First World War thus became President of the Weimar Republic. That was the first great open victory of the reaction in Germany. The explanations which the Communist Party offered for ,its policy in connection with the presidential elections were interesting. Thus the Rota Fahne declared on April 19th, 1925: "Hindenburg is in favour of brutal measures against the working class. - Marx is in favour of the same measures, but with the crucifix in the other hand." And on April 22nd it wrote: "The danger of and reaction does not lie in the possibility that Hindenburg may be elected on April 26th. The danger will be just as great if the other candidate of the bourgeoisie, ~arx, is elected." The electoral losses of the Communists indicate that the popula­ tion had no sympathy with this point of view. How strong Germany already felt herself can be best seen from the Military Budget adopted by the Reichstag. It excellently illustrated the great progress already made by German re-armament. The following is an illuminating comparison with the 1913 figures (both sums given in gold marks):

GERMAN MILITARY EXPENDITURE 1913 1925 Standing Army. 800,000 100,000 (Allegedly). StaffExpendi- ture . 4,300,000 Marks 4,200,000 Marks Maintenance 207,200,000 45,000,000 Uniforms 48,000,000 23,000,000 > .Horses .. 21,800,000 8,500,000 Fortifications, etc. . 22,900,000 22,700,000 Artillery, etc. 75,000,000 63,000,000 53 "The fact that several items, Staff Expenditure, Fortifications, ' Artillery, etc., show very little difference is particularly striking. Changes in purchase price accounted for this phenomenon only in small degree. In addition to the 1925 expenditure recorded above there was a great' deal of further expenditure from secret funds which never appeared at all in the official military budget and which greatly swelled the total expenditure of the German Republic on military matters. It must be recorded to the credit of the Com­ munists that they were the only ones to vote against this budget. Over and above the defeats suffered by the German Communist Party in the years 1924-25 came the conclusion of the Locarno Treaty which was regarded as a threat to Soviet Russia. In fact, . the leaders of the Communist International were.so disturbed that they decided to try another change in the leadership of the German Communist Party. The Central Committee of the Party led by Fischer and Maslow was deposed, and a new one was set up with 'Ernst Thaelmann as chairman. , 'Wilhelm Koenen and remained on the Central Committee as more or less permanent Communist civil servants, and they have been responsible for the administration of Communist policy down to the present day. . Naturally, the members of the Party were not consulted when this .change of leadership was made; they had never been consulted previously, and they have never been consulted since. The German Communist Party had truly become "an organization of a Leninist type". It would be difficult to overestimate what this meant for Germany. With all its faults, up to 1914 the old Social Democratic Party had been a school for democracy for the intelligent and pro­ gressive workers of Germany. Even after the war both the Social Democratic Party arid the Independent Social Democratic Party had strictly democratic party statutes. For instance, before the Party congress in Halle at which the split took place the Independent Social Democratic Party organized a ballot of all its members. .There is no doubt that the democratic constitutions of the working­ class Parties and of the Trade Unions represented at least' one solid democratic element in German- political life. The Leninist organizational theory strictly rejected this inner­ party democracy. Lenin's contention was that mass organizations of the workers must degenerate into working-class organizations with a bourgeois outlook. Only parties of the elite, of the revolu­ tionary advance guard, could pursue really revolutionary -aims. Whether the policy of an organization serves the masses cannot be decided by the masses themselves, but only by the advance guard, which is a revolutionary organization under iron discipline. In this organization the guiding organizational principle was democratic centralism. What democratic centralism really means can be seen from the twelfth of the twenty-one conditions' laid down by the Communist International for the acceptance of the Independent Social Democratic Party into its ranks: 54 "In the present epoch of intensified civil war the Communist Party will be in a position to do its duty only if it is organized in the most highly centralized fashion possible, if iron discipline prevails in its ranks, and if its Central Committee, enjoying the full confidence ofthe Party membership, is provided with plenary powers, and the widest possible authority." Now, whether a Central Committee enjoys the confidence of the Party membership is not a matter for the Party membership to decide: the Executive Committee of the Communist International does that. For this reason no Communist Parties can ever have . any really vital inner-party life. . If one traces this system through­ out all its ramifications one finds that all the Parties affiliated to the Communist International stand under its dictatorship. Rosa Luxemburg opposed this theory of democratic centralism when she saw what it was leading to in Soviet Russia. Lenin declared that "the new democracy" consisted in the fact that "the masses must learn by experience that their most reliable leaders are the disciplined advance guard of the .proletariat truly conscious of it aims". Rosa Luxemburg declared, however that this "new democracy" was worse than no democracy at all: "It stops up the living source which alone can correct the innate inadequacies of social institutions, the active, untram­ melled and vital political life ofthe broadest masses of the people. Freedom only for supporters of the government, freedom only for members of one party-no matter how big its . membership may be-is not freedom at all. Freedom must always be freedom for those who think differently." . However, it was Lenin's idea andnot Rosa Luxemburg's which­ prevailed within the Communist Parties, and after five years' existence the German Communist Party had hardly any members left who had been brought up in the democratic traditions of Social Democracy. The members of the German Communist Party were the typical "obedient nitwits" who frightened even Lenin. They accepted every slogan that was bawled at them, and they agreed with every change ofleadership the Communist International cared to make. The situation was accurately summed· up by Ruth Fischer even before the Communist International decided to depose her from her position as leader of the Communist Party when she expressed her cynical contempt for the spineless mob who followed her leadership in the phrase: "If we issued the slogan 'Long live the Man in' the Moon!' they'd take it up obediently and without question." · . The successors of Ruth Fischer and Maslow in the Central Committee' of the German Communist Party, Wilhelm Pieck, Wilhelm Koenen and Walter Ulbricht are typical party officials devoid of all sound political ideas. In any case it was not their-job to workout a new policy, but to carryon the old one, if they could, 55 rather more.successfully than their predecessors had done. The "foreign-political expert" of the party, Gerhart, also remained in the new Central Committee. Writing in Jahrbuch, 1925-26, issued by the Communist International in 1926 in Berlin, this man declared: - "At Versailles the defeated and their allies Bulgaria and lay naked on the legal operation table of the Entente. ... . "The Ruhr adventure was the last attempt of French imperialism in the present stage of development to dominate Europe with the methods of brutal attack at the cost of a defeated Germany. The methods suffered bankruptcy.... "Ifthe Dawes Plan tore the -instrument of reparations out ot:-­ the hands of French imperialism then Locarno was to diminish .' France's political hegemony on the continent in favour of British imperialism. . '. . "Undoubtedly the point of Locarno was directed against Soviet Russia. ... . "The mere fact of the existence of proletarian Russia acts as an accelerating factor, as a revolutionary encouragement of ' the rebellion of the colonial peoples against their imperialist oppressors. With this, however, British imperialism whose world power is based decisively on the exploitation of hundreds of millions of Iridians, Chinese, etc., is thus involved in an irreconcilable, direct and active enmity which nothing can bridge with 'the first working-class and peasant State in the world (underlined in the original). The destruction of the movements .of the oppressed peoples for national freedom, the destruction ofthe revolutionary support given to these movements by Soviet Russia, is the struggle ofBritish imperialism for its own existence or for the perpetuation of its existence as an imperialist power.. '.. "British imperialism cannot yet risk a decisive struggle against Soviet Russia. ' British imperialism is faced .with the problem of forming a holy-white alliance. In Locarno British imperialism sought to form · such an alliance under its own leadership and directed against Soviet Russia. . .. Locarno is one of the stages of British imperialism's persistent and system­ atic policy ofencirclement directed against Soviet Russia. ... "By veering into line with the policy of British imperialism the German bourgeoisie has involved itself in a contradiction with Soviet Russia and with the great movements ofthe oppressed colonial peoples, and this contradiction must intensify itself to the extent that the German bourgeoisie becomes more and more the mercenary slave ofBritish imperialism." With this farrago of nonsense the man was merely babbling what the Communist International had told him to babble. He had no judgment ofhis own and not the faintest idea ofthe real situation ~ '. . 56 ' . in the world on which he was supposed to be an expert, and, above all, he had not the very faintest inkling of Germany's real foreign­ political intentions, not the faintest notion that she was engaged in preparations for a war of revenge against precisely the much­ abused Western Powers. How little real connection there was between this 'flatulent agitation of the Communist Party and the actual political situation was demonstrated by the conclusion- of the -Berlin Agreement on April 24th, 1926, between Germany and Soviet Russia confirming and extending the Rapallo Treaty. The signatory powers agreed to seek mutual friendly understanding in all economic and political questions which might arise between them. They also pledged their ­ neutrality in the event of one or the other of them being attacked by 'a third party or parties, and each agreed not to take part in any coalition aimed at boycotting the other. This agreement secured Germany's rear effectively, but it is more difficult to see what the Russians got out of it. In any case, it was certainly the forerunner of the 1939 Russo-German Pact. The Berlin Agreement fitted into the general framework of the policy against the Western Powers. Bucharin, the theoretical leader of the Communist International, had declared as early as the Fourth Congress ofthe Communist International, 1922: . "I confirm that we are already big enough to conclude a military agreement with this or that bourgeois government with a view to overthrowing, with the assistance of the .bourgeois government in question, another bourgeoisie. Assuming that a military alliance .was concluded between the Soviet Republic and a bourgeois State then it would be the duty'of all Comrades in all countries to contribute as far as possible to the victory of this Two-Power Block." With these words Bucharin laid bare the real purpose of the Communist International. He very wisely left open the question of who was to be the ally and who the enemy. However, the Central Committee of the .German Communist Party was in no doubt and assumed at once quite naturally that the enemy was to be the former Entente, and in particular Great Britain. With its usual slavish stupidity it acted on this assumption-both in the pre­ Hitler period and it! the years from 1939 right up to June 1941. Not a single Communist leader ever imagined in his wildest dreams that the time would come when Great Britain and the would go to the aid of the Russian people in their dire need as staunch allies and true friends against a treacherous attack launched by Germany:

"THE HORNY-HANDED SON OF TOIL" There is really not very much to be said about Ernst Thaelmann. He comes from Hamburg, and before he was called to Berlin as a G.C. 57 C member ofthe Central Committee ofthe Communist Party he had a fair following amongst the workers there. However, the numerous attempts of the Communist Party and the .Communist International to make him into a political personality have never really got off _ the mark owing to the total inadequacy of his equipment to sustain such a role. At the utmost one might say that he was not without a certain political instinct, but at reasonable self-expression he was a deplorable failure. He loved to mount the platform as a horny- • handed son of'

* Otto Lehmann-Russbueldt deals in greater detail with this matter in his pamphlet Aggression, a "Fight for Freedom" publication. (Hutchinson.) . 60 . Referendum" of 1929, and the other was the wild "Transport Workers' Strike" in Berlin in 1932. 'In both cases it was the Nazis- . who chiefly profited by them. Thaelmann's accession also brought a more personal and individual note into Communist Party life. The "Leader Idea" was spreading in Germany with horrifying rapidity, and Thaelmann apparently decided to cash in on it. He caused Communist propaganda placards to be printed with his photo, and on his birthday the Party organized official celebrations. On that day many thousands of Party members and sympathizers marched past the headquarters of the Party where Thaelmann took the alute standing on the balcony. Apparently he felt that what the Nazi and the Nationalist Stahlhelm leaders could do he could do too. It was-another mistake, for the innumerable demonstrations exhausted the Party members, and in addition.the impotence of the Party so dearly displayed at these demonstrations, most of which were broken up.by the police, depressed the members and created a very poor impression generally. In order to keep some sort of a hold on the masses of people who came into the Party, "unpolitical" satellite organizations were founded such as the , International Workers' Relief (LA.H.), the Red Aid (for the support of working-class political prisoners), and, above all, the Red-Front Fighters,' League (R.F.B.). As the official .Communist Party Press was rapidly becoming unreadable for any but trained adepts with all the requisite jargon at their finger­ tips, "non-party" newspapers were founded such as the Welt am Abend and Berlin am Morgen. _ All these institutions carried on a tremendous amount of ' activity and developed into the most important pillars of the Communist Party and its policy brought millions of new voters to the Party 'machine. But there was so little real vitality behind all the sound and fury, that with the arrival of Hitler it all ceased from one, day to the next as completely. as though it had never existed. "

THE RED-FRONT FIGHTERS' 'LEAGUE (R:F.B.) Tha~lmann's heart, the German workers were informed by the Communist Party Press, belonged to the Red-Front Fighters' League. Now amongst the many pests that the German Reich had let loose on a long-suffering world since its foundation was the wholesale plague of semi-military organizations. Thousands of naval and military leagues, "OldComrades'" associations, patriotic male voice choirs, and all the rest of it, lustily upheld the traditions of German militarism during the off periods when no war happened to be engaging its attention. The wildest imperialist war-mongering and the loudest praise of the virtues of war were the heart and soul of all these societies. The showers of encouraging telegrams which used to reach the Kaiser and his generals before and during the 61 ' First World war, and which now perform the same s~rvice for Aitler and his gang, came from these associations. They were so wide­ spread that a whole industry grew up around them, and vested interests of no mean order were, and still are, attached .to the manufacture and supply of the inevitable regalia, banners, , musical instruments, etc., not to mention the.letting ofrooms, halls and other accommodation, and the vast sale of alcoholic refresh­ ment inevitably involved. These military and naval associations not only survived the Fiist World War and the so-called German Revolution, but under the Weimar Republic they even took on a new and still more 'vigorous lease of life. Men who,had served in the German Army ' during the war and who had returned to their hoines with, as they fondly imagined, "Left-wing" opinions, thought they were acting in a very class-conscious fashion indeed when, instead ofjoining the already existing warriors' associations, invariably Right-wing, .they clubbed together to found their own "Red" Warriors' Associations. In this way there were "Red Sailors'" Associations in Hamburg and Koenigsberg, and "Red", Warriors' Associations in other parts, complete with bands and banners and all the usual trimmings. After consultation with the representatives of the Communist International the 'German Communist Party decided to centralize these various associations, and thus in 1924 the "Red-Front Fighters' League", or R.F.B:, as it was more popularly known from its initials, was founded. The supreme leader of this organization W(iS Thaelmann. The R.F.B. very quickly imitated all the military • practices and orgamzation of the nationalist "Stahlhelm", which was at that time the strongest and most influential of these 'bodies. . Before long the parades of the R.F.B. were overtopped by a forest of flags and dotted with scores of bands. The R.F.B. had its own khaki uniform, its own belt and buckle, and its own hat badge. Its members marched in military formation' and -took part in military exercises, which seemed to consist chiefly ofcrawling on their,bellies. Even in the Communist Party itself this performance aroused a certain'amount of protest, but the protests carried no weight. By this time, therefore, every main political current in Germany had its corresponding semi-military organization. The Right-wing nationalist parties had the Stahlhelm and the Nazi S.A: and S.S., the parties of the middle '(Social ,Democratic Party, Democratic Party and to a certain extent the Catholic ) had the so­ called Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold (Reich's Banner Black, Red, Gold, -from the colours of the Republic), and'the Communists had their R.F~B. These militaristic performances, in which the "Left-wing" and "Democratic" organizations of the German working class took a very willing part, are perhaps the best proof that .revolutionary, or even ordinary democratic-liberal, traditions were unfortunately almost as good as' non-existent in Gerrnany. . It was also typical that in the German working-class movement, both the Social 62 Democratic and the Communist, particularly in the latter, it was customary to use military expressions to describe political activity. Supporters were invariably "mobilized", propaganda "battles" were "fought", "campaigns" were launched, new members were "recruited", the collection of funds was known as '.'collecting munitions", and so on. In short the relationship with the barrack­ square jargon was very close. In the circumstances it was not surprising that the semi-military organization of the Communist Party became more popular amongst the masses than the Party itself. \ People who had little inclination, towards the political organizational and enlightenment work which would normally be associated with a working-class political party flocked to the R.F.B. These elements were politi­ cally ignorant and untrained, but aggressive and very often hooligan types, although, of course, there were also numerous workers amongst them who considered rapid and vigorous action essential if the steady advance of the reaction was to be stopped. . A marked feature of this period was that as unemployment developed on a mass scale large numbers of unemployed workers went into Hitler's S.A. f This process went so far that in the end between 50 and 60 per cent of the S.A. consisted of working-class elements. The workers in the R.F.B. and the S.A. generally knew each other from the factories and often enough they lived together in the same streets. Constant fights took place and the rivalry often developed into a sort of vendetta. On the other hand, discussions also took place constantly; they would argue with each other, insist that they were both after the same thing, that they were both againstthe capitalists, and so on. These discussions were probably largely responsible for the fact that when the R.F.B. was suppressed by the Social Democratic Minister of the Interior, Severing.rmany members went over to the Nazis, partly perhaps from afeeling of embitterment, for the Reichsbanner was not suppressed and the S.A. was suppressed only temporarily. In some districts it came about that the R.F.B. and the S.A. carried out joint actions, though they marched separately. This was particularly the case in collisions with the police or with the Social Democratic Reichsbanner. In districts where even the Communist Party had a strong Socialist tradition such things did not happen. , The R.F.B. had no policy of its own; it was an instrument of the Communist Pa~ty, and it carried out without question whatever instructions were given to it. .The Communist Party thus bears its full share ofthe responsibility for the very serious consequences of all this playing at f oldiers. The peak point of R.F.B. strength was in 1929 when the great "Red-Front Fighter Day" was held in Berlin. General Hammerstein and other high officers of the Reichswehr were present to see the parade, and they are reported to have been deeply impressed. Hamrnerstein himself highly praised "the good bearing" of the R.F.B. men. He was not in the least disturbed by what he saw. He realized that these 63 workers were already half won for militarism and that all that was necessary ' was to give them a new political idea or a different political programme, and they and their organization could be used ' excellently for the purposes of war. That was, to take place a few years later. Thaelmann had his open motor-car, and, standing up in it giving the "Red-Front" salute, he slowly drove past the .assembled forma­ tions whilst the men shouted "Red Front" and raised their fists. They shouted "Red Front" and clenched their fists and they weren't 'quite so well fed, but that was all the difference between them and the others. -, . Revolutionary spirit perhaps? Just one example of it. ' One of the sabotage trials happened to be taking place in Moscow, and a 'number of death sentences were passed on engineer saboteurs. The leaders of the R.F.B. in Zoppot, 1929, sent off a telegram to Moscow: ' "R.F.B. Zoppot begs to be allowed to execute the sentences in an honorary capacity." The Rote Fahne printed this telegram together with warm words of appreciation for the "revolutionary spirit" it demonstrated. . Rosa Luxemburg had written inthe programme of the Spartacus , League: - ",We hate and abominate the shedding of human blood." The Communists had gone a long way since then.

POCKET BATTLESHIPS AND THE YOUNG PLAN The Weimar Republic was great at organizing; it organized even its own demise. The government met with universal agreement, even from the Communist Party; when it declared that upemploy­ , ment was a consequence of the payment of reparations.. Although the German Government could find enoughmoney to build a fleet . of new-type battleships-cruisers they were supposed to be, but when their revolutionary design became known they were won called "Pocket Battleships"-the Entente Powers nevertheless gave ear to Germany's plaints and ~nce again reduced the amount of reparations she had to pay by introducing the Young Plan. The German working class had the privilege of providing their rulers with a new and powerful argument in favour of re-armament. A vote organized by the Trade Unions in Kiel to discover whether the shipbuilding workers were in favour of building the battleships or not resulted in a vote of approximately 90 per cent in favour. The reason given was that the building ofwarships would help to reduce unemployment; it "made work". This is an important point, . 64 because the same argument was used later on under Hitler, and it helps to explain why there was little or no opposition to Hitler's or his predecessor's war preparations. . _ The very latest slogan ofthe Communist'Party was now "Down with the Young Plan!" and this appeared on placards all over the country. ' All that was necessary was to change the name from "Dawes" to "Young'" and'the 'blocks left over from the previous campaign ,could serve

UNITED FRONT, BUT WITH WHOM?

In 1930 the Communist parliamentary group became the third strongest in the Reichstag...The Social Democratic group was still strongest, and then came the Nazis. In the meantime the Nazi S.A. formations had assumed something very like the dimensions of , an army, and at its biggest parade in Brunswick 1l0,QOO uniformed men took part. . The various organizations of Ihe nationalist Right-wing, the Nazis; the German National Party, the Stahlhelm, etc., had formed an alliance which was known as the Harzburger Front, from the name of the little spa where the agreement was concluded. The Communists now beganto shout loudly for a "United Front" between them, the Social Democrats, the Reichsbanner, and the Trade Unions. This was the so-called "People's Referendum" for the deposition of.the Prussian Government, led by the Social Democratic Prime Minister . . ' . The initiative was taken by the German National Party, the Stahlhelm and the Nazis in 1931. The Communists were not in any doubt about the meaning of the proposed "People's Referen­ 65 dum", and in fact the official Communist speaker in the Prussian Diet declared: "Who is behind this People's Referendum then? Isn't it Herr Hugenberg? Isn't it the gentlemen of the money sacks, who , have every interest in .establishing a Fascist regime here in Germany too? This People's Referendum of the National ' Socialists-has only one aim: to prepare the way for the establish- , ment of the bloody dictatorship of Fascism. We Communists refuse to take part in this deception which is to be practised on the people." - Thus there is no doubt whatever that the leadership of the Communist Party' ofGermany knew perfectly well what it was doing when it changed its attitude to the proposed People's Referendum from one day to the next. It even gave the officially termed "People's Referendum" a special name of its own, and in Com- ' munist literature it became the "Red People's Referendum". At whose orders was this carried out? The well-known organ of German heavy industry, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung declared ' in an article: "As far as the Communists are concerned they fulfil within . certain limits a 'useful purpose in our political life. . .. The Communists must see to it that the Social Democrats do not become all-powerful. They are a. useful instrument for the bourgeois and capitalist State as long as they' operate as a thorn in the side of Social Democracy." - In the history of the international working-class movement it has often happened that extreme Right-wing groups in parliament -. have voted together with working-class parties, but without any contact having takenplace between them in the matter. The manner of this Communist agitation, however, led to the Communists using the arguments and weapons of the enemy. That brought its _own punishment with it in time, for the Communists themselves fell victim to these same weapons. r Incidentally, the famous "People's Referendum" was boycotted by the people and the Prussian Government survived the attack.

COMPETITION IN NATIONALISM

It was no easy: job for the Communist leaders to make this sodden change of front appear at all reasonable even to their uncritical members and supporters. The Communists were sup­ posed to be fighting against the same parties with whom they were now making pacts. The key positions controlling Germany's foreign policy and her industry were in the hands of Right-wing 66 leaders. The Reichswehr Ministry was, of course, absolutely in . their hands. These people were in negotiation with the Entente Powers and they represented a permanent threat to Soviet Russia, despite the fact that Russia supported Germany's policy against,the Western Powers. The -Communists therefore accused these Nationalists of "National Treachery". The comic situation .had arisen in which the rabid German Nationalists were still not nation- alistic enough for the Coinmunists. "' There were circles who were accustomed to identify the Com­ munist Party and theCorpmunist International with Soviet Russia. Now Soviet Russia was building up quite a formidable army, which was rapidly winning the respect of Germany's military circles. The idea therefore arose that one day this Red Army might support "the war of liberation" waged by Germany against the Western Powers. In consequence new contacts were stablished between the Communists' on the one hand and Nazis and Reichswehr officers on the other. In 1930 in VIm on the Danubethree Reichswehr officers were arreste-d and charged with havmg formed Nazi "cells" in .the Reichswehr, Hitler dissociated himself from them; he was afraid that his relations with more important Reichswehr circles than these three unimportant young officers might be exposed ·to the view of' the public. The three officers considered themselves betrayed, and one of them, Second-Lieutenant .Scheringer, turned to the Com­ munists. They influenced him very successfully and convinced him that national freedom could only be won in conjunction with social freedom, and that both must be won in alliance with Soviet Russia. Scheringer was very willing to believe this, and from then on he became a mouthpiece for Communist propaganda-not for very long, but long enough to cause new confusion in the minds ofworkers and also in the minds of various so-called "national-revolutionary" groups, which consisted chiefly of dissident Nazis, Communists, Social Democrats, intellectuals, students, followers of Strasser's "Black Front", etc. There was never any friendship between the Communist Party, or even itsrnembersvand officers, Fehme murderers, etc. It was merely that the"slogan of dictatorship suited nationalistic circles. Once the people can be persuaded to accept the idea of dictatorship it is not a difficult matter to impose a different dictatorship alto­ gether on them. That was exactly what happened in 1933, and it was made easier by the fact that the population had gradually become used to the idea of dictatorship; thanks in considerable part to the propaganda of the Communists. • The activity of the so-called League against .Imperialism was part and parcel of the "National" policyof the Communist Party. Muenzenberg, a member of the Central Committee of the Com­ munist Party, had been placed in charge of this work by the leaders of the Communist International. The centre from which this anti­ imperialist propaganda went out into the world was in Germany, 67 · but not the supreme leadership-that was in Moscow. Inter­ national congresses of this League against Imperialism were held in 1927 in Brussels and in 1929 in Frankfort-on-Main. Delegates were present from all parts of the world and the League maintained particular connections with India, . Ireland, Tunis, the Arabian couotries, South Africa, and so on. The League against Imperialism was a very definitely anti-British organization, and its chief task was to conduct propaganda against the British Government. In an illustrated publication issued in 193b by this organization on "the struggle of the Indian people for liberty", readers were shown Bose as a "fighter for Indian liberty", whifst MacDonald, the British Premier of the day, was cast, surrounded by tanks and aeroplanes, in the role of "oppressor". There was also an article entitled , "England's War Preparations on the North-West Frontier against the Soviet Union" \"fhich declared: . "The most elaborate preparations are being made by British Imperialism through its representative the MacDonald govern­ ment for the coming war of aggression against the Workers' and Peasants' Republic. The Indian Army has been mechanized, each company having a tank and an armoured car. 680 tanks have been ordered by the Government for the Indian Army. Bombing air-squadrons are concentrated on the frontier, and preparations are being made on an extensive scale for bottling up the frontier with poison gas." , Naturally, this sort of propaganda did not disturb either the German Nazis .or the German Government; on the contrary, it helped to create the general war atmosphere against Great Britain. The idea of war against Great Britain was made "popular" in all sections of the German population, and particularly amongst the youth. . The Communist Party had no very strong youth organization, but in the years from 1929 to 1933 it had considerable influence on the ideological development of the German youth. -The leaders of the Communist Party were themselves too intellectually poverty­ stricken to give the German youth any/ sound idea on which to develop their lives and 'to rally them to a struggle to develop any such idea. Widespread 'unemployment paralysed too many energies, and in-addition the constant appeals of the Nazis and the Communists to hatred and violence had a devastating effect on the attitude ofGerman youth. Therewas very little difference between the appeals. of the Communists and those of the Nazis. Both wanted a dictatorship. The young people went indroves to the stronger side, and that was the Nazis. The chaotic and contra­ dictory nature of Communist ideas can be seen from the fact that , the Party issued the -slogan "Hit the Fascists wherever you meet them!" whilst at the same time, out of old tradition, warning the workers against "individual terror". The intellectually immature 68 youth were not in a position to discover where qne slogan ceased to operate and the other began, and, naturally, the call to violence made the stronger appeal. . The Communist youth detachments marched in the demonstra­ tions ofthe Party singing the praises of"bloody civil war". One of their songs had the same tune as the Nazi anthem, the " Lied", and it was impossible to distiriguish which was which. Is there, in all .these circumstances, any cause for surprise that later on most of the German youth became unscrupulous Nazi soldiers ? The Communist Party had .practically no influence on the .women ofGermany, and investigations into the polling showed that of all political parties the Communist Party had the lowest pro­ portion of women's votes. It was not the programme of the Communist Party which repelled the women of Germany so much as the methods of Communist propaganda and activity.

THE TERRORIST ELEMENTS

That type of person who is quite naturally given to violence, brutality and wild speech was to be found in all classes of society in Germany and in almost all parties. These people have mercenary natures with a broad streak of sadism. They are always to be found where-there is plenty to drink and the prospect of violence. The brutal murder of political opponents, Pacifists or "Marxists", was merely an agreeable change in their degenerate existences. The main contingent of these unintelligent brutes was composed of demobilized. officers and men of the former Imperial Army, and numerous semi-intellectuals who veered from one extreme "front" to the other, arid, to a lesser extent, between one party and the ­ other. They joined, .generally speaking, neither the Nazi Party nor the Communist Party, but either the Nazi S.A.or the Communist R.F.B. - These people were not politically-minded; they resented any suggestion that they were "political". They were "soldiers", and they were often in opposition to the party which organized them. Many members of the Nazi S.A. hated the Nazi Party, because officials and middle-class people were accepted as members, but . they swore by Hitler and Roehm. Similarly there were many members of the R.F.B. who violently abused the Communist Party but swore by Thaelmann. A "nationalist" author, , has given a very accurate description in his book Die Stadt of two such types from the dying days of the Weimar Republic. They are named Iversen the Nazi S.A. man, and Hinnerk the "Red-Front" man, and neither of them is a Communist. Their discussions show very clear traces of the complete chaos of political ideas caused by the policy of the Communist Party: 69 , ·" Iversen, known to his friends .as 'Ive', knocked around as a soldier for three years after the Armistice during the restless post-war period. The last parade of his detachment found him as a lieutenant with new and shining shoulder-badges, demobili­ zation papers in his pocket, and a firm determination in his heart to grab whatever chance came his way. Apart from hitting, shooting and stabbing he had had no training in any­ thing, but he had a certain ability to find his feet in whatever situation arose. . "He got a job as a worker in a wool-carding factoryIn Hamburg. . .. He remained , there for " a year •.. and tramped to the factory every morning with his grub-tin swinging in his hand. On Sundays he went to dances. His . fellow workers never called him anything but 'lieutenant' and tried to persuade him 'to join their party and the Union. However, he had a deeply rooted objection to co-operatives and trade union officials, and although he did not know it he had some affinity to the Communists and Syndicalists."

. ~ , After a while Iversen became the editor ofa newspaper amongst the 'discontented peasants of Itzehoe-Holstein. They were not actually Nazis, but merely because at that time they had not yet heard of the Nazis: "Generally he dictated direct to the compositor; and when he - was stuck the compositor, who wore the Red Front in his , buttorihole, helped himout with lewd remarks. "Ive needed assistance, and he found it in the person of a young man who turned up one day in the editorial office from somewhere or the other for .some reason which was not quite clear. ,As this young man observed, a little worried, God in his inscrutable wisdom had decided that there had to be organiza­ .tions, so he organized. At the beginning of the process he had , , not only abattalion of young peasants at his disposal, complete with cyclists, motor-cyclists and-motor-cars, but -an aeroplane. even landed in a field near the town ready to drop the news­ papers punctually at the farthest point in the province." -, : Salomon makes no mention of the fact that an organization of this sort costs money, and so he doesn't have to bother his head with any indication of where the money came from. However, the peasant movement broke down and Ive found himself out of a job again. He went to Berlin in search of opportunity and one day he fell in with a demonstration: "Ive couldn't see whether they were Communists or National Socialists. It was always the same young and undisciplined .faces which appeared at all these demonstrations wearingsome sort ofcheap clothing to imitate uniform. 70 " 'Germany'," shrieked a voice, and in chorus there came a wild shout 'Awake'. '. "Ive stood and watched them pass .... a hand clapped down on his shoulder. . .. He turned round: 'Hinnerk!' he ex­ claimed. 'Emil is my name,' said Hinnerk. ' 'Since when have you been with the Nazis?' asked lve. 'Hinnerk laughed. 'Oh, a long ' time,' he replied. 'Since the formation ,of the Party really. Didn't you know that?' No, Ive didn't know it." Ive visited Hinnerk in his S.A. Local. Salomon describes the place and the people in it as follows: "The Local itself-cellar accommodation divided into a number of rooms-was filled with tables and forms which were so arranged that they -looked as if they could he used as barri­ cades at need. . . . Young people were sitting at almost every table, smoking, 'playing cards, Of talking. . .. The whole atmosphere of the place, 'the clouds of smoke, the sprawling figures , and the general air of aimless activity reminded Ive of a 'dug-out during the war, and he was not surprised to hear that many 'of these young fellows had no homes to go to andspent the nights stretched out on the hard forms of the Local. Regu­ larly every few hours the posts at the door were punctiliously changed; and the empty conversation was chiefly about duty. "Hinnerk pointed out to him that diagonally across the street, on the corner, was the Local of the Communists.... Day and night the rival bands-lay in wait for each other, ready to attack the enemy suddenly--each member of each band was known to each member of the other-to spring at each other's throat. . .. From time to time one or the other deserted to the opposite Local, knowing full well that he could expect short shrift from the side he had left if ever he fell into their hands. "Four members of Hinnerk's Storm Detachment had been killed within the space ofa few months." Hinnerk began to explain his ideas to Ive: "Intelligence is a disease. . .. The intelligent chaps have had the whole show in their hands for twelve years now.... And where has their intelligence landed them? In the dirt. ... And not ten thousand clever.books will get them out again." However, lve is still doubtful about it all: , . "'You always land in the wrong corner,' said Hinnerk. 'Why don't you come to us?' 'Join the Nazis?' asked Ive with misgiving. 'To the proletes,' replied Hinnerk, 'to the class­ 71 conscious proletes.' 'Since when have you been a , Com­ munist ?' ' asked' lve. 'Oh, a long time,' replied Hinnerk. 'Didn't you know?' No, lve didn't know. ... 'Well, what on earth side are you going to be on ,when the trouble starts?' asked lve, and Hinnerk declared: 'On the side the police . aren't.' " •

Now the fact was that by this time most of the police were already Nazis, but that didn't prevent them from beating up pro­ letarian Nazis and even shooting at them. Salomon then describes­ the discussion of his lve with a Communist: " 'Communist Germany is the biggest threat to the world. ... Maybe the Versailles Treaty will be torn up under the Hakenkreuz.zbut under the Soviet Star it's already been torn' up. . . .' 'The German field ofeconomic activities in the future would be Central Europe,' said lve. 'Naturally,' agreed Hellwig (the Communist). 'And a Soviet Germanywould get hold ofCentral Europe more easily than a HakenkreuzGermany could.' Ive admitted that." Have these tendencies to contact and, even co-operation with al .eg-d "oppositional" Nazis ceased? Not at all" they are being continued by the Communist Party during the present war. German Communists in London have published a,manifesto said to have been drawn up by a "Peace Conference" which allegedly took place in December 1942 "in a West-German town". In the report that the Communists issued concerning this ,alleged conference we find the following:

"It is of particular interest to note that the voice of the opposition within the National Socialist'Party was represented at this conference." A captain of the German army is also said to have been present. One person in particular is deserving of especial mention out of the circle of people who are .interested in building a bridge between the Nazi Party and the Communist Party, and that is Bodo Uhse, who now plays a leading role in the Communist,Party. The man wrote the following about himself in the Moscow journal The Word: , "BodoUhse. Born 1904 in ,South Germany.the son of an officer. • Took part in the Kapp Putsch in 1920 and became an active member of the Hitler movement. 'In later years he came into touch with the revolutionary peasants' movement, was expelled from the National Socialist Party and joined the Communist Party in 1930. In January 1932 he was made a delegate to the European Peasants' Committee. In 1933 he emigrated. In 1934 he was deprived ofhis German citizenship. 72 His book Mercenary and Soldier is strictly prohibited in Ger- many." , -

What Bodo does not tell us about himself in the above short 'summary is contained in his autobiography entitled Mercenary and Soldier which was published by a German Communist house in . Bodo was a member.of the Free Corps "Oberland", which has already come in for mention in this pamphlet. Pages of his autobiography are taken up with descriptions of his illegal activity for this organization under the cloak ofjournalistic activity for the Bamberger 'Zeitung, Violence and boozing were the accompani­ ments to the main task which was the building up of a 'cadre army in preparation for the full mobilization to follow at a later date, and the smuggling of arms for it.' Bodo and his friends were very experienced in this kind ofwork. His education, it appeared, according to his own story, came to . a sudden and premature end as the result of an ill-natured jape whose victim was a grey-haired mathematics master. .Thanks to the recommendation of General von Gebsattel, Bodo was then taken on as a learner in the editorial office of the Bamberger Tageblatt. Soon after that he became a member of the Free Corps "Ober­ land", and was before long well up in all the things pertaining to a member of that 'body. He knew all the Fehme murderers by reputation at least, the Right-wing home-defence bodies, the league "Bavaria' and the Reich", the "" asso­ ciation of Captain Heiss, the "Wiking" league, and the Nazi leaders Esser, Feder, Ludendorff, Streicher and Co. ' The following is a typical example of the brutal savagery of Bodo's group. In the autumn of 1923 Bodo went with his group to the Thuringian frontier to forestall action on the part of the Thur­ ingian ,workers. A group of working-class youngsters had fallen in with 'the "Oberland" group and attempted to interfere with a transport of arms. The two groups, faced each other. Bodo describes the rest for us : "The youngsters gradually came up to us, and amongst them was a dark-haired chap, probably about fourteen years old, with a fresh and' open face. He stood opposite us behind 'the fence with his hands resting on it and looked straight at us without moving. . . . ',Suddenly a terrible blow with the butt of a pistol smashed down on to the backs ofhis hands. There was acrack like a nut being smashed, and a' spurt of blood, and then the boy's hands fell white with fractured bones to his side." I Bodo then covered the youngsters with his army pistol and the unarmed boys withdrew silently with the crippled lad in their middle. . Bodo exercised with his two companies and a battery of field artillery in the neighbourhood ofBamberg, a town of about 55,000 73 inhabitants. After the Munich-beer-cellar Putsch Bodo went on the run. Bodo had a dog which was christened "Adolf" in order to annoy the Nazis ·and to convey, in part, at least, the contempt he felt for them and for their leader's miserable attitude before the .court. However, in 1927 we find Bodo changing his "Oberland" uniform for the brown shirt of the Nazis. As a particular follower of Strasser, Bodo was sent soon after into the editorial office of the first Nazi North-German newspaper in Itzehoe, a little town in Schleswig-Holstein. His organizational qualities flourished in this virgin soil, and before long he had formed S.A. detachments from the immature peasant youths and led them to break up all attempts at holding working-class' meetings. Bodo then describes a fight at a meeting: . "My head was burning. With difficulty I turned round to Rauh, the S.A. leader, punched him in the chest in sudden anger, and.got it out at last: 'What do you think you're.supposed to be? .A male voice choir? God damn you, drive them out of it.' A glass was flung against the wall and smashed, and Rauh's whistle was heard above the sound of brealeing glass. The audience sprang to their feet, chairs were swung, the pathetic South Sea illusion of papier-rnache was torn to pieces in a trice and the laths used as weapons. The Brown Shirts sprang down from the platform, and from the rear of the hall the second detachment pressed forward. The big fists of the peasant lads smashed into the skinny bodies of the unemployed workers in the centre of the hall and put them to wild flight down the steep stairs at the bottom of which the police were waiting to baton them as they tried to escape into the open. Outside, however, they rallied their forces and tried to fight their way back into the hall, but they were repulsed by the superior forces of the S.A." . Bodo's description shows us the reason for the Nazi victories. Physical and numerical superiority at every fight and co-operation with the police . . It was Bodo's last battle on the Nazi side. After that Saul became Paul, and Bodo changed over to "Red Front". However, the words with which his confessions end show little sign that he has really changed at all inwardly: "The great force to which the future belongs was grappling with the past. In order to remain loyal to it the happy-go-lucky spirit and thoughtless life ofthe rnercenary had to be abandoned to become a soldier; a soldier of the just cause whose prospects look black today." . Thanks to his conversion our Bodo mustn't beat up orthodox Party Communists any longer, but "God tempers the wind ..." and there are still "Left-wing Communists", "Trotzkyists", left to beat up. The "Trotzkyists" are for the Communists what the Jews . ~4 . are for the Nazis, and this Communist faction is as much outside the law for the orthodox Communists as they were themselves. What Communists themselves thought of the Communist type can be seen from a book written by the Communist leader Regler and published in the Saar in 1934. It deals with the sort ofworking man who is pot a member of the Party, and who will -join only the Red Front. Describing the hero of his book, Regler writes: ' "Every practical action mobilized him. Lectures' bored ' him. Smilingly he refused to attend courses, and declared him­ self too dumb for it. The Party didn't attract him either. He had friends in the R.F.B., and he said that he stood by Thael­ mann." In .his book RegIer also describes how unemployed workers steal coal from the pit dumps. Numerous children were placed as watchers, and if the police appeared they were armed with all sorts of instruments, tin cans, etc., to make a tremendous amount of noise. If the mining police ' came on to the scene the thieves sang the "International" and the children beat time on their tin cans. Regler describes a discussion on this problem ofcoal-stealing: " 'But it's stealing', saidone of the beginners doubtfully. " 'Stealing! Stealing!' mocked the leader. - 'As though the French act any different. They've stolen everything they could lay . hands on ,. haven't they? We're only taking our German coal back again. Get me T " In this attitude towards the problem of reparations the Com­ munists were in full agreement with the Nazis. Regler writes nothing to indicate that he condemns it.

ALSACE-LoRRAINE

It is quite true that at the two Reichstag elections in 1932 the Communist Party gained many new votes, but its inner strength continued to decline. The Party continued to lose members and the Party newspapers, as well as the near-Communist newspapers run by the Party, lost tens of thousands of subscribers every month. There was general .unrest amongst the Party membership and it expressed itself in numerous cases of corruption and in many desertions to the Nazis. On the other hand, the Nazi Party went from strength to strength, and it emerged' from both elections in 1932 as by far the strongest Party in the country. Its membership had increased tremendously and by 1932 it had risen to over 1,400,000, whilst the S.A. detachments, which bore the brunt of the work for the Party, had about 800,000 members. ., The leaders of the Communist Party observed that nationalism . 75 was attracting larger and larger masses, and that the phenomenal growth of the Nazi Party was due to this. They concluded that their Party would be able to win some of these masses ifit increased its competition in nationalism with the Nazis. In this it did not hesitate at indulging in open incitement to w ar, and the election appeal issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in r: October J932 declared: "The chains of Versailles weigh more and more heavily on the limbs of the German working-class masses, and increase the exploitation and robbery,of the masses. A Socialist Germany will tear up the shameful Treaty ofVersailles. Only a Socialist Germany in alliance with the freed millions of the,Soviet Union would be in a position to ward off successfully any and every attack on the part of France, Poland and other imperialists.... Workers in town and country, you must therefore strengthen our revolutionary army of freedom in its struggle against the Versailles Treaty. Only -the coming Socialist Germany will give the oppressed German population in Austria, Alsace­ Lorraine, South Tyrol, etc., the possibility of attaching .itself to Germany." Thus the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ger­ many justified ,Hitler's attack on Austria and the seizure and "Germanizing" of Alsace-Lorraine years before they took place. Hitler merely carried out what the Communists were demanding. The fact that it was a "brown" invasion and not a "red" invasion, makes no difference to the populations of the occupied countries of Europe; for them the invaders'are all Germans. However, the nationalistic policy of the Communist,Party-was not entirely without success. Some .good Nationalists came over. One of them was the former police officer Giesecke. As a trained policeman this fellow was obviously of tremendous account and the Communists immediately pur him into touch with the leader of their "Military Organization", Comrade Kippenberger. Giesecke made such-a good impression on Kippenberger that the latter lost no time in initiatinghim into all the secrets ofthe "Military Organi­ zation". Kippenberger even took him on a personally conducted tour around the mostimportant groups of the "Military Organiza­ tion" and there was soon nothing that Giesecke did not know about it. In return he delivered lectures to the officials and local leaders of the organization on street-fighting, defensive and offensive tactics, and so on. Now Giesecke was ambitious. : He wanted to shine and not hide his light under an illegal bushel. He demanded that the Communists should put him-forward as a candidate at the first ,of the two 1932 Reichstag elections. However, the Party leaders explained to him that he was really a bit new to the Party to get it seat in the Reichstag. Giesecke swallowed his disappointment, but when the second elections came along in November he asked 76 ' , whether he hadn't been in the Party long enough now, but once again his request was turned down. , This time he turned his back on the Party, and went back to the people from whom he had come in the first place; the Nazis, and gave them full details of all he' had learnt about the Communist ' ''Military Organization". As a result arrests took place all over Germany and the key men of the Organization were soon all safely under lock and key. Hundreds of Communists went to prison as a result of the "affair Giesecke", and scores of'arms dumps, secret hiding-places, and in fact the whole illegal organizational pre­ parations of the Communist Party, on which the Communist International had spent millions of marks, were exposed and destroyed, including illegalprinting-works and distribution centres, etc., long before Hitler came to power. ' The blow was a paraly-ing one, and the members of the Communist Party have not been told anything about it down to this day. ' Kippenberger is said to have paid the 'price for' his over-trustfulness, but the Ulbrichts and the Piecks, who were no less responsible, are now busily engaged in Moscow forming riew committees with other officers who are just as natiopalistic: They are still shouting about the freedom they are

"going to bring" to Austria and Alsace-Lorraine. I Just as the Communists did their best to appear "National", so the Nazis did their best to appear Socialist. That was demanded of.them by the name of their Party and by the masses of recruits they had won from the ranks of the working class. ' They therefore began to give their blessing to strikes, and when the wild strike of the traffic workers took place in Berlin at the end of 1932 an alliance was formed between Nazis and Communists. Nazi and Com­ munist pickets worked side by side; they met in the same Locals; and when a strike picket who happened to be a Nazi was shot dead by the police their mutual co-operation blossomed into real frater­ nization. The Nazis also brought a new note into the strike. They jammed the lines with stones and caused the trams to derail, they destroyed currentleads, and SQ on. They were much better trained for acts ofsabotage than their Communist colleagues. At the same time they got to know a lot of Communist'officials personally, and to know where they were accustomed to meet. That proved very useful a few months later. The newly founded Secret State-Police Geheime Staats-Polizei or Gestapo as it became to be known by a euphonious combination of initial syllables, was able to begin its arduous work with great success. When Hitler became Reich's Chancellor the Communist Party was the only oppositional Party which wanted' to fight . . Com­ . munist 'emigrants in this and other countries are never tired of stressing the point. But they never say with whom or for what. The backbone of the Party had long been broken beyond repair.

77 PART III

WAS HITLER'S VICTORY INEVITABLE?

WAS Hitler's victory an "inevitable and necessary stage in historical development" as Communist leaders have decided, though only .since 1933 ?No, it ' was not. Naturally, the Communist Party did not want to see Hitler in power, and Communists fought to prevent it at the risk of their lives, but that is not the point: it is not the good intention which counts in politics, not the result it was " desired to .attain, but the result actually obtained. From the Left-wing the Communist Party helped to weave the net of lies which was cast over the population of Germany; The only difference where the Communist Party was concerned was that it brought a different nuance into the lie. If the leaders of the Communist Party had pursued a responsible and conscientious policy they could not have failed to recognize the historical truth that Germany caused and started the First World War of 1914-18, and waged it with desperate brutality until the day it was lost. The lie of Germany's innocence should have been refuted the moment it was born into the world. If a real political and ideological change had been brought about in 1918-19 then the new-formed Republic would have opposed the nationalistic incitement which exploited the lie of Germany's innocence. Certainly, after the war serious dangers arose in Germany, and there were many confused situations to cope with, but for anyone with eyes to see the main danger was soon clear enough: the danger of a new German war of aggression. The war criminals of the First World War were not handed over by the government of the German Republic, but honoured and generously pensioned, and they at once set about organizing the Second World War. How very successfully they did it the world is now in a position to judge. Super-officialdom, super-centralism, propaganda and armaments cost Germany far more than all the reparations payments put together could have done. The Communist Party did not rise to the tasks set before it by history. There were certainly idealists in the Communist Party, and men and women willing to sacrifice even their lives, but they were exceptional." _ Was there ever at any time a real danger of a successful Com­ munist revolution in Germany? The truth is that there never was. The short history ofthe Party reveals it clearly as an organiza­ tion which was not really revolutionary either intellectually, ideo­ logically, politically or organizationally. , Let us hear two witnesses on the point, both witnesses whose evidence ·is based on accurate knowledgeand clear insight. First of all the Temps, the organ of French governing circles. Under the title "The Communist Danger" it wrote as follows in its issue of October 20th, 1933 : . 78 "Our generation is threatened with so many dangers that we must weigh them up carefully Even today many people still talk about the possibility of a Communist regime in Germany. They declare that with six million unemployed there had to be a revolution in Germany: it was only a question between Hitler and Moscow. And they argue further that if the present regime in Germany disappeared Bolshevism would come to power 'from the banks of the Rhine to the coasts of the Baltic'. The Hitlerites talk like this too, and probably believe what they say. But others are also convinced of its truth.... "Much as one hesitates to make categorical statements, it is nevertheless possible to declare sincerely that up to the present there has never been a time at which there was any real danger of a in Germany.... "The Armistice had hardly been signedwhen Germany fed the phantasy ofthe rest of Europe with tales of the devastations of 'Spartacus', Workers' Councils had been formed in some ­ factories. On November 9th, 1918, a revolutionary committee w s formed.in Berlin against the Social Democratic Government of Ebert, Haase and-Scheidemann. ... . "A few days later German troops returned to the towns of Germany. Under fluttering flags and with bands playing the long lines of these men coming from the front with stern faces ­ gave their fellow citizens. an example of order.... "Under the leadership of German Social Democracy almost all the high officials ofthe old regime were left in office, the world observed. The cadres were firm, and Germany respected them. "In the meantime Germany secured permission from the Allies to maintain the Reichswehr and 'to keep quite consider­ able quantities of artillery and machine-guns. For, of course, an army was necessary to hold down revolts, just as prosperity was necessary-to pay reparations. "The spectre of Communism played this role for fifteen years, and when the role was played out the spectre disap- peared...... "Let us assume that some unexpected event brought the Hitler regime to an end and that Germany was seriously threatened with a revolution of the extreme Left; what would happen? . . . ' "In all probability the General Staff would immediately

seize the reins. Martial law would be proclaimed at once.f No one would be at all surprised by this. One must not forget that for many years after the war a state of martial law was kept in operation by Socialist governments. The splendidly disciplined Reichswehr, obedient to a wink, would master the insurrection within a few days." The second witness is Dr. H. Rauschning, who was formerly a leading Nazi and had ample opportunity ofmeeting Hitler, Goering 79 and the other Nazi leaders. He writes the same in almost the same words in his book The Revolution ofDestruction published in 1938: "The German Reich was never farther- from a Bolshevist revolution, or even from a political revolt on the part of the Left, than it was in 1932-33. Just those circles who now support the legend that a Bolshevist revolution was immediately imminent, know best of all, and they have proved it by their own tactics, that a Putsch in Germany was possible only with the support of the legitimate power in the background." What interest then have the exiled German Communists who are now in Great Britain and the United States in convincing the world that a strong Communist opposition exists inside Nazi Gerinany ? In Germany everyone knows there is no such thing, but people abroad at once declare the slightest sign of opposition, no matter'on what field it shows itself, to be "Communist". This is a great compliment to the Communists, who, as usual, claim the leadership of the oppositional movement, but it does less than no good to the real cause, which, for the moment, is the development of an opposition which could support the struggle against the "H itler regime and against the German war. The opposition which really exists in Germany wants to see something more than a mere change in colour; it wants to see a new mentality altogether, a new German attitude on all fields ofhuman activity.

THE ATIITUDE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

Not only has the German people no revolutionary tradition whatever, but it has not even a democratic and progressive tradition. That is precisely the tragedy ofGermany, and it came about because ""the German bourgeoisie, the growing German capitalist class, married German feudalism" instead of abolishing it. There was therefore no bourgeois revolution and it is too late for one to take place now. The Communist Party had not strength enough to lift its followers above the political ideas of the day. And the Social Democratic Party had long ago lost all vestige of any such power. Since 1909 it had been a Party of people with the political ideas and outlook of the lower-middle-class, and its congresses were dominated by the landlords of the Party Locals and meeting-places sent to them as delegates. These people invariably talked in stentorian voices , but they said nothing. Germany's Democrats were equally disappointing. As late as 1924 people like Thomas Mann, Theodor Wolff and Georg Bernhard were supporting Pan-Germany and "the continuation of Bismarck's mission". This demand at least has been fulfilled, if only temporarily, and Ribbentrop is the authentic successor of Prince Bismarck. 80 The fundamental weakness of the Germans is their lack of civic courage, and the Communists suffered from it just as much as the others. Just one example of it: in 1921 the Right-wing parties in Germany-with the benevolent support of the Social Democratic Government-caused great posters to be exhibited all over Germany depicting the sufferings ofhungry women and children and crippled war veterans/together with a text which informed the beholder that . all this was the consequence of the Versailles Treaty. At that time Paul Levi was the political leader of the Communist Party and he proposed that the Party should print strips to be pasted diagonally across these pictures declaring that the depicted sufferings were the result or the war into which German Militarism and Imperialism had plunged the people. The Central Committee of the Com­ munist Party rejected the proposal on the ground that it would be too unpopular with the masses. The Communist leaders, with .rare exceptions, had become bureaucrats. -Generally speaking, the revolutionaries of yesterday become the bureaucrats of today only after the victory of the revolution, but in Germany they got that far long before the revolution. Communist propaganda often sounded insincere/and dishonest. It talked pathetically of "suffering illegality for the cause", but at; the same time it purchased big Party houses complete with expensive printing works. The Party had no less than 26 daily newspapers, and a total"of45 regularly published journals of all sorts. If the Communist Party had really desired to win the firm confidence of its own members then it would have chosen its officials from its own ranks and districts. That was done only ­ very seldom. The officials installed in the provinces"generally came from Berlin. This was, in fact, one of the reasons why the Communist Patty was ill informed concerning local events and local feelings. These officials installed from Berlin wrote a lot about other people taking their hands off China "and India, and so on, but they saw too little of what was going on under their noses, the war preparations in the factories within a stone's throw of them, the civil war preparations on the landed estates of North Germany,

and so on. J ..... " The Communist Party exhausted its willing members 'by over­ loading them with all sorts ofactivities, many of them senseless. "In this way,' too, they incurred the increasing dislike of the women, .who hated to see husbands and sons going off night after night to this Party meeting or that.; it broke up family life too much. The mass unemployment of the years 1929-33 had a particularly severe effect on the membership of the Communist Party. When employers had to dismiss workers they first sacked those who were known to them as Communists. The result was that the Communist Party soon became a Party of unemployed workers rather than a Party offactory workers, and as a result the basis of its only strength and influence was broken up. The younger 81 members of the Party often occupied themselves endlessly .with politically useless negotiations with the Nazis. It was not only what the Communist Party did in critical situations which lost it sympathy, but above all how it did it. Its leaders threatened the people too loud and "too often with the -coming dictatorship they were going to establish. With this they made themselves new enemies and frightened off many of their friends. . The Communists were always trying to be lJlore nationalistic than the Nazis, more Catholic than the Catholics, and so on. Terms like Democracy, Culture and Humanity lost all meaning when the Communists got hold of them and interpreted them in their own way. The term Socialism was worked to death. Things sometimes looked so bad that there were people who quite honestly believed that the Communists were' carrying on only a sham fight against the Nazis; and, in fact, the methods of the two opponents were so much alike that such views are not surprising. However, the undeniable fact is that the Communists made heavy and bloody sacrifices in their struggle against the Nazis. The heads of Communists did not roll from the block in sham. However, thanks to the policy of their leaders Ulbricht, Koenen, Pieck, etc., - 'the victims are unfortunately "wanderers into nothingness".

NOTHING HAS CHANGED THEM

The members of the Central"Committee of the Communist Party who succeeded in escaping from Germany declare calmly that they did not flee; they have merely changed the-sphere of their activities from one place to another. Once abroad, they began to organize a lively propaganda to convince the world that it was only the Communist Party which was fighting in Germany against the Nazi regime. A pamphlet prepared by the Communist Party of Germany was published in Great Britain in 1933 to convince the British people.ofhow active the Communists were. And it is afact that as far as the Communist "apparatus" is concerned it is very active, but that is all. However, the whole activity of the Com-

o munists was based on the grossly erroneous assumption that the Nazi regime would not last more than a few weeks. This was the opinion publicly expressed by Fritz Heckert, the representative of the German Communist Party in Moscow in February 1933, and he was supported in this view by prominent leaders of the Com­ munist International such as Manuilski and Knorin. The leaders of the Communist International even seemed to have believed it themselves, for the official speaker' on behalf ofthe Presidium at the plenary session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International on December 2nd, 1933 (Le. at a time when the "few weeks" had already extended into many months, and not far short of the first year) declared: 82 "In its resolution of April 1st, 1933, 'on the present situation in Germany', the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International declared that the political and organi­ zational line of the Communist Party of Germany both before and during the"accession ofthe Fascists to power was thoroughly correct. I do not doubt that this plenary session will com­ pletely "approve of this resolution of the Presidium of the E.C.C.I. on the ." In truth, the speaker really had no cause to doubt, and- every­ thing received complete approval. None of th~ Communist leaders present asked whether if the policy which did not succeed in preventing Hitler's rise to power, and which did not, in the upshot, " prevent the outbreak of world war, was correct, its result was also correct. ' The Communist International dogmatically insisted that the ­ Hitler dictatorship was a necessary transitory stage and that there­ fore the arrival of Hitler did not represent a defeat for the German working class. The leaders of the German Communist Party, as characterless as ever. , willingly supported the Communist Inter­ national in this shocking error, for, of course, if the attitude of the Communist International was correct then there was nothing unpleasant for them to .explain away: However, there were one or two of them who were so shaken by the immensity of the defeat suffered by their Party and by the Socialist working class as a whole that they found it impossible to pretend that everything in the garden was lovely. Remmele and Heinz Neumann, both members of the Central Committee of the German- Communist Party, frankly admitted the defeat and sought to draw conclusions from it. They were soon to be taught better. They were both ordered to the Comintern, and after a while Remmele recanted and solemnly admitted what a scoundrel he had been to suggest that the German working class had suffered a defeat. _ The first meeting of Communist officials which took place in Paris in 1933 after Hitler's accession to power was opened by a gentleman named Kantorowicz, also a recent acquisition to the - Communist Party, with the words: - "Anyone who feels inclined to say that the German pro­ letariat/has suffered a defeat has no place at this meeting." He was right, of course. The leaders of the Communist Inter­ national had now apparently come to the conclusion that the German Communists had not been nationalistic enough, for at the plenary session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in December 1933,the official reporter ofthe Presidium declared:

"It must. be admitted that before the accession of Hitler to 83 power the Communist Party of Germany paid little attention in its agitation amongst the broad masses to the struggle against the Versailles Treaty although the dissatisfaction of the masses with the Versailles slave Treaty was very great. This was the fault of Neumann, who was the Ieader of the Party at that time. Instead of the Communist Party it was the German National Party and the National Socialists who exploited this dissatis­ faction throughout Germany for demagogic purposes ... .instead of taking over the initiative from the masses in the struggle against Versailles. .. ." . And so it .went- on in almost endless repetition-Versailles, Versailles, and still .more Versailles. Incidentally, Neumann was .not the leader of the Party at that or any 'other time. It was Ernst Thaelmann. .-

AND VOERING LAUGHED.•.• Once the Nazis were in power they wasted no time in securing their ends in every possible ' direction. And, unfortunately, the 'C ommunists did not cease to act the fool for one moment. In March 1933 the controlled German Press published a sensational .report to the effect that "foreign 'planes" had flown over Berlin and dropped leaflets. Of course, "German public opinion" saw the point at once, and immediately there were loud cries for more 'planes and still more 'planes to prevent incidents of this sort from happening again. After all, it might have been bombs, mightn't : it? Not a soul had seen 'the 'planes or heard them or found any of the mysterious leaflets, and not a soul either inside Germany or out believed a word of the Nazi provocation-s-oh yes, except the Central Committee ofthe Communist Party, which had by this time changed its haunts and was now in . The German Com­ munist Arbeiter-Illustrierte, which had also moved to Prague, published a photo of an aeroplane on its front page with the trium­ phant heading "Red Flyers over Berlin';" Goering could afford to laugh; at least the Communists believed him. It is true that the "aeroplane" on the front page of the Arbeiter-Illustrierte looked more like the papier-mache contraption in which lovers have their photos taken in cheap ateliers, but that didn't matter, Goering had his confirmatory proof, and the German air police received the urgently necessary supplies of new 'planes.

"JOIN' THE N~ZI ORGANIZATIONS!"

A leading official of the Comrnunist Party in Chemnitz who went over to the Nazis justified his desertion racily: "Hitler was . 84 first past the post. Thaelmann weakened. Our money goes on Hitler." However, it would be wrong to conclude from this that the Communists were any quicker in deserting to the Nazis than others proved to be. Throughout Germany the same con­ temptible scenes were enacted. Communists, 'together with members of the various satellite organizations, assembled in public places, burnt their red flags and other working-class emblems, and then solemnly requested permission to join the Nazi organiza­ tions. As far as the middle-class parties were concerned, this was unnecessary, for the parties themselves applied for immediate acceptance en masse. . However, apart from all this, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany officially adopted a resolution with the blessing of the Communist International, calling on its members and supporters to join the Nazi organizations. This decision will probably go down in history as causing more misgiving amongst Socialist workers than any other. At the plenary session 'of the Executive Committee ofthe Communist International on December 2nd, 1933, the official reporter declared: "The Communist Party of Germany must avoid the mistake of the Communist Party of Italy, and immediately take up the work in the Fascist organizations." . Two years later at the congress of the Communist International in August 1935 this decision was confirmed. The official speaker of the Geiman Communist Party reported triumphantly that the working.masses of Germany.were now in the Nazi organizations as instructed. It was certainly true that they were in the Nazi organi­ zations, but it contradicted all the 'previous contentions of the Communists. This speaker, Comrade Ackermann, now a member of the so-called "National Committee of Free Germany", in Moscow declared: "Without the work within the Fascist mass organizations there can be no question ofany overthrow ofthe Fascist dictator­ ship, for that is where the million.masses are. Where are the Social Democratic workers, the former organized or unorganized workers, the man, the woman, the youth, the adult, the Free­ thinker, the Protestant, the Catholic? They are all in one Fascist mass organization or the other today. . ... And, Comrades, with the increasing disillusionment of the masses, with the slow but steady narrowing ofthe mass basis ofFascism, there is a growing shortage of subordinate officials in the Fascist organizations. ,We must take advantage of this short­ age in order to get our own people, in order to get honest workers, in order to get revolutionary workers into these posts." This decision, which the Communists called the tactic of the , 85 Trojan Horse, betrays a complete lack of understanding of the essence of Nazi organizations. If the masses were really dis- . illusioned-they certainly were not in 1933-then the Communists should not have sought to support the organizations ofthe dictator­ ship and their war preparation by taking over subordinate officials' posts in them, but should have assisted in their break-up by agitating for the masses to leave them. This decision of the Communists will result in every coward and every renegade appealing to it after the collapse of the Nazis to justify his action.

AND EVERYTHING -R EMAINS AS IT WAS BEFORE The Communist Party of Germany was destroyed not only by the Nazi dictatorship, but largely by its own defects. Evenbefore . Hitler came to power the policy of the Communists, or their propaganda, with the Communists it means the same thing, had lost all substance. The fight of the Communists against the Nazis was no struggle between-two different outlooks, but a mere rivalry. Both parties talked about Socialism, but outdid each other in Nationalism. When the fateful Russo-German Pact was concluded in 1939 only the Communists and the Nazis welcomed it. After the out­ break of the war the Communist author Oscar M. Graf wrote that "peace had become untenable", whilst Walter A. Ulbricht, a leading member of the Central 'Committee of the Communist Party of Germany; wrote an article which for shameless ana revolting treachery probably establishes a new record for anything ever written by an alleged "Left-winger". For this creature Great Britain and France were the main enemies: not Hitler Germany. But even this article was accepted by the German Communists abroad as authoritative gospel. When attacked the Soviet Union, the miserable deceit practised for years by the Communists of Germany on their Russian Comrades was exposed for the lying bluff it was and always had been. The innumerable telegrams of solidarity, "We defend the Soviet Union !" "Hands off Soviet Russia!" and aU the rest of it, were false to the core; In the spring of 1942 the German Com­ munist Party in London issued a pamphlet entitled "Report from ~ Berlin" in which, in effect, it had to admit the complete bankruptcy of its policy. "Report from Berlin" declares: "We Communists, too, expected an unquiet day in Berlin. We were, indeed, convinced that after 'the conclusion of the German-Soviet Pact Hitler would not be able to swing our people over to war against the U.S.S.R. We trusted the wisdom and class-consciousness of the Berlin worker. But subsequent events brought to light other factors. 86 "At the same time we saw with distress and pain that -th e war, like a wave, was sweeping over the heads of our Party organizations. ... The German people were embarked on the most rapacious and predatory war against the first Socialist country in the world. They didso reluctantly, like oxen led to the slaughter. ,', ~ . "Then came the first reports or the German army's rapid advance, and of its 'capture of Soviet cities. Every possible means of self-advertisement was -brought into play to incite chauvinist sentiments among the people and villages. Petty­ bourgeois audiences, and especially women, sighed and whis­ pered, 'What a blessing all this isn't taking place in Germany but in Russia:" , . '

But had ' the Communists learnt a thing from it all? In December 1942 they were up to their old tricks again. As men­ tioned before, it was stated that a "peace conference" had taken place "in a West-German town" at which representatives of all the former parties from the Nazis ("oppositional S.A." 'as the report said) to the Communists were present. The Communists were unable to provide any proofwhatever that this conference ever took \ place or even to make their account of it reasonably plausible, but atJeast they demonstrated their old willingness to line up 'with every­ one and anyone, and'to bluff and deceive eyerybody fool enough to be taken in,by them. The alleged composition of this mysterious conference suggested that,its pieces had been drawn from a political Noah's Ark. All parties were represented by several delegates in .proper accord with German traditions in order, apparently, that each might happily survive the political Flood. In 1918 when the soldiers were called uponto elect "Soldiers' Councils" they very often elected their officer's,with the result that control and power stayed just where jt had been before. The Spartacus League warned the soldiers in vain against this hopeless practice. Now, in 1943, a "National Committee for ' Free Ger­ many" has been formed in Moscow 'on which members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany sit side by side with Nazi officers taken prisoner by the Russians. Mr.rWalter Ulbricht is also on the Committee. But not one single revolu­ tionary Socialist took part in the alleged conference in Western Germany or is to be found on the precious "National Committee" in Moscow. At this late stage of the proceedings no revolutionary Socialist is likely to be taken in sufficiently to walk into the Com-

munist trap. I From intellectual laziness, or perhaps deliberately, the German Communists always speak of German "Fascism", and of "the Fascist dictatorship" in Germany, and, less often, of "Hitler Fascism". For whatever reason, they always avoid calling the ruling system in German,y by its real name. This is a peculiarity of the policy and propaganda of Communists everywhere. For the 87 Communists, "Fascism" has become a generic term, and it is stretched to include all the various .reactionary -tendencies and institutions in any country whatsoever, and not to describe a par- . ticular dictatorship as such. What really exists in Germany is a dictatorship established and wielded by the National Socialist German Workers' Party. ' It is based on the principle of "totali­ tarianism", and it far outstrips the principles of "Fascism" on all fields. The.German Nazi dictatorship cannot be included under a general heading. It stands alone. This brute domination ' of nationalism and militarism demonstrates to the world, amongst , other things, that "Nationalism" and "Socialism" are not mutually exclusive in Germany. The National Socialist Party, the Nazi S.S., the Nazi S.A., and the German Army, all organizations whose ruthless savagery and bestiality have shocked the world, are not made up of a new race or 'a new kind ofhuman being; they are in fact representative of the whole German nation.

THE END .

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