The Nationalists were combatting the Separatists by individual acts of terror. The Communist Party called a counter-demonstration “against the Separatist traitors.” When the two conflicting forces met at a cross section in the city, I saw, for the first time in my life, Communists fighting side by side with Nationalist terrorists and the German police. The Separatists were defeated, mainly because of the interference of the pro-German British cabinet.
Even while we were supporting German Nationalists against the French in the Rhineland and the Ruhr with every weapon at our disposal, we decided that in the event of a Communist uprising in Germany, we would not allow ourselves to be drawn into conflict with French military forces. Our plan of strategy, as formulated by our staff officers in the Rhineland, called for the withdrawal of our party military formations into central Germany, into Saxony, and Thuringia, where the Communists were particularly strong at that time. We trained our units with that in mind.
In preparing for the Communist revolution, the German Communists created small terrorist groups, so-called “T” units, to demoralize the Reichswehr and the police by assassinations. The “T” units were composed of fiercely courageous zealots.
I recall a meeting of one of these groups on a September evening in the city of Essen, shortly before the Communist uprising. I recall how they came together, quietly, almost solemnly, to receive their orders. Their commander announced tersely:
“Tonight we act.”
Calmly they took out their revolvers, checked them for the last time, and filed out one by one. The very next day the Essen press reported the discovery of the body of a murdered police officer, assassin unknown. For weeks these groups struck swiftly and effectively in various parts of Germany, picking off police officers and other enemies of the Communist cause.
When peace came these fanatics could find no place in the orderly life of the country. Many of them took part in armed holdups for revolutionary purposes at first, and then simply in acts of brigandage. The few who found their way to Russia usually wound up in Siberia in exile.
In the meantime the German Communist Party was awaiting instructions from the Comintern which seemed incredibly slow in coming. In September Brandler, the leader of the party, and several of his colleagues were summoned to Moscow for instructions. Interminable discussions took place in the Political Bureau, the supreme body of the Russian Communist Party, where the Bolshevik leaders were debating the proper hour to launch a German revolution. For many anxious hours the leaders of the German Communist Party cooled their heels in Moscow while the Bolshevik brain trust was formulating its final plan of action.
Moscow decided to do the thing thoroughly this time. It secretly dispatched its best people into Germany: Bukharin; Max Levine, who had been one of the leaders of the four weeks’ Bavarian Soviet dictatorship; Piatakov, Hungarian and Bulgarian Comintern agents, and Karl Radek himself. We Red Army men in Germany continued training our military forces. We held secret night maneuvers in the woods near Solingen in the Rhineland in which several thousand workers would take part.
At last the word went around: “Zinoviev has set the date for the uprising.”
Communist Party units throughout Germany awaited their final instructions. A telegram arrived from Zinoviev to the German Central Committee fixing the exact hour. Comintern couriers hastened to the various party centers with the command from Moscow. Guns were removed from their hiding places. With mounting tension we awaited the zero hour. And then. . . .
“A new telegram from ‘Grisha,’ ” said the Communist leaders. “The insurrection is postponed!”
Again the Comintern couriers sped through Germany with new orders and a new date for the revolution. This state of alarm continued for several weeks. Almost every day a new telegram would arrive from ‘Grisha’ (Zinoviev)—new orders, new plans, new agents from Moscow with new instructions and new revolutionary blueprints. At the beginning of October, orders came through for the Communists to join the governments of Saxony and Thuringia in coalition with the Left Socialists. Moscow thought that these governments would become effective rallying centers for the Communists, and that the police could be disarmed in advance of the uprising.
At last the stage was set. A categorical telegram came through from Zinoviev. Again the couriers of the Comintern sped to every party district in Germany passing along the word. Again the Communist battalions mobilized for the attack. The hour drew near. There could be no turning back now, we thought, and awaited with relief the end of those nerve-wracking weeks of delay. At the last moment the Central Committee of the German Party was again hurriedly convened.
“A new telegram from ‘Grisha’! The insurrection is postponed again!”
Again messengers were dispatched with urgent last minute cancellation orders to the party centers. But the courier to Hamburg arrived too late. The Hamburg Communists, with true German discipline, went into battle at the appointed hour. Hundreds of workers armed with rifles attacked the police station. Others occupied strategic points in the city.
Communist workers in other parts of Germany were thrown into a state of panic.
“Why are we doing nothing while the workers of Hamburg are fighting?” they asked the district leaders of their party. “Why don’t we come to their aid?”
The party lieutenants had no answer to give them. Only those on top knew that the workers of Hamburg were perishing because of ‘Grisha’s’ latest telegram. The Hamburg Communists held out for about three days. The great working-class masses of the city remained indifferent, and Saxony and Thuringia did not come to the aid of the Communists. The Reichswehr under General Von Seckt entered Dresden and threw the Communist-Left Socialist cabinet of Saxony out of office. The Thuringia cabinet suffered the same fate. The Communist revolution had fizzled out.
Those of us in Germany all knew that headquarters in Moscow were responsible for the fiasco. The entire strategy of the proposed revolution had been worked out by the Bolshevik leaders of the Comintern. This made it necessary to find a scapegoat. The factional rivals of Brandler in the German Party were familiar with the Comintern technique of covering up the mistakes of the high command, and they at once swung into action.
“Brandler and the Central Committee are responsible for our failure to capture power,” shouted the new “opposition” headed by Ruth Fischer, Thaelmann and Maslow.
“Entirely correct,” echoed Moscow. “Brandler is an opportunist, a social democrat. He must go! All hail to the new revolutionary leadership of Ruth Fischer, Thaelmann and Maslow!”
At the next World Congress of the Comintern this was all dressed up in ritualistic resolutions and decrees, and with Moscow’s blessings the German Communist Party was turned over to its new general staff.
Brandler received an order to come to Moscow, where he was deprived of his German passport and given a Soviet office job. German matters, he was informed by Zinoviev, were no longer to concern him. All of his efforts to return to Germany were unsuccessful until his friends threatened to create an international scandal by bringing the matter to the attention of the Berlin government. Only then was he released from Soviet Russia and expelled from the Communist Party.
Souvarine, the eminent French writer and author of the most comprehensive biography of Stalin, had the same experience. Ousted in 1924 from the leadership of the French Communist Party by order of the Comintern, he was detained by the Soviet government until his friends in Paris threatened to appeal to the French authorities.
Upon one branch of the Soviet government the costly experiment of 1923 was not entirely wasted. That was the Military Intelligence Service. When we saw the collapse of the Comintern’s efforts, we said: “Let’s save what we can of the German revolution.” We took the best men developed by our Party Intelligence and the Zersetzungsdienst, and incorporated them into the Soviet Military Intelligence. Out of the ruins of the Communist revolution we built in Germany for Soviet Russia a brilliant intelligence service, the envy of every other nation.
Shaken