IceBreakChron II: THE NAZIS ARISE

[JasonPratt]

For the prior thread of my Icebreaker Thesis Chronology project, click here.

For the Table of Contents and Introduction thread, click here.

The Shadow of Death
------------------------

As Stalin works to consolidate his rule, against his competitors for Lenin's legacy, this leads into an introduction for how Stalin prefers to make government policy. Anastas Mikoyan, for example, becomes a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party this year, 1923 -- and will stay in the Committee until 1973! (Beating all records of political survival under Stalin.) For forty of those fifty-three years, he will also be a candidate or member of the Politburo, the most important power organ of the nation, which governs the entire Soviet Union and its satellite republics. An article later in the Soviet Journal of Military History (hereafter JMH) #6, 1976, p.68, cites him for a typical Stalin policy meeting: "Most often there were five people. We met late in the evening or at night, rarely in the afternoon, usually without preliminary notice. There were no protocols or records kept during the course of such meetings."

Later in Stalin's reign, Air Force Colonel-General A.S. Yakovlev will serve as one of Stalin's personal aides. In his memoir "Life's Task", p.498, he will write, "During the meetings of Stalin's inner circle there were no stenographers, no secretaries present, no records or protocols kept."

During the coming Great Patriotic War, Marshal of the Soviet Union Dmitry F. Ustinov will be the People's Commissar of Arms. In his memoir, "In the Name of Victory," he will write, "During the meetings and conferences conducted by Stalin, discussions of problems and the making of decisions frequently occurred without records, and often without the corresponding paperwork marking the decision made."

During the coming war, once Stalin takes the role of Commander in Chief, the epic G.K. Zhukov will serve as his deputy. From his "Memoirs and Reflections", 1969, p.296, "Many political, military, and general government questions were discussed and solved not only at the official meetings of the Politburo and in the Central Committee Secretariat, but also in the evening at dinner in Stalin's apartment or at his dacha, where the Politburo members closest to him were usually present."

JMH #2, 1962 (page uncited) will quote Colonel-General B. Vannikov, the People's Commissar of Ammunition, "At the meetings and conferences, Stalin had a habit of discussing questions and making decisions without protocols or records... From this it is clear that the understanding of many events just based on documents is incomplete and unclear, and in many cases incorrect."

In short, as Stalin begins consolidating his rule during and after Lenin's death, he is continuing to operate primarily like the leader of a mafia gang: secret gatherings of plotters and conspirators, in spirit and in essence. By contrast, Hitler will hold meetings in the presence of large crowds, ensuring that a personal historian and three stenographers would be available for historical records. Doubtless, this was due to Hitler's egotistic insistence on shaping, and even on being the shape, of history! But the different result is that we have a lot of, often contradictory, material from Hitler to work with, even for tracking his policy considerations and decisions; while for Stalin we have to work with more indirect references and propaganda.


(As a sidenote, regarding Suvorov's occasional lack of pages cited: he reports in a postscript to Chief Culprit that he often has had to work from requested photocopies of material available only in Russia at the time, made by friends of his and smuggled out; consequently, the page numbers aren't always visibly aligned correctly.)

[JasonPratt]

Their Struggle
----------------

August 1st, 1923: from Stalin's speech at the Plenary meeting of the Central Committee and the Oversight Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks: "The Comintern [Communist International] Commission for German Affairs, made up of Zinoviev, Bukharin, Stalin, Trotsky, Radek, and a number of German comrades, took a number of decisions on how specifically to help German comrades seize power."

While various decisions had been made, one decision was that the Central Committee's regular members would not be involved in the secrets for these preparations. Only the listed Soviet leaders, plus their "German comrades", would know about it and run the operation. Stalin thought it was necessary to avoid anything that might reveal that the revolution was instigated, much moreso dictated, by the USSR; Soviet Russia was too much of an enemy to Germany after preceding years, so this had to look like a spontaneous grassroots movement -- of the type Marx had predicted.

[JasonPratt]

End of September, 1923: an emergency meeting of the Political Bureau (i.e. the "Politburo") of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks is called, specifically to fix a date for the German coup. They decide upon November 9, 1923.

The only non-Politburo attendee is Stalin's private secretary Boris Bazhanov, who later elaborates (criticizing this plan and reporting Stalin's secret opposition to it) that the resources initially released to create a German revolutionary war were already enormous, but that a follow-up decision simply issued a blank check.

The Soviet Union mobilized all German-born and German-speaking communists, then trained and dispatched them to Germany for undercover work to prepare for the armed uprising. High ranking Soviet officers joined them, among them the People's Commissar Vasily Schmidt; Central Committee members Karl Radek and Grigory Piatakov; and Politburo candidate member Nikolai Bukharin. Many other high ranking officers arrive in Germany under aliases: among them, Unshilikht; Vatsetis; Menzhinskii; Trillisser; Yagoda; and the butcher of blood himself, General Mikhail Tukhachevsky!

Why would anyone would even bother sending the butcher of blood to join this coup group, aside from the obvious reason that he has a lot of experience commanding army-sized terror groups?! Suvorov doesn't bother to mention here, but elsewhere he's clear that Tukhachevsky is a prime exponent and teacher of theories about establishing secret Soviet government organizations within target nations, so that they can rise up to rule simultaneously with the arrival of Red Army units to 'defend' and 'counterattack' against property owners oppressing the workers rising up spontaneously this way to throw off their shackles and yokes etc. The Red Army cannot currently reach German territory (not even Eastern Prussia), but apparently the Politburo expects major components of the German army to defect into a Red German Army sizeable enough that someone experienced in the command of such units, and directly under the Politburo's trust and influence, should be nearby to take overall command of the situation. And of course, again, Tukhachevsky  is currently the leading mastermind of secret Soviet governments rising up to collaborate with military overthrow.

Besides, with Lenin still slowly dying (under Stalin's careful overwatch), having one of the leading potential inheritors of Lenin's command over all Soviet property and means of production, busy overseeing the revolutionary takeover of Germany several thousand kilometers away from Moscow, might be regarded as a bonus opportunity for some people!

Soviet ambassador to Germany Nikolai Krestinski forms a powerful web of secret intelligence for distributing the weapons and ammunition flowing through the Soviet Embassy in Germany. Bazhanov in his memoirs will write (p.67), "[Deputy Chariman of the State Political Directorate] Unschilicht was given responsibility for recruiting, organizing, and arming brigades for mounting an insurrection and bringing down the government. He was also expected to form a German Secret Police to eliminate the property owners and enemies of the revolution." This is very much in synch with Tukhachevsky's takeover strategies.

[JasonPratt]

November 7, 1923, is the official Soviet anniversary of the Communist takeover of Russia after the "Great October Socialist Revolution".

The Comintern plans to arrange workers' demonstrations of solidarity today in Germany, in honor of this anniversary; while special units who have been trained in Moscow by Soviet secret police and military intelligence, under the supervision of Joseph Unshlikht, will provoke conflicts with the police, to cause violent clashes and arrests, thus inflaming the anger of the workers.

This part goes according to plan.

Tomorrow, the plan is to grow the street fights into more serious clashes, escalating again throughout the following day; then on the night of November 9, Unshlikht's units are to seize the most important government establishments, making this appear to be a spontaneous reaction of the masses against police brutality.

The German Workers' Party meanwhile has added some details for a new name, the NSDAP, the English acronym for the German title translated as the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The unofficial but increasingly popular abbreviated nickname: Nazi.

It has a new Fuehrer, member 007, Adolf Hitler. One of their slogans is, "War on Poincaré and Stresemann!" -- these are, respectively, the prime minster of France, and the German Chancellor and Foreign Minister. This is also a slogan of the Comintern at this time.

Karl Radek, now back in Germany again to try fomenting revolution again (he has been here several times already for that purpose), will meet with representatives from the Nazi party, about coordinating their efforts tomorrow. Afterward he expresses an open enthusiasm for Hitler's storm troopers (nicknamed for the assault troops trained to break through the trenchlines of WW1), "We can see on the faces of German students wearing brown shirts the same devotion and the same inspiration which shone on faces of the Red Army officers. [...] Great guys! You will see that they will fight for us, lobbing hand grenades." (This is reported in Hilger and Meyer's "Incompatible Allies", 1953, p.267; and by Krivitsky's memoir, pp.49-50.)

[JasonPratt]

November 8, 1923: In Munich, Hitler and a group of armed followers try to arrest the government of Bavaria, declaring that the world revolutionary war of the workers rising up against the property owners, has begun.

Hitler, under the red flag of workers' revolution, and avowing the same slogans as the Comintern, declares that the governments of Bavaria and Weimar are demolished. He forms a new government immediately, intending to expropriate non-workers' incomes, nationalize industrial conglomerates, and confiscate German industrialists' war profits; and on this evening a group with Ernst Roehm at its head (second in party authority to Hitler himself) takes control of the headquarters of the military district. Other attempts are put down by the army and the police.


November 9, 1923: the date resolved by the Soviet Politburo for taking control of Germany by armed revolution. However, the uprising never happens.

Partly this is because the German Communist Party could not decide which heir(s) of the political authority of the dying Lenin to follow, and many more Germans joined the Social Democrats instead.

Partly this is because Hitler was already too successful at taking over the script, so to speak, and yet not successful enough to keep from being crushed, captured, put on trial, and sent to prison. Hitler does show personal bravery in leading his militant socialist revolutionary comrades into police fire, taking wounds which result in his capture.

Also, the revolutionary takeover of Germany failed partly because Stalin carefully hampered the support back home for the armed uprising, while consolidating his power: he did not think the uprising would be effective with the Social Democrats opposing it locally, and with Poland still preventing the Red Army from reaching Germany to lend its support. Stalin did however solidly agree that control of Germany was the key to controlling mainland Europe and from there the world. He just differed from Trotsky on how to most effectively use military power to bring Germany (and the whole world) into the USSR. From this angle, another reason for Stalin to carefully undermine the success of the mission also appears: taking over Germany would give Trotsky, and his ally Tukhachevsky, too much increased clout back in the Kremlin!

From this time, Trotsky's star will be in decline. But will Stalin be able to gain and keep control over Tukhachevsky...?

[JasonPratt]

While in prison, Hitler will write Mein Kampf ("my war", i.e. against the Versailles Treaty), an autobiography and political manifesto working his way up to the putsch attempt. Later, after coming to power, Hitler will declare his fallen associates national heroes, and name the dates of his rebellion, November 8th and 9th, as the most important German national holiday.

This will lead to the oddity of Nov 7th and 8th being the greatest official Soviet holiday, and Nov 8th and 9th being the most important Nazi holiday! But the reasons for the convergence lie in the convergence of their socio-economic philosophies: Hitler was piggy-backing on Marxism, and on celebrating Lenin's October Revolution over Russia.

Hitler's autobiography is dedicated to sixteen of those fallen comrades, slain on November 9th, 1923. But Hitler will write nothing, from his prison cell, about how and why he came to be behind prison bars; nothing about what happened on Nov 8-9, the two most important days of his life so far, the culmination of his struggle so far. Instead the last page will briefly state, "I will not venture here into discussions about events which led us to November 8, 1923."

[JasonPratt]

After the failed coup, major strategic roadblocks exist between Stalin and control of Germany:

the very popular Social Democrat Party currently controls German politics;

Poland stands in the way (terrain makes Poland easier to invade from the west than east);

and although the Soviet military is numerous, it's also still weak.

Also, German National Socialists, Nazis, are gaining ground by appealing to German cultural and racial pride, over the threat of the recently established USSR's publicly stated plans to bring the world under control of non-German enemies of Germany -- plans still being distributed into Germany through propaganda papers.

The Nazis also and just as fully intend to use military strength to seize control of the means of production (starting everywhere Germans live), but they are using the Soviet Union as an external threat to build up military strength for protection against being absorbed into the Slavic USSR.

So who will use which military power to take and keep control of the means of production? The Nazis, or the Soviets?

[JasonPratt]

End of 1923: even some scraps of good old-fashioned capitalism, in Lenin's New Economic Policy, have revitalized Russian (if perhaps not exactly 'Soviet') national production. This year there was so much grain that the Soviet Union was able to export it again, without causing mass starvations! Truly, progress is being achieved!    This will continue until 1927.

End of 1923: by now, Trotsky has become the leader of a minority oppositional bloc within the Communist party. This is a definite notch downward for the originator and first commander of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and the first president and chief diplomat (in effect) of the Soviet government! -- the man who kick started and led the October Revolution until Lenin could return from exile.

[JasonPratt]

1924: this year, the Junkers factory in the Soviet Union will reach and sustain production of several hundred metal planes a year, for a while.

Following Junkers' Soviet success, Krupp will move production to Russia (for cannons, shells, and tanks);

BMW (for tank and plane motors);

Walther (for rifles);

among others (such as Bersol for poisonous gasses).

Obviously, Stalin is not planning for all this to be used against him. But just as obviously, without Stalin's help Germany would not have been able to re-arm in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Why did Stalin want a re-armed Germany, capable of making war on Europe? -- for poison gas cannot be easily (if at all) used as a defensive weapon!

[JasonPratt]

January 21, 1924, Vladmir Illyich Ulyanov, the bank robber who gave himself the criminal gang nickname “Lenin”, and took over control of a Great Power, goes to his reward.

This will set off a flurry of efforts and competitions (briskly encouraged by Stalin) to raise memorials for Lenin. This may be when the idea of a Lenin statue above the Palace of the Soviets is conceived (if not earlier); but it is certainly when Stalin accepts and settles on the idea of raising the Palace so that Lenin will be standing above the ruins of Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow (still standing at the time). Arc lamps will of course be provided to flood the statue so that the people will be called to honor Lenin even at night.

[JasonPratt]

1924: Hitler is working on Mein Kampf, and writes (through dictation) in chapter 14 of volume two (his next to last chapter), "Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy", "We want to return to that point, where our previous development halted six hundred years ago. We want to halt Germany's constant efforts to expand to the south and west, and have our sights set towards the territories situated to the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future. If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primary have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states."

Also in Mein Kampf, "Germany's most evil enemy is, and will always be, France!"

Still, from 1925 (when he publishes the book) going forward, this quote about his soil policy from "Eastern Orientation", will be cited in the essays and public speeches of Soviet leaders including Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. When the Nazis come to political power, from January 1933 onward, this quote will be referenced even more in the Soviet Union, broadcast from loudspeakers, shouted at factory meetings -- used for Soviet propaganda to scare the people so that they will be willing to tolerate Stalin doing whatever he wants to his people.

In other words, Stalin and his regime are not ignorant that Hitler wants to set his sights "toward territories situated in the east"; Stalin's regime will definitely interpret this as an intention to invade and conquer Russia, and use that interpretation to justify their own acts of murderous tyranny to protect the people from the monster, Hitler.

However, in that very same next-to-last 14th chapter, Hitler also writes, "Already the one fact of concluding an alliance between Germany and Russia, would mean the inevitability of a future war, the outcome of which would be predetermined. Such a war could only mean the end for Germany." Suvorov doesn't present the context for this quote, thus tacitly implying that Hitler already knew that allying with the Soviets would necessarily mean a war between the Nazis and the Soviets, which the Nazis must lose.

I suspect (not having read Mein Kampf yet) that Hitler means Germany would become a shield to be splintered by capitalist nations in launching a war to overthrow the Soviet Union. But who knows, maybe Suvorov's implication is correct? That would be very weird in this case, but I'm curious. (Anyone who has the book at hand is free to chime in!  )

[JasonPratt]

1925: A. Tupolev's design team creates the TB-1, the first monoplane in the world with a cantilever wing.

It is also the first entirely metal bomber in the world. Several years after the end of WW1, the rest of the world is still building wooden biplane bombers.

Test trials of the TB-1 will yield two world records; and a third world record will be set for producing 216 TB-1s in a short time (per the Tupolev company's own archive volume, "Tupolev's Aircraft ANT-1 -- ANT-15", 1995, p.16.)

The Soviet Union will have more heavy bombers this year, than all other nations in the world combined!

(I like to start years, where possible, with overviews of Soviet aircraft achievements. But I'll have particular entries along the way sometimes, too.  )

[JasonPratt]

January 1925: at the plenary of the Central Committee, discussing among other things an increase in military expenditures, Stalin (as found in Vol.7 of his collected works, pages 14 and 72) declares that a second world war is inevitable, as is the Sovet Union's entrance into that war. "There can be no doubt that a war in Europe will start and they will all fight in it. [...] We will have to enter, but we will enter last. We will enter in order to throw in our weight and tip the scale."

This is in context of the ongoing Soviet-Leninist theory that a second imperialist/capitalist world war must be necessary to create the conditions for the final revolutionary world war.

[JasonPratt]

April 15, 1925, Stalin directs his government to sign an agreement with Germany (specifically with the Weimar Republic) about the creation of a secret air force center in the Russian city of Lipetsk for training German military pilots.

The Soviet Union buys one hundred D-XIII military planes from the Dutch company Fokker, for the German pilots to use.

Over the following years, the Heinkel He-34, He-46, He-51; the Arado Ar-64 and Ar-65; the Junkers K-47; and the Dornier D-11 will be successfully developed and tested in the USSR for the Germans! This will however end soon after Hitler becomes Chancellor.

Speaking of Corporal Paperhanger...!

[JasonPratt]

July 18, 1925, Hitler (having been released from jail) publishes the first of his two volumes of Mein Kampf; volume two will be published in 1926.

The first foreign reader is Josef Stalin, who quickly secures a copy, and then personally orders both volumes translated into Russian -- the first foreign translation. 

Although its Soviet circulation remained limited, a copy is given to each Soviet party and military leader. Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky, later to be a Marshal of the Soviet Union, will write, "In our time we all read Hitler's book Mein Kampf." (We shall be seeing much more of Ultra-General Rokky along the way!  Suvorov is practically a fanboy of him, for good reason as we shall see. This is his earliest mention in the chronology.)

Out of all the people Stalin eliminates, including in Germany, he doesn't send anyone to crack Hitler's skull and burn down the Munich beerhall where Hitler runs his political party. Why?!

From Stalin's perspective, the two sentences about expanding onto Russian soil in one chapter of one volume, are outweighed by Hitler's "struggle" or "war" against the chains of the Versailles Treaty -- a treaty which Lenin, and then Stalin, have also been opposing from its inception, both vocally in German Communist slogans, and actively by starting to re-arm Weimar Germany.

Stalin will not, however, be ignoring Hitler's briefly stated plans for Russia. On the contrary, Stalin's chief strategic blunder (in my estimate, not quite Suvorov's) will come from being absolutely focused on Hitler's goal of conquering and keeping Russian soil.

Lenin was looking for someone who (as previously quoted) "would emerge, who would raise a struggle against the Versailles Treaty." What does Lenin and his gang have against the Versailles Treaty?! Nothing except that it keeps Germany militarily and even industrially weak. It is at least a selling point for the German Communist Party, run from Petrograd by Lenin at first, then by Stalin from Moscow. But Stalin has been going farther than slogans, by actively helping Weimar Germany re-arm in secret. Within that context, Stalin's focus on supporting Hitler as the enemy of the Treaty's victors can be understood, rather than destroying Hitler as the avowed enemy of whoever is governing that "Russian soil" (namely Stalin's Soviet Union).

From Hitler's Volume 2, 13th chapter, "We must take every point of the Versailles Treaty separately, and systematically make it clear to the broadest masses of the population. We must achieve an understanding among sixty million German men, women, and children, and make them feel the shame of this treaty. We must make these 60 million have a deep hatred of this treaty, so that their scorching hatred brings the will of the people together and evokes a cry in unison: GIVE US BACK OUR ARMS!"

Stalin could make use of the few lines in the subsequent 14th chapter, about Russian soil, for his own tyrannical justifications. But he also made use of Hitler's "struggle" against Versailles and especially against what Hitler called Germany's greatest enemy, the evil France. Also from Vol.2, chp.13, "We must understand the following to the end: Germany's most evil enemy is and will always be France. [...] The task of the day for us is not the struggle for world hegemony," although note that Hitler intends that day to come! "France systematically tears apart our people and according to her plans she strangles our independence... We simultaneously hear protests and slogans against five or even ten different countries, and meanwhile forget that first of all we need to concentrate all our physical strength and mental powers to deliver a blow to the heart of our vilest enemy... France will inevitably strive to make Germany into a weak and crushed nation... At the current moment, our only enemy is France -- that nation which deprives us of our rightful existence."

Hitler has many pages and chapters in his two volumes along this line. By contrast to this "immediate task", the "Russian soil" in the east is a perspective for subsequent centuries. From Vol.1, chp.13, "The effort would have to be envisaged in terms of centuries; just as in all problems of colonization, steady perseverance is a far more important element than the output of energetic effort at the moment."

And indeed when Hitler does strike out into Russian soil, he will have no intention of conquering and colonizing it yet! -- which Stalin will disastrously misunderstand. (Suvorov, I will argue along the way, misunderstands this as well, despite pointing it out several times himself.)