Stalin Prepares a German Government
Fischer, Ruth
Stalin Prepares a German Government By Ruth Fischer COVERED by the veil of diplomatic parleys going- oh between Washington, London, and Moscow, a new type of Stalinist German organisation is being...
...The leading men of this period are heroes fdr all German nationalistic youth since Ohm's times) those wore the men who saved Germany's independents under almost hopeless political and military circus* stances in alliance with Russia...
...American public oponion knows little about it...
...Long lira the free, independent, and Christian Germany") and a host of new names were msde "well-known...
...There are now organized committees in London, Stockholm (a few hours' flying time from Germany), Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and recently also in New York, the last named under the Chairmanship of Paul Tillich, Professor of Theology...
...it trusts a foreign Communist only when he has cooperated in the killing of his own political brothers...
...A chain of so-called Free German Committees has been constructed around the Moscow Free German Committee organized July 31, 194.1...
...Pieck now stands in the spotlight of the new mise-en-tcene for thousands of other German Communists scattered all over the world or still within Germany...
...Called by Alfred Kantorovicz in the' February issue of Free M'vrM "a veteran of the workers' movement, friend and comrade of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg," Pieck is photographed side by side with General Walter von Seydlitz and the other Junker generals, all wreathed in smiles...
...They represent a link with the ruling circles in Germany...
...Within the German prisoners' camps, the Russisns began intensive work...
...Using the experiences of the first World War (in which war prisoners played an important role in the revolutionary crisis in Europe) trained groups of writers, poets, and actors, and German political refugees, were mobilized to addreas these Nazi youths in nationalistic language, showing them that Hitler's war was lost and that Germany could only be saved by incorporation into the future Russian-Kuropean power bloc...
...Stalm will be able to sleep peacefully in tbe Reichskanzlerpalais in Berlin or whatever building will then stand in its place under the name of "Fret German Liberation Hall...
...Moving in the background of the conference was the old time German Communist Walter Ulbricht, now a well trained GPU chief...
...The necessary "purging" of-the Nazi Party in Germany will give the Stalinist apparatus an opportunity to build up and to test out this terrorist movement...
...they are a symbol to their soldiers and an organizing center for the new party in the making...
...German neo nationalism of this type does not hesitate to sacrifice Eastern Prussia to Wanda Wasilewska's autonomous Poland, deeply convinoed as'it is that all Europe will be Stalinist, so that it doesn't matter who will be Gauleiter in one part or another...
...TP HE New York Committee of Free Germans embraces all shades and colors of the German political emigration...
...They believed in Hitler and in Germany's mission to rule Europe...
...This policy has deep roofs within the German and the Russian armies as well as within the Nazi and the Stalinist Parties...
...Together with these Communists one finds two ex-police presidents of Berlin, Albert Grxesinski and Hoist Baeren-sprung, formerly police president in Magdeburg...
...Pieck grew up in Bebel's Social Democratic Party, entering the movement around 1895, and learned from the bottom tip the art of organizing, understanding very early too that the organisers always heat the philosophers, the jsswslishl and the writers...
...he gave good service to everybody and with a long series...
...Tauroggen is an episode in the war of 1812-1813 between Napoleon and Russia...
...And the Generals want, first of all, as in 1918, to save the German Ainiy...
...The^ German youth at first Ktubbornly resisted this propaganda...
...pilE symbolic leader of the old-timers is Wilhelm Pieck, now 70 years of age...
...GPL and Gestapo agents can understand each other very readily...
...These Free German movements have a password— "Tauroggen...
...This big noise about literature and music serves the cause well, it dopes the fools by a tremendous amount of "culture," befogging all political issues...
...It was the beginning of "Prussia's Wat of Liberation" against Napoleon, the Westerner, under tha leadership of Cxar Alexander...
...The Free German Movement is a Neo-Stalinist version of this old trend, offering a new chance of survival to the German Army and a transformed "stalinixed" Naxi Party...
...They understand each other much better than do the diplomat)* of Washington, London, and Moscow...
...Stalin Prepares a German Government By Ruth Fischer COVERED by the veil of diplomatic parleys going- oh between Washington, London, and Moscow, a new type of Stalinist German organisation is being formed in Russia...
...The lost war against Russia must have revivified the policy of "Russian orientation," the Bismarckian tradition...
...Hermann Hudzis-lawski, always organizationally a Social Democrat, but connected with the Moscow apparatus before 19.13, a contact man in Prague since 1934...
...but even a I'M liberal could recognize the manifold and" tempting possibilities of crooked deals which can be made with the help of these militarists of high rank and wide experience...
...Most Social Democrats, of course, are strongly opposed to this outfit...
...The political implications of this appeal are stiikingly clear—the continuation of an autonomous German nationalistic states or states, integrated in the Kussian-European Empire, giving up temporarily or permanently all claims to German leadership in Europe, assuming the role of a "junior partner...
...There are forces in the army that are loyal to the country . . . this government will int...
...iiyi history provides a great example i m years age, when German troops were enemies on Russian soil, the host of the Germans, von Stein, A mat, Clsasewits, York and others sppealed from Russia ever the heads ef the traitor German leaders to the conscience of the German people and called apoa them to wage a war of liberation "Germany must not die . .. if the German people in good time are courageous enough and prove indeed that they what to he a free people . . . they will then win the right to decide their fate themselves snd other nations will take them in consideration...
...Thus Pieck was no more than a bureaucratic lackey to every group of leaders of Hie German Communist Party...
...Here we find a leading contact man of the Moscow apparatus, Albert H. Schreiner, a veteran of the Communist Party of Germany...
...Hie comrade and leader was a man of uncompromising purity of character and indomitable fighting spirit, Karl Liebknecht...
...Every group is built up on the same pattern: some leading Communists in the background, a thick crust of literati, writers, actors, "churchmen," and among them a few trained GPU agents to watch over the Communist leaders and the whole group, and to give secret reports to Moscow...
...yitr Moscow Free German Manifesto of July |i, * 1943, takes this line...
...Whatever secret negotiations these German groups are able to carry on via Sweden, Japan, or Portugal will be seen in detr.il only in future developments...
...The cementing of the two "movements," the German political Communist emigration and the Moscow created nationalistic Generals' and officers' movement, is an historic fact of perhaps terrible consequences...
...No other country has been sble to organise a similar setup with captured Nazis...
...L-~~— The Moscow apparatus swallowed him up very early, making bun their confidence-man number one, the man who got the fat checks for the party in some obscure corner of the Russian Embassy in Berlin, the man who had contacts with the GPU, and with the division for false passports...
...T*H E decisive turn came with and after Stalingrad...
...mediately cease the military opera lien...
...In this manner it will attain peace and once again place Germany on an equal footing with other nations...
...Little attention was paid to this conference in the Anglo-American world...
...It depends, of course, on multiple factors, mainly in the U. S. A. but also in England, Germany, snd Russia, just what the concrete results of the "Free German'' policy of Russia will be...
...and Dr...
...There we find Stalin's \boitt the Great Patriotic War of tke Sonet Union, W. Florin's (another oldtimer) Why Hitler Fight* Against the Soviet Union, A Free and Independent Austria, etc., etc...
...The form of the new organization is totalitarian, .subject to iron discipline and with a setup including secret services...
...For instance, Count Von Einsiedel, a great-grandson of Bismarck, vice-chairman of the Free German Moscow Committee, broadcasted personally to his father in Berlin...
...It means the just, inexorable trial of those responsible for the war...
...Around them is a whole group of chorus girls, Catholics, capitalists, Professors of Anthropology, and a group marked as a dissident social-democratic group, the so-called "New Beginners," whose leader is Paul Hagen...
...A weekly newspaper Frcie* Dentxch-laud appealing regularly in the German language in Moscow, links the Moscow center to its ramifications in the western world...
...but at the same time it means amnesty for all Hitler adherents who in good time will renounce him and join the movement for a Free Germany...
...will recall the German troope to the Reich's frontiers and embark on peace negotiations, renouncing all rosea est...
...The infiltration of veteran German Stalinists in these new bodies is one of their characteristic features...
...The Tillichs, the Hagens, and their supporting cast will not have very much to say later on...
...The aim of the committee is the organization of a large pressure movement in the United States to influence a future peace treaty with Germany which will be favorable to the Russian-German policy...
...His Marxist training ia poor, his rhetoric old-fashioned and ridiculous...
...The Moscow apparatus has a sound political principle...
...A SURPRISINGLY large number of old-timers of the German Communist Party have survived the purges and exile and persecutions...
...On October S, 1841, the first conference ef German war prisoners took place in Moscow, following the Stalinist "Peoples Front" pateern...
...Felix Boen-heim, a minor figure and old party member...
...A tremendous amount of propaganda material was brought out in the German language in Moscow—pamphlets of all kinds, in smsll porketsize editions, which were distributed among war prisonera and along the front lines...
...Within the organisation Pieck was a specialist on questions of "personnel...
...In liquidating the anti-Russian Nazis with the help of the pro-Russian Nazis, "the Stalinists will certainly liquidate all anti-Stalinist leaders, movements, and organizations...
...Despots always need minstrels...
...The Gleichtchaltung of these German liberals and "innocents" is an easy task in New York and will be even easier after Hitler's breakdown within Germany...
...This group of generals and officers is without doubt in constant contact with political leaders in Moscow...
...Bertold Breeht, the poet of totalitarianism, well known in Germany, and author of "The Beggar's Opera...
...Soldier speaks to soldier in soldier's fashion...
...But no teriou* political observer con overlook th* possibility of a Ru**inn-G*rm*m totalitarian Empire after Hitler'* breakdown...
...But as the German position on the Russian front became weaker, tens of thousands of young Germans were won over to Stalin's policy...
...Pieck fought with him through the bitter first months of the revolution of 1918 and stood at his side during the Spartacus revolt of January 1919, which Roaa Luxemburg opposed energetically within the Communist Party of Germsny...
...He went through the anti-oar meve-ment and the Spartacus Bund during the first World War, went to Holland and directed the illegal propaganda inside Imperial Germany front abroad...
...in spite of the prestige which he attained from his close relationship to Karl Liebknecht he was si ways a third-rate politician, unable to make major decisions and to win real leadership in a real movement...
...A peculiar, rather interesting role is played by these literati and writers...
...The Sixth German Army surrendered, and most »f its staff soon went over to Stalin who now has at his disposal a group of high German officer* who hav* been clotely connected frith and integrated in th* hierarchy of the German Army and of the Xazi Party...
...The leading men of this group are: Walter von Seidlitx, General von Korfes, Edler von Daniels, General Lach-niann, and Colonel of the General Staff von Hoven, and the General Walther Meyer of the Waffen SS...
...It was not alone the cold Bolshevik contempt for such things as the "Geneva Convention" (which Russia never ratified), prohibiting political propaganda among war prisoners, but a far more decisive factor that made this possible- the approach to the young Naxis by the method of speaking and thinking close to their own mentality...
...They will be the bulk of the German-Stalinist organization of tomorrow...
...German officers now write, with full mention of their title and rank, in German Communist papers all over the world, they speak at meetings in "personalized" form...
...It was a place in Eastern Prussia where a Napoleonic Prussian auxiliary corps went over to the Russian side...
...they are distributed all over the world, in Moscow, in London, in New York, in Mexico, in Sweden, in Switzerland, and throughout South America...
...It will be the generals in Moscow and the Piecks who are at present organizing the new terrorist movement who will be the rulers of Stalin's "Free Germany...
...A "League of German Officers" was founded (General of the Artillery Walter von Seidlitz, their commander, greeted them with the word...
...of betrayals against his nearest political friends, passed the test for his integration into the GPU apparatus His job wax the purging and liquidation of those German emigres and workers who came to Russia sooner or later to find themselves in conflict with the authorities...
Vol. 27 • May 1944 • No. 19
