A group of leading figures in Russia, including authors and well-known scientists, turned to Lenin and got his reluctant approval to appeal for support abroad. On July 13, 1921, Maxim Gorky asked for help from the international community.
Herbert Hoover, secretary of commerce and later president of the United States and usually identified with the Great Depression, responded positively, and the American Relief Administration (ARA), created to help postwar Europe, began supplying tons of food and other essentials to Russia. By the summer of 1922 the ARA was feeding nearly eleven million people a day.46 It also supplied seed grain, which made it possible for the Soviets to grow their own grain and eventually overcome the famine.
Soviet Communists never understood American philanthropy, did not trust the ARA, and had its operations carefully watched. In fact, many of the Russian notables who mobilized the help were arrested. Lenin saw to it that Gorky, once a supporter, was driven out of the country “for health reasons.” Nothing could be allowed to tarnish the glitter of the new Soviet system.47
The Americans were appalled to discover that even at the height of the famine the Soviet government was still exporting large quantities of its own grain, supposedly to finance industrialization. A Russian historian who says that the American aid saved millions of lives was shocked to learn that Lenin robbed his own people’s taxes, supposedly to purchase grain abroad “but in reality to finance revolution throughout the world and to force the creation of more and more new Communist parties.” Considerable sums were sent to agents in 1921, including those in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy, America, England, the Balkans, Sweden, and Switzerland. It would be impossible to take seriously the suggestion that Lenin had given up on world revolution and all this was just a bluff.48
Lenin’s health began to suffer, and from mid-1921 onward his activities were restricted. He was incapable of sustained work and by the end of the year had taken seriously ill again. The misery dragged on for just over another year, punctuated by collapses that left him incapacitated.
Stalin was not merely an aberration or corruption of Leninism. He was also an exploiter, building on the Leninism he inherited and promoted to his own political advantage. Although he eventually introduced many changes, these were variations on policies and practices already established or well rehearsed under Lenin. Thus it is a distortion of history to compare the Soviet Union under Stalin with other dictatorships if we do not take into account the first years of the new regime and Lenin’s crucial role.
PART TWO
THE RISE OF GERMAN NATIONAL SOCIALISM
4
NAZISM AND THE THREAT OF BOLSHEVISM
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, and grew up in Linz. He flirted with art and architecture, lived for a while in Vienna, but led an aimless existence. Throughout these years he held warm feelings about Germany but gave little or no indication of the fanatical nationalist, rabid anti-Semite, and heartless warmonger he was to become. He moved to Munich on May 25, 1913, a little more than a year before the First World War. Although at one point in his autobiography he called the time he spent in Linz the happiest of his life, he said much the same about prewar Munich. In fact he lived an isolated existence in that city as well. Later, when trying to establish a National Socialist identity for himself, he claimed he had talked about politics with like-minded people. They were all convinced “that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism.”1
Although there has been a great deal of speculation about when Hitler became anti-Semitic, before 1919 there is no reliable evidence of the hatred and hostility toward Jews of his later years. The First World War and particularly its immediate aftermath in Munich were the catalysts that turned Hitler into the most radical anti-Semitic politician in German history.2
On June 28, 1914, Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria, was assassinated in Sarajevo, and a diplomatic crisis brewed throughout July. In Munich, from July 26 onward, there were signs of popular support for Austria, and on August 1 the German government finally declared war on Russia and began mobilization. The next day, a Sunday, Hitler was among the thousands gathered at the Feldherrnhalle in downtown Munich to show their support.
Just over two weeks later he volunteered to serve and was accepted. After brief training he was assigned to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16. The volunteers who served in it included students from Munich, as well as members of the educated middle class, but most came from rural areas. Training was complete by late October, and the regiment was sent to Flanders, where it was thrown into what was already a hopeless situation and suffered staggering losses, estimated at around 70 percent. Hitler wrote to friends in early November that of the original 3,600 men in the regiment, only 611 remained. He also told them he had been promoted to corporal (retroactive to November 1). Although he was generally liked by his comrades, he remained a loner and somewhat of an eccentric.3
Hitler went on leave to Berlin on September 10, 1918, but by that time the situation had deteriorated, and he was disgusted at the lack of commitment to the war. He was hardly back in Flanders when he was injured in a gas attack on the night of October 13–14. Temporarily blinded, he was sent to a field hospital to recover. Almost exactly a week later he was admitted to the hospital in Pasewalk, near Stettin, where he was treated until November 19 and released. While he was in Pasewalk, not only did Germany suffer defeat, but on November 9 a revolution broke out, a turn of events that left an emotional scar he carried the rest of his life.4
SOCIAL REVOLUTION
German casualties in the First World War were staggering, with 2.4 million dead, or 18.5 percent of the 13 million who wore the uniform. Another 4.8 million had been wounded, and, of these, 2.7 million died prematurely. Practically no family was unaffected by death or long-term disability.5
In Berlin, on the evening of November 7, the MSPD (Majority Socialists) issued an ultimatum demanding among other things the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Chancellor Prince Max of Baden asked Friedrich Ebert, the Socialist leader, whether he was prepared to join him in a fight against upheaval, but was told that if the kaiser did not abdicate, the situation would get out of hand. Ebert said he did not want revolution; “in fact, I hate it like the sin.”6
By 11: 00 a.m. on November 9, Prince Max had informed the press of the kaiser’s imminent abdication and of his own decision to resign. By early afternoon Philipp Scheidemann of the MSPD had declared a “German Republic” before the crowds from a balcony of the Reichstag. Two hours later Karl Liebknecht of the more radical Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) proclaimed a “Free Socialist Republic of Germany.” This was the long-awaited revolution, but it brought little satisfaction to anyone.
There was initially outer calm with the nonviolent transition from monarchy to republic. The great majority accepted that the days of the kaiser were over. For all that, November 9 marked what became in retrospect one of the most emotionally laden days in German history. Hitler and the nationalist right promptly regarded it as a “stab in the back” of the troops. The home front supposedly let down the battlefront. This myth was constructed by the military, but to Hitler and millions more it became an article of faith. They called Socialists like Ebert, Scheidemann, Liebknecht, and their comrades the “November criminals,” a code word for everything the right hated—particularly Marxists and Jews.
An armistice began to be negotiated on November 6 and was finally signed on November 11. The guns fell silent on the western front, but in the east the situation was more complex. Soviet Russia posed a threat to Europe, and in Germany there was fear of an invasion. There soon developed a “basic consensus” between the new Socialists in power and the “old elites” that the attempt by the Bolsheviks to take over the Baltic area had to be stopped. The Allies shared this view, and notwithstanding their demands to disarm, they agreed that German troops could fight on for the Baltic. The “great fear” in 1918—which was Lenin’s great h
ope—was that Bolshevism would spread to the West and particularly Germany and Austria.7
When Hitler left the Pasewalk hospital on November 19, the country was still in the throes of revolution. He arrived in Munich two days later to find the Bavarian monarchy gone. Even more improbably, given that region’s traditionalist and religious culture, the monarchy had been replaced by a radical Council Republic led by Kurt Eisner, a Socialist and not even a Bavarian.
On a personal level, Hitler felt fortunate to be allowed to remain in the army, given the shortage of jobs and general upheaval. But he hardly jumped at the opportunity to get involved in the revolution, perhaps because, with his world turned into chaos, he did not know what to do. For many such people, what was outrageous about Eisner was not just his radicalism but that he was a Jew. For right-leaning people, Marxism and Socialism became synonymous with Bolshevism and entangled with anti-Semitism.
The fear of Bolshevism was also evident among delegates to the First General Congress of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils held in Berlin, December 16 to 21. This congress determined the shape of the new republic. The 514 representatives were divided as follows: the MSPD (Majority Socialists) had around 300, the USPD (Independent Socialists) about 100, with the remainder either left-liberal or without party affiliation. Reflecting their lack of support, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht—the leaders of the ultra-left Socialists in the Spartacus group—were not even elected. The Russian Bolshevik leader Karl Radek, Lenin’s representative, and illegally in Germany since December 19, supported the radicals. His presence alone confirmed the worst right-wing fears.
The First General Congress firmly rejected (344 to 98) the motion to base the new republic on a council system along the lines of the Soviet Union. Several speakers pointed to the Russian example as one they did not want to follow. The congress decided by an even larger majority (400 to 50) to hold early national elections for January 19, 1919.8
Germany was a land of property owners, where millions had investments in stocks, bonds, and savings. The country also had a pension and welfare system that helped integrate state and society. Most workers were opposed to Communism, and even radical left-wingers were not anxious to emulate the Bolsheviks. According to Arthur Rosenberg, eventually a loyal member of the Communist Party, if they had run candidates in what were the first elections in the new republic (January 1919), they would likely have received a “maximum” of 1 percent of the vote. Workers tended to be trade-union oriented, wanting gradual improvements in benefits, an approach despised by Lenin because it meant making the system work rather than destroying it.9
Despite the desperate situation at war’s end, Germans were not quite ready to embrace even moderate Socialism. Of the first six regional elections held from November 1918 to January 1919, the MSPD won majorities in only two. These public attitudes were confirmed by the national elections in January. There the MSPD gained 37.9 percent of the vote and the USPD 7.6 percent. Even if they could bury their differences, they did not have an absolute majority. Liberal parties did surprisingly well with 18.5 percent; and the Catholic Center Party gained 19.7 percent. Conservative and more right-wing parties mustered between them only 14.7 percent of the vote, a sign that they were discredited for identifying so heavily with the war.10
Worries about a “Red scare” did not go away in Germany, and even if popular support for far-left radicals was minimal, that did not mean there was no basis for concern. After all, the Bolsheviks had little backing in Russia and never intended to wait for a majority to claim all power.
Lenin wanted the world. His idea of a vanguard party, which was to “enlighten” and direct the workers, was not meant to be restricted to the Soviet Union. In March 1919 he created the Communist International (Comintern). He said that the Russian Revolution could not stand on its own and pleaded for the world proletariat to support it. This was the rationale for spreading Russian-style Communism, including by force of arms. At the second annual meeting of the Comintern in July-August 1920, he stipulated that Communist parties everywhere had to agree to twenty-one conditions, accepting “iron proletarian centralism,” that is, subordinating themselves completely to Moscow. Lenin’s top-down approach inside the USSR logically extended to Communist parties everywhere. The Soviets wanted Western counterparts to create “cells” in key social institutions, recognizing the “impossibility of gaining majorities in favor of Communism, even in the working class, until after the revolution.” Lenin and Trotsky hoped there would ultimately be Bolshevik-style coups in the West with Moscow leading the way and standing at the head of the world revolution.11
The continuing efforts of the Soviet Union to export revolution heightened anxiety about the Reds and helped fuel the rise of radical right-wing parties, such as the obscure one that Hitler discovered in Munich when he returned there at war’s end.
COMMUNISTS IN MUNICH
Kurt Eisner, leader of the USPD, persisted as head of government in Bavaria, even though what he stood for was completely out of place there. That point was shown by the first state (Landtag) elections held on January 12, 1919. Eisner was defeated, and the USPD finished last, winning less than 2 percent of the vote and only 3 seats out of 180. The Catholic Party in Bavaria (BVP) did best (66 seats), followed by the MSPD (61) and the Democrats (25). Eisner dithered for more than a month, but on his way to tender his resignation on February 21, he was assassinated by a right-wing extremist, Count Anton Arco-Valley. Scarcely an hour later, perhaps in retaliation, a member of the Revolutionary Workers’ Council entered the Landtag and shot (among others) the leader of the Bavarian SPD, Erhard Auer, who survived the assassination attempt.12
The German Communist Party (KPD) was founded in meetings held December 30, 1918, to January 1, 1919. The USSR tried to send a delegation, but the German military stopped them at the border. One of the first things Karl Radek discussed with Rosa Luxemburg, a key figure of the Spartacus group, was the use of terror. She had reservations, but her colleague Karl Liebknecht “warmly supported” Radek. His only quibble was to ask why the Cheka was “so cruel.” Radek’s argument was simple: “We plan for world revolution [and] we need a few years’ grace. How can you deny the need for terror under those circumstances?” Leninists like Radek believed a “real” Socialist revolution was just around the corner.13
An ill-considered mass demonstration in Berlin took place on January 5. It was sparked by the attempted dismissal the day before of the Berlin police chief and member of the USPD. The KPD had agreed to go along with a protest march, but did not want to try taking power, because it thought a coup was bound to fail. KPD leaders and other radicals were taken aback by the size of the demonstration on January 5 and the amount of unrest in the days that followed. There was no calming these waters. This misnamed “Spartacus uprising” was a confused affair that involved the USPD and KPD, as well as the Spartacus group. Armed bands of followers took over Berlin’s leading newspapers, and concluding from false news that the military was on their side, Liebknecht and others who were prepared to use violence as needed called for a general strike to bring down the government.14
Radical Socialists like Liebknecht and Luxemburg wanted to dispense with parliamentary elections. They might have had reservations about Lenin and Bolshevism, but they agreed with much that Lenin stood for, including the nationalization of industry and collectivization of agriculture. The economic program of the Spartacus group could have been written by Lenin. Luxemburg criticized the MSPD for not destroying the capitalist class and for insisting on “the inviolability of private property.”15
These were the leaders of Spartacus, which in total counted perhaps one thousand members at the start of the revolution. Their demands made them sound like German Bolsheviks.16 Though Luxemburg had crossed swords with Lenin, in Germany she echoed one of his favorite points: Socialism could not just be “introduced.” She claimed that there would be a need for violence and civil war because “when the bourgeoisie is hit in its heart—and
its heart beats in the cash register—it will put up a life and death struggle.” Hence, “the idea that socialism can be introduced without a class struggle and through parliamentary majority decisions is a ridiculous petit-bourgeois illusion.”17
On January 7, Gustav Noske, a member of the MSPD and of the cabinet, decided it was time to use force. His dictum was: “Fine, let it be me! Somebody has to become the bloodhound, and I do not shy away from the responsibility.”18 Besides regular troops he called for volunteers, who came from right-wing groups like the Volunteer Regiment Reinhard. Noske also used Free Corps troops under General Walther von Lüttwitz, whose men were committed anti-Bolsheviks. These groups later had links to Nazism. By January 11, they had cleared out the occupied buildings in Berlin, and on January 15 the coup was over. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were brutally murdered. The seriousness of the occasion cannot be exaggerated. As one writer put it, “If their immediate aim—the overthrow of the Ebert-Scheidemann government—had been achieved, then that would have led to a bloody civil war in all of Germany and a military intervention of the Allies.”19
Eisner’s assassination on February 21, which was intended to put an end to what remained of the revolution in Bavaria, actually rekindled the determination of some radicals. There was a wave of revolutions in Munich more chaotic and Communistic than Eisner’s. Between late February and early May the city threatened to become a smaller and less bloody version of the Russian Revolution. All kinds of experiments were tried, including the declaration of the Bavarian Soviet Republic.
It was precisely at this time that Béla Kun (another Communist with a Jewish background) seized power in Hungary, and there was talk that Austria and Bavaria might be next.20
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