Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  This senior Prussian civil servant is not embarrassed by patriotic scruples. The pursuit of revenge against France, which is doubtless dear to him, in no way obscures his clear judgment as a class conscious bourgeois. He is the sort of person who will get on well with those clearsighted French bourgeois who, in 1918-19, when the dead of the Great War had scarcely been buried, bluntly declared that Ludendorff was better than Liebknecht.

  By July the continuing economic crisis was causing serious political tensions. In the Rhineland demands were growing for independence from the German republic. The government of the shipping magnate Wilhelm Cuno, based on the parties of the center, was increasingly unpopular.

  Amid the Collapse of Bourgeois Germany

  Correspondance internationale, July 14, 1923

  The revolutionary situation is ripening in Germany. The remarkable and rapid growth of Communist influence is perhaps the best indication of it. After having remained for several months with an average print run of 25,000 copies, Die Rote Fahne of Berlin is now printing 60,000, more than Vorwärts. And it is, after all, only one of the KPD’s 30 daily papers. The growth in the party’s membership is also noticeable, as is the extension of its trade union influence, its moral leadership within the factory committee movement—the most active current in Germany’s proletariat—its key role in the political life of Saxony and Thuringia, and its striking electoral successes in such a backward area as Mecklenburg-Strelitz. All these facts are evidence that the masses’ will for action is awakening. When a Communist Party develops in this way, it is because it is approaching a historical turning point. The German revolutionaries are well aware of this.

  On July 12 Die Rote Fahne published a document whose style and tone take us back to just before the great days of 1919. It is an appeal from the KPD central committee to the party members. The gravity of the political situation is set out in precise terms—bluntly and with no bombast. The conclusions are formulated with the sober energy of a challenge issued after mature consideration to the reactionary elements which are biding their time just outside the frontiers of legality. The KPD central committee mentions the preparations being made in the Rhine region to proclaim a Rhineland republic, under the aegis of the occupation authorities and with their financial assistance. The Bavarian fascists used to get French money; some Rhineland fascists are still getting it. The government, and the social democrats who are members of it, are quite well aware of the preparations for a reactionary violent coup and for foreign intervention. Fascist action could also begin as a result of measures by the Reich against red Saxony and Thuringia; or else it could be the unexpected result of a simple wage struggle. To quote the document itself:Our party must raise the combativity of its organizations to such a level that they will not be surprised by civil war wherever it may be launched.

  […] If legal communications are interrupted by a general strike in the railways and postal services, or by military operations, we must make sure of all our lines of communication in advance.

  […] The fascists count on winning in civil war by the most resolute use of violence and of crushing brutality. Any workers who resist them and are then taken prisoner will be executed. To break strikes, they will go so far as to shoot every tenth striker. Their violent coup can only be stopped by meeting white terror with red terror. If the fascists, armed to the teeth, shoot our proletarian fighters, they will find us implacable and determined to destroy them. If they put every tenth striker up against the wall, the revolutionary workers will kill one fascist in five.

  The fascist associations have arms and military equipment. Those workers who are not yet in possession of arms must know where and when they can obtain them if they are needed.

  It is in the Ruhr and the occupied region that the working-class faces the greatest threat. The KPD considers armed struggle against French imperialism to be impossible, and envisages a general strike there if necessary.

  Why?

  German corn is more expensive inside Germany than American and Argentinean corn. At Hamburg at the beginning of July 100 kilograms of cereals cost (including freight for foreign corn):

  La Plata wheat 11.5 guilders71 or 730,000 marks

  American wheat 11.7 guilders or 737,000 marks

  Russian rye 8.35 guilders or 530,000 marks

  German rye 610,000 marks

  German wheat 850,000 marks

  The consequence is that within one week the price of a loaf has risen from 7,000 to 20,000 marks on the free market, and from 4,200 to 10,000 (from July 23) on ration cards for the poor. From June 29 to July 5, the minimum subsistence level for a household with two children has risen by 147,000 marks a week, to a total of 919,668 according to the official index. Between July 10 and 11 in Berlin, the cost of living rose by 22 percent in 24 hours. A pound of margarine went from 34,000 to 38,000 marks, an egg from 3,400 to 4,400, a pound of bacon from 35,000 to 48,000 (that is, 37 percent increase). It is true that there is talk of raising wages—every ten days.

  Such are the results of the combined efforts of a government in the service of big capital, the landowners and French imperialism.

  In working-class Germany, statistics reveal that since the new falls in value of the mark, unemployment has gone down slightly. In May there were only 6.2 percent unemployed among trade unionists as against 7 percent in April. In the tobacco industry, the worst affected, there were only 21.5 percent as against 32.3 percent. The number of unemployed receiving assistance from various organizations (far from all of them) has fallen, in the same period of time, from 279,135 to 244,742. Industries affected by limitations on the number of hours worked employ 5,400,000 workers of whom 1,159,963 (21.7 percent) are only working shortened weeks (shoemakers, metalworkers, textiles, clothing, tobacco).

  When we remember that German workers long ago exhausted their savings and any money put aside, and that they earn a pittance even when they work full weeks, we can image the sum of wretchedness embodied in these figures. It is easy to understand the disturbances in the Rhineland and Saxony, in the course of which a certain number of unemployed have been killed by the police force of the democratic order.

  The dollar continues its dance. The Reich is devoting millions of gold marks to “stabilize the mark,” that is, to prevent it from vanishing into thin air too rapidly, and thus to favor the stock exchange speculations of the barons—or bandits—of finance. On this point, the Communist fraction in the Reichstag are asking Herr Cuno the following tricky questions: “Has the Hugo Stinnes steamer company (shipping line) been exempted from the compulsory surrender of foreign currency? Why? Is it the only one?”

  It isn’t the only one. And who can fail to understand why?

  But on the evening of July 10, the dollar, quoted at 256,000 or 266,000 marks at Gdansk, and at 276,000 marks at New York, was, thanks to government action, only at 187,000 marks at Berlin. The difference between the official and the real rate of exchange is paid by the people on small fixed incomes—the only ones affected—to the big financial establishments. That’s what they call “stabilization.”

  The Reich’s floating debt doubled in June, reaching the splendid figure of 24.9 billion marks. On June 30, there was paper money in circulation to the value of 17,291.1 billion marks.

  But if the Reich’s finances are expressed by such fabulous—negative!—figures, if the bankruptcy of the state becomes a little clearer every day, then the big financial establishments for their part seem prosperous enough. Take a look. The Diskontoge-sellschaft , the third largest bank in Germany, has published its accounts. It’s ending up with a net profit of 4.8 billion marks, that is to say, 24 times higher than last year. It is paying 250 percent dividends to its fortunate shareholders. And all these figures are doctored so as not to be too startling to people with no bread and no shirts, but who nonetheless read the papers.

  For its part the Dresdner Bank is only paying 200 percent dividends for 1922. Its profit and loss account is closed with a net profit of 18,227,522,
795 marks.

  Inflation caused by lack of confidence in paper money has obviously swollen all these figures, which, if they were reduced to 1914 proportions, would still be very respectable. Above all, in a land with tubercular children, with the most wretched wages, and where begging and prostitution are very widespread.

  Here we have merely set out figures, well known facts that have been published and are unquestioned. They will show you, comrade, what a capitalist society looks like when it is breaking down on the eve of some formidable crisis… They explain why the German Communists, the only ones to look reality in the face amid the shipwreck, are using the determined language quoted above while demanding the seizure of the real values 72 of the bourgeoisie.

  By mid-July the crisis was leading to polarization of left and right. Hermann Ehrhardt, one of the leaders of the Kapp putsch and involved in the murder of moderate Jewish cabinet minister Rathenau in 1922, had escaped from jail with official complicity. The KPD moved onto the offensive with the call for a national Anti-Fascist Day on July 29.

  Reports from Germany

  Disturbances at Wroclaw and Frankfurt Correspondance internationale, July 28, 1923

  In the course of the last month, the situation in Germany has become more tense to an unimaginable degree. And for a very simple reason: no wage any longer enables you to stay alive. You know in the morning that the dollar will certainly be worth 50,000 marks more by the evening. There is now no brake or limitation on rising prices; the cost of living goes up by the hour, and often by 20 to 30 percent in the course of 24 hours, while the slightest increases in wages and salaries must be negotiated over a week. Housewives are driven crazy and retailers are beginning to be afraid. The population is trying to lay in stocks, foreseeing that “something” is coming; the shopkeepers are rationing them. Sometimes the insane rise in prices prevents them from restocking their shops. Others, knowing very well that one day they will be looted and strung up, are hiding their stocks and fitting iron bars on their doors.

  Eight days ago hunger riots suddenly broke out in Wroclaw,73 sparked off, it seems, by young fascists who called on the crowd to loot Jewish shops. The police intervened brutally, supported by the reformist trade union leaders.—Order must come first!—The result: six dead, 15 wounded, 150 proletarians in jail, 750 billion marks of material damage. For the hungry crowd had nonetheless given a good lesson to some vicious grocers.

  On July 23, at Frankfurt-am-Main, a large anti-fascist demonstration, organized jointly by the SPD and the KPD, mobilized all the hungry in the city. On the route of the march was the home of the public prosecutor Haas, who ran out with his revolver in his hand to shut the iron gate to his garden. The appearance of this armed bourgeois in the street was enough to unleash the terrible latent anger of thousands of people. In a few moments prosecutor Haas was knocked down, stabbed and his house completely ransacked. Remember the anger in the streets in Paris in 1789 and the fate of those who caused starvation, Foulon and Berthier74…

  Yesterday (July 25) at the Berlin food markets, housewives were queuing up at the stall of a potato seller.—For there is a spud crisis: you can’t find them anywhere, speculators are hiding them. Think about it! They’ll be worth twice as much tomorrow. The first women to arrive got them at 5,000 marks a pound. Those who arrived half an hour later were already paying 6,000 marks a pound. To those who came last the worthy trader offered his potatoes for 7,000. They nearly beat him up. The municipal police—in green uniforms75—intervened with the greatest brutality. One poor woman was literally trampled underfoot by three uniformed brutes. Afterwards she was carried for first aid to Die Rote Fahne, whose offices were nearby. And that is significant.

  These people feel condemned, that they can’t go on living like this, and that the authorities are quite ready to give them bullets rather than bread.

  July 29

  It is in these conditions that everywhere in Germany preparations are being made for the Anti-Fascist Day of action on July 29, in which the KPD is calling for the participation, not only of workers, but of the working middle classes, civil servants, small investors, peasants, in short all the ruined, all the hungry, all the infuriated, precisely all those whom fascism is asking to fight against the proletariat on behalf of high finance…

  After long hesitation, the government, greatly embarrassed, has made its mind up. The Reich minister of the interior, Herr Oesel, has proposed that all the states in the Reich should ban all open air demonstrations and disperse them, if necessary by force. Citizen76 Severing, social democratic minister of the interior in the bourgeois Prussian government, the Severing of the odious provocations of March 1921,77 immediately banned the demonstration on July 29. His colleague Noske, social democratic president of the Hanover government, had anticipated him by doing the same some days earlier.

  The demonstration will go ahead nonetheless. Peacefully or otherwise—that depends entirely on the government’s attitude—it will now, in any case, have a doubly revolutionary impact. Will Herr Cuno dare, if the situation arises, to use the troops against the proletariat and middle classes determined to demonstrate their willingness to struggle against fascism which, for its part, is mocking the Leipzig high court, defying the republican government and counting on the support of the Reichswehr and the police? When the Bavarian reactionaries disregard the republican laws of the Reich, the central government puts up with the blow and does not react in any way. The KPD today is strong enough not to submit to the decrees of ministers who are protecting fascism. On July 29 shall we see the police and the army mobilized alongside the fascist gangs, forming a common front with them? To tell the truth, it would be no surprise. But then the government of the “republic” would decisively discredit itself in the eyes of the backward working-class elements who still have illusions in it. And that would be a big step forward.

  The fascist organizations in Berlin are preparing a counterdemonstration for July 29. Their appeal is signed by the DNVP, the People’s Party of National Freedom (officially banned, but this detail is unimportant to it), the National Union of German Officers and the United Patriotic Associations. The fascist game is clear. If the government acts against the proletariat, make a bloc with it, impose vigorous repression, and then grab all the advantages from the situation. We are on the brink of civil war.

  Ehrhardt and Noske

  Naturally Ehrhardt is still on the run. There are even good reasons to believe that at this moment he is the darling of the smartest salons in Budapest. There is nothing more revealing of the complicity of the republican regime towards reaction than the escape of this commander in chief. The Saxon government has published some very interesting material on this subject. A cousin of Ehrhardt from Hamburg, a friend of various ministers and of Herr Cuno, was able to discuss freely in private in Leipzig jail with the man charged by the high court. The latter enjoyed all conceivable freedoms in prison. His escape still remains mysterious. Not a single door was forced. The prisoner evaporated leaving no trace. Good Lord! Benevolent jailers opened the doors for him. They expect to receive promotion—after the fascist coup. One detail: a few days before Ehrhardt’s escape I noticed in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the paper of Stinnes’s press trust, a thoroughly pro-fascist organ, a very ambiguous note in which it was observed, though without any conclusion being drawn, that Ehrhardt’s imprisonment on remand was being excessively prolonged… Opinion was being prepared for his escape.

  The Leipzig high court has just (July 23) passed judgment on one of his accomplices, the young Princess of Hohenlohe. She has been sentenced to six months in prison for giving false evidence to assist Ehrhardt. She’s only a stooge, and the affair is without importance. But it produced a delicious statement in evidence from Noske. The social democrat Noske came before the court to testify that Ehrhardt had been able “by methods which were admittedly inhumane’ to form an élite corps78 which had been highly useful in restoring order in Germany and in repressing Bolshevism. “I had to use t
hese troops because I had no others.” This scoundrel of a socialist had no others! At the time of von Kapp’s coup in 1920, Ehrhardt offered military dictatorship to von Kapp. Do you know why? “Because,” Noske tells us, “despite his repeated requests, I had refused to be dictator.” What a great citizen, believe me! And to think this bloody reactionary scum still belongs to a Socialist Party, to a Socialist international, to the same one as Fritz Adler and Jean Longuet. Which of these men has sunk the lowest?

  As the economic crisis got worse and the Cuno government became more unpopular, the KPD faced a major problem. There were threats to ban the anti-fascist demonstrations called for July 29. The KPD sought advice from Moscow and got contradictory and inconsistent replies. In most parts of Germany the demonstrations were replaced by mass meetings; not a complete climbdown, but a withdrawal to a more defensive stance.

  Scarcity in Berlin

  Correspondance internationale, August 4, 1923

  It must be possible to measure, day by day, the progress of Germany, this great capitalist country, so wonderfully organized, as it slides towards the abyss.

  What is new this week? The paper money crisis, the scarcity—publicly acknowledged—of potatoes and fats, the enormous rise in the cost of living and the proportional fall in wages. The Reichsbank is issuing billions of paper marks every day: but on the New York stock exchange, the mark is falling ever faster. By the time they have been printed, German banknotes are worth no more than what they cost in paper and ink. Over the last few days there has been a shortage of notes. Private printshops had to be rapidly called into service to print notes of one, two, five and ten million marks… They were not even in circulation when the dollar, which five days ago was worth 400,000 marks, was quoted at 1,000,000 (on the evening of July 28). They had to hurry and print notes of one, five and ten billion!