Russia and the Reichswehr

The KPD is in a desperate situation. The evidence for Russia's armament is so overwhelming that it cannot be denied, and the characteristic feature of the whole matter is that Moscow does not want to deny it completely: Moscow's policy is the policy of alliances with other bourgeois states, Bukharin made the following theory at the 4th World Congress: “There is no difference between a loan and a military alliance." (Minutes of the 4th World Congress.) Therefore the question of the arming of the Reichswehr by Russia is, from the standpoint of the Third International, a perfectly correct matter. International is a perfectly correct matter. The alliance with other capitalist states only makes sense if this alliance is based on unconditional mutual support. Since there is admittedly no limit here, and, as Bukharin says:

“In this form of national defense of the military alliance with bourgeois states, it is the duty of the comrade of such a country to help this bloc to victory” (ibid.).

Thus the useless and stubborn denial of the KPD merely means that it does not have the courage to commit itself to the principles of the Third International. It is ashamed of its own program. — At least that is progress!

The KAPD, of course, does not expect the Central Committee to respond to the open letter of the KAPD. which we published in No. 2 of the “KAZ.”. The KPD is so far gone that such a document, if it were to come before the eyes of the workers of the KPD would result in the immediate and final collapse of the policy of Moscow and its sections, as well as of the KPD itself, and if it were to muster hundreds of columns against it. This shows us that the only thing left to do is to find ways and means to reach the proletarians of the KPD. And we are already succeeding in this to an ever-increasing degree. The “Vorwärts” of January 10 attached a note to the KAPD's open letter with the remark that Pieck had already admitted everything in the Political Bureau. Pieck then sent the “Vorwärts” a statement saying that this claim was a “bold-faced lie”. Moreover, everything was “not true”. Poor Pieck!

The following “revelations”, which the Social Democratic Reichstag deputy Franz Künstler pulled out of the noses of two workers who worked in a poison gas factory relocated to Russia, are making the rounds of the Social Democratic press:

This poison gas factory was then located in Trotsk on the Volga. Phosgene and Lost, i.e. Yellow Cross and Blue Cross, were manufactured using special machines. Part of the factory consisted of a special filling room for filling one million gas grenades. The factory was operated by the Stolzenberg company in Hamburg, the owner was a member of the National Socialist Party. The managing director was a “patriotic” Director Naß. The company had orders from the “Gefu” (Society for the Promotion of Industrial Enterprises), which employed 30 workers and 15 foremen, all of whom were from Germany. The workers were given a strict penalty of silence, but the pay was good: 700 to 900 marks a month. Two doctors from the Reichswehr were present. Officially, the factory was called “Russich-deutsche Persilfabrik”. The factory was often inspected by German officers sent by the Reichswehr company “Gefu”, including Colonel von Liedt and Major Tschunke. The Siemens-Schuckert Company supplied the electrical equipment, the “Lindes Eismaschinen” Company supplied the compressors, and Rudolf Meyer in Hamburg supplied the district heating. Work continued until May 1926, when a major flood threatened to release two tons of phosgene from their containers. After this, the German workers were deported to Germany, where they extorted the rest of their wages from “Gefu” under the threat that they would appeal to the industrial tribunal. What remained was a detachment of the “Gefu” Reichswehr company, which had meanwhile changed its name to “Wicko” (Wirtschaftskantor).

What does the “Rote Fahne” answer to this? One reads:

So the facts are as follows: The factory was built in May 1926. It perished as a result of the flooding. Not a single shell was produced. The famous Stolzenburg company is bankrupt — so if anyone were to have the audacious idea of investigating the Social Democratic allegations, they would be facing a natural phenomenon, so to speak, and it is well known that one is powerless to do anything about it. But all this did not prevent the “Vorwärts” and the “Leipziger Volkszeitung” from announcing to the German working class just a few days ago that in October 1923 the Reichswehr guns were loaded with Soviet Russian gas grenades, namely with those grenades which, according to the reports of the “Leipziger Volkszeitung”, could not be produced in 1926. (“Rote Fahne” of January 8).

According to this, Moscow intended to have a factory built in Russia so that it could be shut down shortly before the gas grenades were filled! Together with the German Reichswehr, they built factories, factories so as not to produce a single “grenade”. A fine piece of logic. Even more subtle is the trick that the grenades that could not be produced in 1926 could not possibly be fired in 1923. With respect: the shells themselves were not produced in this factory at all, it was a gas factory. The Berliner Tageblatt wrote on December 6 that a shell factory, a grenade factory and a gas factory had been built. Thus the whole demagogy of the “Rote Fahne” collapses.

Even more. In the same article she admits that these stupid jokes are only calculated for stupid proletarians. For a few lines further on she confesses:

“The proletarian dictatorship in the Soviet Union does its duty to the international working class when it arms itself with all its might to be a match for its imperialist opponents at the moment of struggle."

This is the confession that Russia is “arming hand in hand with the German counter-revolution with all its forces”, i.e. the direct confirmation of what a headless Leninist first tries to deny. The point is not whether the German Reichswehr has received much or little, but rather to put Moscow's counter-revolutionary policy and its root, capitalist restoration and the policy of truce with capital and against the proletariat that springs from it, in the right light.

The “Vorwärts”, which sheds crocodile tears over the arming of the German Reichswehr by Russia, relies just as much on the stupidity of its readers as the “Rote Fahne”. For the arming of the Reichswehr by Russia was carried out with the help of the Social Democratic Party, just as there is no crime against the proletariat in which the Social Democrats did not have a hand. In addition to the confirmation by the Berliner Tageblatt in the number already mentioned, the "Metallarbeiterzeitung" of January 8, for example, made the following admission:

The one thing we have to criticize about this speech (meaning Scheidemann's speech in the Reichstag. Ed. of “KAZ.”) is that it did not come a few years earlier. If the military swamp had been ruthlessly exposed much earlier, it could have reached this extent or this dangerousness, and on the other hand, the perpetrator of these misdeeds would have long since gone where he belongs. Here the honest democratic representatives are constantly campaigning abroad for trust in the new Germany — but at home they leave untouched a system that must whip up the sharpest mistrust everywhere; here these representatives of the people are striving to preserve and strengthen the republic — but in parliament they approve the funds for an army that — to quote the Austrian Comrade Deutsch — is ready at any moment to turn the collar on the republic. This ambivalent behavior of the democratic and republican representatives of the people strikes us as extremely strange and dangerous to boot. It is not surprising that it is not understood by the working class. By their behavior, these representatives of the people are burdening themselves with a responsibility that we certainly do not ask them to shoulder.

The impudence of the Social Democrats in presenting themselves as a party and exclaiming with a hypocritical twinkle in their eyes: “I thank God that I am not like other people”, is due to the fact that the KPD cannot in this case expose the shame of the Social Democrats without at the same time exposing its own shame. The arming of the Reichswehr by Russia took place with the help of the SPD and KPD. But the fanatical will for a united front! Hence Moscow's theory of stabilization! Hence the thesis of “building socialism in one country”, which is tantamount to a truce with capital. The proletariat can only counter these crimes if it turns away from a policy which, in its logical consequence, must always lead to crimes against the proletariat. That is why the dispute is not only about the “Soviet grenades”, but about the policy itself, which must lead to these consequences, which are quite correct from the standpoint of the Third International. We are fully aware of the fact that the Central Committee of the KPD will never, under any circumstances, allow this to go to the bottom, as the KAPD did with its Open Letter to the Central Committee of the KPD — it cannot do so without committing political suicide, it will not print our letter and refute it — because it is not possible, even if 99 percent of the members of the KPD were to demand it. But the workers of the KPD will not be able to avoid the question of whether their path — to Amsterdam — is not too dirty for them after all.