Stalinism

Going Red

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Reichswehr Lieutenant Richard Scheringer’s infamous 1931 conversion from National Socialism to the Communist Party of Germany

On 4 October, 1930, three young Reichswehr officers from the Fifth Artillery Regiment in Ulm were sentenced by the Federal Court in Leipzig to 18 months’ imprisonment for the crime of preparing to commit high treason. Radicalized by Germany’s ongoing domestic instability and international weakness, and motivated by a contempt for the ‘old order’ and for the older generation of Reichswehr officers, these three young men – Richard Scheringer, Hanns Ludin, and Hans Wendt – had been caught disseminating National Socialist propaganda within army garrisons and attempting to foment support for a prospective ‘national revolution’ among the officer corps, hoping in this way to foster a sense of nationalist-anticapitalist radicalism within the Reichswehr which would help prepare it for its role as a ‘people’s army’ in the event of a nationalist uprising. The ‘Ulm Reichswehr trial’ was a highly publicized event within Germany (Hitler famously gave testimony to the court, defending his party against accusations of treason), and the fate of the three young officers became a cause célèbre for nationalists in Germany, who regarded them as martyrs for the cause of the Fatherland. There was thus something of a sensation among the German public when, in early 1931, one of the Ulm officers publicly announced his decision to ‘convert’ to Communism: Richard Scheringer. During their incarceration in the Gollnow fortress-prison, Scheringer and Wendt had become friendly with the institution’s many Communist inmates, and through long political debates with his new comrades Scheringer in particular had increasingly come to doubt the substance and validity of National Socialist doctrine. Helped along in his conversion by the allure of the Communist Party of Germany’s (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) ‘programme for the national and social liberation of the German people,’ as well as by the poor impression left by the NSDAP leaders he had met since his imprisonment, Scheringer finally decided to renounce ‘fascism’ and to throw his lot in with the cause of Marxism-Leninism instead, and a declaration to this effect was read out in the Reichstag by KPD deputy Hans Kippenberger on 19 March, 1931. Scheringer’s jump to Communism was heralded as a great victory by KPD publications, as the forerunner of many more conversions to come, and the party was eager to make as much political capital from the event as it could. Scheringer was swiftly incorporated into the party’s ‘national and social’ propaganda strategy, with the young ex-officer set to work writing propaganda material from his cell in Gollnow, and his name was attached to a new journal explicitly directed at winning over disillusioned, socially-conscious nationalists and soldiers. Translated below are three pieces related to Scheringer and his decision to cross the barricades and ‘go red’: an extract from Kippenberger’s Reichstag speech, in which he reads out Scheringer’s declaration for the ‘red front’; an article from KPD daily Die Rote Fahne discussing the reaction to Scheringer’s decision and its significance for German Communism; and a Communist propaganda leaflet penned by Scheringer and addressed to  rebellious members of the Berlin SA, an example of the type of material which the KPD hoped would help convince idealistic National Socialists and help create more Scheringers to swell the ranks of the “fighting proletariat.” 

Scheringer Declares for German Communism
From the 1931 Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 445.

Scheringer’s declaration announcing his ideological conversion to Marxism-Leninism was first made public to the German people by Communist Reichstag deputy Hans Kippenberger on 19 March 1931, read out towards the conclusion of a speech given during an otherwise unremarkable parliamentary debate on the issue of defense spending. Scheringer and Kippenberger had become acquainted only a month or so beforehand, meeting over a glass of schnapps in a smoke-filled Gollnow workers’ pub while Scheringer was out of prison on a weekend furlough. During their meeting Scheringer had stressed to Kippenberger that his decision to ‘go red’ was sincere and that he was especially committed to “warning the Volk about Hitler”, whom he had met and not been particularly impressed by. Kippenberger for his part had emphasized to Scheringer the anti-pacifist credentials of the KPD, assuring him of the party’s commitment to revolution and to building a powerful German Red Army. Scheringer was especially impressed by Kippenberger’s martial background (Kippenberger was a decorated WWI veteran and the leader of the KPD’s underground paramilitary apparatus), which helped reassure him of the correctness of his decision and of Kippenberger’s suitability for conveying that decision to the world. For the sake of brevity I have only translated an extract of Kippenberger’s speech, the end portion which deals specifically with the NSDAP and with Scheringer, the rest being concerned with the rather dull topic of Reichswehr funding issues. The translation has been made from the Reichstag stenographic transcripts for 1931. – Bogumil 

Extract from KPD Deputy Hans Kippenberger’s Speech
to the German Reichstag of 19 March, 1931.

KIPPENBERGER (KPD): …But I would here like to point out another fact with reference to the relationship between the Reichswehr, the National Socialists, and, moreover, the Social-Democrats: that in the Reichstag faction of the National Socialist Party there are 25 deputies who, from 1918 to 1920, fought against the workers as members of the Freikorps. This means that there are 25 National Socialist members of the Reichstag who, according to the Reichstag Handbook, boast of having helped erect the Versailles System and of helping to set the Weimar Republic in the saddle through blood, terror, and murder

(“Very true!” from the Communists)

together with Noske and with Herr Groener.1 If we review the list of 25 National Socialist murderers who are today drawing parliamentary allowances from the Republic, then we can extend their ranks directly to Social-Democracy –

(The President’s bell sounds)

VICE-PRESIDENT VON KARDOFF: Herr Deputy Kippenberger, I call you to order.2

KIPPENBERGER (KPD): – not only via a Winnig or a Grützner,3 who have also outwardly demonstrated their spiritual kinship through their open conversion to the NSDAP, but also in such a way that the 25 on this side here (to the right) include at the very least Herr Wels as the chairman of the party over on that side,4 who played exactly the same role and function. Continue reading →

Social-Fascism

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“Social Democracy objectively represents the moderate wing of Fascism.” British Communist R. Palme Dutt’s theoretical explanation of the Stalinist concept of “Social-Fascism”

The theory of ‘Social-Fascism’, which held that Social-Democracy was Fascism’s “handmaiden” and its “moderate wing,” was first formalized within the international Marxist-Leninist movement over a number of Comintern meetings throughout 1928-1929. The idea that Social-Democracy and Fascism were ideologically intertwined was not a new one at the time; Zinoviev as early as 1922 had remarked at the Fourth Comintern Congress that: “Not by chance is Mussolini, a renegade from the Second International, a sometime Social-Democrat, now at the head of the counter-revolutionary movement in Italy; not by chance are such as Ebert and Noske at the head of the government in Germany.” Similar observations had been made over the years by other leading Communists, including Clara Zetkin, Leon Trotsky, Earl Browder, and Josef Stalin. Yet it was not until the Comintern introduced the concept of the ‘Third Period’ at the tail-end of the 1920s – i.e., the notion that global capitalism had entered a period of economic collapse and impending revolution – that the complementary theory of Social-Fascism was also officially adopted and began to directly shape Communist tactics and propaganda. The claim that Social-Democrats were working in concert with the bourgeoisie to stymie the nigh-inevitable proletarian revolution and to build a reactionary fascist state was not always popular or well-understood among Communism’s grass-roots supporters, particularly as it seemed to often translate (as was most notably the case in Germany) into Communist parties directing the bulk of their hostile energies against fellow workers in the ‘reformist’ parties, rather than against actual outright ‘Fascists’. One of the more notable attempts to allay some of this confusion and to give the idea of Social-Fascism a more complete theoretical foundation occurred in the 1934 book Fascism and Social Revolution, by Rajani Palme Dutt. In his book Dutt, a British-Indian Communist and one of Stalinism’s more erudite English-language theoreticians, outlined in detail some of the Marxist-Leninist analyses of Fascism with which many have already become familiar: that it is “a means of capitalist class rule in conditions of extreme decay,” that it is “the organisation of the entire capitalist state upon the basis of permanent civil war,” and so on. A significant segment of Dutt’s book is also given over to examining the relationship between Social-Democracy and Fascism, and it is the chapter dealing with this topic which has been excerpted below. What makes Dutt’s analysis on this topic particularly compelling is that it does not just focus on painting Social-Democracy as a capitalist tool for manipulating workers into the service of the bourgeoisie. Instead, Dutt goes into some detail examining the alleged shared ideological roots between Social-Democracy and Fascism, intimating that the two do have some form of common intellectual lineage, particularly through Social-Democracy’s alleged “abandonment” of Marxism and internationalism during the Great War. While Dutt (like most Marxists) is reluctant to ascribe any serious, pre-War theoretical foundations to Fascism, his admission that there is nonetheless an actual, direct relationship between Socialism and Fascism is still particularly noteworthy, especially given how reluctant many on the Left today seem to be when it comes to acknowledging the uncomfortable fact that Fascism and National Socialism actually began as evolutions (or heresies) of Marxist doctrine.  

Social Democracy and Fascism
From R. Palme Dutt’s Fascism and Social Revolution (1934)

It is evident from the previous survey of the historical development of Fascism in Italy, Germany, and Austria that the role of Social Democracy is of decisive importance in the development to Fascism. The understanding of these two closely-related phenomena of the post-war period, of modern Social Democracy and of Fascism, is of key importance for the whole understanding of post-war capitalist politics. The whole question, however, is ringed round with controversy, and requires very careful further analysis, if the real issues of Fascism, and the conditions of the growth of Fascism are to be understood.

It should be explained that the term “Social Democracy” is here used only to cover the post-war phenomenon, the post-1914 Social Democratic Parties which subsequently united to form the post-war Second International or “Labour and Socialist International” in 1923. Although the tendencies of opportunist parliamentary corruption and absorption into the capitalist State were already strong and growing before the war throughout the imperialist epoch, even while the nominal programme of international revolutionary Marxism remained, and were increasingly fought by the revolutionary wing within these parties since the beginning of the twentieth century, it was only the decisive test of the imperialist war in 1914 that brought these tendencies to their full working out and openly revealed these parties as having passed over to capitalism. The direct passing over in this way since 1914 of large organisations of the working-class movement in all the imperialist countries, and especially of the parliamentary and trade union leadership, to open unity with capitalism and with the capitalist State, is a big historical fact; and the subsequent evolution of these parties since the war has played a large role, in the early years in the defeating of the working-class revolution, and in the subsequent years in the growth of Fascism.

This latter role was already showing itself in very marked preliminary forms in those secondary states where White dictatorships were established, in Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria, etc. In the period of the reconstruction and partial stabilisation of capitalism with the aid of Social Democracy, and still more since the development of the world economic crisis and the shattering of the basis of capitalist reconstruction, this character has become increasingly marked throughout Social Democracy. A process of “fascisation” in a whole variety of forms and stages, as well as of playing directly into the hands of Fascism, can be traced. Continue reading →

Aufbruch: Winning the Nationalists for Communism

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“Nationalists! Break through to us!” Articles from ‘Aufbruch’, a National Bolshevist propaganda journal produced by the Communist Party of Germany

Between 23 September to 4 October 1930, three young officers of the German Reichswehr stood trial in a Leipzig court, charged with plotting to commit high treason. The three Lieutenants – Richard Scheringer, Hanns Ludin, and Hans Wendt – had for several months been spreading national-revolutionary propaganda among the officer corps of the 5th Artillery Regiment in Ulm, encouraging them “not to fire on a national uprising of the people” should it occur, but instead to actively side with the revolutionary nationalists, to “join the revolt and become the nucleus of a people’s army of the future.” The ‘Ulm Reichswehr Trial’ of these young officers became a notorious event in Weimar history (Hitler was famously called as a witness), but even more notorious was its aftermath. On 27 February 1931, almost five months into an 18 month sentence, Richard Scheringer publicly announced that he had forsaken radical-nationalism and decided to convert to Communism, and a statement to this effect was read out in the Reichstag on 18 March by a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The Communists saw Scheringer’s conversion as a major propaganda victory, and quickly hurried to incorporate his name and image into their “National and Social” propaganda line, a strategy directed at winning over disaffected nationalists for Marxism-Leninism through Communist appropriation of nationalist discourse and aesthetics. To that end, in July 1931 a new propaganda journal was launched: Aufbruch: Kampfblatt im Sinne des Leutnant a.D. Scheringer (“Awakening: A Combat-Journal in the Spirit of Lieutenant a.D. Scheringer”). Aufbruch directly targeted itself towards members of the NSDAP, SA, Stahlhelm, Wehrwolf, and other nationalist organizations, utilizing Scheringer’s name along with National Bolshevist language in an attempt to build common ground between nationalist and Marxist revolutionaries. Aufbruch articles might cover military developments in the Soviet Red Army, revolutionary strategy in China, the concept of the “Nation” in socialist theory, or the inadequate social-revolutionary credentials of nationalist leaders – all topics intended to attract a radical-nationalist audience and to make them sympathetic to the arguments of German Communism. The two articles below are translated from the first edition of Aufbruch, and give an idea of its flavor: the first (untitled) lead article is effectively a statement of the journal’s purpose, while the second (“The Break with Yesterday”) is an account by an anonymous supposed ex-NSDAP member explaining why he and others like him decided to break with the NSDAP in favor of the KPD.

Untitled Lead Article from
Aufbruch
“A Combat-Journal in the Spirit of Lieutenant a.D.1 Scheringer”
From Aufbruch vol. 1, no. 1, July 1931

LENIN:
“If the cause of the Volk is made the cause of the Nation,
then the cause of the Nation becomes the cause of the Volk!”2

Folk-comrades!

In this historic hour, we turn to you former officers and leaders in the nationalist associations:

The misery of our Volk is growing tremendously. More and more are the masses being forced into impoverishment by the capitalist system. Hundreds of thousands of peasants separated from their homes and farms; millions dulled through having to eke out a meager existence; millions of workers and employees without work and bread; hundreds and thousands of academics and intellectuals no longer with any opportunity to earn a living.

The capitalist ruling powers are trying to keep the machinery of state running through brutal cuts to wages and salaries; by reducing care for the sick and disabled; by cutting civil servant salaries and war victim benefits; by throttling unemployment benefits; by perpetually introducing new taxes and new methods of coercion. The tribute burdens are passed on completely to the working strata among the Volk. Freedom of expression is stifled through ruthless terror, and every protest by the masses is suppressed with fascist methods.

Meanwhile, international finance capital is preparing for a war of intervention against the Soviet Union, in order to reintegrate back into the capitalist system an economic territory which is flourishing as a result of socialism’s realization. In their own countries the exploiters have done everything possible to incite the German Volk against the East in service of the predatory capital of world finance. In this way they hope to escape their present difficulties once again, and to create an outlet for the growing anger of the masses. If this criminal plan is fulfilled, then all hope for the national and social liberation of the German Volk will be destroyed for a long time to come, because our freedom can only be secured in tandem with the first free workers’ and peasants’ state on Earth, the Soviet Union! The opposite route leads us to a new enslavement, to the perpetuation of capitalist servitude indefinitely. Continue reading →

Beating the National-Fascists (at their Own Game)

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Advice from the Comintern to the Communist Party of Germany on winning back the masses radicalized by the ‘national-fascism’ of the NSDAP

The article below is essentially a companion piece to the Communist Party of Germany’s (KPD) August 1930 Programmatic Statement for the National and Social Liberation of the German People. The ‘Programmatic Statement’ represented an attempt by the KPD to seriously grapple with the rising popularity of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), born from recognition of the fact that nationalist sentiment (particularly aggrievement over the Young Plan and Versailles Peace Treaty) appeared to be a genuine motivational factor even among much of the proletariat, and that the social-revolutionary posturing of the NSDAP was being taken seriously by the masses even if to Marxists it appeared patently unconvincing. The new programme, and the general political line which it ushered in, was thus intended to “take the wind out of the nationalist propaganda of the Nazis” by beating the “fascists” at their own game, adopting certain tropes and terminology from the nationalist camp and repurposing them to demonstrate how it was in fact only German Communism which could truly bring both national and social liberation to the German people. The translated piece below – a draft letter to the KPD produced by the Political Secretariat of the Communist International in July 1930 – shows some of the genesis behind the 1930 programme, written as it was a month before the new programme was first launched within the pages of KPD daily Die Rote Fahne. The draft letter consists of analysis and advice from the Comintern to the KPD, outlining the reasons behind the growing success of “national-fascism” and recommending that a new programme be produced to better equip the Communists to compete against the NSDAP in the upcoming Reichstag elections. The exact authorship of both documents is somewhat unclear. Typically the 1930 programme is ascribed either to the KPD’s principal theorist, Heinz Neumann, or to Party-leader Ernst Thälmann. Historian Martin Mevius, however, asserts that it was actually the work of Comintern functionaries Dmitry Manuilsky, Wilhelm Knorin, and Otto Kuusinen (all working under Stalin’s direction), and that it “had to be sold to the German party leadership,” who initially were not very enthusiastic. The existence of the ‘precursor’ document I have translated here probably gives credence to Mevius’s claim that the programme originated in the Comintern. Whatever its provenance, the ‘National and Social’ programme grew to be a central component of the KPD’s political work over the the following years, and its “foresight” and “historic significance” were still being acclaimed decades later by Communists in East Germany.

Draft Letter to the KPD Leadership
On the National Liberation of the Working People against “National Fascism”:
A Perspective on the Reichstag Elections
Drafted by the Political Secretariat of the Communist International
28 July, 1930

Moscow.
6 Ex/Bö.
28.07.1930

Confidential.

On the Question of the Struggle against National-Fascism in Germany.1

To the Central Committee of the KPD.

Valued Comrades!

Within Germany, the grave political and organizational successes which fascism (the National Socialists) has made over the course of the last year present us with the problem of how to fight against this new weapon of the bourgeoisie in all its magnitude. The example of Saxony2 and of other areas demonstrates that fascism has been successful at winning over the broad masses, proletarians among them, who could and should have been captured by our work so far, and that our Party has not yet discovered all the methods required for the fight against national-fascism.

Fascism’s rapid rise is the result of the economic crisis in Germany, a crisis deeply intensified when coupled with the Young Plan, which plunges small commodity-producers and entrepreneurs into ruin, makes millions of proletarians unemployed, depresses the living standards of those workers still in the factories (wage cuts), and imposes new taxes, new tariffs, and other evils upon the broadest masses of the working people (including white-collar employees, small businessmen, artisans, small farmers, etc.).

The broadest masses of the petite-bourgeoisie and the backwards strata among the proletariat, who no longer wish to go on living in the old manner, are leaving the ranks of the old bourgeois parties – particularly the German National People’s Party,3 and in some cases also, the Social-Democrats – and are streaming into the fascist camp, because fascism promises a radical, “revolutionary” way out of the present situation. That the national-fascists are able to lure the masses through radical slogans is evidence of the profound unrest occurring within these masses, is evidence for their radicalization. Continue reading →