Witness to the German Revolution (15 page)

Correspondance internationale
, October 6, 1923

Sixteen killed, and about a 100 wounded. Such is the outcome of the “peaceful” separatist demonstrations in Düsseldorf, today, September 30. French soldiers intervened to restore order, siding exclusively with the demonstrators for the “Rhineland Republic” who had attacked the blue police. The tragic incidents in Düsseldorf
have occurred at a time when the whole of Germany, disturbed by persistent rumors coming from the occupied territories, is expecting the proclamation of a Rhineland Republic as a signal for civil war and the carving up of Germany.

For some time French intrigues have been going on there. Many Rhineland industrialists think it is in their interests to unite with powerful French capitalism and make a clean break with a Germany where revolution is impending. There is a feverish agitation going on in the occupied regions calling for the creation of a buffer state to “ensure peace between France and Germany.”

Make no mistake about it. Desired by French and Rhineland capitalists, whose only homeland is their safe full of money, the proclamation of a Rhineland Republic would create a double and terrible danger at the very heart of Western Europe. There would be the risk of war and indeed the certainty of war some time in the future: for just as Great Britain could not accept, 110 years ago, Napoleonic hegemony over the Confederation of the Rhine, so Great Britain today will not permit France to have hegemony over the continent, for that would bring her ruin and death. There would be the danger, nay the certainty, indeed the immediate certainty, of a growth of reactionary forces in Germany. Herr Wulle, one of the leaders of extremist nationalism, just recently told a journalist of our acquaintance in the lobby of the Reichstag: “The day after the Rhineland declares independence, we shall take those responsible by the throat throughout Germany.” In any case, independence for the Rhineland would immediately give a powerful impulse to the nationalist movement. It would become the starting point for ceaseless agitation in favor of a war of revenge. Furthermore, it would have the consequence of separating the working-class masses of the rest of Germany from those in the Rhineland, thus weakening the workers' Germany of tomorrow. It is for these very serious reasons, for the peace of Europe
and for the German revolution which is the only way of guaranteeing it, that the KPD opposes Rhineland separatism with all its strength.

With a few days distance, it is beginning to be easier to see what was really behind the recent events in Munich and Berlin that led to the establishment of two dictatorships which are different but very similar, those of Herr Gessler and Herr von Kahr. Von Kahr, endowed with dictatorial powers, recently declared to the fascist paper
Völkischer Beobachter
that he considered himself as a temporary replacement for King Rupprecht and that he would rule against the left. His first measures confirm these statements and are consistent with his past as a committed separatist. They are as follows:

No action has as yet been taken against Hitler's gangs, which are continuing to mobilize. There is even better. Herr Gessler, dictator for the Reich, has suspended the
Völkischer Beobachter,
which nonetheless continues to appear under the protective guardianship of Herr von Kahr.

So what happened at Munich? What the Pan-German nationalists, with Hitler and Ludendorff, wanted to do outside the law was done within the law by the royalist nationalists. The coup was carried out in the name of the law.

And what happened in Berlin? Being powerless to affect this situation, the Stresemann-Hilferding government endorsed it by establishing military dictatorship throughout the whole Reich. At the personal request of President Ebert, the exercise of this power has been entrusted to Gessler, the Reichswehr minister, the member of the government who is closest to the Bavarians. At Munich, dictatorial authority has reverted to Herr Gessler's direct subordinate, General von Lossow, for whom von Kahr exercises the functions of general state commissioner. Pure diplomatic conjuring! General von Lossow is the friend and in effect subordinate of von Kahr. While the latter cancels the laws of the Reich—you really can't act more straightforwardly!—Crown Prince Rupprecht, prime minister von Knilling, and General von Lossow accompany him at a solemn military ceremony, the review of the traditional company of the Reichswehr at Munich on September 30, which ends with shouts of “Long live the king!”

In the face of monarchist, reactionary Bavaria, the dictatorship in the Reich is only an imitation dictatorship, a question of form and appearances and apparently, totally futile.

The bourgeois and social democratic government in Berlin cannot and will not take any effective measures against Bavarian reaction. And it knows very well that the Reichswehr would not obey orders. But while it was officially established in response to von Kahr's appointment in Munich, Gessler's dictatorship is creating an intolerable
situation in the red states of Saxony and Thuringia. It is well known that the left social democratic prime minister of Saxony, Zeigner, has long been contemptuously boycotted by the Reichswehr authorities, whose reactionary maneuvers he has obstinately denounced. President Ebert and all his fellow thinkers who are SPD ministers responded to him by placing workers' Saxony under the dictatorship of the Reichswehr lieutenant general Müller, who already on September 27 announced the dissolution of the legally constituted workers' hundreds. For the moment general Müller is hesitating to enforce this measure. But he is ruling Dresden after the fashion of the captain general of Barcelona.
¹²⁷
His decree of September 27 sets out seven points (which I have abbreviated):

Thus the workers of democratic Saxony, deprived of the right to strike and of all constitutional rights, no longer have any means of legal defense. The socialist government of Saxony—which is displaying a rather woeful caution—has been canceled at the stroke of a pen. The slightest sign of protest by Saxon workers can only be outside the law, and the Reichswehr is authorized by the Great Coalition to repress it with the greatest rigour!

The KPD has launched the call for a political general strike. Tomorrow perhaps this general strike will spread to workers' Saxony, which will not easily accept the rule of the sabre and jackboot of the Reichswehr. What will happen then? The whole bourgeoisie, including that belonging to the Great Coalition, has for months been in full agreement on this point with the people in Munich: “The scandal of Saxony and Thuringia is crying out to high heaven and must be brought to an end.” (Maretsky, a DVP deputy, supporter of the Great Coalition, in
Tag.
) Against a revolutionary movement, consciously provoked by General Müller, a united front would be immediately established including fascists of every shade, whether Bavarian, separatist, Pan-German or whatever, plus the Reichswehr and the democratic and social democratic government forces. So we can see the extent of the danger and the unscrupulous behavior of the citizen ministers Schmidt, Hilferding, Sollmann and Radbruch who are consciously preparing the repression of the workers' movement in Saxony and Thuringia using the methods of Noske, even if afterwards they get themselves hanged by Ludendorff.

Doubtless they believe they will have an even greater chance of being hanged if a socialist revolution triumphs in Central Germany.

While the German Communists are confronting this complex and dangerous situation, while they are making great efforts to fortify
the last proletarian bastion of central Europe against an imminent attack by the reactionaries, people who obviously understand nothing, either of Communist thought, or of what is happening in Germany (even though they belonged to the French Communist Party not long ago
¹²⁸
) are writing things of precisely this sort:

“In the French context, the Radek-Rosmer
¹²⁹
plan would be the equivalent of the advocacy of French national defense in
L'Humanité
by such names as Léon Daudet.”
¹³⁰
Poor wretches! You have to be very blind or very dishonest to confuse the national defense of an imperialist state with the “national” defense of an internationalist workers' revolution that is about to begin; or to fail to understand that in a country where the yoke of a foreign imperialism is added to that of national capitalism, the masses have as a result a double feeling of revolt which constitutes the most powerful revolutionary force; or not to understand that if the German Communists failed to recognize it, they would guarantee the victory of nationalist fascism, and the carve-up of Germany would establish, in a Balkanized central Europe, a lasting reinforcement of capitalist disorder.

But here let's pick out a cutting from
Germania
(of September 19), organ of the Catholic Center. In a “Political letter from Württemberg” the writer bitterly deplores the fact that Communist propaganda has penetrated among the Württemberg peasants who until recently only felt the influence of the Catholic Center and the National Socialists.
Germania
, whose competence we shall not
challenge, is thus bearing witness to the value and success of the KPD's tactics towards the nationalist movement.

For some days we have been paying five million marks for a newspaper, 4.5 million for a suburban railway ticket (third class) or a local phone call, six million for a letter abroad and everything else in proportion. With a rate against the dollar which in the last few days has varied between 160 and 200 million, a newspaper at 40, 50 or 60 French centimes
¹³¹
a copy, the same for the tram and the rest in proportion. In this respect
Montag Morgen
has published a curious diagram of the rise in prices and the rise of the dollar. On August 6, the rise of prices was more or less proportional to that of the dollar. After August 20, the cost of living rose noticeably faster than the dollar. If both were rated at 100 on August 1, the difference between them was: dollar 509, cost of living 1,567. On September 17, the difference had increased further: dollar 1,210, cost of living 1,931. On September 24, the cost of living had increased more than twice as much as the rate of exchange: dollar 13,364, cost of living 39,200.

Life is more expensive in Berlin than in Paris or New York. And the German worker is still paid in paper marks! The dictatorship of the reactionary army was truly necessary, above all in the eyes of SPD ministers!

The great assault on the eight-hour day has been launched all down the line. For the last three days the cabinet crisis has been in
the air. Chancellor Stresemann finally resigned yesterday evening (October 3) but was asked by President Ebert to form the new government. The crisis, announced 72 hours in advance by the nationalist organizations, became clear when Herr Scholz, leader of the parliamentary group of the German People's Party (Deutsche Volkspartei)—he replaced the present chancellor as its leader—presented the three demands of the majority of his group, demands which were quite unacceptable to the SPD:

Herr Scholz also demanded that a conflict between Bavaria and the Reich should be avoided.

Having thus been treated with contempt by the powerful party of the industrialists in the Great Coalition, the SPD showed itself as conciliatory as it could. Yesterday evening, Wednesday, a solution to the crisis was announced, with the SPD agreeing to dictatorial measures to increase production and to “minister Braun's flexible formula” on the eight-hour day.

In other words, in order to save themselves from being driven out of office, the SPD have agreed to vote for an enabling act giving exceptional powers to the government, which will give it the right to exercise a sort of dictatorship over labor; they have agreed to the suppression, scarcely concealed behind an ambiguous terminology, of the eight-hour day; to leave power in the hands of the counterrevolutionary Reichswehr and to stand back from any conflict with armed Bavaria, which is openly preparing its major military assault on proletarian Germany.

It wasn't enough. At the last moment, the bourgeois parties made a further effort to throw the SPD out of the government. And that is the point we have now reached.