Witness to the German Revolution (18 page)

His
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
is carrying on consistent agitation for these aims. Let's take another look at the last few issues. The leading article on October 9 was devoted to a diatribe against those whose are sabotaging the intensification of labor and to a defense of the ten-hour day. The previous day the leading article proclaimed
“The age of dictators”; Professor Richard Sternfeld referred to Sylla, Richelieu, Cesare Borgia, Cromwell and even Lenin.

If the German worker worked two hours a day more (without eating any more), then Herr Stinnes, Herr Klöckner, Herr Krupp and Herr Otto Wolff
¹⁴⁰
think they could “pay the reparations” without losing anything—in fact the very reverse! In return for which, Senegalese bayonets would allow them to digest in peace…

In reality, the problem is much more complex. We doubt whether the harshest economic dictatorship, even exercised by the iron chancellor, could raise German production, the stagnation of which has profound causes which would only be cured by dictatorship if it were exercised by the proletariat. For the main causes are:

After a fortnight's suspension, the Berlin Communist paper
Die Rote Fahne
(The Red Flag) had just reappeared. Four issues had appeared—it comes out twice a day—when Herr Gessler, minister cum dictator, saw fit, yesterday (October 10) to suspend it afresh, this time until further notice. In fact, after a fortnight's suspension, there could be no question of a suspension of less than three weeks or a month at the minimum. Till further notice is even better. The measure applies to all the Communist journals of Berlin and the surrounding area which might attempt to take the place of Die Rote
Fahne. This paper has seen the number of subscribers rising constantly for some months. It is obvious that repeated suspensions—we are up to the fourth or fifth in a short period of time—are bound to completely disrupt its services, make it lose contact with its audience, and deprive it of its subscribers. That's the result they trying to achieve.

Thus throughout almost the whole of Germany, swarming with fascist and nationalist newspapers, martial law has had the result of suppressing the Communist press and it alone. At Munich, von Kahr has suppressed it permanently. In Berlin, Herr Gessler and in Saxony, General Müller, have suppressed it until further notice. Elsewhere other generals…

We have also learned that numerous arrests of Communists have just taken place in Wroclaw (October 10). Most of the leaders of branches of the KPD in Silesia, and all the editorial staff of the
Silesische Arbeiter Zeitung
(Silesian Workers' News) are said to be behind bars. The semi-official Vossische Zeitung (Voss News) admits candidly that the aim of these arrests is to suppress “Communist propaganda for a workers' and peasants' government!”

Let's note this frank statement which is quite remarkable at a time when propaganda for a fascist dictatorship is being developed without the democratic and social democratic government obstructing it in the slightest way. Let's remember the Russian Revolution. Three months before the October Revolution, the eloquent Kerensky suppressed and suspended
Pravda
, imprisoned the Bolsheviks, kept Trotsky in a cell, hunted down Lenin and Zinoviev, while Kornilov, Savinkov and Denikin were allowed to conspire as they pleased.
¹⁴¹
Herr Stresemann is wrong not to study recent history… History which might repeat itself!

On September 30 the floating debt of Germany exceeded 46 trillion marks, to be precise, 46,844,781,444,537,903. But the dollar was only at 150__200 million. Today, October 12, it is quoted at five billion.

On September 30, Berlin had 160,000 unemployed.

Correspondance internationale
, October 20, 1923

It's no longer the case that the situation is getting more tense every day. Now it's every single hour that brings us some grave news.

The Reichstag met on Saturday (October 13) and voted for the Enabling Act, giving exceptional powers which Herr Stresemann had demanded. We know that at the first session, two days before, in the course of which the lamentable spectacle of the impotence of the Great Coalition was displayed, the cabinet had been frustrated, mainly because the radical minority
¹⁴²
abstained on the vote. I don't know in detail whether it voted and how. It isn't important. But it remained in the chamber to make up the quorum. Hence the dis-solution
of the Reichstag was avoided. So now we've got a “constitutional dictatorship” and a “strong man.” The strong man is Herr Stresemann—since the Bavarian deputies and the SPD opposition remained on the floor of parliament.

To tell the truth, this comic performance, tinged with tragedy, doesn't fool anyone. The Great Coalition no longer has any authority. The most influential bourgeois elements belonging to it want a right wing dictatorship and are not very concerned with parliament, and even less with the SPD ministers. They are exercising dictatorship by making it more specific, by strengthening it every day. Herr Stinnes and Vögler
¹⁴³
dictate the government's domestic policy. Herr von Kahr carries out his own policy and doesn't give a damn for the chancellor in Berlin. As for the social democrats, they fall into two categories: those who feel cheated, defeated by reaction, but without the slightest will to action, clutching on to an outdated dream of loyal opposition and the keeping up of republican appearances; and those who can see civil war coming and are turning towards the Communists.

Let's note the absolute uselessness, in parliamentary and all terms, of the parties of the middle and small bourgeoisie, the DDP and the Catholic Center, although they enjoy a strong parliamentary representation. The small and medium bourgeoisie, bankrupt or well on the way to it, no longer has any real prestige or influence. The time has now come for the plutocrats, for the mining syndicate, for Stinnes and for the military adventurers who are promising to provide them with a praetorian guard
¹⁴⁴
—Hitler, Ehrhardt and Rossbach.

For the last few days Saxony has had three Communist ministers, Brandler, Böttcher and Heckert. Thuringia will have the same in the next few days. Nothing is more unusual, more preposterous than this event. In a country under martial law, where waves of riots are spreading from one frontier to the other, where the Communist press has been suppressed, where hundreds of Communists have been in prison for years, here are revolutionaries quite calmly entering governments solely in order—they make no secret of it!—to organize the resistance of the proletariat to the counterrevolution, that is, to prepare for civil war.

And what revolutionaries! Their very names speak volumes. Brandler is the most respected leader of the KPD. This former stonemason, stocky and broad-shouldered, about 40 years old, considered as one of the organizers of the March Action in 1921,
¹⁴⁵
escaped the following year from a fortress and took refuge in Russia until an amnesty allowed him to return. Fritz Heckert, a mason too, five years younger, has also spent time in the prisons of the republic; indeed it was a Saxon minister who once had him locked up. Heckert has been politically active since he was 15, has always been a resolute opponent of social-patriotism, took part in the foundation of the KPD and is a member of its central committee. Böttcher is a printer. He was a member of the USPD and joined the KPD after the Halle Congress.
¹⁴⁶
In 1920, general Maercker, one of Kapp's accomplices, had him imprisoned in the Königstadt fortress. The workers released him. A friend of General Maercker is exercising dictatorial power in Dresden, and Böttcher is finance minister!

General Müller quite clearly understands how outrageous the situation is. He has just responded to the formation of the workers' government by a very clear declaration of war. His decrees of October 13 dissolve the workers' hundreds—formed legally with the support of the Zeigner cabinet—require the handing over within three days of all the weapons in the possession of individuals, forbid the formation of action committees, and lay down penalties of imprisonment and fines for any infringements.

These two
ukases
,
¹⁴⁷
which both begin with the words “I forbid…” are preceded by an explanatory commentary. The employers, according to this, are complaining of being molested, in various places in Saxony, by a “violent minority of workers.” Older workers are complaining about the youth… Even
Vorwärts
is indignant. Take a quotation: “The proletarian hundreds have been dissolved in Saxony. In Bavaria, the reactionaries are still armed.
In such conditions martial law is unacceptable.”
(Emphasis in the original.) Do you understand, citizen?

Comrades belonging to the cadres of the proletarian hundreds have already been arrested.

The congress of the factory committees in Saxony and Thuringia, which was due to meet on October 18, has been banned.

Other measures of extreme gravity, which
Vorwärts
has no desire to tell its readers about, supplement these.

General Müller, who is thus attempting to disarm the proletariat, is arming reaction. In Dresden, Leipzig and elsewhere, the numbers of the Reichswehr have been swollen by the enrollment of volunteers who wish to contribute to the restoration of order. Joint companies have been formed for which the Reichswehr has contributed officers, arms, equipment and even uniforms. The Com-munist
deputy Siewert has made it known that 2,500 fascists from the Stahlhelm have been armed in Dresden and the Erzgebirge. General Müller has agreed to it. His troops need reinforcements! By courtesy of martial law, a counterrevolutionary army is being formed in red Germany.

Even before the formation of the workers' government, the (left) social democratic cabinet in Saxony had announced measures against the industrialists who are sabotaging production. For the latter have stopped production in a number of firms in order to increase unemployment and worsen the situation of the workers. They will be forced—with the assistance of Heckert, Brandler and Böttcher—to reopen their workshops; they will be forbidden to close them. They are greatly “harassed” by this. This dormant war cannot last very long. Either the Reich government will back up General Müller and remove the workers' ministers in Dresden from office, whereupon the working class will have no alternative but a general strike, which would necessarily be insurrectional, or else the general strike will oblige General Müller to respect proletarian organization. Decisive actions, from which the signal for the German revolution may very well spring, seem imminent in red Saxony.