the fate that befell all loyal Communists. Elected to the Reichstag in 1927, he became a member of the Committee on Military Affairs. Regarding himself as the Comintern’s representative on that body, he supplied the Soviet Military Intelligence with valuable information for many years. He remained in Germany for some months after Hitler came to power, continuing to do dangerous underground work for the Communist Party. In the fall of 1933 he fled to Russia. In 1936 he was arrested as a Nazi spy.
The Ogpu examiner pressed him for an admission that he was in the service of the German Intelligence. Kiepenberger refused to “confess.” “Ask Krivitsky whether I could become a Nazi agent,” he pleaded. “He knows what I did in Germany.”
“Didn’t you know General Bredow, head of the Reichswehr Military Intelligence?” asked the Ogpu examiner.
“Of course I knew him,” replied Kiepenberger, “I was a member of the Communist fraction of the Reichstag and on the Military Affairs Committee.” (General Bredow had frequently appeared before the Reichstag Committee.)
The Ogpu had no further “incriminating” evidence against Kiepenberger. Nevertheless, after six months of “questioning” the dauntless fighter “confessed” that he was in the service of the German Military Intelligence. “There is a nail in my head,” he kept repeating. “Give me something that will put me to sleep.”
We Soviet officers organized German Communist Military formations, the foundation of the German Red Army that was never to be, in a very systematic fashion, dividing them into units of one hundred men, Hundertschaft. We prepared lists of Communists who had served in the war, cataloging them according to their military rank. Out of this list we expected to create the officers corps of the German Red Army. We also organized a technical staff of experienced specialists: machine-gunners, artillery officers, the nucleus of an aviation corps, and a liaison personnel chosen from trained wireless and telephone operators. We set up an organization of women and trained them for hospital duty.
In the Ruhr, however, as a result of the French occupation, we were faced with an entirely different problem. The Ruhr was the scene of one of the strangest spectacles in history. Unable to oppose French arms by force, the Germans were waging a war of passive resistance. Mines and factories shut down, leaving only skeleton staffs at their places to prevent the mines from flooding and to keep factory equipment in working order. Railroads were almost at a standstill. Unemployment was universal. The Berlin government, already faced with a fantastic inflation, supported virtually the entire population of the Ruhr.
Meanwhile the French began to encourage the Separatist movement which aimed to detach the entire Rhineland from German and form an independent state. Casual observers thought that the Separatist movement was nothing but French propaganda. In fact, however, it was native and very serious, and if the British had not opposed it, the Rhineland would have severed itself from Germany in 1923. In many Rhenish homes I saw busts of Napoleon, the creator of the Confederation of the Rhine. Often enough I heard the inhabitants complain that their rich country was exploited by Prussia.
The Communist Party opposed the Separatist movement by every means at its disposal. The slogan of the Comintern was “War Against Stresemann and Poincaré!” The slogan of the Nazis and their nationalist allies was: “War Against Poincaré and Stresemann!” It was during these days that Schlageter, a Nazi terrorist, was executed by the French military authorities. Schlageter’s death would have passed unnoticed outside the narrow circle of his comrades had not Karl Radek, the Comintern’s cleverest propagandist, brought it home to the German people. “Join the Communists,” cried Radek, “and you will liberate the Fatherland nationally and socially!”
For a time negotiations went on between Radek and a number of Nazi and Nationalist leaders, notably Count Reventlow. The basis for collaboration was that German nationalism’s sole chance of success was in joining hands with Bolshevik Russia against imperialist France and Great Britain. But this union was not consummated. It was not until 1939 that it finally took place under conditions vastly different from those contemplated by Moscow when Germany was the underdog.
Meanwhile everything was prepared for a Separatist coup d’état. The leaders of the Separatist Party—Mathes, Dorten, Smith—marshaled their forces. A great demonstration in Dusseldorf late in September was to be the signal for the proclamation of the Rhenish republic.
The Nationalists were combatting the Separatists by individual acts of terror. The Communist Party called a counter-demonstration “against the Separatist traitors.” When the two conflicting forces met at a cross section in the city, I saw, for the first time in my life, Communists fighting side by side with Nationalist terrorists and the German police. The Separatists were defeated, mainly because of the interference of the pro-German British cabinet.
Even while we were supporting German Nationalists against the French in the Rhineland and the Ruhr with every weapon at our disposal, we decided that in the event of a Communist uprising in Germany, we would not allow ourselves to be drawn into conflict with French military forces. Our plan of strategy, as formulated by our staff officers in the Rhineland, called for the withdrawal of our party military formations into central Germany, into Saxony, and Thuringia, where the Communists were particularly strong at that time. We trained our units with that in mind.
In preparing for the Communist revolution, the German Communists created small terrorist groups, so-called “T” units, to demoralize the Reichswehr and the police by assassinations. The “T” units were composed of fiercely courageous zealots.
I recall a meeting of one of these groups on a September evening in the city of Essen, shortly before the Communist uprising. I recall how they came together, quietly, almost solemnly, to receive their orders. Their commander announced tersely:
“Tonight we act.”
Calmly they took out their revolvers, checked them for the last time, and filed out one by one. The very next day the Essen press reported the discovery of the body of a murdered police officer, assassin unknown. For weeks these groups struck swiftly and effectively in various parts of Germany, picking off police officers and other enemies of the Communist cause.
When peace came these fanatics could find no place in the orderly life of the country. Many of them took part in armed holdups for revolutionary purposes at first, and then simply in acts of brigandage. The few who found their way to Russia usually wound up in Siberia in exile.
In the meantime the German Communist Party was awaiting instructions from the Comintern which seemed incredibly slow in coming. In September Brandler, the leader of the party, and several of his colleagues were summoned to Moscow for instructions. Interminable discussions took place in the Political Bureau, the supreme body of the Russian Communist Party, where the Bolshevik leaders were debating the proper hour to launch a German revolution. For many anxious hours the leaders of the German Communist Party cooled their heels in Moscow while the Bolshevik brain trust was formulating its final plan of action.
Moscow decided to do the thing thoroughly this time. It secretly dispatched its best people into Germany: Bukharin; Max Levine, who had been one of the leaders of the four weeks’ Bavarian Soviet dictatorship; Piatakov, Hungarian and Bulgarian Comintern agents, and Karl Radek himself. We Red Army men in Germany continued training our military forces. We held secret night maneuvers in the woods near Solingen in the Rhineland in which several thousand workers would take part.
At last the word went around: “Zinoviev has set the date for the uprising.”
Communist Party units throughout Germany awaited their final instructions. A telegram arrived from Zinoviev to the German Central Committee fixing the exact hour. Comintern couriers hastened to the various party centers with the command from Moscow. Guns were removed from their hiding places. With mounting
