CHAPTER 4: The international radical right's Aufbau (reconstruction)
Karl Schlogel, a German expert on White emigres, has noted that Munich ascended to the dynamic crux of volkisch German-White emigre collaboration after the Kapp Putsch collapsed in Berlin in March 1920. [1] Leading German and White emigre participants in the Kapp Putsch fled East Elbian Germany for Bavaria, where they quickly reorganized and found new means to further complementary right-wing German/White emigre interests. Former German and White emigre Kapp Putsch conspirators in Bavaria sent a mission under Max von Scheubner-Richter to establish clandestine military and economic relations with General Piotr Vrangel's Southern Russian Armed Forces, which were based on the Crimean Peninsula in the Ukraine. To foster the common struggle against Bolshevism, Vrangel's regime pledged to deliver large amounts of agricultural goods in return for military personnel and supplies from right-wing Bavarian circles.
The cooperation between German and White emigre rightists based in Bavaria and Vrangel proved short-lived because of the Red Army's surprisingly rapid victory over Vrangel's forces. Nonetheless, this brief German-White emigre/White connection spurred the formation of Aufbau, a conspiratorial volkisch German/White emigre organization that opposed the Entente, the Weimar Republic, Jewry, and Bolshevism. Aufbau sought to overthrow the Bolshevik regime and to set Grand Prince Kirill Romanov at the head of a pro-German Russian monarchy. Following the low point of right-wing fortunes in Germany that had been reached with the Kapp Putsch's failure, Aufbau demonstrated its resilience by rejuvenating the volkisch German/White emigre radical right on German soil in the course of late 1920 and the first half of 1921.
Aufbau maintained close ties with the National Socialist Party from the beginning. The German Max Amann served both as Aufbau's second secretary and as secretary of the National Socialist Party. Four Baltic German Aufbau colleagues from the same Riga fraternity in the Russian Empire played leading roles in the National Socialist Party: Aufbau's first secretary (and de faacto leader) Scheubner-Richter, Aufbau's deputy director Arno Schickedanz, and two collaborators with Hitler's early mentor Dietrich Eckart, Alfred Rosenberg and Otto von Kursell. Prominent White emigre members of Aufbau who did not belong to the NSDAP but who nevertheless served its cause included Aufbau's vice president Vladimir Biskupskii, the Ukrainian Cossack Ivan Poltavets-Ostranitsa, who led Aufbau's Ukrainian section, and the close trio of Fedor Vinberg, Piotr Shabelskii-Bork, and Sergei Taboritskii. Scheubner-Richter also introduced Hitler to General Erich von Ludendorff in the context of Aufbau, thereby beginning a political collaboration that led to the disastrous Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch of November 1923.
THE BAVARIAN-CRIMEAN CONNECTION
While the Kapp Putsch failed ignominiously in East Elbian Germany, it succeeded in overthrowing the socialist government in Bavaria. As a result of the Kapp Pursch, a new right-wing regime was installed in Bavaria under Minister President Gustav Ritter von Kahr and Bavarian Police Chief Ernst Pohner. [2] The National Socialist Party headquartered in Munich in which Hitler played a key role (he only established dictatorial control over the Party in July 1921) began its dramatic rise in rightist German affairs in the favorable new political climate in Bavaria. [3] White emigre Aufbau member and prominent National Socialist Alfred Rosenberg later credited Pohner, a staunch opponent of the November 1918 Revolution in Germany, with holding a "protective hand" over the National Socialist Party. [4]
In addition to protecting the fledgling National Socialist movement, the new right-wing Bavarian government offered a haven for German nationalist revolutionary officers connected with the Kapp Putsch. Prussian officers implicated in the Kapp Putsch received a warm welcome in Bavaria. General Erich von Ludendorff established cordial relations with police Chief Pohner after fleeing Berlin for Bavaria. [5] Ludendorff's Kapp Putsch comrades Colonel Karl Bauer, Captain Waldemar Pabst, and Captain Hermann Ehrhardt, the last of whom had led the troops for the failed coup in Berlin, likewise received police protection in Munich and surrounding areas. [bIn general, Bavarian police officers and armed supporters guarded failed conservative revolutionaries from the north.[/b] [6] From exile in Sweden, Wolfgang Kapp approved of the move of so many of his former co-conspirators southwards. He noted in a letter to General Ludendorff: "At least in Bavaria there is a bourgeois government in power. The people have come to the correct conclusions from the March Undertaking." [7]
In general, the German Kapp Putsch conspirators who relocated from Prussia to Bavaria favored a monarchical state system. In an April 1921 booklet, "Germany's Future: Tasks and Goals," Captain Ehrhardt presented views that accorded with prevalent volkisch sympathy for monarchy as an institution, as opposed to its practice under the last, weak Kaiser. Ehrhardt stressed, "We declare our support for monarchy with pride as the constitution that is in principle the most suitable for us." He further called for the German people to unite with a common will. He noted, "We are a people, but still not a nation ... We are a people inwardly, among ourselves," but not a "nation outwardly, as a unified power ... We are a people, united in everything except for the will, and since we do not have a united will, we are not a nation. But this is just what we must become." [8] Ehrhardt thus argued that the inherently powerful German people lacked correspondingly forceful leadership to lead it to greatness.
Like many volkisch German officers such as Ehrhardt implicated in the Kapp Putsch, several leading White emigres who had supported the Kapp Putsch moved to Munich in the spring of 1920. The Kapp Putsch conspirators Scheubner-Richter, Fedor Vinberg, and Piotr Shabelskii-Bork fled Berlin for the Bavarian capital in March 1920. German governmental authorities promptly banned Vinberg's Berlin newspaper Prizyv (The Call) in the wake of the Kapp Putsch. Vinberg left behind considerable debts from the venture. [9] Once in Munich, Scheubner-Richter, Vinberg, and Shabelskii-Bork collaborated with other White emigres who had already established residency in Munich, including the former Rubonia Fraternity colleagues Rosenberg, Arno Schickedanz, and Otto von Kursell. [10]
In the spirit of The Call, Vinberg and Shabelskii-Bork edited a newspaper in Munich, Luch Sveta (A Ray of Light). [11] A Ray of Light argued that Jews and Freemasons sought to destroy Christianity and to take over the world. The White emigre colleagues wrote their paper from the point of view that no room remained for passive bystanders in the struggle against these forces of evil. [12] Vinberg and Shabelskii-Bork, eventually joined by their colleague Sergei Taboritskii, were extremely destitute in Munich. They only possessed some disposable income immediately after finishing a work for publication. Even then, however, they soon fell back into a state of poverty. [13]
White emigres who wished to reside in Munich under the Kahr government required the references of two members of the existing Russian refugee community there. The Munich Police under Pohner thus guarded against leftist Russian expatriates. Munich's White emigre community, which peaked at 1,105 in 1921, contained virtually no Constitutional Democrats, Social Revolutionaries, or Mensheviks. Munich's White emigre population thus differed markedly from Berlin's more leftist Russian refugee community. Nobles, high-level bureaucrats, and leading officers, who were right-wing by virtue of their background, dominated Munich's White emigre landscape. Many members of Munich's White emigre population had belonged to the radical right Black Hundred movement in Imperial Russia. The White exiles in Munich had greater contact with volkisch German circles than those Russian refugees who lived in Berlin. [14]
Some prominent White emigres managed to stay in Berlin after the Kapp Putsch, but Munich, as the rising center of right-wing activity in Germany, held increasing attraction for them. Colonel Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, the former leader of the Western Volunteer Army in the 1919 Latvian Intervention, kept a low profile in Berlin under constant surveillance. He also traveled regularly to Munich to collaborate with radical right colleagues there. [15] General Vladimir Biskupskii, who had cooperated with German occupying forces in the Ukraine in 1918, had served as the political representative of Bermondt-Avalov's Western Volunteer Army, and had supported the Kapp Putsch, managed to maintain his primary residence in Berlin. He worked diligently behind the scenes to organize paramilitary forces dedicated to reestablishing monarchical regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. [16] He developed contacts with all leading pro-German, anti-Bolshevik White emigre groups in Germany. He spent increasing amounts of time in Bavaria, where he coordinated his activities with rightist German and White emigre circles there. [17]
General Biskupskii increasingly overshadowed his rival Colonel Bermondt-Avalov. After the Kapp Putsch, Bermondt-Avalov steadily lost authority and trust in leading White emigre circles. [18] German agents who shadowed him soon wrote of him derisively as an insignificant braggart. In one report, they asserted that Bermondt-Avalov's "most viable" option for increasing his support was marrying "a rich American," as he did undeniably possess a way with the ladies. [19]
A new destabilizing Russian emigre personage emerged in right-wing Munich society in early 1920. Despite his chronic duplicity and his collaboration with Bolshevik authorities, the former Black Hundred publicist Mikhail Kommissarov managed to gain a position of trust in rightist German and White emigre cliques in Bavaria. He eventually played an important role in the formation of Aufbau, which furthered anti-Entente, anti-Weimar Republic, anti-Semitic, and anti-Bolshevik collaboration between volkisch Germans and White emigres. Kommissarov wormed his way into conspiratorial rightist Munich circles as part of a convoluted career of intrigue and deceit in which he operated as a double agent.
Kommissarov had a dubious past. After losing his post in the Okhrana (Tsarist Secret Police) in Saint Petersburg because he had printed illegal pamphlets that encouraged anti-Semitic pogroms during the Revolution of 1905, he had managed to regain his position. He had demonstrated his lack of gratitude to his superior by starting an affair with his wife and then absconding with secret funds. He had subsequently used his drinking friendship with the court mystic Rasputin (whom the Black Hundred leader Vladimir Purishkevich subsequently shot) to acquire the Tsar's favor. Kommissarov had managed to become the mayor of Rostov/Don for three weeks before being removed for gross mismanagement and embezzlement. After disappearing from the landscape for a while, he had resurfaced in Kiev under German occupation in 1918. There he had offered to serve Hetman Pavel Skoropadskii. The Ukrainian leader had understandably replied that he could do without Kommissarov's assistance. [20]
Many Whites correctly suspected Kommissarov of collaborating with Bolshevik leaders. He had traveled through Bolshevik-controlled territory to the Terek Cossacks during the summer of 1919 with no problems, which had proved highly suspicious. He had been elected to the Krug, or leadership circle, of the Terek Cossacks. He had then traveled as an envoy to General Anton Denikin's Southern Army, a White force based in the Ukraine that was engaged in fighting the Bolsheviks with Entente support. Denikin had ordered Kommissarov's arrest as a Soviet agent. According to the French military intelligence agency the Second Section, after being rebuffed from Denikin's forces, Kommissarov had assisted the chief of the Chrezvychainaia Komissia po Borbe s Kontr-revolutsiei (Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle with Counter-revolution, the Cheka) in Petrograd. [21]
In April 1920, Kommissarov began working for the intelligence agency that his old protector in the Tsarist Secret Police, General Kurlov, had recently established in Berlin to provide anti-Bolshevik information to White emigres in Germany. Despite the mistrust that he had engendered among rightist circles in the past, Kommissarov used his considerable intellectual gifts and social adroitness to find his way quickly into high society wherever he went. He began circulating in right-wing monarchical circles in Munich. He worked especially diligently to gain General Ludendorff's favor. At the same time, however, he initiated contact with Bolshevik representatives in Germany and provided them with information on anti-Soviet activities in Germany. [22]
As one of his many lies, Kommissarov claimed to serve as the authorized representative of General Piotr Vrangel, a man of noble Estonian/Baltic German ancestry who had taken control of the weakening Southern Russian Armed Forces from General Denikin in April 1920. [23] On the basis of this spurious authority, Kommissarov began collaborating with White emigres who sought to wrest the Ukraine from Bolshevik rule. In particular, he teamed up with the extreme anti-Semitic right-wing monarchists and Germanophiles Boris Pelikan and Konstantin Scheglovitov.
Kommissarov's Ukrainian associates possessed solid right-wing credentials. Pelikan and Scheglovitov had belonged to the far right Monarchical Bloc in Kiev in 1918 under German occupation. [24] Pelikan, an extremely wealthy individual, had played a prominent role in the Black Hundred movement in Imperial Russia, and he had served as the mayor of Odessa with its large Jewish population. [25] Like Kommissarov, he belonged to the Southern Section of the monarchical Soiuz vernych (Union of the Faithful) under the overall leadership of the former Union of the Russian People faction leader Nikolai Markov II. [26] Scheglovitov had served as the Minister of Justice in Imperial Russia, and he subsequently engaged in shady business deals and acquired large sums of money from rightist organizations in the Ukraine. [27] In 1920, Pelikan and Scheglovitov led a Munich-based grouping that struggled for an independent Ukraine. [28]
Kommissarov, Pelikan, and Scheglovitov helped to form a commercial organization dedicated to fostering trade between rightist elements in Bavaria and General Vrangel's forces on the Crimean Peninsula. [29] A German named Wagner, a former aide de camp in the German Army High Command, officially led this venture. Wagner used his influence in the house of Wagner and Furter to foster the Society for Ukrainian-Bavarian Import and Export. This organization possessed 300,000 marks in venture capital from right-wing firms, most notably from the Munchner-Augsburger Maschinenfabrik (Munich-Augsburg Machine Factory). The Society for Ukrainian-Bavarian Import and Export proposed providing civilian industrial goods, war materials, and German officers for General Vrangel's Southern Russian Armed Forces in return for Crimean agricultural goods. [30]
Germans and White emigres associated with the Society for Ukrainian-Bavarian Import and Export held May 1920 consultations in Munich and nearby Regensburg. German consultants at these talks included General Ludendorff, his advisor and Kapp Putsch co-conspirator Colonel Bauer, the aforementioned Wagner, and Major Josef Bischoff, the former commander of the Iron Division in the 1919 Latvian Intervention. Bischoff closely followed Ukrainian matters, and he had established a secret anti-Bolshevik propaganda center in Odessa. Kommissarov, Pelikan, and General Biskupskii represented the Russian (more properly Ukrainian) side of the talks. The Baltic Germans Scheubner-Richter and Rosenberg mediated between the German and Russian conspirators. [31]
The German and White emigre plotters adopted Colonel Bauer's program, which called for uniting all those who had fought against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War under the slogan: "The end justifies the means." The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had leading Jews use this motto as well, further suggesting the influence of the fabrication on the views of members of the radical right. The conspirators schemed to annul the Paris Peace Treaties concluded after World War I and to overthrow the Bolshevik regime through an alliance of nationalist Germans, Russians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Turks. The plotters sought to reestablish monarchies in Central and Eastern Europe, after which an alliance between Germany, Russia, and Hungary would be declared and Poland would be partitioned once again. The rightist participants at these May conferences in Bavaria decided to send a White mission to General Vrangel's forces in the Crimea to specify the terms of mutual assistance. [32]
Although General Vrangel received material assistance from the Entente, most importantly from France, the German and White emigre conspirators based in Bavaria had reason to count on his sympathy with their cause. While he would subsequently lean increasingly towards the Entente, at this time, Vrangel wished to cooperate with a monarchical Germany to bring about what he regarded as Russia's renewal. Those who knew Vrangel personally verified that he held staunchly monarchical and pro-German views. His occasional Entente-friendly remarks, Vrangel's associates claimed, arose because of his dependence on French material aid. [33] Vrangel relied on French support largely since the primarily socialist German government had refused to recognize his delegation in order to appease the Soviet regime. Though they aided him, French authorities distrusted Vrangel. [34]
To maintain good relations with both the Entente and Jewish residents in the Crimea, General Vrangel curbed anti-Semitic agitation among his forces. [35] Some men under his command nevertheless campaigned vehemently against Jews, most notably Gregor Schwartz-Bostunich, who ultimately rose in the ranks of Heinrich Himmler's SS. [36] Schwartz-Bostunich had been born in Kiev to a Baltic German father and a mother with the maiden name Bostunich whose own mother had come from the Bavarian nobility. He had received degrees in law and theology in Kiev in 1908. He had traveled from Imperial Germany to the Russian Empire after the outbreak of World War I before acting as what he later described in an SS report as an "agitator and army speaker" for General Vrangel. [37] In the Crimea, Schwartz-Bostunich preached fanatically against Bolsheviks, Freemasons, and Jews. His inflammatory actions led the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, to issue a death warrant for him. The prominent National Socialist and Aufbau leader Scheubner-Richter later employed Schwartz-Bostunich as a speaker on behalf of the NSDAP and sent him to hold talks throughout Germany. [38]
Georgii Nemirovich-Danchenko also worked as a prominent anti-Semitic agitator under Vrangel's White regime on the Crimean Peninsula. Nemirovich-Danchenko had been born in Saint Petersburg in 1889, he had received his law degree as the top student of his class in 1910, and he had worked in the State Council under the Tsar. He had published his first article on the land question in 1917. [39] He became the press chief of Vrangel's regime. [40] Nemirovich-Danchenko managed to disseminate a significant amount of anti-Semitic propaganda in a largely clandestine manner during his service under General Vrangel. [41] Like Schwartz-Bostunich, Nemirovich-Danchenko went on to collaborate with Scheubner-Richter in Aufbau.
Nemirovich-Danchenko became increasingly disappointed with General Vrangel's leadership in the Crimea during the Russian Civil War. While he had hoped to exercise wide-ranging autonomy as Vrangel's press chief, in fact, Vrangel greatly restrained his activities. In September 1920, for example, the first edition of the planned weekly Russkaia Pravda (Russian Truth) appeared with two anti-Semitic articles based on the assessments of various philosophers and writers. Vrangel immediately banned the newspaper. According to Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vrangel did so because of pressure from the Crimea's Jewish population. Nemirovich-Danchenko strongly protested Vrangel's decision, but to no avail. [42]
The clandestine mission to General Vrangel's regime in which Nemirovich-Danchenko played a leading role, which had been decided upon during the rightist German/White emigre conferences in May 1920, left Munich under Scheubner-Richter's leadership in the middle of June 1920. [43] Other members of the delegation included the double agent Kommissarov, the former important Black Hundred member Pelikan, the economically well-connected German Wagner, and some Hungarian and Austrian representatives. The deputation traveled down the Danube River, first stopping in Austria's capital Vienna and then continuing on to the Hungarian capital Budapest. [44]
Scheubner-Richter's delegation benefited from advance support work in Budapest. The officers Bauer and Biskupskii had earlier left Munich for Budapest to coordinate the mission's activities with the de facto Hungarian leader Admiral Nicholas Horthy. Horthy acted as the regent for the Habsburg Dynasty, which the Hungarian parliament had pledged to return to Hungary (some day) in a May 1920 resolution. [45] General Ludendorff and the former Latvian Intervention mastermind General Count Rudiger von der Goltz, who resided in Budapest under a false name, had also conducted negotiations with members of Horthy's government on behalf of Scheubner-Richter's delegation to General Vrangel.
Scheubner-Richter's mission achieved considerable success in the Hungarian capital. The delegates to the Crimea under Scheubner-Richter's guidance emphasized the pronounced military component of their undertaking as well as the economic one. Admiral Horthy supported the deputation and its goals of German-White collaboration. Horthy's approval moved Scheubner-Richter to express his profound thanks. General Berzewicsky, the chief of the Hungarian Armed Forces, asserted that he had 70,000 soldiers at his disposal to further the German/White emigre plans to abolish the Paris Peace Treaties. [46]
After its successful layover in Budapest, Scheubner-Richter's mission arrived in the Yugoslavian capital Belgrade in the middle of July 1920. Troubles began there because of Kommissarov's deceit. Scheubner-Richter held talks with members of the local White emigre delegation in Belgrade. [47] Meanwhile, the swindler Kommissarov absconded. Soon afterwards, perhaps on the way to the next stopover in Varna, Bulgaria, the delegation members Wagner and Pelikan realized that Kommissarov had deceived them. [48] Kommissarov had received 115,000 marks for arranging the journey to the Crimea on the false basis of representing General Vrangel in Germany. [49] The Ukrainian nationalist Pelikan later wrote Kommissarov never to show himself in his sight again. In August 1920, Vrangel ordered that Kommissarov never be allowed to gain passage to the Crimea. [50] Kommissarov went on to join the Soviet cause openly as an agent in Bulgaria in March 1921. His reports led to the arrest of numerous White emigre officers throughout the Balkans. [51]
Despite Kommissarov's duplicity, the international right-wing mission under Scheubner-Richter's leadership managed to evade Bolshevik agents to arrive to a warm welcome in Sevastopol, the site of Vrangel's headquarters on the Crimean Peninsula, in July 1920. [52] The presence of Scheubner-Richter's delegation had to be kept as a diplomatic secret since French authorities in the Crimea had threatened to cut off Vrangel's supplies if he collaborated with Germans. [53] Scheubner-Richter ascertained the views of Vrangel's officers and soldiers. He presented himself as a Russian and engaged in numerous conversations with members of Vrangel's Southern Russian Armed Forces. He concluded that whereas Vrangel's government contained a significant number of Constitutional Democrats, commonly known as "Kadets," who supported the French, Vrangel's armed forces primarily consisted of rightists who openly sympathized with Germany. Vrangel's soldiers and officers jeered at the French Military Mission whenever it appeared. [54]
The Entente proved very unpopular on the Crimean Peninsula. Scheubner-Richter later described the lasting resentments of the Crimean population against the French largely since French troops had fled pell-mell from Bolshevik forces and had abandoned White formations in nearby Odessa to grisly Bolshevik retribution earlier in the Russian Civil War. [55] Vrangel's press chief Nemirovich-Danchenko later noted in his memoirs (which Aufbau published in April 1923) that the residents of the Crimea had harbored considerable anti-English and anti-French sentiments. Inhabitants of the Crimea had blamed the English and French not only for halfheartedly resisting Bolshevik forces, but also for using their power to maintain unfair currency exchange rates. Nemirovich-Danchenko remarked that when word had circulated in Sevastopol that a delegation from Germany had evaded French intelligence agents to arrive in the city, Sevastopol society had greeted the news with "poorly concealed exultation." [56]
Scheubner-Richter's delegation achieved considerable successes in Sevastopol. Despite French anti-German countermeasures in the Crimea, Scheubner-Richter's colleague Wagner established a branch of the house of Wagner and Furter in General Vrangel's capital. [57] Scheubner-Richter, for his part, held extensive talks with Vrangel that progressed well. [58] Significant numbers of German technicians and traders subsequently traveled to the Crimea in accord with Scheubner-Richter's designs. [59] By the end of July 1920, Vrangel's approximately 75,000 soldiers included a sizeable number of White and German officers sent from Scheubner-Richter's associates in Bavaria. [60] The French Military Mission in Poland noted with dismay that Vrangel's officer entourage strongly approved of the growing Bavarian-Ukrainian cooperation under Scheubner-Richter's direction. [61]
Despite their increasing collaboration with Vrangel, Scheubner-Richter's financial backers in Bavaria distrusted the White general as too pro-French, largely because of his concessions to the French in including Constitutional Democrats in his government. In order to placate critics in right-wing Bavarian financial circles, Vrangel added far rightists to his regime. Most notably, he gave a post to the former Black Hundred writer Ivan Rodionov. [62] Rodionov was a Ukrainian Cossack who had published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in The Sentinel, the official newspaper of General Piotr Krasnov's Great Don Host. [63] Rodionov later had his anti-Bolshevik work, "Victims of Insanity," serialized in the National Socialist newspaper the Volkischer Beobachter (Volkisch Observer) beginning in October 1923. [64] By including far rightists in his government and stressing that he had first gone to the German government for help in fighting the Bolsheviks, Vrangel stiffened the wavering support of leading White emigres and Bavarian industrialists by early October 1920. [65]
Another large German-Russian monarchical consultation with key players from the Kapp Putsch took place in Bavaria in early October 1920. The participants discussed fostering closer ties between right-wing Germans and White emigres based in Germany and Vrangel's regime. The Generals Ludendorff, Goltz of Latvian Intervention fame, and Max Hoffmann, who had negotiated with Soviet Foreign Minister Lev Trotskii in Brest-Litovsk but had subsequently turned against the Bolsheviks, represented the German side of the discussions. Latvian Intervention commander Colonel Bermondt-Avalov and General Biskupskii, the latter of whom actually did not possess a mandate to represent General Vrangel as he claimed, represented Russian interests. [66] General Goltz proposed sending 50,000 armed Germans, overwhelmingly officers, to Vrangel's forces in the Crimea via Hungary. [67] Goltz's former collaborator in the Latvian Intervention, Major Bischoff, subsequently recruited German and Austrian officers and soldiers for Vrangel's forces from his new base in Austria. [68]
French military personnel in Hungary noted the effects of increased collaboration between former Kapp Putsch conspirators and General Vrangel's Southern Russian Armed Forces. French authorities soon rook action to stop this anti-French cooperation. A French military report from October 1920 complained that large numbers of German officers in possession of valid Russian passports were traveling to Vrangel's forces via Hungary to fulfill the agreement for closer military and economic collaboration that Scheubner-Richter and Vrangel had reached the previous July. Such German officers followed the directives of General Goltz in particular. Goltz operated on the margins of the German government to penetrate Vrangel's army with the goal of overthrowing Bolshevism and creating a right-wing Russian, more properly Ukrainian, state that would cooperate with a nationalist Germany. [69]
In light of the increasing threat that growing right-wing German-White collaboration posed to France's interests, French police in the Crimea supervising Vrangel's forces arrested Scheubner-Richter and the members of his delegation in the middle of October 1920. French authorities released the members of the mission after much wrangling and bribery, but the delegation could not leave the peninsula immediately because of a lack of transportation facilities. The mission remained under strict French police surveillance until it left the Crimea for Germany later in October 1920. [70]
AUFBAU'S GENESIS AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT
Upon his return to Munich from his dangerous mission to General Vrangel's forces in the Crimea in late October 1920, Scheubner-Richter, who was widely regarded as an authority on Russian matters among volkisch German circles, set about organizing Aufbau. [71] This conspiratorial organization developed into the center of cooperation between volkisch Germans, notably including Hitler and General Ludendorff, and pro-German White emigres. Despite Aufbau's crucial influence on the genesis and growth of National Socialism, historians have neglected to subject the secretive association to a thorough analysis. [72]
According to Aufbau's statutes, the organization fostered the "national interests of Germany and the Russian area of reconstruction." Aufbau sought the "promotion of an energetic national economic policy with regard to the Eastern states, especially those states that have formed on the territory of the former Russian Empire, for the reconstruction of the economic life of these states or the Russian Empire." [73] The imprecise language of Aufbau's statutes sidestepped the crucial issue of whether the Russian Empire was to be reconstructed as a unified whole, or whether the Ukraine and the Baltic regions, for instance, were to be granted autonomy. This lack of clarity was most likely intended to render the organization palatable both to Great Russians and to minorities, most notably Ukrainians and Baltic Germans who came from the margins of the former Russian Empire.
Aufbau closely controlled its membership, which tended to be wealthy, and the organization carried out its activities in a strictly conspiratorial manner. Aufbau sought fiercely determined anti-Bolshevik Germans and White emigres, notably Russians, Ukrainians, and Baltic Germans, as ordinary members. Interested people of other nationalities could join as extraordinary members if they could demonstrate their commitment to furthering Aufbau's goals of far right German-Russian collaboration. Ordinary members had to pay 100,000 marks upon admission into the association and 20,000 marks in annual dues, whereas extraordinary members had to disburse 10,000 marks to enter the organization and had to contribute 50,000 marks annually. Aufbau's leaders carefully checked the background of prospective associates and could accept or reject applicants without offering any explanation for their decision. Aufbau's organizational work was carried out in complete secrecy. [74]
The former Tsarist general Aleksandr von Lampe observed the genesis of Aufbau. As a moderate monarchist, a sympathizer with the Entente, and a man who disapproved of what he termed Fedor Vinberg's "hysterical cries," Lampe regarded the decidedly pro-German Aufbau suspiciously. [75] He noted in his extensive Russian diary that Aufbau professed the official goal of establishing waterway trading and industrial relations with southern Russia (the Ukraine) after the overthrow of Soviet power. He also wrote of Aufbau's unofficial goals, most notably to bring about the rapprochement of right-wing German and White emigre circles to reestablish monarchical regimes in Germany and Russia and to defeat "Jewish dominance." [76]
Hitler developed close ties with Scheubner-Richter's Aufbau early on. In the course of November 1920, Hitler met Scheubner-Richter through the agency of Rosenberg. This meeting initiated an intense period of collaboration between the volkisch leaders, both of whom came from outside Germany's borders. [77] Hitler demonstrated his agreement with Aufbau's anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic views in a November 19, 1920 speech. He argued that the Soviet Union was an agrarian state, but it could not even feed its own people "as long as the Bolsheviks govern under Jewish rule." He stressed that the Jews were in control in Moscow, Vienna, and Berlin, and he argued, '''There can be no talk of reconstruction" because of the fact that the Jews, as servants of international capital, "sell us Germans." [78] Scheubner-Richter heard Hitler speak publicly for the first time a few days later, on November 22, 1920, [79] Impressed with the experience, he joined the National Socialist Party soon after. [80] From this time on, the fortunes of Aufbau and the National Socialist movement become ever more closely entwined.
While alliance with Hitler's National Socialists furthered Aufbau's cause, Scheubner-Richter had to overcome a serious setback during his early direction of the conspiratorial right-wing organization. During the initial period of Aufbau's anti-Bolshevik activities, he placed significant hopes on General Vrangel's Southern Russian Armed Forces. He counted on the complete fulfillment of the agreement that he had concluded with Vrangel for close military and economic cooperation. Expectations of sizeable support from Vrangel's forces in the Crimea nevertheless disappeared early on. The Red Army routed Vrangel's Southern Russian Armed Forces in the course of late November 1920. Vrangel's men evacuated the Crimea in order to escape death or incarceration at the hands of the victorious Bolshevik forces. [81] After his defeat, Vrangel stressed that he had fought against the "fundamental causes of the destruction that threatens the entire world." [82]
In a November 1921 article in the Volkisch Observer, "Jewish Bolshevism," Aufbau member and National Socialist ideologue Rosenberg asserted: "Vrangel was left in the lurch by the French, just as Iudenich was by England." As we have seen, the English fleet had stopped covering General Nikolai Iudenich's advance on Petrograd in 1919 in order to fire on Colonel Bermondt-Avalov's Western Volunteer Army. Rosenberg claimed that in the span of seven months, Vrangel's forces had only received three shipments of antiquated French military supplies. In return, the French had taken great amounts of grain. He also complained that the '''French' military mission" to Vrangel was composed of seven Jews and only three Gentiles. He concluded, "The Russian generals were supported only as long as they did not have dominance over the Red Army, just long enough to be able to pursue the process of tearing the Russian people to pieces with the greatest success." [83] Rosenberg's hatred of the Entente found great resonance in volkisch German and White emigre circles.
After Vrangel's anti-Bolshevik undertaking in the Crimea collapsed, Scheubner-Richter had to concentrate on using volkisch Germans and White emigres centered in Bavaria to build Aufbau into a powerful conspiratorial organization. He regarded White emigres in Germany from whom he drew support as "pro-German and pro-culture." [84] Through Aufbau, he sought to undermine socialists in Germany and the Bolshevik regime, both of which he regarded as under the control of Jews. He acted as the de facto leader of Aufbau, though officially he only held the post of first secretary of the organization. He could devote himself completely to directing right-wing German and White emigre elements for conspiratorial undertakings, for he possessed considerable personal wealth that he had acquired through his marriage into the German nobility.
Scheubner-Richter won over Baron Theodor von Cramer-Klett to serve as Aufbau's official president. Cramer-Klett was a fantastically wealthy individual with vast industrial enterprises and agricultural lands who possessed many connections to high places in Germany and abroad. [85] He proved Aufbau's most important German financial contributor. He placed large sums of money at the organization's disposal in return for future concessions in a planned independent nationalist Ukrainian state. He received particularly large funds for Aufbau from the German company Mannesmann. Cramer-Klett was allied with General Ludendorff through marriage. Moreover, he maintained a dose friendship with Prince Ruprecht von Wittelsbach of Bavaria, whom Scheubner-Richter initially envisioned as the future German Kaiser. [86]
While Cramer-Klett officially led Aufbau by virtue of his wealth and connections, General Biskupskii served as Scheubner-Richter's truly indispensable collaborator in the association. [87] Biskupskii held the post of vice president. He brought valuable military and financial clout to the organization. He used his proud martial bearing and his elegant military costumes to ingratiate himself in the higher echelons of Bavarian society. His considerable intellect, adroitness, versatility, and language abilities allowed him to secure a leading role in the White emigre community in Munich. He also used his social skills to establish relations between Aufbau and leading aristocrats, landowners, industrialists, and military officers in Bavaria. [88] Biskupskii gradually developed a dose relationship with Hitler himself. [89]
At the time of Aufbau's foundation in late 1920, Biskupskii led the Pan-Russian People's Military League, which sought to establish a popular federal monarchy on the territory of the former Russian Empire. Each segment of the confederation, such as the Ukraine and the Baltic region, was to enjoy substantial autonomy, initially under dictatorial military leaders. The organization used the mottos: "Federal monarchy," "The land to the people as property," "Power to the Tsar," and "Tsar and people." Biskupskii thus did not pursue purely "reactionary" political goals. He promised peripheral peoples substantial autonomy in a new Russian confederation. Moreover, realizing the popularity of Bolshevik land reforms among the peasants, he sought to win support for a new Russian monarchy by pledging to respect peasant land ownership.
Although the German Foreign Office consistently collaborated with the Bolshevik regime, a Foreign Office report from early November 1920 asserted that Biskupskii was
the right personality to lead the intended [anti-Bolshevik military] action to a fortunate solution. B[iskupskii] is clever, energetic, adroit, without political prejudices, and has a name that is in no way politically handicapped. For this last reason, B[iskupskii] also will not run into resistance on principle among any Russian group. A special advantage of General B[iskupskii]'s is the correct recognition of the ideas that always take root in the consciousness of the Russian people. At that time, Lenin also only attained victory since he correctly assessed the people's psyche at the given moment. [90]
Scheubner-Richter sought to transfer the German Foreign Office's positive assessment of Biskupskii personally into material support for Aufbau's anti-Bolshevik cause. He submitted a report to the Foreign Office in December 1920 which suggested that, while the agency's representatives officially had to deal with the Soviet Union, they should secretly support the White emigre activities that Aufbau coordinated. [91] The Foreign Office did not support Aufbau's endeavors, however. Instead, it maintained its fundamentally pro-Soviet stance. Scheubner-Richter became increasingly irate at the Foreign Office's close relations with Soviet leadership. [92]
While Aufbau failed to gain the support it desired from the German Foreign Office, the organization did attain considerable prestige by winning over General Ludendorff, who had been Germany's most valuable military strategist during World War I and a driving force behind the Kapp Putsch. Biskupskii established a close relationship with Ludendorff and helped to gain him for Aufbau's cause. [93] Scheubner-Richter had long enjoyed Ludendorff's patronage, and he also played an important role in winning the general for Aufbau. [94] Ludendorff found Aufbau with its marked anti-Bolshevism and bold solutions to the "Eastern question" appealing. Scheubner-Richter introduced Ludendorff to Hitler in the framework of Aufbau in March 1921. Aufbau's de facto leader thereby initiated a political collaboration that culminated in the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch of November 1923. [95]
Ludendorff contributed significantly to Hitler's militaristic Weltanschauung. In 1921, the general released a book, Kriegsfohrung und Politik (War Leadership and Politics). In this work, he claimed along the lines of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: "The supreme government of the Jewish people was working hand in hand with France and England. Perhaps it was leading them both." He further stressed that peace was only a period of preparation for war. War brought "front-line socialism" that stabilized a warrior community whose energies were directed outwards. [96] Hitler later claimed that Ludendorff's book "clearly pointed out where it was practical to search [for the mistakes of the past and the possibilities for the future] in Germany." [97]