CHAPTER 9: Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism
While Aufbau clearly played a formative role in shaping early anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic National Socialist ideology, the historian Walter Laqueur has minimized the heritage that Aufbau left to National Socialism after 1923. In his work Russia and Germany, Laqueur asserts that National Socialism did not need White emigre support after it had become a mass movement in the course of the 1920s.1 While National Socialist-White emigre collaboration did decrease markedly in the aftermath of the failed Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch of November 1923, Aufbau nonetheless bequeathed a powerful political, financial, military, and ideological legacy to National Socialism.
Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism took several forms. The death of First Lieutenant Max von Scheubner-Richter, Aufbau's de facto leader and Hitler's closest political advisor, in the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch served as an example of heroic sacrifice for the National Socialist cause. White emigres continued to raise significant funds for the NSDAP after 1923. In the vein of Aufbau, Hitler continued to use White emigres, especially Ukrainian nationalists, to destabilize Soviet rule after the failure of the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch. Hitler's preoccupation with winning the Ukraine for Germany along the lines of Aufbau policy led him to divert powerful armed forces away from Moscow in 1941, thereby diminishing German chances of victory in World War II.
Early anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic National Socialist ideology, which relied greatly on Aufbau thought, found pronounced expression in the Third Reich's final years. In addition to his wish to gain Lebensraum (living space) in the East, Hitler's intense anti-Bolshevism that he had developed during his period of collaboration with Aufbau led him to launch a hazardous military crusade against the Soviet Union. Aufbau views of the "Jewish Bolshevik" peril, which had greatly influenced National Socialist ideology in the early 1920s, helped to motivate the National Socialist attempt to annihilate European Jewry in what was euphemistically termed the Final Solution.
Former Aufbau members served the post-1923 National Socialist cause. Alfred Rosenberg's Baltic German colleague Arno Schickedanz, Aufbau's former deputy director, acted as the number two man in the Aussenpolitisches Amt (Foreign Policy Office) of the NSDAP. The former 1919 Latvian Intervention commander Colonel Pavel Bermondt-Avalov and his associate General Konstantin Sakharov played leading roles in a Russian emigre National Socialist organization known for its initials ROND. Beginning in 1936, Aufbau's former vice president, General Vladimir Biskupskii, directed the Russische Vertrauensstelle (Russian Trust Authority) that oversaw White emigres in Germany within the framework of the NSDAP. The former head of Aufbau's Ukrainian section, the Cossack leader Colonel Ivan Poltavets-Ostranitsa, worked closely with Hitler and Rosenberg to strengthen a Ukrainian National Socialist movement that helped Germany in its conflicts with Poland and the Soviet Union.
After Scheubner-Richter's death, Rosenberg served as the linchpin connecting Hitler to key White emigres and their views. He shaped National Socialist ideology and policy in a variety of official capacities. He edited the National Socialist newspaper the Volkischer Beobachter (Volkisch Observer), led the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP, acted as the Representative of the Fuhrer for the Supervision of the Entire Intellectual and Ideological Political Instruction and Education of the NSDAP, assisted Hitler as the Representative of the Fuhrer for the Central Treating of Questions of the East European Area, and ultimately served as the State Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories during World War II. In this last post, he coordinated White emigre operations to organize pro-National Socialist Soviet citizens for the German war effort, and he helped to implement the atrocities of the Final Solution.
THE MEMORY OF SCHEUBNER-RICHTER
The most intense period of National Socialist-White emigre collaboration ended with the disastrous November 8/9, 1923 Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch in which Aufbau's guiding figure and Hitler's closest advisor, Scheubner-Richter, was killed. Yet Scheubner-Richter's memory was preserved in the National Socialist Party. Hitler honored his fallen comrade by giving his widow Mathilde the task of creating the National Socialist Party Archives in August 1926. In this endeavor, Mathilde collaborated with Heinrich Himmler, who went on to become the leader of the SS.2 Hitler spoke respectfully of Mathilde in January 1942 when he reminisced about Scheubner-Richter's "sacrifice" for the National Socialist cause. He enthused: "What dignity his wife displayed!"3
After he came to power in January 1933, Hitler regularly commemorated the events of November 8/9, 1923, in which Scheubner-Richter had participated, with great pomp and reverence as a heroic undertaking that had inspired nationalist resurgence. He placed a laurel wreath at the memorial to his fallen comrades, most notably Scheubner-Richter, with the inscription, "And you have triumphed after all!"4 He spoke annually along the lines of his November 1935 oration commemorating the 1923 Putsch:
This brave action was not in vain. For in the end the great national movement came out of it ... While our enemies believed to have destroyed us, in reality, the seeds of the movement were flung over all of Germany at a stroke ... And for us [these martyrs] are not dead. These temples are no tombs, but an eternal sentry. Here they stand for Germany and keep watch for our people. Here they lie as faithful witnesses of our movement.5
In National Socialist ideology, which emphasized the theme of heroic death, Scheubner-Richter assumed a place of honor.
Scheubner-Richter's Aufbau activities eventually helped to pave the way for friendly relations between Hitler's Germany and Hungary. Soon after Hitler became the German Chancellor in January 1933, the right-wing Hungarian Minister-President Gyula Gombos ordered his ambassador in Berlin to visit the Fuhrer as soon as possible: "On my behalf, pass my best regards and wishes ... Recall that ten years ago, on the basis of our common principles and ideology, we were in contact via Mr. Scheubner-Richter... Tell Hitler my firm belief that the two countries have to cooperate In foreign and domestic policy.'" Scheubner-Richter, Hitler's "irreplaceable" advisor, proved to have been a good National Socialist representative.
THE PRO-NAZI CAREERS OF FORMER AUFBAU MEMBERS
Scheubner-Richter's former indispensable assistant in Aufbau, General Vladimir Biskupskii, continued to play the leading role in the circle around the Tsarist throne claimants Kirill and Viktoria Romanov after the failure of the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch. Biskupskii officially served as the minister of war in Kirill's exile government? He developed into the leading White emigre personality in Europe.8 In a December 1924 interview with the State Commissioner for the Supervision of Public Order, Biskupskii described himself as Kirill's representative in Germany. He stressed that he sought to win as many White emigres as possible for Kirill's cause, and he propagated German-Russian rapprochement in the vein of the nineteenth-century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Biskupskii claimed that as soon as the Weimar Republic stopped supporting the Soviet regime, Bolshevism would collapse.9
As of the late 1920s, Biskupskii collaborated with conspiratorial pro-Kirill monarchists headquartered in Moscow itself who sought to overthrow the Bolsheviks and to institute an alliance between nationalist Russian and German states. With the assistance of Major Josef Bischoff, the former commander of the Iron Division in the 1919 Latvian Intervention who currently operated in the vicinity of Vienna, Biskupskii supplied Russian nationalists inside the Soviet Union with significant amounts of weapons purchased outside of Germany.10
Biskupskii's patrons Kirill and Viktoria suffered financial ruin in the aftermath of the November 1923 Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch. Along with other considerable funds that the couple had placed at Aufbau's disposal, the 500,000 gold marks that Kirill and Viktoria had lent General Erich von Ludendorff to further the "German-Russian national cause" had disappeared when Hitler and Ludendorff's undertaking had collapsed. n Nonetheless, Biskupskii channeled considerable funds to aid Hitler's rise to power in the early 1930s." He likely received much of this money from Kirill and, more importantly, from Viktoria, with whom he maintained a rather indiscreet affair.13
The sources of Kirill and Viktoria's post-1923 funding are not entirely clear. It is known that Colonel Boris Brazol, a former Aufbau member who had aided Scheubner-Richter by writing anti-Semitic literature, the president of the Russian Monarchical Club in New York, and the White emigre contact man with Henry Ford, the wealthy anti-Semitic American industrialist and politician, managed to gather large sums of money for Kirill in 1924 when Viktoria visited America.14 Brazol likely continued to act as a conduit between Ford and Kirill in the 1930s who transferred money from the former to the latter.
Hitler's National Socialist regime granted Brazol organizational prerogatives on German soil. In the summer of 1938, Brazol, who was by this time an American citizen, helped to organize a clandestine anti-Comintern congress in Germany with the approval of Hitler's secret police, the Gestapo, and Himmler's SS. The assembly included representatives from America, Canada, France, England, and Switzerland. Himmler himself took an interest in Brazol in August 1938, and he commissioned a certain Muller of the SS to write a report on the White emigre's earlier activities.15
Besides Biskupskii and Brazol, other White emigres who had belonged to Aufbau and who supported the National Socialist movement continued to back Kirill's claim to the Tsarist throne after 1923, most notably Aufbau's last leader, the Baltic German Otto von Kursell, and Biskupskii's comrade General Konstantin Salthatov. Kursell, the National Socialist whose greatest fame came when he was commissioned to draw portraits of Hitler, maintained good relations with Kirill and visited him frequently in the years following the Hitler/Ludendorff Putsch.16 Sakhatov, who corresponded regularly with Hitler during the latter's imprisonment for his November 1923 putsch attempt, coordinated relations between Kirill's supporters in Germany and abroad, including in the Soviet Union.17
The former 1919 Latvian Intervention commander Colonel Bermondt-Avalov, who, like Sakharov, had supported Kirill's bid for the Tsarist throne and had collaborated with Aufbau, led two National Socialist Russian emigre organizations in the early 1930s. In the course of 1932, he directed the formation of the Russkoe Osvoboditelnoe Natsionalnoe Dvizhenie (Russian National Liberation Movement, better known for its initials ROND).18 Soon after he came to power in January 1933, Hitler, who knew Bermondt-Avalov personally, granted him the right to lead ROND along National Socialist lines.19 Hitler also ordered the creation of a political science school within ROND. The Kirill supporter and former Aufbau member General Sakharov led the institution's military section.20
ROND, a militaristic organization, enjoyed a great degree of sympathy among the German population.21 The White emigre association possessed paramilitary groups patterned on the NSDAP's Sturmabteilung (Storm Section, SA). ROND used the SA's Horst Wessel Song as its hymn. ROND members also attacked political opponents and Jews along the lines of the SA. The official uniform of the White emigre organization displayed a pronounced National Socialist character. ROND dress included a black shirt with a green and white swastika.22
ROND only existed for a short time. The largely autonomous German Foreign Office opposed pro-Kirill activities in Germany and pressured Hitler to ban ROND.23 Hitler dissolved ROND in October 1933.24 ROND was reconstituted as the Deutsch-Russische Standarte (German-Russian Standard) with Bermondt-Avalov in the leading role.25 The German-Russian Standard had approximately 6,000 members.26 Former citizens of the Russian Empire, whether ethnic Russians or not, could join the organization, with the explicit exception of Jews and Freemasons. "Aryans" from other countries could also be granted membership. Members absolutely had to exhibit a "National Socialist Weltanschauung."27 Bermondt-Avalov damaged the Standard's cause when he was arrested for embezzling 50,000 marks in August 1934, imprisoned for three months, and then expelled from Germany. He resurfaced in Rome, where he sought to lead a group of White emigre fascists under Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime, but with little success.28
Bermondt-Avalov's former collaborator/rival in the 1919 Latvian Intervention, General Biskupskii, experienced difficulties with the National Socialist leadership in the early 1930s before he attained a position of influence in the Third Reich in 1936. The NSDAP's Eastern expert Rosenberg in particular maintained a reserved attitude towards Biskupskii despite all of the general's former financial and political assistance to the National Socialist cause. Rosenberg and Biskupskii had a bit of a falling out. Correspondence from the early 1930s indicates that while he had actively worked to establish an autonomous Ukraine in the context of Aufbau in the early 1920s, Biskupskii now opposed Rosenberg's increasingly aggressive plans to smash the Soviet Union and to replace it with several weak states without a uniting Tsar.29
Biskupskii wrote Rosenberg in December 1931 and warned him against advocating a policy of allying Germany with England against Russia. He called such a strategy "the greatest aberration." The White emigre general stressed that he had nothing against Rosenberg personally, but it was "painful" for him to see such views in the Party whose "entire ethos and ideology" accorded with his own. He stressed that he and the NSDAP had shared the "same understanding and the same sympathy up until the year 1923," but now the Party seemed to be "among the most bitter enemies of Russia" with its idea of the "carving up of Russia." Biskupskii ended his letter by emphasizing that while he opposed Rosenberg politically, he had always had "sympathy" with him personally and treasured "the best memories of our earlier common work."30
Rosenberg was polite in his reply to Biskupskii, but he nevertheless emphasized his differences of opinion with the general. He stressed: "I certainly have gotten to know many splendid people in Russia so that I think back to them and to much in Russian life with only the greatest sympathy." He noted, however, that the chances that an internal revolt would overthrow Bolshevism appeared slim to none. He stressed that "Bolshevized Russia" could only be defeated through an "at least economically-politically united coalition" of powers. Moreover, he argued that Germany could not direct its foreign policy in accordance with the "hopes and wishes of national Russiandom, for the Russian Empire as a political power that national Russiandom longs for does not exist, and no one can say today if it will arise again."
In his reply to Biskupskii, Rosenberg further stressed that the White emigre general's ideas did not address "Germany's necessities of life with regard to the question of space." Rosenberg accused Biskupskii of "marked naivety" in thinking that Germany should deal with its "population surplus" simply by putting its "capable engineers and inventors" at the disposal of the "coming Russia."31 Here Rosenberg clearly informed Biskupskii that the German need for Lebensraum (living space) in the East overruled the wishes of the White emigres whom Biskupskii represented. This correspondence reflects Rosenberg's sense of acceptance in Germany as an ethnic (Baltic) German, whereas Biskupskii, with his Russian (more properly Ukrainian) roots, remained more of an outsider.
After Hitler came to power in January 1933, Biskupskii vainly sought to gain more influence in Eastern matters. On March 31, 1933, Hitler named Rosenberg the leader of the Aussenpolitisches Amt (Foreign Policy Office) of the NSDAP with the former Aufbau deputy director Arno Schickedanz as his chief of staff. Hitler used the Foreign Policy Office to circumvent the German Foreign Office, which he viewed as a "society of conspirators" directed against National Socialism." Sensing opportunity, Biskupskii congratulated Rosenberg on his appointment. He then suggested that as a "basic principle," Rosenberg's bureau should "receive some similarity in its structure with the organization of the III International, with a plan of work for the long term." He noted that the Foreign Policy Office would likely receive a Russian Section soon, and he proposed himself for a leading role in this department. Along the lines of his earlier Aufbau endeavors, he wished to organize this Russian Section as a "strictly conspiratorial cell."33
Biskupskii suffered hardship during the first year of Hitler's Germany. Rosenberg did not respond to his repeated offers to lead a Russian Section of the NSDAP Foreign Policy Office. Rosenberg's colleague Schickedanz sought to spare the pride of Biskupskii, his former chief in Aufbau.34 Worse for Biskupskii, the Gestapo, briefly imprisoned him in October 1933 as part of its efforts to curtail the legitimist movement behind Kirill. After his release, Gestapo authorities told the White emigre leader that they would contact him if they needed his assistance, but that he and the pro-Kirill movement he represented should lay low for the time being. Biskupskii then advised Kirill to suspend his political activities until a more favorable climate developed in Germany.35
Biskupskii finally achieved recognition from the National Socialist government in May 1936, when he was named the head of the newly created Russische Vertrauensstelle (Russian Trust Authority).36 Biskupskii won out over General Sakharov, who was also considered to be a suitable leader for the pro-National Socialist White emigre community in Germany.37 Biskupskii's Russian Trust Authority was to unite all White emigres on German soil and to alleviate internecine power struggles.38 Biskupskii's organization incorporated the remnants of Bermondt-Avalov's German-Russian Standard and oversaw the approximately 125,000 White emigres living in Germany.39
Hitler personally named all of the personnel for Biskupskii's agency, including the women employed as secretaries. He insisted that Lieutenant Sergei Taboritskii serve as the Russian Trust Authority's deputy director. Taboritskii was one of the former Aufbau members who had attempted to assassinate the Constitutional Democratic leader Pavel Miliukov in March 1922. Taboritskii had joined the National Socialist cause openly in 1927 upon his release from prison.40 Soon after Hitler's ascension to power, Taboritskii had been rumored to possess a paid position within NSDAP Headquarters in Munich.41 Taboritskii increasingly overshadowed Biskupskii in the Russian Trust Authority.42 Lieutenant Piotr Shabelskii-Bork, Taboritskii's accomplice in the attempted assassination of Miliukov and the White emigre who had brought The Protocols of the Elders of Zion from the Ukraine to Germany, also assisted Biskupskii's organization.43 He regarded the Russian Trust Authority as a means of opposing "world Jewry, Freemasonry, and Communism."44
In his capacity of leader of the Russian Trust Authority, Biskupskii officially served under the somewhat hostile NSDAP Eastern specialist, Rosenberg, but he had supporters in high places.45 The Gestapo, though it had once imprisoned him, had helped Biskupskii to become the head of the Russian Trust Authority in the first place.46 In return, Biskupskii sent intelligence reports to the Gestapo.47 Biskupskii also enjoyed the patronage of Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels.48 In April 1938, Goebbels ordered Biskupskii to establish a course in Berlin to train police units composed of Germans, Russians, and Ukrainians for eventual service in the Ukraine.49
In the tradition of Aufbau, Biskupskii's Russian Trust Authority improved Kirill's standing in Germany. Biskupskii's longstanding personal relationships with Hitler, Rosenberg, and other National Socialist leaders in particular helped the pro-Kirill movement to expand its German base.50 The White emigre community in Germany under Biskupskii's leadership generally hoped that Hitler's armed forces would attack the Soviet Union, topple the Bolsheviks, and place Kirill atop a new Russian monarchy. Since Biskupskii remained a convinced supporter of Kirill, French intelligence viewed his placement at the head of the Russian emigre community in Germany as evidence that Hitler wished to install Kirill as the leader of a nationalist Russian state after the overthrow of Bolshevism.51 After Kirill died in October 1938, the White emigre community in Germany under Biskupskii's direction generally supported Kirill's son Vladimir as the future head of a nationalist Russia.52
While Biskupskii ultimately attained a position of authority over White emigre matters in the Third Reich, Hitler and Rosenberg paid far more attention to the former leader of Aufbau's Ukrainian section, Colonel Ivan Poltavets-Ostranitsa. In his work Russia and Germany, the historian Walter Laqueur noted that National Socialist Eastern policy continued to support Ukrainian separatists after 1923.53 Biskupskii resented the attention that Hitler and Rosenberg gave Poltavets-Ostranitsa. 54 Unlike Biskupskii, Poltavets-Ostranitsa maintained very close relations with both Hitler and Rosenberg after 1923. From Munich, he continued to lead his National Ukrainian Cossack Organization, which collaborated with Hitler's National Socialist Party. The secret police of the Weimar Republic described the Organization as the "national Ukrainian volkisch movement."55 Poltavets-Ostranitsa used a Ukrainian coat of arms and a swastika as the symbol of his union." The National Ukrainian Cossack Organization received subsidies from the NSDAP, and the Volkisch Observer printed propaganda on its behalf.57
Rosenberg had high hopes for fruitful collaboration with Poltavets-Ostranitsa, who assumed the title of Ukrainian Hetman, or leader, in 1926. Rosenberg desired assistance from an autonomous, allied Ukraine along the lines that Poltavets-Ostranitsa advocated. In 1927, Rosenberg wrote a book, Der Zukunftsweg einer deutschen Aussenpolitik (The Future Path of a German Foreign Policy). This work aroused the special interest of the Sztab Glowny Oddzial drugi (Main Headquarters Second Section), the primary Polish intelligence agency, for its assertion that "an alliance between Kiev and Berlin and the creation of a common border" served as a "volkisch and state necessity for future German policy."58
In his foreign policy work, Rosenberg further stressed the need to use ethnic separatism in the Soviet Union, particularly in the Ukraine and the Caucasus, to overthrow Bolshevism and to limit the power of the subsequent Russian state. He emphasized the Ukraine's importance as a valuable source of raw materials as well as a market for German industrial goods. He thereby presented views that he had adopted during his time of activity in Aufbau in tandem with Poltavets-Ostranitsa in the early 1920s.59
Soon after Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, Poltavets-Ostranitsa wrote him a congratulatory letter. He assured Hitler: "The Ukrainian Cossacks congratulate you and your movement on your achieved victory." He noted that the Ukrainian Cossacks under his leadership had collaborated with nationalist German circles since the Bolshevik Revolution. He further emphasized that National Socialists had long known that
Germany's freedom and space in the East are bound together with the freedom of the Ukraine and the Caucasus as the factors that alone are in a position to weaken the Russian pan-Slavic and pan-Communist danger for Europe, since they strive for a true alliance and friendship with national strength against Russia, against Poland, and against France. I have also adopted this idea, which Your Excellency has written on your standards, with Ukrainian Cossacks in the Ukraine and in the emigration, and I am firmly determined to go with [you] hand in hand, foot by foot, step by step through all difficulties, in complete belief in your victory.
Then Poltavets-Ostranitsa made an even stronger plea for increased collaboration between the Ukrainian Cossacks he represented and Hitler's Germany. He emphasized, "We hope not only for your help, but also for your patronage, just as Hetman Ivan Masepa hoped for from the King of Sweden Karl XII in the year 1709." Poltavets-Ostranitsa further noted that he had included a memorandum that presumably dealt with detailed plans for closer military, political, and economic cooperation between Hitler's government and Ukrainian Cossacks. Poltavets-Ostranitsa closed his letter with the rousing words: "Heil Hitler, and your standard from the Rhine to the Caucasus!"60 Poltavets-Ostranitsa thus wished for National Socialism to spread far to the East.
Poltavets-Ostranitsa considerably influenced the early National Socialist regime, which sought to use his Ukrainian independence movement to undermine the Soviet Union.61 Polish intelligence in May 1933 attributed great influence to Poltavets-Ostranitsa in the new Hitler government.62 In the summer of 1933, the French military intelligence agency the Second Section reported that National Socialist leadership wished to establish a Ukrainian satellite state that would replace the overseas colonies that Germany had lost as a result of World War I.63 Rosenberg planned the creation of a marginally independent pro-German Ukraine composed of territory currently part of the Soviet Union and Poland. He granted Poltavets-Ostranitsa considerable powers to organize Ukrainian emigres who worked towards this goal. Hitler personally invited the Ukrainian Cossack leader to relocate from Munich to Berlin.64 Poltavets-Ostranitsa acted as the NSDAP's expert on Ukrainian matters. He periodically provided reports on Ukrainian issues to Rosenberg's Foreign Policy Office.65
Rosenberg intensified his support of Poltavets-Ostranitsa's Ukrainian independence movement in the spring and summer of 1934. In April 1934, Poltavets-Ostranitsasent a representative of his National Ukrainian Cossack Organization to the Japanese Embassy in Berlin with the permission of Rosenberg's Foreign Policy Office. This envoy presented a plan of action in case of a war against the Soviet Union that called for primarily Ukrainian Cossacks within the USSR to support a Japanese attack.66 Rosenberg gave the welcoming address at a conference of Ukrainian emigres held in Berlin in the summer of 1934 that dealt with the military training of Ukrainian exiles for use in a war against the Soviet Union. Representatives of Hermann Goring's Luftwaffe (Air Force) along with leading Army officers attended. The military training of Ukrainian emigres subsequently took place in Berlin, in Hungary, and in the Balkans.67
A letter Poltavets-Ostranitsa wrote Hitler in May 1935 indicates close military coordination between the National Socialist regime and the National Ukrainian Cossack Union. Poltavets-Ostranitsa offered the armed support of his Cossacks now that Hitler had reinstated conscription and had begun building a large standing army in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. Poltavets-Ostranitsa stressed: 'The Ukrainian Cossacks have fought in conjunction with the NSDAP against the enemies of the National Socialist Weltanschauung." He pledged, "If Germany should be attacked from one side or another," then "the Ukrainian Cossacks are ready to fight immediately in the ranks of the German army. I hereby place all able-bodied members of the Ukrainian Cossacks fit for action in Germany and abroad at the disposal of Your Excellency."68 Poltavets-Ostranitsa regarded national Ukrainian interests as concurrent with those of Hitler's Germany.
Poltavets-Ostranitsa experienced serious difficulties soon after he had written Hitler to promise the armed support of his Ukrainian Cossacks. Largely because of his reputation as a swindler, he could not raise large numbers of followers in Germany and in the Ukraine.69 He further damaged his cause in late 1935 when he was discovered to have forged a letter from Rosenberg and to have passed information to Soviet agents.70 Rosenberg's Foreign Policy Office stopped financing him, and he was even briefly imprisoned in a concentration camp.71 Poltavets-Ostranitsa suddenly found himself to be a pariah.
Poltavets-Ostranitsa was rehabilitated beginning in 1936. The NSDAP member and former Aufbau leader for a short period, Otto von Kursell, wrote Schickedanz of the Foreign Policy Office on Poltavets-Ostranitsa's behalf. Schickedanz responded that he would ensure that the Ukrainian Cossack again received financial assistance.72 Polish intelligence from 1937 reported that Rosenberg again strongly backed Poltavets-Ostranitsa,73 The Ukrainian Cossack leader continued to work for the National Socialist Party, as witnessed by his name in NSDAP payroll records from 1937 and 1938.74 French intelligence noted in December 1938 that Rosenberg, in collaboration with Poltavets-Ostranitsa, had been charged with aiding the Ukrainian independence movement based in the Ukraine that distributed anti-Bolshevik propaganda and carried out terrorist acts.75 While he had damaged his reputation through his deceit, Poltavets-Ostranitsa continued to play a significant role in prewar National Socialist foreign policy.
Hitler's shocking turn toward Josef Stalin's Soviet Union in 1939 placed White emigres in Germany such as Poltavets-Ostranitsa in a very difficult situation. The conclusion of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, commonly known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact, on August 23, 1939 stunned Germany's White emigre community. The influence of Rosenberg and Schickedanz's Foreign Policy Office had declined significantly in 1939. Hitler had left Rosenberg and Schickedanz out of the loop with regard to his arrangements to divide Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union.76 The German-Soviet partition of Poland beginning in September 1939, which initiated World War II, occurred in a manner similar to what the Aufbau Generals Erich von Ludendorff and Vladimir Biskupskii had envisioned in 1923, with the significant difference that Aufbau had wished to divide Poland between National Socialist German and Russian states.77 With the National Socialist-Bolshevik alliance, Rosenberg, who had consistently upheld a vehement anti-Bolshevik Weltanschauung, found himself in an uncomfortable position. For a period of time, he was forbidden to hold public speeches, and some of his books, notably Plague in Russia!, were banned.78 Soon after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Rosenberg wrote in his diary: "I have the feeling as if this Moscow-Pact will one day take revenge on National Socialism ... How can we still speak of Europe's deliverance and structuring when we must ask Europe's destroyers for help?"79 He detested National Socialist Germany's collaboration with the Soviet Union despite its expediency.80
When Biskupskii, the head of the Russian Trust Authority, learned of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, he rushed to three different German ministries to gain an overview of the situation. He was assured that the new treaty would not affect the position of White emigres in Germany. He further received the pledge that the agreement he had concluded with Ludendorff in 1923 still remained in effect. These assurances helped to mollify him.
In conversations with another White emigre, Biskupskii noted that Soviet leaders were following an imperialist, nationalist foreign policy, with little trace of Communism. He emphasized that he had long predicted a nationalist evolution in the Soviet Union. Biskupskii stressed that the internal situation in the Soviet Union was such that the Germans should find it relatively easy to place a "people's monarchy" in charge in place of Bolshevik leadership. He hoped to play a leading role in this Russian monarchical system, which would represent a Russian form of National Socialism.81
While Biskupskii sought to regard the Hitler-Stalin Pact in a positive light, the National Socialist-Soviet alliance shocked the White emigre community in Germany that he represented. White emigres in Germany generally believed that the treaty meant the end of Germany's support of the Russian monarchical cause.82 A Reichssichetheitshauptamt (State Security Main Office, RSHA) decree from October 25, 1939 curtailed White emigre freedoms. While the RSHA did not outlaw existing White emigre organizations and newspapers, "Russian, Ukrainian, Cossack, and Caucasian" emigre organizations in Germany were to limit their activities. For instance, White emigre groups could not propagate anti-Soviet propaganda, they could not hold open meetings, and they could not advertise for new members.83 National Socialist-White emigre collaboration reached a low point during National Socialist Germany's brief partnership with the Soviet Union.
The cooperation between Hitler and Stalin that so discomfited Germany's White emigre community did not last long. Hitler soon returned to his intense anti-Bolshevik roots, which he had largely developed during his close interaction with Aufbau in the early 1920s. Even while German armed forces were still engaged in the French Campaign in June 1940, Hitler expressed his intention "to take action against this menace of the Soviet Union the moment our military position makes it at all possible." He issued the first directive for the invasion of the Soviet Union in August 1940 under the telling name Aufbau Ost (Reconstruction East). In titling his planned Soviet campaign Aufbau Ost, Hitler demonstrated the lasting impression that Aufbau's warnings against "Jewish Bolshevism" had made on his thinking.84
Rosenberg in particular had vehemently urged Hitler to invade the Soviet Union, and he collaborated closely with Hitler in determining Eastern occupation policies.85 Rosenberg had a two-hour conference with Hitler on April 2, 1941 concerning the upcoming administration of conquered Soviet territories. In his notes, Rosenberg wrote of this meeting:
I discussed the racial and historical situation in the Baltic Sea provinces, the Ukraine and its battle against Moscow, the necessary economic link with the Caucasus, etc. The Fuhrer then developed in detail the projected move to the East ... The Fuhrer asked me about the likely response of the Russian, soldierly and humanly, under great pressure, about the present Jewish situation in the Soviet Union and other matters.
Hitler ended the conference by stressing: "Rosenberg, your great hour has arrived now. "86
Rosenberg gained greater influence over Hitler's Eastern planning in the course of April 1941. Early in the month, he submitted a detailed memorandum to Hitler outlining the planned administration of former Soviet territories. In accordance with basic Aufbau policy, the most economically important Soviet regions, the Ukraine, the Don area, and the Caucasus, were to be combined into a Black Sea Confederation that would oppose Great Russian expansion. The Baltic States were to be united. The Great Russian region was slated for the harshest treatment. On April 20, 1941, his birthday, Hitler appointed Rosenberg to serve as the Beauftragter des Fuhrers fur die zentrale Bearbeitung der Fragen des osteuropaischen Raumes (Representative of the Fuhrer for the Central Treating of Questions of the East European Area).87 In his new post, Rosenberg greatly influenced Hitler's plans for ruling former Soviet areas.
The German Wehrmacht (Armed Forces) attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, beginning Hitler's anti-Bolshevik crusade that was known as Operation Barbarossa. Army Group Center, which contained 1.6 million of the 2.5 million German soldiers on the Eastern Front, captured approximately 330,000 prisoners and 3,332 tanks by July 3, 1941.88 Advance units of the powerful army group traversed the Dnepr River, the last important natural barrier before Moscow, on July 11, 1941. Army Group Center captured another 309,110 prisoners and destroyed or seized 3,205 tanks in the Smolensk pocket, only 200 miles from Moscow, by August 5.89 According to the military historian Albert Seaton, if Hitler had ordered Army Group Center to advance on Moscow in August, then "nothing could have saved the Soviet capital."90
On August 18, 1941, the Chief of the Army High Command General Colonel Walter Brauchitsch and his Chief of Staff General Franz Halder urged Hitler to order an immediate offensive against Moscow.91 Hitler refused. He asserted: "The most important objective to be achieved before the onset of winter is not the capture of Moscow but the seizure of the Crimea and of the coal-mining region on the Donets [in the Ukraine], and the cutting off of Russian oil-supplies from the Caucasus."92 Hitler accordingly sent powerful elements of Army Group Center south into the Ukraine.93 Hitler's emphasis on winning the Ukraine for Germany in the tradition of Aufbau, while leading to short-term gains, helped to bring about the ultimate military defeat of the Third Reich.
Hitler's drive southwards into the Ukraine, where the local population welcomed German troops as in 1918, led to a short-term stunning tactical victory and a long-term strategic disaster.94 The Wehrmacht captured 665,000 prisoners and 884 tanks in a pocket around Kiev, but the battle lasted until the end of September 1941. Army Group Center thus could not launch its offensive against Moscow until October 2, 1941. The Soviet High Command had been amazed when Army Group Center had not advanced against Moscow in August 1941. Fully aware of Moscow's key strategic, military, economic, and political importance, the Soviet High Command had used the two months that Hitler had afforded it on the Central Front to rest its troops, to build new defensive lines, and to bring up substantial reinforcements. On December 6, 1941, the Red Army launched a massive counter-attack in front of Moscow with over 100 divisions. Soviet forces hurled Army Group Center's exhausted, freezing, and dispirited troops far away from the Soviet capital. After the German attack on Moscow collapsed, Operation Barbarossa failed as well. Hitler's Third Reich never recovered from this military setback.95
While German armed forces still occupied Eastern territories, Rosenberg attained a high position of authority in administering conquered Soviet areas. He initially could not implement his ideas of treating Ukrainians and other Eastern peoples leniently, but he gained a belated measure of success in late 1944 when the National Socialist regime began using the captured General A. A. Vlassov's Russian Liberation Army against the Red Army. Hitler secretly named Rosenberg the Reichsminister fur die besetzten Ostgebiete (State Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories) on July 17, 1941. The public announcement of Rosenberg's appointment to this post came on November 18, 1941.96 In accordance with Aufbau's principles, Rosenberg did not group conquered peoples of the Soviet Union together as Russians. Instead, his State Ministry possessed subdivisions, most notably the Reichskommissariat Ostland (State Commissionership East Land), composed of the formerly independent Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian states with most of Belarus as well, and the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (State Commissionership Ukraine).97
Rosenberg advocated treating peripheral nationalities in conquered Soviet territories moderately, but he had difficulties putting his policies into practice. Rosenberg and his colleague Schickedanz (the latter of whom would have served as the State Commissioner of the Caucasus had the German drive to capture the region not failed in the aftermath of the disastrous 1942-1943 defeat at Stalingrad) did not possess the influence that they desired. Hitler tended to favor those who advocated a severe approach to peripheral Eastern groupings. Rosenberg and Schickedanz had to watch disapprovingly as their ideas of close collaboration with Ukrainians and a relatively lenient attitude towards other Eastern peoples frequently lost out to brutal policies against what were sometimes referred to as "subhumans."98
Rosenberg's May 19, 1943 meeting with Hitler demonstrated his inability to implement a moderate course of cooperation with Ukrainians. Rosenberg complained of the insubordination and brutal policies of his nominal subordinate, the Reichskommissar Ukraine (State Commissioner Ukraine) Erich Koch. Hitler defended Koch's ruthless actions. He stressed that the difficult circumstances of the time necessitated a merciless occupation of the Ukraine to extract economic resources and labor.99 Rosenberg was not allowed to turn the Ukraine into a quasi-autonomous protectorate under moderate occupation policies as he desired. In general, Rosenberg increasingly lost power-political struggles as World War II progressed.100 Largely because of the spectacle of his being "buffeted about hopelessly in the struggle for power in the Party" in the last years of the Third Reich, as the historian Alan Bullock has worded it, scholars have unjustly underestimated Rosenberg's overall importance to National Socialism.101
Rosenberg saw his ideas of making greater use of captured soldiers from the Soviet Union partially vindicated in late 1944. Rosenberg had supported using the forces of the captured Red Army General Vlassov, who despised Bolshevism, against the Soviets. In a May 1943 newspaper interview, Vlassov had lamented that his Russian Liberation Army existed virtually only on paper. He had regretted that his plans to create a powerful anti-Bolshevik army from captured Red Army soldiers had not been heeded, but he had stressed that sooner or later National Socialist leadership would recognize the need for such a force.102 The hour of Vlassov's Russian Liberation Army came late in 1944, when the Wehrmacht, Propaganda Minister Goebbels, and finally the SS partially adopted Rosenberg's thesis of the necessity of malting extensive use of the populations of the Soviet Union to overthrow Bolshevik rule. When Reichsfuhrer SS (State Leader SS) Himmler finally backed General Vlassov's Russian Liberation Army in October 1944, however, the tide had long since irrevocably turned against the Germans on the Eastern Front.103
During Germany's battle against the Soviet Union, Rosenberg's charge Colonel Ivan Poltavets-Ostranitsa supported National Socialism in an advisory capacity.104 In March 1942, the Ukrainian Cossack leader held personal talks with Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel relating to matters on the Eastern Front. He proposed that Caucasian and Turkestani forces be given official standards with great pomp and ceremony in the near future. Keitel agreed with his suggestion.105 Moreover, on April 15, 1942, Hitler gave Poltavets-Ostranitsa a victory by granting Cossacks a special status and allowing them to perform combat duty for the National Socialist cause.106
As fortunes turned increasingly against the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, Poltavets-Ostranitsa continued to support the German war effort steadfastly. In a February 1943 letter to Rosenberg, he noted the exemplary service that Cossacks had already given the Wehrmacht. He urged his former Aufbau comrade to make greater use of this "warlike people," which could be mobilized into a fighting force of over one and half million soldiers for the "liberation of the Eastern territories from Bolshevism."107 In April 1943, Poltavets-Ostranitsa submitted an essay to Rosenberg's State Ministry in which he outlined the postwar Cossack state he envisioned. The official languages of this entity were to be German, Ukrainian, and Russian. Hitler himself would regulate the borders of the Cossack nation, which was to stretch roughly from what had been Eastern Poland to the Ural Mountains.108 As he had in his time of work in Aufbau, Poltavets-Ostranitsa sought to unite the interests of Cossacks with those of National Socialists.
Poltavets-Ostranitsa witnessed the Third Reich recognize the exemplary Cossack service for the National Socialist cause. On November 10, 1943, Rosenberg and Field Marshall Keitel made a proclamation to the Cossacks in which they praised Cossack courage in the fight against Bolshevism. Their declaration stressed: "The German Army has found honest and loyal allies in the Cossacks." The Cossacks who fought on Germany's side in the war were to be granted special privileges in the Third Reich and were to receive an autonomous Cossack state after the end of hostilities on the Eastern Front.109 The Wehrmacht, far from advancing, however, retreated from this time onwards. Poltavets-Ostranitsa ultimately ended his service for the Third Reich in the Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt - SS (SS Race and Settlement Main Office) based in Prague during the final stages of the war.110