European Jungle by F. Yeats-Brown Pages 143-148Now that the policy of armed risings had failed, the internal organization of the Communist Party was thoroughly overhauled. Three of its centers were directly dependent on Moscow:
(1) The German Communist Party.
(2) The Young Communist Union.
(3) The Red Front Fighters League.
[...]
Newspapers supporting the movement included International Press Correspondence, The Red Flag, and The Red Front. More than a dozen Communist newspapers were published in provincial centers. From January, 1929, to June, 1931, a period of two and a half years, 41 editors of these publications were tried and convicted of high treason by the then very lenient and certainly non-Nazi courts of Germany.
Communist activity was not limited to the masses of the electorate: it penetrated also the army, navy, and police forces. In the year 1932 there was a monthly average of 40 cases of incitement to disaffection in the Army, and 74 in the Police. Accused were generally charged with the distribution of subversive literature, for attempts to reach the Forces by personal contact were almost impossible to prove.
Preparations made by the Communists for a second armed rising in 1932 were well planned and nation-wide. Starving men and women were looting provision shops. Strikes and riots succeeded each other with monotonous regularity. There were 7,000,000 unemployed.
The central question of the rising is the arming of the proletariat [wrote Hans Kippenberger, alias A. Langer.* I have slightly abbreviated his redundant sentences, without altering their meaning.] The question of arms must be solved by the masses themselves. One could add indefinitely to Lenin's list of primitive weapons available to the proletariat: to "knives, knuckle-dusters, rags soaked in petrol" one could add "axes, bricks, boiling water to pour on the bestial police raging in the working-class quarters, and simple hand grenades to mention only the most primitive of the almost infinite possibilities available everywhere. It is proletarians who work in chemical factories and in mines, who handle poison gases and explosives, and transport on the railways and waterways the bourgeoisie's instruments of murder: if they make use of these possibilities for the sake of their freedom they are only doing their duty.
*Der bewaffneter Aufstand, by Hans Kippenberger. Geneva, 1931
At this time the Communist Party had spies and saboteurs in all the major industries of the country, a courierservice to Moscow, complete with ciphers, passport-forging establishments, friendly customs-officials, and concealed stocks of dynamite, incendiary material and weapons in all the principal cities of Germany. Certainly the time was ripe for a bid for power.
The National Socialist Party, on the other hand, had reached a difficult point in its evolution. In July, 1932, it had obtained 230 seats in the Reichstag, but in the November elections it lost 34 seats, whereas the Communists gained 11. The Communists knew, moreover, that the Nazis were short of funds, and that they themselves could rely on substantial contributions from Moscow.
Terror, scientifically applied, is an invariable prelude to a Communist rising. The Police Commissioner of Berlin made a report on August loth, 193 1, with regard to the murder of three inspectors and the wounding of three constables in which he stated that "police investigations have proved that in all the above-mentioned cases murders were planned. Communist organizations have made it their task to fight the executive institutions of the State by organized assassination."
Subsequent investigations have proved that the Police Commissioner was right. The following table shows the casualties suffered by police who came into conflict with the Communists in the course of their duties:
In five years, therefore, 128 Nazis were killed and 19,769 injured. Each year the Communist murders and assaults increased. It is true that there were similar mounting casualties on the Communist side.
''Cet animal est tres mechant . .There is an unfortunately common type of Englishman a product of our insularity, I suppose who says of revolutionaries: "There's nothing to choose between them: both sides adopted violent methods." If someone hit my complacent countryman in the eye, or tried to pick his pocket, he would probably resist and retaliate, and he would certainly resent the attitude of mind of a spectator who watched the progress of the fight from afar and declared that people who brawled like that ought really to be locked up.
The people who began the brawling in Europe were the Communists. In Russia they had excuse for their original actions, but in Germany, under the democratic Weimar Republic, Communism could have won the votes that National Socialism won had it been the will of the people to renounce Christianity and adopt the gospel of Marx. It was not the will of the people, as the following table clearly shows:
Although Germany definitely turned against Communism in 1930, preparations to force it upon the German people went forward vigorously, even after Hitler had been nominated Chancellor, on January 30, 1933. A few of these plots are given below, because the memories of the friends of Communism are very short:
On February 13th, 1932, at a meeting of Communist leaders at Aue, in Saxony, it was stated that "big things will happen shortly," and arms were issued to members of the Red Army.
On February 15th, 1932, the police in Flensburg received information that armed groups, provided with explosives, had been formed from the worst characters in Hamburg for the purpose of setting fire to buildings and blowing up bridges. Inscriptions appeared on the walls: "Workers, arm yourselves!
On February 17th, 1932, the police in the Ruhr district learned that terrorist groups of Communists were about to attack various railway stations
and municipalities.
On February 18th, 1932, in Cammin, Pomerania, the police discovered a plan in cypher for an armed rising. Led by a bricklayer, 25 men were to capture leading citizens and hold them as hostages. Public buildings were to be occupied, and railway bridges destroyed. A similar terrorist group was discovered at Burscheid, where nearly a hundredweight of dynamite was confiscated.
In Herdecke, Schwerte, and Hagen, 43 Communists were arrested, in possession of 7 rifles, 42 pistols, 8 bombs, and other explosive material.
Between July, 1931, and December, 1932, a period of eighteen months, 11 1 cases of high treason were proved against the Communists in the German Courts.From all parts of the country came news of an impending Communist revolt; indeed, the Comintern had openly boasted of its preparations, and that it had inspired strikes and street-fighting. In Altona, Communist groups paraded the streets armed with knives, daggers, and bottles of sulphuric acid, giving the clenched-fist salute. The memory of the bloody Sunday of Altona, on July 17th, 1932, when 17 people were killed and over 50 wounded, was still fresh in the minds of the inhabitants. In Hanover preparations for revolution were well advanced: 100,000 detonators and large quantities of explosives had been stolen from a forester's house, and the rising was fixed for the day that Adolf Hitler was to assume office. Any of these conspiracies, or all of them together, would have provided a starting-point for the severe repressive measures which the Nationalist Socialist Government, in office only since January 30th, 1933, had undoubtedly determined to take against the Communists, when the Reichstag caught fire mysteriously on the night of February 27th.
You can read the rest of the book here:
https://ia802609.us.archive.org/1/items/europeanjungle00yeat/europeanjungle00yeat.pdf. There's much much more in there to be read. Yeats-Brown based his information on archival material that he searched for while in Germany and no doubt other archives in the European countries he visited. On page 374 he reproduces in full the entire service record of Adolf Hitler that he translated from the Munich Archives.
He is also a very fair observer, he criticises Hitler for his alleged breaking of the Munich Agreement, and for having "broken his word" on September 26th 1938, although this is a common misconception (see here for that myth:
https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=13155). Over-all, the book is a joy to read. His chapter on the Soviet Union is very enjoyable as well, I couldn't stop myself from laughing, particularly at this comment:
On the Martina, a Volga steamer, the engines seemed to be more or less efficient, but we started six hours late in Gorki and arrived thirty-six hours late in Stalingrad. The Responsible Worker in charge of the bathroom water supply rarely remembered to turn it on. The decks were never scrubbed. Brasswork was unpolished. Hawsers were not flaked down. Litter was lying everywhere. I washed in a cracked basin from a leaky tap. The sanitary arrangements reeked to heaven. The Soviet Government has liquidated many things, but not its lavatories.
F. Yeats-Brown, European Jungle (Macrae Smith Company, 1939), Pp. 58-59
You cannot help but laugh! It's a genuine very witty and informative book to read. Yeats-Brown also informs us of the Czech origins of the May Crisis, in which Edward Benes falsely claimed Hitler mobilised against Czechoslovakia. So he was definitely ahead of his time when it came to information.
