A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind (9 page)

Stresemann’s deputy, Karl von Schubert, however, was growing increasingly anxious. During the Soviet-inspired uprisings of October 1923, a Russian general, Peter Skoblevsky, had been arrested and imprisoned. By May 1926, his trial had still not been held. Soviet officials offered to release more than forty Germans currently in Russian jails in exchange for General Skoblevsky’s freedom. One of the German prisoners, an engineer for the Junker corporation, had been engaged in the illegal production of war materiel inside Russia. The Soviets used this to pressure Berlin into giving up Skoblevsky. If Berlin refused, the implicit threat meant that the German engineer’s trial would publicly reveal what the Junker Corporation was manufacturing. The threat caused consternation inside the Foreign Ministry. Brockdorff-Rantzau urged the release of Skoblevsky.
⁴⁸
Shubert was eager to keep the Russians from exposing the secret arrangements. He was beginning to doubt the value of continued military cooperation in light of the risks. The Foreign Ministry agreed to release Skoblevsky, but Stresemann was not ready to end the arrangements with Moscow. Having Skoblevsky tried was an issue of no consequence to the Wilhelmstrasse. His release cost the Ministry nothing. There would have been no point in calling the Soviets’ bluff over this one case. Yet Schubert’s fears steadily mounted.

On July 9, Schubert strongly advised against Reichswehr participation in Soviet military maneuvers inside Russia. Such actions, he believed, could only raise unwanted suspicions in the West.
⁴⁹
On July 23, Schubert’s fears reached a tremulous pitch. The situation was dire, he wrote. The Western powers suspected that Germany was involved in a secret military alliance with the Soviets. He denied any such allegations. But if the truth emerged, he pleaded, “our entire strenuously constructed policy could be ruined.”
⁵⁰

Although Schubert was correct that their business with Russia was getting riskier, Stresemann held firm. In full knowledge of the dangers, he allowed and facilitated the transfer of weapons from Russia into
Germany, in flagrant violation of his own assurances to the West that Germany was disarmed. On August 11, he noted that Brockdorff-Rantzau had informed him that 400,000 Russian-produced grenades were stockpiled on the sparsely populated Bear Island (
Bäreninsel
), soon due to be moved. Brockdorff-Rantzau expressed concern that if this shipment of weapons became known, it could severely compromise German foreign policy. The Reichswehr assured him that the chartered ships would be so carefully selected that no one would suspect a thing.
⁵¹
Nothing could possibly go wrong.

As weapon shipments began to flow, so too did rumors. By year’s end, an event occurred that could easily have severed the two countries’ covert cooperation. It very likely would have, but Stresemann’s strategic empathy for his adversaries enabled him to keep a steady hand.

Despite Stresemann’s best efforts, the details of German rearmament could no longer remain secret. Remarkably, the disclosure came not from the Soviet government, as had often been threatened, but from within Germany itself. On December 16, 1926, Philipp Scheidemann, the ex-Chancellor and now head of the Social Democratic Party, stepped forth and delivered a stunning speech to the assembled Reichstag. In full view of foreign dignitaries, including American Ambassador Jacob Gould Schurman, Scheidemann detailed Germany’s covert activities inside the Soviet Union. His speech exposed the ways that Germany was violating the Treaty of Versailles—in stark contrast with Foreign Minister Stresemann’s prominent policy of fulfillment.
⁵²
The revelations would unleash dissension, bring down the government, and call German foreign policy into question. Yet unbeknownst to Scheidemann, it would also create a pattern break, one which Stresemann could use to his advantage.

3
_______
Steady on the Tightrope

Stresemann’s Maneuver, Act II

Revelations

When Philipp Scheidemann took the floor, he plunged the Parliament into mayhem. Within minutes of his speech, the parties on the Right exploded in anger. “Traitor!” they shouted. “Treason!” Using their greater numbers, the Socialists tried to shout their opponents back down but to no effect. Communists shrieked in disbelief at Scheidemann’s allegations, unable to believe what they were hearing about this unwholesome union between Mother Russia and the Fatherland. Reichstag President Paul Löbe repeatedly rang his bell, fruitlessly calling the assembly back to order. At one point, a parliamentarian on the Right leapt up and, pointing to the American Ambassador seated in the gallery, cried, “Why reveal these things to our enemies?”
¹
In the end, Scheidemann’s speech, just days before Christmas 1926, would bring down the Weimar government and force a new coalition into being.

Scheidemann asserted that it was not only their right but their responsibility to speak out in order to keep Germany on the democratic path and the path of peace. An armed force that pursues its own political agenda that is opposed to democracy and peace, he continued, cannot be maintained. Citing a recent speech by General Wilhelm Heye (Chief of the
Truppenamt
²
), in which the General called the army an obedient instrument of the state, Scheidemann remarked that this is a goal that had not yet been reached. Instead, he charged, the Reichswehr had become a state within a state.
³

Given his stature, Scheidemann’s revelations could not simply be dismissed. He was, after all, the very man who had proclaimed the German Republic. Standing on the Reichstag balcony in 1918 at the war’s close, Scheidemann addressed a mob of Berliners and declared that rule by monarchs had ended. He did this in part to stave off an impending revolution, but no vote had ever been cast on the matter. He was acting on his own authority. In February 1919, he became the Republic’s first Chancellor. That summer he resigned, refusing to sign the Versailles Treaty once its harsh terms were announced. Despite his act of nationalistic protest, as a leading German socialist Scheidemann remained the target of right-wing furor, even being attacked with acid by extremists. His historical significance aside, as the Social Democratic Party head, he presently controlled a substantial bloc of votes in parliament. Thus, in December of 1926, when the ex-Chancellor rose to speak, he commanded considerable attention.

Turning to the delegates on the Right and addressing them directly, Scheidemann announced: “Do not pretend that what we discuss here today is a surprise to other nations. I know and expect this comment. If you are honest, you must admit that probably all countries in the world know exactly what is happening here.” The German people, he explained, knew the least about what the Reichswehr was doing.
⁴

Although German resistance to disarmament and Allied occupation had been widely suspected, Scheidemann was referring specifically to a recent exposé in the December 6
Manchester Guardian
. The newspaper—probably working from leads given to them by the Social Democratic Party—described some of the details surrounding the Reichswehr’s secret rearmament inside Soviet Russia. Because he could not obtain satisfactory assurances from the government that these activities would cease, Scheidemann decided to reveal the full story (or as much of it as he could) to the public through his Reichstag address. His speech has often been depicted as a purely political maneuver, intended to discredit the government and force a reorganization, but when one actually examines the text of his remarks, it is clear that deeper issues were also at stake.

Scheidemann’s address covered three distinct acts of subterfuge: financial improprieties, covert military training, and the production of war materiel. First, he described how money from the federal budget
was being diverted to fund illegal rearmament in Russia. He outlined the scheme of withdrawing cash from a bank account and covering up the money trail. When he told the assembly that German officers and generals had been traveling to Russia under fake names and false passports, the Right erupted. One parliamentarian from Mecklenburg, Herr von Graefe, shouted, “What would happen to you in Paris if you said these things about the French?”
⁵
His point was that no nation would tolerate the public disclosure of state secrets.

The effect of von Graefe’s words was electrifying. The entire room descended into cries from the Right and counter-charges from the Left. Reichstag President Löbe called for silence. Scheidemann tried to continue. “I have only the wish—” before being drowned out by shouts of “Traitor!” President Löbe fecklessly rang his bell for order.

When Scheidemann at last resumed, he described in overpowering detail how the Reichswehr was in league with right-wing organizations across Germany to secretly drill future soldiers under the guise of athletic training. The military, he alleged, was providing weapons and funds to train civilians in military functions. It was employing former officers as so-called sports instructors—all in violation of Versailles.

In the final section of his address, Scheidemann discussed the rearmament currently underway inside Russia, to the great embarrassment of Communists present. Seeing no need to rehash the details reported by the
Manchester Guardian
, he instead supplemented the case with additional allegations. According to his sources, airplanes, bombs, and poison gas were all being built beneath the Soviet cloak. As recently as late September to early October 1926, four ships had traveled from Leningrad to Stettin, a port city then part of Germany. Three of these ships—the
Gottenburg
,
Artushof
, and
Kolberg
—reached Germany, though the fourth had sunk. The workers unloading the cargo were sworn to secrecy. The contents were innocuously labeled “Aluminum” and “
Rundeisen”
(a type of steel). In reality it was thousands of tons of war materiel. Finally, Scheidemann described a collaboration between Reichswehr financing, a chemical company in Hamburg, and the plant in Russia producing gas grenades. This time, the Communists were outraged. Though publicly pledged to supporting Communist
movements throughout the world, here was evidence that Soviet Russia was aiding the harshest opponents of Communism inside Germany. Nothing was making sense.

Turning to address the Communist delegates, Scheidemann admonished that they should be opposed to what Russia was doing because it was only pushing the country further to the Right. “We want to be Moscow’s friend, but we don’t want to be its fool.” Scheidemann called it a mistake that Germany forged an agreement with Russia just after making peace, but it would be far worse if such dealings were continuing even after Locarno and Germany’s entry into the League. Becoming ever bolder, he proclaimed, “Enough with these dirty dealings. No more munitions from Russia for German weapons.” The Communists let loose a cacophony, but Scheidemann was not cowed. “You want to drown me out with your shouts, so I will repeat it. No more munitions from Russia for German weapons.”
⁶

To some, Scheidemann’s Reichstag speech was a flagrant act of high treason. To others, it was a profile in courage. Toward the close of his remarks, Scheidemann delivered a powerful and prescient defense of his position. He declared that secret armament was a grave danger. It irresponsibly damaged foreign policy. It compelled the nation to lies and hypocrisy. One day, he warned, we will be caught, and then the world will say that Germany is dishonest. “This cannot serve our Republic. We want to be seen in the world as an upstanding people that fulfills its obligations.” Finally, Scheidemann announced that his Party would withdraw its support for the government in order to trigger the formation of a new one.
⁷
But neither Scheidemann’s words nor his Party’s actions could alter the course toward rearmament.

Throughout the whole of his speech, Scheidemann restricted his attacks to the military alone. In one of his only references to the Foreign Minister, he portrayed Stresemann as embattled by the Reichswehr’s actions. He insisted that Germany’s opponents abroad referred continuously to Germany’s lack of disarmament, saying that Germany gave only the appearance of disarming. He implied that, unfortunately, they were correct. “If you don’t know this, ask Herr Stresemann, who must overcome these difficulties.”
⁸
In essence, he was giving the Foreign Minister a free pass.

Reactions

Scheidemann’s speech created a pattern break moment. It forced the issue of German rearmament into the open, enabling Stresemann to observe reactions from East and West. Would the British and French demand an end to German–Soviet relations? Would the Soviets call off the military cooperation? Or could Germany continue with business as usual, preserving ties to both sides and thereby extract concessions from both?

The Soviet response was telling. Having frequently threatened to expose the secret arrangements, once they were already partly revealed, the Soviets now showed themselves eager to cover up the rest and keep the agreements intact, just as Stresemann had suspected. What Stalin had declared at the start of 1926, that the Soviet Union should build socialism in one country, appeared to be his genuine position. Stresemann had grasped that Stalin’s greater aim, at least for the time being, was not fomenting revolution inside Germany but instead revitalizing Soviet military and economic strength.