Witness to the German Revolution Read Free Page A

Ludendorff was better than Liebknecht.

By July the continuing economic crisis was causing serious political tensions. In the Rhineland demands were growing for independence from the German republic. The government of the shipping magnate Wilhelm Cuno, based on the parties of the center, was increasingly unpopular.
    Amid the Collapse of Bourgeois Germany
    Correspondance internationale , July 14, 1923
    The revolutionary situation is ripening in Germany. The remarkable and rapid growth of Communist influence is perhaps the best indication of it. After having remained for several months with an average print run of 25,000 copies, Die Rote Fahne of Berlin is now printing 60,000, more than Vorwärts. And it is, after all, only one of the KPD’s 30 daily papers. The growth in the party’s membership is also noticeable, as is the extension of its trade union influence, its moral leadership within the factory committee movement—the most active current in Germany’s proletariat—its key role in the political life of Saxony and Thuringia, and its striking electoral successes in such a backward area as Mecklenburg-Strelitz. All these facts are evidence that the masses’ will for action is awakening. When a Communist Party develops in this way, it is because it is approaching a historical turning point. The German revolutionaries are well aware of this.

    On July 12 Die Rote Fahne published a document whose style and tone take us back to just before the great days of 1919. It is an appeal from the KPD central committee to the party members. The gravity of the political situation is set out in precise terms—bluntly and with no bombast. The conclusions are formulated with the sober energy of a challenge issued after mature consideration to the reactionary elements which are biding their time just outside the frontiers of legality. The KPD central committee mentions the preparations being made in the Rhine region to proclaim a Rhineland republic, under the aegis of the occupation authorities and with their financial assistance. The Bavarian fascists used to get French money; some Rhineland fascists are still getting it. The government, and the social democrats who are members of it, are quite well aware of the preparations for a reactionary violent coup and for foreign intervention. Fascist action could also begin as a result of measures by the Reich against red Saxony and Thuringia; or else it could be the unexpected result of a simple wage struggle. To quote the document itself:
    Our party must raise the combativity of its organizations to such a level that they will not be surprised by civil war wherever it may be launched.
    […] If legal communications are interrupted by a general strike in the railways and postal services, or by military operations, we must make sure of all our lines of communication in advance.
    […] The fascists count on winning in civil war by the most resolute use of violence and of crushing brutality. Any workers who resist them and are then taken prisoner will be executed. To break strikes, they will go so far as to shoot every tenth striker. Their violent coup can only be stopped by meeting white terror with red terror. If the fascists, armed to the teeth, shoot our proletarian fighters, they will find us implacable and determined to destroy them. If they put every tenth striker up against the wall, the revolutionary workers will kill one fascist in five.
    The fascist associations have arms and military equipment.
Those workers who are not yet in possession of arms must know where and when they can obtain them if they are needed.
    It is in the Ruhr and the occupied region that the working-class faces the greatest threat. The KPD considers armed struggle against French imperialism to be impossible, and envisages a general strike there if necessary.
    Why?
    German corn is more expensive inside Germany than American and Argentinean corn. At Hamburg at the beginning of July 100