with an order to the Central Committee of the German Communist Party from Zinoviev and the executive committee of the Comintern: There is a revolutionary situation in Germany. The Communist Party must seize power. The Central Committee of the German Communist Party is incredulous. The members can scarcely believe their ears. They know that they cannot hope to overthrow the Berlin government. But Bela Kun’s orders are clear: an immediate uprising, the abolition of the Weimar republic, and the establishment of a Communist dictatorship in Germany. The Central Committee of the German Communist Party obeys the instructions from Moscow. As a loyal subordinate of the Executive Committee of the Communist International headed by Zinoviev and directed by Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Radek and Stalin, the German Communist Party it can not disobey.
On March twenty-second, a general strike was declared in the industrial districts of Mansfeld and Merseburg, central Germany. On March twenty-fourth, the Communists seized the city administration buildings at Hamburg. In Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz, and other cities of central Germany the Communists directed their attack upon court houses, city halls, public banks and police headquarters. The official German Communist newspaper, Die Rote Fahne, openly called for a revolution.
In the Mansfeld copper mining district, Max Hoelz, the Communist Robin Hood who had a year before single-handedly waged guerrilla warfare against the Berlin government throughout the Vogtland area of Saxony, arrived to announce that he was in charge of operations. About the same time a series of bombing outrages took place throughout Germany, including attempts to blow up public buildings and monuments in Berlin. In this the government recognized Hoelz’s expert hand.
On March twenty-fourth, the Communist workers in the huge nitrogen plant at Leuna, armed with rifles and hand grenades, barricaded themselves within the factory.
But the Communist effort to co-ordinate these localized actions broke down completely. Their loyal, trained party regulars responded to the call, and were sent to their death by the party, battalion after battalion, more ruthlessly than Ludendorff had sent his troops into battle. The great mass of workers neither responded to the call for a general strike, nor joined in the scattered outbreaks. By early April, the uprising had been put down everywhere.
The leader of the German Communist Party, Dr. Paul Levi, who had opposed the adventure as madness from the very start was expelled from the party for putting the blame in no uncertain language where it belonged.
He informed Moscow that it understood nothing of the conditions in Western Europe, that it had sacrificed the lives of thousands of workers upon an insane gamble. He referred to the Bolshevik leaders, and the emissaries of the Comintern as “scoundrels” and “cheap politicians.”
Within a short time after this March uprising, the Communist Party of Germany had lost half of its members. As for Max Hoelz, the Communist firebrand who expected to seize power by dynamite, he was tried on charges of “murder, arson, highway-robbery and fifty other counts” and sentenced to life imprisonment.
I was interested in Hoelz’s fate, because for all his wild notions, he was undoubtedly an honest and bold revolutionist. To the workers of his native Vogtland he has become a legendary figure. When I was stationed several years later in Breslau, where Hoelz was imprisoned, I established contact with one of his jailers who had become deeply attached to him. Through him I sent Hoelz books, chocolates and food. Together we plotted to liberate Hoelz. But it was necessary for me to obtain assistance as well as authorization from the Communist Party. I communicated with Hamann, the leader of the party in Breslau, and he promised to have several reliable men for me. I then went to Berlin and conferred with the Central Committee of the party. They debated the issue. Some wanted Hoelz released through a legal maneuver, such as electing him to the Reichstag. Others believed that his escape would be the very thing to galvanize the masses, who were then very apathetic to the Communist Party. I was granted permission to attempt the jail delivery. Upon my return to Breslau, however, the first thing Hoelz’s jailor told me was: “We have been ordered to chain up his door.”
The authorities had learned of our plot, through none other than Hamann himself, the leader of the Breslau Communists, member of the Reichstag—and police stool pigeon.
Hoelz was later released by legal means. Although I had been working to effect his escape and was in constant communication with him while in Breslau, I met him for the first time in Moscow in 1932, at the apartment of Kisch, the German Communist writer. When he learned who I was, he laughed:
“Oh, you are the rich American uncle who sent me good books and food.”
In Moscow Hoelz was a hero for a time. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, a factory in Leningrad was named after him, and he was furnished with a good apartment at the Hotel Metropole. But when the Communists capitulated to Hitler in 1933 without firing a shot, and it became clear that this was the official policy of Stalin and the Comintern, Hoelz asked for his passport. He was put off day after day, and spies were set on his trail. He became furious. He demanded immediate permission to leave. His friends in Moscow now avoided him. The Ogpu refused to return his passport. A little later an insignificant notice appeared in the Pravda announcing that Hoelz had been found drowned in a stream outside Moscow. In the Ogpu I was told that after the rise of Hitler, Hoelz had been seen coming out of the German Embassy in Moscow. The fact is that Hoelz was killed by the Ogpu because his glorious revolutionary past made him a potential leader of the revolutionary opposition to the Comintern.
The defeat of the March uprising in Germany sobered Moscow considerably. Even Zinoviev toned down his proclamations and manifestoes. Europe was quite evidently not done with capitalism. Nor was Russia itself—for after the suppression of the peasant rebellions and the Kronstadt revolt, Lenin made important economic concessions to peasants and business men. Russia settled down to a period of internal reconstruction, and the world revolution went decidedly into the background. The Comintern was busy finding scapegoats for its defeats, cleaning out Communist Central Committees in various countries and appointing new leaders in their places. Factional fights in the Communist Parties abroad kept the machinery of the Comintern busy drawing up resolutions, counter-resolutions and expulsion orders.
In January, 1923 I was working in Moscow in the third section of the Intelligence Department of the Red Army. Word reached us that the French were about to occupy the Ruhr in order to collect reparations. I was living at this time in the Hotel Lux, which was also the chief residence of the officials of the Comintern and of visiting foreign Communists. . . .
I want to explain that the Hotel Lux was, and still is in fact, the headquarters of Western Europe in Moscow. Through its lobbies pass Communist leaders from every country, as well as trade union delegates, and individual workers who have in some fashion earned a trip to the proletarian Mecca.
Consequently, it is important for the Soviet government to keep a close watch upon the Hotel Lux, in order to discover exactly what the comrades in every country are saying and doing, to know their attitude toward the Soviet government and toward the warring factions within the Bolshevik Party. For this purpose the Hotel Lux is honeycombed with Ogpu agents registered as guests and residents. Among the agents who lived at the Hotel Lux and kept the Ogpu informed about the doings of foreign Communists and workers, was Constantine Oumansky, at present Soviet ambassador to the United States.
I met Oumansky in 1922 for the first time. Oumansky, born in Bessarabia, had lived in Rumania and Austria until 1922 when he came to Moscow. Because of his knowledge of foreign languages, he received a position with Tass, the official Soviet News Agency. His wife was a typist in the Comintern office.
When Oumansky’s turn came to serve in the Red Army he told me that he did not wish to “waste” two years in common army barracks. Soviet life then had not assumed the caste character it now bears, and his remark shocked me. Most Communists still look upon service in the Red Army as a privilege. Not so Oumansky. He presented himself at the offices of the Intelligence Department with a recommendation from Foreign Commissar Chicherin and from Doletsky, Chief of the Tass, requesting that he be permitted to “serve” his two years in the Army as a translator for the Fourth Department.
That very evening while I was in the company of Firin, at that time assistant to General Berzin, Chief of the Military Intelligence