Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  Effects and causes

  Last week, on October 31, Berliners paid 64 billion for a pound of smoked sausage, with the dollar at a rate of 65 billion. Meanwhile, at a meeting held in the town hall, the mayor of Berlin said that “more than 300,000 Berlin workers are unemployed.” A report by Frau Weil made known the destitution of twelve thousand orphans sheltered and nourished by the city, which has accommodation equipped to take only 4,000 children. Often up to three abandoned children have to sleep in the same bed…

  I met a doctor from a poor area, one of those who, a few months ago, had to go on strike to obtain a very modest salary from the sickness insurance fund. “Since the onset of autumn,” he told me, “we are all seeing a sudden development of illnesses caused by hunger. Scrofula is normal among infants in working-class districts. Dropsy occurs frequently. There has been a reappearance of the ‘hunger sickness’ which we saw at the worst times during the war: the flesh swells, goes dull and offers no resistance to the touch. Bone decay, forms of enteritis and all the varieties of tuberculosis in the long run gnaw away the organism which has been enfeebled by starvation. Have you noticed the complexion of faces you see, for example, near the Silesia station?167 This greyish, yellowish, discolored hue puts the brand of hunger on people’s foreheads. A diet which is inadequate in fat, sugar and meat exhausts all the reserves of the organism whose capacity for work rapidly diminishes. Are you surprised that these people are slow to awaken to revolutionary consciousness? Remember that their vital energies have been undermined by famine…”

  “Do you know what is going on in the schools? A rapid survey, carried out on October 27 in nine school districts of Berlin has recorded the presence in class of 470 children who had not eaten anything all day! The parents warn the teachers: if the child faints, don’t be surprised! And then, ‘don’t be too hard on her: she’s hungry.’”

  We arrived at the Alexanderplatz—one of the busiest squares in Berlin; comparable to the Place de la République in Paris—to find a long queue of old men and women, of people of no discernible age, of children with poor little wizened faces. “Look! They’re waiting for the soup kitchen.”

  I bought a paper for 10 billion and found the new prices: milk, 20 billion for a litre; gas and water, 21 billion for a cubic meter, tram ticket 10 billion; loaf (four pounds), 25 billion… My paper also told me that on the other hand: “Before the war Herr Hugo Stinnes’ fortune was already estimated at 100 million gold marks, and like all the big industrialists he was able to multiply it several times during the war. The Montan factories and the electricity works, in which Herr Stinnes possesses the majority of shares, his shipping companies, his coal marketing company at Mülheim and his transatlantic shipping firm in Hamburg are each worth about a hundred million gold marks. To this must be added his involvement in business abroad, in the mining industry, oil shares, banking, shipping, his various possessions in Germany itself: newspapers, printing presses, paper-works, forestry—the whole constituting a fortune which doubtless rises to billions in gold marks and could be expressed in paper marks only by using astronomical figures… Only posterity will know the truth about a financial power which, exceeding that of the likes of Morgan, Rockefeller, Cecil Rhodes, Harriman, Carnegie, Rothschild, Vanderbilt, has reached legendary proportions and given birth to a sort of myth…”168

  The death of a people, the end of a culture; what an inexhaustible source of wealth!

  The suicide of the German republic

  Will the suicide of the German republic be consummated for its fifth anniversary? Fearful gatherings of people are arguing passionately outside newsagents’ shops. Papers are too dear; people come to read the headlines and what can be seen of the front pages in the shop windows. Then they discuss with their neighbors, creating curious little open-air meetings.

  The most recent news, extremely alarming, has made the republican papers take on a panic-stricken tone. In Bavaria, on the borders of Thuringia, in Pomerania, in Mecklenburg, in East Prussia, in Silesia, fascist forces are mobilizing for a military march on Berlin, announced for November 7. The mass of the fascist army is concentrated on the borders of Thuringia under the orders of captain Ehrhardt who is seen as the “dictator of tomorrow.” Erhardt is said to have called on the Stresemann government to resign… The Young German Order from central Germany has been mobilized on the night of November 3. The Stahlhelm association has mobilized its five thousand local groups. At Coburg, the fascist headquarters, the streets are full of young men in full uniform, with white armbands, helmets and rifles. Captain CL Faber, correspondent for the Montag Morgen (Radical) in this “theatre of war,” notes the presence of concentrations of artillery at Burggrub and four thousand Austrian fascists at Kronach. “The fascists,” he writes, “seem to be intending to make a sudden attack towards Eisenach-Erfurt-Weimar and thus cut the Stuttgart line, that is the line to north Germany; at the same time they would take over some important arms factories.” Meanwhile they are carrying out requisitions, expulsions of Jews from Coburg, maneuvers and troop reviews under the inspection of the escapee from the Leipzig High Court, whom another journalist calls Ehrhardt, “for whom all doors are opened.”

  The government knows what is going on. Is it counting on the Reichswehr? “The Reichswehr will never fire on the Reichswehr,” claim the nationalists. Moreover, the Bavarian fascists seem not to be irregulars and to be acting with the approval of Herr von Kahr. The radical press wants a call for republican volunteers. A meeting of republican youth (November 4) has decided in principle to answer the call. Herr Sollmann, recently a SPD minister, spoke some memorable words there, doubly memorable for a Socialist and an ex-minister of Stresemann: “If the Republic dies,” he said, “it will be because of the cowardice of its leaders.” How right he is, and how well he knows himself!

  Is there not a lot of deceit mingled with this cowardice? No measures have been taken against the fascists in recent days. But Vorwärts has made “sensational revelations” about the Communist danger. Brandler, for whose arrest there is a warrant, has gone into hiding. It is said that they are looking for the whole Zentrale 169 of the KPD. In Berlin there have been numerous arrests of militants accused of taking part in the formation of workers’ hundreds. A ministerial edict has banned the congress of factory councils from being held anywhere in Germany…

  The fruits of Social Democratic treachery

  It seems that we are in a state of complete political confusion, but that is only an illusion; reaction is at work. The departing SPD ministers have not yet been replaced. The act giving exceptional powers, which was to be valid only as long as the Great Coalition cabinet was in power, and which was therefore automatically canceled by the resignations of citizens Schmidt, Sollmann and Radbruch, remains in force. There was talk of making up the cabinet with non-party figures. Then it was admitted that, yielding to demands from Bavaria and heavy industry, Herr Stresemann was negotiating the entry of the DNVP into his government. That would amount to the establishment of a right wing dictatorship with the appearances of legality. The DNVP are imposing as a condition the removal of the SPD from the Prussian government and the granting of the most important portfolios to their party. Some curious feelers have been put out. There has been talk of a directory to be headed by Herr Minoux, who has just resigned from his job as general manager of Herr Hugo Stinnes’ companies in order to devote himself to politics. Count Reventlow has published an account of a recent interview between Herr Hergt, one of the DNVP leaders, and General von Seeckt, commander-in-chief of the Reichswehr, at which perfect agreement is said to have been reached. It seems that everything is combining to establishing a Stinnes dictatorship, perhaps soon a Stinnes-Ludendorff dictatorship.

  Let’s dwell on the numerous indications of a coup in the course of preparation, or more precisely already being carried out. Herr von Preger, Bavarian representative in Berlin, has given a member of the staff of the Münchener-Augsburger Abendzeitung (Munich and Augsburg Evening News) precise s
tatements as to what his government wants: “We remain German with all our soul. We have no intention of splitting off from the Reich. But we want an end to what are called the gains of the revolution and to restore order…” This political program can be expressed in three words: Bavarianization of Germany.

  Herr von Kahr, continuing to apply this program, has banned the sale in Bavaria of the main Berlin liberal papers: Berliner Tageblatt, Vossische Zeitung, Mittag Zeitung (Midday News), Vorwärts, and also the Frankfurter Zeitung (Frankfurt News), (November 5). That’s enough to tell us what he means by the freedom of the press. In Saxony, General Müller means exactly the same; he has just banned the publication of any information other than official communiqués about incidents in which the Reichswehr has used its weapons—that is, the murder of workers. At Zwickau, the same general has banned a conference of SPD office-holders.

  General Reinhardt is operating in red Thuringia. And what he is doing would be quite unbelievable if recent events in Germany had not accustomed us to every kind of duplicity on the part of the official government, to every kind of cowardice on the part of the social democrats who tolerate this duplicity and cover up for it, and every kind of effrontery on the part of the armed reactionaries. Twenty to thirty thousand Bavarian nationalist volunteers, paid by the Munich government and the tycoon Hugenberg, have gathered on the frontier of workers’ Thuringia. The castle of the Duke of Coburg is serving as Hitler’s official headquarters. Interviewed by a staff reporter of the Berliner Tageblatt, the head of the Coburg police said that “nothing now can prevent the explosion of a national movement.” The central committee of the Stahlhelm association sent a formal appeal to Herr Stresemann on November 5, urging him to establish a national dictatorship. The statement concluded with the words: “Act so that others are not forced to act!” In bourgeois democratic circles and even in Catholic circles there is great alarm. The government has announced that it will deal with any situation that may arise by sending Reichswehr troops to the frontier between Thuringia and Bavaria. But General Reinhardt, who is required by Herr Gessler’s instructions (according to Vorwärts and according to a letter from the Reichswehr minister himself, made public on November 8) to defend Thuringia against any possible attack by nationalist gangs, has had posters put up in all the towns of a state where, in the opinion of the bourgeois press “there is exemplary order,” declaring that he “has come to restore order, to put an end to red terror and to disarm the workers’ hundreds.” The defense of Thuringia has become military occupation and the disarmament of this proletarian state! By a decree of November 5, however, Herr Gessler has taken upon himself to protect the Reichswehr and to suppress any offense against the army.

  In effect, we are already living in a regime of reactionary dictatorship; it lacks formal authority, something which is quite a problem since the working class, in a situation of being defeated without having fought, remains formidable to the ruling parties whose aim is a brutal intensification of the exploitation of labor. Now we can see the terrible consequences of the betrayals of social democracy, repeated and obstinately continued (entry of the SPD into the Great Coalition, subsequent reconstitution of the Stresemann cabinet, proclamation of martial law, vote for the act giving exceptional powers) and also the unforgivable failure of the left social democrats who let slip the opportunity for a workers’ offensive when the troops entered Saxony. Now the enemy class has taken the initiative. In the class war, battles which were not joined—retreats—can be counted as defeats and cost as dear as defeats.

  Pogroms in Berlin

  Today, November 5, we have seen in the center of Berlin some authentic pogroms in the old Russian style. This terrifying display of human bestiality, which everywhere the Soviet regime has effortlessly made impossible, occurred in the capital of Germany and was able to continue with impunity for almost an entire day. In a street close to the Alexanderplatz170, a young Jew was grabbed in the street, stripped of his clothes and beaten; he escaped naked from a jeering mob and got away with his life only thanks to the courage of a master butcher who hid him in his shop and then stood at the door with an axe keeping everyone out. In another nearby street, just like at Zhitomir under Tsar Nicholas II, the bedding and crockery of Jewish families were thrown out of the windows. That happened right in front of the windows of the Polizeipräsidium 171 and a barracks of green police. The police intervened only belatedly, gently and apparently with reluctance. A Jewish doctor (a patriotic bourgeois with a war medal) says that police officers drove past a group which was knocking him about and refused him any effective protection. Wouldn’t you imagine you were reading a report from Odessa, dated 1905?

  During and after the disturbances I went through the districts where the anti-Semitic riot took place. I got a very clear impression of an organized action. I saw groups of young “unemployed” anti-Semites going up the Friedrichstrasse, clearly led by the inevitable cyclists who in Germany have the job of stewarding all political demonstrations. Moreover, for months the nationalist press, led by the Völkischer Beobachter, has been advocating the “liberation of Germany from the Jewish yoke.” And events even more abominable than those in Berlin took place near Coburg, in the region occupied by the Bavarians. In the village of Altenhausen on November 5, uniformed nationalists surrounded the homes of several Jewish families and made them appear before a sort of court martial where the majority of the adults were sentenced to be hanged on the spot. The victims of this atrocious hoax escaped only after a bad dream lasting a whole night in which they were robbed of everything and ill-treated.

  We should stress that these pogroms are not the work of the unemployed as such, but of a very particular minority recruited among the unemployed by the nationalist agitators. In the main districts of Berlin, large spontaneous demonstrations of the unemployed have taken place without any sort of outrages occurring. It’s true that bakeries and pork-butchers’ shops were looted all over the place. But these actions should not be confused with those of the anti-Semites, although the police have persisted in lumping them together and have announced, to the great pleasure of the shopkeepers, that five hundred and thirty looters have been arrested (November 7).

  In Germany, just as in Tsarist Russia, anti-Semitism is the necessary diversion provided by nationalism for the anger of the unthinking crowds and the brutality of the hired rabble which it needs to control the streets and create the illusion of a popular movement. The police did not act severely against the Berlin pogroms, probably because they were part of the theatrical staging intended to prepare opinion for the advent of a right wing dictatorship.

  Via bankruptcy to capitalist dictatorship

  On the day when the hunger riots and pogroms in Berlin began, the dollar was worth, at the official rate, 420 billion, and a three-pound wholemeal loaf cost 140 billion. A ruinously expensive measure, disastrous like all those taken in the financial sphere. The five hundred million from the gold loan which was supposed to provide the general public with a stable means of exchange have disappeared without trace in circulation, which is monopolized by wealthy speculators. These are making huge profits according to a plan which can be sketched out as follows:The financial speculator buys from the state, at a nominal rate, “German dollars” which he pays for in paper marks (and which he often arranges to pay in arrears at one fifth or one tenth of their official value).

  He deposits in the state loan bank his real-value notes and receives a credit in paper marks which can be reimbursed in paper marks, and with these he recommences operations.

  Alternatively, he sells his “German dollars” in private dealings at five or six times their face value (about two trillion with an official rate of 420 or 625 billion).

  With the paper marks he has now got back, he buys, at the face value of 420 or 625 billion, genuine American dollars, which in reality, on all the world’s exchanges, are worth seven to ten times more, and which he rapidly smuggles abroad.

  The result of these various operations mu
ltiplied infinitely is the bankruptcy of people on small fixed incomes, the exploitation of the mass of consumers and the systematic theft of state wealth.

  Since the five hundred million from the gold loan is already exhausted, the Stresemann cabinet has just decreed the issuing of a new gold loan of three hundred million at six percent. A fictitious value, established without any sort of backing, destined to be stolen like the first issue. These eight hundred million in “real value” paper, which speculation has managed to swallow up in a fortnight, can be reimbursed in Rentenmarks still to come. So, before even having been collected, the first credit annuity in Rentenmarks granted to the Reich by the capitalist corporations’ and which was to the sum of nine hundred million in gold, is about to be exhausted.

  This fact should be brought to light, as well as the deliberate delays to the issuing of Rentenmarks, for they explain this mad financial policy. The bankruptcy of the Reich remains an incomparable source of profits for capitalist and financial circles, at whose mercy it moreover places the state. By means of the bankrupting of the democratic republic, which they don’t even want to hear tell of any more (in official government documents there is no longer any reference to “defense of the republic” but only to the “safeguarding of German unity”), these circles have achieved financial, economic and political dictatorship.