West-Eastern European commodity exchange joint stock company

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The West-Eastern European Goods Exchange Aktiengesellschaft (WOSTWAG) was a trading company registered in November 1922 in Berlin, owned by the Soviet secret service . The company predominantly handled illegal arms exports .

organization

From the very beginning, WOSTWAG was a front company of the Soviet secret service, as the Soviet Union was diplomatically recognized by a few states until the mid-1930s and direct trade with other countries was therefore excluded. The brothers Bronsilav (Antek) and Sigismund Boleslavovich Iankovskii (Jankowski) acted as founders and David Rosenblith as managing director until 1933.

In 1923, the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade (NKWT) granted WOSTWAG permission to be the only Soviet company to trade and export cotton, wool and chemical goods until 1929. Half of the profits went back to the NKVT. The proceeds were used to illegally buy weapons in European countries. In the summer of 1927, WOSTWAG was officially granted a monopoly on the export of Soviet weapons by resolution of the Politburo , in some cases well below market prices. Corresponding losses had to be borne by three quarters of the company's profits, the rest was taken over by the mediating Supreme Council for Economics . The first arms exports went to Turkey and especially to China . War material was covertly delivered via WOSTWAG to Chinese warlords , to the National Revolutionary Army of Chiang Kai-shek and later in parallel to the People's Liberation Army of Mao Zedong .

Up until the end of the 1920s in particular, WOSTWAG procured military and technical goods from the German Reich for resale to East Asia . Trade with Germany was completely stopped in 1938. WOSTWAG maintained a main base in Outer Mongolia, which was de facto annexed by the Soviet Union . From Ulan Bator , the company primarily exported furs, antlers, hides and bone glue to China via the branch in Kalgan . The office in Kalgan was headed by Latvian Adam Purpiss (* 1883) until the early 1930s . The resale took place through branches in Harbin , Hankou and Tientsin , which from 1931 operated under the name Oriental Trading and Engineering Company . The shipment of the goods via the duty-free contract port of Tientsin was organized by a WOSTWAG branch registered in Hamburg.

Daily necessities, especially rubber products, silk, tea and medicine, returned to Ulan Bator from China. The profits made in this way were also used to finance purchases of military and technical goods in Europe, including Mercedes-Benz commercial vehicles. The transfers were handled by the Shanghai branch of the Chicago Chase National Bank . WOSTWAG's share capital was officially US $ 100,000 from 1931. The Berlin-based Alfred Devintel (75%) and the American Claude A. Tupper (25%), who works as a mining engineer in China, were listed as shareholders.

After the Chinese reunification (1928) , the responsible German consulate in Tientsin refused to process documents from WOSTWAG, which was registered in Berlin, whereupon the Polish consulate in China issued various export and import papers. After the establishment of a New York subsidiary, the branch in Shanghai had de facto American diplomatic status from 1934 , so that all Chinese imports and exports could be processed unchecked via the extra-territorial contract ports in China. All other branches in China temporarily shut down after the start of the Sino-Japanese War in 1938.

Well-known subsidiaries

In the 1930s, until his arrest in Paris in 1939, Stefan Iosifovich Mrochkovsky coordinated the secret service activities of WOSTWAG with various front companies, including in the following capitals:

  • Paris: 1930–37 Societe Anonyme francaise pour l'importation de legumes secs. The Comintern agent Rubin Glucksmann, the father of the philosopher André Glucksmann , had worked here since 1935, who had previously worked in Hamburg for two years . It was from here that covert arms deliveries to the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War were organized. The Paris branch included at least four other front companies between 1933 and 1937.
  • London: I. Richman & Co. had been the agency here since 1924 . In 1936 the company was re-established under the name Far Eastern Fur Trading Company , which was liquidated as enemy assets in England after the German victory over France in 1940.
  • New York: Pacific Merchandise Corp. was founded in 1934 . and in 1936 the establishment of the Oriental Trading and Engineering Company . This company was wound up after the conclusion of the Japanese-Soviet peace and friendship treaty in 1941, with which the Soviet arms deliveries to both the Chinese nationalists and the communists came to an almost complete standstill.

Exposure

The British journalist Gareth Jones , who was murdered under mysterious circumstances near the border with the Mongolian People's Republic in 1935 , is said to have carried out initial research, in particular on the Soviet arms deliveries to China . In 1938, the defector Walter Germanowitsch Kriwitzki provided extensive information about the Soviet front companies of the US government , who was found dead three years later in a Washington hotel with a gun in his hand. Little is known about the continuation of WOSTWAG's activities after 1945. More extensive publications on the various Soviet arms exports took place during the McCarthy era and after the collapse of the Soviet Union .

Archival material

  • British Public Records Office: KV2 / 1902 and KV2 / 1655 (based on statements by Walter Krivinsky, which are not always correct).
  • Special archive (at the Moscow State Military Archive) Fund 1461: OFP Berlin-Brandenburg. Foreign exchange office: "Reports of the foreign exchange office to review the foreign exchange operations and financial activities of companies in the export and import trade, letters St-Wo. 1937. "

literature

  • David Stone: Soviet Arms Exports in the 1920s. in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 48, 2013, pp. 57-77.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b A report from 1949 gives the name as West-Eastern European goods exchange action company GmbH.
  2. ↑ a b Born or as Abram or Aaron Lazarevich Erenlub (Ehrenlieb). Both were active for the 4th directorate of the GRU . Stone, David; Soviet Arms Exports in the 1920s; Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 48 (2013), p. 21 f.
  3. ↑ Cyrkel-Maier, Marc; At Daimler-Benz in Gaggenau: the commercial vehicle plant in the years 1926-1945; an economic history study; Marburg 2011 (Tectum-Verl.), Pp. 205-9; ISBN 978-3-8288-2640-3
  4. ↑ Former British-Palestinian subject, then with a German passport at the outbreak of war, managing director in London. Interned there as an enemy alien, he provided the British secret service with information on Soviet involvement. The ship with which he was to be brought to a camp in Canada was sunk in the Atlantic in 1940. ( The shameful years; thirty years of Soviet espionage in the United States Washington 1951). The Russian defector Walter Germanowitsch Kriwitzki (English: Krivitsky, Russian: Ва́льтер Ге́рманович Криви́цкий) had provided information as early as 1938.
  5. ↑ Margaret Siriol Colley: Gareth Jones. More Than a Grain of Truth. Newark 2005, p. 22 f.