Economic development association (liaison organization)

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The Economic Development Association was a German-Russian organization in Munich , which existed in Bavaria in the early 1920s and was composed of Germanophile monarchists and Russian emigrants. The declared aim of the association founded by Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter in Munich in 1920/1921 was to promote cooperation between national economic and political circles in order to restore the pre-revolutionary order in Europe, especially in Russia . Thoughts of the extreme right in Russia and the Bolsheviks , but also experiences with the latter, reached the NSDAP through Aufbau and its members .

Members

The founder and managing director was Max-Erwin von Scheubner-Richter. Baron Theodor von Cramer-Klett junior and Prince Vasilij Biskupskij acted as president and vice-president . The 150 members consisted of Bavarian monarchists and above all Baltic Germans as well as Russian and Ukrainian emigrants. Other members of this multinational association were Vladimir Kleppen and Boris Brazol, who had important American contacts, and Georgi Nemirovič-Dančenko, a former press director for General Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel in the Crimea, who was an expert on questions about Ukraine. Ukrainian Colonel Ivan Poltavec-Ostranica , who had worked with the German armed forces during their occupation of Ukraine , joined the organization in 1921.

The members of this anti-Bolshevik , anti-Semitic , but not anti-Slav organization, had for the most part had experiences with the Bolsheviks themselves. In addition, among the Russian refugees were former members of the proto-fascist Black Hundreds such as Fyodor Viktorovich Winberg , Biskupskij and Šabel'skij-Bork . The latter was the son of an anti-Semitic journalist who, according to a report by the Gestapo, carried the anti-Semitic fiction The Protocols of the Elders of Zion with him on his trip to Germany and gave it to the publicist Ludwig Müller von Hausen , who had it translated and published.

The Baltic German members included Alfred Rosenberg and Arno Schickedanz , who had witnessed the revolution in Moscow, Otto von Kursell , who had served in the Russian army, and Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter , a Reich German who grew up in Riga and German vice-consul was in the Turkish Erzerum . In this position he followed the genocide of the Armenians in 1915 and reported on it. Later he was head of the Upper East press office in Riga. After the Bolsheviks invaded the city, he was arrested and sentenced to death, but was able to free himself with significant help from his wife and escaped to Germany. The German members included General Erich Ludendorff , his co-conspirator in the Kapp Putsch, Colonel Max Bauer, and the managing director of the NSDAP, Max Amann .

background

Background in Russia and Soviet Russia

Between the turn of the century and 1917 there were right-wing extremist groups in Russia known as the “Black Hundreds”. Politically, they were located in the middle between the reactionary movements of the 19th and the right-wing extremist movements of the 20th century and they had close ties to the monarchy and the church. In contrast to earlier, comparable movements, they had recognized the importance of mass mobilization. These groups spread political propaganda, but also carried out pogroms and political murders.

Before the revolution, the Black Hundreds spread the horrific image that the Jews were the downfall of the Russian Empire. In fact, there was little sympathy for the Bolsheviks in Jewish circles before 1917, and despite the severe discrimination against Jews in Russia, there were fewer than 1,000 Jews among the members of the Bolsheviks before 1917. A career in administration and the army was barred for Jews until World War I and they were only allowed to live in the limited area of ​​Russia known as the Pale of Settlement . The development after the October Revolution, however, seemed to confirm the horror picture, since the Jewish emancipation in Russia coincided with the effects of the October Revolution and thus with millions of deaths due to war, mismanagement and extermination policies. (According to Robert Conquest , the extermination policy is an expression of a willingness that is inherent in the attitude of the Bolsheviks towards the class struggle, because even before the October Revolution, Felix Edmundowitsch Dzerzhinsky formulated considerations that a policy of extermination was a potential instrument of the class struggle, and Zinoviev said in 1918 the annihilation of 10% of the population.)

The right-wing extremists took advantage of the disproportionately high proportion of people of Jewish descent among the political leaders of the Bolsheviks, which seemed to substantiate the myth of a Jewish conspiracy, and referred to a disproportionately high proportion of Jews among the Cheka employees. During the civil war in Ukraine, employees of Jewish descent were even outnumbered in the Cheka, which encouraged anti-Semitism there. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. which many right-wing extremists were still skeptical of before the revolution, the status of a prophecy has now been assigned.

With the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk , Ukraine was recognized as an independent state, which then moved into the German sphere of interest. When the Soviet armed forces deployed in Ukraine after the peace, German and Austrian troops marched in. This led to a collaboration between German and white officers. This cooperation had a confidence-building effect and when the German troops withdrew from Ukraine at the end of 1918, a large number of white officers followed. Among them were right-wing extremists and former members of the black hundreds.

Background in the Baltic States and Germany

The cooperation between the German and white military in Ukraine was exemplary. German Freikorps fought in the Baltic States together with Russian units and partly under the Russian flag ( Iron Division ) in the West Russian Liberation Army . The leadership of the Freikorps viewed Latvia as a bridgehead for military operations against the Soviet Union . It was hoped for a rapprochement between Germany and a future, restored, anti-communist Russia directed against the Allies. Another goal was economic and political cooperation in order to end the foreign policy isolation after the First World War. Some Freikorps leaders had also recognized that the Baltic States could be useful as a base in the event of a possible coup against the German government.

The Latvian government of Ulmani asked for support against the Red Army from German volunteer corps. With the consent of the German government and Great Britain, the Freikorps expelled the Bolsheviks and the Riga occupied by them was taken on May 22, 1919. Subsequent members of Aufbau were involved in the operation in the Baltic States: Von Scheubner-Richter supported them in his role as political advisor to August Winnig , the general representative for the occupied Baltic countries. Arno Schickedanz took part in the capture of Riga as a member of the Baltic State Armed Forces, and white emigrants took part in the recruitment of Russians in Germany for military service in the Baltic States. Biskupskij acted in Berlin as a representative of the West Russian Liberation Army .

From the perspective of the German Freikorps, their intervention in the Baltic States had failed for political reasons. Under pressure from the Entente , the German government closed the East Prussian border on October 6, 1919 and cut off supplies. Parts of the Freikorps again submitted to German orders, but after the order to dissolve the Freikorps they took part in the Kapp Putsch . Several of the Russians mentioned above supported the Kapp Putsch. In addition, Scheubner-Richter was planned by Wolfgang Kapp as press chief of the new putsch government. After the coup failed, those involved fled to Bavaria, where they were protected by the police authorities.

founding

In October 1920, after returning from a trip to the Crimea, where von Scheubner-Richter had concluded an agreement with General Pjotr ​​Wrangel on military and economic cooperation with the support of Bavarian entrepreneurs, von Scheubner-Richter began to organize the Economic Development Association . The statutes were deliberately kept vague to avoid the question of whether the Russian Empire as a whole should be restored or whether Ukraine and the Baltic countries should be granted autonomy. This should make the organization interesting for both Russians and minorities.

The association carried out its activities in strict secrecy. Membership has been closely monitored and the background of candidates for membership has been thoroughly examined. It aimed at decidedly anti-Bolshevik Germans, Russians, Ukrainians and Baltic Germans as full members, but people of other nationalities could also join the organization as extraordinary members. Each member had to pay 100,000 marks upon entry and then 20,000 marks annually.

Proximity to the NSDAP

Following Rosenberg's mediation, von Scheubner-Richter met Adolf Hitler for the first time in November 1920 . In the same month Scheubner-Richter joined the NSDAP and in 1923 he became one of Hitler's most important advisers. Several members of Aufbau were also members of the NSDAP Alfred Rosenberg, Arno Schickedanz and Otto von Kursell. Max Amann was not only the managing director of the NSDAP, but also the association's second secretary.

Ideologemes

Construction wanted to restore the pre-revolutionary order in Europe, especially in Russia, but was also extremely hostile to the Weimar Republic . It was also about the revision of the Versailles Treaty and the defensive struggle against the Communist International . The organization was heavily anti-Semitic, and those who shaped the ideology of Aufbau believed that “the Jews” caused the Russian Revolution. Alfred Rosenberg z. B., who was a Russian citizen until 1923, equated the Jews with the Bolsheviks as early as mid-1918 (in a paper not published at the time). The extermination policy of the internationalist regime of the Bolsheviks was interpreted and condemned by members of Aufbau as the deliberate extermination of the Russian national intelligentsia. The fate of Russia threatened other countries too, was the central message. Irrespective of the fact that Alfred Rosenberg condemned the extermination policy, he described the Bolsheviks' actions as "expedient" as early as 1922 and 1923.

Although leading members were of the opinion that behind finance capital and Bolshevism was so-called world Jewry and that this represented a “deadly” danger to Germany, the association did not propose the extermination of the Jews. The radical rebuilding ideologist Winberg, however, a close friend of the murdered Tsarina, propagated the apocalyptic anti-Semitism of the Black Hundreds and advocated the annihilation of the Jews in his 1922 book Krestnyj Put ' and in the magazine Luč Sveta . Winberg also founded the monarchist newspaper Prizyv. Dietrich Eckart urged the German nationalists to pay more attention . Rosenberg, who had adopted the interpretation of the October Revolution on the part of the extreme Russian right, carefully studied their newspapers and used them extensively for his own work. The members of the association interpreted the events in Russia and the Soviet Union as a "conspiracy phenomenon", and this Judeo- Masonic conspiracy was not viewed as racial, but interpreted in almost religious terms and was more the result of traditional anti-Semitism. Only later in the NSDAP was the supposed conspiracy reinterpreted as a racial and cultural phenomenon and Rosenberg provided the appropriate justification.

In the early NSDAP there were voices in favor of rapprochement with the Soviet Union. In contrast, the Soviet Union was a clear enemy for unification. However, this did not prevent von Scheubner-Richter from seeing the country as a role model with regard to the militarization of politics and the suppression of political opponents.

propaganda

The association published the "economic construction correspondence". Scheubner-Richter was editor of this magazine, in which he and Russian emigrants disseminated their ideas and published reprints from right-wing emigrant newspapers. In addition to Grigorij Nemirovič-Dančenko, Fjodr Winberg was also one of the Russian authors of articles in the paper.

The organization also tried to influence the NSDAP by commissioning Winberg to conduct propaganda talks with Adolf Hitler. According to the French intelligence service, Winberg and Hitler had had several long personal conversations by October 1922 at the latest, and Hitler's notes for a lecture in November 1922 show the influence Winberg had on his thinking. Hitler describes the Soviet Union as a "Jewish dictatorship" and cites Winberg as the source.

Propaganda material was also distributed in the Soviet Union with the support of the association. In April 1923, for example, Soviet authorities confiscated large amounts of propaganda material from white emigrants and arrested the distributors. These were primarily statements by Grand Duke Kyrill Vladimirovich Romanov to the Russian people and the Russian army.

Support for the claims of Grand Duke Kirill to the throne of the tsar

Within the politically divided group of Russian emigrants, the society supported the monarchist movement around Grand Duke Kirill, a nephew of the last Tsar, who raised claims to the Russian throne and thus competed with Grand Duke Nikolai , who was in Paris. The association was a co-organizer of the most important meeting of the pro-German part of the monarchist movement, which took place in Bad Reichenhall in mid-1921 under the cover name “Congress for the Economic Reconstruction of Russia”. The congress did not produce any concrete results, but organizing it was a success for Aufbau. Scheubner-Richter and Biskupskij gained prestige as a result. Ludendorff and Scheubner-Richter, under the leadership of Walter Nicolai, organized an anti-Bolshevik intelligence service for Kirill in order to receive reliable news about events in the Soviet Union. From the beginning of July 1922, Nicolai sent reports to Scheubner-Richter, who passed them on to the NSDAP.

Financial support from the NSDAP

In May 1922, General Biskupsij and his personal secretary Arno Schickedanz reached an agreement with Ludendorff, according to which Ludendorff could use the assets of the heir to the throne Kirill and Viktoria Feodorovna as part of the organization's activities to promote German-Russian interests. The sums of around 500,000 gold marks passed through were higher than the freely available assets of the heir to the throne, so it can be assumed that the money also flowed from other sources. The American industrialist Henry Ford gave the representative of Kirill in America, the construction member Boris Brazol, considerable sums. Brazol passed this on to the heir apparent.

Biskupskij also passed on money from emigrants directly to the NSDAP, and Scheubner-Richter passed considerable sums of money from white immigrants to the NSDAP, in particular money from Russian industrialists, especially from oil magnates, and from German business people, industrialists and bankers.

terrorism

Members of the association took part in acts of terrorism. Sergej Taborickij and Šabel'skij-Bork, close friends of Winberg, attempted an assassination attempt on the constitutional democrat Pavel Nikolajewitsch Miljukow , who escaped the assassination attempt. In an attempt to disarm the assassin, however, the father of the writer Vladimir Nabokov was fatally injured. Since Winberg was suspected to have been involved in the murder of Nabokow, he had to leave Germany. Biskupskij and Bauer organized a contract killing of Alexander Fyodorowitsch Kerensky , the Social Revolutionary and head of the transitional government, a venture that failed. Other circumstances also indicate terrorist activity by the organization, such as contacts with the Consul organization and Bauer's arrest on suspicion of planning the attempted murder of Scheidemann .

Military plans against the Soviet Union

In accordance with its anti-Bolshevik objectives, the association supported plans to attack the Soviet Union, with particular emphasis on an independent Ukraine. Wilhelm Franz von Habsburg-Lothringen , who called himself Vasil Vyshyvaniy and was an informal Habsburg throne candidate for a Ukrainian satellite state during the First World War, commissioned Biskupskij in the summer of 1921 to assemble an army in Bavaria for use in the Ukraine. In doing so, he implemented an agreement with Scheubner-Richter and Biskupskij, who had managed to obtain 2 million marks and 60,000 Swiss francs for Vyshyvaniy's accession to the throne in an independent Ukraine. General Biskupskij envisaged a two-front campaign with one field of operations in the north (Baltic States) and one in the south (Ukraine), and together with General Peter Wladimir von Glasenapp and Pawel Michailowitsch Bermondt-Awaloff, he organized invasion troops for use in the Baltic States. The plans failed partly for financial reasons.

The association also supported nationalists in Eastern Galicia who fought for an independent Ukraine and thus became hostile to both Poland and the Soviet Union. German officers provided military training in courses organized by Ernst Röhm , among others .

The Hitler putsch and the end of reconstruction

Von Scheubner-Richter played an increasingly central role in right-wing extremist circles in 1922 and 1923. He was an advisor to Hitler and Ludendorff and at the same time managing director of the German Combat League , whose program of action he designed. Based on developments in the Soviet Union, he believed that a few determined men could change something, and he advocated a more energetic approach by Hitler. He played a central role in the Hitler coup . According to Otto Strasser and Ernst Hanfstaengl , Scheubner-Richter was the head of the conspiracy. Other sources also assume that he was the real brain behind the coup.

Von Scheubner-Richter was killed while marching on the Feldherrnhalle . With him, the advocate of Russian- and Ukrainian-German cooperation disappeared and his death, together with the final victory of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union, contributed to a reformulation of National Socialist foreign policy. Without von Scheubner-Richter, the association fell into insignificance. Biskupskij, the leading head after Scheubner-Richter, got into trouble with the Bavarian authorities, who suspected him of complicity in the putsch. The association officially existed for a while under the leadership of Kursell, who took over the writing of the construction correspondence. The last edition appeared on July 15, 1924.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Johannes Baur: Economic Development Association, 1920 / 21-1924. In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria . October 13, 2011, accessed February 25, 2015 .
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  3. ^ Richard Pipes : Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. Fodor's Travel Guides, New York 1994, ISBN 0-679-76184-5 , p. 258.
  4. ^ Bettina Dodenhoeft: Vasilij von Biskupskij. An emigrant career in Germany, in Karl Schlögel Hg .: Russian emigration in Germany 1918 to 1941. Life in the European civil war. Oldenbourg Akademie, Munich 1995 ISBN 3050028017 , pp. 219-228
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