Molotov Ribbentrop Pact at 80: Exploring the long history of Communist-Nazi collaboration

There is something wrong with a regime that requires a pyramid of corpses every few years. - George Orwell, About the "current Russian regime" (11 April 1940)

Eighty years ago on August 23, 1939 Communist Russia and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The treaty had secret protocols that divided Eastern Europe between the two regimes. The Communist International (Comintern) issued new orders to their members once the non-aggression pact had been made public. Harvey Klehr, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History, Emeritus, at Emory University, described the new directive.

Good communists were ordered to oppose anyone intending to stand in Hitler’s way.  With Ribbentrop’s second visit to Moscow at the end of September and the signing of a German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, the Comintern emphasized that the primary adversary was those countries that were at war with Germany, and those socialists and social democrats fighting against fascism. Germany had concluded a pact with the USSR, while “reactionary” England, at the helm of a vast colonial empire, was the “bulwark of capitalism.” Thus, communist parties in England and France were ordered to call for the defeat of their countries—ordered, in other words, to officially embrace treason.

Nine days later on September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War II started. Sixteen days later the Soviet Union exercising its secret agreement with the Germans invaded Poland from the East and met their Nazi allies on September 22, 1939 in a joint military parade in Brest-Litovsk to celebrate their victory.

German Lt-Gen Mauritz von Wiktorin, Gen Heinz Guderian & Soviet tank commander Semyon Moiseevich Krivoshein in Brest-Litovsk, Poland on 9/22/1939.

230,000 Polish soldiers and officers and thousands of military service representatives were taken captive by the Soviets. The precursor to the KGB was the NKVD.

"From October 1939, the delegated NKVD officials from Moscow heard the prisoners, encouraged them to cooperate and collected data. Only a few of the prisoners agreed to collaborate. The commanding officers’ reports included opinions about hostile attitudes of the Poles and a minimal chance of them being useful to the USSR authorities."

The decision to shoot the prisoners was signed on March 5, 1940 by seven members of the All- Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) authorities: Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria (proposer), Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Mikhail Kalinin and Lazar Kaganovich.  Thousands of Polish Army officers and intellectual leaders were taken into the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in the Soviet Union, shot in the back of the head or in the neck and buried in mass graves.

This arrangement only ended on June 22, 1941 when the Nazis double crossed their Soviet allies and launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. This strategy cost 22 to 28 million Russian lives in World War Two, and nearly led to the Nazi conquest and occupation of Russia.

Josef Stalin overseeing the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

How did these two regimes with diametrically opposed ideologies become allies? The Nazis who believe in racial hierarchies and the Communists who believe in economic equality? Vladimir Lenin's observations on class struggle in a speech to Russian communist youth on October 2, 1920 gives an insight into the communist moral vision:

"The class struggle is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society."

Fascists believe freedom of expression and liberalism are a sham and they embrace violence as a positive force to achieve national unity. However at the same time their ideological nemesis, the communists, also reject the same existing system and embrace violence as a means to achieve their end. Both have agreed on the need to destroy the existing democratic order, and with their "moral" world view have not discounted working with each other to achieve that end.

Anti Fascist Action conference in Germany (1932)

The destruction of the Weimar Republic in Germany was a joint exercise by the Communists and the Nazis. Antifa came into existence during these years, and was controlled by the German Communist Party (KPD). Rob Sewell in his 1988 book Germany: From Revolution to Counter-Revolution, Fortress Books described how the German communists allied electorally with the Nazis:

"In August 1931, to capitalise on their growing popularity, the Nazi Party launched a referendum to overthrow the Social Democratic government of Prussia. At first the KPD correctly attacked it. Then, three weeks before the vote, under orders from Stalin's Comintern, they joined forces with the fascists to bring down the main enemy, the Social Democrats. They changed the name of the plebiscite to a 'Red Referendum' and referred to the fascists and the members of the SA as 'working people's comrades'!"

Professor Klehr described how the communists had viewed the Nazis as a means to undermine capitalist democracies and achieve power . Antifa identified all political parties that were not communist as fascist. This meant that social democrats, centrist, and conservative political parties were  all lumped together with the Nazis and labeled fascist.  The Comintern's class against class approach fractured any potential broad anti-Nazi coalition.

"Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1932 had been immeasurably aided by the German communists' steadfast support for the Comintern tactic of “class against class,” which demanded no cooperation with other anti-Nazi forces. German communists blithely insisted that Hitler’s triumph would be evanescent—summarized in their optimistic slogan, Nach Hitler, kommen wir ('After Hitler, us'). 

This is why you see a communist like "The Communist Vulture" in 2019 declare that "nonviolence is an endorsement of white supremacy." Polarizing the political culture, tearing down democratic institutions and changing the system by any means is the objective. Both are seeking revolution and using whatever means to achieve it, except nonviolence. This is because their ideology is founded on violent struggle. The communist believes in class struggle therefore non-violence is anathema to them. Same holds true for Nazis, who view violent struggle through a racial prism.

The rejection of nonviolence is not new. The Soviet press published an article written by S.M. Vakar in 1948 following Mohandas Gandhi's assassination titled "The Class Nature of the Gandhi Doctrine" in the Soviet philosophy journal Voprosy filosofii (Questions of Philosophy). The Marxist Leninists repudiate Gandhi because of his "reformist methods of struggle" and principled rejection of class struggle. According to them the nonviolence "doctrine still retards the development of class awareness among the Indian masses." The Soviet KGB went further in their active measures against Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States.

Meanwhile the Soviet Union following the end of World War II was funding Neo-Nazi parties in West Germany in an effort to undermine their democracy. They backed the Socialist Reich Party in 1950 that worked with the Communist Party of Germany.  Campaign themes of the Socialist Reich Party included that the Holocaust was an allied propaganda invention, it accused the United States of building fake gas chambers and producing fake news-film footage about concentration camps, that the politics of the Allied-powers created West German state were merely a front for American domination, and that West Germany's puppet status of the United States should be opposed. 

Fidel Castro in 1962 when Otto-Ernst Remer was selling him weapons

In the early 1960s the Nazi who saved Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in 1944, Otto-Ernst Remer, had contacts with and assisted Fidel Castro in Cuba with the purchase of weapons. Ernst-Remer along with Ernst Wilhelm Springer sold the Cuban dictator 4,000 pistols. The German foreign intelligence agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), reported that "evidently, the Cuban revolutionary army did not fear contagion from personal links to Nazism, so long as it served its objectives."  

The myth that the communists are anti-fascists is a dangerous one. The fact is that they view the Nazis as a tool to polarize society, accelerate the development of class consciousness, destroy Western Democracies and replace them with communist regimes. 
 

Remembering the man who saved Hitler's Third Reich in 1944 and sold arms to Fidel Castro in the 1960s

 A closer look at an unrepentant Nazi who sold weapons to Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro in 1962 when Otto-Ernst Remer was selling him weapons

 Seventy five years ago on August 7, 1944 the trials of the conspirators who tried to kill Adolf Hitler in Operation Valkyrie began. Judge Roland Freisler presided over the political show trial of the men who had attempted to rescue Germany and bring the Nazi regime and the war to an end.

On July 20, 1944 the failure of a bombing to kill Hitler, and one man crushed the conspiracy and brought to an end this high level plot by civilian and military officials. The bomb went off and injured, but did not kill Hitler at the Wolf's Lair, a command post near Rastenburg, East Prussia (present-day Poland). The July 20 plot or as it came to be known Operation Valkyrie failed. In the end 7,000 people were arrested, and 4,980 executed for their role in the plot.

The New York Times on October 9, 1997 reported on Otto-Ernst Remer's role in breaking up the anti-Nazi conspiracy:

Mr. Remer initially followed a general's orders to seal off Berlin Government ministries, but Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels soon put him on the phone with Hitler, who promoted Mr. Remer to colonel and ordered him to crush the rebellion.

Mr. Remer was instrumental in the arrest of the conspirators, including Claus von Stauffenberg, the plot leader, and their families. Many were executed, and others were sent to concentration camps, said Shimon Samuels, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization based in Los Angeles that tracks Nazi war criminals.

Mr. Remer later won promotion to major general, commanded a division and was responsible for Hitler's personal security.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H25087 / Unknown / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de

However, what remains disturbing is that the man who broke up the conspiracy Otto-Ernst Remer (18 August 1912 – 4 October 1997) would go on to play a big role in post-Nazi Germany. Captured by the United States, he remained a prisoner of war until 1947. 

Following his release, he obtained funding from the Soviet Union and established the Socialist Reich Party in 1950 that worked with the Communist Party of Germany.  Campaign themes of the Socialist Reich Party included that the Holocaust was an allied propaganda invention, it accused the United States of building fake gas chambers and producing fake news-film footage about concentration camps, that the politics of the Allied-powers created West German state were merely a front for American domination, and that West Germany's puppet status of the United States should be opposed. 



The Socialist Reich Party was banned in 1952 and Otto-Ernst Remer fled to Egypt. He was an advisor to Gamal Abdel Nasser, and worked with other former Nazis assisting Arab states with the development of their armed forces.

In the early 1960s Otto-Ernst Remer had contacts with and assisted Fidel Castro in Cuba with the purchase of weapons. Ernst-Remer along with Ernst Wilhelm Springer sold the Cuban dictator 4,000 pistols. German foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) reported: "Evidently, the Cuban revolutionary army did not fear contagion from personal links to Nazism, so long as it served its objectives." 

Otto-Ernst Remer returned to West Germany in the 1980s, and set up an organization entitled the "German Freedom Movement" (G.F.M.), which advocated the reunification of East and West Germany, and the removal of NATO military forces from West German soil. The G.F.M. was an umbrella organization for multiple underground Neo-Nazi splinter-groups, and Remer used it to influence a new generation of post-war born Germans. Until the end of his days he continued to engage in Holocaust denial, was an unrepentant Nazi and continued to promote and organize underground Neo-Nazi movements that continue to engage in acts of terror and murder to the present day.

Otto-Ernst Remer in 1993

None of this should comes as a shock considering that Communist Russia allied with Nazi Germany in 1939 to start World War Two, and covertly promoted Nazi elements again in post-war Germany  to undermine West German democracy. 

It is also important to remember that it was not just the Soviet Union that allied with the Nazis from 1939 to 1941, but the whole international communist movement.

Harvey Klehr, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History, Emeritus, at Emory University, described how communists had mistakenly viewed the Nazis as a means to achieving power and undermining capitalist democracies.

"Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1932 had been immeasurably aided by the German communists’ steadfast support for the Comintern tactic of “class against class,” which demanded no cooperation with other anti-Nazi forces. German communists blithely insisted that Hitler’s triumph would be evanescent—summarized in their optimistic slogan, Nach Hitler, kommen wir ('After Hitler, us'). By 1936, the folly of that policy was evident, leading the Soviet Union to drop it and seek alliances to stop Hitler."

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the Nazi German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, officially called the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was signed 75 years ago. Made public on August 23, 1939 the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact was a Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact with secret protocols setting out how the two regimes would divide Poland and the Baltic States.  World War 2 would begin with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939. The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East on September 17, 1939. The double invasion is dramatized in Andrzej Wajda's 2007 film Katyn.

Nazi Foreign Minister Von Ribbentrop, Joseph Stalin, and his foreign minister, Molotov

The Communist International (Comintern), known also as the Third International issued new orders to their members once the non-aggression pact had been made public.  Professor Klehr described the new directive.

Good communists were ordered to oppose anyone intending to stand in Hitler’s way.  With Ribbentrop’s second visit to Moscow at the end of September and the signing of a German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, the Comintern emphasized that the primary adversary was those countries that were at war with Germany, and those socialists and social democrats fighting against fascism. Germany had concluded a pact with the USSR, while “reactionary” England, at the helm of a vast colonial empire, was the “bulwark of capitalism.” Thus, communist parties in England and France were ordered to call for the defeat of their countries—ordered, in other words, to officially embrace treason. 

According to Klehr, Nazi reports confirmed that the Communists were fulfilling their part of the agreement and sided against Western Democracies.

 A June 1940 Gestapo report approvingly noted that the Soviet government was favorably disposed to the Third Reich and had endorsed its invasions of the Scandinavian states and Belgium and Holland “as necessary and proper.” The report went on to note that the Comintern had avoided open attacks on Germany,  and that the parties and publications allied with the Comintern were not pushing for communists to struggle against National Socialism or denounce fascism.

This arrangement only ended on June 22, 1941 when the Nazis double crossed their Soviet allies and launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Communist morality has no problem with any of it because as the communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin observed in a speech to Russian communist youth on October 2, 1920:

"The class struggle is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society."

This is the morality that led the Soviet Union to back Nazis in post-war Germany and Fidel Castro to use former Waffen SS to train his security forces and buy weapons from Nazis in the 1960s.  This is the "morality" of the ends justify the means.

This is the value system of totalitarians.

Otto-Ernst Remer died in Spain on October 4, 1997. He was 85 years old and an unrepentant and true believing Nazi.

However the value system that prevailed in Germany was a profoundly different one. A value system reflected by those who defied Hitler and the Nazis at the cost of their own lives.

Visiting the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism: A Reflection

"National Socialism means: Enmity with neighboring nations, tyranny internally, civil war, world war, lies, hatred, fratricide and boundless want." - Dr.  Carl Albert Fritz Michael Gerlich, Der gerade Weg, 31 July 1932

Entrance to the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism

This year marks 80 years since the outbreak of World War 2, and during a visit to Munich happened to find markers and plaques across the German city highlighting the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP; Nazi Party) , their criminal regime, and the continuing crimes by Nazis following the end of the Second World War.

For example outside of the Old City Hall in the historic heart of Munich the above plaque was prominently displayed along with an English translation that read:

FOR CENTURIES THIS BALLROOM IN THE OLD CITY HALL WAS USED FOR MUNICIPAL AND CIVIC GATHERINGS AND FESTIVITIES.

THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REGIME MISUSED THE VENUE TO PLAN THEIR ANTI-SEMITIC CRIMES.

DURING A NAZI PARTY CELEBRATION ON THE EVENING OF 9TH NOVEMBER 1938 THE ANTI-JEWISH VIOLEENCE BEING INCITED IN MANY CITIES OF THE REICH WAS EXTENDED HERE INTO A NATIONWIDE POGROM.

THE "REICHSKRISTALLNACHT" OR "NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS" AS IT BECAME KNOWN WAS THE PRELUDE TO THE ANNIHILATION FOR EUROPE'S JEWS.

Walking further came across an ominous marker that indicated that Nazi crimes did not end in 1945. The marker recognized in both German and English that "[t]heir unheeded suffering admonishes us to care. The deeds of right-wing extremists call for vigilance. Munich remembers the victims of the Oktoberfest Bomb Attack on 26 September 1980 and all those affected by it." Through a quick Google search learned that the marker had been placed there on September 4, 2018 and that 13 people had been killed and 219 wounded in the bombing.

The day before had toured the Alte Pinakothek, the old art museum, saw the old masters, and returned the following day to see impressionist painters at the newer museum, the Neue Pinakothek, which is just across the street and complements the old art museum, but found it was closed for renovations from December 31, 2018 until some time in 2020.

Walking back I happened upon the the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism. This museum opened on May 1, 2015 with the objective of "education and remembrance documenting and addressing the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship and their origins, manifestations and consequences right up to the present day." 

Site in Munich were Nazis had their headquarters

It is one of those things that is known, but that one does not connect with an area best known for Oktoberfest, and the great culture and civilization of Bavaria. The Nazis first came into power in Munich, and had their main headquarters there.

Spent about four hours going through the different multi-media presentations beginning just after WWI all the way through to the present. It documents the violence, criminality and horror of the NAZI's and their skillful use of propaganda that dehumanized the other, especially Jewish people. 

Because it has a Munich focus it addresses the gathering there of Hitler, Italy's Mussolini, Britain's Chamberlain, and France's Daladier in 1938 and the agreement they all signed that met all of the German Fuhrer's demands and sealed the fate of  Czechoslovakia, but did not deter the oncoming war. 

However there was no mention of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact that spurred on the war with the division of Poland in secret protocols between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia or the resistance of housewives in Berlin, who in 1943 went on strike and got their Jewish husbands back with a coordinated non-violent action.

Student Resistance: The White Rose

However many acts of resistance in Munich were featured including, The White Rose, a student resistance to the Nazis.  In the picture above three members of the movement are gathered: Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst on July 23, 1942. All three would be executed by the Nazis. Resistance to the Nazis began early.  Conservative journalist Dr.  Carl Albert Fritz Michael Gerlich campaigned against the Nazis early on (see his quote at the top of the page) was taken to the Dachau concentration camp in 1933 and murdered by the the Nazis in 1934.

The case of Johann Georg Elser is also highlighted in the museum. Elser was a 36-year-old carpenter from a small town in southern Germany who came close to assassinating Adolf Hitler on November 8, 1939. The carpenter's objective was to kill Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels. He planted a bomb with a timer where the three men would be while Hitler was making his annual speech at a Munich beer hall. Hitler and his delegation left earlier than planned. The bomb went off 13 minutes after the high-ranking Nazis left and eight were killed and 63 injured.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H25087 / Unknown / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Nearly five years later on July 20, 1944 the failure of another bomb to kill Hitler brought to an end a high level plot by civilian and military officials. The bomb went off and injured, but did not kill Hitler at the Wolf's Lair, a command post near Rastenburg, East Prussia (present-day Poland). The conspiracy was code named Operation Valkyrie. In the end 7,000 people were arrested, and 4,980 executed for their role in the plot.

However, what remains disturbing is that the man who broke up the conspiracy Otto-Ernst Remer (18 August 1912 – 4 October 1997) would go on to play a big role in post-Nazi Germany. Captured by the United States, he remained a prisoner of war until 1947. Following his release, he obtained funding from the Soviet Union and established the Socialist Reich Party in 1950 that worked with the Communist Party of Germany.  Campaign themes of the Socialist Reich Party included that the Holocaust was an allied propaganda invention, it accused the United States of building fake gas chambers and producing fake news-film footage about concentration camps, that the politics of the Allied-powers created West German state were merely a front for American domination, and that West Germany's puppet status of the United States should be opposed. 

(SRP) leaders; Chair Dr. Fritz Dorls, Otto Ernst Remer, 2nd Chair Fmr SS / Hitler Youth leader Count von Westarp.

The Socialist Reich Party was banned in 1952 and Otto-Ernst Remer fled to Egypt. He served as an advisor to Gamal Abdel Nasser, and worked with other Germans assisting Arab states with the development of their armed forces. He often met with Johannes von Leers. It is worth providing some background on von Leers.

Johannes von Leers had been Waffen SS in Nazi Germany, was also a professor known for his anti-Jewish polemics, and was an important ideologue of the Third Reich, serving as a high-ranking propaganda ministry official. He would offer these services to Nasser at the Egyptian Information Department and serve the Egyptian leader as an advisor. He also provided publishing services in Peron's Argentina. Johannes von Leers converted to Islam, took the name Omar Amin, and died in Egypt at age 63 in 1965. 

In the early 1960s Otto-Ernst Remer had contacts with and assisted Fidel Castro in Cuba with the purchase of weapons.

Otto-Ernst Remer returned to West Germany in the 1980s, and set up an organization entitled the "German Freedom Movement" (G.F.M.), which advocated the reunification of East and West Germany, and the removal of NATO military forces from West German soil. The G.F.M. was an umbrella organization for multiple underground Neo-Nazi splinter-groups, and Remer used it to influence a new generation of post-war born Germans. Until the end of his days he continued to engage in Holocaust denial, was an unrepentant Nazi and continued to promote and organize underground Neo-Nazi movements that continue to engage in acts of terror and murder to the present day.

It is also disturbing that Communist Russia allied with Nazi Germany in 1939 to start World War Two, and covertly promoted Nazi elements again in post-war Germany after 1945 in order to undermine West German democracy. Is Vladimir Putin carrying on today where Josef Stalin left off? How much of a role did and does Nazism play in exacerbating anti-Jewish sentiment in the Muslim world?

Visiting the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism led me to take a closer look at Nazism past and present and its enablers. 

The words of Primo Levi from the The Drowned and the Saved in 1986 should cause us to be ever vigilant: "It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere."