Russia at war 1941-1945

Government that was promising the Germans "sovereignty" if an anti-Nazi "National Government" were set up. Obviously, the Soviet Government could make no such

promises to Germany without consultation with the Allies.

Nevertheless it was, both internally and internationally, a curious step to take, and during the period that followed, some odd reactions to it could be observed both in Russia and abroad.

The truth is that the Free German Committee had by this time become an important basis for Russian propaganda in Germany, and especially among the German army. Speakers

from the Free German Committee talked daily and nightly to Germany from Moscow

radio. Hundreds of thousands of copies of Freies Deutschland were printed weekly and showered over the German lines. It was a large, extremely well printed and well produced paper, with a mass of good reading matter: but in this paper the Soviet Union's

benevolence to the German people seemed to be so great that every possible precaution was taken to keep copies of Freies Deutschland out of the hands of foreigners, especially of foreign diplomats and correspondents in Russia. For, without the full acceptance by such readers of the view that this was propaganda, and nothing but propaganda,

calculated to undermine German morale, it might have given rise to all sorts of

undesirable comments, especially in the American press hostile to Russia. Nor were

Russians allowed to read it, except for that first number. The thing was intended for Germany, and for Germany only.

Whether, in setting up this Free German Committee and in printing this "Free German"

paper (whose Wilhelmian black-white-and-red border particularly scandalised so many

"Comintern" Germans in Russia), the Soviet Government was also thinking in terms of

"just in case" will perhaps never be definitely established. But it is certainly quite conceivable that there was an element of "insurance" in all this—for, supposing there was a palace revolution in Germany, and the Generals took over from Hitler, and attempted to negotiate a general peace, or a separate peace with the West, the Free

German Committee and its later by-product, the Bund Deutscher Offiziere, with several of the Stalingrad generals among them, who were now calling for the overthrow of Hitler, might have become a useful diplomatic weapon in the hands of the Russians. All kinds of possibilities can, indeed, be envisaged if the plot against Hitler in July 1944 had

succeeded; and if that had happened, the Free German Committee might have been of

some value to the Soviet government. Also, one never could tell—it might come in useful even after the complete defeat of Germany; for there was not sufficient reason to suppose that complete unanimity would reign forever among the occupying powers. Also, from

the standpoint of German internal propaganda, it was important to be able to impress upon the German people, if necessary, that the Russians were the first to have set up a Free German Committee, and that Stalin's benevolence was of more lasting consequence than all Ehrenburg's bloodcurdling threats. As it happened, the Free German Committee proved to be of only small practical importance; but in July 1943 there were still all kinds of possibilities in the future, and perhaps the Russians thought they had better be

prepared for them. It should also be remembered that this was before Teheran: and suspicions of a possible double-cross by the "other fellow" existed—though only faintly

—on both sides.

Perhaps the Russians also thought that the German defeat at Kursk might have greater immediate repercussions inside Germany than it actually had.

If the Free German Committee was not to play any political part whatsoever, it was

because the Nazis kept control of Germany and the German people till the very end.

Later, after Germany's surrender, some of the old German communists, who had been in Russia since before the war, were sent to Germany to do some "organisational" work; the soldiers on the Free German Committee, and on the Bund Deutscher Offiziere were not going to play any appreciable part in this sequel.

[ It is notable, all the same, that Field-Marshal Paulus, General Korfes (also of

Stalingrad), and some others settled in East Germany and adopted a pro-Russian line.]

It was indeed, obvious from the start that at least a great part of the Free German

Committee—which actually included among its rank-and-file members some SS men!—

was never intended to be anything but a tool of Russian propaganda. Barring, of course, an "accident" to Hitler.

[ In Child of the Revolution, Wolfgang Leonhard, who was one of the contributors to the Free German paper in 1943-4, describes the consternation some aspects of the "Free German" move caused among the German communists then in the Soviet Union,

especially the Wilhelmian black-white-red colours which, more than the "Weimar"