The Great Terror

The representative of Stalin’s personal secretariat, his old henchman David Kandelaki, was sent as “Commercial Attaché” to the Soviet Embassy in Berlin to make these delicate approaches. In December 1936 Kandelaki approached Dr. Schacht at his own request to inquire about the possibility of enlarging Soviet—German trade. Schacht answered that a condition of this must be the ending of Soviet-sponsored Communist activity in Germany. Kandelaki went back to Moscow to consult Stalin and at about the turn of the year was given a written draft proposing the opening of negotiations either through ambassadors or, if the Germans so desired, in secret. The draft reminded the Germans that agreement had previously been suggested by the Russians.

On 29 January 1937 Kandelaki, with his deputy Fridrikhson, again visited Schacht with a verbal proposal from Stalin and Molotov for the opening of direct negotiations. Schacht said that these suggestions should be passed to the German Foreign Ministry, and added once more that he felt that Communist agitation would have to be damped down. On 10 February, Neurath saw Hitler about the proposals and wrote to Schacht the next day, sensibly saying that there was no practical point in getting an agreement from the Russians to cease Communist propaganda. On the main issue, he said that as things were at the moment the Russian proposals were not worth proceeding with. If, however, Russia was “to develop further along the lines of an absolute despotism supported by the Army,” contact should certainly be made.

Meanwhile, the Pyatakov Trial had gone ahead, with its anti-Nazi implications. Even here, Stalin was able to have it both ways. General Köstring, the German Military Attaché who had been in effect implicated in the trial, was not declared persona non grata

. This decision seems to have been taken after considerable pressure from the Germans and is, to say the least, curious.

For the time being, Stalin’s approaches did not bear fruit. But the point had been made. The German leaders had had the advantages of an arrangement put before them.

Meanwhile, as Stalin’s real approaches to Hitler went ahead, the nonexistent contact between the Soviet High Command and the Nazis was made the subject of the decisive accusations of treason.

In the murky world of the secret organizations, some measure of contact had already been established between the NKVD and Reinhardt Heydrich’s SD.

After the suppression of the German Communist Party, operations against its underground remnant became simply a Secret Police matter. As with all sophisticated operations of this type, the Nazi secret agencies left some underground Communists untouched, with a view to retaining political contact.fn7

Among the organizations penetrated by both the NKVD and German espionage was the Union of Tsarist Veterans, with its main body in Paris. On 22 September 1937 the NKVD was to carry out, as a special operation, the kidnapping and murder of General Miller, its leader. This seems to have been in an attempt to put General Skoblin, Miller’s deputy, in command of the organization. Skoblin had long worked as a double agent with both the Soviet and the German secret agencies, and there seems no doubt that he was one of the links by which information was passed between the SD and the NKVD. According to one version, the first move in the whole dark business, which “originated with Stalin,”⁶⁷ appears to have been an NKVD story sent through Skoblin to Berlin to the effect that the Soviet High Command and Tukhachevsky in particular were engaged in a conspiracy with the German General Staff. Although this was understood in SD circles as an NKVD plant, Heydrich determined to use it, in the first place, against the German High Command, with whom his organization was in intense rivalry.⁶⁸ For in Heydrich’s motives, in this whole business, the compromising of the German Army ranked high. This side of it rather dropped into the background as the operation proceeded, and it does not anyhow particularly concern us.