The Great Terror

The evidence that Stalin, or the NKVD, planted the idea with the Germans is far from conclusive. But whatever its origins, it is certainly true that it was only the atmosphere of extreme suspicion now engulfing the Soviet Union which made the idea seem worth pursuing from the German point of view. Meanwhile, the rumors trickled into Moscow. In January 1937, the Pravda correspondent in Berlin, A. Klimov, sent information that German Army circles were talking of their connections in the Red Army, especially Tukhachevsky.⁶⁹ And S. P. Uritsky, head of Red Army Intelligence, reported directly to Stalin and Voroshilov that there were rumors in Berlin of opposition among the Soviet generals, though he himself did not credit this.⁷⁰ The Soviet embassy in Paris sent a telegram to Moscow on 16 March that it had learned of plans “by German circles to promote a coup d’état in the Soviet Union” using “persons from the command staff of the Red Army.”

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The most probable account⁷² (to which Gomulka, when leader of the Polish Communist Party, gave his authority in a formal speech)⁷³ makes it out that towards the end of 1936, in a conversation with Hitler and Himmler, the pros and cons of “betraying” Tukhachevsky and crippling the Red Army were discussed, and a decision was taken. Several Soviet and other accounts⁷⁴

make it clear that the story of the German contacts with Tukhachevsky was originally “leaked” by the Nazis through President Beneš of Czechoslovakia. Beneš had the information as early as the end of January 1937 (and confidentially passed it on to the French, whose confidence in the Franco-Soviet Pact was considerably weakened by it).⁷⁵ He also, as several recent Soviet accounts agree, passed the reports to Stalin, in all good faith. Gomulka tells us that this false information had been planted some time before the documentary “evidence” arrived, so that preliminary reports of the “treason” were in Stalin’s hands “at the time of the February—March plenum.”⁷⁶

The creation of the actual documentary evidence was an artistic job and took time. In March and April 1937, Heydrich and Behrens (who later became Chief of the SS in Belgrade and was executed by the Tito Government in 1946) directed the forgery of a “dossier” containing an exchange of letters over a period of a year between members of the German High Command and Tukhachevsky. Largely the work of the German engraver Franz Putzig, who had long been employed by the German secret agencies on false passports and so on, it consisted of thirty-two pages and had attached to it a photograph of Trotsky with German officials.⁷⁷ One later Soviet book quotes a number of Western and German accounts of the forgery of the dossier, and appears to accept that given by Colonel Naujocks, formerly one of Heydrich’s men.

⁷⁸ This says that the German security service got a genuine signature of Tukhachevsky from the 1926 secret agreement between the two High Commands by which technical assistance to the Soviet Air Force was arranged. A letter was forged using this signature, and Tukhachevsky’s style was imitated. The letter carried genuine German stamps, and the whole dossier consisted of it and fifteen other German documents. The German generals’ signatures were obtained from bank checks. Hitler and Himmler were shown the dossier in early May, and approved the operation.

A photocopy was in Prague within days. Beneš confirmed the existence of the plot to the Soviet Ambassador on 7 May, and on 8 May sent a personal secret message about it to Stalin. Heydrich’s secret agent was put in touch with an officer of the Soviet embassy, and showed him two pages, asking payment for the rest. The officer immediately flew to Moscow and returned with full power to buy the whole dossier. Half a million marks were paid over (though these later turned out to be forged). And by mid-May, the documents were in Stalin’s hands.⁷⁹

Possession of this definite “proof” of treason may have contributed to a final decision on the conduct of the blow against the generals. On 20 May, Dmitri Shmidt was shot in secret without further ado.⁸⁰

On the same day, the emergency stories about the just-discovered plot began to be put about inside the NKVD. An official who left Russia on 22 May says that real panic was now gripping the officer corps.⁸¹

The same day saw the arrest of yet another of the leading figures in the alleged plot—Eideman. He was called out of a Moscow Party conference in the House of the Moscow Soviet, where he had been sitting on the presidium, and taken away by the NKVD.⁸² The original pretext was that he had signed a Party recommendation for Kork. Like Yakir, Eideman is represented as having become disillusioned with the Purges. After a Party meeting in the spring of 1937, he had remarked quietly to a friend, “Last night they arrested another comrade here. It seems to me that he was an honest man. I don’t understand….”⁸³