Witness to the German Revolution Read Online Free Page B

Ehrhardt’s escape I noticed in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the paper of Stinnes’s press trust, a thoroughly pro-fascist organ, a very ambiguous note in which it was observed, though without any conclusion being drawn, that Ehrhardt’s imprisonment on remand was being excessively prolonged… Opinion was being prepared for his escape.
    The Leipzig high court has just (July 23) passed judgment on one of his accomplices, the young Princess of Hohenlohe. She has been sentenced to six months in prison for giving false evidence to assist Ehrhardt. She’s only a stooge, and the affair is without importance. But it produced a delicious statement in evidence from Noske. The social democrat Noske came before the court to testify that Ehrhardt had been able “by methods which were admittedly inhumane’ to form an élite corps 78 which had been highly useful in restoring order in Germany and in repressing Bolshevism. “I had to use these troops because I had no others.” This scoundrel of a socialist had no others! At the time of von Kapp’s coup in 1920, Ehrhardt offered military dictatorship to von Kapp. Do you know why? “Because,” Noske tells us, “despite his repeated requests, I had refused to be dictator.” What a great citizen, believe me! And
to think this bloody reactionary scum still belongs to a Socialist Party, to a Socialist international, to the same one as Fritz Adler and Jean Longuet. Which of these men has sunk the lowest?

As the economic crisis got worse and the Cuno government became more unpopular, the KPD faced a major problem. There were threats to ban the anti-fascist demonstrations called for July 29. The KPD sought advice from Moscow and got contradictory and inconsistent replies. In most parts of Germany the demonstrations were replaced by mass meetings; not a complete climbdown, but a withdrawal to a more defensive stance.
    Scarcity in Berlin
    Correspondance internationale , August 4, 1923
    It must be possible to measure, day by day, the progress of Germany, this great capitalist country, so wonderfully organized, as it slides towards the abyss.
    What is new this week? The paper money crisis, the scarcity—publicly acknowledged—of potatoes and fats, the enormous rise in the cost of living and the proportional fall in wages. The Reichsbank is issuing billions of paper marks every day: but on the New York stock exchange, the mark is falling ever faster. By the time they have been printed, German banknotes are worth no more than what they cost in paper and ink. Over the last few days there has been a shortage of notes. Private printshops had to be rapidly called into service to print notes of one, two, five and ten million marks… They were not even in circulation when the dollar, which five days ago was worth 400,000 marks, was quoted at 1,000,000 (on the evening of July 28). They had to hurry and print notes of one, five and ten billion!

    Between July 20 and 26, the cost of living rose by 50 percent. From July 25 to 27, in two days, the price of foodstuffs leaped by…107.7 percent (butter, from 70,000 a pound to 180,000; margarine from 50,000 to 80,000; pork from 60,000 to 120,000, etc.). The Reich statistical department is deliberately falsifying the cost of living index. On July 23, it registered an increase of 36.1 percent for the previous week. Die Rote Fahne checked and found it was 50 percent. Housewives check even better.
    And what they find is worse… The shopkeepers simply refuse to sell to them. They are waiting for next week’s increase so as to make better profits or to run less risk. So potatoes—the basic food of the German worker—butter, margarine and milk have no longer been on sale in Berlin for the last four days. The days before revolution are always the same! The monopolist is one of the last products of an exploiting society in disintegration.
    But all our figures mean nothing unless they are