Cause of World Unrest - Nesta Webster




Chapter XI
Revolutions in Germany and Hungary

With the advent of the Bolsheviks to power in Russia, a new situation was created in the international conspiracy. In the Turkish and Portuguese outbreaks, which have already been discussed, the Continental Freemasons, working through their secret organizations, were the chosen instruments; with Lenin installed in Moscow, and using Russia as a platform, Bolshevist emissaries pure and simple were the means for disseminating unrest and provoking discord.

We will now deal with their activities in Prussia, Bavaria, and Hungary. It is notorious, of course, that the Germans used Bolshevism as a means towards their own victory (witness Brest-Litovsk), though at the same time they were exceedingly uneasy at the consequences which its progress might have in their own country.

But the whole attitude of Germany towards Bolshevism is very enigmatic, and in keeping with German mentality. Just as they were prepared to use the submarine warfare as a means of defeating the Entente (without considering seriously the consequences which might follow from America's entry into the war), so they are willing to toy with Bolshevism for the purpose of rendering nugatory the Treaty of Versailles (without weighing risk of the revolution which Soviet government might bring about in the Fatherland).

At any rate the possibility of a Bolshevised Germany must always be considered by the Allies. When all allowance is made for German duplicity, the present situation is sufficiently serious, for already the Jews of Moscow, working through their emissaries in Germany, have succeeded to some extent in setting Prussia against Bavaria and town against country.

Hungary is interesting because more than any other country it throws a vivid light on the international character of Bolshevism. All the Bolshevist forces (including those in England) are being called on to break down the Magyar rampart, which stands resolute, with something of the spirit of the intolerant but impressive Count Tisza, against the floods that are pouring forth from the East.

Revolution, when it came in Germany, was not a new and isolated event. War circumstances brought about revolution first in Russia, and Lenin's achievement was to recognize the psychological moment at which to strike for it there. He succeeded. But this success in Russia was, in his eyes, only a first step to a wider success throughout the world. With this end in view, and revolution in Germany especially, he was ready to countenance any inconsistency in Russia, and to impose on her any fresh sacrifices. He was willing, for example, to postpone peace and continue war, and did this, when thereby he could promote his larger policy. Only by remembering this can we understand the Bolshevist manoeuvres at Brest-Litovsk, or their later designs on East Prussia.

Only by remembering this, too, can we realize the full significance of the revolutionary attempts in Germany. The fact that in Russia circumstances permitted the Revolution to approximate at once to the wholesale scheme of Lenin—a scheme almost identical, as we have shown, with that of the Protocols—and the fact that in Germany revolution sought to move by partial stages in accord with the struggle between Socialist and Spartacist, these facts must not hide the conclusion that, in both, revolution was related with one and the same conspiracy. In both, as everywhere else, Lenin is an opportunist on behalf of his projected international upheaval.

Already in May of 1918, the Soviet had an accredited agent in Berlin. This was the Bolshevist Jew, Joffe, who was Red Ambassador there until the beginning of November, when he was returned across the frontier. The reason for his expulsion was his notorious activities in league with the Spartacists, as well as with the extremists among the Independent Socialists whose help the Majority Socialists now felt able to do without.

These Independents have not disavowed their traffic with Joffe, and through him with Moscow, in preparing for the Revolution in Germany. Barth, who seems to have been the chief medium for it, denied only that Moscow financed it. Barth has admitted every kind of support and assistance from the Bolsheviks in furthering the Revolution except money. This denial of financial help is not corroborated by Joffe. The expelled Ambassador, on the contrary, boasted of having given Barth "hundreds of thousands of marks. In any case, that large sums were passed from him to the Spartacists is as much beyond doubt as that Joffe had deep resources of money for this particular revolution-fostering campaign. In Lenin's own words it was "a chain of revolutions" that was being forged, and in that chain "the chief link was the German one." His artisan Joffe, at work in Berlin on the German link during the summer of 1918, is believed to have had four million marks placed at his disposal by the Soviet for the job.

Joffe had scarcely disappeared from Berlin when Radek (Sobelson) arrived there. Jew succeeded Jew. Joffe had been sent as Ambassador to the Government of the Kaiser, and his secret traffic with the Spartacists revealed itself gradually. Radek, on the other hand, entered Germany by stealth, and was Lenin's representative sent explicitly to negotiate with the Spartacists, and with the Jew Liebknecht in particular. For Liebknecht had by now been liberated from prison, and as between him and the revolutionary Government, of which Noske was proving the strong man, the game of "pull Devil, pull baker," had begun. Radek immediately took a hand on Liebknecht's end of the rope. On the last days of 1918, these two were openly advocating a "Revolutionary Communistic Labour Party of the German Spartacus-band." On an early day of 1919, according to good authority, a document signed by both clinched the connection between the Moscow and the Berlin "comrades," Liebknecht putting his name to it as prospective President of the German Soviet Republic, and Radek as accredited Plenipotentiary of the Russian Soviet Republic.

The terms of this alleged pact, which is believed to have been concluded in the attic of the Jewess, Rosa Luxembourg in Berlin, are given by M. Paul Miliukov. Lenin on his part undertook

  • To recognize Liebknecht as President of the German Soviet Republic;
  • To furnish important funds for Spartacist propaganda;
  • To place specially trained agents at the disposal of the Spartacists; and
  • To order Soviet armies to take the offensive and cross the German frontier in support of a simultaneous Spartacist rising in Berlin;

while Liebknecht undertook

  • To establish a Soviet Government in Germany immediately upon his advent to power;
  • To observe faithfully and put into practice all the teachings of Lenin's doctrines; and
  • To raise a Red Army of 500,000 men to be placed under the supreme command of the Commissary for War at Moscow.

Eichhorn—who, it is worth remembering, had been in Joffe's service earlier—was in this league, and a few days later the rising under his direction was scotched by Noske's troops, and Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg were murdered. The hand of Moscow in this attempt was proclaimed abroad by the Majority Socialist Government itself, which threatened reprisals against such Russians as should have been found to have shared in it. Radek was arrested; but Radek by this time had contrived to establish some thirty Bolshevist organizations throughout Germany, and so, with him as well as fifty or a hundred Spartacist leaders off the scene, the attempted new revolution of March 6th to 13th was still possible. It, too, failed, even with the Independents' help, but it brought into the light once more the strength of the union between the German and the Russian Bolsheviks.

All Lenin's eggs were never in one basket, or even in half a dozen baskets. The smashing or cracking of them in one place or in six was regarded by him as merely a local reverse. His objective was world-wide revolution, and he was pursuing it everywhere. Radek's activities had spread far beyond Berlin and Russia, as the March risings on the Rhine and in Hamburg and else where proved, and in Bavaria they had important results.

Immediately following the murder of the Prime Minister, Kurt Eisner (himself a Jew, Saloman Kusnowsky by name), and the proclamation of a Soviet Republic in Bavaria by the Munich Women's, Peasants', and Soldiers' Council, a Russian Bolshevik appears prominently. Max Livien, a Jew of Moscow, was on the spot, awaiting events and preparing for them. There was always some emissary of Lenin on the alert at points of outbreak.

Livien was at once elected a member of the Executive Committee, and he at once declared a policy in accord with that of the Russian Bolsheviks. There was to be no Diet, but only a proletarian dictatorship. Bavaria was to be allowed to work out its own scheme of government without interference from Prussia. All over Germany, independent Soviet Republics were to be set up. Here, in fact, were all the signs of Lenin's world-revolution policy—the disintegration of the State, a Communist subversion of authority, and the rule of Moscow supreme. The Bavarian plan was only partially successful from the beginning, and in the end it failed, but it dovetailed into the general conspiracy and helped it forward.

It is, in fact, the great strength of Lenin's manoeuvres that even when immediately unsuccessful they dovetail into the general cause, working for its ultimate good. Germany did not prove ready to jump to the Soviet idea, but the attempts to force her to it, even while they failed, increased that "attenuation by suffering" through which, in Lenin's own declarations, the peoples throughout the world could be brought to Bolshevist heel.

Thus, although Liebknecht had disappeared, Moscow still dallied with the project, signed with him, of ordering Soviet armies to take the offensive against Germany. That was only one of several offensives contemplated, and in attempting these together the Bolsheviks bit off more than they could chew. But if nothing came of this particular military enterprise, it has to be remembered that the others in the plan—against the Allies in North Russia and Denikin and Koltchak in the South—have now all been accomplished, largely no doubt through Allied mistakes. Lenin has always known how to wait.

And circumstances have always enabled him when pitted against other opportunists to wait longest. Here let us recall that while it was Germany who gave Lenin safe conduct to Russia, it was ourselves who introduced Trotsky to his side in that unhappy country. Against the single purpose which those errors aided, hand-to-mouth policies had no chance; and the aid lent to world revolutions by the errors was so timely that the speculation is unavoidable whether they were not deliberately directed to this end. The question may well be asked how it came about that Lenin and Trotsky were allowed to foregather in Russia just in the nick of time for their grandiose design.

The German Governments—both the Imperial before the Revolution and those that came after it—played an opportunist game with Lenin as he with them, but he played it better. We have Trotsky's account of Brest-Litovsk, and how Moscow bided its time while that apparent victory for the ex-Kaiser's policy worked out to its undoing. His Socialist successors have similarly played fast and loose with the Bolsheviks, according as the Spartacist fortunes seemed to allow them to flout Moscow or to favour it.

The game is not finished. Lenin's chief pawn in it is the Third International, the creation of which, through the defeat of its predecessors, has been his constant aim throughout the war and since; and it is significant that revolution in Germany is specifically set by the Third International in the forefront of the Revolutions which it was pledged to foster. The Bolshevist hand was detected, by the most competent observers, in the Kapp rising, and this Monarchist failure strengthened the Spartacist cause in Germany. We can trace the same design in still more recent events, such as the Bolshevist order which has gone forth for the expulsion of so influential a rival as Kautsky from the ranks of the German Independent Socialists. This is to be interpreted as a renewal of confidence in Moscow, following on successes against Poland to take a directing hand in German revolutionary politics.

The Revolution in Hungary is particularly instructive. Here the Bolsheviks made clever use of the exasperation aroused in a proud country by peace conditions which placed it in a position of inferiority to its ancient and despised enemies. Bolsheviks make use of any weapon, even the nationalism which is their main obstacle. If a principle or a prejudice has possibilities they use it; when it has served its purpose they throw it aside. This dexterous inconsistency is one of the secrets of their power. The appeal to nationalism was for the time being successful in Hungary, just as no doubt Lenin hopes he will have a similar result from the appeal he is at present making to the reviving national spirit in Russia, as shown in the talk about recovering Russian territories in Poland and the revival of the claims to Constantinople.

The "National Council" which, it will be remembered, overthrew the Hungarian Government, was composed, according to Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett, the special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, of the leaders of the Radical wing of the Old Independent Party, the Jewish Mafia and the Social Democrats. The ground had been carefully prepared by Jewish-Bolshevist propaganda, and according to an account of it written by an Hungarian lady, Mile. Charlotte Geocze, who at the time of writing was obviously unaware of the existence of the Protocols, it bears a striking resemblance to the plan of campaign outlined by the "Learned Elders of Zion."

In a series of articles edited by the former Hungarian Prime Minister, M. Huszar, the writer of one of them, the editor of the Nenzeti Ujsag, emphatically declares in that connection that Bolshevism cannot be explained alone by the revolutionary spirit in the air and by the economic crisis occasioned by the war, unless at the same time one accepts the fact that its moving force is the tenacious and secret solidarity of the Jews. A further point made is the continuous immigration of Russian Jews into Hungary from the East, which proceeded in a regular rotation; Jews settling down among the Ruthenians as money lenders, ruining the peasants and then returning home. A particular race of Jews, the Khazar, took a prominent part in this movement.

Bela Kun, the leader of the Hungarian Bolsheviks, was a Jew, and nearly all his ministers, like Friedlander, Wertheim, Dorscak, and Kohn, were also Jews. Kun was in close touch with Lenin, and was directly inspired by him in all his acts. Wireless communication was maintained between Moscow and Budapest, and some of the messages thus exchanged made exceedingly interesting reading. In a well-known message of greeting Lenin was informed:

"The Hungarian Proletariat, which yesterday took the entire State power into its hands, has introduced the Dictatorship of the Proletariat into the country, and greets you as the leader of the International Proletariat."

Many of these messages are to be found in the book, Secret Documents of the Bolshevist Propaganda, compiled by Professor Szabo of Hungary, and published in Budapest over a year ago. One message from Tchicherin, the Bolshevist Commissary of Foreign Affairs to Bela Kun, sent in cypher, with reference to preparing the soil in London, says:

"It would be useful to get into touch with the Russian People's Information Bureau in London. You could best do this by means of Sylvia Pankhurst, whom you can approach through the Daily Herald."

In the Daily Herald of there recently appeared the following:

"Mrs. Despard, Robert Dell, and Harold Grenfell, as the 'Donors' Committee' of the People's Russian Information Bureau, are asking for £500 to clear off outstanding liabilities and the estimated deficit on the next year's work of the Bureau. The Bureau, as most of our readers know, exists to circulate, collect, and tabulate information on the Russian situation."

Mrs. Despard is well known. Mr. Dell was formerly Paris correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, and was requested by the French Government to leave Paris during the war. Mr. Grenfell was formerly in the Navy and attached to the Embassy in Petrograd. He was the subject of a question addressed to the Prime Minister by Mr. Raper in the House of Commons on July 1st, 1920. Mr. Raper supplemented his question by asking Mr. Bonar Law if he was aware that documents had recently been sent to London by the British Minister in Finland implicating General Sir Hubert Gough, head of the late Inter-Allied Military Mission to Finland, also Commander Grenfell, and Professor Cotter, "as being associated with a notorious Bolshevist agent in Helsingfors." Mr. Bonar Law replied that he had not heard of it, and subsequently, on July 13th, in reply to a further question by Mr. Raper, the Leader of the House said that he had read the letters referred to, but did not think that they called for any action.

The overthrow of Bela Kun was one of the severest blows dealt at Bolshevism, but it is worth while noting that General Smuts was entrusted with one of those amazing Prinkipo missions for the purpose of coming to some understanding with the Bolsheviks before the French and the other Allies were allowed to advance on and occupy Budapest.

The campaign led by the Bolsheviks against Hungary ever since the return of civilized government has been extraordinarily malevolent and widespread. Bela Kun's Jews, imported from Russia, carried out appalling atrocities during their tenure of power, and on his expulsion there were some sporadic massacres organized by infuriated Hungarian officers, whose womenfolk had been shamefully maltreated. But the Government did, and is doing, all in its power to check any such excesses.

Notwithstanding that fact, the pro-Bolshevik papers in Europe, including those in England, were deluged with lurid accounts of atrocities committed by the anti-Bolshevik Hungarians. So persistent were these reports that official inquiries were made by the Allied Missions in Budapest, and their conclusions, which were published in a British White Paper, were to the effect that there were practically no atrocities at all, and that instead of thousands being massacred not more than fifty had been put to death. Yet in spite of this exposure, international labour has decided on a boycott of Hungary, though in the same breath it objects to any anti-Bolshevik measures against Russia on the ground that it would be interfering in the internal affairs of another country.

In both Germany and Hungary and, since the writing of this paper, also in Poland, the Jews of Moscow have suffered checks, but the battle has not yet been fought to a conclusion.

Revolutionary movements, both prior and subsequent to the war, have now been analyzed, and evidence of a common design, of a universal conspiracy, operating secretly through Freemasons and openly through Bolsheviks, has been put forward.