Joseph E. Davies was the US ambassador in the USSR during the critical period of 1936-38. This is his reevaluation of the trials in light of the german attack in 1941. Found in "Mission to Moscow".
Passing through Chicago, on my way home from the June commencement of my old University, I was asked to talk to the University Club and combined Wisconsin societies. It was just three days after Hitler had invaded Russia. Someone in the audience asked: "What about Fifth Columnists in Russia?" Off the anvil, I said: "There aren't any they shot them."
On the train that day, that thought lingered in my mind. It was rather extraordinary, when one stopped to think of it, that in this last Nazi invasion not a word had appeared of "inside work" back of the Russian lines. There was no so-called "internal aggression" in Russia co-operating with the German High Command. Hitler's inarch into Prague in 1939 was accompanied by the active military support of Henlein's organizations in Czechoslovakia. The same was true of his invasion of Norway. There were no Sudeten Henleins, no Slovakian Tisos, no Belgian De Grelles, no Norwegian Quislings in the Soviet picture.
Thinking over these things, there came a flash in my mind of a possible new significance to some of the things that happened in Russia when I was there. Upon my arrival in Washington, I hastened to re-read my old diary entries and, with the permission of the State Department, went through some of my official reports.
None of us in Russia in 1937 and 1938 were thinking in terms of "Fifth Column" activities. The phrase was not current. It is comparatively recently that we have found in our language phrases descriptive of Nazi technique such as "Fifth Column" and "internal aggression".
Generally speaking, the well informed suspected such methods might be employed by Hitler; but it was one of those things which many thought just couldn't really happen. It is only within the last two years, through the Dies Committee and the F.B.I., that there have been uncovered the activities of German organizations in this country and in South America, and that we have seen the actual work of German agents operating with traitors in Norway, Czechoslovakia, and Austria, who betrayed their country from within in cooperation with a planned Hitler attack.
These activities and methods, apparently, existed in Russia, as a part of the German plan against the Soviets, as long ago as 1935.
It was in 1936 that Hitler made his now famous Nuremberg speech, in which he clearly indicated his designs upon the Ukraine.
The Soviet government, it now appears, was even then acutely aware of the plans of the German high military and political commands and of the "inside work" being done in Russia, preparatory to German attack upon Russia.
As I ruminated over this situation, I suddenly saw the picture as I should have seen it at the time. The story had been told in the so-called treason or purge trials of 1937 and 1938 which I had attended and listened to. In re-examining the record of these cases and also what I had written at the time from this new angle, I found that practically every device of German Fifth Columnist activity, as we now know it, was disclosed and laid bare by the confessions and testimony elicited at these trials of self-confessed "Quislings" in Russia.
It was clear that the Soviet government believed that these activities existed, was thoroughly alarmed, and had proceeded to crush them vigorously. By 1941, when the German invasion came, they had wiped out any Fifth Column which had been organized.
Another fact which was difficult to understand at the time, but which takes on a new significance in view of developments, was the manner in which the Soviet government was "bearing down*' on consular agencies of Germany and Italy in 1937 and 1938. It was done in a very high-handed manner. There was a callous and almost brutal disregard of the sensibilities of the countries involved. The reason assigned by the Soviet government was that these consulates were engaged upon internal, political, and subversive activities; and that because of these facts they had to be closed up. The announcements of the trials and executions (purges), all over Russia that year, invariably charged the defendants with being guilty of treasonable and subversive activity in aiding "a foreign power" to overthrow the Soviet state.
Every evening after the trial, the American newspapermen would come up to the Embassy for a "snack" and beer after these late night sessions and we would "hash" over the day's proceedings. Among these were Walter Duranty and Harold Denny of The New Tork Times, Joe Barnes and Joe Phillips of the New York Herald Tribune, Charlie Nutter or Dick Massock of the Associated Press, Norman Deuel and Henry Shapiro of the United Press, Jim Brown of the International News, Spencer Williams representing the Manchester Guardian. They were an exceptionally brilliant group of men. I came to rely upon them. They were of inestimable value to me in the appraisal and estimate of men, situations, and Soviet developments. I had myself prosecuted and defended men charged with crime in many cases in the course of my professional Sfe. Shapiro, too, was a lawyer, a graduate of the Moscow law school. His knowledge of Soviet law was most helpful. The other men were all very familiar with Soviet conditions, personalities, and Russian psychology. We had interesting discussions, which lasted long into the night.
All of us there in Moscow at the time paid comparatively little attention to that side of these cases. Some of us seemed to have "missed the boat." I certainly did. There is no doubt but that, generally speaking, we were centring our attention on the dramatic struggle for power between the "ins" and "outs" between Stalin and Trotsky and the clash of personalities and policies within the Soviet government, rather than upon any possible German Fifth Column activities, which we were all disposed to discount at the time.
In my own case, I should have known better, for there were two facts which should have placed me on notice. They had come to my knowledge and were not known to the others. One of these occurred during an interview which I had shortly after my arrival in Moscow with an official of the Soviet Foreign Office; the other occurred before I reached Moscow, in the Berlin Foreign Office in January, 1937, during an interview which I had with a German Undersecretary of State.
The story which was unfolded in these trials disclosed a record of Fifth Columnist and subversive activities in Russia under a conspiracy agreement with the German and Japanese governments that were amazing. The gist of the testimony, which die record of the case discloses, is as follows:
The principal defendants had entered into a conspiracy among themselves, and into an agreement with Germany and Japan to aid these governments in a military attack upon the Soviet Union. They agreed to and actually did co-operate in plans to assassinate Stalin and Molotov, and to project a military uprising against the Kremlin which was to be led by General Tukhatchevsky, the second in command of the Red Army. In preparation for war they agreed to and actually did plan and direct the sabotaging of industries, the blowing up of chemical plants, die destruction of coal mines, the wrecking of transportation facilities, and other subversive activities. They agreed to perform and did perform all those things which the German General Staff required should be done by them pursuant to instructions which they received from such General Staff. They agreed to and in fact did conspire and co-operate with the German and Japanese Military Intelligence Services. They agreed to and in fact did cooperate with German diplomatic con* sular representatives in connection with espionage and sabotage. They agreed to and actually did transmit to Germany and Japan Information vital to the defence of the Soviet Union. They agreed among themselves and with the' German and Japanese governments to cooperate with them in war upon the Soviet government and t6 form an independent smaller Soviet state which would yield up large sections of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine, and White Russia in the west to Germany and the Maritime Provinces in the east to Japan.
They agreed after the German conquest of Russia that German firms were to have concessions and receive favours in connection with the development of iron ore, manganese, oil, coal, timber, and the Other great resources of the Soviet Union.
To appreciate fully the character and significance of this testi- mony, which I personally listened to, it should be borne in mind that the facts as to this conspiracy were testified to by two cabinet members of the first order, the Commissar for the Treasury and the Commissar for Foreign Trade, by a former Premier of the government, by two Soviet Ambassadors who had served in London, Paris, and Japan; by a former Undersecretary of State and by the acting Secretary of State of the government, as well as by two of the foremost publicists and editors of the two leading papers of the Soviet Union.
To appreciate its significance, it was as though the Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, Secretary of Commerce Jones, Under- secretary of State Welles, Ambassador Bullitt, Ambassador Kennedy, and Secretary to the President Early, in this country, confessed to Conspiracy with Germany to cooperate in an invasion of the United States.
Here are a few excerpts of the testimony in open court:
Krestinsky, Undersecretary of State, said:
We came to an agreement with General Seeckt and Hess to the effect that we would help the Reichswehr create a number of espionage bases in the territory of the U.S.S.R. ... In return for this, the Rcichswehr undertook to pay us 250,000 marks annually as a subsidy.
Grinko, Secretary of the Treasury, said:
I knew and was connected with people both in the Ukrainian organization as well as in the Red Army who were preparing to open the frontier to the enemy, t operated particularly in the Ukraine, that is to say, at the main gates through Which Germany is preparing its blow against the U.S.S.R.
Rosengoltz, Secretary Of Commerce, stated:
I handed various secret information to the Commander in Chief of the Relchsweht Subsequently, direct connections were established by the Ambassador in the U.S.SJL to whom I periodically gave information of an espionage character.
Sokolnikov, former Ambassador to Great Britain, stated:
Japan, in the event of her taking part in the war, would receive territorial concessions in the Far East in the Amur region and the Maritime Provinces; as respects Germany, it was contemplated to satisfy the national interests of the Ukraine.
The testimony of many of the minor defendants went to establish the fact that, upon orders of the principal defendants, they bad direct connection with the German and Japanese Intelligence Services and co-operated with them in systematic espionage and sabotage; and either committed or aided and abetted in numerous crimes. For instance, Rataichak stated that he had organized and was responsible for two explosions at the Gorlovka nitrogen fertilizer plants which entailed enormous property losses as well as the low of human life. Pushkin contributed or assumed responsibility for the disaster to the chemical plants of the Voskresscnsk Chemical Works and the Nevsky plant. Knyazev told how he had planned and executed the wrecking of troop trains, entailing great loss of life, upon the express directions or instructions from foreign Intelligence Services. He also testified as to how he had received instructions from these foreign Intelligence Services "to organize incendiarism in military stores, canteens, and army shipments," and the necessity of using "bacteriological means in time of war with the object of contaminating troop trains, canteens, and army camps with virulent bacilli."
The testimony in these cases involved and incriminated General Tukhatchevsky and many high leaders in the army and in the navy. Shortly after the Bukharin trial these men were arrested. Under the leadership of Tukhatchevsky these men were charged with having entered into an agreement to co-operate with the German High Command in an attack upon the Soviet state. Numerous subversive activities conducted in the army were dis- closed by the testimony. Many of the highest officers in the army, according to the testimony, had either been corrupted or otherwise induced to enter into this conspiracy. According to the testimony, complete co-operation had been established in each branch of the service, the political revolutionary group, the military group, and the High Commands of Germany and Japan.
Such was the story, as it was brought out in these trials, a& to what had actually occurred. There can be no doubt but what the Kremlin authorities were greatly alarmed by these disclosures and the confessions of these defendants. The speed with which the government acted and the thoroughness with which they proceeded indicated that they believed them to be true. They proceeded to clean house and acted with the greatest of energy and precision. Voroshilov, Commander in Chief of the Red Army, said:
It is easier for a burglar to break into the house if he has an accomplice to let him in. We have taken care of the accomplices.
General Tukhatchevsky did not go to the coronation in London as he had planned. He was reported to have been sent down to command the army of the Volga district; but it was understood at the time that he had been removed from the train and arrested before he arrived at his command. Within a few weeks thereafter, on June 1 1, he, along with eleven other officers of the High Com- mand, were shot pursuant to judgment, after a trial by military court-martial, the proceedings of which were not made public. All of these trials, purges, and liquidations, which seemed so violent at the time and shocked the world, are now quite clearly a part of a vigorous and determined effort of the Stalin government to protect itself from not only revolution from within but from attack from without. They went to work thoroughly to clean up and clean out all treasonable elements within the country. All doubts were resolved in favour of the government.
There were no Fifth Columnists in Russia in 1941 they had shot them. The purge had cleansed the country and rid it of treason.
