For Litvinov was right. From 1936, and on the basis of the threat of his alternative anti-German policy, Stalin began to put out feelers to the Nazis, through his personal emissaries.
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.
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.”71
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