|
Hans SchafranekKurt LandauThis outline of the life and work of Kurt Landau is intended toserve as an introduction to his major theoretical work on the SpanishRevolution, a comparison of Germany 1918 and Spain 1936, which followsit in this book. It is a summary by the author of his full lengthbiography Das Kurze Leben des Kurt Landau: Ein Österreichischer Kommunist als Opfer der stalinistischen Geheimpolizei, published by Verlag fur Gesellschaftskritik of Vienna in 1988. The original German text was translated into French byJean-Pierre Le Nir, notes were added by Jacqueline Bois, and the wholewas published in Cahiers Léon Trotsky, no.5,January/March 1980, pp.71-95. As is our custom, in the English versionedited and translated from the French by Ted Crawford, all footnotesreferring to foreign language sources have been deleted, since thosewho would want to use them would be able to read this article in theFrench, or better still the original German. English languagereferences have been retained, along with notes which amplify the text.This has involved renumbering the notes, of which there were 164 in theFrench version. Our thanks are due surely to the writer, and to Professor Broué, the editor of the Cahiers Léon Trotsky, for allowing us to introduce this remarkable militant to an English readership. Kurt Landau, born on 29 January 1903, the son of a prosperous winemerchant, joined the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) in 1921, a notuncommon event for a member of the Jewish intelligentsia of the time. Ayear later he took up the post of the leader of the Vienna-Wahringsection. In Austria the revolutionary wave slowly subsided. The Communistswere forced to adapt their tactics to the new objective conditions of‘relative stabilisation’ which provoked violent internal quarrels. At a time when most of the participants in these factional struggleslocated their arguments purely on a national level, and merely saw theCommunist International as an umpire, Landau immediately saw theconsequences which would ensue because of the discussions in theRussian Communist Party (RKP) and the Comintern. At the beginning of1923 he violently criticised the decisions of the Fourth Congress ofthe Communist International on the concept of the workers’ government,and supported the positions of Bordiga [1] and Acevedo. [2]He harshly rejected coalition governments with Social Democrats as arevision of the Marxist theory of the state. But the aim of his attackswas not merely the leadership of the German Communist Party (KPD) inthe person of Brandler [3], but equally the ‘opportunism’ of Zinoviev. [4] Whilst the leadership of the Austrian section of the Cominternblindly applied the anti-Trotskyist campaigns ordered under the pretextof ‘Bolshevisation’, Landau, at a delegate conference in Vienna, tookthe side of the founder of the Red Army, who had now fallen fromfavour. In between he became the head of the agitprop section of theCentral Committee and the cultural editor of Rote Fahne, the main organ of the KPÖ. In a resolution Landau vehemently defended the theses formulated by Trotsky in 1923 in Literature and Revolutionon the impossibility of a culture of the working class alone – aquestion also debated in the Russian Proletkult committees – and hethen attacked the cultural superstructure of Stalin’s dogma of‘Socialism in One Country’. [5] From 1923 to 1925 an evolution took place in the debates between the groups led by Frey and Tomann. [6] Under the powerful influence of the Comintern’s emissaries, a rubber-stamp faction was formed around Koplenig, Fiola [7]and others, which was characterised by a credulous devotion to theleadership of the Soviet party, and which gradually took control of thesection by undemocratic methods. Faced with this development the groupsof Frey and Tomann united just before the Eighth Congress in September1925. In March 1926 Landau joined this united opposition whilemaintaining his own international positions. Insofar as they did notdeny their principles and openly capitulate to the Central Committee,the “ultra-leftists, the Trotskyists, those without principles onprinciple” [8] were expelled from the KPÖ at the end of 1926 and beginning of 1927. They formed the Kommunistische Partei Österreichs-Opposition, or KPÖ-O. [9]Inside this new organisation, with some success to begin with, Landauargued for the idea of a second Communist party which would not regarditself as an expelled fraction of the official section. However, hequickly suppressed this opinion, as the KPÖ-O was itself heterogeneousand under pressure from the KPÖ leadership, and was only partiallywelded together under pressure from the KPÖ, the new questions whichwere posed, as well as the unresolved problems of the previous factionfights, were pregnant with potential conflicts, and were accompanied byconstantly changing alliances. In April 1928 the KPÖ-O expelled Landauand the militants close to him, Mayer, Kuba, Daniel, Heinrich andThoma. [10] These created a second oppositional organisation around the review Der neue Mahnruf. In Graz this group had more supporters than the official KPÖ. In the interwar period Austria was unexceptional as far as thefragmentation of oppositional Communist organisations was concerned. InGermany at that time there were also several groups which supported theaims of the Russian Left Opposition. Expelled to Turkey by Stalin,Trotsky attempted to unify his scattered supporters. At his personalsuggestion there was a possibility that Landau would take part in thisactivity as his personal secretary in Prinkipo, but the latter refused.Trotsky then asked Landau to organise the unification of the leftoppositions in Germany, the centre of the fight against Fascism, therise of which the Comintern had neglected in a criminal fashion. InSeptember 1929 Landau went to set himself up in the heart of theworkers’ revolutionary movement in Berlin in ‘Red Wedding’. It was above all due to his great efforts that there was a fusion of the little Trotskyist groups in Germany [11]in March 1930, in the Unified Left Opposition of the KPD(Bolshevik-Leninist). Landau was elected onto the provisional nationalleadership, and worked intensively on their main organ, Der Kommunist.Several days later a conference of the International Left Oppositionplaced him on the International Bureau, which gave a new impetus to theideological and organisational fusion. The Unified Left Opposition of the KPD won some influence around thebase of the Communist Party, which the growth of theNational-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP or Nazi Party)had alarmed, but which the fruits of the theory of ‘Social Fascism’ andits orientation to ‘red unions’, the Revolutionare GewerkschaftOpposition (RGO), increasingly disarmed. In May 1930 10 delegates ofthe North Berlin (Wedding) sub-section of the KPD signed a resolutionof the Bolshevik-Leninists; 30 others openly protested against thereaction of the KPD leadership to this declaration, that is to say theviolent expulsion of the opposition delegates by the organisers of theconference. Furthermore, Trotskyist influence grew in the League ofFreethinkers, in Red Aid and in the Building workers’ Federation. The mainstream Communists reacted to this, not only by numerousexpulsions and mindless violence, but also – as we now know – bysending in numerous agents to splinter the International LeftOpposition from the inside. One of the most famous of these – RomanWell, alias Robert Soblen [12] – became the most important rival of Landau. [13]At a meeting of the national leadership in June 1930, Well denounced,for obvious reasons, the atmosphere of panic supposedly spread byLandau (“Hitler at the gates”), foreseeing a “cold revolution” by theNazis through a “Fascisisation of the state apparatus”, and picturedthe evidence for a fundamental change in the policy of the KPD.Moreover, Well wanted Frank-Graf, whose activity in the service of theGPU is proved from many clues [14], coopted onto the national leadership. A national conference in October 1930 confirmed Landau in his postas the representative of the International Bureau, but it was not,however, able to get any political clarification. From January 1931,supported by the majority of the Berlin leadership, Landau imposed aseries of dismissals and expulsions, but this did not resolve thecrisis. Trotsky, who in the meantime had experienced some disappointmentswith the supporters of Landau in Austria, for reasons which we cannotgo into here, took the side of Well [15],and, with majority support internationally, demanded a referendum,whereas Landau discounted any clarification from an internationalconference which included the Bordigists. After the failure of severalattempts at conciliation, as well as Pierre Frank’s [16] mission to Berlin, the German section of the International Left Opposition split on 31 May 1931. The part of the German Left Opposition led by Landau, which then published the main paper Der Kommunist,looked for new international links: in April 1932 the Group forInternational Work of the Left Opposition in the Comintern wasestablished in Berlin, with sections or friendly organisations inGermany, Austria, France, Hungary, Greece, the USA, Belgium and Italy. [17]What linked this organisation, a rival to the International LeftOpposition, at the beginning at least, was political differences withTrotsky and his methods of organisation, which were consideredbureaucratic. Although the Left Opposition of the KPD(B-L), of which the mostimportant theoreticians and organisers with Kurt Landau were HansSchwalback and Alexander (Sascha) Müller, did not become any biggerthan the official section of the ILO in the decisive phase of theWeimar Republic – it could not have had more than 300 members – it wasnot content merely to produce theoretical analyses and to agitate in apurely propagandist way, but it actively intervened – as far as itsmodest forces allowed – in the class struggles of the Germanproletariat. As a defensive tactic against the rising Fascist flood,numerous attempts were made to forge practical United Front agreementswith the Communist and Social Democratic organisations, as itsparticipation in the Berlin transport strike at the beginning ofNovember 1932 alone proves. [18] When the long Fascist night started in Germany in 1933 theorganisation survived the first destructive blows better than theweighty bureaucratic apparatuses of the mass German working classparties, which were paralysed by their own strength. At an illegalconference held in March 1933 they decided to start an oppositionalfaction in the KPD, and to publish a bi-monthly journal, Der Funke (The Star). This organ circulated not only in Trotskyist circles and among the SAP, but took the risky path to members of the KPD. [19]The appearance of a youth paper, in collaboration with oppositionalactivists in the Young Communist League in the spring of 1933, couldalready be counted as a success in this work. [20]The first fell victim to the fury of the SA in the summer of 1933. Inspite of incredibly difficult conditions, the successful consolidationof the organisational structure and the discussions with other leftgroupings, particularly with the SAP, were brutally interrupted when,in the spring of 1934, the Gestapo succeeded in infiltrating theorganisation and almost entirely destroying it. In the course of a fewweeks over 100 militants were arrested [21], and the most important activists were sentenced at the end of July 1934. The rupture in international relations, the need for a legalpublication and, if possible, a permanent communication network betweenthe isolated cadres, all proved the necessity for some kind of centreabroad. So Landau, with his wife Katia (actually Julia), left Germanyfrom March 1933 and found a new area of activity among the refugees inParis. In June 1933 the former Secretary of the organisation, HansSchwalbach, followed him. As well as keeping contact with German militants since the politicalsplit, Landau, as the leading Internationalist Marxist (as their grouphad been called since March 1933) was confronted with two importantproblems. Firstly there was the balance sheet to draw up of thehistoric failure of the Communist International, and flowing from thatthe questions relating to the political and organisationalreorientation of the international working class movement leading toclarification. Secondly, Landau had the important task of helping withthe unification of the oppositional groups on the French left, and tocollect around the representatives abroad (or Auslandsvertretung, AV) agroup of sympathetic French comrades who could act as points for theprogrammatic sharpening of the tendencies in the organisation. The lastaspect cannot be examined here – even if it were possible to describeit with any precision from the documents – because we should have todeal with the history of the Trotskyist, Bordigist and Syndicalisttendencies in France as well as the internal currents of opposition inthe PCF, which would overwhelm the limited space given to this succinctsketch. As a result of the ‘Fourth of August’ of the KPD, [22]Trotsky wished to move towards the building of a new illegal classparty of the German proletariat – a conception he put forward for thefirst time on 12 March 1933 [23],not without colliding with the violent resistance of his followers inGermany. For Trotsky the KPD’s collapse testified “incontestably thatthe fate of not only the German Communist Party but also the entireComintern was decided in Germany”. [24]This was the final event which caused him to abandon en bloc the policythat he had hitherto followed of the reform of the Comintern. [25] Since Landau up until this time – in spite of his organisationalbreak and growing political differences – had thought of himself asclose to Trotskyism inasmuch as it was “a living intellectual currentwithin Communism”, this estimation of Trotsky, according to whom theKPD had utterly betrayed its revolutionary rôle because of itscapitulation to German Fascism without a fight, had, consequently, theeffect of the irrevocable breaking of the umbilical cord. In opposition to this Landau developed the conception of a “newZimmerwald”, to which he tried to win Rosmer, the “French Liebknecht”,and to whom he explained his political positions on 26 March 1933: The process of the decomposition of the Comintern, which hascommenced its last decisive stage with the German catastrophe, requiresthat all Communists who accept the principles of the first fourCongresses of the Communist International [26]should form a solid group inside the Comintern and, in every country, aCommunist leadership capable of winning a decisive fraction of theworking class in order to reconstruct the Communist parties in thestruggle for the rebirth of the Comintern. We ourselves, left wingactivists, should form the left wing in such an organisation, which, byits work, will win the whole organisation to our principles. Where suchan organisation destroys the centrist bureaucracy and reorganises theCommunist parties it will then become the basis for a new and genuineCommunist Party. This programmatic definition of the tasks to be undertaken was also the leitmotiv of the legal edition of the paper Der Funke,the organ of the International Marxists, which appeared in Paris fromMay 1933 onwards (it was printed in Vienna), and which was mostlyedited by Landau himself. [27]These technical possibilities for publication came to nothing simplybecause the Fascists also seized Austria. The outlawing of Landau’ssupporters there (Neuer Mahnruf) in February 1934,combined with the simultaneous collapse of the German group, caused adrastic contraction in the range of activity of the Auslandsvertretungled by him in Paris. [28]During the next two years, although it was not in any way inactive, itsmaterial and political possibilities were in reality reduced to thoseof a circle. It is true that Landau intensified his contacts with theoppositional group Que Faire?, formed at the end of1934 around André Ferrat, Georges Kagan, Pierre Rimbert and others. Hebecame editor of the journal of that name and tried – without eventualsuccess – to win them to his own strategic views. [29] A series of political events became the external catalyst of thepartial break-up of this little group. In 1936 Stalin, using a giganticapparatus of repression, started down the road of the systematic andmassive physical destruction of his now politically powerless opponentsand of all his future potential enemies. The entire Bolshevik old guardbecame the target, not just of political attacks, but of the revolversof the GPU. From the cellars of the Lubianka to the most distant frozenwastes of Siberia, the police firing squads knew no rest. When on 24 August 1936 the first great public Moscow Trial reachedan inglorious end with death sentences passed on all the accused,Landau was enormously worried, because the defence of the Bolshevikleaders, now called “scum”, “jackals”, “hyenas” and “mad dogs” [30],was for him not only the clear duty of proletarian internationalism –above all and in spite of the euphoric mood of the Popular Front inwhich his travelling companions happily closed their eyes to themassive number of murders – but also a ‘personal’ matter of greatimportance. One of those executed, Valentin Olberg, was a member ofLandau’s group in Berlin in 1930-31. [31] In the Parisian emigration it was Landau who immediately took theinitiative with a big political campaign of solidarity with Stalin’svictims, and on 30 August 1936 sent a proposal for joint activity toHeinrich Brandler, who bluntly rebuffed such a request. [32]The KPO defended the Zinoviev trial as “a justified defensive actagainst a counter-revolutionary plot”, and thus cynically confirmed theessential elements of the criticism that Trotsky had made of it. [33]The SAP, which had gone into a rampant right wing direction since 1933,meanwhile prepared itself for the German Popular Front in the ‘LutetiaCircle’, and showed itself equally uninterested in Landau’s efforts. However, he had to defend himself from a left opposition within hisown ranks which grew in influence, and which became organisationallyseparate at the beginning of 1937. Only the Trotskyists and theultra-left group Internationale around Maslow [34]finally took part. Several joint discussions devoted to perspectives onthe Russian Revolution were organised, and some later proposals weremade by Landau, such as for the creation of a joint body for workers’education as a centre of activity opposed to the ‘liberal’ education ofthe Popular Front, and for a joint pamphlet on the Moscow Trials. With this in view Landau made contact with the Czech group around Kalandra [35],though this came to nothing because of ideological incompatibility orthe sectarian interests of the organisations. While the Trotskyistswished above all to recruit members to their own organisations,Maslow’s followers linked their criticism of Stalinism to ‘sectarian’needs which resulted from their refusal to defend the Soviet Union,inasmuch as it was considered to be a system of state capitalism. Whenit is considered overall, this campaign did not lead to any positiveconcrete result. The second event which rocked the international workers’ movement toits foundations, and submitted all the problems of revolutionary theoryand practice to pitiless examination, was the outbreak of the SpanishCivil War in July 1936, which at its beginning was indistinguishablefrom a social revolution of tremendous depth and scale. It threw intothe shadows all the previous revolutionary uprisings since the ebb ofthe first wave from 1921 to 1923, and in some respects even wentfurther than in 1917. This fact is attested by political authors asdifferent as Leon Trotsky [36], Andrés Nin [37], and Augustin Souchy [38], without naming others who closely examined the question. From the summer of 1936 revolutionaries, weary of illegal politicalactivity in their own country or the bitter experiences of exhaustingsmall group existence in the centres of emigration, poured into Spainfrom all corners of the world. Landau although physically marked by thedifficulties of emigré life, together with his wife Katia, knew peaceand quiet no more. Every day they followed the news from the front. Theheadlines announced the coming siege of Madrid by the Fascist troops.This enforced inactivity was torture to them. They succeeded in makingcontact with Andrés Nin and Juan Andrade [39] of the Executive Committee of the POUM through the efforts of Fosco (an Italian Trotskyist who was close to the POUM) [40]and Mika Etchebehere (the wife of Hippolyte Etchebehere – theArgentinian member of the POUM, who had worked politically with Landausince 1931). [41] At the beginning of November 1936 Landau and his wife Katia arrivedin Barcelona, which, despite the slow ebb of the revolution, was thefocus of the radicalisation of the Catalan and even the Spanishworkers. [42]With this emigration the leadership of the Marxist-Internationalistsalso moved its abode. The POUM gave Landau the job of working withforeign journalists, writers and ordinary militiamen. He had his ownoffice and several staff, and worked both as a political instructor andin organising things as ‘ordinary’ as sleeping and eating arrangements.The most important meeting place for the numerous foreign supporters ofthe POUM was the Hotel Falcón, which had been requisitioned by the POUM: It buzzed with a swarm of journalists, politicians and exiles fromthe whole world, while several oppositional groups of Socialists andCommunists met there. The SAP, represented by Max Diamant and WilliBrandt [43],the activists of the KPO-Brandler tendency, Council Communists fromHolland, Trotskyists from America, France, Britain and South America,Italian Maximalists, German Anarcho-Syndicalists and the Jewish Bundwere all there. This was so much the case that some, such as the SAPand the Italian Maximalists, had their own distinct military unitswhich were a part of the POUM militia. Many of the revolutionaries hadbeen soldiers during the First World War, and having militaryexperience, they were determined to support the Spanish Revolution bothpolitically and militarily. The leaders of the POUM had neither thetime nor the wish to take part in the discussions and factionalintrigues of these groups. So they appointed the Austrian Kurt Landau,the leader of the Der Funke group, as the coordinatorand adviser to collect together and organise what was useful amongthese volunteers as well as organising international relations. [44] Landau expected that the impetus of the Spanish Revolution would bea beacon for the necessary reorientation of the European working classwhich he had desired since 1933, and which he now thought a practicalpossibility through the medium of the POUM. This function of the POUMas the axis of a ‘new Zimmerwald’ would have to be fleshed out duringan international conference at Barcelona which he had competentlyprepared in collaboration with International Secretariat of the POUM.To avoid any dilution of the revolutionary objectives of the proposed“Fighting International Bloc”, he drew up a programmatic basis whoseacceptance seemed to him to be the minimum for starting practicalactivity in this centre of action: 1. Principled rejection of the Popular Front. A fight againstFascism insofar as it was a working class struggle for Socialism andthe dictatorship of the proletariat, active support of our Socialistrevolution against both its open external enemies (the Fascists) andhidden ones (the non-interventionists) and against the democraticcounter-revolution of Stalinism and reformism. 2. Revolutionary struggle against war. Against all support forimperialist states at war, and an intransigent struggle against futureattempts at a wartime class truce by the reformists and Stalinists inthe camp of the victors in the First World War. 3. Recognition of the working class character of the Soviet Unionand thus the duty of the international working class to defend theSoviet Union in war by every method of class struggle. The fightagainst reaction inside the proletarian dictatorship in the SovietUnion, and a fight against Stalinism and for equal political rights forall political supporters of soviet power. This hope of seeing a revolutionary development in Spain giving apowerful impulse to the reorientation of the workers’ movement in theinternational arena was strongly expressed in numerous articles,letters, discussions, and in a talk broadcast by Radio POUM on thethird anniversary of the Austrian insurrection that is worth mentioninghere: Today we are talking to you from working class and revolutionaryBarcelona, on the radio station which were seized by the workers duringthe July days, during which the Spanish working class continued thestruggle which we Austrian comrades started in February 1934. It is astraight line which runs from the Austrian February in 1934 to therevolutionary Spanish July. The way we showed in Austria is one theminers of the Asturias borrowed several months later. But the AsturianOctober Revolution was the great prologue of the revolutionary victoryof July 1936. In a few weeks we, all the revolutionary groups andparties, are holding an international conference in Barcelona, and wehope that delegates will come from the ranks of Austrian proletarianrevolutionaries. Truth will show itself to be stronger than the powerof machines. Stronger than the troubled waves of slander the invincibleforce of our Socialist revolution will be affirmed ... As a member of the London Bureau, an international tendency waveringbetween Social Democracy, ‘official’ Communism and Trotskyism, the POUMhad a close relationship with the SAP, which sent Max Diamant and WilliBrandt as both their representatives and as leaders of the Germansection of the POUM in Barcelona. They supported that wing of the POUMwhich did not reject the Popular Front line even after the experiencesof Nin in entering the government of the Catalan Generalitat and soughtto disregard the violent anti-Trotskyist attacks of the CatalanStalinists and Spanish (PSUC and PCE) stirred up by Soviet ‘advisers’.The Spanish representatives of the SAP came into conflict both with thePOUM majority and their own oppositional members of which the mostimportant – after their expulsion from the SAP – contacted Landau andfound themselves just as much in vehement opposition to Brandt andDiamant. [45] Landau was involved in violent polemics on the subject of themilitarisation and the de facto dissolution of the militias and theirreplacement by a ‘Peoples’ Army’. Unlike Brandt he unreservedlyrejected the idea of the ‘Peoples’ Army’ which was favoured by theStalinists. Nor did Landau share Brandt’s optimism concerning hisperspective for the Spanish Revolution deriving from his positiveevaluation of the Popular Front. Did it not result in the bloodydestruction of the proletarian insurrection in Barcelona in May 1937 –a last desperate attempt to reverse the rapid progress of thedestruction of the revolutionary gains since the turning point of1936-37, and to revive the tradition of July 1936 – a suppressioncarried out by the joint efforts of the Communist Youth, the CatalonianEsquerra (the bourgeois governmental party in Catalonia) and regularunits of the Civil Guard and shock troops? [46] This was understood by Landau as a decisive step on the road to social and political defeat as well as militarily. [47] The policy of weakening all the anti-Stalinist forces (already proclaimed in Pravdaon 17 December 1936 with a cynical precision: “In Catalonia, theelimination of the Trotskyites and Anarcho-Syndicalists has alreadybegun; it will be carried out with the same energy as in the SovietUnion.”) [48]took place in May 1937 and had the appearance of a witch-hunt againstall who were on the left of the PCE. Among the innumerable foreign andSpanish supporters of the POUM, left Socialists, Anarchists andTrotskyists were victims of pogroms. In the summer of 1937 about 15,000anti-Fascist political prisoners [49] languished in the official dungeons or in the numerous prisons of the GPU. [50] After the battles upon the barricades of Barcelona in which he wasinvolved as a witness, Landau did not feel sufficiently safe in thesuburb of Saria. He asked the advice of Alexander Souchy, who gave himaccommodation in the Laetana, the headquarters of the RegionalCommittee of the Anarcho-Syndicalist CNT, and since Souchy shortlyafterwards went abroad as a CNT representative, to inform otherSocialist parties of the worsening situation, he advised Landau not toleave the building in the meantime. This advice was the result of arealistic appreciation of the situation, since another lodging, inwhich Landau had stayed for a short time, was being openly watched bythe police. When Peter Blachstein, the representative in Spain of Neuer Weg, a split from the SAP, sought refuge there he was immediately arrested. For reasons which have not been completely explained, [51]Landau left his relatively safe refuge in the CNT headquarters andsurfaced, this time in worse circumstances. After the arrest of thewhole Central and Executive Committee of the POUM and the outlawing ofthe party, he knew he would be in mortal peril. On the same day hiscompanion in struggle, Katia, was arrested in a secret POUM ‘safe’house, and was overwhelmed with a collection of absurd accusationswhich went as far as open anti-Semitism, and was held as a hostage, toattract Landau and deliver him to the hangman. This habit of holdingrelatives was not exceptional. In spite of these difficult circumstances, in clandestinity and withuntiring devotion to the revolutionary cause, Landau wrote numerousarticles which found their way abroad. [52]In these articles he developed in a fragmentary manner a fundamentalcritique of Bolshevism, and following on from that a polemic which wasequally sharp against both Trotsky and his supporters. Of what crimes was Landau accused? The course of brutalinterrogations to which Katia Landau and her fellow prisoners weresubjected, carried out for the most part by non-Spaniards, revealedattitudes which showed the long arm of the Russian secret police. [53]In addition to an (incorrect) statement that Landau was a member of theExecutive Committee of the POUM, he was accused of the alleged creationof a ‘terrorist’ group, which not only was responsible for the eventsin Barcelona but also had as its objective the assassination of Stalinand the leaders of the Comintern! A special number of Die Internationale (September 1937), devoted to a single theme Why Trotskyism must be eliminated from the working class movement,written by Phillipe Dengel, described Landau as the “officialtheoretician” of the POUM and showed remarkable frankness about thedirection in which the “political” confrontation would develop: After all the German and international experience every Trotskyistmust be treated as a direct agent of Fascism. Every contact with theseelements is a crime against the working class, against those who carryon a heroic resistance against Fascism in Germany. The struggle againstthese Fascist agents in the ranks of the working class is as much theduty of Social Democrats as of Communists. Whereas after May 1937 resignation and demoralisation grew amongstthe numerous supporters of the POUM because of the feeble resistance toits destruction, Landau’s optimism remained intact. A letter that hesent in July 1937 to one of his companions from the struggle inAustria, Karl Daniel, bears witness to that: In spite of this bloody hard situation I feel at home like a fish inwater ... A fight to the death has been declared between us and theStalinists. They are 10 times stronger than us, but until now they havehad to deal with broken men [in the Soviet Union], a singleintellectual [Trotsky] and some little groups. But here we have thepossibility of developing, not just a little faction fight or aliterary joust against them, but a class struggle of workers againstStalinism. Even if we must go under, which I do not believe, even if weare annihilated, we, who carry on the fight, will leave such a deepimpression that in a new situation the struggle between the revolutionand Stalinism will flare up anew as the class struggle of therevolutionary working class against the Stalinist counter-revolution.It is on our tough bones that Stalin will break at least a few teeth.The POUM represents the only considerable political force on whichMarxism can lean. Even if the party has shown a thousand weaknesses,the best foreign comrades, above all our militiamen, are enthusiasticfor the party in a way that has rarely been seen. Whoever goes abroadafter leaving here, whether they are from the SAP, the KPÖ or God knowswhat, they leave as “POUM ambassadors” entrusted not only with the jobsof [illegible in original] but filled with the greatest enthusiasm forour party in its struggle, and a mortal hatred of Stalinism. Several weeks later on 23 September 1937 Kurt Landau was discoveredin his hiding place and taken away. Let us allow Katia Landau to speak: Kurt was staying in a house of some POUM comrades in a Barcelonasuburb. The woman who looked after him was called Carlotta Duran. Shehad just come to her house when she saw a large very elegant blacklimousine parked in front of her house. My husband was seated on theterrace, writing as usual. Two men in plain clothes and an AssaultGuard got out, and asked him to get his things and then to come awaywith them immediately. She openly admitted that she had not the courageto intervene. Why was my husband tracked down? Perhaps because the POUMcomrades still at liberty had made this house a headquarters which hadbeen noticed in this quiet suburb. All the enquiries at the Commissariat General for Public Order aswell as those at the prisons drew a blank. The General Delegate forPublic Order, Paulino Gomez, explained to those who were interested inthe disappearance of Landau that he could not get any information inreply to his enquiries from Valencia. In spite of a flood of slanders by the Comintern’s propagandaapparatus in every country, it was not completely successful instifling a critical attitude and solidarity with the victims ofStalinist repression, above all in the case of the disappearance ofAndrés Nin. It appeared he was known internationally as an oldrevolutionary in several oppositional currents. As well as severalattempts to start solidarity campaigns in Britain and France, threeinternational commissions of enquiry – with the participation ofwell-known representatives of the London Bureau – gained a certaincredibility. The last of these, composed of John McGovern (GeneralSecretary of the Independent Labour Party) and Felicien Challaye(Professor at the Sorbonne and a member of the commission of enquiry onthe Moscow trials) [54]went to Catalonia in November 1937 to examine, among other things, boththe situation in the state prisons, the circumstances in which severalforeign representatives of worker’s organisations, Erwin Wolf, MarcRhein [55] and Kurt Landau, had disappeared, and to throw light on the case of Nin as well. In the meantime Katia Landau, who was threatening a hunger strike,and was held in the Carcel de Mujeres (Women’s Prison) at Barcelona,had asked the Catalan President Companys, the Minister of the Interiorand all the relevant police and justice authorities for information onthe place of detention and the fate of Kurt Landau, a reply to thequestion as to whether she was being held as a hostage, or what was thereason for her arrest, and if there was nothing against her, herimmediate release. On 8 November she had recourse to an extreme form ofstruggle – 500 women, mostly German, undertook a hunger strike incomplete solidarity with her. The above mentioned commission of enquirywhich had access to some prisons could not get over being greeted bythe singing of the Internationale by hundreds of women prisoners – “Fascist agents” according to the Stalinists. If the Negrín government, in spite of this pressure, was none toowilling to shed any light on the predominance of the Stalinistapparatus in decisive sectors of the state machine, for tacticalreasons it was in part constrained to take its distance from the openslanders of the Stalinists. In addition to this a real clash ofinterests had emerged since the autumn of 1937. It was doubtless due tothis that we can explain the personal intervention of the Minister ofJustice, Manuel Irujo, after which Katia Landau gave up her hungerstrike on 22 November 1937 and was set free. A week later she was againarrested by the Grupo de Informacion, without a warrant it is true, andtaken with Elsa Hensche (KPO) to the Paseo San Juan (used by the GPU inBarcelona.) One of their ‘specialists in interrogation’, LeopoldKulcsar, [56]was an ‘old acquaintance’ of Kurt and Katia Landau from the time of thefaction fights in the KPÖ in 1924-25. Kulcsar – one of the most suspectfigures in the Austrian workers’ movement – talked about Kurt Landauwith an almost pathological hatred. He promised a “bloody vengeance”,and stated that he had come to Spain on a “special mission”, though histrue function in the apparatus remains controversial. [57] That brings us back to the question of knowing who had foreseen,organised and carried out the kidnapping and execution of Landau. Allthe clues point to the GPU, but it is almost impossible to know exactlywho were the people involved. The murderers knew how to cover theirtracks – as they did in numerous similar cases. According to Erich Wollenberg’s version, recorded by Carola Stern,Kurt Landau was kidnapped by members of the German apparatus andtortured to death. In any case physical ill-treatment – which withoutany doubt can be assumed to have happened – would have brought mortaldanger to Landau, as he was a haemophiliac. There is a story thatWalter Ulbricht ordered the French Communist André Marty to ‘liquidate’Landau and that Marty went along with this. At any rate even if thiscannot be verified, the activity of these two professionals remains oneof the darkest chapters in the history of the Spanish Civil war.Landau’s track can perhaps be followed to Calle Corcega 299 (theForeign Police) but is afterwards lost in the gloom. Julian Gorkin, once chief editor of the main POUM paper La Batallaand Secretary of their International Secretariat, who knew Landau well,tells in a letter to Elsa Poretski of his stay in the state prison atBarcelona. Here there was a meeting with a friend, also imprisoned, whoassured him that Landau had been taken to the Hotel Colon – theheadquarters of the PSUC, the Comintern section in Catalonia – that hehad been killed in a cellar of the hotel, and his body then burnt. Onthe other hand Katia Landau does not exclude the possibility that herhusband was deported to the Soviet Union and there experienced the fateof countless of his political companions. After his new imprisonment at the beginning of December, there was averitable odyssey through the secret state prisons where he wasthreatened with a trial for military espionage. In the meantime theLandau case had a certain publicity – Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adlerwrote to the Comintern trying to obtain Katia’s freedom. TheRevolutionary Left Group around Marcel Pivert attempted to intervene aswell, and to this intervention Katia probably owed her release andexpulsion from Spain – in exchange for a few aeroplanes. The Stalinistswere happy to have murdered a fighting revolutionary. In October 1938,when they put on trial the most eminent leaders of the POUM, theyaccused Landau and some of his comrades involved in the trial of havingacted as agents of the Gestapo! Several organisations and many prominent individuals protested withtelegrams to President Negrín at this vile slander. Among them wereAlfred Rosmer, F. Brupbacher, Victor Serge, Ignazio Silone, Brandler,Frölich, Thalheimer, Marceau Pivert, Magdeleine and Maurice Paz,Rappaport, M. Fourrier, Martinet and several others. However, by thistime the Spanish Stalinists were already reaping the fruits of theirPopular Front policy. They were being eliminated by their bourgeoisallies, whose foot they had put in the stirrup. Less than a year laterthe whole of Spain was under the Fascist yoke. **************************************** Notes1. Amadeo Bordiga (1889-1970). Editor of the review Il Soviet,a leader of the PCI in 1923, rejected the United Front policy in theunions. He was marginalised by Gramsci and Togliatti at the Lyonsconference of the PCI in 1926. A severe critic of Stalinism, he wasexpelled from the party in 1930 and published many articles and books. 2.Isidora Acevedo, member of the Socialist Federation in the Asturias,joined the left wing of the PSOE which created the Spanish workers’Communist Party (PCOE) on 13 April 1921. The PCOE fused with theSpanish Communist Party created by the Federation of Young Socialistson 15 April 1920. The newly unified Spanish CP was created on 14November 1921, and Acevedo became editor of the Aurora Rosein Oviedo. After the fusion and the Third Congress of the Comintern,Acevedo joined the opposition, and was threatened with expulsion. Hewas a member of the Spanish delegation at the Fourth Congress of theComintern. 3.Heinrich Brandler (1886-1967), a building worker, he was one of therare working class leaders of the Spartakist nucleus, and, afterelection to the KPD Central Committee in April 1920, he became chairmanof the party in February 1921, and took over the party leadershipduring the March action. Imprisoned from July to November, he stayedfor several months in Moscow as a member of the Praesidium of theCommunist International. As General Secretary of the KPD in the autumnof 1923, Stalin blamed him for the October defeat. 4.It was above all the following passage from Zinoviev’s talk that Landausubmitted to a vigorous critique: “If all goes well we will get out ofsuch a government [a coalition of Social Democrats, Syndicalists,non-party and Socialists] one Social Democrat after another, untilpower rests in the hands of the Communists.” 5.In May 1924 Stalin wrote: “But to overthrow the power of thebourgeoisie and establish the power of the proletariat in one countrydoes not yet mean the complete victory of Socialism. The principal taskof Socialism – the organisation of Socialist production – has still tobe fulfilled. Can this task be fulfilled, can the final victory ofSocialism be achieved, in one country, without the joint efforts of theproletarians in several advanced countries? No, it cannot. To overthrowthe bourgeoisie, the efforts of one country are sufficient; this isproved by the history of our revolution. For the final victory ofSocialism, for the organisation of Socialist production, the efforts ofone country, particularly of a peasant country like Russia, areinsufficient; for that, the efforts of the proletarians of severaladvanced countries are required.” (Foundations of Leninism, cited in EH Carr, The Interregnum 1923-24,London, 1954, pp.358-9) However, in December 1924 we find the contrary:“There can be no doubt that ... the theory that the victory ofSocialism in one country is impossible, has proved to be an artificialand untenable theory.” (The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists, Works, Volume 6, London 1975, p.414) 6.Karl Tomann (1877-1945) became a Communist during his captivity inRussia, and became part of the directorate which decided on thecancellation on 13 June 1919 of the insurrection set for the 15th. WithKoritschoner he was on the right of the party leadership, and violentlyattacked the ‘left’ led by Frey. Tomann was in charge of trade unionactivities until, pushed by Ruth Fischer, Zinoviev sent an emissary,Karl Frank, who had him expelled in August 1924. But in December he wasreadmitted and restored to his position as secretary of the party tradeunion sector. 7.Johann Koplenig (1891-1968), who was an activist before the First WorldWar and then a prisoner in Russia, only returned to Austria in 1920. Hejoined the KPÖ, became its Secretary in 1924 and General Secretary in1925. Gottlieb Fiala (1891-1970) also joined the KPÖ when he returnedfrom captivity in Russia, and was a member of its Central Committeeuntil 1923. He sat on the Executive Committee of the Comintern from1924 until 1928. He was responsible for work in the Austrian army, andwas the director of Red Aid. In 1927 he became Koplenig’s second incommand. 8.The agreement made on 30 August by these two tendencies, which waslampooned by the party and called an “unprincipled bloc”, only won 40per cent of the votes. 9. The main paper of this tendency was the journal Arbeiterstimme (Workers’ Voice), of which 134 issues were published between January 1927 and August 1934. 10.Karl Mayer, Kuba, Karl Daniel, Ludwig Heinrich and Hans Thoma were allexpelled with Landau by the KPÖ(O) leadership in April 1928 for“leftist deviation”. According to Wagner in Trotskismus in Österreich,the expulsion of these activists – who all came from Graz, then thesecond biggest town in Austria – was for Korschist tendencies. Theexpelled group, together with the branch in Graz, then formed anindependent organisation which published Klassenkampf, and then, from May 1929, Der Neue Mahnruf. 11.This is a reference to the Wedding Opposition which existed from 1925,and the Palatinate Opposition, whose best-known people were, for themost part, expelled from the KPD in 1927. Subsequently there was theTrotskyist Opposition in the Leninbund around Grylewicz, as well as theSaxon group, Bolschewistische Einheit, which had rejoined the Leninbundin 1928-29. 12.Rubin Sobolevicus (or Sobolevitch) (1901-1962) was of Lithuanianorigin, studied agriculture in Germany, and then after a stay of a yearin the USSR, during which he joined the Soviet Secret Service, hestudied economics at Leipzig, where he joined the KPD. In October 1928he joined the oppositional Communists in the Bolschewistische Einheitgroup, which fused with the Left Opposition in 1929. In 1930, under thename of Roman Well, he became one of the main leaders of the GermanUnified Left Opposition and made every effort to split the group inBerlin led by Landau (cf. G. Vereeken, The GPU in the Trotskyist Movement, London 1976, pp.18-31). 13. Cf. Arthur Spencer, A Strange Interlude. A Footnote to the Soblen Case, Survey, October 1963, p.114ff. 14. Ibid. 15. Leon Trotsky, The Crisis in the German Left Opposition, 17 February 1931, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1930-31, New York 1973, pp.147-150. 16.Pierre Frank (1905-1984) who was a member of the French Communist Partyin 1924 as one of the leaders of the CGTU chemical workers, joined theLeft Opposition in 1927, and signed the La Veritémanifesto in 1929. In 1930 he was one of the leaders of the ‘Marxistwing’ who moved towards the French Section of the Left Opposition, andwhich in May fused with the International Secretariat. 17.It was composed of the following groups: Germany – Linke Opposition derKPD (Bolschewiki-Leninisten); Austria – Kommunistische Linksopposition (Neue Mahnreufgroup); France – Gauche Opposition; Greece – Spartakos Group; Hungary –Emigrants from the Communist Party of Hungary in Austria and the UnitedStates; USA – Communist League of Struggle (Weisbord group); Belgium –Ligue des communistes internationalistes; Italy – Bordigists (notformally joined) 18.These strikes occurred under the influence of the RGO, controlled bythe KPD, and the NSBO, the National SocialistischeBetriebs-Organisation, which was the Nazi union. 19.Erich Wollenberg reported that the Stalinist methods of denunciation tothe Gestapo were part of the political repertory of the KPD from1933-34 onwards: “In Berlin, Breslau and elsewhere they composed‘circulars’ in which they warned against the infiltration work ofTrotskyists, ex-Communists or anti-Stalinist Socialists, of whom theygave precise details of where they were living, their hiding places andtheir political activity. These ‘circulars’ fell into the hands of theGestapo, as they were supposed to do. In this way the political machineinspired by Ulbricht helped the Gestapo to liquidate a series ofanti-Fascist groups which were in opposition to the KPD leadership.”(E. Wollenberg, Der Apparat – Stalins Fünfte Kolonne, Ost-Probleme, no.19, 12 May 1951, p.578) 20. Above all on the question of trade union work. 21.See the prosecution case against H. Jacobi and others for illegalpolitical activity by the Procurer General of the Berlin Court on 28July 1934. 22.Here Trotsky compared the KPD’s surrender to Fascism without a fightwith the abandonment of internationalism by the SPD in 1914 on theissue of war credits. 23. L.D. Trotsky, The Tragedy of the German Proletariat, 14 March 1933, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, New York 1972, p.384. 24. L.D. Trotsky, It is Necessary to Build the Communist Parties and an International Anew, 15 July 1933, ibid., p.420. 25. Ibid. 26.The reference by Landau to the first four Congresses of the CommunistInternational is an astonishing contrast with his previous positionsinasmuch as he had renounced this part of the Trotskyist ‘tradition’when he broke with Trotskyism. 27. Landau wrote numerous articles under the pen-names of ‘Wolf Bertram’ and ‘Spectator’. 28. One result was that Der Funke ceased to appear. The last (duplicated) issue was published in July 1934. 29. André Morel (born 1902), called Ferrat, had been a member of the Political Bureau of the PCF after 1927, and was the editor of L”Humanitéuntil February 1934. Georges Kagan, of the agitprop section, who calledhimself Pierre Lenoir, was a member of the PCF’s machine. Others camefrom the Left Opposition, such as Pietro Torielli, known as PierreRimbert (born 1910), who was expelled from the PCF in 1932, and wasactive in the Ligue Communiste until 1933. 30.These and other similar verbal monstrosities were not lacking in any ofthe Russian or Comintern publications of the time. See for example The Case against the Trotskyite-Zinovievist Terrorist Centre published by the Peoples’ Commissariat for Justice in Moscow in 1936. 31. Not Guilty, New York 1972, pp.97-115. 32.Brandler’s negative reply has not been preserved. According to KatiaLandau he wrote that he wished to have nothing to do with the“Trotskyist traitors”. 33. Indeed the KPO criticised the ultra-left course of the Communist International during the Third Period of 1929-34. 34.Isaac Tschereminski, alias Arkady Maslow (1893-1941), had been one ofthe organisers along with Ruth Fischer in the KPD against Brandler andthe leaders of the party. Close to Zinoviev, he was expelled from theKPD in 1928 together with Fischer, and in January 1933 had emigrated toParis, again with her. In January 1934 he met Trotsky in Paris andworked with the International Secretariat of the ICL until mid-1934. InSeptember 1935 he and Ruth Fischer created the group Die Internationale. 35.Zavis Kalandra (1902-1950) was an activist in the Czech Communist partyfrom 1923 and a member of its leadership, and publicly opposed theAugust 1936 Moscow Trial, and from that date broke with the party. 36. L.D. Trotsky, The Lesson of Spain: The Last Warning, 17 December 1937, The Spanish Revolution 1931-39, New York 1973, pp.306-26. 37.Andrés Nin Perez (1892-1937) was an old leader of the CNT and then ofthe PCE, and for a long time was Assistant Secretary to the ISR, andwas a member of the Russian Left Opposition in the InternationalCommission from 1923. After his expulsion from Russia he returned toSpain and became General Secretary of the Izquierda Comunista deEspaña, and was then one of the creators of the POUM in 1935. 38.Augustin Souchy (born in Germany in 1900), a militant Anarchist at theend of the First World War, had represented the revolutionarysyndicalist wing at the Second Comintern Congress. Editor of theAnarchist journal Der Syndikalist from 1923 to 1927, he left Germany for France in 1933. 39.Juan Andrade Rodríguez (born 1897), co-founder of the Spanish CommunistParty, was expelled from it in 1927. Co-founder and leader of the LeftOpposition, then of the Izquierda Comunista and finally of the POUM, hewas arrested in 1937 but managed to escape in 1939. 40.Fosco was the pseudonym of Nicola di Bartolomeo (1901-1946). Expelledfrom the PCI over the question of China, he became a Bordigist in 1928,he joined the ‘New Opposition’ of the ‘Three’ and then led the groupNostra Parola. In July 1936 he had just emerged from prison. Cf. hisaccount below. 41.Mika Etchebehere was the wife of Hippolyte Etchebehere, a militantexpelled from the Argentine Communist Party in 1925. He lived in Spainin 1930-31, in France in 1932, in Germany in 1933, and, under the nameof Juan Rustico helped produce the paper Masses. Close to Landau, he participated in the group Que Faire?In July 1936 he got to Madrid, was military commander of a motorisedunit of the POUM in Madrid, and was killed on 18 August 1936. 42. George Orwell gives a very lively description of this in Homage to Catalonia. 4343.Max Diamant (born 1908), one of the leaders of the SAP and HerbertFrahm, called Willi Brandt (born 1913), one of the SAJ youth, were theSAP delegation to Spain. 4. Paul Thalmann, Wo die Freiheit stirbt, 1974, p.137. 45. Peter Blachstein must be mentioned, particularly inasmuch as he represented the Neuer Weg group in Spain. 46. Cf. Fenner Brockway, The Truth About Barcelona, London 1937, and Felix Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, New York 1974. 47.According to a letter dated 20 June 1976 to the author from PaulThalmann and indirectly in an uncompleted draft (mid-August 1937 andwithout a title) by Landau. The first position he adopted, it is true,gave a different appreciation, but it is possible that this was due tohis responsibilities for defending the POUM’s positions. 48. Cited by Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, London 1961, p.363. But cf. Reiner Torstorff’s letter in Revolutionary History, Volume 2 no.1, Spring 1989, p.47. 49. Cf. W.G. Krivitsky, I Was Stalin’s Agent, London/New York 1939, p.105. 50.For example in Barcelona there were Puerto del Angel 24, Paseo de SanJuan 104, Calle de Montaner 321, Calle Corcega 299, and the Calle deVallmajor 5. In Valencia was the old nunnery of St Ursula, and inMadrid, the Calle de Atocha and the Paseo de Castellana, and there wasalso one at Alcala de Henares, to mention only the most important. 51.While Souchy thought that Landau had underestimated the danger, KatiaLandau was of the opinion that, as a Marxist, Kurt was not made welcomein this Anarchist milieu, and that he thus preferred to look foranother refuge. 52. Several articles were published in Juin 36, the paper of the PSOP, in May 1939, written by Landau during his period of clandestinity, for example Bolchevisme, trotskysme, sectarisme, and Le trotskysme et la revolution espagnole. 53.For the leading cadres of the POUM these interrogations took a purelygrotesque form. They were always asked stereotyped questions, as inGorkin’s case: “What is your opinion of Stalin? What is your opinion ofTrotsky? Do you believe that Trotsky is more or less revolutionary thanStalin? What did you do in the ‘May Days’? What do you think of thepresent government? Did you have more sympathy for the previousgovernment [of Largo Caballero] than for the present one?” 54.John McGovern (1887-1968) was one of the most popular ILP speakers,known above all for his interruptions in the Commons and his strikinggestures, such as his participation in hunger marches. FelicienChallaye (1875-1967) was a writer and teacher of philosophy, a ‘totalpacifist’ after 1932, a member of the Ligue Internationale descombattants de la paix, whose paper, Le Barrage, took up a position against the Moscow Trials. 55.Erwin Wolf (1902-1937), known as Nicole Braun, a Sudeten German, hadjoined the Left Opposition in Berlin where he was a student in 1932.Coopted onto the leadership of the IKD abroad, he became secretary toTrotsky in Norway in November 1935. At the meeting of the InternationalSecretariat in July 1936 he was sent to Spain, arriving in April 1937,where he was arrested on 28 July and disappeared after 13 September.Marc Rhein, son of the leading Menshevik Raphael Abramovitch, a memberof the Young Socialists, was the editor of Social-demokratic Kraten in Stockholm. Arrested in Barcelona in April, he was never seen again. See the piece on Wolf in Quelques Collaborateurs de Trotsky, Cahiers Léon Trotsky, no.1. It is intended to publish this in English in some future issue of Revolutionary History. 56.Leopold Kulcsar (1900-1938) had joined the Young Socialist Workers whenvery young. Arrested in 1918, he later joined the KPO, which he left in1925-26. He was member of the Socialist Party until February 1934 and amember in clandestinity until December 1934, at which time, accordingto Otto Bauer, he took refuge in Brno, which he left in 1937 to be asecretary at the Spanish Embassy. He died shortly afterwards in January1938. 57.On the subject of Kulcsar, Katia Landau wrote: “I always had theimpression that he did not belong to the apparatus, but that he wantedto make his career out of the Landau case. I rather think that someonein the GPU had something on him, but that he had been allowed throughbecause he had come from high up.” Professor Alfred Magaziner, who knewKatia Landau and Kulcsar equally well from the 1920s onwards does notrule out Kulcsar’s activities on behalf of the GPU, but adds that hiscontacts with the Russians were also on the normal diplomatic level(according to Katia Landau he was a military attaché). In particularMagaziner said: “After the second arrest of Katia Landau, I had aconversation with Leopold K – three days before he died – and wequarrelled all afternoon. He claimed that at her place the police hadfound maps of Madrid and Barcelona giving targets for air attacks. WhenI asked him when these maps had been found, he replied it hadbeen after the arrest, I told him straight that this was a commonlittle police trick and that nothing could be concluded from that, andwe parted at loggerheads.” (Conversation with Professor Magaziner, 8March 1978)
|