Hitler Youth Conspiracy
Encyclopedia
The Hitler Youth Conspiracy was a case investigated by the Soviet secret police
, during the Great Purge
in the late 1930s. Essentially a theory in search of evidence, it nonetheless resulted in the arrest of numerous German teenagers and some in their twenties and beyond, who were accused of having been fascist
, anti-communist members of the Hitler Youth
and of working against the Soviet Union
. Teenagers from the Karl Liebknecht School
, from Children's Home No. 6
, and adults from factories and elsewhere were arrested, tortured and imprisoned. Many were executed or died in custody. Some were the children of leading communists. Within years, the investigation was found to have been faulty and a number of the investigators were also arrested, with sentences ranging from imprisonment to execution. In the 1950s, following the death of Joseph Stalin
, a new examination of the files revealed many of the accusations to have been baseless and a number of the victims were rehabilitated
.
and subsequent political repression
of suspected opponents of the October Revolution
, there were purges and mass repressions within the Soviet Union, as well as purges of the Communist Party, both within the Soviet Union and abroad. Waves of persecutions occurred, in which the number of those charged with being counter-revolutionary or fascist increased substantially. In his "Secret Speech", Nikita Khrushchev
said that between 1936 and 1937, the number of arrests for counter-revolutionary crimes grew ten times.
At the February–March 1937 plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU), there was a renewed call to purge the party of Trotskyite elements, unleashing a wave of mass terror in the summer of 1937. The term "counter-revolutionary fascist groups" came into use within the NKVD in 1938 as they carried out the purges. German members of the Executive Committee of the Communist International
reported at the April 28, 1938 meeting that there had been 842 arrests.
As early as 1930, the Soviet secret police, the Cheka
, later the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs
(NKVD), investigated teenaged German suspected of being members of the Hitler Youth
, but these investigations preceded the Great Purge and those arrested were not given the harsh sentences of later years. Most were released before 1934. As the Great Purge swept up communist activists in massive arrests, their spouses and children were also persecuted. Some were banished to a gulag
, some children were put in orphanages and in some cases, older children were themselves arrested and charged with anti-revolutionary activity and forming anti-revolutionary groups. International communists living in the Soviet Union were hard hit, especially Germans, who were there in large numbers, fleeing Nazism. While German parents were rounded up, accused of espionage, this charge was not plausible for foreign children who had not been outside the Soviet Union in years. Instead, they were charged with having formed a branch of the Hitler Youth
.
. Department 4 of the Main Directorate of State Security under the NKVD handled secret political affairs and took care of the administration of the case; Department 7, which handled foreign intelligence, implemented the orders.
Those carrying out the arrests were directed to reach quotas for arrests and confessions, and were given deadlines. When Rudolph Traibman, who interpreted during the interrogations, later said that when he complained to his superior, he was threatened with arrest. According to another contemporary, Leonid M. Sakovsky, "When Sorokin and Persitz ordered G. Yakubovich to sign arrest warrants, Yakubovich laid his wristwatch on the desk and said, 'Look how many arrest warrants I can sign in one minute.' And then he began to sign the warrants, without reading them." The investigations produced completed arrest reports that according to one historian, are hardly worth reading; they report no details other than personal identification, rather, they follow a sterotype, barren of other evidence.
Some 70 teenagers and adults were arrested between January and March 1938, primarily the children of German and Austrian foreign workers and exiles, but also a few Russians. Some of those arrested were clearly not members of the Hitler Youth; 20 were over the age of 30 and one was 62, students at local technical schools or workers in factories. There were 13 pupils and two teachers arrested from the Karl Liebknecht School
and a number from Children's Home No. 6. There were seven people, most adults, from the Left Column
theater troupe, including Helmut Damerius
, a close friend of Wilhelm Pieck
's son, Arthur, also an actor and Bruno Schmidtsdorf, the lead actor in Gustav von Wangenheim
's 1935 film, Kämpfer.The film's original Russian title was Bortsy. It was released in the United States as Der Kampf. Schmidtsdorf was arrested on February 5, 1938 with fellow troupe members Kurt Ahrendt and Karl Oefelein, all charged with founding a branch of the Hitler Youth
. All three were executed three weeks later. Ahrendt was also from the Karl Liebknecht School, where he was a leader of the Young Pioneers
.
Those arrested were tortured and often confessed quickly to alleged crimes, either to try to bring the torture to a halt or because they were advised by those longer in custody that it was their only hope for relief from the beatings, which could last for hours. A number of those arrested were the children of prominent communists, such as Hans Beimler, Jr., son of Hans Beimler
; Max Maddalena, Jr., son of Max Maddalena; and Gustav Sobottka, Jr., the son of Gustav Sobottka
.
Of those arrested, 6 were released, 20 were sentenced from five to ten years, 40 were executed, two were returned to Germany and the Gestapo
under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact; and one died in prison. The first execution was on February 20, 1938 at the Butovo firing range
; an additional 39 people were executed there between March and May 1938.
.
After Stalin's death, a re-examination of the conspiracy revealed that the charges were baseless. Survivors were released from detention in 1954 and 1955. Gustav Sobottka, Jr., were rehabilitated postmortem in 1956.
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
, during the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
in the late 1930s. Essentially a theory in search of evidence, it nonetheless resulted in the arrest of numerous German teenagers and some in their twenties and beyond, who were accused of having been fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, anti-communist members of the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
and of working against the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Teenagers from the Karl Liebknecht School
Karl Liebknecht School
The Karl Liebknecht School , named after Karl Liebknecht, was a German-language elementary school in Moscow. It was established for the children of German refugees to the Soviet Union. It opened in 1924 and was closed in 1939...
, from Children's Home No. 6
Children's Home No. 6
Children's Home No. 6 was an orphanage in Moscow established for orphans from fascism. It was established for Austrian and German children and was considered a model in the Soviet Union, housing some 130 children...
, and adults from factories and elsewhere were arrested, tortured and imprisoned. Many were executed or died in custody. Some were the children of leading communists. Within years, the investigation was found to have been faulty and a number of the investigators were also arrested, with sentences ranging from imprisonment to execution. In the 1950s, following the death of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, a new examination of the files revealed many of the accusations to have been baseless and a number of the victims were rehabilitated
Rehabilitation (Soviet)
Rehabilitation in the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal...
.
Background
Beginning with the earliest history of the Soviet Union, with the Red TerrorRed Terror
The Red Terror in Soviet Russia was the campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government. In Soviet historiography, the Red Terror is described as having been officially announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov and ended about October 1918...
and subsequent political repression
Political repression
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....
of suspected opponents of the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, there were purges and mass repressions within the Soviet Union, as well as purges of the Communist Party, both within the Soviet Union and abroad. Waves of persecutions occurred, in which the number of those charged with being counter-revolutionary or fascist increased substantially. In his "Secret Speech", Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
said that between 1936 and 1937, the number of arrests for counter-revolutionary crimes grew ten times.
At the February–March 1937 plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
(CPSU), there was a renewed call to purge the party of Trotskyite elements, unleashing a wave of mass terror in the summer of 1937. The term "counter-revolutionary fascist groups" came into use within the NKVD in 1938 as they carried out the purges. German members of the Executive Committee of the Communist International
Executive Committee of the Communist International
The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI, was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body...
reported at the April 28, 1938 meeting that there had been 842 arrests.
As early as 1930, the Soviet secret police, the Cheka
Cheka
Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
, later the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
(NKVD), investigated teenaged German suspected of being members of the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
, but these investigations preceded the Great Purge and those arrested were not given the harsh sentences of later years. Most were released before 1934. As the Great Purge swept up communist activists in massive arrests, their spouses and children were also persecuted. Some were banished to a gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
, some children were put in orphanages and in some cases, older children were themselves arrested and charged with anti-revolutionary activity and forming anti-revolutionary groups. International communists living in the Soviet Union were hard hit, especially Germans, who were there in large numbers, fleeing Nazism. While German parents were rounded up, accused of espionage, this charge was not plausible for foreign children who had not been outside the Soviet Union in years. Instead, they were charged with having formed a branch of the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
.
New Allegations
Investigations regarding NKVD Order Number 8842, the Hitler Youth Conspiracy began in January 1938. The commissar of the NKVD gave an order to find and arrest a group of young people who were alleged to have formed a branch of the Hitler Youth and were planning acts of sabotage and and an assassination. They were also accused of praising Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
. Department 4 of the Main Directorate of State Security under the NKVD handled secret political affairs and took care of the administration of the case; Department 7, which handled foreign intelligence, implemented the orders.
Those carrying out the arrests were directed to reach quotas for arrests and confessions, and were given deadlines. When Rudolph Traibman, who interpreted during the interrogations, later said that when he complained to his superior, he was threatened with arrest. According to another contemporary, Leonid M. Sakovsky, "When Sorokin and Persitz ordered G. Yakubovich to sign arrest warrants, Yakubovich laid his wristwatch on the desk and said, 'Look how many arrest warrants I can sign in one minute.' And then he began to sign the warrants, without reading them." The investigations produced completed arrest reports that according to one historian, are hardly worth reading; they report no details other than personal identification, rather, they follow a sterotype, barren of other evidence.
Some 70 teenagers and adults were arrested between January and March 1938, primarily the children of German and Austrian foreign workers and exiles, but also a few Russians. Some of those arrested were clearly not members of the Hitler Youth; 20 were over the age of 30 and one was 62, students at local technical schools or workers in factories. There were 13 pupils and two teachers arrested from the Karl Liebknecht School
Karl Liebknecht School
The Karl Liebknecht School , named after Karl Liebknecht, was a German-language elementary school in Moscow. It was established for the children of German refugees to the Soviet Union. It opened in 1924 and was closed in 1939...
and a number from Children's Home No. 6. There were seven people, most adults, from the Left Column
Left Column (theater troupe)
The Left Column was an agitprop theater troupe during the 1920s and 1930s. The troupe worked in support of the Workers International Relief...
theater troupe, including Helmut Damerius
Helmut Damerius
Helmut Damerius was a German communist and a member of the Left Column, an agitprop theater group. As the Nazi Party gained in strength, he went into exile in Moscow, only to be arrested in the Hitler Youth Conspiracy and sentenced to a long term in a Soviet prison...
, a close friend of Wilhelm Pieck
Wilhelm Pieck
Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck was a German politician and a Communist. In 1949, he became the first President of the German Democratic Republic, an office abolished upon his death. He was succeeded by Walter Ulbricht, who served as Chairman of the Council of States.-Biography:Pieck was born to...
's son, Arthur, also an actor and Bruno Schmidtsdorf, the lead actor in Gustav von Wangenheim
Gustav von Wangenheim
Gustav von Wangenheim was a German actor, screenwriter and director.- Life :Wangenheim was born Ingo Clemens Gustav Adolf Freiherr von Wangenheim in Wiesbaden, Hesse, to parents Eduard Clemens Freiherr von Wangenheim and Minna Mengers...
's 1935 film, Kämpfer.The film's original Russian title was Bortsy. It was released in the United States as Der Kampf. Schmidtsdorf was arrested on February 5, 1938 with fellow troupe members Kurt Ahrendt and Karl Oefelein, all charged with founding a branch of the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
. All three were executed three weeks later. Ahrendt was also from the Karl Liebknecht School, where he was a leader of the Young Pioneers
Pioneer movement
A pioneer movement is an organization for children operated by a communist party. Typically children enter into the organization in elementary school and continue until adolescence. The adolescents then typically joined the Young Communist League...
.
Those arrested were tortured and often confessed quickly to alleged crimes, either to try to bring the torture to a halt or because they were advised by those longer in custody that it was their only hope for relief from the beatings, which could last for hours. A number of those arrested were the children of prominent communists, such as Hans Beimler, Jr., son of Hans Beimler
Hans Beimler (Communist)
Hans Beimler was an active member of the German Communist Party and a deputy in the Reichstag.Beimler was born in Munich and served in the Kaiserliche Marine during the First World War...
; Max Maddalena, Jr., son of Max Maddalena; and Gustav Sobottka, Jr., the son of Gustav Sobottka
Gustav Sobottka
Gustav Sobottka was a German politician in East Germany. He was a member of the Communist Party and was in exile during the Nazi era...
.
Of those arrested, 6 were released, 20 were sentenced from five to ten years, 40 were executed, two were returned to Germany and the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact; and one died in prison. The first execution was on February 20, 1938 at the Butovo firing range
Butovo firing range
The Butovo firing range is the name of a location where more than 20,000 political prisoners were shot during the Great Terror of the Soviet Union and thereafter from 1938 to 1953. It is located in the Yuzhnoye Butovo District of Moscow, near the village of Drozhzhino...
; an additional 39 people were executed there between March and May 1938.
Aftermath
Mikhail Perlitz was ousted from the NKVD and arrested in April 1939 and indicted with three paragraphs of Article 58. He was tortured and confessed his guilt, though he later recanted. An NKVD troop tribunal tried Persits and and found him guilty of all charges. He was shot on February 2, 1940. Ivan Sorokin, who had been head of the 3rd Department of the Main Directorate of State Security, was charged with mishandling prisoners and fabricating charges. He was tried at an NKVD troop tribunal in August 1939 and was sentenced to death, a sentence confirmed by the Supreme SovietSupreme Soviet
The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union was the Supreme Soviet in the Soviet Union and the only one with the power to pass constitutional amendments...
.
After Stalin's death, a re-examination of the conspiracy revealed that the charges were baseless. Survivors were released from detention in 1954 and 1955. Gustav Sobottka, Jr., were rehabilitated postmortem in 1956.
Partial list of those arrested
- Kurt Ahrendt, teenager – executed 1938
- Hans Beimler, Jr., teenager
- Helmut DameriusHelmut DameriusHelmut Damerius was a German communist and a member of the Left Column, an agitprop theater group. As the Nazi Party gained in strength, he went into exile in Moscow, only to be arrested in the Hitler Youth Conspiracy and sentenced to a long term in a Soviet prison...
– tortured, sentenced to a gulag and banished to KazakhstanKazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe... - Hans KleringHans KleringHans Klering was a German actor, director, voice actor, graphic designer and author. He joined the Communist Party and went into exile in the Soviet Union in 1931, returning to Germany in 1945...
, adult – later co-founder of DEFA - Wilhelm Klug, age 17 – survived
- Max Maddalena, Jr., teenager – released and arrested again, following the German invasion, died in custody
- Karl Oefelein – executed 1938
- Hans Petersen – sent back to Germany on the transport to Brest-Litovsk
- Wilhelm Reich – sent back to Germany via Brest-Litovsk
- Günther Schramm – released in 1940
- Harry Schmitt – released in 1940
- Bruno Schmidtsdorf – executed 1938
- Erwin Turra – sent back to Germany via Brest-Litovsk
- Gustav Sobottka, Jr., age 20 at time of arrest – died in custody at age 23
Further reading
- Helmut Damerius, Unter falscher Anschuldigung. 18 Jahre in Taiga und Steppe, Berlin and Weimar (1990) (published posthumously)
- Holger Dehl, Natalija Mussijenko, "Hitlerjugend in der UdSSR?" in: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, (1996), No. 1, pp. 76–84
- Natalia Mussienko, "Vorwurf: Mitglied einer Hitlerjugend" in: Neues Deutschland, (August 28, 1995)
- Natalija Mussienko, Liste der Opfer der »Operation Hitlerjugend« in: Dehl, Oleg; Mussienko, Natalija; Barck, Simone; Plener, Ulla (Eds.), Verratene Ideale. Zur Geschichte deutscher Emigranten in der Sowjetunion in den 30er Jahren. Berlin (2000), pp. 197–207
Sources
- Hans Schafranek, Natalia Musienko, "The Fictitious 'Hiter-Jugend' of the Moscow NKVD" in: Barry McLoughlin, Kevin McDermott (Eds.), Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union. Palgrave MacMillan (2003), p. 208ff. ISBN 1-4039-0119-8
- Walter Laqueur, Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany. Brandeis University Press (2001), ISBN 1-58465-106-7 and Tauris Parke Paperbacks (2004), ISBN 1-86064-885-1. Original title: Geboren in Deutschland: Der Exodus der jüdischen Jugend nach 1933
External links
- Sobottka jun., Gustav / Hans Boden NKVD and Gestapo. Retrieved November 26, 2011