Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The far right in the German and Russian Empires
- 2 At the extreme in the Ukraine and in Germany
- 3 “Hand in hand with Germany”
- 4 The international radical right's Aufbau (reconstruction)
- 5 “Germany–Russia above everything”
- 6 Conspiracies of fire and the sword
- 7 “In Quick March to the Abyss!”
- 8 The four writers of the apocalypse
- 9 Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- NEW STUDIES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
6 - Conspiracies of fire and the sword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The far right in the German and Russian Empires
- 2 At the extreme in the Ukraine and in Germany
- 3 “Hand in hand with Germany”
- 4 The international radical right's Aufbau (reconstruction)
- 5 “Germany–Russia above everything”
- 6 Conspiracies of fire and the sword
- 7 “In Quick March to the Abyss!”
- 8 The four writers of the apocalypse
- 9 Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- NEW STUDIES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Summary
While Aufbau failed to unite all White émigrés in Europe behind the Tsarist candidate Grand Prince Kirill Romanov in league with National Socialists, the völkisch German/White émigré organization did use political terror and covert military operations to undermine the Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union. As the first known example of Aufbau's participation in terrorism, Vice President Vladimir Biskupskii tried to arrange the murder of Aleksandr Kerenskii, who had led the Provisional Government in Russia in 1917 before the Bolsheviks had seized power. In other terrorist undertakings, Aufbau coordinated its activities with those of Organization C, a conspiratorial far right association under the leading Kapp Putsch figure Captain Hermann Ehrhardt, which possessed considerable connections with the NSDAP.
Aufbau participated in at least two prominent terrorist acts in league with Organization C. The Aufbau colleagues Piotr Shabelskii-Bork and Sergei Taboritskii, who possessed ties with Ehrhardt's secretive organization, mistakenly killed a prominent Russian Constitutional Democrat, Vladimir Nabokov, in their attempt to assassinate the Constitutional Democratic leader Pavel Miliukov. The evidence suggests that at least three Aufbau members, General Biskupskii, General Erich von Ludendorff, and his advisor Colonel Karl Bauer colluded in Organization C's shocking assassination of Walther Rathenau, who served as Germany's Foreign Minister. Aufbau thus clearly acted as a terrorist organization.
In its anti-Bolshevik military schemes, Aufbau adopted a three-pronged approach. Building upon the precedent of earlier German/White anti-Bolshevik campaigns in the Ukraine and the Baltic region, Aufbau raised armed forces for operations in these areas.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Russian Roots of NazismWhite Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945, pp. 166 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005