ABSTRACT
Radek’s Schlageter speech was intended as a demonstrative gesture to threaten Britain with the possibility of a Russian-German bloc, able to counterbalance Britain’s realignment with Turkey. When Turkey deserted Russia’s fight against the victors of Versailles, this gave more weight to the Soviet policy of supporting Germany just in the process of breaking the treaty. The German Politburo, in agreement with Radek, instructed party organizers on how to carry out the Schlageter policy. Radek was supported by “the brain of Bolshevism, Nikolai Bukharin, whose status in the Comintern and in the German party was unique. Of all the members of the Russian Politburo, Zinoviev was the most hesitant, unenthusiastic, ambiguous, in carrying out this policy of National Bolshevism. The Nazis had thousands of forerunners, with various faces and voices. Moeller van den Bruck was a representative forerunner of Nazism, “the well-known counter-revolutionary writer” mentioned by Troeltsch.
