USSR helped future Nazis

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The close and versatile military-technical cooperation between the two states ceased after the Nazis came to power in Germany.

Rogue countries

Archive photo

After the end of the First World War, the German army, once the strongest in Europe, was a pitiful sight. According to the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty, its number was limited to 100 thousand soldiers. The Germans were forbidden to have armored forces, military aviation, submarine fleet, and also engage in military research and development.

However, the Reichswehr, as the armed forces of the Weimar Republic were called, was not going to put up with its bitter fate. The German military was determined to develop their army, but it was impossible to do this on German territory under the close supervision of the Allies.

Archive photo

A solution was soon found: Germany turned to Soviet Russia with an offer of cooperation. This rogue country, having just survived a devastating Civil War and foreign intervention, was surrounded by hostile states and was not even recognized by a single leading power in the world. As the Commander-in-Chief of the Reichswehr Hans von Seeckt noted: "The break of the Versailles diktat can only be achieved by close contact with a strong Russia."

Moscow was happy to break this blockade by establishing contacts with Germany. In addition, military cooperation with the still highly skilled German military was vital to the modernization of the Red Army.

Bypassing restrictions

Negotiations on military cooperation between Moscow and Berlin began even before the end of the Soviet-Polish war (1919-1921). happened during the Wielkopolska Uprising in 1919. Nevertheless, there was no talk of any military-political alliance.

Hans von Seeckt with the Reichswehr officers - Bundesarchiv

In 1922, in the small Italian town of Rapallo, the Germans and Bolsheviks agreed to restore diplomatic relations. While economic agreements were publicly concluded, negotiations were unofficially going on on cooperation in the field of training military pilots, tank crews and the development of chemical weapons.

As a result, a number of German secret schools, training and military research centers appeared in Russia in the 1920s. The government of the Weimar Republic did not skimp on their maintenance and annually allocated up to ten percent of the country's military budget for this.

Soviet-German military cooperation proceeded in an atmosphere of complete secrecy. Although Berlin needed it much more than Moscow. In 1928, the Soviet plenipotentiary in Germany, Nikolai Krestinsky, wrote to Stalin: “From the state point of view, we are not doing anything contrary to any treaties or norms of international law. Here the Germans are violating the Versailles Treaty, and they need to be afraid of exposure, they need to think about conspiracy."

Object "Lipetsk"

Object "Lipetsk" - German Aviation School - Bundesarchiv

In 1925, a German aviation school was secretly established near Lipetsk (about 400 km from Moscow), all the costs of which were entirely on Germany. According to the agreements, both German and Soviet pilots, who adopted the experience of their Western colleagues, were trained here.

In addition to studying the theory, tests of new aircraft, aviation equipment and weapons were carried out, tactical techniques for conducting air combat were worked out. The aircraft were purchased by the German War Ministry through intermediaries from third countries and delivered to the territory of the USSR. So, the very first batch was 50 Dutch Fokker D-XIII fighters, disassembled, arrived at the Lipetsk air center.

The training period for a German pilot in the USSR was about 6 months. They arrived in Lipetsk secretly, under assumed names, wore Soviet uniforms without insignia. Before leaving for the aviation center, they were officially dismissed from the Reichswehr, on their return they were accepted back and reinstated in ranks. The pilots who died in the tests were brought home in special boxes with the inscription "machine parts".

Fokker D. XIII fighters in Lipetsk - Bundesarchiv

More than a hundred German pilots have been trained at the Lipetsk aviation school over the eight years of its existence. Among them are such important figures of the future Luftwaffe as Hugo Sperle, Kurt Student and Albert Kesselring.

In the early 1930s, both Germans and Russians began to lose interest in the aviation school near Lipetsk. The former, bypassing many of the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, were already partially able to prepare their armed forces on their territory. For the latter, after the Nazis came to power in 1933, military-technical cooperation with an ideological enemy was impossible. In the same year, the aviation school was closed.

Object "Kama"

Training on plywood tanks at the "Kama" facility - Archival photo

The agreement on the organization of a German tank school in the USSR was concluded in 1926, but it began to function only by the end of 1929. The Kama school located near Kazan (800 km from Moscow) was referred to in Soviet documents as the Air Force Technical Courses.

"Kama" worked on the same principle as "Lipetsk": complete secrecy, funding mainly at the expense of the German side, joint training of Soviet and German tankers. At the training grounds near Kazan, they actively tested tank armament, communications, studied the tactics of tank combat, camouflage, and interaction within the framework of tank groups.

Practicing maneuvers at the "Kama" facility - Archival photo

The test tanks, the so-called "Big Tractors" (Grosstraktoren), were secretly produced by order of the German military department by the country's leading enterprises (Krupp, Rheinmetall and Daimler-Benz) and were delivered disassembled to the USSR. The Red Army, for its part, provided light T-18 tanks and the British-made Carden-Lloyd tankettes that it had.

As in the case of the Lipetsk aviation school, the functioning of the Kama was impossible after 1933. For a short time of its existence, it trained 250 Soviet and German tankers. Among them are the future Hero of the Soviet Union Lieutenant General Semyon Krivoshein, Wehrmacht General Wilhelm von Thoma and Heinz Guderian's chief of staff Wolfgang Thomale.

Object "Tomka"

German personnel at the Tomka site - Bundesarchiv

School of chemical warfare "Tomka" in the Saratov region (900 km) was the most secret center of the Reichswehr in the USSR. The complex consisted of four laboratories, two vivariums, a degassing chamber, a power station, a garage and barracks for housing. All equipment, several aircraft and guns were secretly brought from Germany.

German personnel of 25 people permanently resided in "Tomka": chemists, biologists-toxicologists, pyrotechnics and artillerymen. In addition, there were Soviet specialists as pupils at the school, who did not have such a rich experience in the use of chemical weapons as their Western colleagues.

Tests at the range were carried out in 1928-1933. They consisted in the spraying of poisonous liquids and toxic substances with the help of aviation and artillery, as well as in the disinfection of territories.

Bundesarchiv

Of all their facilities on the territory of the USSR, the Germans held on to the Tomka the most. In addition to the limitations of the Treaty of Versailles, the geographical factor also played a role for them: in a densely populated relatively small Germany, it was not easy to find suitable test sites for testing chemical weapons. Despite the fact that for the Soviet side, the functioning of the school brought both money and invaluable experience, the political moment turned out to be more important: in the year of the birth of the Third Reich, "Tomka" was closed.