Communists do not in the least idealise methods of violence. But they, the Communists, do not want to be taken by surprise; they cannot count on the old world voluntarily departing from the stage; they see that the old system is violently defending itself, and that is why the Communists say to the working class: Answer violence with violence; do all you can to prevent the old dying order from crushing you, do not permit it to put manacles on your hands, on the hands with which you will overthrow the old system.
~ Joseph Stalin
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The air smelled of coal giving an impression of a fire despite the cool morning air. In the frost, the scene of villages and towns amidst a great forest might have seemed magical, a return to a simpler time around the hulks of dead factories, the relics of an industrial age.
The issue at hand was that their workers hadn’t gone alone with the program. Instead they had armed themselves.
Peter Klompf eyed the red flag fluttering above the prominent water tower that made up one of the landmarks of Lehrte. The United Front were here alright and soon he wouldn’t need binoculars to realise it.
“It’s almost time.” Franz reminded him before returning to the cupola of his armoured truck in a stance much the same as his. Peter’s colleague had been with him ever since their journey back from the Soviet Union, alongside the rest of their armour training school. It made the situation easier when surrounded by friends but the question of what to do weighed on him with just the sight of them.
Klaus, his friend who led the school’s underground reading group, looked as pensive as Peter felt but he too now commanded an armoured truck with a cow catcher-like device attached, designed for smashing through barricades. Here they were, being ordered to crush the sort of revolution they had once whispered about in the early hours of the morning.
They had read Hitler’s book, they had discussed it, and they had mostly agreed yet here they were fighting him. Peter’s father had hated Communists for as long as he could remember, perhaps that was why he had been so curious about what they were for in the first place but he could hardly defect now with the nation at war and his family at home waiting, expecting...
“Final checks then, wait for the whistle and we’ll follow in with the lead column,” he announed to his men, Reichswehr regulars who had been driving the armoured trucks when they had only been meant to be training stop-gaps for the sort of innovations Peter and his colleagues had been developing.
The Bussing armoured trucks had taken a bit of getting used to after the experimental devices that had played around with in Russia but they had proven their worth during the initial assaults in Berlin. Those who had experience of that charge were leading front now.
The village of Immensen made up their command post, the villagers having fled to safety. Or so was the story. With Hannover under Communist control the operation would need to be surgical, both to assure that the railway terminal would be captured quickly and relatively intact but also so that revolutionary forces couldn’t then retreat into Hannover to launch a counter-attack.
It was expected they would flee to do just that the moment the Reichswehr arrived in any force and for Peter that would also be the best thing for his moral dilemma. The armoured force would be circling around the town at any rate, to ensure any escape would be haphazard.
---
“It looks like they’ll be coming soon.” The factory worker panted whilst trying to recover his breath. He had just made a sprint between his home village and the outer barricade.
Johann nodded in acknowledgement but wished he could do more than hear the faint sounds of movement in the distance and see it for himself. He wondered where he might be able to get his hands on a good pair of binoculars. The roof of the giant cement factory on which he stood allowed a panorama of the town but not much beyond it from the naked eye. Thankfully most of the villagers from the surrounding towns had come to defend their factories and the more athletic of his newfound comrades could be used as runners to get a picture of the situation.
“You’re sure this will work?” Feder asked, although he was the notional commander of the town’s defence he was relying on Johann’s experience of what a Reichswehr attack might look like.
“They got through the barricades pretty quickly in Berlin, but that was without them being harassed from the buildings around. If we can bottle them up-”
“Then we get them to the killing zones, I know.”
The tactic of luring a superior foe into overlapping fields of fire had been used by Hitler himself during the defence of Munich and he had schooled his lieutenants regarding it in the Ruhr, here such lessons had been put into practice. With any luck, they might even work.
“Did you ever have to fight this many in the Ruhr?” Lars called out, and Johann realised the Social Democrat had managed to secure a good pair of binoculars from somewhere. Before he could ask we he meant however, there was a crump from the distance that brought everyone to a pause. Then another. And another. And-
---
Peter saw hundreds of grey blobs marching directly for the town whilst the first artillery shells impacted within it, the noise of their impacts dulled by the noise of armoured procession he was part of, looping around the town. All around him their own assigned Reicshwehr troops jogged alongside, trying to get in the habit of using the trucks for cover whilst eagerly trying to get a peak of what was unfolding from the other side as well.
Peter felt his stomach swelling and deflating even whilst maintaining a stern look from the armoured truck’s cupola.
They had by now circumvented the town, placing themselves between it and the city of Hannover, cutting off the main route of potential escape. The artillery fire had now stopped, indicating the main infantry assault had already begun but still no-one had fled from the town, not even any women or children.
The racket of gunfire grew in intensity from the other side of the town, indicating that something had gone badly wrong. Flags went up across the column, indicating the need to split up into individual units to break into the town. Peter attempted to sigh but ended up retching, his nerves getting the better of him. Whatever was going on, they were about to go in.
“You men stick behind me, keep low and covered until we’re into the town.” He yelled back at the Reichswehr infantry who in their steely determination put his own nerves to shame.
Perhaps they were just better actors.
The whistle blew and his driver revved the armoured trucks engine once more.
---
A thick dust of cement, ash and what looked like vapourised organs partially covered the mounting dead bodies filling up the lanes between the clayworks and the sugar warehouse.
The Reichswehr had been trying to spook whoever was defending the town it seemed, perhaps enough for them to flee or even just surrender outright but the revolutionaries assembled by Feder had held their nerve. This was much to Johann’s relief, he had merely been happy the roof had held when the first shells landed. Even though machine guns hammered away from pillboxes of broken stone and cement, and bullets swooshed over his head, he was mostly happy to be back on solid ground.
If the Reichswehr troops had been expecting a lightly defended town they had been disappointed and perhaps this explained they had poured in so eaglery rather than stick to the stricter discipline of cover and advance, cover and advance, that Johann was used to being on the other side of. It turned out defending a town whose main industry was a cement works had lent itself to constructing fortifications and the Reichswehr men left alive were now clambering to find cover in the face of interconnecting trenches and pillboxes of cement and mortar, slapped together in desperation but holding for the moment.
“They’re starting to get their act together.” Lars shouted from across the trench.
“Just hold them for as long as you can, we still have a trick up our sleeve remember.”
Lars smiled, “If we’re going to be swallowed whole we may as well give them the worst case of indigestion they’ve ever had!”
Johann laughed at the poor standard of the Social Democrat’s wit.
“I never fought I’d die fighting alongside a social fascist when the revolution came!” Johann tried to be as warm as possible in the heat of the battle.
“I just wanted a 40 hour week to be honest.” Lars shouted back before placing a struck match onto the kerosene soaked wick of a petrol bomb and hurling the flaming device down towards the huddled Reichswehr forces.
Flames spread across the road and those caught in it seemed stuck in a strange jig as their comrades attempted to fire past them. The rhythm of the dance, the melancholy of it, made Johann laugh harder, perhaps just a bit too hysterically. His mind sent him back to descending on Freikorps from the air and as he returned his hands to the warm MG08 Maxim gun.
Hammering away at the white guards, he was in the clouds once again.
---
The noise of the firing from afar grew more intense but the scene was still as Peter’s armoured truck landed on the paved road. Gliding smoothly after coursing over stony fields for so long only added to the calm of the scene.
Bang
A shot rang out, followed by more, Peter’s head had disappeared under the cupola at the sound of the shots but opted to pop back up for a moment so he could tell where the firing was coming from. The truck’s driver, to his credit, drove on towards the source of the shooting. From where they had been Peter could see a dead body in grey but was unable to dwell on it as he turned to face the barricade in front of the truck. It appeared there were four or five men with guns bobbing their heads up and down to take potshots at the more numerous force.
Peter tried to maintain some level of visibility whilst remaining covered, luckily for him the shots were tried to get at the men behind the truck, mostly. There were now more armoured cars queuing up behind him, the crossfire becoming intense. The tactic that had worked so well in Berlin had been to ram such barricades and spill through the gap but it wasn’t clear if that was all that was holding them up. Those behind him were growing agitated at the pause.
Crouching up and down he noticed a figure staring at them from the tenements towereing over the scene, their eyes locked for a moment before the head popped back in, alarmed at being seen. The calls to advance were growing, Peter tried to point upward.
A bullet ricocheted off the exterior of the truck and into his arm in a stab of hot, blistering pain. Peter bit into his other arm so not to scream but it appeared the rest of the crew were aware he had been hit. Crew members he now realised were beginning to lose patience with his dithering.
“Ram it!” He heard someone shout.
“Wait, no, I didn’t-” Gasping in pain, Peter’s protest was barely audible as the driver chose to obey whoever had given the order in his place. The armoured trucks engine whined and the tires screeched as with full force they hurtled toward the barricade. The stacks of crates and plywood and the shocked faces of those behind came closer and closer before he ducked for impact.
---
Johann felt himself be lifted off the ground and then being thrown back down amongst a mess of bloodied limbs. Winded as he was he tried to scream, before he realised none of them were his. The sudden surge of relief he felt was quickly quelled by the advancing troops ahead of them. Under a hail of bullets and mortar, the Reicshwehr had indeed gotten their act together quickly.
One pillbox was now being taken out at a time and it seemed he was next with so much fire being concentrated on it. He ordered his men to alert the others still holding out to retreat whilst he continued to blast away with the Maxim gun, spraying from side to side uncontrollably in a great waste of ammunition but also causing a temporary halt to the enemy advance, before jumping from the parapet himself and sprinting back to the next line of barricades and concrete blocks.
By the time he had been grabbed over the wall shots were already ringing out again. Stragglers who had been slow to follow were already being mowed down but only token resistance was being offered, maximum effect required maximum exposure. That was Hitler’s mantra for the killing zone and it meant inviting as many Reichswehr in as possible even if it meant being unable to cover your own comrades in the meantime. The cement factory and the town centre lay behind them.
Lars approached him once again, the man’s ruddy, bullish face smeared with blood and dirt. His eyes were ablaze with adrenaline. Johann realised he probably looked the same but hoped he had at least had his eyebrows intact.
“Nothing beyond this line for us. When they cross here it’s all over. Looks like your man has gotten us killed after all.”
The statement was matter-of-fact, there was no sense of anger or betrayal to it and Johann couldn’t respond even if he had been able to. All he could do was the same as Lars, grab a rifle and keep firing until they ran out of bullets.
The butt might be able to hold off a few if it came to that but Johann had long made his peace with the reality of his situation.
To be a communist was to be a corpse on holiday.
---
The painting is
Our Locomotive by Revold Baryshnikov