Nuremberg: Stalin – Not Trotsky – Made Deal With Hitler!¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter from Socialist Appeal (No. 23) seizes on a dramatic moment at the Nuremberg Trials to invert the central accusation of the Moscow Trials. The core argument is that the Stalinist bureaucracy, not Leon Trotsky or his followers, was the party that made a secret deal with Hitler. The text reports that Hess’s defence counsel, Seidl, introduced an affidavit from Dr Friedrich Gauss, head of the German Foreign Office legal department, claiming a secret treaty signed by Ribbentrop in Moscow nine days before the invasion of Poland. The Soviet prosecutor, General Rudenko, is described as scrambling to the microphone in protest and spending the afternoon telephoning Moscow for instructions. The chapter treats the existence of a formal signed document as secondary; the political fact is the Stalin-Hitler Pact itself, which enabled the partition of Poland and the occupation of the Baltic States. This, the author insists, was the actual ‘go’ signal for Nazi aggression.
The polemical target is twofold. First, the chapter directly attacks the Soviet prosecution’s credibility at Nuremberg, arguing that the cross-examination of Göring failed to produce even a hint of documentary or testimonial evidence linking Trotskyists to the Nazis. The author claims the prosecution dare not raise the issue for fear of exposing the Moscow Trials as a frame-up. Second, the chapter turns the logic of the Moscow Trials on its head: it was Stalin who made secret agreements with Hitler, facilitated Nazi aggression, and thereby prepared the way for the eventual attack on the USSR. The text draws on the contemporary press coverage, citing the Daily Express to underscore the discomfiture of the Soviet bureaucracy. The historical context is the immediate post-war period, when the Allies were staging the Nuremberg Trials to prosecute Nazi leaders, but the Soviet Union was simultaneously attempting to maintain the fiction that it had been a consistent opponent of fascism. The chapter’s narrative thrust is to expose that fiction by using the trial’s own proceedings as evidence against Stalin’s regime.