Bring These Witnesses – They Are Still Alive¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter from Socialist Appeal No. 27, “Bring These Witnesses – They Are Still Alive,” mounts a devastating polemic against the Stalinist bureaucracy by exposing a glaring contradiction at the Nuremberg Trials. The core argument is that if the Moscow Trials were genuine—if the accused Trotskyists had indeed conspired with the Nazis—then the surviving witnesses from those trials should be the most important prosecution witnesses at Nuremberg. Yet they have not been called. This silence, the chapter contends, is irrefutable proof that the Moscow Trials were frame-ups.
The text draws directly on the indictments and confessions of the 1936–38 Moscow Trials. It cites Bessonov, sentenced to fifteen years, who confessed to secret negotiations with Daitz, a colleague of Rosenberg, and claimed knowledge of meetings between Trotsky and Hess, Niedermeier, and Professor Haushofer. It also quotes the indictment of the so-called ‘Parallel Centre’, where Radek and Sokolnikov received fifteen-year sentences. Radek’s own testimony from 4 December 1936 is reproduced: he claimed that at diplomatic receptions in 1934–35, a German military attaché gave him to understand that the German government was in communication with Trotsky. The chapter notes that the names of the attaché and the government are redacted in the original—a detail that further undermines the credibility of the evidence.
The polemic is directed squarely at Stalin and his apologists in Britain. The author points out that Stalin, “incautiously,” allowed some of the accused to live—Radek, Rakovsky, Sokolnikov, Bessonov—rather than executing them all. These men are “living testimony” that the trials were frame-ups. Yet at Nuremberg, where the Nazi leadership was being tried for conspiracy and aggression, the question of Trotsky’s alleged collaboration with the Nazis has not even been raised. The chapter’s rhetorical thrust is merciless: the failure to produce these witnesses is not an oversight but a confession. Their evidence would not survive independent cross-examination. The author warns that raising this question publicly might even “seal the fate” of the few survivors still in Stalin’s jails.
Historically, the chapter situates itself in the immediate post-war period, when the Soviet Union was presenting itself as the righteous victor over fascism. By exposing the Stalinist regime’s refusal to let its own star witnesses testify, the text undermines the moral authority of the USSR at Nuremberg and vindicates Trotsky’s long-standing claim that the Moscow Trials were a monstrous fabrication.