Three months later a Communist revolution broke out in Natal and Recife, which claimed 150 dead and 400 wounded. Luis Carlos Prestes, the Jew Ewert and the “Ambassador” of Soviet Russia in Montevideo, the Jewish former furrier Minkin, were revealed as the agents of the “Alliance.”
To come to France, Dimitroff said that the French Communist Party provided an example for all sections of the Communist International of how the tactics of a Front Populaire should be carried out. Thorez, the leader of the French Communist Party, added that a revolution does not occur automatically, but must be organized. We are determined, he said, to follow the example of the Russian Bolshevists. We are… in favour of the Soviets.
The French Communist Party has proved itself worthy of the praise which Dimitroff accorded it. Its membership increased from 87,000 in January to 100,000 in March, to 187,000 in June and to over 225,000 in August, 1936. During the same period the number of military youth organizations was quadrupled. The number of votes increased from 790,000 to 1,500,000, a third of which were recorded in greater Paris alone. The number of Communist members in the French Chamber increased from 10 to 73. The circulation of the newspaper Humanité rose from 154,000 in 1933 to 750,000 for a time in 1936. During the electoral campaign for membership in the Chamber, in 1936, 27 million pamphlets were distributed by the Communist propaganda headquarters. After their affiliation with the Communist Front Populaire, the trade unions increased in membership from 800,000 in May of this year to 4,300,000 in August.
France is also proceeding to follow the example of the Spanish Front Populaire. Dimitroff’s “Trojan horse” stands within the walls of Paris.
But nothing provides us with a better object lesson, nothing could convince us more thoroughly of the seriousness of the decisions of the Seventh World Congress, than the sanguinary and appalling events in Spain. They represent the literal carrying out of the directions given at that time. They are practically the realisation of the “Front Populaire” plan, which has attained only its preliminary stage in France, but has reached its highest point of development in Spain. Dimitroff had announced the plan of action under a Front Populaire government when he said that the exercise of the powers of a government of this kind was to be utilised to prepare the masses for the revolution, and that they should arm themselves for the Socialist revolution, because Soviet power alone could provide salvation.
The Spanish delegate, Ventura, announced that the exact programme was as follows: “The Spanish proletariat and our party… will overthrow Fascism and the power of the bourgeois and the owners of the large estates once and for all, and bring about the triumph of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution… Under the banner of Lenin and Stalin, we are proudly marching towards victory.”
Before the murder of the monarchist leader Calvo Sotelo, which took place on July 13, 269 lives had already been sacrificed to the murderous Communist pest. The French journalist Arminjon reported, for example, that in Murcia the mob seized upon two young men who had been said to be Fascists. They were maltreated on the street, and finally a woman seized a butcher’s hatchet and beheaded them both. This occurred on March 16, and the names of the two men were Pedro Cutillas and Antonio Martinez.
The Press throughout the world had finally to print reports of the inhuman horrors perpetrated by the Spanish Marxists at the command of their foreign instigators. It is impossible to give even approximate figures approaching the actual facts. On August 19, the following facts were made public, derived from an official source: in the city of Madrid and in its suburbs, up to the present, more than 6,000 people were murdered by the Reds, 1,400 alone in the famous park Casa del Campo. In the largest prison, the Carcel Modelo, there were at that time 3,000 prisoners, and 1,146 in San Antonio, the total for Madrid being 6,000. I have in front of me a report by an eyewitness, the German Heinrichs, whose house overlooked the Casa del Campo, and here quite different figures are given. This eyewitness reports that up till August 30, he himself had seen about 6,000 people shot. He also reports that on other squares in the city, in the streets and in the houses, 20,000 more were murdered.
Other eyewitnesses, some of whom were forced to witness the Bolshevist murders from within the prisons, give reports of hundreds of murders daily. A young foreigner saw with his own eyes how in the night of August 20, about 200 prison officials in the Carcel Modelo were murdered, and how, on the next day, 250 members of the Fascist organizations were shot in the courtyard of the barracks. On August 15 he saw a convoy of 250 prisoner s arriving in Madrid from Almeria handed over to the Red militia by the police escort. The latter lined up 240 of them and shot them on the spot then and there. They escorted only 10 of them to the prison, so as to have carried out their “duty.” A little later the Fascist leaders, Ruiz de Alda, Fernando Primo de Rivera, Cuesta and Valdes, were murdered.
The whole German nation mourns for the seven Germans who died a horrible death as victims of the murderous Red crew. On their way to the Recreation Congress in Hamburg, four Germans, named Caetje, Dato, Hofmeister and Treiz, who were also members of the National Socialist Party, were murdered by a group of Bolshevists. After a long “trial,” two of them were led behind a factory, and the other two were placed against a wall a little way off and the four of them were shot. It was afterwards ascertained that the criminals had performed their bloody work with small shot. Hofmeister and Treiz were so disfigured that they could only be recognised with difficulty by the shape of their faces. Many other Germans were injured or suffered damage to their property. The National Socialist, Hans Hahner, was murdered on the way to his work at the Red Cross station. His house was plundered and his wife left destitute.
Not only in Madrid, but throughout the whole country, there were constant further reports of the horrible doings of the Reds. According to the Diario de Noticias of Lisbon, 187 people were murdered in Llora del Rio, and 250 in Constantina.
According to the German paper Germania, in Cartagena 600 officers and soldiers were thrown into the sea with stones tied round their necks. According to the Seculo, in the monastery of Baena 180 persons were executed by the Communists with choppers and razors, among them the priest of Santa Maria Mayor, and also women and children. The women’s bodies were ripped open. The Seculo also referred to a report by two peasants from Malaga of the murder of more than 400 persons, who were thrown into the wells with weights tied to their feet, or bound to the tails of horses and dragged through the streets. According to Die Front of Zürich, the Italian consular agent Solaverani reported that a girl of 16 fired the first shot at a prisoner. The Journal de Genève reported that in Rosal de la Frontera the Communists locked 40 people in the church and set fire to it, so that they were burnt to death. According to The Times, 400 inhabitants were murdered in Runda, about 200 of them being thrown into the Tagus. According to the Evening Standard, 51 hostages were shot in San Sebastian on August 14. Again according to the Seculo, in Almendralago General Franco’s troops found the corpses of prisoners, crucified head downwards on the prison walls. The Seculo reported further that 80 persons were burnt alive. According to the Daily Mail, in Cartagena 50 members of the civil guard were bound neck to neck, and beaten with iron bars and thrown into the sea from the Red prison ship Sil. The same paper stated that the special correspondent of Le Journal, Emile Condroyer, had reported from El Arahal that the Reds shut up 30 men, women and children in prison, poured petroleum in through the window and threw in lighted matches.