Some time before this I had also joined a student organization which contained members of the SPD, as well as members of the Communist Party. This organization was frowned upon by the SPD, but they did not take steps against me until I came out openly against the official policy. I was made the Chairman of this organization and we carried on propaganda aimed at those members of the Nazi Party whom we believed to be sincere. The Nazis had decided to start propaganda against the high fees which students had to pay, and we decided to take them by their word, convinced that we would show them up. I carried on the negotiations with the leaders of the Nazi group at the University, proposing that we should organize a strike of the students. They hedged and after several weeks I decided that the time had come to show that they did not intend to do it. We issued a leaflet, explained that the negotiations had been going on but that the leaders of the Nazis were not in earnest. Our policy did have success because some members of our organization succeeded in making personal contact with some of the sincere Nazis. The Nazi leaders apparently noticed that, because some time later they organized a strike against the Rector of the University. That was after Hitler had been made Reich Chancellor. During that strike they called in the support of the SA from the town, who demonstrated in front of the University. In spite of that I went there every day to show that I was not afraid of them. On one of these occasions they tried to kill me and I escaped. The fact that Hindenburg made Hitler Reich Chancellor of course proved to me again that I had been right in opposing the official policy of the SPD. After the burning of the Reichstag I had to go underground. I was lucky because on the morning after the burning of the Reichstag I left my home very early to catch a train to Berlin for a conference of our student organization, and that is the only reason why I escaped arrest. I remember clearly when I opened the newspaper in the train I immediately realized the significance and I knew that the underground struggle had started. I took the badge of the hammer and sickle from my lapel which I had carried until that time.
I was ready to accept the philosophy that the Party is right and that in the coming struggle you could not permit yourself any doubts after the Party had made a decision. At this point I omitted from resolve in my mind a very small difficulty about my conduct of the policy against the Nazis. I received, of course, a great deal of praise at the conference in Berlin which was held illegally, but there rankled in my mind the fact that I had sprung our leaflets on the leaders of the Nazis without warning, without giving them an ultimatum that I would call to the student body lest they made a decision by a certain date. If it had been necessary to do that I would not have worried about it, but there was no need for it. I had violated some standards of decent behaviour, but I did not resolve this difficulty and very often this incident did come back to my mind, but I came to accept that in such a struggle of things of this kind are prejudices which are weakness and which you must fight against.
All that followed helped to confirm the ideas I had formed. Not a single party voted against the extraordinary powers which were given to Hitler by the new Reichstag and in the universities there was hardly anybody who stood up for those who were dismissed on either political or racial grounds, and afterwards you found that people whom you normally would have respected because of their decency had no force in themselves to stand up for their own ideals or moral standards.
I was in the underground until I left Germany. I was sent out by the Party, because they said that I must finish my studies because after the revolution in Germany people would be required with technical knowledge to take part in the building up of the Communist Germany. I went first to France and then to England, where I studied and at the same time I tried to make a serious study of the base Marxist philosophy. The idea which gripped me most was the belief that in the past man has been unable to understand his own history and the forces which lead to the further development of human society; that now for the first time man understands the historical forces and he is able to control them, and that, therefore, for the first time he will be really free. I carried this idea over into the personal sphere and believed that I could understand myself and that I could make myself into what I believed I should be.
I accepted for a long time that what you heard about Russia internally could be deliberate lies. I had my doubts for the first time on acts of foreign policies of Russia; the Russo-German pact was difficult to understand, but in the end I did accept that Russia had done it to gain time, that during that time she was expanding her own influence in the Balkans against the influence of Germany. Finally Germany’s attack on Russia seemed to confirm that Russia was not shirking and was prepared to carry out a foreign policy with the risk of war with Germany. Russia’s attack on Finland was more difficult to understand, but the fact that England and France prepared for an intervention in Finland at the time when they did not appear to be fighting seriously against Germany made it possible to accept the explanation that Russia had to prepare its defences against possible imperialist powers. In the end I accepted again that my doubts had been wrong and the Party had been right.
When Germany started the real attack on France I was interned and for a long time I was not allowed any newspapers. We did not know what was going on outside, and I did not see how the British people fought at that time. I felt no bitterness at the internment, because I could understand that it was necessary and that at that time England could not spare good people to look after the internees, but it did deprive me of the chance of learning more about the real character of the British people.
Shortly after my release I was asked to help Professor Peierls in Birmingham, on some war work. I accepted it and I started work without knowing at first what the work was. I doubt whether it would have made any difference to my subsequent actions if I had known the nature of the work beforehand. When I learned the purpose of the work I decided to inform Russia and I established contact through another member of the Communist Party. Since that time I have had continuous contact with persons who were completely unknown to me, except that I knew that they would hand whatever information I gave them to the Russian authorities. At this time I had a complete confidence in Russian policy and I believed that the Western Allies deliberately allowed Russia and Germany to fight each other to the death. I had, therefore, no hesitation in giving all the information I had, even though occasionally I tried to concentrate mainly on giving information about the results of my own work.