Jakob Suritz
Jakob Suritz, also known by the Russian version of his name, Yakov Zakharovich Surits, was a Soviet diplomat best known for serving as the Soviet ambassador to France during the Danzig crisis.
Revolutionary Diplomat
Suritz was born in Dvinsk in the Russian empire into a middle class Jewish family. His father, Zakhary Suritz owned a jewelry store, and his mother, Reizi Suritz was a house wife. He was at first active in the main Jewish socialist group in the Russian empire, the General Jewish Labour Bund, which he joined in 1902. In 1903, he joined the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party. In 1905, he took part in the Revolution of 1905. In 1907, he was arrested for his revolutionary activities and exiled to the Tobolsk Governorate in Siberia. In 1908, he married Elizaveta Nikolaevna Karpova, by whom he had two daughters. In 1910, he was released from internal exile and went to Germany to study philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. After the February Revolution of 1917, he returned to Russia.After the October Revolution of 1917, Suritz defected and joined the Bolsheviks along with his friends Ivan Maisky and Alexander Troyanovsky, both of whom also served as ambassadors for the Soviet Union. In 1917, the new Bolshevik Foreign Commissar Leon Trotsky disbanded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and created the Narkomindel in its place. Trotsky demanded that all Russian diplomats abroad swear loyalty to the new regime or be fired; the vast majority chose the latter option. Suffering from a serious shortage of experienced diplomats, Trotsky was forced to recruit former Mensheviks such as Suritz into the Narkomindel to serve as diplomats. Suritz had no experience as a diplomat and was only recruited because he was fluent in German and French.
Suritz initially served as the Soviet minister to Denmark. Subsequently, Suritz was sent to Kabul to serve as the first Soviet minister to Afghanistan. Suritz was described having "arrived like a hurricane" in Kabul in December 1919 as he sent out to convince the Emir Amanullah Khan that he should align Afghanistan with Soviet Russia against the British empire. The fact that the Emir Amanullah had just been defeated in the Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919 greatly aided Suritz's efforts. From 1920 to 1922, Suritz was also a member of the Turkestan Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. From 29 May 1922 to 27 April 1923, Suritz served as the Soviet minister in Oslo.
Ambassador in Ankara
From 14 June 1923 to 19 June 1934, Suritz served as the Soviet ambassador to Turkey. Rudolf Nadolny, the German ambassador in Ankara reported: "My Russian colleague Jakob Suritz was a very nice man...I immediately became friends with him and we later made a gentleman's pact that he would only pursue political interests in Turkey, supporting me in my economic endeavors, and I in turn would back him in politics. We both remain faithful to this agreement, which borne rich fruits".In April 1926, Suritz formally opened the new Soviet embassy, which was the first embassy in Ankara. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had moved the Turkish capital to Ankara, but for some times afterwards the embassies remained in Istanbul as other governments believed that Ankara was only a temporary capital. The decision to move the Soviet embassy in Turkey from Istanbul to Ankara was a gesture of friendship towards the new Turkish republic as a sign that the Soviet Union supported Kemal's claim that Ankara was the new capital of Turkey. The new Soviet embassy was built in a style that gave it an "ultra-modern appearance" with "soaring porches" that resembled the "wings of an airplane". The modernist style of the Soviet embassy that had no links to any of the architectural styles of the Russian past was intended to symbolize that the Soviet Union represented a rupture with the past and was the start of something new. Likewise, the modernism of the Soviet embassy was intended to symbolize the universalism of Communism as the modernist look of the Soviet embassy could just as easily being seen in any other structure built in a modernist style anywhere else in the world. Finally, the new Soviet embassy in Ankara was meant to symbolize the way that a backward nation was modernizing under the new Bolshevik regime with its modernist style serving as a symbol of progress and advancement. At the time, the Soviet embassy was unlike any other building in Ankara and caused a sensation when it was opened.
Suritz was close to President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and arranged for him along with his premier İsmet İnönü to attend a lavish banquet at the Soviet embassy in 1927 to honor the 10th anniversary of the October revolution. Soviet leaders in the 1920s saw Britain as their principle enemy and Kemal 's Turkish nationalist policies, which often pitted him against Britain, led to an informal Soviet-Turkish alliance. The Soviet Union was committed to the destruction of the established international system, and the Soviets allied themselves to any nation that wished to challenge the international order such as Germany in Europe, Turkey in the Middle East and China in Asia. During the Greek-Turkish war of 1920-1922, Britain supported Greece while the Soviet Union supported Turkey. However, Kemal did not wish for a complete break with Britain not the least because he did not want Turkey to become too dependent upon the Soviet Union and he preferred to rebuild the strained Anglo-Turkish relations after the League of Nations decided the Mosul dispute in favor of Britain in 1926. At one ball at the Çankaya Mansion, Kemal was careful enough to place himself between Suritz seated on his left and the British ambassador, Sir George Clerk, seated on his right to symbolize his desire to be desire to keep Turkey in-between the Soviet Union and Great Britain. Clerk noted that anywhere else in the world such events "would scarcely warrant recording in an official dispatch, but Angora is not other places". In 1929, Suritz negotiated and signed a secret alliance with Turkey.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, on 26 October 1933 Suritz hosted an elaborate party in Istanbul where the Soviet Black Sea Fleet sailed down the Bosporus, bringing the Defense Commissar, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov as the guest of honor. Suritz greeted Marshal Voroshilov as he landed in Istanbul while a 25-gun salute was fired in his honor. The reception of the Soviet delegation in Istanbul was described as friendly with large crowds cheering the visitors. Most notably, the wives and daughters of the Politburo members went along on the trip to Turkey "in great exception against Stalin's ban against junketing" as the correspondent of Time put it. Upon landing in Istanbul, the wives and daughters were taken away by "the svelte Mrs. Suritz" who had them all redressed in the latest styles of Paris as she felt that the Moscow fashions would make a terrible impression in Turkey. Afterwards, the Soviet party travelled on to Ankara where at a ball at the Soviet embassy hosted by Suritz and his wife with the guest of honor being President Kemal, the wives and daughters of the Soviet delegation were described being "having shone like Soviet Cinderellas".
Ambassador in Berlin
In 1934, he was appointed as the Soviet ambassador to Germany. On 26 October 1934, Suritz arrived at the Reich Chancellery to present his credentials as the ambassador of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to Adolf Hitler. Suritz had a difficult time in Berlin as a Jew and a Communist, and frequently had to invoke diplomatic immunity in his disputes with the German authorities. However, within the diplomatic community in Berlin, Suritz was well regarded as an intellectual who had a passion for collecting French Impressionist paintings. Suritz had a very close friendship with the American ambassador in Berlin, William E. Dodd, who like him was an intellectual turned diplomat. In his diary, Dodd wrote that Suritz was the "brightest of local diplomats" and "an impeccable gentleman in all respects". As Suritz spoke no English while Dodd spoke no Yiddish or Russian, the two talked in German, their common language. Dodd was a deeply unhappy man as he came to detest Nazi Germany, which ultimately led to his recall to the United States in 1937. Dodd came to lean on Suritz as one of the few fellow ambassadors whom he shared his feelings about his posting. Unknown to ambassador Dodd, his daughter Martha Dodd who had come with him to Berlin was recruited to work as a spy for the Soviet Union during her time in Berlin by one of her lovers, the Soviet diplomat Boris Vinogradov who served as the First Secretary at the Soviet embassy.On 14 January 1935, Suritz wrote to the Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov that: "As you know, your German friend has told us that there has been powerful pressure from influential Reichswehr circles and those close to Schacht insisting on reconciliation and agreement with us. According to him, the biggest impression has been our preparedness to develop economic relations." Suritz did not name the "German friend" he was referring to. On 29 May 1935, Suritz reported to Litvinov that he had met the Reichsbank president Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, whom he described as being "very friendly and spoke about the necessity of an improvement in mutual relations".
On 28 November 1935, Suritz reported that he met a number of German officials, whom he listed as the Foreign Minister, Baron Konstantin von Neurath; the Luftwaffe commander, Hermann Göring; the War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg; and the Propaganda Minister Dr. Josef Goebbels. Suritz stated: "All my contacts with the Germans have only strengthened my earlier conviction that the course against us, which Hitler has embarked, will remain unchanged, and we cannot expect any serious alternations in the immediate future. All my interlocutors were unanimous in this respect. For an example, I was told that Hitler has three obsessions: hostility towards the Soviet Union, the Jewish Question and the Anschluss; hostility towards the Soviet Union flows not only from his ideological attitude towards Communism, but also constitutes the basis of his tactical line in foreign policy...I repeat that it's more obvious to me now than at any other time before that Hitler and his entourage will not voluntarily change their course as far as relations with us are concerned...There is nothing we can do but patiently and continue to strengthen and develop our economic ties. Strengthening of economic ties on the basis of Schacht's latest proposals suits both sides. Implementation of the new agreements will set interested commercial circles in motion and bring them closer to us. It will doubles strengthen our "base" in Germany and will make a turn in the political course easier when the present German leadership is forced to by subsequent events".
Suritz reported to Litvinov that David Kandelaki, the Soviet trade attaché in Berlin, was in contact with Dr. Schacht. Soviet officials from Stalin down onwards understood Nazi Germany in Marxist terms, seeing National Socialism as something conjured into existence by the forces of "finance capital" and tended to overrate the influence of Dr. Schacht, whom it was assumed to be the leader of the "finance capital" interests that controlled the Third Reich. Through Hitler's anti-Soviet feelings were taken for granted, it was assumed to be possible to by-pass him and reach an understanding with the leaders of German "finance capital" such as Dr. Schacht. Suritz stated that Dr. Schacht was interested in having the Soviet Union export raw materials to Germany that the Reich lacked such as oil, copper, manganese, and high-grade iron to assist with rearmament, which offered a potential way to affect a change in German foreign policy. On 4 December 1935, Litvinov wrote to Suritz: "The conclusions you draw on the basis of intensified contacts with the Germans don't surprise me at all...I never had any illusions in this respect". Litvinov defined to Suritz that his duties in Berlin were: "There is no point in strengthening present day Germany too much. It is enough in my view, to maintain economic relations with Germany only at a level necessary to avoid a complete split between the two countries". On 10 December 1935, Suritz told the German diplomat Fritz von Twardowski that he "had strict instructions to do everything within my power to bring about, at least outwardly, an improvement in mutual relations". Suritz told Twardowkski he was interested in an economic agreement that might improve relations in the long-term.
On 13 December 1935, Suritz wrote in a report to Litvinov that there were two factions within the German state, one associated with the Nazi party and another that consisted of the military, the industrialists and the Reichsbank who wanted better German-Soviet relations for the purposes of trade. On 17 December 1935, Suritz wrote to the deputy foreign commissar Nikolay Krestinsky that there was "in Reichswehr and industrial circles a growing belief in the unproductiveness and erroneousness of National Socialism's anti-Soviet course". On 19 December 1935, Litvinov wrote back to say he was "skeptical" of what he called the "alleged" split in the German leadership. On 11 January 1936, Krestinsky wrote to Suritz "...neither in Berlin nor in Moscow, nor in any other quarter of the globe, are there any indications of any changes in direction". On 19 April 1936, Litvinov told Suritz that the existing state of German-Soviet economic relations was satisfactory and he was opposed to a new Soviet-German credit agreement for an expansion of trade. On 4 August 1936, Krestinsky informed Suritz: "German affairs have not been discussed here for a relatively long time. The prospects of Soviet-German relations are viewed as in the same way earlier...Germany does not conceal its definitely hostile attitude in relation to us". Krestinsky further stated that though the Germany was offering a credit agreement of one billion Reichmarks to improve trade, but that he was opposed because the reason for the offer were not "political", but "exclusively economic". The outbreak of civil war in Spain led to rapid decline in German-Soviet relations as the Soviet Union intervened on the side of the left-wing Frente Popular government while Germany intervened on the side of the Spanish Nationalists.
In September 1936, German-Soviet relations reached a new nadir with the Nuremberg Party Rally where Hitler and the other Nazi leaders made a number of viscerally violent speeches that denounced "Judo-Bolshevism" in the most strongest of terms and spoke about the desirability of colonizing the Soviet Union as Germany's lebensraum. Hitler called for an alliance of Western states to be led by the Reich against "Judo-Bolshevism", which he depicted as a demonic ideology that threatened the existence of civilization. In his keynote speech at the Nuremberg Party Rally, Hitler announced the Four Year Plan designed to have the German economy ready for a "total war" by September 1940 and created the Four Year Plan organisation led by Göring to achieve the goals of the Four Year Plan. On 11 September 1936, Suritz wrote in a report to Moscow that the Soviet Union should make a formal note of protest against what had been said at the Nuremberg Party Rally and that the Soviet Union should cease the export of certain raw materials to punish the Reich. Suritz's recommendations were rejected on the grounds that Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War had led to tensions with Britain, and the prospect of worsening German-Soviet relations and with it a German-Soviet war would lead to more pressure from Britain to end the intervention in Spain at a time when the Soviet Union was attempting to improve relations with Britain. Of Suritz's recommendations, only one was adopted, namely that Soviet newspapers denounce what had been said at the Nuremberg Party Rally and the Soviet media gave extensive attention to the Nuremberg speeches.
In November 1936, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact. At a press conference in Berlin, Joachim von Ribbentrop and General Hiroshi Ōshima informed the world of the Anti-Comintern Pact and invited a number of other nations such as China, Britain, Italy and Poland to sign the pact. Though directed only against the Comintern, Suritz noted that the pact was in fact a thinly disguised alliance against the Soviet Union, which presented the scenario of the Soviet Union facing a two-front war against Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia. On 14 December 1936, Suritz was summoned to meet Göring. Göring told Suritz that he wanted to expand and improve German-Soviet trade to help achieve the ambitious goals of the Four Year Plan and suggested that better Soviet-German economic relations would inevitably lead to better political relations. Suritz noted that Göring made no offers to improve political relations other saying repeatedly that more trade would inevitably improve political relations. On 27 January 1937, Suritz reported to Litvinov that he met Dr. Schacht, who was in favor of a new German-Soviet economic treaty to dramatically improve trade.. However, Suritz stated that Dr. Schacht had imposed a number of political preconditions first, namely the end of Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War; the end of support for the Front populaire government led by Léon Blum in France; and for the Soviet Union to renounce the alliances it had signed with France and Czechoslovakia. Suritz stated that Schacht's offer was so one-sided that it should rejected immediately. Unknown to the Soviets, Schacht was acting on his own. At the time, Schacht was losing a power struggle over the control of German economic policy to the other Nazi leaders and he was looking for a foreign policy success that might restore his prestige with Hitler. In August 1936, Schacht had started talks with Blum in Paris that continued well into 1937 for a deal under which France would return French Togoland and French Cameroon to Germany in exchange for the Reich cutting back its level of military expenditure and lowering its extremely high tariffs.
However, Suritz in a letter to Krestinsky stated he was concerned about the prospect of Germany reaching an agreement with "other states" against the Soviet Union that it was worth allowing Kandelaki to negotiate with Dr. Schacht. Litvinov ordered Suritz to attend the Kandelaki-Schacht talks in view of Kandelaki's lack of diplomatic experience. On 4 February 1937, Litvinov reported to Stalin that Kandelaki and Suritz had met Schacht, but he expressed a negative view of the talks, as he argued that Schacht was only seeking improved trade to assist with German rearmament. Suritz was ordered to negotiate, but also to keep the French ambassador André François-Poncet and the Czechoslovak minister Vojtěch Mastný informed as well. The British historian Geoffrey Roberts argued that the talks with Dr. Schacht were only intended to improve relations, and were not the beginning of an effort to seek an alliance with Germany as otherwise Suritz would have been ordered to keep the talks secret from François-Poncet and Mastný. Jealous over the way that Schacht had trespassed into a matter that properly belonged to the Auswärtiges Amt, Neurath informed Hitler that Schacht had been talking with Kandelaki and Suritz as he demanded that Schacht stick to central banking. Hitler immediately vetoed the talks. On 21 March 1937, Schacht told Suritz that there was nothing to discuss. On 7 April 1937, Suritz was assigned as the new Soviet ambassador to France. Kandelaki was recalled to Moscow, where he was executed for treason.