Ernst Wollweber: saboteur for Communism

 

Ernst Wollweber was born in 1898, the son of a miner in Hamburg, Germany. He joined the German Navy in 1917 and was inspired by what was happening at the time in Russia, namely the Bolshevik Revolution. He was one of the instigators of the German naval mutiny of November 1918, hauling up the red flag on the cruiser ‘Heligoland’ at the entrance to the Kiel Canal, this being the signal for the revolt.

He had hoped that post-war Germany would turn to Communism but was disappointed in this when the Weimar Republic was formed in 1919. His response was to lead another shipboard mutiny and take his vessel to Murmansk as a present for Soviet Russia. He was rewarded by Vladimir Lenin by being appointed chairman of the International Seamen’s Union. In this capacity he sailed round the world, acting as an emissary of Communism in China, Japan, Italy and the United States.

The German Communist Party was destroyed by Adolf Hitler when he came to power in 1933, but Wollweber saw an opportunity to cause havoc for the Nazi regime. He based himself in the Danish capital Copenhagen, from where ships left loaded with supplies for the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. His agents were able to insert pieces of TNT explosive into the supplies of coal that fuelled the ships’ engines, with devastating results.

Sabotage now became Wollweber’s weapon of choice. In 1940 he was able to destroy the ‘Marion’, a German troopship heading for Norway. A shattering explosion sank the ship and badly burned corpses, 4000 of them, floated ashore for weeks afterwards.

When the Nazis invaded Denmark in April 1940, Wollweber escaped to Sweden, where he had already organised a sabotage ring. He was promptly arrested, but his agent had recruited two young waitresses whom nobody suspected of nefarious activity. They were responsible for a massive explosion at a freight yard in July 1941 which destroyed truckloads of German shells.

The Germans demanded that neutral Sweden should hand Wollweber over to them, but he stayed in jail until the end of the war in 1945. He was then allowed to travel to Moscow, where he was treated as a Soviet hero. He returned to Germany and organised a spy ring in what became Communist East Germany.

He continued to work as a saboteur, causing explosions on British and American ships. He was almost certainly responsible for a fire on board the British liner ‘Queen Elizabeth’ in 1953, which was the year in which he was appointed Minister of State Security in East Germany.

He did not always see eye-to-eye with the East German regime. In 1961, Walter Ulbricht, Secretary of the East German Communist Party, ordered Wollweber’s arrest. However, when Wollweber contacted Moscow a telegram arrived in Berlin that read “Let Wollweber alone, he is a friend of mine”. It was signed Krushchev.

Ernst Wollweber died a natural death in 1962.

© John Welford