Carl Von Ossietzky - The Abteilung M Affair

The Abteilung M Affair

In 1929 Walter Kreiser, one of the writers for Die Weltbühne, published an expose of the training of a special air unit of the Reichswehr, referred to as Abteilung M ("M Battalion"), which was secretly training in Germany and in Soviet Russia, in violation of Germany's agreements under the Treaty of Versailles. Kreiser and Ossietzky, the paper's editor, were questioned by a magistrate of the Supreme Court about the article later that year, and were finally indicted in early 1931 for "treason and espionage," the assertion being that they had drawn international attention to state affairs which the state had purposefully attempted to keep secret. The arrests were widely seen at the time as an effort to silence Die Weltbühne which had been a vocal critic of the Reichswehr's policies and secret expansion.

Counsel for the defendants pointed out that the information they had published was true, and, more to the point, that the budgeting for Abteilung M had actually been cited in reports by the Reichstag's budgeting commission. The prosecution successfully countered that Kreiser (and Ossietzky, as his editor) should have known that the reorganization was a state secret when he questioned the Ministry of Defense on the subject of Abteilung M and the ministry refused to comment on it. Kreiser and Ossietzky were convicted and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. Kreiser fled Germany but Ossietzky remained and was imprisoned, being released at the end of 1932 for the Christmas amnesty.