Operation Prangertag was a conspiracy by the right-wing Black Reichswehr paramilitary movement, led by Major-General Wilhelm Seegers, to overthrow the Weimar Republic and restore the German Empire. Backed by the USSR, the Black Reichswehr planned to secretly form a modern army in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and assassinate the German and French foreign ministers, enabling Germany to have a shot at renewing and winning World War I. On 30 May 1929, the assassination attempts on Gustav Stresemann and Aristide Briand failed, foiling the coup.
History[]
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles reduced the size of the Reichswehr to 100,000 soldiers and 4,000 officers, while prohibiting conscription and banning the construction of aircraft, heavy artillery, submarines, capital ships, tanks, and materials for chemical warfare. General Hans von Seeckt and Defence Minister Otto Gessler secretly plotted to create a shadow army, the Black Reichswehr, to receive modern training and weaponry and become the official military of a restored German Empire after a coup against the democratic government of the Weimar Republic. The failure of the Kustrin Putsch of 1923 resulted in the original Black Reichswehr organization being disbanded, but a cadre of army officers led by Major-General Wilhelm Seegers refounded the organization and continued to build up a secret army.
Starting in 1925, Major Anton von Beck made repeated visits to the Soviet Union, where the Bolsheviks had allowed the Germans to establish the secretive Lipetsk fighter-pilot school in exchange for the German pilots' aid in instructing the Russians how to build aircraft engines. At Lipetsk, the Black Reichswehr began to build a modern fleet of military aircraft in violation of the Versailles treaty. Many in the German cabinet, including Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, sympathized with the Black Reichswehr's plot to give Germany a modern air force, and thus turned a blind eye to the goings-on in Russia until it became clear that Streseman had become an assassination target for nationalist forces.
At the same time, industrialists Annemarie and Alfred Nyssen secretly imported trainloads of small arms, anti-aircraft guns, tanks, and heavy guns from the USSR, with Seegers signing off on all trains crossing the German border and supplying the weapons to the Black Reichswehr at their base near the Nyssen estate.
By 1929, the Black Reichswehr had begun to plan their final victory: Operation Prangertag. In their most daring smuggling mission yet, the Black Reichswehr conspired to import thirteen wagons full of phosgene gas into Germany. On 29 April 1929, this train was ambushed by Cheka agents at Novorzhev, and Boris Volkov and Ivan Tyumenev killed two German railroad workers and stole their uniforms before attaching a caboose containing Countess Svetlana Sorokina's gold to the rear of the train, planning on smuggling the gold into Germany and then to the exiled Leon Trotsky in Istanbul, enabling an additional revolution in Russia. This complication of the Black Reichswehr's plan would have disastrous consequences for both sides. Sorokina, a Cheka double agent, tipped off the Soviet ambassador Denis Trokhin about the location of the Trotskyist Red Fortress cell's headquarters in Berlin after Alexei Kardakov took her there to announce the arrival of the Soviet train. This resulted in the Cheka agents Grigori Selensky and Mikhail Fallin massacring 15 members of the Red Fortress cell, and Kardakov - who survived - retaliated against Sorokina (who planned to divert the gold carriage to Paris for her own use) by informing the Berlin Mafia boss Edgar Kasabian of the train's contents. Kasabian's henchmen accidentally triggered an explosion on the train when they opened a mislabeled car and caused a phosgene leak; the explosion drew the attention of the Berlin Police, who became aware of the Soviets' smuggling of phosgene into Germany.
The Berlin Police were able to use the discovery of the train to arrest Alfred Nyssen for smuggling illegal weapons and chemicals into Germany, causing a scandal within Nyssen AG and leading to Alfred being removed from its board by his mother. The police also arrested the two Chekists responsible for the Red Fortress massacre, and they blackmailed Trokhin into giving them the names of the Black Reichswehr leaders in exchange fro the release of the Chekists and a cover-up of the massacre. Government prosecutors indicted Major-General Wilhelm Seegers, Major Anton von Beck, Oberst Otto August von Malbeck, Major Johann Georg Friedrich, Oberstleutnant Richard von Loitzing, Major Erich von Meeseberg, Major-General Erich Lindenfeld, Freiligrath, von Bock, Erhardt, Escherich, and Lieutenant-General Gustav Hausinger - as well as three other leaders - in the plot to overthrow the government. The police arrested several of the coup plotters in late May, at the same time as the organization planned to launch its coup.
While the generals joyously feasted at the Moabit detention center, they were visited by the policeman Bruno Wolter, who had overseen the distribution of sniper rifles to the Black Reichswehr personnel still at large. There, they planned their coup: the German and French foreign ministers Gustav Stresemann and Aristide Briand would be visiting the Threepenny Opera at at Theater auf Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin shortly after 7:30 PM. The two statesmen would be greeted by Lord Mayor Gustav Böß at 7:45 PM, and they would be photographed during question time. Police officers would have to be granted identification tags to enter the building, and they would strike at the foreign ministers as they sat in seats Five A and B in the Lord Mayor's VIP box, coinciding with a shootout that would occur in the musical. Reichswehr scouts would be signaled to lower the republican flag while General Kurt von Schleicher would mobilize military districts I and II and all barracks of the German Reich to take the Reichstag and police headquarters, arrest all democratic leaders in politics and the military, including police chief Karl Zörgiebel. Afterwards, Seegers would head to the House of Broadcasting with the new Chancellor, Erich Ludendorff, who would announce the end of the republic and the reintroduction of the monarchy. As soon as Berlin was secured, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany would return from exile and address his people.
However, on the night of 30 May 1929 (the Feast of Corpus Christi), policeman Gereon Rath was able to thwart the plot by holding sniper Florian Scheer at gunpoint before he could fire. Wolter took advantage of the staged gunfire to shoot Scheer and prevent him from revealing the plot, but he failed to shoot Briand, who - bored with the play - had left his seat just seconds before Wolter could shoot him. While Wolter escaped, and the Black Reichswehr removed Scheer's body, Rath foiled the coup, as both foreign ministers remained alive, the republican tricolor was not lowered and replaced by the Imperial flag, and thus no military uprising took place. The next morning, political police chief August Benda planned to present Seegers at a press conference, but President Paul von Hindenburg arrived before the conference could be held, and Hindenburg decided that Seegers would come with him. Benda was forced to announce that the police could not make any more insights public, and that the conference would be postponed until further notice. Hindenburg also had the Soviet train sent back to Russia at once, removing the evidence of the right-wing coup attempt. Not long after, Benda was assassinated by the Nazis, and NSDAP puppet Gottfried Wendt was appointed to succeed him as chief of the political police.