Unholy Alliance

Here is the first comprehensive account of the secret military and political relationship between Germany and Russia in the years after the First World War, when the seeds were sown for the second. At that time these two major powers were outcasts from the society of nations—Germany because of her defeat, Russia because of the Bolshevik Revolution. Quarantined, they sought each other’s company. Leaders in the uneasy partnership included the complex statesman Gustav Stresemann, the tragic Walter Rathenau, soon to meet an assassin’s bullet, and the unscrupulous Karl Radek, Germany had deposed her Kaiser, Russia her Czar; both countries were in social and political turmoil.

In recounting the story of this relationship, Dr. Freund has had access to important unpublished material, including the archives of the German Foreign Ministry and the private papers of Stresemann and General von Seeckt.

The noted historian, John W. Wheeler-Bennett, in his introduction calls Unholy Alliance “a work of significance… an important addition to the literature of this period of history…the strange and ever-fascinating story of German-Russian collaboration during the twenties.”

“Mr. Freund’s able study, utilizing a number of sources not hitherto available, constitutes an up-to-date and authoritative account of a particularly absorbing period in the relations between Germany and the Soviet Union.”—George F. Kennan

“I can say without hesitation that this is by far the most thorough treatment I have read of German-Russian relations.”—Alan Bullock, Oxford University