Part Five: The Five Most Notorious Political Wrongful Convictions in World History

These rumors reached Stalin through various channels. Stalin immediately recalled that as early as June 1938, a senior official of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs in the Soviet Far East defected to the "puppet Manchukuo." Is there a connection between this person's defection and Garen's "abnormal behavior" before and after the war? Is there some kind of conspiracy involved in this?

Rom: Does he want to create a counter to Hitler?

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was an important theorist and leader in the early Soviet Union. His personal grievances with Stalin were no secret within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In his early years, Bukharin praised Stalin's rival Trotsky and firmly opposed Stalin's policy of agricultural collectivization. At a Politburo meeting, Bukharin even publicly revealed Stalin's misconduct—previously, in an attempt to win Bukharin over, Stalin had privately compared Bukharin to the Himalayas, while viewing other Politburo members as insignificant flies. In 1928, Bukharin was finally expelled from the Central Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by Stalin. At a Politburo meeting, Bukharin even publicly revealed Stalin's misconduct—previously, in an attempt to win Bukharin over, Stalin had privately compared Bukharin to the Himalayas, while viewing other Politburo members as insignificant flies. In 1928, Bukharin was finally expelled from the Central Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

In December 1934, Kirov, a member of the Central Political Bureau of the Soviet Communist Party, was assassinated. Stalin seized this opportunity to initiate the Great Purge, during which Trotsky was exiled, and Zinoviev and Kamenev were subsequently killed

On January 26, 1938, General Friedrich was brought to Hitler's Chancellery to confront the pimp face to face. The pimp adamantly claimed that Friedrich had asked him to find male prostitutes and stated that Friedrich had even given him a sum of money to cover his tracks. Even more astonishingly, the case files reviewed by Hitler clearly documented evidence of Friedrich's alleged crime of sodomy, suggesting that even the Gestapo could not fabricate such detailed records. In this situation, Friedrich's defense was futile. Once the news broke, it immediately became a scandal that shocked all of Germany. On February 4, Friedrich was forced to resign from his position as Commander-in-Chief of the Army.

In 1937, the famous "Tukhachevsky Case" occurred in the Soviet Union. Stalin, based on a piece of "reliable intelligence," concluded that one of the most talented military leaders in the Soviet Union—Marshal Tukhachevsky—was plotting a coup against him. Tukhachevsky was arrested, and Stalin appointed Yagoda and others to interrogate him. Ultimately, at Stalin's behest, Yagoda and others sentenced Tukhachevsky to death. Tukhachevsky was arrested, and Stalin appointed Yagoda and others to interrogate him. Ultimately, at Stalin's behest, Yagoda and others sentenced Tukhachevsky to death

In the modern and contemporary history of the world, various countries have experienced significant political injustices for various reasons, some of which have even become historical mysteries that remain unsolved to this day

Galun (originally named Buliuhe'er) was a renowned general of the Soviet Union. He joined the Tsarist army in 1914 and later served in the Red Army. In 1924, upon orders from his superiors, Galun came to China to serve as the Soviet military advisor to the National Revolutionary Army, assisting the Guangzhou revolutionary government in the Northern Expedition. It is said that Lin Biao consulted him for military knowledge at that time. After Chiang Kai-shek betrayed the revolution, Galun was forced to return to the Soviet Union, and from 1929 onwards, he began working in the Soviet Far East.

Röhm was one of Adolf Hitler's most loyal henchmen. However, after Hitler ascended to the pinnacle of power in German politics, he surprisingly had this old friend executed. It turned out that Röhm had been framed by Göring and Himmler, leading Hitler to mistakenly believe that he was plotting against him

On June 30, 1934, Hitler personally arrived in southern Germany and arrested Röhm, who was asleep. Subsequently, all senior leaders of the SA were also arrested. Without any interrogation, all senior SA officials were executed. Röhm was also killed in prison on July 2.

This judgment has provoked the anger of many enlightened individuals in France. The renowned French writer Zola stood up and published an article in the newspaper criticizing the government. As a result, he was arrested by the military and sentenced to one year in prison

After Tukhachevsky's death, the politically naive Galen did not foresee that Tukhachevsky's tragedy would be repeated in his own life. In fact, Stalin could never fully trust military officers of Tsarist origin, including Galen. By involving Galen in the interrogation of Tukhachevsky and allowing him to witness Tukhachevsky's tragic fate, Stalin was employing a tactic of "striking the mountain to scare the tiger".

This was precisely what Göring and Himmler desired. They simply forged some "evidence" of Röhm's alleged conspiracy to rebel, aiming to prove to Hitler that Röhm's "second revolution" was actually directed against him. These two Nazi tyrants were indeed masters of slander; when numerous pieces of "evidence" were presented on Hitler's desk, even he was deceived. He decided to send the "traitorous scoundrel" Röhm on a one-way journey.

At that time, the outspoken Rom was vigorously promoting a "Second Revolution" to strike hard against the conservative forces within Germany, aiming to replace the "nobility" of the German national defense army with stormtroopers. This slogan not only infuriated the national defense army but also caused unease among many prominent figures in Germany's industrial and commercial sectors

Colonel Picard, head of the French military counterintelligence, discovered while reviewing the files of Esterhazy that the application he submitted years ago to be transferred to the General Staff bore handwriting identical to that of the note in the Dreyfus case. Picard immediately reported this finding to Deputy Chief of Staff Gons and urged the military to reopen the case. However, Picard was soon expelled from the General Staff and assigned to fight against the Arabs on the Tunisian border. Unwilling to accept this fate, Picard continued his efforts, hoping to have the Dreyfus case reexamined.

After the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, General Fritsch, who regarded honor as life, took to the Polish battlefield as a combat officer, and was killed near Warsaw on September 22. Almost simultaneously, lawyer von der Goltz, who had provided defense services for Fritsch in this case, after a long investigation, finally understood the tricks played by the Gestapo. It turned out that the Gestapo had found the file of a cavalry captain named von Frisch in their archives, who had engaged in homosexual activities in Munich. The Gestapo exploited the coincidence of the similarity in their names (in German, Fritsch is "Fritsch" and Frisch is "Friseh") to fabricate this miscarriage of justice.

Fritsch: The Gestapo manufactured the "chicken scandal"

Bukharin sensed that he was about to be arrested, so he wrote a letter to the future party congress, asking his wife, Anna Larina, to recite it and then burn the letter. In the letter, Bukharin defended himself against the injustices he had suffered and called on the future generation of party leaders to vindicate him and restore his reputation. Indeed, not long after, Bukharin was arrested on the charge of "conspiring to overthrow the Soviet government." In prison, the interrogators accused Bukharin of having sent an agent, Fanny Kaplan, to assassinate Lenin in 1918 during World War I because he opposed Lenin's signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany.

However, the just individuals led by Zola continued to advocate for the Dreyfus case, exerting pressure on the authorities. As a result of their efforts, in June 1899, the French government announced a "pardon" for Dreyfus and shortly thereafter promoted him to the rank of major. It was not until July 12, 1906, that the French Supreme Court re-examined the entire case, overturned the original verdict, and declared Dreyfus innocent

In fact, Röhm did not overthrow Hitler's plans; he died rather unjustly. What truly harmed Röhm was his penchant for boasting.

In 1935, General Friedrich was appointed as the Commander-in-Chief of the Nazi German Army. He, along with Defense Minister Marshal Werner von Blomberg, actively supported Hitler's military expansion and preparations for war. On November 5, 1937, Hitler summoned the heads of the German Army, Navy, and Air Force, including Friedrich, to the Chancellery in Berlin to outline his plans for initiating a world war. Friedrich immediately expressed his dissent, believing that the German Army was not adequately prepared to engage in a world war. Hitler was very displeased with this response.

However, a fact that was almost overlooked by all French people is that after Dreyfus was arrested, important military intelligence in France continued to be leaked. This finally raised the vigilance of certain departments within the army, prompting them to begin re-examining the Dreyfus case. In March 1896, the intelligence department intercepted a letter from Schwartz to French officer Major Ferdinand Esterhazy, who also came under the scrutiny of the investigators

Dreyfus Affair: An innocent Jewish officer was exiled

The notorious Gestapo not only incited hatred among the Jewish people, but also frequently plotted against high-ranking officers of the German military. General Werner von Fritsch, the Commander-in-Chief of the Nazi German Army, was a victim of a fabricated case orchestrated by the Gestapo that led to his downfall

In 1933, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany. Röhm was under the impression that Hitler would share wealth and power with the brothers of the Storm Troopers, but he was unaware that what Hitler desired even more was to consolidate his own power

In prison, the interrogators employed all means of coercion to force Galen to confess to crimes he had never committed, even cruelly gouging out one of his eyes

On September 26, 1894, French intelligence personnel obtained an unsigned note addressed to the German military attaché in Paris, Schwartz-Kaubn, which contained a list of confidential information regarding the French Army General Staff. This indicates that there were individuals within the French military providing intelligence to the Germans

Bukharin: Did he want to assassinate Lenin

The news of Tukhachevsky's execution reached Germany, causing a wave of jubilation within the Nazi intelligence agency: that "reliable intelligence" was precisely what they had fabricated to frame Tukhachevsky.

As early as 1920, Röhm joined the Nazi Party and assisted Hitler in establishing a paramilitary group known as the Sturmabteilung (SA). After the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, he spent 15 months in prison, during which he became very close friends with Hitler. Röhm's SA played a particularly prominent role in protecting senior Nazi officials and intimidating political opponents; they can be considered Hitler's most effective political enforcers in the early days, making significant contributions to his rise to power

Between July and August 1938, a large-scale conflict erupted between the Soviet Red Army and the Japanese army in the Zhangguping area. Although the Soviet forces emerged victorious, they suffered significant losses. Some of Garen's political opponents began to spread rumors, claiming that the aggressive posture of the Japanese had long been evident, and that in the face of a clear threat of war, Garen had deliberately failed to make adequate preparations, resulting in heavy losses for the Soviet army. It appeared that Garen had colluded with the Japanese. Some of Garen's political opponents began to spread rumors, claiming that the aggressive posture of the Japanese had long been evident, and that in the face of a clear threat of war, Garen had deliberately failed to make adequate preparations, resulting in heavy losses for the Soviet army. It appeared that Garen had colluded with the Japanese.

Thus, in October 1938, Garen was recalled to Moscow and was soon arrested

The French intelligence agency immediately reported to its superiors, and General Messier, the Minister of the Army, ordered his subordinates to identify the traitor in the shortest possible time. The intelligence agency deduced that only an intern officer who could access all four offices of the General Staff simultaneously would have been able to handle these documents. During the examination of the handwriting of all intern officers, the agency found that the handwriting of a young Jewish officer named Dreyfus bore some resemblance to that on the note. Further investigations revealed additional suspicions regarding Dreyfus: he was the only Jewish intern officer among all the officers at the General Staff (which was the primary concern), and his brother retained German nationality to manage the family estate.

Ultimately, Bukharin was forced to label himself as a "traitor" and "counter-revolutionary," and Stalin showed no mercy, executing Bukharin in March 1938. This miscarriage of justice was not rectified until 50 years later, when on February 4, 1988, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union officially exonerated Bukharin

On January 10, 1898, the military court began hearing the charges against Esterhazy. Although Esterhazy had already admitted to providing intelligence to the Germans, Dreyfus was merely a scapegoat, yet the judges and jurors, acting on the "will from above," still declared Esterhazy not guilty

Meanwhile, Hermann Göring regarded Röhm as his greatest rival within the Nazi Party, while Heinrich Himmler sought to establish the SS as independent from the SA. Their shared interests led to a swift alliance between the two. The so-called "Second Revolution" promoted by "Big Mouth Röhm" was exaggeratedly reported to Hitler by Göring and Himmler. Hitler then demanded that Röhm abandon the notion of this so-called "Second Revolution," yet Röhm continued to make enemies everywhere with his loud proclamations, insisting that he would initiate a "Second Revolution".

The case of Galen is merely one example among a series of wrongful cases during the Great Purge in the Soviet Union. In this frenzied movement, Galen was neither the first high-ranking Red Army general to be wrongfully executed, nor was he the last.

Dreyfus was thus arrested, and the trial was conducted in secret. However, when the French public learned that a Jew had betrayed his own country by leaking intelligence, there was an immediate outcry, with many demanding the death penalty for Dreyfus. Newspapers extensively covered the incident and exerted pressure on the judges and the government, insisting that this Jew must be made to face severe consequences

It was not until 18 years later that the Soviet side, through extensive investigation and evidence collection, proved that the case of Galen was a complete miscarriage of justice: as the commander of the Far Eastern Army, Galen had actually been focused on preparing for combat against the Japanese army. The Soviet Union faced elite Japanese forces during the Zhanggufeng incident, and the significant losses incurred can be understood

Galen: A renowned general met a tragic end in prison

Only two months after the conclusion of this meeting, General Friedrich fell victim: General Friedrich had no interest in women, remaining unmarried and dedicating all his energy to the construction of the German Wehrmacht. However, Reinhard Heydrich, a senior official of the Gestapo, found a pimp in Munich and instructed him to accuse Friedrich of being homosexual, committing the crime of sodomy (which was illegal under Nazi German law)

This is a complete miscarriage of justice. Bukharin desperately defended himself, but to no avail. On the contrary, the interrogators even used Bukharin's wife and son to coerce him into "telling the truth".

On November 9, 1938, the renowned general Galen met a tragic end in prison. By that time, the Soviet authorities still regarded him as a "traitor"

At the same time, the defection of senior official Liuxikoff from the People's Committee of Internal Affairs in the Far East is completely unrelated to Galen. That individual fled to the "puppet state of Manchukuo" out of fear of being implicated in the Great Purge, a tragedy brought about by Stalin's paranoia

Under the immense pressure of public opinion, on January 13, 1895, the French military held a ceremony at the French Military Academy to publicly strip Captain Dreyfus of his military rank. Amidst the countless curses from the French populace, Dreyfus surrendered his command sword and endured humiliation. Three months later, he was exiled to Devil's Island