Bad news for Trotsky
Aug 1st, 2012 by houghtonmodern
On August 20, 1940, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was attacked in his home in Coyoacán, Mexico. Trotsky was accosted in his study, where he was reading reports of the Battle of Britain in the newspaper. His attacker, Ramon Mercader, bludgeoned Trotsky in the head with an ice axe; Trotsky died in a nearby hospital twenty-six hours later.
Adding to our extensive collection of Trotsky’s papers, we have recently acquired the copy of Ultimas Noticias de Excelsior that Trotsky was purportedly reading when he was attacked. The newspaper, spattered with blood, was retrieved by one of Trotsky’s guards, Henry Schnautz.
Images of the newspaper can be seen after the jump.
*2012M-1. Henry Schnautz material concerning Leon Trotsky, 1940. Gift of Donna Miller, 2012.
Henry was there only a few months. He was not impressed with Trotski’s guards and their handling of the first attack. He took off from the southern Indiana farm where he was living with his parents and several brothers and sisters, looking for a new life with more action and adventure than he saw at home. He was a fairly good marksman, but the next attack was very different from the first. He stayed on a couple of years after Trotski’s death to guard Natalia. While there he fell hard for Esperanza Lopez Mateos the sister of Adolfo, who was to become president of Mexico. She broke his heart and finally he went back to the US and was conscripted into the army, to fight in World War II.
Henry lived to ninety nine, telling his stories to young interested listeners. He was quite a pack rat and finally one of his favorite listeners, Terry Priest, went through Henry’s hord. Most of Henry’s papers had been shoveled in bags and hauled to the dump, but Terry Priest was able to sift through what was left and find some wonderful fragments of a long life.
Bad news indeed and what a terrible way to die.