The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery by Wolfgang Schivelbusch

Author:Wolfgang Schivelbusch [Schivelbusch, Wolfgang]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2013-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

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GERMANY

Ten years after the end of the First World War, a French marshal, an English minister, and a German historian reflected on how things might have turned out differently. Marshal Ferdinand Foch, former commander in chief of the Allied forces, was convinced that Germany, instead of capitulating, “could have held the line on the other side of the Rhine in November 1918.” 1 Winston Churchill, then chancellor of the Exchequer, further developed this train of thought, speculating that it would have cost the Allies six months of heavy casualties to reach the Rhine. For Germany, he argued, that period of time would have been

sufficient for strong positions to be selected and prepared, and for the whole remaining resources of the nation to be marshaled in defense of its territory. But far more important than any military advantage was the effect which Germany, by admitting defeat and withdrawing completely from France and Belgium, would have produced upon the cohesion and driving power of the Allies.… Had Germany … stood with arms in her hands on the threshold of her own land ready to make a defeated peace, to cede territory, to make reparation; ready also if all negotiation were refused to defend herself to the utmost, and capable of inflicting two million casualties upon the invader, it seemed, and seems, almost certain that she would not have been put to the test. 2

In the view of Weimar historian Arthur Rosenberg, the decisive date was August 8, 1918, that “black day” on which General Erich Ludendorff, faced with the Allies’ Amiens offensive, realized that the absolute military triumph he had envisioned could not be achieved. At that moment, Rosenberg argues,

the majority in the Reichstag should have relieved Ludendorff of command … and formed a parliamentary government. The bourgeois democratic revolution that followed in October could equally well have taken place in August. The new German government could then have stopped the Military High Command’s ventures in the East, unilaterally canceled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and recalled all German troops from the occupied eastern countries. An understanding and a political alliance with Soviet Russia would thus have been possible. During August and September, Germany might have initiated the transformation of Austria-Hungary into a working confederation of states, reached an understanding with Poland and turned Alsace-Lorraine into an autonomous state. Had Germany and Russia moved closer, the situation in the Balkans, Rumania, and Bulgaria would also have been altered. Finally, a strong political coalition composed of Germany, Russia, and Austria would have been in a much better position to wrest favorable peace terms from the Entente than Germany, isolated and defenseless, was later able to negotate at Versailles. 3

These ex post facto speculations accurately reflect the thoughts running through the heads of those in power at the time. Everyone from Prince Max von Baden, the last imperial chancellor, to the military leaders of the Entente was convinced that the German situation was anything but hopeless. Responding to a query by Prime Minister Lloyd George,

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