A Perfidious Distortion of History by Jurgen Tampke

Author:Jurgen Tampke
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: POL042030, POL021000, HIS027090, HIS037070, HIS010000, HIS054000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2017-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Weimar

After the wounds left by the bitter division over Germany’s role in the war, chances that a united workers’ movement would give strength to the newborn republic were slight, as was evident almost immediately. The speed with which the monarchical system was wiped away within less than a week — having been regarded as invincible little more than four years previously — stunned Germany’s political establishment. On 10 November 1918, the two socialist parties formed a revolutionary government that consisted of three Majority Socialist and three Independent Socialist members, under the impressive title of ‘The Council of the People’s Deputies’. Far-reaching social and constitutional reforms were decreed.

Behind the scenes, though, a less united picture was emerging. Frightened, like most Germans, that the revolution would lead to Bolshevik chaos, Friedrich Ebert, the SPD leader and member of the council — a man known for his saying that ‘he hated revolution like sin’ — made an agreement with General Groener (who had succeeded Ludendorff as commander-in-chief) to secure the survival of the Reichswehr. Less than a week later, Karl Legien, the leader of the German trade union movement, made a pact with industrialist Hugo Stinnes not to tamper with the existing economic structure. This was the logical continuation of the reformist approach most party and union leaders had followed before the outbreak of war. The SPD leaders’ objective was clear: the establishment of democracy, already decreed in the final stages of the war, as quickly as possible. Social changes were to come gradually through the ballot box and through the trade unions, taking onto account prevailing economic conditions. The SPD saw their role as a caretaker government, to thwart radicalism until a National Assembly had been elected.

The Independent Socialist Party favoured a parliamentary system with majority rule as a long-term aim, but they wanted to use the council system to clear the path for more genuine social democracy. In their opinion, the nation’s institutions had to be reformed and the power of the old establishment had to be curbed. They doubted that those who ran the public service, the army, judiciary, and police, the universities, the education system in general, and other vital institutions would accept major political and social changes. There was substance to this view. Conservative ideology in pre-war Germany had little respect for Western parliamentarianism, which was considered to have an aura of corruption, if not decadence. The ruling establishment thought that the Prussian bureaucracy was more efficient than the Western system, as Germany’s rapid developments in all fields had shown. Subsequently, the Reichstag was often referred to as a Schwatzbude (the chatter box). Moreover, the people who had acquired power in the revolution, the workers, were detested by the class-conscious German upper and middle classes. Even when the party supported the empire by voting for the war credits in August 1914, the reaction of the conservatives was ‘ice-cold’, as chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg noted, not without concern. Conservatives feared that, one day, concessions would have to be made. The

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