Back in Vienna, Freud counts the congress a success: ‘I am swimming in satisfaction, I am light-hearted to know that my problem child, my life’s work, is protected and preserved for the future.’ As late summer turns to autumn, and as the situation of the Central Powers becomes more and more desperate, for the first time in months Freud allows a little uncharacteristic optimism to creep into his correspondence: ‘I will see better times approaching, if only from a distance.’
BRESLAU: Rosa Luxemburg is worried. The old argument she used to have with Vladimir–whether a revolution is led by a party or operates through the energy that it releases in society–is now being played out in real time in Russia. Lenin’s revolution looks increasingly like a coup d’état, rather than a genuine revolution of the masses. The Bolsheviks are allowing their tactics to become their ideology. If this continues, Rosa fears, then ‘socialism will be decreed from behind a few official desks by a dozen intellectuals’. To overthrow the rotten Kerensky regime was one thing; to build socialism, another. ‘The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed’, Rosa writes; ‘the building up, the positive, cannot.’
Rosa’s own conception of what a socialist revolution must be–a spontaneous swelling-up of proletarian consciousness, and a dynamic, continuous process of reordering society by and for the masses–seems to be in jeopardy. She warns of the alternative: ‘Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party–however numerous they may be–is no freedom at all.’ Terror cannot bring lasting social change and will besmirch the image of the revolution. An uncomfortable question animates Rosa’s concerns: will the Russian example launch world revolution, or kill it dead? ‘Yes, dictatorship!’ she agrees. ‘But this dictatorship must be the work of a class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class–that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses, it must be under their direct influence.’
Lenin and Trotsky are not miracle-workers, of course. They have acted as they think fit, beset by enemies on all sides. Whatever errors they have made, they must be thanked for trying. They have been far braver than the German Social Democrats–‘spineless jellyfish’–whose chief concern seems to be maintaining imperial order under the Kaiser. But in this latest phase of world affairs, nine months after the Bolshevik seizure of power, Rosa sees the risk of a dreadful strategic error being made in Moscow.
‘The flames of the world war are leaping across Russian soil and at any moment may engulf the Russian revolution’, she writes in a letter to the Spartacists. She worries that her old sparring partner Vladimir Ilyich may be tempted to save himself and his regime through an alliance of convenience with the German generals. Such a pairing would be grotesque, a Frankenstein accommodation between revolution and reaction, between Moscow and Berlin. The moral credibility of the workers’ revolution would be destroyed. The most reactionary state in Europe would be helped to military victory. Even if the Bolsheviks clung on in Moscow, world revolution would be stillborn.
Vladimir has always been more of a politician than Rosa, ready to make sharp deviations if he thinks they are needed. Rosa believes the revolution must be kept pure. However difficult the situation, the Bolsheviks must resist further German pressure. As for the German workers, Rosa is exasperated. When will they finally be compelled to rebel?
‘Four weeks ago, it looked as though big things were underway in the Rhineland’, Rosa writes angrily to a friend, ‘but of course our blockheads didn’t accomplish anything politically and the movement collapsed’. Where are the German soldiers and workers’ councils? Where is the Berlin Soviet? Everything depends on the German workers now.
SOFIA, THE KINGDOM OF BULGARIA: Grand Vizier Talaat, returning from a trip to visit the Ottoman Empire’s allies in Germany, stops briefly in Sofia. The news there is bad. The Bulgarian King Ferdinand (the one whom Wilhelm made such fun of) is seeking an armistice. The game is up. ‘We’ve eaten shit’, Talaat tells his compatriots as he boards the train to Istanbul.
Mustafa Kemal is in the Ottoman province of Syria, where he is given a fresh command. British and Arab forces are driving further north every day.
SPA: In moments of lucidity he sees the position is hopeless–Germany can no longer win this war. Yet still he tries to find a way out. ‘I am like a drowning man clutching at straws’, Ludendorff admits to senior officers when he tells them of the latest rumours he has picked up: that lung infections are ravaging the French army and that the plague has hit Milan.
The general’s entourage decide to go above his head, sending a message to Berlin that the military position is now untenable. Peace must be made at all costs. ‘His Excellency is still desperate enough to fight’, one of Ludendorff’s aides writes in his diary. ‘He does not have the courage to make an end of it; he won’t do it unless forced.’ On a Saturday evening at the end of September, the German war leader finally cracks.
THE WESTERN FRONT: Boats arriving from America have tens, then hundreds, of dead or dying soldiers on board by the time they have crossed the Atlantic and dock in Brest, where Jim Europe and his band arrived nine months ago. The influenza victims’ lungs are blue and swollen. Nothing can be done for them. Local hospitals are overwhelmed. The disease starts spreading amongst the civilian population.
Woodrow calls a conference in Washington. Should the troop transports be stopped? Is shipping troops to Europe doing more harm than good, sending ill men in cramped conditions to a Continent already on the point of starvation? The army recommends the ships be equipped with more coffins and embalming fluid instead.
MUNICH, BAVARIA: A secret society is formed in the Bavarian capital. It calls itself the Thule Society, in reference to the supposed ancient origins of the Germanic peoples in the far north. It is animated by a witches’ brew of beliefs: worship of the sun and various other life forces; a belief in the superiority of the so-called Aryan race; a conviction in the importance of blood; a cultish fondness for neo-medieval ritual, Nordic rune-writing and faux-historic initiation ceremonies. Ardent anti-Semitism is de rigueur.
A man who calls himself a baron (he is in fact the son of a Silesian train engineer) leads the society. Others drawn into its strange orbit include the German translator of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and a sports journalist called Harrer. Most are outsiders in the Catholic high society of Bavaria. Several are Protestants. Some have spent time living in Turkey. All wear swastikas–bronze pins for the men, gold brooches for the women. Every Saturday the society’s men and women meet in the club rooms of one of the city’s grand hotels, the Vier Jahreszeiten, either to initiate new members into the society or to listen to lectures from fellow Thule members on their latest theories and pet subjects. One early talk is on the subject of divining rods.
Over the summer, the society acquires a long-established newspaper and gives it a radical twist. ‘Race purity’, the Münchener Beobachter declares, ‘is the basis of national well-being.’ Kultur is carried in the blood. The claim is based in shadowy theories of historical evolution, quite popular in America. ‘New research has shown’, the Beobachter asserts, ‘that northern Europe, northern Germany in particular, is the cradle of all those bearing Kultur and who, since the dawn of time, have sent wave after wave of people to bring Kultur to all the world and fertilised it with their blood.’
AUTUMN
CHICAGO: For a few seconds he is there right in front of her. A moment later he is gone. In the middle of a Pathé newsreel about the war, Marcelline Hemingway spots the jerky black-and-white figure of her kid brother, all grown up now in his military uniform, being pushed about in a wheelchair by a pretty nurse on a sun-drenched porch in a foreign land.
In the foreign land itself, Hemingway tries one last time to get back into the action before the whole show is over. He makes for the front. But jaundice catches up with him. By the beginning of November, he is back in hospital in Milan again, further away from danger than if he were in Chicago, where influenza closes everyt
hing except the city’s churches for weeks.
Ernest Hemingway’s war is over. For the rest of the world, it limps on.
SPA: On the first day of autumn, Ludendorff calls his staff officers together to a meeting.
The Western Front could break at any moment, he tells them. Germany’s allies have already folded, or will soon be forced to surrender. A combination of Arab and British Empire forces captures Damascus the same day; Istanbul is wide open after the collapse of Bulgaria; Austria–Hungary is a spent force militarily. The German army, ‘poisoned with Spartacist and socialist ideas’, cannot be relied upon. The real enemy now is revolution.
In consequence of this, the general tells his staff, the German high command has recommended to the Kaiser that Germany sue for peace immediately. Having resisted such a decision for weeks, Ludendorff is now adamant it must happen immediately. (In the Reichstag, there is surprise at the sudden change of heart; and the Kaiser, while accepting that a ceasefire may be the only way of saving his throne, worries about the widows who will now blame him for all the blood which has been spent when, of course, he wanted none of it.)
At Ludendorff’s announcement that morning, some begin to weep. A few find themselves holding each other’s hands so tightly they feel they might break. The general has only a few final words left to add. But these are political. They will weigh heavily in the future. He has recommended to Wilhelm that any new German government be made up of ‘those responsible for putting us where we are today’. The socialists and pacifists will be forced to make the peace. ‘They must be made to drink the soup they have brewed’, he tells his officers.
A lieutenant grabs the general’s arm. ‘Is this the last word? Am I alive or am I dreaming?’ he asks. ‘God has wished it so’, replies the general. ‘I see no other escape.’ In private, he tries to soften the blow. A direct approach to Wilson, bypassing the British and French, may yet produce an armistice on honourable terms. ‘The fourteen points are not so absolute’, the general suggests. With a new Chancellor in Berlin–the liberal Prince Max von Baden–perhaps Woodrow will soften his position. But if acceptable terms cannot be secured, ‘believe me, we will fight on to the bitter end’. Two possibilities, then: an honourable peace or glorious annihilation.
That evening, a birthday party for Hindenburg goes ahead as planned at Spa. As is traditional, there are drinking songs and dancing. But all those present know that they are witnessing the end of an era. ‘You and I will be hanged some day’, one of Ludendorff’s close associates whispers in the general’s ear. Some say Ludendorff has lost his nerve.
GORKI: Reports come in every day about anti-government protests spreading through Germany. The unpopularity of the Kaiser’s war is finally turning the people against his regime. Nadya and Vladimir are beside themselves. At last! The revolution is spreading. From his country retreat the impatient revolutionary fires off a note instructing Trotsky and another top Bolshevik to set up a meeting the very next day, in Moscow, to discuss matters in committee. He commands that an automobile be sent the following morning to pick him up. Only a one-word confirmation by telephone, he insists: agreed. One cannot be too careful.
‘Things have so “accelerated” in Germany that we must not fall behind either’, the impatient revolutionary writes to his Moscow comrades, ‘but today we are already behind.’ There will be no alliance with the Kaiser (or with the Social Democrats for that matter). Instead, the German workers must be given encouragement to revolt. The Bolshevik leadership should declare themselves ready to die to help them. An army of three million must be raised as soon as possible. The moment must be seized: ‘The international revolution has come so close in one week that it has to be reckoned with as an event of the next few days.’
In the midst of all this, Lenin finds time to be infuriated about the work of a German Marxist he used to worship–someone who actually knew Karl Marx–and who has now published a pamphlet criticising the Bolsheviks for their turn towards the methods of dictatorship. There is a lot at stake for Lenin here: the question of who is the better interpreter of Marx–the man chosen to be his literary executor or the terroriser of the Zurich library staff. While Europe seems on the cusp of actual revolution, Vladimir’s mind is on the paper war.
Lenin cannot let it rest. He decides to write a counterblast and sits up every night till the early hours venting his spleen against a man he now describes as a ‘despicable renegade’, whose distortions of Marx, in Lenin’s reading, make Marx himself into a kind of soggy liberal. His irritation is immense. But getting it all into shape takes longer than he expected. ‘To analyse Kautsky’s theoretical mistakes in detail would mean repeating what I have said in The State and Revolution’, Lenin writes. But he cannot resist: ‘I must mention, in passing, a few gems of renegacy…’
It is as if he is back in Zurich in 1917, arguing it out over a beer with some dimwit or other.
WASHINGTON–BERLIN–PARIS–LONDON: A German diplomatic note is sent to Washington requesting that Woodrow take the initiative to bring about peace. It asks for an immediate armistice ‘in order to prevent further bloodshed’. A parallel Austrian note adds a few lines about Charles’s peace attempts in the hope that this will soften the President’s approach to Austria–Hungary now. In Istanbul, the three pashas resign. But it is much harder to end a war than to start one.
There are complex calculations to be made. A balance must be struck between what the public wants, what the army can bear, and the higher interests of the state (by which those in charge generally mean themselves). For those on the losing side, political survival and national honour are major concerns. For those who feel things going their way, there is the question of how far to push: whether to exact righteous revenge, or be magnanimous. Make peace too soon, or on the wrong terms, and the sacrifices will have been in vain. Make peace too late, and more lives will be lost for no good reason. So much depends on timing.
No one knows when exhaustion will result in breakdown–of their side, or the enemy’s. Within days of insisting that a ceasefire is the only way of avoiding Germany’s total collapse, Ludendorff seems suddenly quite chipper about the ability of the army to hold out, suggesting that perhaps Germany should fight on after all. For the Allies, it is perhaps easier to continue fighting than agree the precise terms on which to stop. Some argue that the only way to crush Prussian militarism is to push on all the way to Berlin; others want an armistice, but only after a few more victories have been secured, particularly for their own armies, so as to increase their national prestige when it comes to making peace.
Woodrow Wilson sends his own reply to Berlin, without first bothering to consult his partners. He trusts only himself to give the world the peace it needs.
THE WESTERN FRONT: As the German army retreats, farms are pillaged and houses burned. Whether the intention is to slow down the Allied advance, or simply to feed off the land, is unclear. Allied officers warn their soldiers to be careful when inspecting seemingly abandoned buildings. There may be snipers. Or hidden machine-gun posts. Improvised explosive devices are left behind for the careless to touch: books rigged up to grenades and pianos filled with explosives.
There are few solid defensive lines left for the Germans to fall back on. Neither is there time to dig proper trenches and there are few concrete pillboxes in which to take cover. There are only hills, and rivers, and a sea of mud. One night, near the small village of Wervik, right on the border between France and Belgium, three German dispatch runners from the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment find themselves caught up in a British gas attack. They are taken to a field hospital at Oudenaarde. Within a few hours they can barely see from the effects of the gas. Slowly, steadily, their world gets darker. Then it turns black. Nothing left but themselves to contemplate. The horror of the void.
MOSCOW–THE SOUTHERN FRONT: The telegrams fly. War commissar Trotsky accuses Stalin of amateurism and interference in military matters he does not understand; Stalin accuses Trotsky of being
all mouth and no trousers.
‘The point is, Trotsky generally speaking cannot get by without noisy gestures’, the Georgian bank-robber writes. ‘At Brest-Litovsk he delivered a blow to the cause by his far-fetched “leftist” gesturing’, he continues. His treatment of the Czechs caused them to revolt. ‘Now he delivers a further blow by his gesturing about discipline, and yet all that this Trotskyite discipline amounts to in reality is the most prominent leaders on the war front peering up the backsides of military specialists from the camp of “non-party” counter-revolutionaries’. Stalin asks Vladimir Ilyich to intervene to bring the unruly Trotsky to heel. He is ‘no lover of noise and scandal’ himself, the Georgian writes.
The war correspondent turned military supremo bristles. ‘I categorically insist on Stalin’s recall’, he wires to Moscow in October. It is a matter of military necessity: ‘There remains only a short while before the autumn weather makes the roads impassable, when there will be no through road here either on foot or horseback.’ Trotsky wins this round–in part. Military specialists are to be encouraged (or forced) to join the Red Army. Any captured White officer joining the Reds must sign a paper agreeing that their family will be arrested if they desert. ‘By this means we shall lighten the load on the prisons and obtain military specialists’, Trotsky explains: justifying his approach as a simple matter of military necessity. The Georgian bank-robber is called to Moscow and given a different job. But then he is sent back to Tsaritsyn with the task of smoothing things over.
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