A Perfidious Distortion of History
Page 5
The sinking of the Lusitania raised, for the first time, the real spectre of America entering the war. After the sinking of the British vessel Arabic in August 1915, when again a number of U.S. citizens lost their lives, submarine warfare was halted temporarily. It was resumed at the beginning of 1916, the German war leadership hoping perhaps that there had been a softening of American attitudes. When this proved a miscalculation after the sinking of the cross-channel steamer Sussex (which caused another massive outcry in the United States), unlimited submarine warfare was again called off in May 1916.
On 31 May 1916, the German navy challenged the British in a massive encounter off Jutland, which ended in a decisive defeat. The father of the German navy, Admiral von Tirpitz, had been forced to resign two months earlier. His grandiose design to achieve German global hegemony by building a huge battle fleet had proven a huge failure and a waste of money. For the German empire at sea and on land, the writing was on the wall.
War aims
From the beginning, German war aims lacked moderation. This was in part because the Germans had persuaded themselves that they were victims of Allied aggression, and consequently would gain generous compensation for having been forced to fight, and in part because they needed to secure their empire’s future military position. With their armies advancing on Paris in the second half of August, and the capitulation of France seemingly only weeks away, key sections of the German economic, political, and military establishment saw the alleged injustice done to the German nation as a licence to rob and plunder. As the Reichstag deputy of the Catholic Centre Party, Matthias Erzberger, put it in a three-point program to the German chancellor on 2 September:
The slaughterous struggle … makes it an obligatory duty to take advantage of victory … Germany’s military supremacy on the [European] continent has to be secured for all time so the German people are able for at least the next 100 years to enjoy unmolested peaceful development … the second goal is the removal of Germany’s unbearable subordination to England’s perpetual domination in all matters of world policy, the third the break-up of the Russian colossus. It is for this price that the German people went into the war. 8
In this spirit, the leading Rhenish-Westphalian industrialist August Thyssen developed his plan for the future shape of Europe in late August 1914. In the west, Germany would incorporate Belgium and the French departments of Nord, Pas-de-Calais (including Dunkirk and Boulogne), Meurthe-et-Moselle with its belt of fortresses, and, in the south, Vosges and Haute-Saône. France would have lost virtually all of her iron-ore regions. In the east, Russia would have had to cede her possessions in Poland, all the Baltic provinces, the Don region with its capital, Odessa, the Crimea, and a large part of the Caucasus, which would enable Germany to spread her sphere of influence into Asia Minor and Persia. The realisation of these aims would lift Germany to the rank of a world power equal to the British empire.
With minor variations, these views were widely shared by other influential members of heavy industry, East-Elbian conservatives, and the Pan-German League. The leaders of the banking sector, the shipbuilding industry, and the newer electrical and chemical industries refrained from demanding large-scale outright annexations, preferring an economic and political European union under German military leadership.
Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg also saw as an aim of the war ‘… not to restore the European balance of power, but precisely to eliminate for all time that which has been termed the balance of power and to lay the foundation for German predominance in Europe’. 9 He ordered his secretary, Kurt Riezler, to streamline the various demands into a provisional outline of German war aims. Known as the ‘September Program’, its chief demand was the establishment of German hegemony in Europe. France was to be weakened to such an extent that it would cease to be a leading power. In addition to its territorial losses (the annexation of Belfort, the western Vosges, the coastal region from Dunkirk to Boulogne, and the iron-ore region of Briey being the minimum demands) France was to pay an indemnity large enough to cripple its armament production for the next 18 to 20 years. This was part of the overall goal to make the country economically dependent on Germany. Luxembourg was to become a federal state within the empire, and Belgium to be given the status of a vassal state. In the east, the non-Russian nationalities were to be liberated from ‘Russian oppression’. Instead there was to be a ‘cordon sanitaire’ of small states under direct or indirect German rule.
The chief aim of the September Program, however, was the foundation of a central European customs union (Mitteleuropa) incorporating Austria-Hungary, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Poland. Although the union was to have no constitutional government, and although the principle of equality among members was to be presented to the outside world, the intention was that Mitteleuropa would secure German economic (and hence political) predominance in Europe. Overseas, there was to be the creation of a German empire in Central Africa.
The halting of the German advance at the River Marne and the subsequent failure to break through Allied defences at Ypern led to a moderation of war aims. This was temporary. Because the government and the military leadership had concealed from the public the consequences of the failure of the Schlieffen Plan, and as German losses by the end of 1914 already amounted to hundreds of thousands, demands for massive compensation from France and other enemy countries were soon being voiced again with renewed vigour. In fact, rather than weakening as the war progressed, they became ever more radical. 10 In the later debate about German war guilt and German expansionism, these war aims were dismissed by apologists of the Kaiserreich’s role in the disaster of 1914–18 as the fantasies of ‘expansionist dreamers’, and not to be given any credibility, 11 or seen as the last utterings of reactionaries who were wedded to a moribund political system and who thus could not be taken seriously.
German peacemaking in 1917 and 1918 was to show there could be no more serious misinterpretation of the reality of the situation. 12 In fact, when chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg urged moderation because of the need to secure the continuous support of the German labour movement, he soon lost his position.
The German Social Democratic Party
The outbreak of war in 1914 took the Social Democratic German labour movement by complete surprise. The assassination of the Austrian crown prince and his wife at Sarajevo on 28 June was condemned by the party and its media as a mindless act orchestrated by fanatical supporters of a Greater Serbia. No one foresaw a danger to international peace in the action. This view changed on 24 July when the outside world heard the news of the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia, and its insistence that the government in Vienna carry out the investigation into the assassination. After this, the party called mass demonstrations against the impending war, in which hundred thousands of workers participated. Leadership and newspapers protested against the policies of the Vienna government towards Serbia, which seemed bent on bringing about war. They also lodged an appeal with the German government to refrain from any military intervention and to put pressure on Vienna to maintain peace. A meeting held at the office of the Socialist International at Brussels on 29 July, in which Rosa Luxemburg, Hugo Haase, Karl Kautsky, Jean Jaures, and other leading socialists participated, merely asked for further peace demonstrations and for renewed demands upon the governments in Berlin and Paris to pressure tsarist Russia and the Habsburg empire to de-escalate the worsening international situation.
The SPD’s attitude to the situation changed completely with the declaration of tsarist Russia’s partial mobilisation later that day, widely seen as an act of imminent war against the German empire. Behind the decision of the party to unanimously vote for the granting of war credits on 4 August stood the perceived need to defend the nation against attack from Russia, always viewed by German Socialists as the symbol of reaction and the arch-opponent of democracy and social progress.
The bulk of the party leadership and the rank and file accepted the state of ‘civ
ic truce’ (Burgfrieden) declared by the kaiser — that all citizens, regardless of their political leanings, should now fully support the German war effort — without any qualification, and they supported the war until the end. This is in part explained by the fact that most members were content with the reformist approach the party and union leadership had been pursuing since the abolition of the Anti-Socialist Laws in 1890. Progress in bettering workers’ wages and conditions was slow, but progress there had been.
The year 1912 saw the SPD emerge as the largest party in the Reichstag, and membership and voters’ support continued to rise. By the outbreak of war, the party could count on over one million members, and the affiliated Free Union movement over two-and-a-half million members. Policies that might endanger the organisations through confrontations with the state, or other radical actions such as general strikes, were not popular. The workers themselves, notwithstanding their humble social and political status, felt greater loyalty to the Wilhelmine state than they did to their fellow workers in other countries. The party still maintained its Marxist theoretical program of aiming to establish a socialist order, but the advocacy of radical policies before the Great War was confined to a small left wing made up chiefly of intellectuals.
There was another reason why gradualism and moderation, and not class warfare or confrontation, determined party and union policies. Because of their organisations’ growth, salaried officials had to be appointed to run and administer the enterprises. These officials, who were chosen for their presumed administrative skills rather than their political views, soon dominated key positions at local, regional, and national levels. This meant that a great deal of power and influence was in the hands of professional administrators — bureaucrats who were bent on avoiding risk and accommodating the powers that be. Managing finances, improving the efficiency of agitation, and conducting election campaigns became the sole occupation of many administrators. So the growth of a major bureaucracy had a very conservative impact upon the German socialist movement in the years before 1914.
It was not only for altruistic reasons — love for the fatherland, and duty to the kaiser in times of crisis — that influenced many party and union leaders to support the war unswervingly. If Germany’s workers helped in the successful defence of the nation, surely there could be no more obstacles in the path to major political reform that would make the country more democratic and allow the working class, too, to participate in governing. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg told party and union officials repeatedly that their part in the nation’s war effort would be rewarded. So whether by unqualified conviction, or by pragmatism, the majority of the leadership viewed as a luxury any discussion about who had started the war or what the aims of the imperial government might have been. Germany had to avoid defeat at all costs; their contribution must be to keep the workers attached to the national cause, and partisan political activity had to be suspended. To deviate from this position was heresy.
It did not take very long, however, before the official position of the party and union leadership in support of the German war effort was challenged by an initially small but rapidly growing opposition. Although the party had voted unanimously for the granting of war credits on 4 August, there had been dissent in the SPD’s Reichstag caucus the night before, when 14 of the 92 members implied that they would vote against it. This was not because they refused to believe the official explanation for the declaration of war — that a Russian attack was imminent — but because they wanted to uphold the traditional Social Democratic principle of not supporting the imperial system with a single penny. In the end they buckled, and for the last time the SPD’s vote was unanimous.
The reason given for the outbreak of war was first challenged by an outspoken member of the SPD’s left, Karl Liebknecht. He had gone to Belgium in the autumn of 1914, returning convinced that Germany was waging an aggressive war — a view that was hardened by his growing realisation that German war aims envisaged that, in the event of a victorious war, continental Europe would become, more or less, a greater Germany. In a rare act of civil courage, Liebknecht was the sole Reichstag member who in December 1914 voted against the further granting of war credits.
During 1915, opposition to the war within the workers’ movement grew rapidly. As the German armies advanced far into enemy territory, and the threat to the fatherland diminished, the question was raised why no attempts were being made to bring the war to an end. When a third vote for war credits was taken in March 1915, 30 SPD deputies left the chamber, and Otto Rühle joined Liebknecht in voting against the bill. Two months later, a resolution drafted by Liebknecht proclaiming that the policies pursued by the party since August 1914 were violating party principles was signed by close to 1,000 officials. On 19 June 1915, the oppositionists published an article in the Leipziger Volkszeitung entitled ‘The Command of the Hour’, which maintained that Germany was pursuing expansionist aims, and asked all members to demand an end to the Burgfrieden and to refuse further support for the war effort. On 21 December, the number of SPD deputies voting against new credits rose to 20; 22 had left the chamber beforehand, and the pro-war faction was thus reduced to 50. Three months later, those who again defied discipline by voting against war credits were expelled from the party. The dissidents responded by forming a Socialist Working Alliance (Sozialistische Arbeitsgemeinschaft, or SAG). Throughout 1916, the conflict spread to regional and local branches, reaching an initial peak on 28 June when 55,000 workers in Berlin staged the first political strike of the war in protest against the trial of Karl Liebknecht. With harshly worded attacks on the party’s stance pouring in from many influential district executives, the confrontation between the majority and the dissidents became ever more embittered. This was particularly obvious in the struggle for control of the party press. Supported by the strong arm of the law, supporters of the war wrested many affiliated newspapers from opposition editors, and ousted party functionaries. The majority of the leadership stuck to their guns. As the losses at the front reached staggering proportions, it took courage and conviction to admit that the death toll was due not to the need to defend the home-country, but to the expansionist aims of Germany’s leaders. Most lacked this courage. To doubt the defensive nature of Germany’s war effort was a mortal sin.
A last bitter confrontation within the party occurred over the Auxiliary Service Law (ASL), which was introduced in December 1916 to solve Germany’s severe labour shortage. Neither the movement of soldiers from the front nor the employment of prisoners of war or foreign workers brought into Germany achieved the numbers of labourers needed to meet the industrial requirements of the war. The result was increasing job mobility, as most workers naturally preferred higher-paid work, especially in ammunition plants. This endangered production in other industries where pay was lower, and threatened important public services such as the railways. The ASL placed restrictions upon the movement of workers for the duration of the war, but employees were still able to change jobs, provided they could prove to an arbitration committee that their new employment would constitute a marked improvement on their previous position. These arbitration committees were made up of representatives from labour and the employers. The pro-war SPD leaders and the unions were satisfied with the ASL because, for the first time, German industrialists were compelled to sit down in joint meetings with them. On the other hand, the ASL met considerable resistance from employers who participated reluctantly and often only after pressure from government authorities.
The oppositionists in the SPD feared that the ASL would be a means of coercing the workforce into unconditional support for the war. When they held a separate meeting on 7 January 1917, all who attended were suspended from the party. In response, on 6 March 1917, the day the United States declared war on the Central Powers, the dissident party members founded the Independent Social Democratic Party (USP). The spirit of the Russian March Revolution, which broke out two days later, on 8 March, greatly influenced the gathering. Hugo Haa
se, one of the two party leaders, opened the conference:
The storms of March roar through the world. The red dawn shines across the Russian borders into this hall. All who have gathered are filled with admiration for the Russian brothers’ fight for feedom and peace. They also feel solidarity with all like-minded in the International. 13
The newly founded party was not an homogenous organisation. USP membership ranged from the chiefly intellectual left, centred around Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (who were demanding revolutionary proletarian action to change the imperialists’ war into a class war), to leading reformists such as the party’s chief revisionist theorist, Eduard Bernstein, and the Neo-Kantian journalist and party editor, Kurt Eisner. These various factions came together for the duration of the war in their desire for peace and their opposition to the continuation of the mass slaughter. They protested against the ever-worsening living conditions suffered by the bulk of the population, against the shameless annexation demands, against the failure to achieve any social or political reforms, and against the remorseless oppression of the workers and their leaders under the state of siege imposed at the outbreak of war and subsequently by the Auxiliary Service Law. Their membership increased rapidly: 120,000 members had gone over to the USP by the end of 1917, and the SPD’s membership had fallen from almost one million to 240,000.
Dwindling numbers notwithstanding, the SPD did not waiver in its loyalty. The party continued to remind members of their duty to support the defence of the fatherland, and they promised that there would be rich rewards in the end. Not that they had grounds for optimism as far as political or social reforms were concerned: as prominent German historians have argued persuasively, German victory in war would have meant the consolidation of the existing political, economic, and social order, not its demise. 14 Whether gains made by the unions under the ASL would have survived once the pressures of war had disappeared is equally doubtful.