In issues of domestic politics the Catholic party had traditionally allied more easily with Conservatives to the right than with Progressives or Socialists to the left, where anti-clericalism ran deep. In the early summer of 1917, amid mounting skepticism about the success of the submarine offensive, Erzberger’s revelations persuaded a majority of the Catholics in the parliament to turn left, to join with the Progressives and the MSPD in sponsoring a public resolution in favor of a compromise peace. These three parties owned a majority in the Reichstag; and on July 19, 1917, over the protests of the chancellor and the OHL, they passed the so-called “peace resolution.” “The Reichstag strives for a peace of understanding and the permanent reconciliation of the peoples,” it announced. “With such a peace, forced acquisitions of territory and political, economic, or financial oppression are inconsistent.”53 While the USPD voted against the resolution, on the grounds that it did not go far enough and demand an immediate end to the war, it went a great deal further than either Ludendorff or the civilian government wished. It was a spectacular act of parliamentary defiance. It signaled a major rift in the domestic consensus that had borne the war, and it threatened a constitutional crisis should the majority on the left refuse to vote additional war credits.
Ludendorff quickly fought back. His principal strength resided, as before, in his control of the army, his identification with Hindenburg, and – above all – in the promise of military victory, which he alone could deliver. He regarded the Reichstag’s resolution with contempt and responded with a defiant act of his own. His target was the chancellor, whose caution and growing receptivity to domestic reform he disdained and whose political function he viewed, in all events, as little more than the management of opinion in the Reichstag. The introduction of the peace resolution was the sign of Bethmann’s terminal failure in this role, so, even as the resolution made its way to the floor of the Reichstag, Ludendorff and Hindenburg threatened to resign if he were to remain in power. The chancellor now paid the price for his long history of vacillation. He had no friends left. With the support of the patriotic right, which had clamored for months for Bethmann’s dismissal, Ludendorff signaled that the chancellor was an obstacle to a victorious peace; at the same time, the Reichstag’s majority signaled that the same chancellor was an obstacle to a moderate peace. The Kaiser had no alternative but to replace Bethmann with a candidate more to Ludendorff’s taste, a Prussian bureaucrat by the name of Georg Michaelis, who, like Ludendorff himself, cared little about his lack of support in the Reichstag. The new chancellor’s response to the peace resolution was to explain to the assembled deputies that he would support “your” resolution “as I understand it,” and that his understanding of it encompassed a peace that would “guarantee the security of Germany’s borders for all time.”54
In this spirit, the political counteroffensive broadened. Fearing the spread of the USPD’s influence, the OHL undertook an intensified program of “patriotic instruction” among the troops. Censorship was intensified among soldiers’ newspapers. The home front was likewise the object of a renewed campaign of public lectures, films, and other forms of patriotic enlightenment.55 The purpose of the campaign both among the troops and at home was to reinvigorate the vocabulary of patriotism as the governing interpretive medium of the war. As part of the same effort, Ludendorff gave his blessing to the foundation in September 1917 of the “German Fatherland Party,” an enormous new patriotic organization that was designed to mobilize popular sentiments in favor of a victorious peace – in other words, to intimidate the moderates in the Reichstag.56 With the benefit of large subsidies from heavy industry, the open encouragement of the government and the right-wing parties, and with Tirpitz at its helm, the Fatherland Party grew rapidly during the fall of 1917, primarily in the northern and eastern parts of the land. By early 1918 it counted over 2,000 local chapters and, on paper at least, close to a million members; a significant portion of the local leaders were secondary school teachers, Protestant pastors, and other local notables who had been active in Germany’s patriotic societies before the war and were fluent in the language that Ludendorff hoped to promote.
The Fatherland Party quickly provoked the establishment of a counterorganization, the “People’s League for Freedom and Fatherland” (Volksbund für Freiheit und Vaterland), which embraced domestic reform and more moderate war aims.57 With a membership that – again, on paper at least – rivaled the Fatherland Party’s, this organization helped document the polarization of opinion that was the most salient feature of German politics as the war’s last year began. Mass popular organizations and central political institutions now supported conflicting readings of the war and conflicting prescriptions for its termination. In the Reichstag, the proponents of a compromise peace, who were buoyed by the papal peace note in the summer of 1917, gained in numbers and confidence. During the last two years of the war the Reichstag’s budget committee met regularly while the parliament was adjourned; and it took on the character of an executive agency for the broader body.58 In the presence of federal ministers, it extended debate into critical matters of domestic and foreign policy. Then, in the aftermath of the peace resolution, the three parties that had provided the majority joined the National Liberals and established a joint committee to facilitate regular consultations among their leaders.59 Their actions suggested the emergence of a common vision of domestic change. In October a parliamentary majority defied the government with another resolution; this one called for democratic reform of the Prussian suffrage. Its passage persuaded the OHL to sack Michaelis, who now seemed no better able than Bethmann to control the parliament. It was nonetheless a measure of the Reichstag’s growing weight that Ludendorff decided to consult party leaders before he selected still another chancellor, Germany’s third in four months. The choice fell this time on Georg von Hertling, a conservative Bavarian aristocrat who, at seventy-four, was the grand old man of the Catholic party – and a fitting symbol of the old order’s exhaustion. Upon his appointment, in early November, Hertling himself made significant gestures to the Reichstag majority’s claims when he appeared to endorse constitutional reform and then drew several parliamentary leaders into his cabinet. Germany’s parliamentarization appeared to be under way.
Even so, the issues were by no means decided as German politics settled uneasily into an impasse, best described perhaps as semi-parliamentarian. Throughout the early months of 1918 bitter debates on suffrage, ministerial responsibility, and other issues of constitutional reform occupied not only the Reichstag but also the state parliaments, particularly in Prussia, where the stakes were highest and the suffrage system, the keystone of the old order, was the object of growing popular protest.60 The parliamentary debates revealed that conservative forces, whose power the old suffrage system had entrenched in Prussia and elsewhere, were not prepared to abandon their privileges without a fight, however. It thus became clear that the resolution of the basic constitutional questions awaited the circumstances of the war’s end. And Ludendorff still held trumps. Whatever their discomfort with his policies, none of the parties in the Reichstag – save the USPD – dared refuse continued funding for the war. Nor, in fact, could they refuse the blandishments of victory, once Ludendorff presented victory to them.
In the fall of 1917 the Russian armies disintegrated. The Bolshevik revolution in November then brought the end of the eastern war, in circumstances that demonstrated the full volatility of the political situation in Germany as well as in eastern Europe. Peace negotiations began in December – in the Polish fortress town of Brest-Litovsk – between the Central Powers and the new Bolshevik government; but the talks quickly bogged down, in large part because the German leadership was bent on a draconian settlement. The perception that peace might be frustrated in this fashion helped trigger the great German strikes in Berlin and elsewhere late in January. The strikes only hardened Ludendorff’s determination to extract a victor’s peace in the east.61 The impotence of the Bolshevik governme
nt eased his way, for the new regime desperately needed peace at practically any price; and so, after a brief resumption of German military action, a treaty was born in March 1918.62
The settlement was not moderate. It deprived Russia of roughly a third of its population, a similar portion of its arable land, more than a half of its industry, and 90 percent of its coal resources. It also registered the collapse of power in the western domains of the old Russian empire, opening immense vistas in this “shatter zone,” which enchanted the gaze of German expansionists (foremost among them Ludendorff himself).63 The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk consigned Poland and most of the Baltic lands to German control in one form or another. In the ensuing months the territory under German dominance expanded.64 German troops entered Finland in order to support anti-Bolshevik forces there, as well as to secure commercial advantages. They also moved into the vast spaces of the Ukraine, where they created a vassal state whose purpose was to mobilize grain, coal, iron, and other resources for the German war effort.65 From here German soldiers and agents of German industry spread out south and east into the Don basin, the Crimea, and the Caucasus, to the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas. The grail that beckoned them here was a strategic route to Persia, India, and central Asia, as well as political control, war materials (especially oil), and military recruits, whom Ludendorff proposed to raise among German ethnic communities in southern Russia.66
In view of Germany’s staggering commitments elsewhere in the war, an air of fantasy hung over the extravagant plans of soldiers and diplomats who wanted to exploit these distant lands. With more than a million soldiers, whom it was compelled to retain in the eastern theater, the German army sought to bring a degree of order to a region in which even the term “civil war” understated the chaos. These circumstances defied the hopeful expectations that deliveries of food and other materials would significantly ease the burdens on the German home front. Although it was calculated to promote Germany’s victory in the war, the eastern settlement was, as all the parties recognized, provisional; its fate was wholly dependent on the war’s ultimate military outcome.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk mocked the idea of a compromise peace, and its proclamation breathed new energy into patriotic sentiments in Germany. These found echo in popular celebrations early in 1918 that were reminiscent of those in the summer of 1914. When the treaty arrived in the Reichstag for ratification in March, it passed by an overwhelming majority, which included the Progressive and Catholic parties. Only the USPD voted against it. The MSPD, which was by now riddled to the point of paralysis by dissension in its own ranks, could agree only to abstain.
Events in the spring of 1918 brought temporary relief to the emerging domestic political crisis. They also cast doubt on the integrity of the Reichstag’s peace resolution and the good intentions of the parliamentary majority. Finally, they confirmed a truth that had governed German politics since the outbreak of the war. Like the eastern settlement, the future of Germany’s domestic institutions hinged ultimately on the military outcome of the conflict in the west. This truth blocked compromise on basic issues of domestic politics, as surely as it guaranteed that the war would continue in the west until one of the contending sides capitulated. The spectacular German victory in the east seemed to vindicate Ludendorff’s calculations on every score. The crisis would be resolved on the battlefield before it could culminate at home. Having won the war in the east, Ludendorff prepared to do the same in the west.
1 Georg Bollenbeck, Bildung und Kultur: Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters (Frankfurt am Main, 1994).
2 Kurt Flasch, Die geistige Mobilmachung: Die deutschen Intellektuellen und der Erste Weltkrieg: Ein Versuch (Berlin, 2000).
3 Klaus Schwabe, Wissenschaft und Kriegsmoral: Die deutschen Hochschullehrer und die politischen Grundfragen des Ersten Weltkrieges (Göttingen, 1969).
4 Jürgen Ungern-Sternberg von Pürkel and Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg, Der Aufruf an die Kulturwelt: Das Manifest der 93 und die Anfänge der Kriegspropaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1996); Bernhard vom Brocke, “‘Wissenschaft and Militarismus’: der Aufruf der 93 ‘An die Kulturwelt!’ und der Zusammenbruch der internationalen Gelehrtenrepublik im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in William M. Calder, III, Hellmut Flashar, and Theodor Lindken (eds.), Wilamowitz nach 50 Jahren (Darmstadt, 1985), 649–719.
5 See Detlef Busse, Engagement oder Rückzug: Göttinger Naturwissenschaften im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen, 2008), who understates the phenomenon.
6 Chickering, The Great War and Urban Life, 427.
7 Andrew D. Evans, Anthropology at War: World War I and the Science of Race in Germany (Chicago, 2010).
8 Eckart Koester, Literatur und Weltkriegsideologie: Positionen und Begründungszusammenhänge des publizistischen Engagements deutscher Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg (Kronberg, 1977); Helmut Fries, “Deutsche Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Michalka, Der Erste Weltkrieg, 825–48; Mommsen, Bürgerstolz und Weltmachtstreben, 828–92.
9 See now Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, ed., with commentary, Hermann Kurzke (2 vols., Frankfurt am Main, 2009).
10 Martin Baumeister, Kriegstheater: Großstadt, Front und Massenkultur 1914–1918 (Essen, 2005); cf. Martin Baumeister, “War enacted: popular theater and collective identities in Berlin, 1914–1918,” in Funck and Chickering, Endangered Cities, 111–26.
11 Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton, NJ, 1947), 23. See also Ulrike Oppelt, Film und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg: Propaganda als Medienrealität im Aktualitäten- und Dokumentarfilm (Stuttgart, 2002).
12 Klaus Kreimeier, The UFA Story: A History of Germany’s Greatest Film Company, 1918–1945, trans. Robert Kimber and Rita Kimber (New York, 1996).
13 Gary Stark, “All quiet on the home front: popular entertainments, censorship and civilian morale in Germany, 1914–1918,” in Coetzee and Shevin-Coetzee, Authority, 74.
14 Scott D. Denham, Visions of War: Ideologies and Images of War in German Literature before and after the Great War (Berne, 1992); Martin Patrick Anthony Travers, German Novels on the First World War and the Ideological Implications, 1918–1933 (Stuttgart, 1982).
15 Mann, Betrachtungen, I, 442.
16 Meidner’s painting is reproduced on the cover of this book.
17 Peter Jelavich, “German culture in the Great War,” in Aviel Roshwald and Richard Stites (eds.), European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 1999), 47–57; Hermann Korte, Der Krieg in der Lyrik des Expressionismus: Studien zur Evolution eines literarischen Themas (Bonn, 1981); René Eichenlaub, “L’expressionisme allemand et la première guerre mondiale: À propos de l’attitude de quelques-uns de ses représentants,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 30 (1983), 298–321.
18 Mommsen, Bürgerstolz und Weltmachtstreben, 862.
19 Volkswacht (Freiburg im Breisgau), August 9, 1915.
20 Meerwarth, Günther, and Zimmermann, Die Einwirkung des Krieges, 448–9.
21 For a microeconomic perspective on this problem, see Matthias Blum, “Der deutsche Lebensstandard während des Ersten Weltkrieges in historischer Perspektive: Welche Rolle spielten Konsumentenpräferenzen?” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 100 (2013), 273–91.
22 Friedrich Aereboe, Der Einfluss des Krieges auf die landwirtschaftliche Produktion in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1927), 86–91.
23 Skalweit, Die deutsche Kriegsernährungswirtschaft, 43, 49.
24 Cited by Lothar Burchardt, “Die Auswirkungen der Kriegswirtschaft auf die Zivilbevölkerung im Ersten und im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 1 (1974), 69.
25 Klein et al., Deutschland im Ersten Weltkrieg, III, 303; cf. Jochen Oltmer, Bäuerliche Ökonomie und Arbeitskräftepolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg: Beschäftigungsstruktur, Arbeitsverhältnisse und Rekrutierung von Ersatzarbeitskräften in der Landwirtschaft des Emslandes 1914–1918 (Sögel, 1995
).
26 Martin Schumacher, Land und Politik: Eine Untersuchung über politische Parteien und agrarische Interessen 1914–1923 (Düsseldorf, 1978), 70.
27 Robert G. Moeller, “Dimensions of social conflict in the Great War: the view from the German countryside,” Central European History 14 (1981), 142–68.
28 Christoph Nonn, Verbraucherprotest and Parteisystem im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Düsseldorf, 1996), 318–38.
29 Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000).
30 Cited by Klaus-Dieter Schwarz, Weltkrieg und Revolution in Nürnberg: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (Stuttgart, 1971), 153.
31 Volkswacht (Freiburg im Breisgau), March 1, 1918.
32 Karl-Ludwig Ay, Die Entstehung einer Revolution: Die Volksstimmung in Bayern während des Ersten Weltkrieges (Berlin, 1968), 167.
33 Tobin, “War and the working class,” 287.
34 Christoph Nübel, Die Mobilisierung der Kriegsgesellschaft: Propaganda und Alltag im Ersten Weltkrieg in Münster (Münster, 2008), 147.
35 Antje Strahl, Rostock im Ersten Weltkrieg: Bildung, Kultur und Alltag in einer Seestadt zwischen 1914 und 1918 (Berlin, 2007), 126–34.
36 Klaus-Peter Müller, Politik und Gesellschaft: Der Legitimitätsverlust des badischen Staates 1914–1918 (Stuttgart, 1988).
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