First World War propaganda and the stab-in-the-back legend (1 of 2)

In this post, I'm looking at the argument Klaus-Jürgen Bremm makes in Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (2013) essentially defending the infamous stab-in-the-back myth that says Germany's glorious generals won the war on the battlefield only to have it undermined by the unworthy civilians and democrats and traitors back home in the wimpy civilian world. (See Part 1 here.)

Rightwing propaganda representation of the "stab-in-the-back"

Bremm describes the theory this way:

In der langen Geschichte der Schlachten und Feldzüge war es ein nahezu beispielloser Vorgang. Eine Nation, die für ihre militärischen Qualitäten bis dahin weltweit respektiert oder gefürchtet war und deren Armeen sich im Oktober 1918 noch an allen Fronten tief im Feindesland behauptet hatten, warf im November 1918 unvermittelt und entnervt die Waffen fort. Die erst drei Tage alte Republik ließ ihre unglückseligen Vertreter hastig karthagische Waffenstillstandsbedingungen unterzeichnen, die den fluchtartigen Rückzug der scheinbar noch unbesiegten Divisionen des Heeres hinter den Rhein diktierten.

Trotz der allgemeinen Erleichterung über das so unvermittelt eingetretene Ende des deutschen Widerstandes rieben sich die alliierten Führer verwundert die Augen. ...

Plötzlich waren die Enttäuschung und vor allem die Scham über die vorzeitige Kapitulation grenzenlos. Dazu traf die Besiegten der internationale Spott: „Bevor sie am eigenen Leib das Leiden und die Zerstörungen des Krieges erdulden mussten, hätten sich die Deutschen vorteilhaft aus der blutigen Affäre gezogen, in die doch sie allein die Welt gestoßen hatten", höhnte der französische Schriftsteller Henry Lichtenberger und der britische Journalist George Young bemerkte einigermaßen verständnislos: Es wäre besser für die Deutschen gewesen, wenn sie mehr Mut bewiesen und weniger schnell aufgegeben hatten.

[In the long history of battles and military campaigns, it was a nearly unprecedented instance. A nation that until then was respected or feared worldwide for its military qualities and which in October 1918 had still maintained its armies deep in enemy territory, in November 1918 directly and unnerved threw their weapons away. The only three days old Republic had its unlucky representatives hastily sign a Carthaginian ceasefire that dictated the hasty withdrawal of the apparently still undefeated divisions of the army behind the Rhine.

Despite the general relief over such an immediately arriving end of the the German resistance, the Allied leaders rubbed their eyes in wonder. ...

Suddenly the disappointment and above all the shame over the premature capitulation were boundless. International mockery about that was directed at the defeated {Germans}: "Before they had to tolerate the sorrows and destructions of the war in their own body, the German advantageously pulled them out of the bloody affairs, into which they alone had thrust the world." {my translation from the German}, taunted the French writer Henry Lichtenberger. And the British journalist George Young remarked fairly unsympathetically: It would have been better for the Germans if they had shown more guts and not given up so quickly.] [my emphasis]

This is a ridiculous conclusion, at least formulated in the way Bremm does.

As Lothar Machtan, biographer of the Kaiser's last Chancellor Max von Baden, puts it in "Autobiografie als geschichtspolitische Waffe" Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 4/2013, by October 1918 Imperial Germany had become "ein politisches System und einen Herrscherstand retten ... die nur durch eine veritable Neuerfindung hätten überleben können" ("a political system and a governing elite ... that could have survived only through a veritable reinvention [of itself']").

"Your Homeland Fatherland is in Danger": German first World War recruiting poster

The Kaiser and his generals had failed across the board. They launched a war of aggression under the false pretense of a defensive war. They denied concealed the consistently expansionist goals to which they held until military failure eventually forced them to recognize their impossibility of achievement, as Fritz Fischer famously documented in detail in Griff nach der Weltmacht (1961).

Gerd Krumeich in his article on the Dolchstoßlegende in the Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg (Gerhard Hirschfeld et al, Hrsg; 2009) notes:

[Gen. Wilhelm] Groener, [Gen. Hermann von] Kuhl und sogar [Gen. Paul von] Hindenburg hatten betont, daß das deutsche Heer im Spätherbst 1918 keineswegs mehr an »allen Fronten siegte« und daß es sich seit den militärischen Katastrophen des Juli/Aug. 1918 nur noch darum habe handeln konnen, einen »anständigen Frieden« zu erreichen - was indessen durch die revolutionäre Entwicklung unmoglich geworden sei.

[{Gen. Wilhelm} Groener, {Gen. Hermann von} Kuhl and even {Gen. Paul von} Hindenburg had emphasized that the German army in late autumn 1918 had certainly not "won on all fronts" and that since the military catastrophe of July/August 1918 the only option was to work to achieve an "respectable peace" - which, however the revolutionary development made impossible.]

In other words, well over a year before the end of the war the Kaiser's glorious generals were whining that the civilians on the home front had failed to be worthy of their glorious generalship, the generalship that had grossly overestimate their own capabilities and failed repeatedly to deliver the results they promised to the nation. The leadership that had expected what became the nearly 4 1/2 year carnage of the First World War to be a short war of a few weeks ending in German victory with vastly expanded territory and even more vastly expanded effective control over neighboring nations and new colonies.

An in October 1918, they knew they were beaten. And Gen. Erich Ludendorff, who had functioned in effect as a military dictator since mid-1917, was happy to turn over his disastrous loss to the Social Democrats to let them take the heat for the defeat and what turned out to be a humiliating peace. They didn't even try to "reinvent" the Imperial Government. It was finished.

There is a lot to criticize about the politics of the Social Democratic Party and its leaders Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann during their first few months in office.

But their initial agreement to a ceasefire that represented a non-annexationist peace and recognized the cold reality of the failure of the Kaiser and his generals in their war, was the only sensible option open to the new government. In fact, if the leaders of the Entente Powers had shown more judgment and restraint in the peace negotiations than greed and the general spirit of banditry that they did - leading the ineffectual Woodrow Wilson by the nose along with them - they would have imposed far fewer punitive conditions than they did on Germany.

But the bullheadedness and stupidity of David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau and the fecklessness of Wilson at the Paris Conference that produced the travesty known as the Treaty of Versailles is not in itself an indictment of new German government to accept the ceasefire terms. (A "Carthaginian" ceasefire? Please.)

For all the faults of the political policies of the Majority SPD of Ebert and Scheidemann during the war, they were consistent in demanding a non-annexationist peace. Keeping a defeated army in the field fighting even longer would have resulted in far more deaths and destruction to the German Army. War is war, so it's no surprised that there were jingoistic-minded Brits and Frenchmen like those Bremm cites would would have preferred to see the German Army further chopped up on the field, even if that meant many more of their own fellow Brits and French killed. War makes people do and say stupid things.

But for Bremm to take those as some kind of meaningful indictment of the new German government's policy on the ceasefire is just plain silly.

It's worth noting, too, that the previous year the Kerenski government in Russia that took power in the February 1917 revolution also made the fateful decision to continue their war against Germany. It didn't work out well for them. Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann weren't fools enough to ignore that experience, either!

As Machtan writes:

Von Anfang an blies ihnen überdies ein eisiger Wind aggressiver Ablehnung durch diejenigen Kreise entgegen, die die deutsche Kapitulation und die deutsche Revolution für ein Versagen der Verantwortlichen, ja für ein Verbrechen hielten und nicht müde wurden, die vermeintlich Schuldigen schonungslos an den Pranger zu stellen. Das provozierte jenen fatalen ideologischen Bürgerkrieg, der wesentlich zur Zerstörung der Weimarer Republik beitrug.

[From the beginning on, an icy wind of aggressive rejection blew against them from those circles who held the German capitulation and the German revolution to be a failure of the responsible official, and even a crime, and who never tired of ruthlessly pillorying the alleged guilty ones. Which provoked that fatal ideological civil war that contributed in an essential way to the destruction of the Weimar Republic.]

This was a circular process. The Kaiser and his generals failed in their plan to snatch territory, colonies and power from their neighbors on the basis of which they launched the war in 1914. As Bremm himself describes at some length, the German generals had constantly declared victories, hidden their failures and systematically presented a sanitized version of the reality of the war to the home front. When they could no longer hide their ultimate failure, they turned the collapsing mess over to the Social Democrats so they cold take the blame for the failure. Then they and their allies in the nationalist movement proceeded to loudly blame the Social Democrats (and the Bolsheviks and the Jews) for their own failures.

"The Kaiser has abdicated!" SPD special edition cover

Gerd Krumeich also writes of the roots of the stab-in-the-back myth:

So ist beispielsweise bereits der mangelnde Nachschub in den Kämpfen um Verdun im Jahre 1916 in der soldatischen Literatur als »Dolchstoß« bezeichnet worden. Bereits im Juli 1917 formulierte General von Seeckt den archetypischen Vorwurf: »Wozu fechten wir noch? Die Heimat ist uns in den Rücken gefallen, und damit ist der Sieg verloren«. Durch Streikaktivitäten und Anti-Kriegsagitation, z. B. des Spartakusbundes im Frühjahr 1918, wurde dieser Vorwurf zunehmend nachdrücklicher. Auch die Tatsache, daß den heimkehrenden Soldaten ab Nov. 1918 immer wieder in öffentlicher Rede bestatigt wurde, sie seien »im Felde unbesiegt« geblieben, festigte vielfach die Uberzeugung, daß die Niederlage nicht militärische Gründe gehabt hatte, sondern von »den Zivilisten«, »den Arbeitern«, »den Juden« usw. zu verantworten sei.

[So, for example, the shortage of reinforcements in the battles around Verdun in the year 1916 already had been labeled in the soldiers' literature as a "stab-in-the-back." Already in July 1917 General von Seeckt formulatede the archetypical accusation: "What are we still fighting for? The homeland has attacked us from behind and therefore the victory is lost." By strike activities and antiwar agitation, for example that of the Spartacus League early in the year 1918, this accusation became more and more insistent. Also the fact that the returning soldiers starting November 1918 continually claimed in public speeches that they remained "undefeated in the field," reinforced many time over the conviction that the defeat didn't have military grounds, but rather than "the civilians," "the workers," "the Jews," and so forth were responsible.]

In other words, this idea was constructed by the military as a fallback alibi long before the end. We've seen this in other situations, as well. The US military promoted a very similar claim about the Vietnam War.

Bremm even cites Von Seeckt's 1917 whining, but cites it as though it were a statement of the obvious rather than an ideological and political construction.

And, as as the undated article Die "Dolchstoßlegende" from the SPD Ortsverein Feldmoching-Hasselbergl puts it, "Hindenburg und Ludendorff hatten nach der gescheiterten Sommeroffensive von 1918 die Reichsregierung am 29. September 1918 ultimativ aufgefordert, Waffenstillstandsverhandlungen aufzunehmen." ("Hindenburg and Ludendorff after the failed summer offensive of 1918 demanded in an ultimative way that the Imperial government start ceasefire negotiations.") Kaiser Bill (Wilhelm II) abdicated on November 9. The same day, the Kaiser's last Chancellor Max von Baden turned over the government to Friedrich Ebert and his Social Democrats.

Cover of a book on the Dolchstoß Trial

Both Bremm and Krumeich refer to the Munich Dolchstoß Trial of October-November 1925, in which an editor was sued for by the head of a conservative publication over the latter's accusing the Social Democrats of having performed a stab-in-the-back in the First World War. (This sides are a bit confusing: Martin Gruber of the Münchener Post had accused Paul Nikolaus Cossmann of the conservative of spreading poisonous propaganda by promoting the stab-in-the-back myth, and Cossman sued Gruber over the criticism; it was the conservative side that initiated the suit.) The court found narrowly that the SPD could not be accurately accused of such a thing, but nevertheless reinforced the idea that the stab-in-the-back had taken place. Krumeich:

Das Ergebnis des Prozesses war, daß die Mehrheitssozialdemokratie der Kriegszeit vom Vorwurf entlastet wurde, sich am »Dolchstoß« beteiligt zu haben. Es bestand aber für das Gericht kein Zweifel daran, daß erhebliche Versuche unternommen worden waren, die Front zu destabilisieren.

[The result of the trial was that the Majority Social Democracy of the time of the war was acquitted of the accusation that they had taken part in the stab-in-the-back. But there remained for the court no doubt that significant attempts had been undertake to destabilize the front.] [my emphasis]

Bremm's description of the Dolchstoß Trial runs like this:

Im Münchener „Dolchstoß-Prozess", den der Publizist und zum Katholizismus konvertierte Jude Paul Nikolaus Cossmann im Oktober 1915 unter großer offentlicher Aufmerksamkeit gegen den leitenden Redakteur der Münchener Post wegen Verleumdung angestrengt hatte, bestand selbst fur das Gericht bei aller Abwagung der bekannten Fakten kein Zweifel, dass im zurückliegenden Krieg erhebliche Anstrengungen in der Heimat unternommen worden waren, die deutsche Front zu destabilisieren. Wenn auch die hauptsachlich attackierte Sozialdemokratie vom Vorwurf, dem Heer in den Rücken gefallen zu sein, durch das Verfahren insgesamt entlastet wurde, war damit doch der Dolchstoß-Topos nun auch gerichtsnotorisch.

[In the Munich "Dolchstoß Trial" which Paul Nikolaus Cossmann, a publicist and a Jew who had converted to Catholicism brought in October 1915 under great public attention against the chief editor of the Münchener Post on the grounds of defamation, there remained for the court after all consideration of the known facts no doubt that in the previous war substantive efforts had been undertaken on the homefront to destabilize the German front. Even though the Social Democrats, who were the main ones accused {in the case of the stab-in-the-back}, were acquitted on the whole of the accusation of having attacked the Army from behind, the stab-in-the-back theme was thereby also given judicial notoreity.] [my emphasis]

Bremm cites a separate 2002 article by Gerd Krumeich at the end of that paragraph. But Krumeich's description in the 2009 article cited above not only frames it notably differently, he explicitly describes the partisan nature and repercussions of the court's decision endorsing the idea of the stab-in-the-back myth: the decision "schuf insgesamt eine eindeutig parteipolitische Ausrichtung der Frage nach den Gründen des deutschen Zusammenbruchs von 1918" ("altogether created a clear party-political bias to the question of the reasons for the German collapse of 1918.")

"The trial," as the SPD Ortsverein Feldmoching-Hasselbergl article puts it, "was a pure conservative propaganda maneuver" ("Der Prozeß war eine reines konservatives Propagandamanöver").

Bremm presents it rather as producing a judicial verification of the stab-in-the-back claims.

To say it again, this is a ridiculous conclusion on Bremm's part.

Tags: dolchstoßlegende, first world war, erster weltkrieg, stab-in-the-back, world war i

First World War propaganda and the stab-in-the-back legend (1 of 2)

Klaus-Jürgen Bremm in Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (2013) gives us an overview of the propaganda operations by Britain, France, Germany and the United States to promote support and enthusiasm for the war efforts at home and to influence where possible public opinion in neutral countries.

Bremm introduces his readers to a cast of interesting characters, like Max von Oppenheim of the Cologne Oppenheim banking family and noted archaeologist. (Max von Oppenheim und der Schatz der Aramäer Zeit Online 29.09.32009) He tried to convince the German Imperial government they could promote a revolutionary uprising in the Islamic world including India against Britain and France. The Kaiser's government agreed to the project and Von Oppenheim established a bureau in Constantinople to promote jihad against the Entente Powers, though without much success. Central Power ally Turkey wasn't so enthusiastic about the project because they wanted to keep ruling Islamic lands it was occupying.

Max Freiherr von Oppenheim (1860-1946) who hoped to get up an Islamic revolution on behalf of Kaiser Bill

Oppenheim was acquainted with Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī (ca. 1838 – 1897), influential advocate of combining modern learning and rationalism with Islām. Oxford Islamic Studies Online's entry on Al-Afghānī says of him:

As a young man, al-Afghani traveled to India. Witnessing the effects of colonization on that country probably inspired his lifelong dislike for the British. He became an outspoken critic of Britain and its presence in India, Egypt, and other Islamic countries. ...

From 1871 to 1879 , al-Afghani lived in Cairo. A grant from the government enabled him to spend most of his time teaching. With Islamic scholar Muhammad Abduh, he introduced an interpretation of Islam that called for modernization and education while encouraging strict adherence to Islamic principles. He promoted political activism, urging his students to publish political newspapers, while he himself gave speeches and headed a secret society engaged in reformist activities. Several of his followers later became the leaders of Egyptian political and intellectual life. Meanwhile, al-Afghani's fiery speeches against the British soon brought him another expulsion, and he returned to India. Here he did much of his important writing, which consisted mainly of collecting and publishing his speeches. His most famous work, The Refutation of the Materialists, includes a defense of Islam against attacks made by Europeans.

Al-Afghānī is a significant figure in the development of what we know as Islamism today. John Voll writes, "Al-Afghani advocated a synthesis of Islam and modern science on the premise that there is no incompatibility between science, knowledge, and the foundations of the Islamic faith. ... The thinking of 'Abduh and al-Afghani provided the basis for Islamic modernism, the effort to combine a modern, Western-style scientific rationalism with an Islamic faith." ("Fundamentalism in the Sunni Arab World" in Martin Marty and Scott Appleby, eds. Fundamentalisms Observed 1991)

Oppenheim understood the revolutionary anticolonial potential in a political Islam. But it didn't turn out to be very helpful to Kaiser Bill's cause.

Most of the figures involved in the propaganda operations weren't nearly so exotic as Von Oppenheim. But newspaperman George Creel (1876-1953), Woodrow Wilson's propaganda chief as head of the U.S. Committee on Public Information was an interesting character in his own right. One of his initiatives was the "Four-Minute Men" program that recruited volunteers to give short speeches in public settings pumping up the war effort.

George Creel (1876-1953), head of Woodrow Wilson wartime propaganda office

Intellectuals on all sides famously rallied to the flag when the war began August 1914 after the unfortunate experience that befell Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that June. In Britain, H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle were among those who agreed to produce work funded on the QT by the British government. Even for fictional stories by famous writers intended primarily for home consumption, it was considered advantageous to not advertise the government funding of fiction contributions by writers.

This inspired me to go back and re-read Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story His Last Bow: An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes, which was unusual in being narrated in the third person rather than by Watson, who also appears in the story. In it, Holmes and Watson nail a Prussian spy in early August 1914, just as the war is about to begin, "the most terrible August in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God's curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air."

Holmes is distinguished as an Irish-American helping the Prussian Von Bork. Von Bork explains to him how he chose the combination to open his safe:

"So it's not quite as simple as you thought. It was four years ago that I had it made, and what do you think I chose for the word and figures?"

"It's beyond me."

"Well, I chose August for the word, and 1914 for the figures, and here we are."

The American's face showed his surprise and admiration.

"My, but that was smart! You had it down to a fine thing."

"Yes, a few of us even then could have guessed the date. Here it is, and I'm shutting down to-morrow morning."

That was Von Bork, not Holmes, who guessed the date four years before.

At the end, Holmes resorts to uncharacteristically flowery language as he says to Watson:

"Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. ..."

I don't know for sure if that particular story was hired by British propaganda office. But it's lower quality compared to other Holmes short stories is a clue that it was. As Holmes himself would surely have observed. (And what was up with having a third-party narration instead of Watson telling the story? Yeesh!)

This 1915 British poster used a bit of shame as well as an appeal to protect one's family to promote enlistment in the armed forces:

Bremm's book is interesting in describing the various marketing strategies the four nations used for their wartime propaganda. But he doesn't have much to say about how effective the official propaganda operations were, or even what considerations one would need to keep in mind in evaluating its effectiveness.

He does note that military censorship kept a lot of failure of the national armies from the homefront public. But he also doesn't give much insight into whether that made sense as a propaganda approach. It was no doubt helpful in concealing the incompetence of various military leaders from their publics. But it also meant that the folks back home were getting a cynical, sanitized and often false picture of how the war was actually going.

That is especially relevant in the eyebrow-raising defense he makes of the stab-in-the-back myth (Dolchstoßlegende) that became a staple of rightwing propaganda in Germany after the war.

I'll discuss that aspect in Part 2.

Tags: first world war, erster weltkrieg, world war i

SPD during the First World War (2 of 2)

Susanne Miller provides a detailed account of the politics of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in her book Burgfrieden und Klassenkampf. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie im Ersten Weltkrieg (1974). A large part of the story involves the split of the Party into the Majority SPD (MSPD) and the Independent SPD (USPD).

In a previous post on this topic, I listed several factors that Miller identified in a separate article for the SPD's prowar course. From "Die Sozialdemokratie in der Spannung zwischen Oppoisitionstradition und Regierungsverantwortung in den Anfängen der Weimarer Republik" in Hans Mommsen, Hrsg., Sozialdemokratie zwischen Klassenbewegung und Volkspartei (1974):

• Responding to the general opinion among their voting base
• The SPD's view of Russia, expertly exploited by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg
• Their (internationalist?) hostility to British and French imperialism
• The claims of France on Alsace-Lorraine
• "The hope of improving their own status through inner political reforms," i.e., their desire to be accepted as a legitimate political party which they hoped supporting the war would achieve (my translation)
• Fear of repression which would roll back their political achievements and subject their Party resources and property to confiscation, censorship or banning

Miller notes in that article that "to the German workers’ movement, the Wilhelmine Reich appeared to them as the ground of their existence and their effectiveness, which they wanted to maintain."  (my translation) In practice and for better or worse, the policy of "August 4", the date of the SPD's decisive 1914 vote for the Kaiser's war credits, represented a decision by the majority (MSPD) faction to commit themselves to being a political party within the Imperial order.

In the book, she elaborates those themes in much more detail.

One of the factors that emerges strongly in Miller's narrative is the level of political trust the SPD leaders placed in the Kaiser and his governments. Through some combination of complacency, patriotism, national shortsightedness and careless judgment, the SPD leaders generally thought even in the immediate weeks after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand that the German government was genuinely seeking to preserve the peace.

Miller notes that during the July Crisis, hardline antiwar Social Democrats like Rosa Luxemburg and Heinrich Ströbel were still convinced even at the end of that eventful month of the Kaiser's genuine desire to avoid war. Ströbel writes of the general Social Democratic attitude in Germany toward foreign policy in the prewar years (Schuld und Sühne, 1919):

... aber man traute in gutgläubiger Verblendung unsren Machthabern doch nicht die tollhäuslerische Absicht zu, die Fünkchen eines unbeträchtlichen Konflikts mit vollem Bedacht zum ungeheuerlichen Weltenbrand anblasen zu wollen.

[... but one trusted with a good-willed blindness that our rulers were certainly would not want to have the insane intention to completely deliberately blow the spark of an insignificant conflict into a monstrous world blaze.]

Ströbel notes that Kurt Eisner, one of the most important antiwar leaders and an adherent of the USPD when it broke off, initially believed at the start of the war that Russia had forced the German Kaiser into a war he didn't want, the propaganda line that Bethmann Hollweg successfully pushed onto the SPD Reichstag faction to convince them to vote for war credit on the fateful August 4. (Eisner for a couple of months in 1918-19 became the head of the revolutionary workers council, aka "soviet", in Bavaria; he was assassinated by Count Anton von Arco-Valley on February 21, 1919.)

Rallying around the national war cause, however painfully dubious it may appear, is something with which Americans have become very familiar over the last 13 years or so. I don't want to read more recent experience back into 1914-18. But anyone familiar with the rhetoric of jingoism, which we still hear constantly from FOX News and like-minded radio ranters, will understand the phenomenon Ströbel describes:

Die Bekehrung der roten Internationalisten zur Kriegspolitik Falkenhayns und Hindenburgs, Bethmanns und Hertlings, brachte das Lob der ganzen deutschen Presse1 freundschaftliche Handedrücke im Parlament und in der Öffentlichkeit, brachte die dankbare Anerkennung von Zivil- und Militarbehörden, brachte Ehrungen, Reklamationen und gesicherte Einkünfte.

The conversion of the red [social-democratic] internationalists to the war policy of [Erich von] Falkenhayn and [Paul von] Hindenburg, Bethmann [Hollweg] and [Georg Freiherr von] Hertling brought the praise of the entire German press, friendly handshakes in Parliament and in public, brought the thankful recognition of civil and military officials, brought honors, satisfactions and secure incomes.

This relates to several of the bullet-points above. As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has written, all wars are popular in the first 30 days. A politician who defied the national patriotic surge would be taking a calculated risk.

Still, the SPD had been nominally committed to an anti-imperialist program that required them, along with their sister parties in the Socialist International (aka, Second International), to oppose any "imperialist" war. As Miller explains, though, neither the SPD nor other major European socialist parties had made practical and concrete plans on how to go about it when and if that moment came. The SPD conducted antiwar demonstrations almost up until the day they switched The social-democratic parties of Britain and France also went along with their country’s war policies.

Another important background factor was that the general expectation on both sides of the initial conflict was that war would be relatively short. The American Civil War could have served as at least a possible precedent in their thinking as a cautionary example of how a present-day war could become an extended conflict with massive casualties. But Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Britain, Russia and the Ottoman Empire were looking to more recent European conflicts such as the German wars of unification against Denmark, Austria-Hungary and France. The Balkan Wars of 1912-13 had displayed exceptional cruelty and bloodlust. But they were ended in a relatively short time.

As horrible as the Great War turned out to be, there was a general expectation on all sides that the war would be a short conflict. That it would become such an extended horror ending with the end of the dynastic empires of Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russian and Ottoman Empire was not part of the calculations of any major political grouping, including the Social Democrats.

Miller devotes a large portion of her book to examining the pragmatic-sounding claims of the SPD that they achieved respectability and were able to mitigate the worst effects of the war on the homefront and pave the way toward the postwar assumption of power. With minor exceptions, Miller finds these claims wanting in substance. From influencing the war aims to exclude annexationist goals to relief for hungry civilians suffering from serious food shortages to extracting political concessions and protecting workers’ rights to opposing punitive demands against Russia in the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations, the SPD/MSPD didn’t wind up with much to show for its efforts.

Miller describes well how the SPD was set up to take the blame for Germany’s defeat and the bandits' peace which followed at Versailles. The SPD ended the war at the head of the government and can rightly claim to have established parliamentary democracy in Germany. That is a big thing. And during the war, the SPD (MSPD) built a political alliance with the "bourgeois" Center and the left-liberal Progress Party, which was the first appearance of what became the core Weimar coalition. Also a big deal.

Miller writes of the wartime alliance with the Center and the Progress Party that it was:

... den entscheidenden Schritt sowohl für ihren Eintritt in das Kabinett des Prinzen Max von Baden als auch für das spätere Zustandekommen der „Weimarer Koalition“ ... Soviel auch für dieses Argument und die damit verbundene positive Bewertung des Ausbrucks der Sozialdemokraten aus ihrer Oppositionsrolle spricht, halt solch eine Sicht einer genaueren Prüfung doch nicht stand. Denn die Bereitschaft der bürgerlichen Parteien, Sozialdemokraten als gleichberechtigte Partner anzuerkennen, und der Wunsch der Reichsleitung, sie an der Regierung zu beteiligen, waren in erster Linie durch die Kriegslage bedingt. Erst mit dem Schwinden der Siegesaussichten wurden die Sozialdemokraten zu verantwortlicher Mitarbeit herangezogen. Als dann die Niederlage zum Faktum geworden und das Land in revolutionäre Gärung geraten war, übergab der letzte kaiserliche Reichskanzler sein Amt dem Sozialdemokraten Friedrich Ebert. Zu einem ähnlichen Verlauf wäre es aber wahrscheinlich gekommen, wenn die Sozialdemokratie weiterhin verschiedene Richtungen in ihren Reihen geduldet und ihnen die Freiheit gewährt hätte, sich öffentlich zu äußern - wenn also die Spaltung vermieden worden wäre. Und auch der Umkehrschluß liegt nahe: hätte das Deutschte Reich den Krieg nicht verloren, wären die alten Mächte am Ruder geblieben. Ihre Haltung den Sozialdemokraten gegenüber hätte sich nicht grundlegend geändert, mochte sich diese in der Kriegszeit vom nationalen Standpunkt aus auch noch so bewährt haben.

[... the decisive step as much for their entrance into the [late wartime Imperial] Cabinet of Prince Max von Baden as also for the later achievement of the “Weimar coalition” … Despite so much that speaks for this argument and the positive evaluation connected with it of the breaking out of the Social Democrats from their opposition role, such a view nevertheless does not hold up to a closer examination. Because the willingness of the bourgeois [non-socialist] parties to recognize the Social Democrats as an equal partner, and the desire of the Imperial leadership to have them participated in government, were in the first line determined by the war situation. Only with the fading of the prospect of victory were the Social Democrats brought into responsible collaboration. [Here, “responsible” should probably be in quotation marks.]

Then when defeat had become a fact and the country was moving into revolutionary ferment, the last Imperial Chancellor gave his office to the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert.

And as Miller says of counterfactual scenarios on this matter, "Freilich gehören solche Überelegungen in die Kategorie unbeweisbarer Spekulation" ("Clearly such reflections belong in the category of unprovable speculation").

But by falling into Ludendorff's trap and willingly putting themselves in the position of presiding over the final defeat and the signing of the ruinous Versailles peace treaty, the SPD got only limited benefit for showing themselves to be good patriotic Germans. The rightwing nationalists and the Nazis kept right on portraying them as enemies of the state and the nation anyway. Konrad Adenauer and his Christian Democratic Union even kept it up after the Second World War.

Miller's book provides an impressive mixture of descriptions of very specific characters with their ambitions and limitations, the various specific incidents and parliamentary maneuvers that make up the story of the SPD during the war, and careful descriptions of the policy perspectives of various factions.

She doesn't lose sight of the tragic aspects of the story. But she also doesn’t make the SPD the villain of the piece, for all the problems she points out with their actions. And while the USPD emerges from her account as being more far-sighted and responsible than their MSPD rivals and associates, she is also careful to point out that the wartime elections that took place in which the USPD and the MSPD stood up competing candidates, the MSPD came out the clear winner. She attributes the USPD's failure to itself achieve more tangible results after the party split in 1917 especially to weaknesses in their general leadership.

The story leaves little doubt that the split over war policy left the SPD that existed in 1914 in far more difficult position in 1918-19 than they would have faced without the split occasioned by the MSPD's far-reaching support of the Kaiser. And not only in supporting the war policies but in accepting the regime itself in a way that left them without adequate strategies to deal with the political situation that arose at the conclusion of the war.

Tags: erster weltkrieg, first world war, heinrich ströbel, kurt eisner, european union, spd

The great mystery of how noble Emperors managed to start the First World War

British historian Christopher Clark has attracted a lot of attention around the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War with his book The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2013). The title fits into the image, politically convenient for those who don't wish to emphasize the more venal and destructive motives that the statesmen of the time displayed in going to war.

Clark's 2000 biography, Kaiser Wilhelm II, certainly encourages that view in relation to the German monarch. He seems to be as convinced as the prewar German Social Democrats were that Kaiser Bill had the most pacific intentions going into the declaration of war in 1914.

I'm certainly no specialist in the causes of the First World War, a multifaceted and much-discussed topic in history. But you don't have to have read a thousand books on the topic to recognize the problem with Clark's treatment of Kaiser Bill leading up to the Second World War. He privileges the Kaiser's public pronouncements over his privates notes (marginalia) and reports of private meetings. This is obviously a questionable approach when dealing with the buildup to a war. Even in those days, heads of state and government were expected to pretend in public that they wanted to avoid war and that the other side was the aggressor or at least on the verge of becoming the aggressor.

Clark isn't consistent in this, though. When the Kaiser's public pronouncements were obviously, blatantly warlike and belligerent, Clark explains repeatedly that, shoot, that was just ole Bill shooting off his mouth, he prob'ly didn't mean nothin' by it.

Here's an example. He devotes a chapter to examples of the Kaiser saying hair-raising things in public and how his officials tried relentless to get him to cool it. In a 1900 speech that came to be known as the Hunnenrede (Hun's Speech), he spoke to a group of German troops about to embark to participate in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China and said, in the translation Clark uses, "When you come before the enemy, let him be struck down; there will be no mercy, prisoners will not be taken. Just as the Huns one thousand years ago ... made a name for themselves in which their greatness still resounds, so let the name Germany be known in China in such a way that a Chinese will never again dare even to look askance at a German." (p. 169)

That seems pretty clear to me. But Clark excuses the crass sentiments ole Bill expressed there in much the same way political spin-doctors try to put their bosses' more embarrassing statements into "context," a word Clark uses a lot in this connection. Here is part of his spin on that speech:

The contrasts and logical inconsistencies within the text suggest that Wilhelm may, in standard fashion, have departed from a more anodyne prepared text to improvise on a matter that had preoccupied him over recent weeks, namely the cruelty and ruthlessness of the Boxer assault on the European legations in China - which had prompted a wave of atrocity stories in the European press - and the need for exemplary punitive action. However, his references to 'mercy' and 'prisoners' [as in have none and take none {BM}] also reflected a broader preoccupation with the problem of managing encounters between a modern 'civilised' army and the fanaticised mass that many contemporaries saw in the insurrectionary movements of what is now known as the 'third world'. [my emphasis] (p. 170)

And this explanation he apparently meant to be exculpatory! Though what he's really saying there is pretty much: yeah, Kaiser Bill was right, that's the only way you can deal with Those People. Wow!

Clark also seems to be playing a game when he writes about the Kaiser's assumptions during the immediate run-up to war in 1914. He hardly discusses Germany's specific concerns about France or the tensions among the great powers arising from their potentially conflicting colonial ambitions. As he discusses the period in which Austria-Hungary was preparing to attack Serbia and the German Kaiser was assuring the Habsburg Emperor that he could count on "the full support of Germany" (from the report of a July 5 meeting of the Austrian Ambassador to Germany, Count Ladislaus von Szögyényi-Marich) in its actions against Serbia, Clark cites evidence that Germany was not expecting an attack by Russia as evidence that Kaiser Bill wasn't expecting a war.

Of course German officials hoped that Russia wouldn't attack them under their treaty alliance with France. But misjudging Russia's likely course isn't the same that as hoping to avoid war with France. The German assumption was that Austria-Hungary would be able to mount a sufficient force against Russia in the event of an attack that Germany wouldn't have to devote large military resources to holding off Russia.

Clark's brief for the German Kaiser's peaceful intentions seems to be disingenuous on this point.

Clark describes the Imperial sleepwalkers about to go to world war this way:

What general conclusions can we draw from Wilhelm's actions during the July crisis [of 1914]? We could begin with the banal observation that Wilhelm, while reluctant to entangle Germany in a continental war, nevertheless made some of the decisions that helped to bring it about. But it should be noted that the same can be said of his two imperial colleagues, Emperor Franz Joseph and Tsar Nicholas II. Alexander Margutti, aide-de-camp to Franz Joseph, reported that the Austrian emperor regarded the ultimatum to Serbia as a diplomatic bluff and was deeply shaken when he realised that the Serbian reply was unacceptable. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was slow to accept the need for military measures and - in a move analogous to Wilhelm's last-minute efforts to avoid continental war - actually rescinded an order for general mobilisation on 29 July after receiving what he took to be a conciliatory message from his German cousin. During a further protracted discussion with Foreign Minister Sazonov on 30 July, the tsar displayed an 'extreme loathing' for war and could only be persuaded with the greatest difficulty of the need for an immediate general mobilisation. (p. 214)

One is left to wonder how, with such pacifist minded Emperors determined not to let a conflict break out, how the war managed to start at all!

Tags: christopher clark, erster weltkrieg, first world war

SPD during the First World War (1 of 2)

The significance of the German Social Democratic Party's (SPD) decision in the historic Reichstag vote of August 4, 1914 to approve credits for Kaiser Wilhelm II's war was not only of significance for the SPD's political fortunes of the moment. It was a major decision that influenced the course of democratic politics in Germany far into the future.

Heinrich Ströbel (1869-1944) was an active participant in the debates within the SPD over war policy. He begins his 1922 book Die deutsche Revolution. Ihr Unglück un ihre Rettung (The German Revolution: It Misfortune and Its Salvation; published in English as The German Revolution and After) on the 1918 democratic revolution in Germany with a reference to the effect of the SPD's wartime debates on supporting the Kaiser's war:

If one wants to understand correctly the essence, the origin and the process of the German revolution, then one must recall two things again and again: first, that the revolution was not the conscious uprising of popular majority against the old political and social system; and second, that this military collapse that spawned the revolution, did not find in Germany a united socialist proletariat [working class] determined to fight, but rather a Social Democracy divided by the argument over war policy.

The Social Democrats became head of the government late in 1918 as the final military collapse was underway. This was part of a conscious political strategy by the military dictator Erich Ludendorff to let the SPD take the blame for Germany's military defeat that Ludendorff himself had delivered to his country. And the SPD walked right into it.

Heinrich Ströbel in 1924 in his official photo as a Reichstag delegate for the SPD

When Ströbel, who had sided with the antiwar faction of the SPD during the war, writes that there was no "united socialist" German working class at the end of the war, he is referring to the splits that occurred during the SPD during the war, which left it in late 1918/early 1919 divided into the prowar Majority SPD (MSPD), the more-or-less antiwar Independent SPD (USPD), and the antiwar Spartacus and International Socialist movements, the later two coming together at the end of 1918 into the German Communist Party (KPD).

There was a workers uprising at the end of 1918 and the beginning of 1919, one of the most discussed incidents in German political history. Not least because it became a sore point in decades of polemics between Social Democrats and Communists. However one judges the details, the facts include the fact that the SPD government used far-right volunteer militias called the Freikorps to suppress the workers demonstrations and strikes during that period. Gustav Noske, a prowar and pro-colonialism SPD Reichstag member since 1906, was put in charge of military affairs by Friedrich Ebert's SPD-led regime and was responsible for bringing in the Freikorps and pursuing a straightforward policy of repression.

Counterfactual history is always tricky, of course. Germany had just been defeated in the war and the victors were bent on implementing a vulture's peace, which is what the Treaty of Versailles embodied. Any government's options would have been highly limited in that situation. But it's also the case the the SPD walked into Lundendorff's political trap. And bringing in the Freikorps, led by hardline nationalists and enemies of democracy, was a step any SPD government serious about democracy should have avoided. And by forging such an alliance with the far-right Freikorps, which kicked off the (failed) Kapp Putsch of 1920 against the Weimar democracy, the SPD frittered away the opportunity it had to drastically reduce the power of aristocratic and antidemocratic members of the German civilian bureaucracy and military command.

Susanne Miller's Burgfrieden und Klassenkampf. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie im Ersten Weltkrieg (1974) provides substantial evidence that the prowar course of the SPD/MSPD committed the SPD not only to support of the defense of Germany, as they claimed, but more generally to preserving the basic existing social order. One might think that a party formally and explicitly committed to revolutionary and radical-democratic goals would have at least kept their sights fixed on a Constitutional monarchy. But as Miller shows, the SPD - the most important advocate for parliamentary democracy in Germany - seemed to accept a constitutional monarchy along British lines for the postwar period.

The nickname that sometimes attached to them had some real substance to it: the Kaiser's Social Democrats.

Ströbel wrote in 1919 booklet called Schuld und Sühne published under the auspices of the pacifist group Neues Vaterland that Ebert "bis zum letzten Augenblick nichts als eine solide Stütze des wider seinen Willen gestürzten Regimes von gestern gewesen war." ("Until the last moment {of the Imperial government} was nothing other than a solid supporter of the regime of yesterday that was overthrown against his will.")

Even allowing for the intensity of the polemics of the moment, that evaluation by Ströbel of Ebert's conduct during those days is both sober and accurate.

(cont. in Part 2)

Tags: erster weltkrieg, first world war, heinrich ströbel, kurt eisner, european union, spd

First World War symposium and images

This is another UC-Berkeley symposium from this weekend on the topic, "Wartime and Postwar Memories Reconsidered," with the discussion beginning around 20:00, Vienna Symposium: Part 2 (1 of 2) 03/08/2014:

This is the second part, video beginning around 4:30, Symposium: Part 2 (2 of 2) 03/08/2014:

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, "Self-Portrait as Soldier" (1915)

John Singer, "Gassed" (1919)

The British National Portrait Gallery has a helpful Chronology of the First World War.

Chateau Wood, Ypres 1917 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

This is a wartime image of Kaiser Bill (Wilhelm II) with the slogan "Gott mit uns" ("God with us").

The loyalties of the Almighty seem to have been a matter of some confusion. According to His loyal followers, He backed Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, but also the opposing Entente side of Britain, France, Italy and Russia. And eventually the United States (of course!). Some Christian theologians might suggest that God wasn't very happy with this whole war business.

Tags: erster weltkrieg, first world war

First World War as a bar fight

This from The Meta Picture is really pretty good:

Click on the link to see the whole thing.

The sad part is that our Very Serious People pretty much seem to think of foreign policy in just such terms!

Tags: erster weltkrieg, first world war

Symposium on the First World War and "Viennese Modernism Between the First and Second World Wars"

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is having a long weekend at UC-Berkeley under the general theme, The Vienna Philharmonic: 100 Years After the Outbreak of the First World War.

The series includes concerts (of course!), events with students, and public symposiums. The first of the symposiums took place today, on the theme "Viennese Modernism Between the First and Second World Wars." The video is here, Vienna Symposium - Part 1:

It includes a presentation by historian Hans Petschar of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek on "The Great War of Imagination and Memory." The abstract provided at the presentation summarizes his presentation this way:

World War I was the first war in which mass media played a crucial role in disseminating news from the Fighting Front to the Home Front. Pictorial media, pamphlets, posters, photographs, and films served as primary means of propaganda to persuade both soldiers at the Front and citizens at Home of the importance of their efforts to contribute and secure ultimate victory. Pictorial media, especially photographic pictures, along with written records provided direct, sensual, and touching imaginations how soldiers lived the war. More than written reports and print news, mass production and distribution of photographs made World War I a "total war," in which not only the armed forces but whole nations were involved.

War photography, however, was by no means neutral. Production and distribution of photographs was controlled by governmental and military bodies and served as an ultimate means of propaganda. In Austria, the War Press Office censored and controlled the distribution of the images. Life in the battlefields, medical care, successful military operations, glorification of war heroes, decorations of the soldiers, and heroic men and women at work were the main topics of the image propaganda. The longer the war lasted, the photographic Grand Illusion was replaced by images of disillusion. The dehumanization of war became visually present in photographic images of executions, in conscious exposures of prisoners of war, and in images of destruction. At the end of the "Great Times," nothing remained but the omnipresence of death. [my emphasis]

His presentation includes numerous visual images illustrating his point.

Tags: erster weltkrieg, first world war

The German SPD and the First World War

One of the aspects of the First World War that most interests me is the position taken by the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in favor of the war.

How do we understand the SPD’s support for the Kaiser in the First World War?

One approach to understanding the SPD’s support for the Kaiseris to start with the events of January 1919.

To understand the problem it pretty much has to be seen from the ceasefire in 1918.

Heinrich Potthoff writes in "Die Sozialdemokrtied von den Anfängen bis 1945" in Susanne Miller/Heinrich Potthoff, Kleine Geschichte der SPD. Darstellung und Dokumentation, 1848-1990 (1991):

Doch die demokratischen Neuerungen wurden überschattet durch den alles überlagernden militärischen Zusammenbruch. Dadurch, daβ nach auβen hin die Regierung und in vorderster Front Erzberger die Verantwortung für den Waffenstillstand übernahmen, konnten die Initiatoren dieses Schrittes sich vor der Öffentlichkeit der Verantwortung entziehen. Es waren die Generale an der Spitze der Obersten Heeresleitung Hindenburg und Ludendorff, die auf den Waffenstillstand gedrangt, die Politiker vorangestoβen und im Falle Hindenburg die Annahme der Waffenstillstandsbedingungen gebilligt hatten. Die Militärs und die nationalistischen Kräfte jeder Couleur nutzten die Verschleierung der wahren Hintergriinde aus, um mit der sofort ins Spiel gebrachten „ Dolchstoβlegende“ die demokratischen Kräfte zu diskreditieren und zu kaschieren, daβ sie selbst es waren, die das Kaiserreich in die militärische Niederlage geführt hatten. (S. 81)

[Certainly the democratic innovations were overshadowed by the military collapse that overlay everything. Thereby, because the government and {Matthias} Erzberger {of the Center Party} above all assumed the responsibility before the world for the ceasefire, the initiators of this step could escape responsibility for it before the public. It was the generals at the head of the Army Senior Command, {Paul von} Hindenburg and {Erich} Ludendorff, who pressed for the ceasefire, put the politicians out in front and, in Hindenburg’s case, had approved the acceptance of the ceasefire conditions. The generals and the nationalist forces of every stripe {Couleur} exploited the concealment of the real background in order to immediately bring the stab-in-the-back legend into play to discredit the democratic forces and airbrush out the fact that it was they themselves who had led the Empire into the military defeat.]

Potthoff also quotes Susanne Miller giving the following points to summarize the major considerations on the SPD, quoting her from “Die Sozialdemokratie in der Spannung zwischen Oppoisitionstradition und Regierungsverantwortung in den Anfängen der Weimarer Republik” in Hans Mommsen, Hrsg., Sozialdemokratie zwischen Klassenbewegung und Volkspartei (1974):

• Responding to the general opinion among their voting base
• The SPD's view of Russia, expertly exploited by Bethmann-Hollweg
• Their (internationalist?) hostility to British and French imperialism
• The claims of France on Alsace-Lorraine
• “The hope of improving their own status through inner political reforms,” i.e., their desire to be accepted as a legitimate political party which they hoped supporting the war would achieve (my translation)
• Fear of repression which would roll back their political achievements and subject their Party resources and property to confiscation, censorship or banning

He quotes Miller: "to the German workers’ movement, the Wilhelminian Reich appeared to them as the group ground of their existence and their effectiveness, which they wanted to maintain." (p. 75 in Potthoff)

Potthoff also quotes August Bebel (p. 75) from the SPD Party convention of 1907: "If we at some time truly must defend the Fatherland, we will defend it because it is our Fatherland, as the ground on which we live, whose language we speak, whose customs we possess, because we want to make this Fatherland to a country to which there has never been the like in the world in the same fullness and beauty." (my translation) Whether this amounts to hurrah-patriotism is questionable.

Remarkably, the SPD leaders also were largely under the illusion that the Kaiser's government, headed by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856-1921), was genuinely interested in preserving the piece. Even as staunch a radical as Rosa Luxemburg (1870-1919) was under that impression!

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, German Chancellor 1909-1917

This is in no small part a tribute to the political skills of Bethmann-Hollweg, who passed himself off to the SPD as a counterweight in the government to the warmongers, which he was not. He played them, and played them effectively. Rainer Traub describes his strategy to win the antiwar SPD to the Kaiser war cause in "Das Debakel der Arbeiterbewegung" (Die Ur-Katastrophe des 20.Jahrhunderts; Spiegel Special 1/2004):

Aber Kanzler Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg verfolgt eine geschmeidigere Taktik. Mehrfach werden in den letzten Juli-Tagen SPD-Vertreter in Preußens Innenministerium bestellt. Die Friedensdemonstrationen, beteuern die Ministerialen, wolle man nicht unterdrücken. Auch die Regierung wünsche ja Frieden. Die deutsche Führung setzt auf die Russenfurcht der Arbeiterbewegung. Zuverlassigen Informationen zufolge, gibt sie zu verstehen, sei die antideutsche, panslawistische Stimmung in Russland sehr stark. Die SPD-Führung moge es darum vermeiden, durch Kritik der eigenen Regierung dieser Stimmung Vorschub zu leisten.

Albert Südekum vom rechten SPD-Flugel versichert dem Kanzler schriftlich und ehrerbietig, dass „gerade aus dem Wunsch heraus, dem Frieden zu dienen, keinerlei wie immer geartete Aktion (General- oder partieller Streik, Sabotage u. dgl.) geplant oder auch nur zu befürchten" sei. Befriedigt registriert Bethmann Hollweg, dass seine Taktik aufgeht.

[But Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg followed a more flexible tactic {than that to which the Kaiser was inclined}. In the last July days {before the war began}, representatives of the SPD were repeatedly invited to Prussia's Interior Minister. The {SPD-lead} peace demonstrations, assured the ministerial officials, would not be suppressed. The government also wanted peace, they claimed. The German leadership focused on the workers' movement's fear of Russia. According to reliable information, they gave {the SPD representatives} to understand, the anti-German, Pan-Slavic was very strong in Russia. The SPD leadership should therefore should want to avoid providing encouragement to this mood by criticism of their own government {i.e., the Kaiser's government}.

Albert Südekum from the right wing of the SPD assured the Chancellor in writing and deferentially that "precisely from the desire to serve peace, none of the many different actions (general or partial strike, sabotage and the like) are planned, or even to be feared." Bethmann-Hollweg realized with satisfaction that his tactic was working.]

Bethmann-Hollweg ran a political con on the SPD. And it worked. The majority of its Reichstag members fell for it and obediently endorsed and voted for the war credits in the Reichstag on August 4, 1914.

Conned by Behmann-Hollweg at the start, conned by Ludendorff at the end. Not an impressive outcome.

Tags: erster weltkrieg, first world war, spd

"Sleepwalking" and the First World War

In this 100th-anniversary year of the demise of the unfortunately Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the unpleasantness which followed, one of the themes the historians and publicists are debating is what is currently known as the "sleepwalking into war" idea, after Christopher Clark's book, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2013).

Briefly put, this concept spreads the question of war guilt promiscuously all around, blaming the whole thing mainly on blundering missteps by more-or-less well-meaning statesmen who were earnestly trying to preserve peace. Since the actions of the Great Statesmen from the aftermath of Franz Ferdinand's assassination to the postwar Treaty of Versailles look more like the work of bandits and highwaymen, even summarizing the "sleepwalkers" notion seems hopelessly corny to me.

But corny often plays well in politics. And, of course, we Exceptional Americans know that "we" got into the war because of the perfidy of the Germans and Kaiser Bill's sneaky U-Boat warfare. And Woodrow Wilson could be the secular Savior who made the world peaceful and safe for democracy if all those corrupt Europeans had been willing to let him run things his way.

The "sleepwalker" notion is particularly attractive to German politicians and publicists who would like to see their country get away from all this peace and international law nonsense and start acting like a Real Country in the world again. Albrecht von Lucke discusses this phenomenon in Der nützliche Herr Gauck Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 3/2014, which I plan to comment on in a separate post.

John Dos Passos used a version of the "sleepwalker" idea in his 1962 popular history Mr. Wilson's War:

To Europeans too the peace had seemed unbreakable. While rich Americans dreamed of Europe poor Europeans dreamed of America. In those peaceful years each could try for the fulfillment of his hopes. While the British Navy assured peace on the seas, the European order overflowed the globe. With time and money a man could travel anywhere, except for a few blank spots where the natives were unruly, or the dominions of the Czar and the Turk where passports were required, secure in life and property, without any official's by your leave. The poorest cobbler in Przemysl or Omsk only needed the price of a steerage passage to Ellis Island to try his luck in the Promised Land.

"If you didn't know the world before the war," old men told their sons, "you've never known what it is to live."

During that last July of the old order only the most sophisticated students of European affairs had any inkling of the rancors and hatreds and murderous lusts fermenting behind those picturesque façades. Realization of the extent of the calamity came slowly. The assassination of the archduke was shrugged off as a continuation of the Balkan disturbances that had been relegated for years to the back pages. When the Czar's armies were mobilized in the name of Slavic brotherhood it could be explained away as a measure to distract the downtrodden Russians from the manifold wrongs and oppressions they lived under. But when the Kaiser answered by alerting his generals and the French called their citizens to the tricolor it was plain that Europe had gone raving mad.

The First World War was certainly madness. But then I hold to the old-fashioned idea that war is always a failure of diplomacy. Of course, we always have the option of deciding it's the Other Side who's responsible for the failure of diplomacy.

But if we take this to mean anything other than that the general public was shocked at what a broad war had broken out, it's really untenable. Germany was ready to rumble with France. Austria-Hungary was champing at the bit to whack Serbia. France wanted to take Alsace-Lorraine back from Germany and to generally get revenge for their defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. Britain had a worldwide empire to defend against potential colonial competitors. Italy wanted to take South Tirol/Trentino away from the Habsburgs and also to make Albania a colony without Austria-Hungary getting in their way.

There had also been widespread public polemics in Austria-Hungary against the Balkan countries and Russia and public encouragement of having a war in the expectation it would be a clean and uplifting way to solve pending international problems - problems in the Balkans, which is what Austro-Hungarian foreign policy had focused on for decades. Militarist agitation, in other words.

So it really wasn't completely unexpected to anyone that was following the news, especially in Austria-Hungary, Germany and France.

Tags: erster weltkrieg, first world war

Italy, Austria-Hungary, the Balkans and the First World War

Freiz Fellner's Der Dreibund: Europäische Diplomatie vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (2nd edition; 1960) tells the story of the relationships among the German Reich, the Habsburg Empire and Italy which resulted in the First World War in the alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War with their nominal ally Italy joining the British-French-Russian (Triple Entente) side in May 1915.

Austria-Hungary regarded it as a terrible betrayal that Italy entered the war on the Entente's side. This poster of the time depicts Italy - with rather bizarre imagery - as a "Judas."

Since Fellner's book is an old-fashioned diplomatic history, I'll provide a few of the key dates from the later 19th century in this process:

• Dreikaiserbund (Three Emperors' League): 1873-75; re-established 1881-1887; "brought Russian recognition of Habsburg predominance in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula." (Reinhold Wagnleitner, "Austria" Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2012)
• 1878: Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia-Hezogovina
• Zweibund (Dual Alliance): Treaty between German and Austria-Hungary 1879-1918; Austria-Hungary and Germany pledged to support each other in a war of aggression by Russia
• Austro-Hungarian "alliance" with Serbia: 1881; effectively made Serbia a protectorate of the Habsburg Empire
• Dreibund (Triple Alliance): 1882; "It was primarily a defensive treaty against a French attack on Italy or Germany." (Wagnleitner)
• Austro-Hungarian defensive treaty with Romania: 1883
• German-Russian Reinsurance Treaty: 1887
• First and Second Mediterranean Agreements: 1887; "joined Great Britain to the powers (Austria-Hungary and Italy) interested in blocking Russia from the Straits and enabled Kálnoky to abandon direct agreements with Russia. The Three Emperors' League of 1881 was allowed to expire, and Austria-Hungary was thus left without any formal understanding with Russia." (Wagnleitner)
• Austro-Russian Agreements of 1897: aimed at limiting Italian ambitions in the Balkans

The Dual Alliance of 1879 between Germany and Austria-Hungary proved to be an enduring one until it came to disaster in the First World War. Germany had won a war with the Habsburg Empire in 1866 and the Dual Alliance was a recognition by Austria-Hungary that they had no claim to authority over any territories of the new German Reich. For centuries, the Habsburgs had headed the Holy Roman Empire which incorporated the various and sundry German states, duchies, kingdoms, etc. At the time of the Treaty of Vienna in 1815 that began the post-French Revolution Restauration period, Austria-Hungary was still considered the most powerful nation militarily in the world. The 1866 German victory established Prussian ascendancy in the German world in fact, and the Dual Alliance of 1879 recognized that diplomatically.

The Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy was established first in 1882, with several esxtensions and some modifications thereafter. Much of Fellner's short book is devoted to the relationship between Austria-Hungary and Italy. From the time of the Dual Alliance on, Austro-Hungarian foreign policy was focused heavily on expansion in the Balkans. The hold of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire on the peoples of that region was steadily weakening during the late 19th century and continuing into the 20th.

Austria-Hungary's perceived interests revolved around their goal of expanding in the Balkans. Italy also had its eyes on the Balkans. This Italian interest didn't begin in the 19th century. This map shows Venetian colonies in the Balkans and the 15th and 16th century:

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Italy in the decades leading up to the First World War was interested in expanding into the Balkans across the Adriatic Sea, particularly into Albania. Austria-Hungary wanted to keep them out. Russia also had perceived interests in the Balkans and so there was a continual risk of Russia and Austria-Hungary coming into direct conflict there. So Austria-Hungary wanted to be sure they had German backing in a war with Russia and at least Italian neutrality in the case of such a war.

The two installments of the Three Emperors' League (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia) bracketed a key moment in the process of Ottoman disintegration in the Balkans, the Russo-Turkish War:

In 1877 Russia and its ally Serbia came to the aid of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria in their rebellions against Turkish rule. The Russians attacked through Bulgaria, and after successfully concluding the Siege of Pleven they advanced into Thrace, taking Adrianople (now Edirne, Tur.) in January 1878. In March of that year Russia concluded the Treaty of San Stefano with Turkey. This treaty freed Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro from Turkish rule, gave autonomy to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and created a huge autonomous Bulgaria under Russian protection. Britain and Austria-Hungary, alarmed by the Russian gains contained in the treaty, compelled Russia to accept the Treaty of Berlin (July 1878), whereby Russia's military-political gains from the war were severely restricted. ("Russo-Turkish wars." Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2012) [my emphasis]

Present day Balkans (Source: Wikimedia Commons)(

But Italy also had colonial ambitions in Africa, especially Libya, which meant they wanted to stay on the good side of the leading sea power, England, which could also affect their ability to expand into the Balkans, as well. Italy also had an ongoing dispute with Austria-Hungary over the territory of South Tirol/Trentino, which wound up permanently part of Italy from the end of the First World War.

On the other hand, Italy was concerned about France as a competitor for colonial possessions in Africa, so they were reluctant to embrace an alliance with France.

But it was, of course, the situation in the Balkans that spawned the Great War. George Kennan wrote in "The Balkan Crisis: 1913 and 1993," New York Review of Books 07/13/1993 issue:

By the beginning of the twentieth century a number of new states—notably Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania — had sprung up in the area thus liberated from Turkish control [during the geographical contraction of the Ottoman Empire in the later nineteenth century]. Those states were, without exception, monarchically governed; and the monarchs were, as a rule, somewhat more moderate and thoughtful than their subjects. But their dynasties were not well established. Their powers were usually disputed by inexperienced and unruly parliamentary bodies. Borders were in many instances vague and lacking in firm acceptance. The entire peninsula was, in short, devoid of international stability.

These states were unstable, jealous of each other's territory, and given to a radical version of nationalism. Any powers that were trying meddle in that area were at a high risk of surprises, blow-ups and unanticipated escalations of conflicts.

Fellner emphasizes 1902 as a critical diplomatic turning point for the Triple Alliance. The three partners renewed the pact that year. But by then, Italy had grown in power and influence in the previous two decades. They had just won assurance from Britain that it would support Italy's colonial position in Tripoli, Libya. And with the renewal of the Triple Alliance, Italy also reached a neutrality agreement later the same year with France, known as the Prinetti-Barrère Agreement. Technically, the Triple Alliance and the Prinetti-Barrère Agreement did not conflict with each other for Italy. Both pledged Italy to neutrality in the case of a Franco-German war.

But it represented a shift in the relative emphasis Italian foreign policy placed on good relations with Britain and France compared to relations with Austria-Hungary. There was also a lot of irritation on Italy's side from what its diplomats perceived as high-handedness from its Triple Alliance partners, particularly in Germany's resistance to formal declarations that the Triple Alliance was not directed against France. Because for Germany, it was directed against France. And Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Prinetti came from a background in private business, and wasn't as accustomed to diplomatic niceties as his predecessors. Fellner says that his German and Austro-Hungarian counterparts found him an "empfindlichen and besonder reizbaren Verhandlungspartner" ("sensitive and particularly excitable negotiating partner").

But with the potential of conflict between France and Italy drastically reduced, the problems with Austria-Hungary loomed much larger in the Italian view. Fellner argues that the value of Albania was greatly exaggerated in the views of both Italy and Austria-Hungary. But:

Von 1902 an beginnt eine Intensivierung der italienischen Adria- und Balkanpolitik, die Österreich-Ungarn nicht hinnehmen konnte. Dadurch trat aber der Konflikt zwischen diesen beiden Staaten, der in den ersten Jahrzehnten des Dreibundes zurückgedrängt war, weil die beiden westlichen Partner nur die französische Gefahr vor Augen gehabt hatten, in ein akutes Stadium. Die in der historischen Tradition, den weltanschaulichen Differenzen und dem nationalen Chauvinismus begründeten Gegensätze zwischen Italien und Österreich-Ungarn werden nun durch den machtpolitischen Konflikt auf der Balkanhalbinsel verstärkt und offenbaren der ganzen Welt die strukturelle Schwäche des Dreibundes. Und da der Wille zur Zusammenarbeit und zu Rücksichtnahme auf die Interessen des Partners in beiden Landern fehlte, führt von 1902 an der Weg des Dreibundes in gerader Linie zu dessen Auflösung am Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges. (Seite 61)

[From 1902 on began an intensification of the Italian Adriatic and Balkan policy that Austria-Hungary could not accept. Thereby, the conflict between the two states that had been suppressed in the first decades of the Triple Alliance because the two western partners {Italy and Germany} had only the French danger in view, entered an acute stage. The contrasts between Italy and Austria-Hungary, which were founded in historical tradition, the different worldviews and national chauvinism, were now strengthened by the conflict over political power in the Balkan Peninsula and revealed to the entire world the structural weaknesses of the Triple Alliance. And because the will to work together and to take the partner's interests into consideration was lacking in both countries, from 1902 on the path of the Triple Alliance led in a straight line to its dissolving at the beginning of the First World War. (p. 61)]

Going back to citing dates for a moment:

• 1908-9: Austria-Hungary formally annexes Bosnia-Herzogovina, backed by the Russians with the Ottoman Empire agreeing to essentially sell their claim in Bosnia-Herzogovina to Austria-Hungary, Serbia opposes, Russia switches sides to back Serbia, Germany backs Austria-Hungary, Russia backs down, war is avoided.
• 1909: Italy makes agreements with both Russia and Austria-Hungary aimed at maintaining the post-annexation status quo in the Balkans. The Racconigi Agreement between Italy and Russia was formally aimed at preventing any single power from becoming dominant in the Balkans, that single power being Austria-Hungary.
• 19+11-12: Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12, which transferred Turkish authority in Libya (the Turkish provinces of Tripolitana and Cyrenaica) to Italy
• 1912-13: First Balkan War; Balkan League (Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia) vs. Ottoman Empire. In the London Treaty of 1913, the four Balkan League members divided up the largest part of Macedonia. Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbians had contested Macedonia among them for decades.
• 1913: Second Balkan War over the division of the spoils from the First; it pitted Bulgaria against Greece, Romania and Serbia. Bulgaria, the main loser, moved closer to Austria-Hungary. Albania wound up ruled by a German prince at the demand of Austria-Hungary, which required Serbia to give up Albanian territory it had acquired.

This latter issue heightened tensions significantly with Italy, whose relation to Austria-Hungary had been touchy since Italian unification. Austria-Hungary was obligated under the Triple Alliance to consult with Italy before pressing actions that changed the status quo in the Balkans, which they neglected to do in other cases and in this one, as well. But Italy had colonial ambitions in Albania, and this was seen in Rome as a direct attack by Austria-Hungary on Italian interests, as Fellner explains (p. 80).

The 1914 Carnegie Endowment’s International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars on the Balkan situation after the two Balkan Wars:

Macedonia, no longer a tomb, has become a hell. Thrace is torn in pieces. Albania erected into a principality, remains the most unhappy and the wildest object of the eager watching of Austria, Servia [sic], Montenegro, Greece and Italy. The churches and the Christian schools are fighting among themselves, enjoying less liberty than under Ottoman rule. Constantinople, more than ever, will be the eternal apple of discord under the surveillance of the Russians, who are themselves under the surveillance of Germany, Austria Hungary and Roumania, in fact of all the Powers, friends, allies and enemies. Greater Greece, Greater Bulgaria, and Greater Servia, the children of contemporary megalomania, will in their turn keep a close watch over the Bosphorus. The islands bring on a contest between Turkey and Asia on one hand, and Italy, Greece, England and all the great European Powers on the other. The Mediterranean open to new rivalries, becomes again the battlefield which she had ceased to be. (p. 16)

And after the Archduke Franz Ferdinand met his sad fate in Sarajevo in 1914, this cauldron of hatred, violence, nationalist fanaticism and foolish great-power meddling led to what would be the world's most destructive conflict up until that time.

By the time that conflict broke out, Italy saw the prospect of gains in South Tirol/Trentino and the eastern side of the Adriatic (Albania). And saw their colonial ambitions in Africa were likely to take a major hit if they incurred the opposition of Britain and France.

So they entered the war against Austria-Hungary.

Tags: erster weltkrieg, first world war