Karl Radek: German History from 1914 to 1923
Karl Radek
German History from 1914 to 1923
Written: 1929
First published: in Great Soviet Encyclopedia, first edition, vol. 16, pp. 109-143, Moscow-Leningrad, 1929
Translated by: Anton P.
I.
From the Imperialist War to the November Revolution.
The start of the war
The last years before the imperialist war fully revealed both the class balance of forces that pushed Germany on the path of military adventures, and the international situation in which this denouement was to come. The bloc of heavy industry and landowners that dominated the country decided to make up for all the lost time when Germany did not take part in the capitalist division of the world, and to achieve redistribution of it through threats, diplomatic blackmail, and, at worst, war. This policy did not meet with adequate resistance either from the petty bourgeois masses or from the working class. True, the heavy burden of armaments, which demanded an increase in taxes and made it impossible to carry out social reforms, lay down for these classes. But the growth of the anti-imperialist sentiments of the petty bourgeoisie was opposed by the parties of the Catholic Center, progressives and conservatives, who opposed it under their influence; as for the working masses, the Social-Democrats lulled them to sleep with their pacifist propaganda. The leftward movement of the workers that began to emerge after the first (1905) Russian revolution not only did not find its reflection in the activities of the Social-Democratic Party, but, on the contrary, aroused opposition in its leading circles. The ruling classes took this circumstance into account.
The international situation was much less favorable. Germany's main ally, Austria-Hungary, was undoubtedly in the process of decay. The Balkan wars proved that the Young Turkish regime failed to renew and strengthen Turkey. Italy's loyalty to the Triple Alliance was more than dubious. As for Germany's enemies, they successfully prepared for war. Russia renewed its army at the expense of French loans and expanded its network of strategic railways. e. France introduced a three-year military service and carried out, albeit with great strain, technical reforms in the army. In England, Lord Holden was laying the foundations for an army that could play a role in a world war. The hope that a partial agreement with Britain on Middle East and African issues would be able to smooth over the acuteness of the contradictions caused by Germany's naval armaments was dubious. Although these contradictions were clearly recognized by public opinion throughout Europe, including Germany, the Kaiser's diplomacy showed a fatal underestimation of the possible role of England in the impending catastrophe; it continued to believe that, firstly, the prestige of Austria-Hungary should not be allowed to diminish, for Germany would have remained isolated then, and that, secondly, in all conflicts with Russia, decisive pressure on them would give the same result as during the 1908-1909 Balkan crisis, that is, it will force them to retreat.
This assessment of the internal and external situation determined the policy of the Germans government during the crisis caused by the assassination of Austrian heir Franz Ferdinand. All documents concerning the outbreak of the imperialist war, published by different governments, make it possible to consider it established that the German government was striving during the pre-war crisis period to provide Austria with the possibility of reprisals against Serbia, which would mean a brilliant victory over Russia and would create the possibility of separating it from France and England. German imperialism hoped that in this way it would be able to localize the war, strengthen its international position and open the way for a redivision of the world. When these hopes were dashed, when Germany was faced with the fact of war with France and Russia, the head of the German government continued to count on the preservation of the English neutrality. This hope shows how devoid of a sense of reality, and therefore doomed, was German diplomacy.
On the other hand, in the field of domestic policy, the calculations of German imperialism were fully justified. Not only did all the bourgeois parties and the entire liberal press help the German government create a conviction among the masses that Germany was attacked by the Entente, but also the Social-Democratic leadership gave the government in advance all guarantees that allowed it not to fear any surprises from the working class. While the SPD's press was still waging a fierce campaign over the war danger and the policy of German imperialism; the War Ministry could send the following secret telegram to the command of the districts on July 31, 1914 (published for the first time only after the war in the documents of the parliamentary investigation commission): “According to reliable information, the Social-Democratic party intends to adopt a position that befits any German under the given circumstances."
The German working class not only wasn't in a belligerent mood, but, on the contrary, watched the growing war danger with the greatest anxiety. The war meetings were overcrowded. The SPD leadership, which, as can be seen from the above document, had voluntarily subordinated their party to German imperialism, tried to lull the vigilance of the working class and the revolutionary elements of the party with shallow pacifist talk. For their part, the leaders of the trade unions could already on August 2 inform at the conference of the boards of the trade unions about negotiations with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, when asked what would be the attitude towards the trade unions in case of war, answered: “We do not intend to harm the trade unions if they do not cause us difficulties. We are glad that we have large organizations of the working class on which the government can rely in its activities." Paul Umbreith, editor of the union's official body, reporting this fact in his brochure Trade Unions and War, calls this answer "satisfactory in every respect." The position occupied by German Social Democracy in the face of war, was indeed "satisfactory in all respects" for German imperialism.
German military strategy and why it failed
Germany entered the imperialist war having the best army in Europe, headed, however, by the emperor, who appreciated only external brilliance in military affairs, and by the chief of the general staff Helmuth Moltke, a man without willpower and without any political outlook, who held office not because of his talents, but because he was the nephew of the organizer of the 1871 victory, Moltke. At the head of the government was an equally ordinary official Bethmann-Hollweg, a person completely unable to navigate the international situation. This composition of the country's leaders reflected the political impotence of the German capitalist class, which, while dominating the country economically, never tried to break the political domination of the Junkers and take power directly into their own hands through open "democratic" struggle.
German imperialism entered the war with the conviction that victory was guaranteed by a "brilliant" strategic plan worked out by Alfred Schlieffen, chief of the general staff in 1891-1905. Schlieffen's plan rested on an assessment of the international position of Germany after the fall of Bismarck and determined by the formation of a Franco-Russian alliance and Britain's attempts to reach an agreement with Germany against France and Russia. Considering the likelihood of a war on two fronts, Schlieffen proceeded, firstly, from the assumption that Russia could only slowly mobilize its military forces, and, secondly, from the fact that a chain of first-class fortresses was created between France and Germany after 1871 representing the greatest difficulty for the advancement of the German armies. From this political and military situation, Schlieffen drew the following strategic conclusions: the solution to the war must be sought in France, having thrown almost all the armies to the west and leaving only an insignificant barrier against Russia. So that the German Army would not be stuck with the French fortresses, Schlieffen intended to deliver the main blow with a strong right flank advance through Belgium and Northern France. In 6-8 weeks the German army was to defeat the French, take Paris and dictate peace to France. After that, the victorious German army had to be transferred against Russia, which would by now be deprived of French aid. Schlieffen did not intend to deliver a decisive blow to Russia, whose autocratic system he wanted to spare. He was sure that France's withdrawal from the war and the first serious defeats would force Tsarism to sue for peace.
Even during the life of Schlieffen (he died in 1913), the premises of his strategic plan changed radically. The Entente arose; not a single serious politician could count on England's neutrality, for a victory for Germany over France and Russia would mean her domination over Europe, and allowing domination of one power on the continent was contrary to the primordial traditions and interests of the British empire. Despite the fact that England entered the war, having an expeditionary force, insignificant on a European scale, her material resources were so great that they allowed her not only to help her allies with money and weapons, but also to create a million-strong army. In addition, England's participation in the war meant the blockade of Germany and the deprivation of its resources of the world market. This made the hope of a quick victory over France groundless. The French command could retreat to the south, sacrificing Paris, wait for Russian mobilization and English help. The defeat of the French army did not resolve the issue. The main enemy was only England, which could not be defeated on land. So, Schlieffen's plan did not at all contain an answer to the central question of the imperialist war — the question of the means and ways of victory over England. The conditions for Russia's participation in the war had also changed. The tremendous work done by Tsarism after the Russo-Japanese War, the rearmament of the army, the strengthening of the railway networks did not allow counting on the slow deployment of Russian military forces. In addition, since the creation of Schlieffen's plan, Russian-German contradictions arose in the Eastern question: the task of Germany, in the event of a war with Russia, was now to force Tsarism, at least, to abandon the policy of conquest towards Turkey, and, therefore, demanded a decisive victory over Russia. Thus, Germany's entire strategic plan was outdated and lacked real foundations. The two months, which, according to Schlieffen's plan, should have led to the victory of Germany, led in fact to the complete collapse of his plan. Here we restrict ourselves to the main points important for the internal history of Germany during the war era. - The German army entered, "according to Schlieffen," with its right flank on the territory of neutral Belgium and, capturing one fortress after another, crushing the Belgian army, an avalanche rushed into Northern France. At the same time, with its left flank, it fought off the French attack on Alsace-Lorraine and launched a counter-offensive. Fear of losing Alsace-Lorraine, at least temporarily, did not allow the German command to enough strengthen its right flank, which fought in Northern France. In addition, the Russian army, earlier than expected, launched its offensive in the East.
The Prussian-German command, trembling for the estates of the Prussian landlords, withdrew a number of divisions from the Western Front and transferred them to East Prussia. As a result, when on 5 September the French counter-offensive began on the Marne, the German army, victorious until that time, tired of continuous marches, was ordered to, after the hardest bloody battles, begin on September 9 to retreat. The German command concealed this defeat from the German people, which was essentially not tactical, but strategic, and which meant the collapse of the plan to defeat the main enemy with one decisive blow. But the German command did not succeed in changing the fact that now the strategy of annihilation was replaced by the strategy of attrition, during which time worked for the Entente and against Germany. On the Western Front, the soldiers of both armies buried themselves in the ground, rising only from time to time from the trenches for desperate attempts to break through the front. General Falkenhayn, who replaced Moltke, attempted to break through the front, starting on 21 February 1916 the bombing of the Verdun Fortress. These battles, which lasted until the beginning of September, cost Germany and the Entente unheard-of casualties, but ended in nothing and were only evidence of incipient despair, for Schlieffen's entire plan was aimed at avoiding hopeless attempts to break through the chain of French fortresses. The bankruptcy of this desperate attempt led to the removal of General Falkenhayn and the transfer on August 26, 1916 of the main command to Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who had previously been the victorious leaders of the war against Russia.
On the Russian front, events also went differently than the German command had expected. The German armies, having repulsed the Russian offensive on East Prussia, forced Russian troops in 1915 to clear the captured Galicia and occupied, for their part, through a victorious offensive, Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. But this was far from enough to compel Tsarism to capitulate. The situation on the Western Front, material assistance from France, England and Japan inspired the hopes of the Russian landowners and capitalists, allowing more and more armies to be thrown into battle to replace the defeated ones. Brusilov's offensive in June 1916 showed that the will of the ruling classes in Russia had not yet been broken. But the picture of the brilliant advancement of German troops in the East, the defeat of Romania a month after its entry into the war, the participation of Turkey and Bulgaria on the side of the central powers — all these created a favorable situation for Germany in the Eastern Front by early 1917.
The dictatorship of Ludendorff and Hindenburg and their external and internal policies
Hindenburg, who took over as chief of staff, and Ludendorff, who was appointed to the specially created post of first quartermaster, were vested with dictatorial powers. But the summoned saviors could not find the means to change the situation on the Western Front. They began with an act that deprived Germany of the opportunity to knock the Russian link out of the chain that gripped it. The proclamation of Poland's independence (November 5, 1916) made it difficult for any attempt to achieve a separate peace with Russia. In the west, convinced of the impossibility of breaking through the front, Hindenburg and Ludendorff changed the direction of the attack. Schlieffen's plan was based on the premise that the main enemy was France. Not having achieved victory over her and feeling the growing chilling influence of the English every day. the blockade, realizing the enormous importance of England as the organizer of the struggle on the Western Front, the new command decided to try to bring England to her knees. It achieved the declaration of a merciless submarine war on February 1, 1917. It renounced any restrictions whatsoever in relation to neutral ships — restrictions, which it assumed, under pressure from America, would force Britain to negotiate peace with the German government. But this plan was not a simple increase in the element of risk inherent in any military plan, but a pure military adventure, since it was technically impracticable. The German Admiralty, creating a fleet for large conquest politics, built before the war, first of all, a linear fleet. It disdained the construction of submarines and entered the war with 26 submarines. At the time of the declaration of a merciless submarine war, Germany had only 72 submarines, a significant part of which were under repair. With several dozen submarines, it was impossible to blockade England, although it could cause significant damage to her. But the most important thing was that the blow directed against England hit not only her, but also the United States of North America, the world's greatest power, whose role had grown enormously since the beginning of the imperialist war, economically, politically and militarily. The German blockade of England meant for America the danger of losing both the money it had lent to the Entente and the capital invested in industries created to serve the war. All this spoke for that the declaration of a merciless submarine war on England is tantamount to war with America. The war with America, the richest country in the world, the country with the most developed industry, promised the prospect of the appearance of new armies of millions on the Western Front. The German command did not understand either the inevitability of a war with America, as the consequences of a merciless submarine war, or the decisive importance of the appearance of a new American army for the defeat of Germany in the Western front. If the retreat on the Marne ruled out the possibility of a German victory, then the entry of the United States of North America in April 1917 in the war ruled out the possibility of ending the imperialist war by a compromise. The defeat of Germany was a foregone conclusion. Predictions that the Americans could “neither swim nor fly” across the Atlantic Ocean and therefore would not come turned out to be an empty phrase. A year after America's declaration of war, 300 thousands of fresh American soldiers fought on the Western Front, and a few months later there were already about a million. There was still one faint hope of delivering a blow to France that would incline her towards peace — the hope of eliminating the Eastern Front. The Russian Revolution, which began almost simultaneously with America's entry into the war, opened up prospects in this direction. But the class character of the dictatorship of Hindenburg and Ludendorff did not allow them to grasp this straw either. Any war, placing a question mark on the position of the ruling class, creates the need for the concentration of power, creates dictatorial tendencies in it. These tendencies, directed against the interests of the oppressed classes — for only at their expense can a war be waged — were noticed in all the belligerent countries. The only difference was that, depending on the degree of democratic development of the country, the apparatus of power was in the hands of one or another group of the capitalist class. In England and France, where liberalism and petty-bourgeois radicalism were the main instruments of ideological influence on the workers and petty-bourgeois masses, the war put petty-bourgeois elements at the head of the dictatorship, like Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Briand, who were most capable of covering up the class essence of the dictatorship. In Germany, in a semi-parliamentary country where the power of the bureaucracy and the military was strong, this cover was not so necessary; it was enough to have the support of the parties of the petty bourgeoisie and the working class, and power could remain in the hands of representatives of the strata that dominated before that time. These layers were big business and Junkers, the representatives of the interests of which were, respectively, civil bureaucracy and military clique. The evolution of the political system in Germany up to its defeat took place within the framework of the struggle for an advantage between the civil bureaucracy and the military. Until the departure of Bethmann-Hollweg, on July 14, 1917, local executive power was concentrated in the hands of the commanders of the districts, but they were directed by the central bureaucracy with Bethmann Hollweg at the head, who fought behind the scenes with a weak and unauthorized main command. From August 1916, with the transfer of the main command into the hands of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who enjoyed tremendous prestige in the country, from the moment of a sharp exacerbation of the general crisis and the emergence of class movements against war, military power begins to gradually subjugate the emperor and the bureaucracy. Michaelis' chancellorship (from July 14 to November 1, 1917), as well as Hertling's (from November 1, 1917 to September 30, 1918), were only a fig leaf to cover the military dictatorship.
The war required a huge mass of supplies, clothing and food. Since the means of production were in the hands of the capitalists, landlords and Junkers, and since the competition on the world market was completely excluded thanks to the blockade, the growth in demand caused a feverish conjuncture and created fabulous profits. The government bought the food it needed at any price. Despite the fact that millions of workers were at the front, all the old enterprises expanded, switching over to military production, new enterprises arose, and there was a frenzied concentration of industry; but since it was not able to meet the needs of the army, then medium and small enterprises were created, working for the defense. Thus, a part of the well-to-do petty bourgeoisie turned out to be interested in continuing the war. From the very beginning of the war, the government was forced to regulate the food market by setting prices for rural households' products and setting mandatory food supply standards for government agencies. Although the state paid very high prices, the landlords and Junkers sold a significant part of their production at speculative prices on the side, creating an internal blockade of the poorest strata of the population, planted on government rations, which became scarce every month. Already at the end of 1914, the leader of the Center, Erzberger, said that a new layer of military millionaires had formed. The dividends of military enterprises already in the first years of the war exceeded fixed capital. Thanks to the war, not only a new layer of bourgeois speculators appeared, but, in the person of Stinnes, defending those meager occupational safety gains that they had achieved through fifty years of class struggle. As early as August 1914, the trade unions abandoned strikes and used all their strength to keep the workers from fighting. The twelve-hour working day, the growing exploitation of nervous energy — all this fell upon the working class, in whose ranks the place of adult workers called up to the front was taken by women and adolescents. The ruling classes refused to bear the costs of the war, even in the form of tax increases, which were ultimately shifted onto the shoulders of the masses. German financial policy during the war was based on the assumption that the enemy would pay all the costs of the war. The war was financed by the issuance of new money, which was withdrawn from circulation through war loans. Five million people bought these loans.
While the entire brunt of the war fell on the masses, it did not even occur to the ruling classes to give them political rights. The entire political life of the country was in the grip of martial law, censorship and police. Behind the scenes, the civil bureaucracy lulled the Social-Democrats' promissory notes for the future. Observing the growing tension in the country, it perhaps realized that it was impossible to leave everything as before, but it did not dare to put pressure on the capitalists and landlords. Only the Russian Revolution forced it to speak out loud about reforms. At the first information about the victory of the February Revolution in Russia, received by the government, but not yet published, Bethmann-Hollweg ran to the sitting Prussian Diet and, with excitement noted by the then newspaper reports, made a speech about the need for electoral reform in Prussia. The Parliament appointed a commission to revise the constitution. But the Junkers and big capitalists, as well as the military command, drew the opposite conclusions from the growing crisis, namely, that no concessions should be made.
Germany's foreign policy goals during the imperialist war could, of course, only be imperialist. At the beginning of the war, in order to deceive the masses, a statement was made about the purely defensive nature of the war on the German side. But soon then, in the press, in literature, and at meetings of ruling parties, a discussion began about Germany's tasks in the event of a victory. This discussion indicated a lack of accounting for martial law, as it developed from the end of September 1914, about the inability or unwillingness of the ruling parties to understand that the German strategy of defeating the enemy with one blow ended in failure. Indeed, admitting defeat at the very beginning of the war would have been tantamount to admitting the bankruptcy of not only the German government, but also of all ruling parties that support German imperialism. Added to this were illusions caused by the seizure of vast territories in the east and the transition of Bulgaria and Turkey to the side of Germany. Finally, the enormous military profits further strengthened the predatory aspirations of the German capitalists, in which a peace program began to take shape, which was a mixture of the most fantastic programs that had ever been put forward by different currents of German imperialism. The extent to which the fantasy of the German ruling class was played out is best seen from the fact that the educated, well-versed in international relations, democratic imperialist Friedrich May could put forward, with the approval of bourgeois public opinion, the program of "Central Europe" dominating economically from Hamburg to Baghdad, the prerequisite for which was the victory over Russia and England at the same time.
The annexationist aspirations of the large and small capitalists found their expression in a memorandum that was handed over on May 20, 1915 by several of the leading economic organizations (the Central Union of German Industrialists, the Union of Industrialists, the Imperial German Union of the Middle Bourgeoisie, the Union of Farmers, the Peasant Union, etc.). This program, put forward by the heavy and processing industry, liberal and Christian peasant unions and the organization of artisans, demanded the inclusion of Belgium in the economic system of Germany, with the transfer of the main Belgian enterprises to German hands, the transfer of the iron-mining regions of Longwy and Brieux to Germany, the transfer of the western German border to the Moselle, with the inclusion of the fortresses of Verdun and Belfort, and the transfer of the sea coast to France to Germany as far as the mouth of the Somme to secure Germany's maritime position in relation to England. As for Russia, the representatives of German capitalism demanded the annexation of the Ostsee provinces and Lithuania, motivating this demand by the fact that, in view of the expected increase in Germany and industrial regions in the west, agricultural regions must be increased in the east in order to maintain equilibrium in the economic structure of Germany. As far as Poland was concerned, German imperialism could not finally decide during the entire war in what form it was necessary to "liberate" its Russian part. On this issue, a struggle was going on all the time between various cliques of German and Austro-Hungarian imperialists, who, although they were not able to defend even their own territories without the Germans, could not, however, come to terms with Germany's exorbitant appetites. The German government either outlined the division of Russian Poland between Austria and Germany, then inclined to the so-called Austro-Polish decision, according to which Russian Poland was to be united with Galicia, under Austrian dominion, for which Germany agreed to be content with "only" the coal regions of Russian Poland. The head of government, Bethmann-Hollweg, publicly repeated phrases about the defensive nature of the war, adding, however, that, of course, such a war could not end in such a way that not a single border stone was moved. In reality, Bethmann Hollweg was of the opinion that England could not be defeated, that Belgium and the annexations of the French regions would have to be abandoned. He hoped that this program would be easiest to carry out not only militarily, but also in the internal political sense, for the Social-Democrats, it will be possible to take the bait of "liberation from Tsarism" for the Western regions of Russia. Heavy industry and Junkers considered this program of Bethmann-Hollweg a capitulation and repeated Blucher's words about the feathers of diplomats, which ruin the results obtained by the soldiers' saber. Because of this program, as well as because of the plan of a new internal political orientation that existed only on paper, there was a continuous struggle between the conservative and national liberal parties, representing agrarian and industrial capital, and Bethmann-Hollweg, who had weak support from the left-liberal press, merchant capital and the circles of Ballin, director of the Hamburg-American Steamship Line, who perfectly understood the impossibility of victory over England. The military command, represented by Ludendorff and Hindenburg, stood for the program set out in the memorandum of the six economic organizations.
The entry of the United States of North America into the war and the beginning of the Russian Revolution were two events, one of which made the military position of Germany almost hopeless, and the other opened up the prospect of internal revolutionary crisis, pushed, finally, the majority of the Reichstag to try, at least in words, to abandon the annexationist program and to consolidate this refusal on behalf of the government. The initiator of this turn was the leader of the left wing of the Catholic Center, Matthias Erzberger, who until that time himself belonged to the most violent annexationists. A capable mass agitator, associated with the Christian trade unions and the South German petty bourgeoisie, he saw perfectly the growing fatigue of the workers and petty bourgeois masses. Thanks to his connections with the Catholic clergy and court circles in Austria, he was aware of the impending danger of the Danube monarchy falling away from the coalition. On June 6, 1917, he made a speech in the parliamentary commission, in which, stating the collapse of submarine war and the impossibility of military victory, demanded the adoption by the Reichstag of a resolution securing the withdrawal of Germany from annexations and indemnities. Before this resolution was adopted, Bethmann-Hollweg fell (July 14, 1917), and the Pomeranian Junker Michaelis was appointed to the post of Reich Chancellor. Michaelis decided to wriggle out of the situation created by the presence in parliament of the majority for the "peace resolution" (212 votes against 126), by declaring his agreement with the resolution in parliament, he made a reservation: "as I understand it." The Social-Democrats, the Center and the Progressives pretended to consider the Reichstag's resolution a guarantee of the government's refusal of all annexations and indemnities, and celebrated their "victory" over the annexationists and the military command.
A test of the sincerity of the intentions of the German government was the negotiations with the victorious October Revolution. The military weakness of the Russian Revolution, which inherited from the Tsar and Kerensky a crumbling, scattered army and a famine-ridden country, gave the German government the opportunity to show what kind of peace it wants. In the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, it presented to the Soviet government a program that included the annexation of territories up to the Berezina and Dvina, the capture of the approaches to Petrograd (the capture of the Dago and Ezel Islands) and the dismemberment of Russia by separating Ukraine and the Caucasus from it. After starting an offensive, the German government imposed the Brest-Litovsk Peace on March 3, 1918 on Soviet Russia. German imperialism hoped that by transferring troops from the Eastern Front to the Western, it would be able to impose its will on the Entente at the last moment. But the annexationist policy towards Russia and the gamble in Ukraine forced German imperialism to leave about a million soldiers in the east, which finally predetermined the complete military collapse of Germany in the six months that followed.
The defeat of the German armies and the "democratic era" of Max Baden was to come about soon. When, during the Brest negotiations, the Soviet delegation sought to ban the transfer of troops from the Eastern Front to the Western, German diplomats smiled meaningfully. These transfers were already in full swing, for at this time preparations were underway for the last offensive, which was to decide the outcome of the war before the American troops had time to arrive. This offensive began on March 21, 1918 and continued until July 18. Five times the German troops left the trenches after the preparatory hurricane fire of artillery and, covering the fields pitted with grenades with their corpses, tried to break through the Franco-British lines. The enemy retreated under the furious blows of the German troops, but the front could not break through due to the fatal lack of forces. On July 18, the enemy launched a counteroffensive.
On June 24, Secretary of State Kuhlmann, speaking in the Reichstag, said that the knot of war cannot be cut with a sword and that a compromise must be sought. At the request of Ludendorff, Kühlmann was immediately driven out and replaced by Rear Admiral Paul von Hintze, the hero of the Pan-Germanists even before the war. Hintze, accepting the briefcase, asked Ludendorff in private whether the general really believed in victory. Ludendorff did not hesitate to answer in the affirmative. - As soon as the counterattack of the Entente troops began, it became clear that the Allies, thanks to the help of America, which monthly threw approximately 300 thousand soldiers, had a decisive advantage in "manpower". Added to this was the overwhelming technical superiority of the Allies, who were marching to victory on waves of oil, as Lord Curzon later put it, having in mind its importance in the massive transport of troops by road. The masses of the Entente tanks could only be countered by a small number of German tanks. This numerical and technical superiority killed the belief in victory in the German soldiers, and the retreating troops shouted to the new units thrown into the offensive: "strikebreakers!" On August 8, after the decimation of the German divisions east of Amiens, the loss that was the beginning of the military defeat, Ludendorff realized that the war was lost, and began, together with Hindenburg, to press the government to prepare peace negotiations through the mediation of Holland. The situation was still hidden from the masses, but on September 26 Bulgaria capitulated, which opened the way for the enemy to Austria and through Austria to the southern borders of Germany. On 27 September the Austrian emperor notified Wilhelm by letter that he would appeal within 24 hours to the allies with a request for separate peace negotiations. On 29 September Ludendorff and Hindenburg declared to the Kaiser the need to immediately appeal to the allies with a proposal for an armistice and peace. In the parliamentary commission, Secretary of State von Hintze said that Bulgaria's surrender, allowing the Entente to occupy Romania, makes the continuation of the war technically impossible, because without the supply of gasoline from Romania it will no longer be possible to use cars and the air fleet. On 1 October Hindenburg and Ludendorff, having informed the Foreign Office that the army was not in a position to wait more than 48 hours for an armistice proposal, demanded urgent steps in this direction. At the same time, they insisted on the immediate formation of a new, democratic government, in relation to which the Entente could be more accommodating. Crown Prince Max of Baden was invited to carry out the "democracy" in such an urgent manner.
Arriving in Berlin, the Prince of Baden learned that the chief of command requires him to immediately appeal to the Entente with a request for an armistice. Therefore, on the night of 3 to 4 October, Prince Max of Baden sent on behalf of the German government a note to the President of the United States, taking Wilson's 14 points as a basis for peace negotiations, asked the latter to take the cause of peace into his own hands. In an equally haste manner, a "democratic government" was appointed, which included: Social-Democrats Scheidemann and Bauer and from the Center party - Erzberger and Gröber. This government, which consisted of Social-Democrats, representatives of the Center party and the Progressives, which had the famous Anglophile Solf as foreign minister and was headed by a democrat of princely descent, was supposed to represent new Germany and instill confidence in the Entente. The Entente, of course, was not very scrupulous about democracy, and the fact that all the newly minted pacifists were until very recently the loyal servants of German imperialism, would not have prevented it from immediately accepting the offer of an armistice, if its calculations did not include achieving the complete defeat of the German army and its surrender. It achieved this goal, putting forward, on the one hand, the question of the abdication of the Kaiser and continuing, on the other, the offensive for another whole month.
On a note of the Prince of Baden to Wilson, the government responded with an inquiry, on whose behalf the government of the Prince of Baden spoke. The German government replied that it represents the will of the majority of the Reichstag and the German people. In response to this statement, Wilson demanded an immediate cessation of the destruction committed by the German troops during their retreat, an end to the merciless submarine war, adding to this that peace conditions would depend on the nature of the new German government and those guarantees that it could give against the arbitrariness of the irresponsible elements prevailing before that time. It was clear that Wilson was thus preparing the question of the Kaiser's abdication. In response, in the note of 20 October the German government refused to torpedo passenger ships and promised to punish those responsible for the destruction in the cleared areas; as for the nature of the guarantees given by the government, it stated that a law was being prepared establishing the government's responsibility to parliament. Despite all these evasions, Wilson, in the third note of October 23, openly stated that the Entente could not have the slightest confidence in those persons who had until that time been the masters of Germany, and that if the Allies had to deal with them, then they will refuse to negotiate and demand the complete surrender of Germany. Ludendorff insisted on rejecting these claims of the Entente to intervene in the interior affairs of Germany, demanded the withdrawal of troops to the borders of Germany and resistance with arms in hand: since there is no choice, it is necessary to fight for several more months to force the Entente to conduct peace negotiations on conditions acceptable to the country. The government rejected Ludendorff's demands, for it was obvious that, after he publicly acknowledged the hopelessness of the situation and asked for an armistice, the army was no longer combat-ready. The struggle would be hopeless, even if there were no famine in the country, if the disappearance of fuel was not imminent and there was no threat of an appearance of Entente troops on the Bavarian border. On October 26 Ludendorff sen his resignation. But neither the Prince of Baden, nor the liberal members of the government dared to demand that the emperor abdicate, although it was on the lips of all Germany. Scheidemann, who knew the mood of the working masses, demanded this renunciation in the name of saving not only the country, but also the dynasty. But the Baden heir, seconded to the Democrats, refused to push the Kaiser down this path, and Ebert and the majority of the parliamentary Social-Democratic Party factions forbade Scheidemann to leave the government, fearing that breaking the coalition with the liberal parties would open the gates of the revolution, about which Ebert, in his conversation with the Prince of Baden, declared that he "hated it more than the plague." Democracy, created by order of Ludendorff and the Kaiser, was unable to resolve the issue of peace and the existence of a monarchy. Its solution was given by the offensive of Foch and the action of the masses of the workers who overturned the dam erected by the Social-Democratic Party.
The November 1918 Revolution
In his memoirs, Scheidemann admits that the vast majority of the working class was against the war. After its start, the Social-Democratic leadership managed to convince some of the workers of the need for full support of the German government in its task of "protecting" the country. There is no doubt that in part of the working class, among its aristocracy, it was possible to create a social-imperialist trend. But the growth of economic devastation and hunger, the oppression of militarism and the police, shameless annexationist propaganda caused already in 1915 considerable discontent among the working masses of the country, which had been steadily growing ever since. The deepest fermentation gripped all the growing circles of the workers and petty-bourgeois masses, manifesting itself especially clearly in the navy. Sailors, outraged by the difference between their starvation rations and the free laughter of the commanding staff, irritated by the annexationist agitation of the officers, created an organization that distributed publications in the fleet, founded in April 1917 the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD). This agitation led in June 1917 on a number of ships to protests against the meager food received by the sailors, to which the government responded by shooting the sailors of the Reichpitsch and Kebes and sentencing others to 180 years of hard labor and 180 years in prison. The movement was suppressed, but the mood of the sailors, of course, did not improve. The next stage of the struggle was caused by the deterioration of food supplies, the loss of food, the victory of the October Revolution and the imperialist policy of the government, which was openly revealed during the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. The strike, which broke out in all industrial centers of Austria on January 14, 1918, spread to Berlin, where on January 28, 500 thousand workers went on strike. All the workers' centers of Germany followed Berlin. Now not only the demands for bread, but also the demands for peace and democracy were put forward. Although in this strike the leadership was still in the hands of the Scheidemannists and the Independents, the Spartacists had already gained significant influence on the masses. In addition, in this strike, represented by the organization of the so-called revolutionary elders, a group of workers - left-wing independents crystallized, which subsequently played a significant role in the November events. Thanks to the treacherous policy of the Social-Democrats and government repression, the strike was broken, but when at the end of October a picture of a hopeless martial law and the complete bankruptcy of the so-called democratic government (that did not dare to ask the Kaiser to resign) emerged, it became clear to everyone that revolution was imminent.
In a number of places, groups of revolutionary workers — Spartacists and left-wing independents — began to take measures to organize an uprising. The triumphal entry of Karl Liebknecht into Berlin on 21 October after his release from prison, showed how strong the flow of the revolution was. Hundreds of thousands of workers honored the fighter for peace and socialism, carrying him on their shoulders. The revolutionary Berlin workers decided to march on November 11th. But, as is usually the case with the poor organization of revolutionaries, spontaneous events prevented their actions. On October 28, when the Social-Democrats also argued with the Prince of Baden whether it was possible to eliminate the Kaiser without unnecessary courtesies, the naval command decided to bring the ships of the line to the open sea for a battle, which, in their opinion, was supposed to alleviate the position of the land army. This decision taken by the command without the knowledge of the government shows what was the price of democracy imposed from above. The sailors, who perfectly understood all the adventurism of this plan, refused to obey. On 30 October, 600 sailors were arrested. In response to this, demonstrations began by sailors and workers of the city of Kiel, who captured Kiel and the warships on November 4. On November 5, sailors and workers captured Lubeck, Hamburg and Bremen. The movement spread to Hanover, Leipzig and Stuttgart. On November 8, workers and soldiers seized power in Munich and drove out the king. Soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies began to be organized everywhere. Information about these events spread to Berlin, speaking of a mass action of sailors capturing the warships and weapons arsenals in Kiel on November 4. On November 5, sailors and workers captured Lubeck, Hamburg and Bremen. The movement spread to Hanover, Leipzig and Stuttgart.
While the masses were preparing for a revolution, the Social-Democrats, who did not dare to deliver an ultimatum to the Kaiser, decided to achieve the condescension of the Entente in a different way. They advised the government of the Prince of Baden to attack the Soviet embassy in Berlin and try to find there evidence of its propaganda activities in Germany, or to open the boxes with the Soviet diplomatic mail. Foreign Minister Solf chose this last path, but when the desired evidence was not found in the Soviet mail, Spartacist appeals, allegedly printed in Moscow, were planted into it, as a result of which the Soviet mission was expelled from Berlin. So the Entente was convinced of the readiness of democratic Germany to a deal at the expense of Soviet Russia. But the Entente demanded the abdication of the Kaiser. Meanwhile, the emperor all this time could not make up his mind to take any step. The generals summoned by him to familiarize themselves with the martial law declared that the army under his leadership would not be able to retreat in order and that his presence in the army would lead to civil war. The advice given to him by one of the zealous generals to perish on the battlefield, the Kaiser, according to Scheidemann's witty remark, found too dangerous for his life. He rushed about with the idea of giving up the crown of the German emperor, without, however, giving up the Prussian crown. On 7 November the Social-Democrats demanded an ultimatum, in order to avoid revolution: the abdication of the emperor, promising, under this condition, through the lips of Ebert to the prince of Baden, the salvation of the dynasty. On the evening of the 8th, the leaders of the SPD organizations informed the party's board that if it did not take power into its own hands, then on the morning of the 9th the masses would take to the streets against its will. Since the Kaiser's abdication had not yet followed on the morning of the 9th, then Scheidemann left the government. While the Prince of Baden tried in vain to get a telephone answer from the Kaiser, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets. One barracks after another joined them. The Prince of Baden, wishing to preserve the fiction of legal continuity, handed over power to Ebert, although, according to the old constitution, the chancellor was appointed by the emperor alone, and according to the new one, with the consent of parliament. At this time, the Social-Democratic representatives brought the message about the proclamation of Soviet power by Karl Liebknecht from the balcony of the imperial palace. Scheidemann understood that if the Social-Democrats continued to defend the dynasty, then the revolutionary wave will roll over their heads. Therefore, he, for his part, proclaimed a republic, which caused a stormy protest from Ebert, who, as can be seen from a series of revelations, had swore before the Prince of Baden, to save the dynasty in the person of the Kaiser's grandson. At the same time Scheidemann promised the masses the formation of a government of all socialist parties. Liebknecht refused, first conditionally, and then unconditionally, to join this government. The Independents made it a condition of their entry into it that power be in the hands of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. But at the same time they expressed their consent to the participation of "bourgeois" ministers in this government as specialists. Desiring to gain time, the Social-Democrats accepted the conditions of the Independents, although at first they spoke out in principle against the government's dependence on the Soviets. So, a government was created in which the upper floor was occupied by Social-Democrats of both factions: Ebert, Haase, Scheidemann, Landsberg, Dietmann, Barthes, and the lower floor by the "business" ministers, in whose hands were the solution of such basic issues as food, finance, demobilization and peace negotiations. The "purely socialist" government spoke to the German people with an appeal on November 12, in which it proclaimed the abolition of martial law, freedom of coalitions and assembly, religious freedom, political amnesty, restoration of labor protection, promised an 8-hour working day, that "the government guarantees the continuation of orderly production and the protection of private property from abuse by individuals." At the same time, Ebert declared in the press that the revolution was over. Having received information about the victory of the revolution in Berlin, the Kaiser fled to Holland, from where on November 28 he wrote a letter to the republican government, in which he expressed his firm belief that after his abdication from the throne, the government, in accordance with the promises given, would hand over all the property of the royal family. - Following Wilhelm, all two dozen German kings and sovereign princes declared their abdication, reprimanding themselves only the wealth accumulated over the centuries by honest monarchist labor. Having received a passport from Scheidemann, Ludendorff emigrated to Sweden, where he began compiling his memoirs, in which he proved that he almost won the war.
At this time the delegation, headed by Erzberger, was received by Marshal Foch, who dictated to them the terms of the armistice for acceptance, and not for discussion. Foch demanded the evacuation of Alsace-Lorraine and all adjacent areas, the issuance of 5 tons of heavy and field guns, 25 tons of machine guns, 1,700 airplanes, 5 tons of locomotives, 5 tons of cars, 150 tons of wagons, all submarines, 8 light cruisers, 10 dreadnoughts, 6 cruisers, 50 fighters, the return of all prisoners (while German prisoners of war must remain in captivity), as well as the issuance of gold received from Russia and gold captured in Belgium. At the same time Foch informed the German delegation that the blockade remained in force until the signing of peace by Germany. The German delegation, who knew that Foch had prepared everything for a new offensive, signed on the morning of November 11 these conditions on the surrender of Germany at the mercy of the victors. In his speech on the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, Scheidemann said that the German Social-Democrats do not want to be forced to sign the peace in such conditions as the Russian Bolsheviks; therefore they are against the revolution, against strikes and agitation in the army, so as not to disintegrate it the way the Bolsheviks disintegrated the Russian Army. The German Social Democrats really did not undermine the power of the capitalists with strikes and revolutionary struggle. Having received power from the hands of the Prince of Baden after the military defeat of Germany, they promised to preserve it for the German capitalists and landowners and protect it from the attacks of the German workers, who rose on November 9. This promise the Social-Democrats kept. But their other promise, the promise not to conclude peace on such bad terms for Germany as the Bolsheviks were forced to accept for Russia a year earlier in Brest-Litovsk, they kept in the sense that they concluded it on terms many times worse. The terms of the armistice dictated by Foch predetermined the Versailles surrender of Germany.
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II.
From the liquidation of the November Revolution to the stabilization of German capitalism (1919-1924).
Restoration of bourgeois democracy and the conclusion of peace with the Entente.
The government of people's representatives set itself the main task of bringing the country to the Constituent Assembly and the conclusion of peace with the Entente. On the first issue between independent Social-Democrats and the Scheidemannites there were well-known disagreements about the timing of convening the Constituent Assembly. As for peace with the Entente, at this point both sides hoped partly for the help of Wilson, partly for the assistance of England, which would oppose the aggressive tendencies of French imperialism. Based on this, the independents, led by Haase, spoke out against the restoration of diplomatic relations with the RSFSR and refused to accept the train with bread sent by the Soviet government to the starving Berlin workers and which was a symbol of international proletarian solidarity. Both the Scheidemannites and the Independents did everything on their part to turn the state life of Germany back onto the old rails. For this purpose, it was necessary, firstly, to limit the intervention of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in the government of the state and, secondly, to disarm the proletariat. This last task required the return of the old army from the front in battle order so that from it the core of a new armed force could subsequently crystallize, which could be directed against the working class. The path to this led through a deal with the Kaiser’s generals (Hindenburg-Groener), which was made on behalf of the Scheidemannites by Friedrich Ebert. The purpose of this deal, as General Groener later showed at the trial against the Munich magazine “Süddeutsche Monatshefte”, which accused the Social Democratic Party of having destroyed the Kaiser’s army, was to survive the independents from the provisional government and ensure the convening Constituent Assembly. A plan was drawn up for the entry of troops into Berlin, and it was determined which divisions and on what days should disarm certain areas of Berlin.
But the implementation of the deal concluded by Ebert with General Groener required two conditions: ensuring its support from the official bodies created by the revolution, and the defeat of the left-wing part of the working class, which could oppose this deal. Compliance with the first of these conditions was, in essence, guaranteed by the resolutions adopted at the 1st All-German Congress of Soviets of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies, which met in Berlin on December 16, 1918. The Scheidemannites had an absolute majority at it. In addition, they enjoyed the support of bourgeois elements elected by the soldiers, by the masses. The mood of the Social Democratic working masses was determined, mainly, by the fact that after the collapse of the hated Kaiser’s regime, they thought only about how to get rid of the blockade, which had not yet been lifted by the Entente, and achieve peace. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the leaders of the Social Democrats convinced them, means a civil war, and a civil war is tantamount to the intervention of the Entente, which will bring the defeat of Germany to the end. The leaders of the independent Social-Democrats did not oppose this agitation with any consistent political line. They talked about “deepening” the revolution, they wanted to delay the convening of the Constituent Assembly, but they were opponents of the proletarian dictatorship and most of all they were afraid of a break with the Entente. This policy of theirs sharply contradicted the mood of the metropolitan working masses, who formally followed independent socialism. But these masses do not have any serious independent organizations and lacking leadership were unable to prevent the All-German Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies from speaking out (December 19, 1918) in favor of convening a Constituent Assembly. The Communist Party, whose founding congress took place at the end of December 1918, at that time represented only a political movement that was still taking shape, and not a mass proletarian organization capable of interfering with the plans of the Social Democratic Party.
Having thus secured the support of the leading bodies created by the revolution, Ebert and other leaders of the Social Democratic Party decided to provoke the Berlin workers into an armed uprising before they had time to organize themselves. To this end, they removed the Berlin police president, the independent Eichhorn, who began arming the revolutionary Berlin workers. The Berlin proletariat responded to this act with grandiose demonstrations and the seizure of a number of government buildings and the editorial office of the Social Democratic Party, "Vorwaerts". The armed forces that the government of Scheidemann and Ebert could count on at this time were insignificant. The numerical superiority on the side of the revolutionary forces in Berlin was undeniable; but these forces were not organized and did not have a definite political program. The newly organized Communist Party did not even have its own faction in the Soviet. Its regional organizations were just being created in Berlin. Its Soldiers' Union included only a few hundred people. The vast majority of revolutionary-minded workers in Berlin formally belonged to the Independent Social Democratic Party, whose leaders were against the civil war. The so-called organization created in 1918 Revolutionary Elders (Revolutionäre Obleute), led by Ledebour, Deimig and Richard Mueller, was an apex organization that covered only part of the metalworkers. The situation was even worse with the political orientation of the revolutionary masses. The most mature part of them—the Communist Party—could not decide to set itself the goal of conquering power, because it knew that it did not yet have the majority of the working class on its side. The Central Committee of the Communist Party, calling on the workers to demonstrate against the removal of Eichhorn, did not think of going beyond the limits of the demonstration. But at a meeting of the revolutionary elders, without the knowledge of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a decision was made to eliminate the government of Scheidemann and Ebert and create a revolutionary government consisting of Liebknecht, Ledebour and Schultz. Having made this decision, the organization of revolutionary elders did not draw any practical conclusions from it, and did not actually try to seize power in Berlin, which, given the balance of forces, was technically quite possible. This allowed Ebert and General Groener to carry out their plan to the end.
On December 23, government troops, under the leadership of General Leki, carried out an attack on the revolutionary naval division stationed in Berlin. On December 29, the Independents, in protest against this shelling, left the government. Then the Social Democratic government appointed as War Commissar and commander-in-chief the Social-Democrat Noske, who already in Kiel showed great talent for disarmament of the revolution. Noske put together a detachment of several thousand former soldiers, bourgeois students and Kaiser officers 25 km from Berlin. Having entered Berlin at their head, he drove the workers out of the buildings they occupied, shot those who surrendered and on January 15 arrested Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who were killed that night by officers of the headquarters of the Cavalry Jaeger Division. This is how the so-called first uprising of the Spartacists ended, which in reality was not an uprising organized by the Spartacus Union, but a spontaneous grandiose demonstration of the revolutionary Berlin workers. The disarmament of workers began throughout the city, and under the protection of armored vehicles on January 19 elections were held to the Constituent Assembly, which gave the Scheidemannites, the murderers of the proletarian leaders, 11.5 million votes. While the Constituent Assembly was meeting in Weimar, the new military force organized by Noske carried out the “calmification” of the main centers of the labor movement throughout the country, occupying in turn Bremen, the Ruhr Basin, Leipzig, and central Germany, crushing revolutionary organizations, disarming and shooting revolutionary workers and dispersing the Soviets. More than 20 thousand proletarians became victims of this punitive expedition by Noske, which made possible the creation of a coalition government in Weimar. The elections to the Constituent Assembly did not give the Social-Democrats absolute majority. Against 11.5 million Scheidemannites and more than 2 million Independent Social-Democrats. there were 5.5 million votes cast for the so-called democratic party, almost 6 million for the Center, approximately 1.5 million for the right-liberal German People's Party and 3 million for the German National Party (formerly conservatives). The government, headed by Scheidemann and with Noske as Minister of War, also included representatives of the Democratic Party and the Center Party. The Constituent Assembly elected the President of the republic on February 11, Ebert. The Entente immediately came to the aid of the new government, called upon to become a bulwark of order, by concluding an agreement with it, according to which, even before the blockade was lifted (it was lifted only on 12 July 1919, after the signing of the Versailles Treaty), Germany was allowed the import of a significant amount of food, which achieved a certain pacification of the more backward layers of the proletariat.
But the defeat of the revolutionary proletariat and the restoration of bourgeois law and order were not able to prevent the development of the labor movement. The transition of industry from military production to peaceful production and the temporary unemployment created by this, as well as the high cost of living caused by the gradual elimination of military regulation of the food market and the lack of imports from abroad, increased ferment among the working masses and led to two general strikes in the Ruhr basin (in March and April 1919), to a general strike in central Germany (March 1919) and to a new armed struggle in Berlin (March 1919). All these strikes were not purely economic in nature. The main slogan of the broad working masses was the demand for the socialization of factories and mines. This slogan was not introduced from outside, but came from the depths of the proletariat itself, which rebelled against the foundations of bourgeois rule - against private ownership of the means of production. To deceive the masses, the Social Democratic Party created a commission on socialization, in which Kautsky and Hilferding, together with bourgeois scientists, were engaged in solving the problem of how to transfer the means of production from the hands of trusts and cartels to the hands of society without causing at the same time resistance from the bourgeoisie. In broadcast posters, the commission notified workers that the cause of “socialization” was moving forward, and promised a law on factory committees, which would ensure the proletariat’s participation in the management of production. The culmination of the revolutionary ferment of the German proletariat during this period was the Munich uprising. Relying on the Munich workers and radical intelligentsia, the Independent Eisner seized power in November 1918 and shared it with the majority Social Democrats. On 21 February 1919, at the opening of the Bavarian Parliament, Eisner was assassinated by Count Arco. This intensified the unrest among the masses of workers and soldiers, which ended with the proclamation of the Bavarian Soviet Republic by Ιndependent Social-Democrats on April 7. led by Toller. The Communist Party, led by Levine, pointed out before the proclamation of the Soviet republic that this step was premature and unprepared. But after the creation of Soviet power, it made every effort to prevent this first proletarian power in Germany from dying ingloriously. The Communist Party tried to hold out until the moment when, perhaps, the proletarian coup in Vienna would create a connection with the victorious Soviet power in Hungary or until the revolution takes the next step forward in central or northern Germany. But the forces were unequal. On May 1, the Soviet Republic in Munich fell and the most merciless white terror began. The German bourgeoisie could celebrate its victory over the proletariat. She now had power over the entire country in her hands, and she had the opportunity to begin peace negotiations with the Entente, for which its representatives were invited to Versailles on April 18.
The head of the German peace delegation, foreign minister Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, accepting the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs from the hands of Scheidemann and Ebert, made it a condition for his leadership of German foreign policy that the Spartacist movement be completely eliminated. "It is necessary to disarm the workers,” he wrote in his statement to the government, “to stop the interference of the Soviets in state affairs, to free entrepreneurs from the amateurish control of factory committees. Only then will the Entente talk to Germany as an equal force, only then will America give loans, without which it is impossible to restore Germany's economy." On May 7, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau and the German delegation accompanying him, having received the text of the peace terms proposed by the Allies, were able to verify that from the moment the German bourgeoisie managed to crush the labor movement, any need for the Entente to occupy Germany disappeared. Only the fear that Germany would follow in the footsteps of Russia could strengthen that wing among the allies that opposed the excessive imperialist appetites of France, partly out of fear of the further development of the revolution, partly out of a desire to prevent the creation of a French hegemony on the continent.
But the defeat of the revolutionary movement showed the allies that they had nothing to fear from the rejection of the Versailles demands by the German bourgeoisie, despite the fact that the Constituent Assembly, in a solemn meeting held on May 15 in the large hall of the University of Berlin, pointedly declared the unacceptability of the Versailles terms. In the business circles of Germany and the bourgeoisie, every day there was a growing conviction that the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles would lead to the occupation of Germany by the French troops and will entail “social chaos.” When asked by the German government whether it would be possible to provide armed resistance, Hindenburg replied that such a possibility was excluded on the Western Front. The faction of bourgeois defenders of the signing of peace was led by the leader of the Catholic Center, Erzberger. The central idea of the defenders of the signing of peace was expressed on December 9, 1918 by the National Liberal Minister Schiffer, who said the following in his speech about the financial situation of Germany: “The creditor is interested in the solvency of his debtor. A state that goes bankrupt economically, and therefore financially, will be unable to satisfy the excessive demands placed on it.” The German bourgeoisie hoped that, no matter how difficult the economic conditions imposed on them at Versailles, the danger of the consequences of Germany’s bankruptcy would force the Entente to reconsider these conditions in the future. As for the territorial demands, the German bourgeoisie hoped for contradictions that would arise between France and England and would limit the freedom of action of French imperialism. But, in essence, the German bourgeoisie was more afraid of the proletariat it had just defeated than of the victorious Entente. The agitation of part of the German bourgeoisie for peace found full support not only from the Social Democratic majority, but also among the Independents, who became the main sponsors of the signing of peace. The Independents referred to the example of Lenin, who signed the Brest Peace Treaty. They forgot only this little thing: Lenin saved the proletarian revolution, and they saved the counter-revolution. It is clear that the Entente, knowing these sentiments of the German bourgeoisie and the Weimar government, flatly refused to enter into any negotiations with the German peace delegation. They only allowed them to submit their comments in writing on the entire draft peace treaty, but did not make any significant changes to the final text of the terms. On June 22, 1919, the Constituent Assembly adopted the terms of Versailles by 237 votes against 138. On June 28 the German Social-Democrat G. Müller on behalf of the German government signed the Treaty of Versailles. On July 12, the blockade was lifted from Germany. Over the course of just a few months, the victory of the November revolution gave way to its defeat. The revolutionary element began to enter the shores.
After a short period during which vast masses of workers were thrown onto the streets and statistics totaled a million unemployed, the industry began to frantically restructure itself to meet the needs of the starved domestic and foreign markets. By the end of 1919, there were already only half a million unemployed, i.e., in percentage terms, slightly more than in 1913. The workers responded to the frenzied rise in prices with a wave of strikes, which in 1919 covered approximately 5 million workers. The eight-hour working day introduced thanks to the November Revolution, the general use of collective agreements, the assistance provided to the unemployed by state and city governments - all this calmed the backward and tired masses and isolated the proletarian vanguard formed in the civil war of 1919. The political reasons for the defeat of the revolution should be sought in the tactics of the bourgeoisie and its Social Democratic agents. The bourgeoisie made relatively large concessions, not opposing the elimination of a number of the most hated remnants of feudalism by the working masses and concluding a bloc with the Social Democrats, for the sake of which it had to abandon its pre-war arrogant attitude towards the proletariat and its organizations. The Social Democratic Party, for its part, did everything to break the onslaught of the revolution. If during the war it justified to the masses its support for the bourgeoisie by the danger of the military defeat of Germany, now it acted openly as a party of cooperation with the bourgeoisie. “You cannot socialize poverty, you must first restore capitalism, and only then can you think about socialism”—this was its main slogan. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of Social-Democrats joined the government apparatus of the bourgeois state, as well as local government bodies, which connected not only them with the bourgeoisie, but also wider circles of workers, before whom appeared the prospects for profitable jobs, a quiet life and honor. But, having restored its state power, the German bourgeoisie could not provide it with the minimum conditions for international stability. She now had to fight to eliminate the most egregious conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, which undermined the foundations of her development and therefore supported the revolutionary crisis for several more years, calling into question the very existence of bourgeois power.
From the Treaty of Versailles to the occupation of the Ruhr.
The Treaty of Versailles deprived Greece of more than 3/4 of its iron ore, 1/3 of its coal, and 15% of its grain area. It forced it to export in kind a significant amount of valuables in the coming years after the end of the war. But most importantly, - consisted in the fact that it deprived Germany of any prerequisites for peaceful development. The Treaty of Versailles was the result of a compromise between France, on the one hand, and England and the United States of North America, on the other. French claims went much further than the conditions accepted at Versailles. France sought to ensure that the western border of Germany was the Rhine. The Lower Vistula was in the hands of Poland, the Rhine in the hands of France - this meant such a weakening of Germany, that France could hope to provoke a separatist movement in it, as a result of which the southern Catholic regions would separate from the German Republic. But this would be tantamount to French hegemony on the continent. And since, thanks to the growth of the navy and the development of aviation, if England were deprived of the benefits of its island position, it would face the greatest threat from France. By dominating Germany and subjugating it economically, France could act as a powerful competitor to English imperialism. Therefore, England resolutely opposed at Versailles the French desire to make the Rhine the western border of Germany. For France’s refusal of this demand, England obliged, together with the United States to guarantee the integrity of the French borders. But the refusal of the United States of North America from ratifying the Treaty of Versailles left open the question of the security of France. This again revived the trends of French imperialism to the seizure of the Rhine border and to the dismemberment of Germany. The Treaty of Versailles gave French imperialism the full opportunity to start the game all over again: a number of paragraphs of the Versailles Treaty relating to the disarmament of Germany, as well as the unsettled reparations issue, provided France with a lot of reasons for continuous conflicts.
The Treaty of Versailles established only that Germany was obliged to pay compensation for the material damage it caused to the allies, as well as reimburse their expenses for pensions for the maimed and the families of those killed in the war. Until 1921, the Allies had to establish both the amount that Germany had to pay and the methods of paying it. The solution to this issue caused many years of struggle between the victorious powers and Germany, on the one hand, and in the ranks of the Entente, on the other.—With such a contrast of interests of all Powers a number of Allied conferences, convened in 1920 to resolve the issue of reparations, did not lead to any results. The London Conference in May 1921 finally developed a reparations plan. It determined the total amount of German payments at 132 billion Μarks in gold, which were divided into three series: for now, only the so-called series A and B, equal to 50 billion, were of real importance, because annual interest was assigned on them, which had to pay and this amounted to 2 billion gold per year, and 26% of the cost of German exports. These conditions were imposed on Germany by an ultimatum adopted by the government of Wirth and Rathenau on 12 May 1921. But already the payment of the first billion, which followed on 31 August, led to such a shock in the money market that the dollar exchange rate, equal to first half of 1921 to approximately 60 Marks, jumped to 190 Μarks by the end of the year. To contribute this billion, it was necessary to enter into short-term loans on extremely difficult terms in Switzerland and Holland, and to pledge the State’s silver reserves and buy gold and foreign currency on foreign exchanges, throwing away large quantities of paper stamps for this purpose.
The attempt of the German government to find a way out in a deal with France (Wiesbaden Agreement of Rathenau and Luscher), according to which, Germany would have to pay significant parts of its obligations with deliveries in kind and the German government would pay its suppliers in stamps in exchange for a French loan, crashed against the resistance of England, which was afraid of too close rapprochement between Germany and French industry. But even if England had not offered resistance, this attempt would have aggravated the internal crisis of Germany, for its result should have been a flood of the Germans money market with paper Marks. Already in December 1921, the government was forced to turn to the reparation commission with a request for a moratorium. In January 1922, the Allies had to grant Germany a short-term moratorium. There was even an attempt to involve international bankers in resolving the reparations issue. A conference of bankers, with the participation of Morgan, which met at the end of 1922, stated that international capital agreed to give Germany a loan that would ensure her payment of reparation payments for the coming years, and was ready to help her in the matter of recovering control of German finances, if the Allied governments agree to reduce German obligations and guarantee that German territories will not be seized. The conference of bankers openly declared that the international money market would not give money under other conditions, because it was afraid that the bankruptcy of German finance would cause a social catastrophe. Further attempts by the allies to come to terms with each other did not lead to any results. Not being able to reach an agreement with France, England began to act provocatively in defense of Germany in order to push France to occupy the Ruhr, which, according to the British, would lead to a crisis in French finances, not giving France the desired results and, in the end, forcing it to make a deal with Great Britain. The plans of France, which was preparing to seize the Ruhr basin, were clearly formulated by the chairman of the financial commission of the French parliament, Dariac, in a secret report published in the summer of 1922 in the Manchester Guardian: “The Ruhr region,” the report said, “is the main. element of Germany's wealth. Most of the German large consortia, were formed here, have their main headquarters and their enterprises here. The 10 - 12 industrialists at their head, directly or indirectly, but in any case, completely hold the fate of Germany in their hands (metallurgy, coal, chemical paints, fertilizers, shipbuilding companies). research, import and export of raw and finished products). These include Stinnes, Thyssen, Krupp, Haniel, Klöckner, Funke, Mannesmann and 3-4 others. Their importance is similar to that of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Harriman and Gould in America. However, these German tycoons play a role in politics that American billionaires have never even dreamed of. They have already offered to replace the German state in paying reparations, but their conditions still remain unacceptable.”
On 12 January 1923 the Ruhr basin was occupied by French and Belgian troops. The struggle for reparations led to an unprecedented aggravation of the German economic crisis.
The capture of the Ruhr and the collapse of the Reichsmark.
The reason for the economic crisis that Germany experienced after the war was, of course, not in reparation payments, but in the general economic consequences of the war for Germany. Germany paid only 1,700 million Marks in gold until January 1923; supplies in kind—3.634 million Marks in gold. Much more important than these payments, as well as a number of valuables transferred to the Entente under the Versailles Peace Treaty, was the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, the Saar Basin and Upper Silesia, due to which Germany, as stated above, lost most of its reserves of iron ore, a significant share of coal, as well as part of its grain regions in the East. But the main reasons for the economic crisis of Germany were: 1) deterioration of the production apparatus, 2) a drop in labor productivity, and 3) a reduction in the world market.
In 1919–20 there was a shortage of 5 to 7 million livres of bread to feed the population. Coal production decreased greatly, meanwhile it was necessary to give reparation coal to France. Not only iron ore, but also coal had to be imported from abroad. The drop in miners' labor productivity, compared to 1913, was expressed in the following figures: in 1913, a miner extracted 972 kg of coal per day, and in 1922 only 580 kg. With reduced coal production, the number of workers had to be increased. In the Ruhr region in 1913, 390 thousand miners were employed, in 1918 405 thousand, in 1919 471 thousand, in 1920 512 thousand, in 1921 559 thousand, in 1922 561 thousand. The fear of revolution forced the work for everyone who returned from the front. According to official statistics, the number of unemployed in Germany was much lower than abroad (in 1919 - 3.7%; in 1920 - 3.8%; in 1921 - 2.8%; in 1922 - 1.5%), in fact, there was enormous hidden unemployment, expressed in the fact that enterprises were flooded with millions of people working with labor productivity reduced by half. The financial situation of the proletariat was terrible: bread consumption fell by 41%, potatoes by 36%, meat by 63%, sugar by 26%, beer by 63%. The salary of a German worker was equal to 1/4 of the salary of an American and 1/2 of the salary of an English worker. Only this meager payment of the proletariat allowed the German bourgeoisie to feverishly restore its industrial exports. But, despite all the efforts, it constituted only a small part of the pre-war exports of Germany. The trade balance of Germany remained passive. Germany's industry needed foreign raw materials, the population needed the import of food, and reparation payments required accelerated industrial exports. The economic crisis of post-war Germany was a crisis of underproduction, which was accompanied at the same time by an ever-increasing financial crisis. State expenses grew every day, while revenues fell every day. The costs of eliminating the war, the costs of fighting the revolution, reparation payments—all this was covered by the work of the printing press. The amount of money in circulation increased from 2.041 million before the start of the war to 32 billion at the end of the war. A year after the end of the war, this amount was already equal to 50 billion, and the next year 80 billion. Thanks to the continuous decline in the value of money and the inability of the German bourgeois parties and the Social Democracy to find funds for the actual taxation, state revenues from taxes and customs duties in 1921 were not able to cover even interest on debts and deficits from government economic enterprises (railroads, post office, etc.). The national debt grew from 5.4 billion before the start of the war to 100 billion by the beginning of 1918, 148 billion by the beginning of 1919, 176 billion by the beginning of 1920 and 264 billion by the beginning of 1921.
While the country was sliding towards economic bankruptcy, the power of capitalist cartels and concerns grew every year. Already during the war, centralized orders from the state allowed the kings of trusts to create an organization that covered the entire economic life of the country. The high prices paid by the state allowed them to accumulate enormous capital. Inflation, which ruined the petty bourgeoisie, vast layers of rentiers, and undermined the power of the banks, became, on the contrary, a powerful weapon for increasing the power of the cartel kings. Receiving large loans from the state bank, they used these sums to buy up less powerful capitalist enterprises, paying off their debts with falling Μarks. They received money for goods sold abroad in gold, which they placed abroad. The governments of the “Weimar” and “small” coalitions alternated in power (in July 1920, the government of the Weimar Constitution, which included the Social Democrats, the Center and the Democrats, gave way to a government of the “small” coalition of Democrats, the Center and the German People's Party; this, in turn, was replaced in May 1921 by the government of the Weimar Constitution under the leadership of Wirth, which in November 1922 ceded power to the government of a “small” coalition without the Social Democrats under the leadership of Cuno), but these changes of scenery did not change anything in the essence of the matter. The power of cartelized capital, with Stinnes at its head, grew, determining both the domestic and foreign policy of the German Republic. It was based on the fact of concentration of industry and trade in the hands of cartels, on the subordination of banks to them, and on dominance over the press. Even the growing ruin of the petty bourgeoisie, which was the result of the war and post-war policies of the capital magnates, the latter managed to turn into a source of their strength; because the petty-bourgeois parties of the Center, Democrats and Social-Democrats did not dare to fight the kings of coal and iron, did not dare to take measures that could at least delay the process of ruin of the petty bourgeoisie, then the latter began to see in the “November regime” and the Entente the source of its misfortunes and expected salvation from that by big capital, which, while ruining the petty middle class, subjugated it to its influence with the help of the fascist organizations it created, that were preparing the “national dictatorship” of big capital.
This development has accelerated since the capture of the Ruhr by the French. The German bourgeoisie decided to win a new war with France with the help of “passive resistance,” which was supposed to consist in the refusal of the miners to mine coal for the French and the refusal of the railway workers to transport it. The government provided funds to pay for this resistance, financing it and providing huge loans to capitalists for the purchase of coal abroad, for wages, etc. In order to arrest the decline of the Mark, which had begun since the capture of the Ruhr to quickly roll down - from December 1922 to February 1923 the dollar rose from 2,000 to 10,000 Marks—the government wasted several hundred millions of foreign currency on the purchase of Marks; in March 1923 it was possible to stabilize the Mark at the level of 20 thousand Marks per dollar. But this attempt went bankrupt due to the fact that the Stinnes group, receiving huge sums of Marks in loans from the state bank, began a frantic purchase of foreign goods and currencies. The price of the dollar, having jumped to 30 thousand Marks in April, reached 50 thousand in May, 110 thousand in June, 350 thousand in July; then things went straight to a catastrophic fall of the Mark: in the first half of August the dollar was worth 4 million Marks, on September 1 - 10 million, in the half of September - 80 million, on October 8 - 838 million, on October 18 - 8 billion. The only means that could delay the fall of the Mark and save the state from bankruptcy was the confiscation of such a part of real values, which would allow taxes to be collected in the form of part of the products of capitalist production and at the same time would provide the state with real influence on cartel policy. But not only the Cuno government, in which the Stinnesian Becker managed the finances, could not decide on this, nor did the Stresemann government that replaced it, in which the portfolio of the Minister of Finance ended up in the hands of Rudolf Hilferding, the author of "Financial capital". The only class that paid taxes in Germany were the workers. Not to mention indirect taxes, they paid 10% of their wages in income tax. Already in July, workers paid half of the entire income tax. In October, three-fourths of taxes fell on wages, and the capitalists profited further from this robbery of the workers, contributing the sums collected weekly from the workers with a significant delay in Marks that had depreciated during this time. The Reichstag passed a law on a forced loan of a billion gold Marks, which should have been paid in paper Marks, but since the loan was not collected at the same time, instead of a billion paper Marks the government received only 12 million Marks.
The frantic pace of depreciation of the Mark caused an unprecedented rise in prices, without exception. the ruin of the petty bourgeoisie and such impoverishment of the workers that in August 1923 a general strike broke out, which swept away the Cuno government and led to the creation of a grand coalition government of the Social Democrats, Democrats, the Center and the German People's Party with Stresemann at the head.
The social crisis of 1923 and the victory of the German bourgeoisie.
Germany's Social Democratic Party, which in 1919 helped the German bourgeoisie to regain power in the name of restoring the national economy and moving towards socialism in a democratic way, was soon to feel that the path to the restoration of capitalism lies through the cultivation of counter-revolutionary elements turning their weapons not only against socialism, but also against the most ordinary bourgeois democracy. The White Army, created by Noske to fight the working class and the danger of the socialist revolution, presented on March 13, 1920, in the person of General Luttwitz and Kapp, its account for the services provided to the bourgeoisie and the Social Democrats during the liquidation of the proletarian revolution. The revolt of General Lüttwitz, behind whom General Ludendorff stood, was an uprising of the Praetorians of the Prussian Junkers, who tried to revive Wilhelmine Germany. This uprising failed for two reasons. Firstly, the workers rose with unprecedented unanimity against the danger of a revival of the old Kaiserian government: the general strike, which simultaneously swept across the whole of Germany, revealed the powerlessness of the white gangs, which in 1919 alternately defeated one detachment of workers after another. But the complete defeat of the Kappists was caused by another reason. Despite their hatred of the working class, the bourgeoisie did not support the Kappists. They understood that an attempt to restore the monarchy would at that moment cause decisive resistance from the Entente. In particular, France would probably use the coup to try to achieve what it did not manage to achieve under the Treaty of Versailles, i.e., the dismemberment of Germany. But in their refusal to support the monarchical restoration, the bourgeoisie was guided not only by these foreign policy considerations. Having won power directly for themselves in a democratic republic, they had no desire to transfer it to the Junkers and their praetorians. In addition, the bourgeoisie understood perfectly well what an enormous service the democratic illusions of the proletariat rendered to them. The lack of support from the bourgeoisie caused a split in the ranks of the Reichswehr. The majority of the generals, led by Seeckt, who hated the proletariat no less than Lüttwitz, and were no less monarchist-minded, however, refrained from supporting Kapp’s counter-revolution. It served as a weapon for another counter-revolution, led by Ebert. The workers—above all the workers of the Ruhr Basin—understood perfectly well that it was not Kapp and his troops, who constituted a minority of the Reichswehr and white military formations; that if you want to protect at least bourgeois democracy from the danger of restoration, then you need to liquidate the entire Reichswehr, created from counter-revolutionary soldiers under the leadership of the old generals. The workers—independents and communists—moved on. They fought the counter-revolution not in the name of preserving the bourgeois republic, but in order to create Soviet power.
Within a few days, the workers of the Ruhr disarmed the Reichswehr troops with almost bare hands, created numerous detachments of the Red Army, and the region began to unite into one whole. Once again the fate of bourgeois Germany was being decided and again the Social Democratic Party saved it. While the Ebert government, having fled from Berlin to Stuttgart, stood powerless between revolution and counter-revolution, Legien, the leader of the trade unions, entered into negotiations with the independent Social Democrats on the creation of a common government to fight the counter-revolution, with the sole purpose of keeping the workers of Berlin from fighting through these negotiations and isolating the Ruhr proletariat. When he succeeded, Ebert moved in the troops of General Watter and in bloody battles defeated the heroic proletariat of the Ruhr. Having thus defeated the revolution for the second time, the Social-Democrats could give up their place to a purely bourgeois government. They paid for this policy with a heavy defeat in the elections of June 6, 1920. Instead of 11.5 million, which they received during the elections to the Constituent Assembly, they now received only 6 million, while the number of votes cast for the Independent Social Democratic Party grew from 2.5 million to 5 million, and the Communist Party, which took part in the elections for the first time, received about 600 thousand votes. The election results showed that some of the petty-bourgeois fellow travelers of the Social Democratic Party went to the bourgeois parties, but some of the workers moved to the left. Whenever the monarchist conspirators raised their heads (the murder of Erzberger on August 26, 1921, the murder of Rathenau on June 24, 1922), the proletariat organized powerful demonstrations that united the entire working class without distinction of party affiliation. The socialist movement had thus shown the monarchical-nationalist elements the readiness of the proletariat to fight with arms in hand against the restoration of the monarchy. The bourgeoisie and Social Democracy then did everything in their power to destroy the emerging united proletarian front, for it knew that, once formed, the united army of the proletariat, by the logic of struggle, would have to go to conquer power. In these battles the revolutionary movement of the working class crystallized, a mass communist party was created from left-wing Independents and Spartacists. The right-wing Independents discarded the revolutionary phrase and returned to the fold of the reformist Social Democracy. In March 1921, the united communist party tried to independently take upon itself the task of armed defense of the proletariat against the white troops (that had the task, on the orders of the Social-Democratic Minister of the Interior Severing, to disarm the workers of central Germany), and suffered a brutal defeat. The battles that the German proletariat waged in the first three years after the end of the war showed that, invincible in the fight against the danger of monarchical restoration, it was not yet able to rise unanimously to fight against the bourgeoisie— for their own dictatorship.
The Ruhr conflict, which led the German economy to complete disorder, again raised the question of the existence of a bourgeois regime in Germany. The Ruhr crisis demonstrated with unprecedented clarity the entire rottenness of the German bourgeoisie, which turned out to be unable either to provide the proletariat with a minimum of well-being or to protect the country from foreign invasion. It showed the proletariat the face of the ruling class in such an unsightly light as no agitation could have done. When the Ruhr coal barons, receiving billions from the state for the so-called passive resistance, did not increase the payments of wages to the Ruhr proletariat since February, despite the fact that during this time the prices of the most necessary products increased many times, and when the Ruhr proletariat rose again to defend its interests, the Düsseldorf government representative, Dr. Lutherbeck, turned to the commander of the French occupation forces, General Degut, with a request to allow him to introduce his troops to pacify the Ruhr workers. (A scientific representative of the German State University!) The government referred to a historical precedent to support his request: “I must remind you,” he wrote, “that during the Paris Commune it was the German main command, which, understanding the situation, provided the French authorities needed assistance in suppressing the uprising. I ask you to give us the same help if you want to prevent dangerous situations from being created in the future...” General Degut authorized the introduction of police troops into the areas affected by the strike. The German fire guard received weapons from the French. authorities to suppress the strike. Cuno's government, the government of national defense against the invasion of France, appeared before the eyes of the masses as a government of national treason, preparing capitulation at the expense of the heroic Ruhr proletariat. But, despite this, the Social Democrats supported this government until the moment when it was overthrown in August by a powerful wave of a general strike.
The new grand coalition government began preparing for capitulation to France, without hiding the catastrophic nature of the situation. Prime Minister Gustav Stresemann said openly that the government was on a volcano and that the solution to the Ruhr crisis was the solution to the question of whether the world revolution would spread from the East to Central Europe. Rudolf Hilferding publicly declared that the new government could be the last democratic government of Germany. On September 23, the government decided to stop passive resistance. This meant its readiness to accept new hardships for Germany, in which the 8-hour working day and other meager gains of the revolutionary era had to be eliminated. The revolutionary ferment that gripped the working masses, the conquest by the communists in a number of industrial centers of a majority in the trade unions - all this proved that the social-democratic regime will be too weak and will not be able to withstand the pressure of the proletarian wave. Large capital, which much earlier put forward the slogan of eliminating the eight-hour working day and transferring railways to private capital in return for a loan to pay reparation payments, had long ago created mass fascist organizations from the declassed petty bourgeoisie and officers, which were supposed to, at the appropriate moment, liquidate the parliamentary government and create a “national dictatorship” of heavy industry for complete enslavement of the working class. This moment was now approaching. Fascism, financed by Stinnes's industrial director Vogler and directed by General Ludendorff and the fascist agitator Hitler, chose Munich as the base of its actions, which, since the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, had been the center of counter-revolutionary organizations. The fascist organizations of Bavaria, armed by the Reichswehr, defied the Bavarian government, which represented the interests of the local kulak counter-revolution, into complete submission. At the same time, in the north, with the knowledge of the government, a so-called “black Reichswehr” was created, armed by the official Reichswehr, supposedly for active combat in case of further advance of the French. This black Reichswehr was a mass armed organization designed to suppress the uprising of the proletariat and to bring about a fascist coup. To these feverish weapons of the fascists, the communist party tried to resist through the organization of the Red Hundreds throughout the country and the united front of all workers. Ιτ hoped that the greatest material disasters that befell the proletariat would push them into a unanimous revolutionary struggle for workers' dictatorship. But the proletariat, systematically ruined for three years by the Social-Democratic Party, was almost unarmed. The Communist Party hoped to obtain these weapons through the entry of the Communists into the left-wing Social Democratic government of Saxony, which had existed since March. While the counter-revolution chose Bavaria as a stronghold for the deployment of its forces, the communists considered Saxony as their springboard. Here the so-called “Left Social-Democrats” prevailed, who, contrary to the will of the Central Committee of the Social-Democratic Party, formed a bloc with the communists, which had a parliamentary majority behind them. The communists hoped, with the help of the state apparatus, to take possession of weapons and launch a struggle for proletarian dictatorship, based on the protection of a democratically elected workers' government. In neighboring Thuringia, on October 16, a similar government was created from the left Social-Democrats. and communists. Thuringia and Saxony separated Bavaria from the north, dividing, thus, the forces of German fascism, and were supposed to be at the center of armed battles for power.
Between the communists preparing for battle and the “illegal” fascists, stood the government of Ebert and Stresemann, ready to fight supposedly on two fronts. On October 8, two days before the communists entered the Saxon government, the imperial government transferred all power into the hands of War Minister Gessler, who acted on the basis of a state of siege declared already on September 27, 1923. Real power was in the hands of the most far-sighted leader of the counter-revolution, General von Seeckt. General Seeckt and the officer clique acting together with him were most afraid of a united front of the workers. Therefore, Seeckt was opposed to the liquidation of the so-called “democratic” government and a break with the Social Democrats. He and the part of the bourgeoisie that stood behind him (primarily representatives of the manufacturing industry) preferred a bloc with Ebert and the Social-Democrats to joint actions with the illegal organizations of the fascists, which were created with their help, but to the strength of which they were skeptical. Attempts by fascist organizations to reach an agreement with Seeckt on the joint creation of a “national dictatorship”, under the leadership of the financial director of the Stinnes concern, Mihn, ended in failure. This split caused the insubordination of the commander of the Bavarian Reichswehr, General Lossberg, who was at one with the fascist organizations of Bavaria. General Seeckt did not go to fight Lossberg and Ludendorff, but set about eliminating the Saxon danger, hoping to come to an agreement with the Bavarians in the future. On October 18, the troops of General Müller occupied Saxony on behalf of Ebert. The complete betrayal of the right Social-Democrats entailed the refusal of the Saxon left Social-Democrats from an armed uprising. On October 21, at a conference of factory committees in Chemnitz, the left Social-Democrats rejected the slogan of uprising. The destruction of workers' organizations and mass arrests began. The Saxon bridgehead of the revolution was destroyed without encountering resistance from the Saxon and all-German proletariat. Only in Hamburg on October 23 did the communists raise an uprising, which, after several days of heroic struggle, not finding sufficient support from the broad working masses, was liquidated by the superior forces of the Reichswehr and the police. The Communist Party, having suffered a heavy defeat in Saxony, did not dare to cover its retreat with rearguard battles.
Following the defeat of the proletariat, the liquidation of illegal fascist organizations began: the fascist uprising had ceased to be necessary for the big bourgeoisie. To save the German bourgeoisie, the Reichswehr and the Social Democrats were enough. Ludendorff and Hitler, not taking this situation into account, raised an uprising on November 8. But they were not supported by the Bavarian Reichswehr. Moreover, the Bavarian government opposed them. It was guided not only by the consideration that in the north and in central Germany the legal Reichswehr and the government relying on it had triumphed and that the defeat of the working class in Saxony made the fascist campaign to the north an adventure; in addition, a major role in the behavior of the Bavarian government was played by the separatist policy of the Catholic kulak south and the Wittelsbach dynasty, which sought, in the event of failure of negotiations between the central government and France, to protect their interests with a separate deal. As a result, the performance of Ludendorff and Hitler ended in a clash with the Bavarian police, who scattered and disarmed their former allies.
"Democracy" won with the hands of the legal fascist General Seeckt who received powers from the Social-Democrat Ebert. Social Democracy, having fulfilled its task of disarmament of the revolution, left the coalition government on November 30, 1923. Stresemann's cabinet gave way to the purely bourgeois government of Wilhelm Marx. The bourgeoisie began to implement reparations to France, which opened up prospects for receiving American loans. Anglo-American capital promised the German bourgeoisie assistance in restoring the monetary system. This gave her the opportunity to introduce temporary currency in the form of the so-called. “rent stamp”, production of which began on November 9. The exhausted masses, who in recent months could not know whether or not the payment they took from the factory would depreciate on the way home, now received hard money again. General Seeckt declared the Communist Party dissolved. The German bourgeoisie, relying on the help of Anglo-American capital, could now begin to stabilize the entire regime.
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