The German Left & The First World War

IN 1869, at Eisenach, Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826-1900) founded a Marxist organisation which was to become known as the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD). Despite the frenetic attempts of Otto Von Bismarck (1815-98) to hamper the progress of the party and its fierce resistance to Prussianism, it grew rapidly. In 1877 the SPD polled 493,000 votes, then, in 1890 it polled another 1,427,000 votes and, by 1912, had managed to win a third of all votes cast and secure an impressive total of 4,239,000. By this time the growing reputation of the SPD had extended across Europe and the Party had become a role model for similar Social-Democratic organisations elsewhere, like those established in Belgium (1885), Austria (1889), Hungary (1890), Bulgaria (1891), Poland (1892), Romania (1893 and 1910), Holland (1894), Russia (1898), Finland (1903) and Serbia (1903). Indeed, David Kirby has described the SPD as “the jewel in the crown of the Second International”[1], but despite its electoral successes, commanding influence and the fact that it now had around one million members, the Party was still unable to achieve power.

The social and economic climate of pre-war Germany had seen a rise in general working class militancy, and the eventual ability of such elements to organise themselves into union-led strike movements which sought confrontation with those attempting to maintain the prevailing status quo, saw the concept of class tension evolve into practical forms of class struggle[2]. In 1907, a conference at Stuttgart had seen the Communists advocate a wave of strikes designed to paralyse the economy and arouse workers’ solidarity. Meanwhile, reactionary groups like the Pan-German League (1893), the German Navy League (1898) and the Reich Association Against Social Democracy (1904) had been used “partly consciously and manipulatively”[3] by the German State in order to divide workers in a frantic attempt to curb the influence of the SPD and talented theoreticians like Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), a man who had helped to formulate the Party’s 1891 Erfurt Programme by advocating an intelligent synthesis between both reformist and revolutionary ideas within a Marxist framework. But in reality, however, those on the Right need not have feared the temporary advance of Socialism at all, for its Leftist adversaries were about to undergo a purely self-destructive process of ideological fragmentation. Despite the fact that the SPD harboured within its ranks a number of revolutionary elements, the Party was able to restrict these inherent strands of Marxist thought and had always campaigned for little more than an extension of the franchise within a reformed political system. Even Rosa Luxemburg (1870-1919) continued to remain in the SPD, despite her opposition to party and trade union leaders and charismatic domination of the Party’s 1913 Congress. But Germany’s largest and most unified cacophony of Left-wing expression was about to come face to face with the ghoulish threat of all-out warfare.

In the past, German Socialism had adopted a strong non-interventionist approach to forms of conflict which it perceived to be either Capitalist or imperialistic, and the SPD had vigorously opposed the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913. As Austria issued its ultimatum to Serbia in July 1914, the Party had sought to quell the flames of international mobilisation by urging debate and diplomacy. Indeed, on 25th July the SPD Directorate openly announced its opposition to “imperialist commercial interests”[4] and declared: “We want no war! Down with war! Long live international brotherhood!”[5] William A. Pelz believes that “such rhetoric was more than the reflection of the feelings of a few Party leaders”[6], and it is certainly true to say that by 28th July twenty-seven large meetings took place in Berlin alone. However, when Berlin was finally forced to adopt a state of national emergency just three days later, all protest meetings were outlawed and the SPD suddenly reconsidered its former position and less than one week later had supported the Kaiser’s request for DM5,000,000,000 in war credits. Even the Left of the Party came out in support of this rather uncharacteristic objective, something which is indicative of the Party’s strong internal discipline.

The artificially-induced spirit of pseudo-nationalistic fervour which had been unleashed by the State, was beginning to unite large numbers of workers behind its militaristic banner. In reality, their “self-identification with the State swept away their feelings of isolation, insecure confidence, resignation, passivity, and the burden of their divided loyalties - to the national State on the one hand, and to international Socialism on the other.”[7] The declaration of war saw German cities literally brimming with hundreds of thousands of cheering citizens who, partly due to the grossly exaggerated potential of the Schleiffen Plan, were completely unaware that there was to be no swift victory and no comfortable return to normality. Men like Paul Von Hindenburg (1847-1934) and Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937) became national heroes and Germany was soon divided into a series of different zones each controlled by military leaders, with opposition to the war regarded as ‘unpatriotic’ or ‘anti-German’. In political terms, for the SPD this new scenario meant that to continue as it had done in the past would lead to total obscurity. On the other hand, the sudden demand for production and the mobilisation of the German proletariat now meant that Socialists could organise within the framework of the domestic war effort. However, in order to exert its influence upon German workers themselves, the Party had to betray its original pacifist principles and become committed to what can only be described as a rather vulgar form of ideological opportunism.

The SPD now attempted to justify its support for the First World War by alleging that it was “now doing what we have always emphatically maintained: we are not forsaking the fatherland in its hour of peril.”[8] In addition, the Party’s increasing hypocrisy even led to its refusal to criticise Germany’s other political parties for the duration of the hostilities. At the very core of the SPD’s incredible volte-face was the ‘Burgfrieden’, or ‘internal truce’. When the Kaiser had entered the German Reichstag building in August 1914 and uttered the phrase “I recognise no more parties; I know only Germans”[9], he was attempting to bring to an end the disunity within Germany and thus redirect the energy contained within the conflictual pockets of popular expression towards the common war effort. Needless to say, judging by the actions of the SPD, the Kaiser’s appeal for national unity was successful.

But although the ‘Burgfrieden’ had served its initial purpose by managing to extract a significant degree of national consciousness from the various segments of German society, the war’s external development soon began to determine the direction of events within Germany itself. By the middle of 1915, German troops were heavily bogged down in trench warfare and the gradual decimation of the human spirit was beginning to be felt much closer to home. Similarly, domestic morale also suffered and the general consensus started to collapse as those behind the ‘Burgfrieden’ policy tried to prevent its inevitable disintegration by “upholding the spirit of steadfastness and devotion to the great national objectives, obviating all threats to the unity of the German people, and preventing any impression that the firm will to victory was wavering.”[10] As a result, the ‘Burgfrieden’ came to represent nothing more than a useful method of suppressing unpopular opinions expressed by an increasing number of people who were hostile to the continuation of the war. Meanwhile, however, the German Left was poised to declare upon itself.

The parliamentary leadership of the SPD began to come under attack from the Left flank of the Party, with individuals like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht starting to have an impact upon its more disillusioned elements in the ordinary rank and file. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were firmly opposed to the war and regarded it as a dynastic plot to undermine Socialism by seeking to unite both the ruling class and German workers beneath a nationalistic facade. The SPD’s main newspaper, Vorwarts, became a literary arena for the subsequent debate which took place between those in the Party who supported the Kaiser’s war effort and those who were completely opposed to it. But the war of words soon began to escalate in accordance with the shifting course of the war, which, by severely affecting the distribution of food supplies, had led to a war of attrition and caused widespread deprivation. The Left took advantage of this growing wave of social unrest and, after December 1915, maintained a commitment to a negotiated peace settlement.

By 1916, the military situation had deteriorated and German citizens at home were faced with mass starvation. Meanwhile, whilst the SPD had originally endorsed the essential message of the 1875 Gotha Programme and its commitment to revolutionary Marxist principles, the Party’s one-time Deputy - Karl Grillenberger - had boasted some years previously that he and his comrades had rejected the Programme because “for us, any revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is now out of the question.”[11] This admission of failure is just one example of how far the SPD had come since its alleged commitment to Marxism, and people like Luxemburg and Liebknecht were able to expose the shortcomings of their adversarial fellow-travellers by reviving the Gotha Programme and restating their belief in the deployment of revolutionary action. But the Right-wing of the SPD, grouped around the journal Die Glocke, accused the dissidents of being ‘unpatriotic’ and still wanted to defend the crumbling ‘Burgfrieden’ agreement. By contrast, however, these revolutionary Socialists - or Spartacists - formed themselves into the Gruppe Internationale and intended to bring the whole framework crashing to the ground.

This uncompromising tactic resulted in the fragmentation of the Party, although the Left-wing of the SPD was itself divided. The majority group included representatives from the centre-ground of the Party like Kautsky, moderate Leftists like Hugo Haase and Rudolf Hilferding, and Revisionists like Eduard Bernstein and Kurt Eisner. These elements may collectively be described as the Independents, and were united in that whilst they supported the need for defensive military action, “they felt that the war aims and the expansionist policy of the ruling groups in the German State and society militated against the credibility of a defensive war.”[12] After being expelled from the SPD’s main parliamentary grouping in March 1916, eighteen of their like-minded delegates established their own parliamentary group shortly before the formation of a rival organisation, the Unabhangige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD). The Spartacists also joined the new Party. But the USPD soon found itself wedged uncomfortably between the orthodox reformists in the SPD and the more radical Spartacus group, whose revolutionary protagonists soon became a thorn in the side of their more moderate bedfellows. At the same time, when the military orchestrated the use of submarine warfare in January 1917 - an essentially political decision - those on the Far Left of the political spectrum were able to expose the obvious shortcomings of parliamentarianism. After all, if Army representatives were actually transcending the political arena in order to follow their own private agenda, the Reichstag had become an irrelevancy and, therefore, Socialists were correct to adopt a revolutionary position. The German State, meanwhile, had obviously realised this fact and many Spartacists were jailed for their subversive activities. Indeed, chief ringleaders Luxemburg and Liebknecht were forced to remain in prison from 1916 until October 1918.

In Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had inspired a great many socialists abroad and, by 1918, the impending defeat of the German military machine simply continued to fuel the Spartacist cause. Although the Kaiser had attempted to initiate a series of futile reforms, the increasing extremities of German society appeared to warrant a more radical political solution and a vast litany of political, social and economic disasters soon followed. Whilst the Allied Blockade had created severe hardship amongst the ordinary civilian population during the Winter months of 1917-18 and been directly responsible for the bread strikes among German metalworkers which followed, the example of Lenin’s soviets led to the formation of similar councils in Germany. On 4th November, 1918, the German Navy was faced with mutiny and the revolution was poised to begin. An effective Allied offensive had forced Grand-Admiral Alfred Von Tirpitz (1849-1930) and his fleet to remain confined and powerless at the Kiel shipyard. And then, as war-weariness and low morale took its toll, German sailors were ordered to put to sea and prepare for a penultimate battle with the British fleet. When the sailors refused a series of riots and demonstrations broke out, eventually spreading to other towns and ports. By 6th November, industrial workers in Hamburg, Bremen and Cuxhaven were demanding the full implementation of Socialism and, despite the non-political grievances of those at the Kiel shipyard, they expressed solidarity with their sea-faring comrades in order to establish an array of workers’ and sailors’ councils. Finally, on 9th November, Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated and Friedrich Ebert became the new German Chancellor, taking control of law and order a day later and immediately seeking to “direct the revolutionary movement into constitutional and lawful channels”[13]. Indeed, under the direction of Noske, the Government even “used regular troops in a bloody suppression of the Left”[14].

But the abdication of the Kaiser was hardly viewed by the Spartacists as a Socialist victory, and the eventual formation of a governmental coalition comprised of representatives from both the SPD and the USPD was seen as a premature interruption of the whole revolutionary process. Indeed, Franz Mehring saw the gradual betrayal of Social Democracy in Germany as being “ground into the dust under the wheel of imperialism’s triumphal chariot.”[15] But as the proposed ‘Republic of Councils’ became overshadowed by the election of a National Assembly and Council of People’s Commissars, Luxemburg and Liebknecht broke away in defiance to form the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD). However, despite the fact that throughout the First World War Luxemburg had supported the concept of Leninist vanguardism, she was now critical of Russian Bolshevism because once it had taken control of the State it “abolished democracy altogether”[16], although she did support he Spartacist rising in Berlin. The KPD now insisted that it would “never assume governmental power except in response to the plain and unmistakable wish of the great majority of the proletarian masses”[17]. But whatever plans the leaders of the KPD had for governmental power were dashed when, on 10th and 11th January 1919, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were murdered on their way to the Moabit Prison by armed soldiers of the reactionary Free Corps. The revolution was thus over before it had even begun and, in the wake of Germany’s military defeat the old guard Social Democrats set about administering Capitalism in a slightly more palatable form than that which had formerly been offered by their vanquished monarchist forebears.

To conclude, one could be forgiven for suggesting that the gradual disintegration of law and order in Germany appeared to lead to a general acceptance of more radical and hard-line political solutions. On reflection, however, despite the slightly different programmes of the SPD and USPD, the German proletariat got the bourgeois Socialist government it had desired all along. Radicals like Luxemburg and Liebknecht may have interpreted the various stages of the war and its impact upon civilian life as a practical validation of their ideological principles, but as Helga Grebing has pointed out, the Spartacists exercised no real influence upon ordinary German workers and “[n]or could they really distinguish between the Majority Socialists and the Independents.”[18] One thing remains certain, the First World War had caused the German Left to become bitterly divided. More importantly, when the weak Socialist government reluctantly accepted Germany’s alleged culpability as laid out in the decidedly one-sided terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the scene was set for the unification of the German Right and the continuing rise of Adolf Hitler and National-Socialism.

Notes:

1. David Kirby; The Second International in Modern History Review, Issue #4, Vol. 4, 1993, p. 15.[Back]
2. Jurgen Kocka; Facing Total War (Berg Publishers, 1984), p. 15. [Back]
3. Ibid. [Back]
4. Edwyn Bevan; German Social Democracy During the War (George Allen & Unwin, 1918), p. 6. [Back]
5. Ibid. [Back]
6. William A. Pelz; The Spartacusbund and the German Working Class Movement: 1914-19 (Edward Mellen, undated), p. 69. [Back]
7. Helga Grebing; The History of the German Labour Movement (Oswald Wolff, 1969), p. 93. [Back]
8. Ibid., p. 92. [Back]
9. Op. cit., Kocka, p. 43. [Back]
10. K. Koszyk; Deutsche Pressepolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Dusseldorf, 1968), p. 146. [Back]
11. Karl Grillenberger; Stenographische Berichte uber die Verhandlungen im Deutschen Reichstag, 26th February, 1891, p. 1805. [Back]
12. Op. cit., Grebing p. 95. [Back]
13. Ibid., p. 101. [Back]
14. Carroll Quigley; Tragedy and Hope (Macmillan, 1974), p. 424. [Back]
15. Franz Mehring; Pravda, 15th June, 1918. [Back]
16. Op. cit., Grebing, p. 103. [Back]
17. Op. cit., Quigley, p. 423. [Back]
18. Op. cit., Grebing, p. 99. [Back]