Germany 1918
GERMANY
1918 – 1945
In November 1918 the
German army on the western front surrendered and Germany capitulated. Germany’s allies, Austria-Hungary and Turkey
also surrendered. The German army was still
an intact fighting force, but it had suffered significant defeats, mainly
because of the arrival of fresh American troops. The subsequent peace treaty, the Treaty of
Versailles, was attended by all the main combatants except for Russia which had
been knocked out of the war in 1917 and had concluded a separate peace with
Germany, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The other defeated countries concluded separate peace treaties with the
allies. Heads of state and generals
attended but also experts like the economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes believed that Germany should be
supported economically because of its pivotal and essential role and that there
should be an economic plan to rescue Europe.
The French, however, had witnessed the immense sacrifice of its people,
it had been French soil that had been fought over. They, therefore, favoured a settlement which
came to be seen as vindictive designed to subdue and limit the German economy
and armed forces and make it incapable of further military action. The Germans had to accept a war guilt clause
and had to accept the conditions of the settlement without negotiation. Acceptance of the terms of the Versailles
Treaty was regarded as a humiliation for Germany by members of the nationalist
and far-right political community that included Adolph Hitler. This group invented the legend that the
German army had been stabbed in the back by Jews and Marxists and that the
members of the civilian government who signed the Treaty were the ‘November
criminals’. By this time Erich
Ludendorff, former Quartermaster of the German army, realised that events were
no longer under his control, and he fled, wearing a disguise, to Sweden. This meant that civilians who had not been in
power during the war since Germany had been under direct military rule by
Hindenburg and Ludendorff since 1916, were left to sign the Treaty.
Keyne’s subsequent book The
Economic Consequences of the Peace outlined his views which were to be
vindicated. Both Germany and Italy used
Keynesian economic methods to pull their economies out of the economic crisis
that engulfed them in the 1920s and 30s.
Keynes realised that in the absence of an economic plan for Germany and
hence Europe that Germany would gradually be overcome by extremists and that
the Versailles Treaty guaranteed that a new war was inevitable.
There were both left and
right-wing putsches in the years following 1918 in Germany. A Communist revolution in Berlin culminated
in the assassination of Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht, leaders of the KPD
(Kommunist Partei Deutschland) by members of the Freikorps, a right-wing
militia, and the Stahlhelm or steel helmets which consisted of army
veterans. In 1920 the Kapp putsch,
orchestrated by right-wing opponents of the Weimar Republic, followed but was
suppressed by forces loyal to the Republic.
This was not to be the last attempted putsch as the Weimar Republic
attempted to integrate mass discontent in the wake of military defeat.
Following the conclusion
of the armistice the Kaiser abdicated and went to live privately in
Holland. Prince Max of Baden became
German Chancellor and began to establish the legislative and constitutional
framework for the new Republic. The HQ
of the Republic was to be Weimar rather than Berlin, the traditional capital. Furthermore, Berlin was too full of violence
and discontent at this stage to be considered as German capital. Weimar was a minor city in the German state
of Thuringia. It had been a significant
cultural centre in the 18th and 19th centuries when major
German writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Frederich von Schiller both
resided there. By the 20th
century Weimar was a relative backwater and symbolised cultural values rather
than militarism, qualities that the new leaders of Germany sought to
promote. However, Berlin was still the
cultural, scientific, and economic powerhouse of Germany.
The Weimar Republic was
to have an elected Reichstag based on proportional representation. The head of government was the Chancellor (Kanzler),
usually the leader of the party with the most seats. The head of state was an elected President
whose status was mainly symbolic although he was able to balance out the powers
of government and legislature. Elections
to the Reichstag were to take place every 5 years and presidential elections
every 7 years. Proportional
representation meant that it was almost impossible for any one party to gain a
majority, so government was mainly a case of coalitions that constantly
shifted. PR also had the effect of
nurturing small anti-democratic parties like the Communist Party and the NSDAP,
both of whom were committed to the destruction of the Republic.
During the 1920s
important moves were made to reform the terms of the Versailles
settlement. The Dawes and Young plans
were attempts by American financiers to resuscitate the German economy on terms
highly favourable to them. The
Kelogg-Briand pact was a re-negotiation of the repayments that Germany had been
forced to make at Versailles, but this time Germany had a say in the
terms. These initiatives were the work
of Gustave Stresemann, German Chancellor, in response to hyperinflation caused
by economic collapse. Stresemann
attempted to re-float the German mark which had become valueless by creating
the Rentenmark and Rentenbanks linked to the gold standard to maintain the new
currencies value.
These political moves all
took place against a backdrop of continuing political violence, culminating in
the assassination of Walter Rathenau, Minister of Finance, and a Jew, by
members of the Freikorps. In 1923, a
small Bavarian right-wing party, the NSDAP, led by Adolph Hitler, attempted to
march on Berlin in imitation of Benito Mussolini’s Italian fascist movement’s
march on Rome. The putsch occurred in
Munich and came to be known as the “beer hall putsch”. The Bavarian police, armed with carbines, met
the Nazi stormtroopers with a volley of shots and the march on Berlin
collapsed. Goering was shot in the leg
but escaped and left Germany for Sweden.
Hitler fell, he had dislocated his shoulder. Hitler was gaoled for his part in the coup
and went to Landsberg gaol where he began to write his life story Mein Kampf. (My Struggle) He received a short gaol
sentence of 5 years for treason and was released within a year on good conduct. A Communist who committed treason would have
been executed.
The Nazis, as they came
to be known, were now a banned organisation.
The other parties included the SPD (Socialisiches Partei Deutschland)
which supported the Republic and its legalistic basis. The first President of the Republic,
Frederich Ebert, had been a member of the SPD.
The SPD were a centre left party that believed in legality and the
gradual achievement of Socialism through the reform of Capitalism. To the left of them was the KPD which
believed that gradualism was doomed and that only Communist revolution could
achieve Socialism. The KPD had a
significant number of delegates in the Reichstag which meant that the left-wing
vote was split. This gave the right an
opportunity. Both the SPD and the KPD
had their own paramilitary organisations like the Nazi SA (Sturmabteilung)
or Brownshirts because of their brown paramilitary uniforms. These were the SPD’s Reichsbanner and
the KPD’s Red Front Fighters. The SA
were terrified of the RFF who they recognised could deal out and return
everything they received.
Another supporter of the
Republic was the Centre Party (Zentrum) which was Catholic and
conservative. Support for the Centre
Party was found mainly in the south and west of Germany. Catholics and Socialists had suffered
repression in Bismarck’s time because Bismarck had attempted to secularise
education, for instance, and resisted the international reach of the
Vatican. One of the last legitimate
Weimar Chancellors, Heinrich Bruning, and his successor Franz von Papen,
belonged to the Centre Party. Support
for the NSDAP was mainly in the north, east and centre of Germany among
Protestants. Later Hitler was to pacify
the Vatican by signing a concordat with the Pope.
Hitler was appointed
Chancellor in 1933 by President Hindenburg and set about establishing a
one-party state with himself as Leader (Fuehrer). The event that offered him the opportunity to
do this was the burning of the Reichstag or parliament by a loner, a Dutch
communist called Marius van der Lubbe.
This gave Hitler the opportunity to use President Hindenburg’s special
powers to suppress opponents and fundamental democratic freedoms. It also involved considerable illegality on
the part of the Nazi movement. Members
of the SPD and the KPD were rounded up by the Brownshirts and taken into
“protective custody”, a euphemism meaning that they were interned without trial
or rights in concentration camps and gaols.
THE
THIRD REICH 1933 – 39
Hitler initiated his
Chancellorship by destroying opposition parties like the SPD and KPD. The leadership of the SPD went into exile in
Czechoslovakia, a liberal country with an intact democratic system, and many
leading members of the KPD fled to Russia where they faced persecution.
Hitler’s next great
opponent were conservative forces within Germany like the army and the church. The German churches, however, required a more
careful, subtle strategy. In 1933 Hitler
signed a Concordat with the Pope which established a doctrine of
non-interference by the Vatican in Germany’s internal affairs. In return the Catholic Centre party was
dissolved. The Concordat was never
entirely successful, but Hitler did not dare revoke it. To the Nazis, the Catholic church with its
international organisation and structure, was still a major threat as it had
been for former Chancellor Otto von Bismarck who had waged a campaign against
it in the 1880s. The Protestant church
which was both anti-Communist and anti-Semitic (since the days of Martin
Luther) and had no international organisation like the Catholics, was more
pliable. It became divided into a Nazi
sponsored church called the German Christian church and the Confessing Church
which opposed some elements of Nazi doctrine such as the sterilisation
programme for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped. Leading protesters like Pastor Niemoeller
were sent to concentration camps like Dachau.
Nazi coordination (Gleichschaltung)
of the country meant that even innocuous, non-political activities now came
under the auspices of the party.
Coordination affected every part of society. There was also the police state. Free speech in social contexts was now
outlawed under the law against “malicious gossip”. German civilians could be denounced to the
Gestapo by friends, neighbours and even their children. Opponents were put in “protective custody”
and removed to concentration camps. The
free press was eliminated and only Nazi newspapers like the Volkischer
Beobachter (Racial Observer) and Julius Streicher’s Der Stormer (The
Attacker) were permitted.
German businesses were
gradually Aryanised meaning that Jewish owners were bullied out of companies
and, from 1933 onwards, Nazi racial laws banned Jews from the Civil
Service. Jews comprised only 1% of the
German population and they were among the most loyal and conforming
citizens. Nazi propaganda aimed to whip
up hysterical antisemitism and racial hatred.
Antisemitism served the purposes of the dictatorship and was encouraged when
the regime’s popularity began to decline.
In 1935 the Nuremburg laws codified antisemitism, even though it was
still unclear as to what exactly was meant by the term ‘Jew’? Was it a religious or a racial term? Many German Jews were secularised and no
longer practised their religion, so did the new laws apply to them? The Nuremburg laws sought to clarify these
matters, but their underlying rationale was arbitrary like many other attempts
at racial legislation.
Hitler was also able to
calm down the pogroms and antisemitic attacks.
For instance, during the Olympics he had to incorporate four half-Jews
into the German team when the USA, among other countries, threatened a
boycott. Antisemitic banners and posters
were taken down around Garmisch Partenkirchen, for members of the international
sporting community were arriving and Hitler recognised that the Olympics were a
flagship for the regime.
The first political
crisis of the Third Reich occurred in late June 1934. Hitler came under pressure from President
Hindenburg to supress radical elements in the Brownshirts, particularly
Hitler’s friend and erstwhile ally Ernst Roehm who was calling for a second
revolution which probably meant a progressive takeover by anti-capitalist
elements within the SA. On the infamous
Night of the Long Knives (Nacht der Langenen Messer) Roehm was liquidated
as were elements of the SA and many of Hitler’s former critics such as the
leader of the northern wing of the NSDAP and its key organiser, Gregor
Strasser. Other victims included former
Chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher who helped Hitler into power. He was killed along with his wife Elizabeth. A priest who had helped Hitler with his
German grammar when he was writing Mein Kampf was eliminated too. The event was depicted by Goebbels, Minister
of Propaganda and Enlightenment, as the defeat of a left-wing and aristocratic
putsch. The law was subsequently altered
to allow legitimacy for Hitler’s acts but, in truth, the putsch was an
illusion. Afterwards, Hitler received a
telegram of congratulations from President Hindenburg. Edgar Junge who had written a speech for
former Chancellor Franz von Papen which he delivered at the University of
Marburg, criticising the violence of the SA, was also executed. Von Papen was fortunate to escape with his
life, for his assassination could not have been explained since he was close to
President Hindenburg. He was made ambassador to Austria and effectively
sidelined.
Following this pivotal
event President Hindenburg died. Instead
of a new Presidential election, Hitler incorporated the Chancellorship into the
Presidency, thus assuming both roles, and called himself the Leader (der
Fuehrer). In effect this removed all
the careful checks and balances that had been installed in the German
constitution at the beginning of the Weimar Republic. The Republic was finished, and Germany had
become a one-party state. The
assassination of Roehm and other elements of the SA was vital in ensuring the
loyalty of the army to the Third Reich.
Without the support of the police and the army, as had been seen in the
Putsch of 1923 in Munich, the Nazis would have been unable to rule effectively. Every member of the German army now had to
swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler himself, thus binding the army much closer
to the person of the Leader.
Hitler set to work to
address the economic crisis triggered by the Wall Street Crash in 1929. He recognised that Germany needed cars and
motorways. Unemployment was critical and
had risen to unprecedented levels.
Hitler initiated a programme to build motorways (Autobahn) paying
for the project by printing or borrowing money.
Ultimately only 20% of the road building programme was ever
completed. What really revitalised the
economy was rearmament and conscription which was re-introduced in 1935. Hitler realised this by repudiating the
Versailles Treaty which had stated that the German army must consist of only
100,000 soldiers, tanks and aircraft were prohibited. Most German now had jobs and, whatever their
personal reservations were about the regime, most non-Jewish Germans accepted
its achievements.
Other projects included
the Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) programme which provided
holidays, sports opportunities, and cultural trips for many Germans at a time
when few Germans moved outside their area or played sports like tennis or golf
which were seen as the preserve of the middle and upper classes. Block bookings of cruise ships, sports
facilities, and theatres brought opportunities to millions of working-class
Germans which had hitherto been totally outside their experience. However, members of the party or the Gestapo
would always be present on these holidays to make sure that ideological
indoctrination was still ongoing, and no one made the mistake of speaking
freely. A massive Strength through Joy
building project at Prora on the Baltic Island of Rugen was abandoned at the
beginning of the war.
The Nazis also initiated
a Winter Aid programme, consisting of unofficial donations (and some official
donations too) collected by members of the SA.
The donations were intended to help the poor and needy.
Hitler had begun his
career as a would-be artist and regarded culture as central to his plan for the
Third Reich. The infamous exhibition of
degenerate art of 1936-7 went on tour round Germany consisted of works by artists
like Kandinsky, Picasso, Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff and Edward Munch. The
exhibition proved incredibly popular, roughly one million people attended it. It was intended to point out the failings of
abstract and experimental art. Hitler
simultaneously organised an exhibition of art that he felt represented National
Socialist values at the Haus der deutschen Kunst in Munich, (an art
gallery designed on the Neo-Classical principles approved by Hitler himself). Hitler rejected cosmopolitan, modernist art
movements like surrealism, cubism, and expressionism in favour of his own taste
for pointless kitsch and gigantic realist statues of thrusting German
supermen.
Music was less easy to
police since it is more abstract than the other arts but obviously any composer
with Jewish connections was repressed, even substantial figures like Richard
Strauss who the Nazi regime favoured and promoted. Strauss had collaborated with librettist Hugo
von Hoffmanstahl on various operas, but he happened to be Jewish. Even some of Mozart’s operas were supressed
since Mozart’s first librettist Lorenzo da Ponte was also a Jew. Perhaps the only authentic and major German
musical work completed in the Nazi era was by former war veteran and Munich
composer Carl Orff. This was his Carmina
Burana and its primitive, powerful outlines and content indicate immense
energy, dynamism and movement, qualities admired by the Nazis (although its
perhaps better known today as the accompaniment to an advert for Old Spice
after shave tonic). However, the Nazis
criticised the libretto which was in Latin and therefore unpatriotic and
contrary to authentic German values.
The only major German
writer to remain was the Nobel Prize winning playwright Gerhard Hauptmann who
had become famous for his play Die Webern (The Weavers), an account of
an uprising by discontented Silesian weavers in the 19th
century. But Hauptmann was too old now
to leave. His involvement with projects
like the racial hygiene movement placed him on the lunatic fringe. Another Nobel Prize winning author was
novelist Thomas Mann. Mann was married
to the daughter of an eminent Jewish family in Munich and his liberal values
were at odds with National Socialism, so he departed for Switzerland. His brother Heinrich Mann, a more vocal
opponent of the Nazis, fled to France.
These writers were important enough not to depend on the domestic market
for their income and they could virtually live anywhere. The only major literary figure to support the
Nazis was Gottfried Benn who had made his reputation before and after WW1 with
his expressionist poetry.
In this period 1933-39
Hitler’s foreign policy was based on re-armament and repudiation of the hated
Versailles Treaty, which Keynes had defined as a ‘Carthaginian peace’ meaning
that it was harsh and vindictive. Hitler’s
first move in international politics was a plebiscite that returned the
Saarland, a coal mining region in the West, to Germany. This was followed by the remilitarization of
the Rhineland in 1935-6. Under the terms
of the Versailles Treaty the Rhineland was not allowed to be occupied by the
German military. When Germany had
threatened to renege on its payments under the treaty in 1923, the French army
had marched in and stripped assets and resources. Hitler pushed a force of 3,000 soldiers up to
the frontier backed up by a further force of 30,000 and gave them orders to
rush back over the border if the French began to mobilise. In the event, there was no response and Hitler’s
gamble had paid off.
Hitler’s next move was
the creation of Greater Germany (Grossdeutschland), an ideal of the
pan-German movement which had demanded the incorporation of all Germans within
an enlarged German Reich. In practice
this meant an Anschluss or connection with Austria. In 1934 an attempted Nazi putsch following
the assassination of Austrian dictator Englebert Dolfuss had been suppressed
and Dolfuss was replaced by Kurt von Schuschnigg. By 1936 political union was now welcomed and
the German army marched across the border encountering no opposition. The British informed Schuschnigg that they
could not help him. Hitler’s homeland
was now part of an expanded German Reich.
Hitler now viewed the
minority German community living in the border region of Czechoslovakia as
another opportunity to expand the Reich.
However, at this point opposition to Hitler’s plans from Britain and
France resulted in the Munich Agreement of 1938. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
travelled to Munich and made an agreement with Hitler that effectively
surrendered the Sudetenland to Germany and offered a guarantee of peace with
Britain for 10 years. In the event the
agreement only lasted for two years. The
German army moved into the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia, a rich country with
democratic traditions and an effective army, was dismembered. What is now the Czech Republic, became the
Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Territory was also ceded to Poland and Hungary. The west’s policy of appeasement had failed,
Hitler had expanded the Reich, seized large new territories, more much needed
manpower including the important Skoda works in the Czech Republic, a large
arms industry, and a well-equipped professional army too. Hitler now turned his gaze to Poland.
Paul Murphy
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