I've promised composing a brief history of the Weimar republic earlier in this thread. What i plan to do is instead of putting it all into one lengthy post/thread i'll compose small bitesize chunks here. They are going to be brief so if by any chance you do want more information than what is provided, your best bet is either to go to the sources i cite or simply drop me a PM. If this works well i may use it as the script for a video like i've done in the past. If a mod wishes to move said chunks to somewhere more appropriate or to compose a new thread on the history of the Weimar republic with what i'm about to say in that new thread, feel free to but f i want to begin first with my thoughts regarding the following:
australopithecus wrote:Trouble is though is that if you're going to assert the Treaty of Versailles as the start of the war (hypothetically) then you can equally say it was Hitler's formation of the Stabswache, or Mussolini's March on Rome, or even the failed putsch in 1923. All equally valid candidates but nothing more than major events on the road to the war's declaration.
I agree and Im not entirely sure about some of the arguments presented in this thread. Let me explain: if one is to suggest that say the year 1918 (the end of the war) or 1919 (with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles [henceforth will be called the TOV later on]) are really as arbitrary as any other date in modern German history. It seems then with this form of logic, one coud go back as far as the late 19th/early 20th century with it's consequences, for one thing it was around this time that the concept of 'Reich' was 'especially reinvoked' in German politics, for another thing this was about the same time the political Right discovered that "socialism" (either through deed as in Bismarck's welfare reforms or simply utilising the name itself) could be utilised away from the left and used for essentialy conservative ends. There were other things going on too such as the development of the
concept of Lebensraum, and propagation of Social Darwinism from the Anglosphere into Germany which for racists and antisemites gave them further justifications for their hatreds, ie to see things now in Racial terms and "race struggle" (This was even more so the case concerning the extreme-nationalist "và¶lkisch" philosophers and sects who saw the Germans and the German state as a "pure entity" to be protected against supposedly corrupting elements [especially what they deemed to be Jewish elements]). Unfortunately such ideas made it's way into intellectual currents too.
"Is the history of nations"¦any different [from Darwin's Origin of the Species]? ... No! The fate of those branches of the human family, which, as nations and races, have struggled for survival and progress for millennia now, is governed by the same external, iron laws that have determined the history of the entire organic world which for millions of years has provided life on earth"¦the victors in the struggle for life were not always the nobler or more perfect forms" - Ernst Häckel, from "Die Welträthsel", quoted in Joachim Remak (ed), "The Nazi Years: A Documentary History", p4.
And within this context of "Race" and "Nation" struggle, nationalist authors would often claim that it is their own race or nation that are the superior ones. such currents can be found within Houston Stuart Chamberlain's infamous racist diatribe, "
The foundations of the Nineteenth century"
"The entrance of the Jew into European history had, as Herder said, signified the entrance of an alien element , alien to that which Europe had already achieved [...] If we look around, we see that the importance of each nation as a living power to-day is dependent upon the proportion of genuinely Teutonic blood in its population. Only Teutons sit on the thrones of Europe."
Now how important is all of this with regards to the war which began in 1939? Certainly all of this carries importance in the making of what was to become Nazi ideology, but knowing this alone offers little in the way in how such an ideology took power in Germany, much less how the infamous war of 1939 came to be, as it can be argued (and already has been done so. see Ian Kershaw's Two part biography of Hitler (Nemesis and Hubris) for more details) that there is litte in the way of straight or undeviating "clear-cut" special path from the late 19th century to 1939, or 1933, and that Historical circumstance had to come into play first. Lucy Dawidowicz in her book "The War against the Jews" mentions a "easy to draw" line of "anti-Semitic descent from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler" (p23). That does not necessarily mean it was inevitable such an antisemitism like the one Hitler espoused would be put into practice.
Imagine for a moment that Germany had say won the war of 1914-1918. European History would obviously have been very different. The British Empire, denied acsess to the continents ports would have swiftly died. The domination of the US economy may not have been so dramatic. Poland may have never came into existance in the 20th century, It's extremely difficult to predict what would have happened to Russia, but it's perhaps easier to say Hitler would most likely have been little more than a mediocre painter, perhaps a Beerhall bore, but the way the victorious Kaiser would have been set up, it would have been significantly harder for a hitler type character specifically to get into a position of complete power.
But of course, all of that was speculative alternative history that didn't play out. Instead what we got was a Germany, at the end of 1918, defeated!
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This part will cover the relative power-political decline of the Kaiser during the War and it's latter stages. I do not think a complete history of World War I needs to trouble me here but i do wish to mention a few things for the sake of context. I'm going to begin with General Erich von Falkenhayn, the man whom the Kaiser himself chose to replace Helmuth von Moltke the Younger after a combination of his ill-health and blame for the defeat at the battle of Marne. But we shouldn't read too deeply into this action in order to imply the Kaiser was some sort of supreme overlord presiding over all of the war effort! On the contrary. It was perhaps a trait of the Kaiser to go along with what others had to say rather than him having the final input, thus as long as the Kaiser could curry the favour of some general or politician, so he could easily be subject to manipulation by them. So it was with von Falkenhayn who managed to remain in his post until August 1916 despite multiple failures such as the failure to properly bleed the French dry at Verdun. He had enough power and influence in his position for the Kaiser to actually remark "I'm only a shadow" to a Junior officer, he also said "If i'm of so little use, than i can go back and live in Germany." (Quoted from Lemar Cecil, "Wilhelm II. Volume II: Emperor and Exile, 1900-1941.", p233.) Nonetheless to put it briefly his failures soon began to stack up against him, also his military strategies for bringing the war to a positive end for Germany (i'll get to this in a min) were dividing High Command. This quickly lead to voices clamouring against him and, after lobbying from Paul Von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, ultimately his resignation on the 16th. It was Ludendorf, A man that already had proven his salt with victories on the Eastern Front whilst the Western front was still stagnent that sucseeded him. And here was a man who openly put it later in his memoirs that he did not like anyone outside High command meddling with strategy.
After recounting one incidence of Civil-military conflict in his Memoirs, ludendorf explained "I mention this incident only because it was characteristic of the feeling [among the civillian leaders] in Berlin; they were always ready to go against, instead of with us." He also observed "the spirit of the people at home rendered action imperative. We had the best prospects of winning the war but it was not over, and what we had won had to be kept. The popular state of mind jeopardized everything." (Quoted from Michael Charles Desch, "Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment", p69-70.)
In practice this also applied to the Kaiser aswell no matter how deeply he respected the system of German Monarchy. This didn't prevent the Kaiser from taking a keen interest in War development
as one can see in this photograph here but now his opinions went largely ignored. This then is my brief explaination from how Imperial Germany transcended into what historians like Martin Kitchen calls "the silent dictatorship" during the latter stages of the War.
I've already mentioned von Falkenhayn's divisivse military strategies, there is something obvious to note about it and that is that Germany was locked into a Two Front War and not just that; the nature of the fronts were totaly different from one another. Ever since 1914 the Western front had remained stagnent to the extent Battle gains could be measured simply in Yards and not Miles
wheras the Eastern Front was wide open and massive gains and losses could be recorded. This not only led to debates
about logistics and the allocation of Men and Machine alike on the Two Fronts but also led to debates about what the grand strategy should be.
Von Falkenhayn preferred what is known in German circles as "Ermattungsstrategie", ie the gradual weakening of the French and British through attrition which would ultimately bring them to the negoating table, in fact this was the rationale behind Verdun wheras Ludendorf and Hindenburg preferred the traditional Prussian "Vernichtungsstrategie", ie the big battle to decide the War. As Verdun was a failure so the tide of opinion in High command turned to Vernichtungsstrategie.
And Ludendorf and Hindenburg would soon get the chance to enact just that on the Western Front. And i think we all know the story! Political and social unrest in Russia,
aided by the increasingly unpopular war over there (see 7:28 onwards and part 4), ushered in the Bolsheviks who finally siezed power in the October Revolution of 1917. The subsequent Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the general ending of hostilities in the east, allowed the Germans to refresh their depleted ranks in the West for a massive assault (dubbed the "Kaiserschlacht" or "Kaiser's Battle") headed up by Ludendorff to break the British back into the channel and force the French to armistice, before the Americans who had ]officially entered the war on April 6th 1917 could get really involved. (see Winston Churchill's "The World Crisis" Part III, Chapter XVII "The Twenty-First of March")
The gains of the offensive when it was launched, although may have looked impressive on a map by the standards of the boggy trench warfare of the previous 3 years, were unsustainable given the increasing German casualty rates and diminishing ability to supply the lines with fresh troops. Ludendorff had failed to achieve the decisive breakthrough needed to win the war. So when the allies counterattacked in the summer of that year, and launched what has become known as the "Hundred Days Offensive", it was relatively easy pickings for them (well, again compared to the the standards of the boggy trench warfare of the previous 3 years anyways), so much so that even the seemingly impregnable "
Hindenburg line" was overrun. All this, plus the those fresh Americans which now bolstered the allied forces, added to how the allies could now bring Tanks, Aircraft, Artillery, Cavalry, Foot-soldiers etc into close coordination (
as exemplified in the battle of Amiens) in a way the Germans simply couldn't, all helped contribute to the breaking of German Morale and in places a very rapid collapse of the German army. Surrenders followed en masse:
"The Germans were surrendering everywhere. I saw one Australian private actually prodding the rear of a German brigadier, much to the amusement of everybody else . But it was a morning of victory. You could feel the hair pricking up your spine with excitement because we knew that it was going to be the end of the war" - Major S. Evers. Australian Corps, quoted from Peter and Dan Snow's BBC documentary "20th Century Battlefields - 1918 Western Front " and from Max Arthur, "Forgotten voices of the Great War", p295.
Indeed according to monitors of military mail at about this time, Ordinary German soldiers were beginning to see this the war as a great 'swindle'. instead of fighting on, many were openly deserting and self-mutilation was rife (and they were pretty open about this too.). Arms were being smuggled away from the front lines for the purposes of impending revolution. (See B. Ulrich and B. Ziemann (eds), "Frontallung im Ersten Weltkrieg. Wahn und Wirklichkeit", p199-208. for details)
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to be continued