Table Of ContentGermany after the First World War
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GERMANY AFTER THE
FIRST WORLD WAR
RICHARD BESSEL
CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD
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Cover illustration: 'The War is over—What now?'. Soldiers arriving in Germany after the First World War.
Reproduced by courtesy of the BibliothekfurZeitgeschichte, Stuttgart.
Preface
From the Heidelberger Platz onward, the streets were black with people.
A great excitement lay upon them. The tension grew. People thought
they heard distant drum-beats. A wave of shouts rolled along the streets.
The stewards formed a chain to hold back the mass of people. And now
the trumpets were indeed approaching.
And then came the sight that caused many in the crowd to weep.
Men as well as women, moved by a feeling of humanity's common fate,
rememberirig the long war and all the dead.
Did the people see the troops? They were looking at the long war, at
victories and at the defeats. Before them a piece of their own life was
marching past, with wagons and horses, machine-guns and cannons.
MORE than seventy years separate us from that grey day in December 1918
when the first German front-line troops arrived back in Berlin. Almost all
those who fought in the First World War are now dead. The soldiers'
graveyards in northern France have become tourist attractions rather than
places of pilgrimage. The heated passions which once accompanied discus-
sion of the First World War have been replaced by measured academic
debate. Yet the world in which we live is still shaped by the Great War and
its aftermath. The First World War was a watershed, marking the destruction
of an old world in an orgy of senseless violence and the beginnings of the
uncertain modern age in which we live. Today, after the collapse of
Marxist-Leninist socialism and the re-emergence of bitter national conflict
in eastern Europe, the First World War seems in some ways closer to us
than it did ten or twenty years ago. As we face the possibility that Europe
is no longer quite the stable place we had assumed it to be, the First World
War and its aftermath may assume an immediacy which was unimaginable
just a few years ago, when my work on this book began.
An author owes it to his readers to explain what his book is about and
why it was written. As with so many monographs, the origins of this book
are both professional and personal. The professional origins are perhaps
obvious. Much of my research over the past decade has involved an
attempt to explain the failure of German democracy in the 1920s and
1930s—to examine the social and political roots of that failure and to probe
the effects of violence in politics.2 Again and again, the experience of
1 Alfred Doblin, November 1918, in, Heimkehr der Fronttruppen (Munich, 1978), 152-3.
2 Richard Bessel Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: The Storm Troopers in Eastern Germany.,
?
1925-1934 (New Haven and London, 1984); id., Tolitische Gewalt und die Krise der Weimarer
Republik', in Lutz Niethammer et al. Burgerliche Gesellschqft in Deutschland: Historische Einblicke,
vi Preface
(and defeat in) the First World War appeared to be of fundamental import-
ance. In particular, the First World War loomed large in any attempt to
explain the origins and effects of the political violence which afflicted the
Weimar Republic to an extent and in a manner quite unknown in Ger-
many before 1914 and which contributed significantly to undermining demo-
cratic government. However, to ascribe political radicalism and political
violence to the brutalizing effects of the War seemed to me unsatisfactory
and altogether too simple. The ways in which the War affected Germany's
social and political history, it seemed to me, needed to be examined more
carefully.
The personal origins are no less important. In a sense, this book is a
search for a grandfather I never knew. My mother's father served in the
Wiirttemberg army during the First World War, winning battlefield promo-
tion to the rank of lieutenant. I was told only the bare outlines of what
happened to him: that he spent the War fighting in northern France; that
after the Armistice he marched his troops in good order over the Rhine (an
achievement of which he was apparently very proud); that he was demo-
bilized in Schweinfurt; that his first wife died in the influenza epidemic in
1918 and that he subsequently married my grandmother in 1920; that he
returned to the Swabian village where he had lived before the War, built a
house and small dry-goods business together with one of his brothers; and
that he felt an abiding animosity towards France. After the War he settled,
apparently without great difficulties, into normal family life. I suspected that
his story might have been far more typical of members of the 'front
generation' of the First World War than were the activities of those who
joined the Freikorps rather than face life in civil society. After all, whatever
psychological damage had been inflicted on the men in the trenches, most
of the surviving soldiers of the Great War, like my grandfather, managed
somehow to pick up the pieces of their civilian lives.
The history of the ill-fated Weimar Republic's early years has been framed
by three broad themes: the political revolution of 1918-19 and its reversal,
the great inflation and the subsequent stabilization, and the 'inner liquidation
of the War'.3 In the literature on Weimar Germany, the revolutionary
politics of 1918-19 and their suppression have figured prominently, with
the publication over the past few decades of a vast number of studies
covering just about every conceivable aspect of the revolution, the coun-
Fragen, Perspektiven (Frankfurt/Main, 1990), 383-95; Richard Bessel, 'Why Did the Weimar
Republic Collapse?', in Ian Kershaw (ed.), Weimar: Why Did German Democracy Fail? (London,
1990), 120-52; Richard Bessel, '1933: A Failed Counter-Revolution', in E. E. Rice (ed.), Revolution
and Counter-Revolution (Oxford, 1991), 109-28.
3 This is the phrase used by Detlev Peukert in his superb study of the Weimar Republic:
Detlev J. K. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik: Krisenjahre der klassischen Moderns (Frankfurt/Main,
1987), 57.
Preface vii
cil movement, and its suppression;4 in recent years, the inflation too has
finally been examined in the detail it requires, thanks in large measure to
the work of Garl-Ludwig Holtfrerich and Gerald Feldman.5 However, the
third major theme framing the history of the failed gamble of Weimar
democracy, the 'inner liquidation of the War', has attracted rather less
attention.
This book is an attempt to examine some of the consequences of the First
World War for Germany. It forms part of an attempt to understand why
and how democracy failed in Germany after 1918, and is based upon a
belief that the consequences of the First World War formed a crucial element
of that failure. It is intended to be what its title promises: a social history
of Germany in the aftermath of defeat in the first global conflict. It
concentrates on the demobilization after the First World War, with de-
mobilization taken in its broad sense as a social and psychological as well
as an economic and military process. As such, its main focus is neither the
revolutionary politics of 1918-19 and their suppression nor the economics
and politics of the inflation. Rather, its focus is Germany as a post-war
society. It forms an attempt to examine the contribution of the War, the
defeat, and the post-war transition to the political culture of Weimar
Germany—an attempt not only to delineate the terrible social and economic
damage caused by the War but also to probe the significance of how the
First World War was remembered during the Weimar period. Implicit in
such a project is the assumption that Germany's social, economic, and
political problems after the First World War stemmed as much from the
extraordinary upheavals after 1914 as from long-term economic and political
structures fixed during the nineteenth century. This is not to assert that
underlying structures had no role in framing the tragic course of German
history during the first half of the twentieth century, but it is to suggest that
we need to concentrate on the contingent as well as the structural determi-
nants of historical phenomena.
References to the enormous literature which the First World War has
generated will be found as appropriate through this book, and so it is not
necessary to parade bulky footnotes here. However, some studies deserve
4 Although it is now somewhat dated, a measure of this huge literature can be gained from
the bibliography prepared by Georg P. Meyer, Bibliographic zur deutschen Revolution 1918/19
(Gottingen, 1977).
5 Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, The German Inflation 1914—1923: Causes and Effects in International
Perspective (Berlin and New York, 1986); Gerald D. Feldman, Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, Gerhard
A. Ritter, and Peter-Christian Witt (eds.), Die deutsche Inflation: Fine £wischenbilanz (Berlin and
New York, 1982); (eds.), Die Erfahrung der Inflation im internationalen ^usammenhang und Vergleich
(Berlin and New York, 1984); eid. (eds.), Die Anpassung an die Inflation (Berlin and New York,
1986); Gerald D. Feldman (ed.), Die Nachwirkungen der Inflation aufdie deutsche Geschichte 1924-1933
(Munich, 1985); id., The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics and Society in the German Inflation,
1914-1924 (Oxford, 1993).
viii Preface
particular mention. Among these are the pioneering work of Gerald Feld-
man,6 Jiirgen Kocka,7 and Wilhelm Deist,8 the imaginative recent studies of
Robert Whalen,9 Ute Daniel,10 Modris Ecksteins11 and George Mosse,12 and
the important studies of other major combatant countries by Jean-Jacques
Becker,13 Antoine Prost,14 Arthur Marwick,15 and Jay Winter.16 Like others
who have studied the First World War and its aftermath, I have profited
greatly from their work—more so than any formal references can testify.
The gestation of this book has taken an inexcusably long time, during
which I have accumulated enormous debts of gratitude. My first debt is to
the staffs in all those archives in Germany and Poland who made materials
available to me and helped me find a way through mountains of documents.
No less important was the funding necessary to undertake numerous and
extended research-trips. It therefore gives me great pleasure to express my
profound gratitude to those institutions which provided the support which
enabled me to carry out my research: to the Open University, which
repeatedly provided travel grants over the years; to the Wolfson Foundation,
which provided a grant for an extended period of study based in Hamburg;
and especially to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which generously
provided the funding for my study leave based at the Technische Universitat
in Berlin in 1985, during which time the bulk of my archive research was
carried out. I also owe a tremendous debt to those scholars whose works
are mentioned above and who charted the historical territory through which
I have wandered. More specifically, I want to thank friends and colleagues
who have read and commented on my attempts to make some sense of the
aftermath of the First World War in Germany—in particular David Black-
bourn, David Grew, Ute Daniel, Wilhelm Deist, Laura de Sherbinin,
Richard Evans, Gerald Feldman, Dick Geary, Reinhard Riirup, Gornelie
Usborne, and Gerhard Wilke. Finally, I want to declare my debt to two
6 Gerald D. Feldman, Army, Industry, and Labor in Germany 1914-1918 (Princeton, NJ, 1966).
7 Jiirgen Kocka, Facing Total War: German Society 1914-1918 (Leamington Spa, 1984).
8 Wilhelm Deist (ed.), Militdr und Innenpolitik im Weltkrieg 1914-1918 (2 vols.; Diisseldorf, 1970);
id., 'Der militarische Zusammenbruch des Kaiserreichs: Zur Realitat der "Dolchstofllegende" ',
in Ursula Biittner (ed.), Das Unrechtsregime: Internationale Forschung uber den Nationalsozialismus, i:
Ideologic, Herrschajlssystem, Wirkung in Europa (Hamburg, 1986), 101-29.
9 Robert Weldon Whalen, Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914-1939 (Ithaca,
NY and London, 1984).
10 Ute Daniel, Arbeiterfrauen in der Kriegsgesellschajl: Beruf, Familie und Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg
(Gottingen, 1989).
11 Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York,
1989).
12 George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York and
Oxford, 1990).
13 Jean-Jacques Becker, The Great War and the French People (Leamington Spa, 1985).
14 Antoine Prost, Les anciens combattants et la societe Jranfaise 1914-1939 (3 vol.; Paris, 1977).
15 Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London, 1965).
16 J. M. Winter, The Great War and the British People (London, 1986).
Preface ix
friends who, sadly, died before this book was completed: to Tim Mason,
without whose help and encouragement I would never have begun historical
research and who long ago suggested many of the themes which surface in
this study; and to Detlev Peukert, with whom I discussed much of what is
presented here and who was an amazing source of stimulating and challeng-
ing ideas. Those who knew these fine historians will understand how much
I owe them and how much we have lost through their untimely deaths.
Historical research is a collective enterprise not only in its production but
also in its consumption. Accordingly, I hope that this book will be read with
interest and profit by others who, while perhaps neither sharing my assump-
tions nor agreeing with my conclusions, agree that ours is a common effort
to understand this fateful chapter in modern European history.
R.B.
Stony Stratford
28 May 1992
