German Politics Thread

They unleashed the Freikorps because they genuily feared what was almost simultaneously happening in Russia. Which was also happening in Munich btw. Ebert and Noske did what they thought what was necessary to defend the budding democracy against what was perceived as the greatest threat. People often downplay or underestimate what was happening. There was a legit mini Civil War happening in Berlin and there was no good option left. The police could not be counted upon since the Police Chief (a KPD member but appointed by the SPD to get the KPD to cooperate) had openly tried to subvert the police against the government. The peace treaty was yet to be signed and there were fears that a prolonged Civil War could be used as a pretext for an invasion of Germany by the Allies. Thus the Ebert government had only bad and terrible options left. No matter the course of action though, the KPD would have remained an enemy either way after its' defeat, and the far-right elements were not strong enough to overthrow the government afterwards.

It is really a shame that someone like Noske got until recently so little recognition for his attempts to defend the Republic while someone like Luxemburg got revered despite her attempts to destroy it. Thankfully the former is slowly changing.

Edited by Zarastro on Apr 9th 2022 at 1:58:06 PM

So did everyone in Weimar Germany think that working with Fascists was a good idea? With the SPD coming out looking best because they at least realised it was a bad idea before the Nazi takeover was completed?

Based on what’s been said this is likely because, whatever his intentions, he ended up being a big factor in destroying the Republic by being a fascist-enabler and turning other factions against the SPD. When you take extreme measures to save something you kinda have to succeed at saving it or you’re just some guy who carried out extremist acts.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 9th 2022 at 1:09:54 PM

Noske also had no problems cracking down on less radical leftists, including arresting unionist Alwin Brandes (who'd later rejoin the SPD and become a member of the German resistance against the Nazi regime) under flimsy pretenses in 1919.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 9th 2022 at 2:25:21 PM

Noske and Ebert saved the Republic by supressing the Spartakus Revolt which was instigated by the KPD. This would have always earned the enmity of the defeated. It is difficult to appreciate with how much vitriol Luxemburg and others agitated against the SPD before the revolt started. Think of the Der Stürmer but with a marxist bend and fewer carricatures and better prose.

Nor did their actions empower the Far-Right to a fatal extent. Their attempts to seize power were - once again - foiled by the SPD and other democratic forces later on. The events of Spartacus Revolt certainly increased instability and caused an even deeper rift, but the ultimate responsibility for this must go to those who - and I'd like to stress this point - tried to instigate a Civil War and overthrow the Republic. Btw. quite a lot of Germans were afterwards very happy about this (no wonder, averting a full Civil War is something many could get behind) and voted in large numbers for the SPD.

Brandes was one the few prominent Soldatenräte who were not seriously considering a plot true. But arresting someone in a dangerous situation and setting him free once their is no evidence against him is hardly "cracking down". Noske was a democrat through and through and actually willing to fight for it. Who knows how history would have gone if Otto Braun and others had similiarly tried to put up a fight later on... . It is easy to say in hindsight that the real enemy was the Far-Right all along but Ebert and Co. who a lot of more pressing concerns. The naval blockade was not yet lifted. People were starving, many angry, armed men with uncertain loyalties came back from the front. The KPD was trying to overthrow the government and briefly succeeded in Munich. Berlin received the warning that particulary France was only waiting for an excuse to invade. Meanwhile people were fighting only a few streets away. Desperate times sometimes encourage desperate measures.

Edited by Zarastro on Apr 9th 2022 at 2:39:01 PM

Luxemburg actually advised against the uprising and only begrudgingly supported it after she was outvoted.

Nevermind that the right-wing press in Germany at the time had been engaging in anti-communist hysterics for weeks at that point, massively exaggerating the actual threat the Spartacists in particular - it's worth remembering that the uprising wasn't even instigated by them despite the name - actually posed.

There was no actual mass support for the uprising.

But in relying on the Reichswehr and the Freikorps, the Ebert government helped an anti-democratic deep state to root itself deep within the republic.

The Ebert-Groener pact will always be a black mark on the SPD's history.

[[/quoteblock]]Luxemburg actually advised against the uprising and only begrudgingly supported it after she was outvoted

Even leaving aside the question aside how "hysteric" this fear really was given what happened in Russia and Germany, if we talk about the press, we can not overlook how systematically the USPD/KPD agitated for weeks for a violent overthrow of the government in the Rote Fahne. That the SPD government managed to steer the Republic through those first few years was their finest hour second only to Otto Wels' speech in 1933.

....

Did you miss the part where they empowered an anti-democratic deep state that would continue to undermine the Weimar Republic until the Nazis put the final nail in the coffin?

So no, this was not one of their finest hours. It's always been a black mark.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 9th 2022 at 4:11:45 PM

How much of the blame for the weakness of the Weimar Republic is still put on the proportional representation system? I remember coming across this in Norman Lowe's book on world history and even in the wiki that the proportional representation system prevented the creation of a more united majority government leading to the ruling coalition always being weak.

But isn't proportional representation usually seen as a good system to ensure minority representation and protection of their rights from majority imposition?

Edited by xyzt on Apr 9th 2022 at 10:51:24 PM

Well, the pre-revolution Reichstag also had a lot of parties despite being first-past-the-post and was similarly fragmented. And it was grossly distorted á la US gerrymander to boot. So this idea strikes me as distinctly alternative facts-ey. And yeah, my impression was that the historical consensus was that a) a Russia-like communist takeover was very improbable in the first place as many of the revolutionaries had different goals and the Soviet-fans had far from an overwhelming role and b) that the dalliance between the SPD and the conservatives had the principal effect of fracturing the workers' movement and strengthening anti-democratic and militaristic groups.

This is a very simplistic view leaves out a lot of factors and reasons behind the decision and also puts way too much importance on it. I tried to explain that the SPD government was in a very, very difficult situation in 1918-1921 and had very few options. Preventing a Civil War and securing the loyalty of the army at least to the extent that they would not openly take up arms against the government were the top priorities and they achieved that. Some historians argue that this "pact" between Ebert and Groener was somewhat succesful because while the Reichswehr later refused to take up arms against the Kapp-Putsch, it also prevented more generals and officers to join.

(Also yikes, the literature on the Wikipedia article is really hopelessly outdated).

The real challenge for the Republic was not some pact between the Reichswehr and the SPD government but the predominant scepticism and even hostility towards the Republic among the elites. The SPD realized that and as e.g. Ursula Büttner in her still relevant book over the Weimar Republic argues (Die überforderte Republik), did a lot to replace them over time, which ironically made e.g. Prussia one of the last democratic strongholds before Hitler took power. The decisions made in the early years after the revolution assured that the Republic survived its' early problems (which was far from sure) and likely would have never became a systemic problem if not for other events and factors like the perhaps biggest economic crisis in history. That much becomes even more clear once you compare the fate of the Weimar Republic from other troubled young democracies, who often struggle from coup attempts and and other instabilities.

Well, the pre-revolution Reichstag was unable to elect or dismiss the government, which made this less of a stability problem. There were nevertheless challenges for the government since they need a majority to pass laws, but still.

Relatively little. I don't think anyone argues that it was the best possible system or that the fragmented Reichstag was an advantage (which is why modern Germany has a 5% threshold) since it led to increasingly difficult coalitions. However a team of historians and political scientists (I think it was led by Dieter Nohlen?) actually analyzed how the smaller parties and independent candidates voted and came to the conclusion that those were surprisingly often in favour of the democratic governments. Back then every party was tailored to a specific milieu and the government could convince them by giving them concessions (like increasing the money given to farmers, which brought the conservatives on board, despite them wanting the Kaiser back and so on). It is really remarkeable how the democratic coalition managed to work during the 1920s despite all difficulties. Which makes the fact that the last coalition of Hermann Müller fell apart about a comparably tiny argument all the more infuriating.

As a side note, I used to think that having a 5% threshold is beneficial for the stability of a government. Perhaps it necessary for a young, immature democracy, but I'd argue that we are past that in Germany and could grant more parties access. Maybe not every 0,5% party but maybe above a threshold of 2%.

The real problem was that the democratic parties (SPD, Zentrum and DDP) lost a shared majority early on which indicates the fragility of the Republic. This was in part because their voters were split between them and antidemocratic parties (e.g. the workers who voted SPD and USPD, and later also NSDAP). Hence those parties made sure after 1945 to unite their chosen voting groups behind them.

This take ignores that the workers' movement was already fractured by the USPD/KPD who, I'd like to remind everyone, tried to instigate a Civil War against the SPD government and briefly took power in Munich. A bit difficult to reconciliate from that.

Speaking of creating an autocratic deep state within a nominally-functional democracy, turns out Adenauer did a Watergate.

I wish I could say I was surprised by this, but I'm really not.

Yeah, doesn't surprise me either.

Guardian article about Adenauer's abuse of power, just in case.

Warts and all. It is well-known that he was extremely paranoid about the SPD and Communists in general. He thought he knew best what Germany needed and that the SP Ds' goals would have been fatal for the country. And to his credit, he was completely right there.

When he resigned, he left a democracy behind that was already mature and stable enough that his successor did not need to think in such categories.

Edited by Zarastro on Apr 12th 2022 at 3:06:17 PM

Instead he left us with a bureaucracy and security agencies infested with Nazis. That's so much better.

I feel like (and it seems like at least some of the historians researching this agree with me) that the stability of German democracy post-Adenauer had a lot less to do with the Chancellor and a lot more to do with German civil society being tired of having replaced hard authoritarianism with soft authoritarianism in the name of 'state security.'

But that would require viewing history through a lens that isn't just the names on a list of chancellors but instead a holistic view of peoples, organizations and trends in civil society, and who'd want to do something like that.

Germany was infested with Nazis back then. As his biographer Hans-Peter Schwarz put it, Adenauers achievement was that he reconciled the German people with democracy and pacified the convinced Nazis to a degree that they never became a threat to democracy again. At least he knew who could be trusted. Other chancellors like Brandt did not show the same kind of insight with their advisors.

The GDR tried to "solve" this by stacking the buraucracy and other positions with communists with little to no experience. Which in return lead to a lot of efficiency problems that fuelled the 1953 uprising. You can do that kind of thing when you know that Soviet tanks have your back. Instead Adenauer hoped that economic prosperity and stability would change the German attitude towards democracy and that turned out to be the case.

Could you perhaps provide us with the names of those historians?

Because the two eminent biographers of Adenauer (Hans-Peter Schwarz and to a lesser Henning Köhler) would disagree with you on that. Nobody argues that he was solely responsible, that would be silly. But not only is he now considered to have been right in all of his mayor "controversial" policy decisions (unlike the positions his opponents held back then) it is also usually stressed that the stability and prosperity his government provided was the driving point that reconciled Germans with democracy.

That is of course difficult to appreciate when you let your own bias cloud your judgement.

Edited by Zarastro on Apr 12th 2022 at 4:51:00 PM

Yeah, it is. I can recommend you some excellent sources on bias identification, though. They were part of my major.

Thanks, but I think I've read and done enough on that myself. My favourite assignment was analyzing Tacitus on that very question.

German chancellor stalling on heavy weaponry to Ukraine

Coalition partners accuse Olaf Scholz of failing to live up to promises as major Russian offensive looms

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/14/german-chancellor-stalling-heavy-weaponry-ukraine-coalition-olaf-scholz-russia-offensive

Strange times that the left part of the Green party is criticizing the chancellor for not sending heavy weapons to a war zone. Not something I would have imagined a few years ago.

Admittedly it is arguably a bit unfair that Berlin gets singled out for criticism while no other countries (except the Czech Republic as I recal) have send tanks either. However in the light of the looming Russian offensive it is also infuriating to know that we could supply them with weaponry that might make a difference medium- to long-term.

Yeah, this big turnaround of Green parties has been remarkable to say the least. Maybe some political realism [the enemy has a vote on whether you have to wage war] is settling in...

To be fair, the Greens are also one of the parties who were actually against projects like Nordstream 2. As far as I'm aware, they never had this weird affinity for Moscow that some of our other parties have.

As noted in the article, Scholz is suspected to be doing this to appease the people within the SPD who still haven't heard the shot.

Which is a bad look both internationally and domestically. Doesn't help that his party was part of Merkel's government coalition that oversaw Germany's previous Russia policy (which is now considered to have been a massive failure).

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 15th 2022 at 12:13:25 PM

It's especially bad since Ukraine already doesn't like the guy. They outright rejected a goodwill visit from him.

Especially since he supported Nordstream 2 almost right up to the day of the invasion.

Edited by M84 on Apr 15th 2022 at 6:13:54 PM

Steinmeier, our president, was the one not being allowed to visit. Who's actually from the same party as Scholz.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 15th 2022 at 12:14:42 PM

It seen Merkel retire in a good moment politically speaking, I wonder how she would come out of this.