From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement
The role of soldiers in the German Revolution must also be considered from the perspective of the relative stability of the German State compared to the Russian one.
Lenin emphasised this on several occasions: in Germany, bourgeois rule was much more firmly established than in Russia, because capitalism was more advanced and the State rested on stronger economic and social foundations. In Germany, therefore, the class party was confronted with the unprecedented task — which remains so even today — of seizing power in a mature imperialist metropolis. The German Revolution brought about the collapse of the Hohenzollern empire, but the rupture was accompanied by bourgeois forces safeguarding class dominance thanks to political forms more suited to the imperialist era. First among these forces was the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the bourgeois party with influence over the working masses
, according to Arrigo Cervetto's definition.
Jacques Droz, in Histoire générale du socialisme, wrote: The aim of social democracy converted to reformism was to replace the imperial, feudal, and militaristic Germany with a democratic and pacifist Germany, [...] with November 9th, the social democracy was convinced that its access to power would put an end to the revolutionary era
. From this perspective, the SPD kept on and recycled the officials of the Empire. Droz further reports that Ebert continued to govern with the undersecretaries of the old regime, who were kept in power as 'technicians' to guarantee continuity and who, after serving the monarchical regime, had become 'republicans by reasoning'
. Moreover, the SPD acted in close connection with the officers and the leaders of the Army, who proved capable of maintaining the initiative.
According to Pierre Broué, the fact is that, despite its defeat, the German bourgeoisie was unquestionably more vigorous than the feeble Russian bourgeoisie in 1917. It had at its disposal an instrument of rare quality, the Officer Corps, and above all the total support of the flexible and experienced apparatus of the social democracy
. [Pierre Broué, The German Revolution, 1917-1923].
Ebert and Groener
Once installed in the chancellery, Friedrich Ebert reassured the military leadership that order would be maintained through the appointment of Deputy Chief of Staff General Wilhelm Groener. This is made clear in the rather fictionalised account by John W. Wheeler-Bennett in The Nemesis of Power.
Ebert was alone. The windows were closed, the curtains drawn. But through them came the discordant cries of the demonstrations in the street. Suddenly, the ringing of a bell transcended all other sounds. Ebert picked up the receiver with a hand that trembled. Then he almost wept with joy. 'Groener speaking'. Was the Government willing to protect Germany from anarchy and to restore order? enquired the crisp military voice from Spa. Yes, said Ebert, it was. 'Then the High Command will maintain discipline in the Army and bring it peaceably home', Groener replied. What was the attitude of the High Command towards the Soldiers' Councils? Ebert asked. Orders had been given to deal with them in a friendly spirit, was the reply. 'What do you expect from us?' enquired the Chancellor. 'The High Command expects the Government to cooperate with the Officer Corps in the suppression of Bolshevism, and in the maintenance of discipline in the Army'
.
Engels and the military question
This was not a foregone conclusion, considering the Russian example, where soldiers had instead been decisive elements, not only at the beginning but also during the seizure of power. It should be noted that in Germany it was precisely the Army that triggered the revolution, and that among the soldiers at the front the name of Karl Liebknecht was pronounced with respect and hope. Wheeler-Bennett highlights this: the Revolution [...] was primarily a military mutiny
and the 'Soldiers' Councils' which had come into being in every unit, were the revolutionary expression of the Army's dissatisfaction with its leaders
. In fact, because, therefore, the Revolution was primarily the work of the Army, it was impossible to oppose it overtly
. Here, therefore, the role of the SPD in holding back the Soldiers' Councils with socialist rhetoric was indispensable. On the other hand, the fatal insufficiency of spontaneity becomes apparent: if revolutionary energies, unleashed by the desire for peace, do not find a conscious party capable of organising them, they disperse into impotence or are oriented by the forces of counter-revolution.
As we have seen, this was the indication Engels had set out in Socialism in Germany [1891] and later in the 1895 edition of the Introduction
to Karl Marx's The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850: faced with modern armies produced by large-scale capitalist industry, a Blanquist action or an insurrection on the barricades was unthinkable, while the way forward was the long and constant process of rooting revolutionary positions among the working masses and therefore within the cadres and ranks of the Army.
The external constraint
Broué notes that, in 1918, the German bourgeoisie also enjoyed the solid support of the armies of the Entente, the threatening shadow of which hung over this whole period of the German Revolution
.
One of the reasons for which the responsibility of governing fell to the SPD was indeed the international factor, that is, the need for a party that provided guarantees to the new Euro-Atlantic consensus that emerged from the war. Edward H. Carr, in The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, notes that the fateful choice between East and West [...] was a permanent dilemma of German foreign policy
. In this regard, of the German political parties under the Weimar republic only the SPD had its roots in the West and was consistently Western in outlook
. The Social Democratic Party, indeed, was connected with the other parties of the Second International, whose main strength was in Western Europe
and it was traditionally hostile to Russia
, which was considered reactionary, [...] backward, and barbarous
; furthermore, it had imbibed much of the bourgeois-democratic radicalism of the Western European Left
. Thus, almost alone among German parties, it turned a receptive ear to Wilson's democratic pacifism
and for this reason during the first period of the Weimar republic, when a Western orientation was essential to Germany, the SPD held the reins of power
. It is true that the Catholic Centre had Western leanings
, but the Vatican's policy was to maintain its autonomy from State politics.
As for the parties standing to the right of the centre
, writes Carr, they were all to a greater or lesser degree hostile to the West
. Certainly, Gustav Stresemann professed his Atlanticism and, more generally, one of the results of the war and revolution was a general transformation and adaptation of German political forces to the new Western framework. Nonetheless, according to Carr, at the end of the conflict the nucleus of these parties
to the right of the centre was formed by the two powers which, behind the façade of the Weimar Republic, continued to rule Germany as they had ruled it under Wilhelm II: the Army and heavy industry
, the former being driven by revanchism towards the West, the latter excluded from Western and overseas markets.
Even in German literature, one can find a "descritina" — to use Antonio Labriola's term, meaning a kind of descriptive account
— of this external constraint. In Doctor Faustus — an intensely German novel — Thomas Mann describes how defeated Germany was placed under tutelage, with the aim of preventing the Revolution [...] from going to extremes and endangering the bourgeois order of things for the victors. Thus, in 1918, the continuation of the blockade after we laid down our arms in the West served to control the German Revolution, to keep it on bourgeois-democratic rails, and prevent it from degenerating into the Russian proletarian. Thus, bourgeois imperialism, crowned with the laurels of victory, could not do enough to warn against 'anarchy', not firmly enough reject all dealing with workmen's and soldiers' councils and bodies of that kind; not clearly enough protest that only with a settled Germany could peace be signed and only such would get enough to eat. What we had for a government followed this paternal lead, held with the National Assembly against the dictatorship of the proletarian, and meekly waved away the advances of the Soviets, even when they concerned grain deliveries
.
Duality of power
In the months following November 9th, the alternative arose between an elected Constituent Assembly and the transfer of power to the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, moving towards the dictatorship of the proletariat as per the Russian model. In Berlin there was in fact a duality of power: on one side the Council of People's Commissars, led by Ebert; on the other the Executive Committee of the Councils, which at the Circus Busch assembly had received its formal mandate to oversee the commissars. However, Broué observes, the drama and the historic weakness of the German Workers' and Soldiers' Councils is ultimately bound up with the fact that there did not exist a real 'conciliar party' to encourage and invigorate them, and to take part in the struggle for conciliar power, which the Bolsheviks were able to do between February and October 1917
. On the decisive question, Constituent Assembly or Councils
, most Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) leaders adopted the position of the SPD.
Within the same Councils, whenever a revolutionary majority appeared in factory elections, the SPD and trade unions called for the unity of the socialist parties — defended with the support of soldiers at the Circus Busch — to obtain equal representation in the executive. Thus, observes Broué, the Councils oscillated between the anti-soviet line
of the majoritarians and the hesitation waltz
of the independents.
Where the Spartacists were in a position of strength, there was certainly an attempt to make the Councils a real second power, with measures such as the dissolution of the police forces and the establishment of red guards
, whose core was made up of mutinous sailors. An example is the Council of Neukölln, a suburb of Berlin, which was cited by the press as a testing ground for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
But the bourgeois parties and business associations, while declaring their recognition of the authority of the Councils, acted swiftly to undermine them. One of the first initiatives in this regard was the establishment of inter-classist citizens' councils
. In Cologne, for example, several entrepreneurs founded the Hansabund with this aim. The Deutsche Zeitung approved, noting that, faced with biased
(i.e., class-based
) workers' guards, it was necessary to establish civil guards
. Hans-Peter Schwarz reported the stance of the Catholic mayor Konrad Adenauer: Accommodation of social conflicts and conflicting interests
.
For the SPD, the Councils only had revolutionary significance during the brief period of the fall of the imperial regime; but later, as Friedrich Stampfer explained in the Vorwärts of December 13th, the Councils could not retain their power, because they represented only a part of the population: We have won, but we have not won for ourselves alone, we have won for the entire people! That is why our watchword is not: 'All power to the soviets', but: 'All power to the entire people!'
.
A coalition of forces defending the bourgeois order was therefore organised around social democracy, through the convening of a Constituent Assembly that took power away from the Councils.