The Weimar Republic

If I should die, think only this of me:     That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be     In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,     Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air,     Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home. In Flanders Fields the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

In October 1918 the German High Command reluctantly accepted a truth which they had known since the start of the Schlieffen Plan: The war was lost. Germany needed to sue for peace. However, for the Junker, the notion of surrender was more than they could bear. For them it was imperative that the humiliation of surrender should be borne elsewhere.

Accordingly, Prince Maximilian of Baden was appointed Chancellor and tasked to form a civilian government which would seek an armistice with the Allies. However, the Allies could not stomach the idea of concluding a peace agreement with a country headed by Wilhelm II, the man they held responsible for starting the most destructive war in history. Since Wilhelm would neither abdicate, nor seek an honourable death on the battlefield, Prince Maximilian deposed him by announcing his abdication on 8th November.

On 9th November, Prince Maximilian handed over the Chancellorship to Friedrich Ebert, leader of the largest party in the Reichstag: the Social Democrats. Almost immediately the formation of the German Republic was announced. On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month the guns finally fell silent and the armistice was signed.

Almost immediately, Ebert’s Social Democrat government faced armed opposition from extreme left wingers. This group, known as the Spartacists after the Roman slave who tried to remould an empire, eventually failed. The government appealed to the army for help who, disliking anarchy, ruthlessly put down the Spartacist Uprising. Communist leaders Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht were beaten to death in the street.

As it turned out, the treaty signed at Versailles, the very place of the proclamation of Imperial Germany in 1871, was not at all conciliatory. The Germans were given only the choice of acceptance or the resumption of hostilities. The treaty passed into the German mindset as the “Diktat”. The ex-Kaiser commented that having had “the war to end war” they now had “the peace to end peace”. The “Dolchstoss” (stab in the back) became legend: the German Army had not been defeated on the battlefield but rather had been betrayed by civilian socialist traitors. The Junker knew exactly how close to collapse the Army had been, but it suited them to let the legend fester.