Читать книгу Adolf Hitler - Clemens von Lengsfeld - Страница 13

Pact and putch: in November I was a red, but now it’s January...³⁵

“Workers and soldiers! The four war years were dreadful. The sacrifices were awful that the people had to make of their property and blood. The unfortunate war is at an end; the killing is in the past. The consequences of the war, want and poverty, will still be a burden to us for many years. The defeat, which we wanted to prevent under all circumstances, has not been spared us. Our proposals for rapprochement were sabotaged; we ourselves were insulted and defamed.

The enemies of the working people, the true inner enemies, who are responsible for Germany’s collapse, have fallen silent and become invisible. These were the stay-at-home warriors, who maintained their demands for conquest right up to yesterday just as they pursued their dogged battle against any reform of the constitution and, in particular, the scandalous Prussian electoral system. Hopefully these enemies of the people are done with forever. The Kaiser has abdicated and his friends have disappeared. The people have been victorious over them all right along the line!

Prince Max of Baden has handed over his office as Reich chancellor to member of parliament Ebert. Our friend will form a workers’ government, to which all socialist parties will belong. The new government may not be disturbed in its work for peace and taking care of work and bread.

Workers and soldiers! Be aware of the historical significance of this day. The impossible has happened! Great and incalculable work awaits us.

Everything for the people, everything by the people! Nothing may happen that serves to dishonour the workers’ movement. Be united, loyal and conscientious! The old and rotten, the monarchy has collapsed. Long live the New; long live the German Republic!³⁶

With these words the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann declared the Weimar Republic from the balcony of the Reichstag on 9 November 1918. He was acting unilaterally.

November Revolution 1918: Scheidemann holds an address from a Reich Chancellery window. Friedrich Ebert becomes Reich Chancellor, after the resignation of Max von Baden, on 9. 11. 1918. (meeting of Ebert, Scheidemann and others with Max von Baden in the Reich Chancellery, approx. 1 pm).

The first German republic was a product of indecisiveness and failure in the form of the lost war and a revolution, which initially came from soldiers weary of war. For this reason no one had seen it coming, let alone planned it. Even its own government did want it to succeed in anchoring this form of an “improvised democracy”³⁷ with its new constitutional rights and freedoms never before conceded in the authority-loving people. In addition, people feared that democracy inherently also basically concealed “a Bolshevistic risk”. This danger however was wildly exaggerated as the mass movement mainly consisted of workers’ and soldiers’ councils. Thus the protest was carried on against prevailing wrongs by somewhat diffuse political desires for change or design. In it were collected the most varied of political currents from extreme left to extreme right. Furthermore, the protest was fed by mass unemployment, war damage and anxiety about the future. In the tumult of the events of 1919 these different currents would soon break apart again. Anyone who had hoped that, after the war and the tumultuous events with the founding of the first democratic republic, a mental change would take place in the minds of the people was bitterly disappointed. Since it was the old military elite, who had also pulled the strings in the Kaiser’s Empire, who continued to have the say so and now also determined the destiny of the young republic. This meant the old leadership was the new one. Its figureheads were Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, the heroes of the victoriously fought “Battle of Tannenberg” 1914, which was so cannibalised for propaganda purposes that it was even given credit for the ending of the war with Russia, which had been shaken to its core by a revolution.

“Soldiers of the 8^th army! The many days of fierce battles on the fields between Allenstein and Neidenburg have come to an end. You have gained a devastating victory over 5 army corps and 3 cavalry divisions. More than 90,000 prisoners, countless artillery and machine guns, multiple flags and many other items, which are the spoils of war, have fallen into our hands. […] I hope to be able to let you have a few days of well-earned rest. But then we’ll move on again with fresh strength with God for our Emperor, King and Fatherland until the last Russian has left our dear, stricken province of the homeland and we have carried our victory-accustomed flags right into the enemy’s home territory. Long live His Majesty, the Emperor and King. Hurrah!”³⁸ is what Paul von Hindenburg had drummed into his soldiers after the battle of Tannenberg at the time.

Kaiser Wilhelm II (centre) during the discussion of the situation with Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg (left) and First General Quartermaster Erich Ludendorff on 8 January 1917.

In the manner of Goethe’s sorcerer’s apprentice it could have been said: The spirits we called up ... we couldn’t get rid of them. They now obtained support from the ranks of conservatively minded editors and business leaders, right-wing Freikorps teams and the now spiritually rootless soldiers back from the Front, who were no longer able to settle to anything in civilian life. Nearly all layers of the German population were affected by the deep mistrust of democracy. Not a few wanted the Kaiser back because they were attached to a long outworn authoritarian idea of a leader and they missed a clear cut hierarchical order, in which everyone had his set place. Freedom and democracy could not be imposed upon this. Decades of imprinting with traditional convictions could not just simply be shrugged off like an old coat.

Someone, who was part of the influential military establishment and who made plenty of profit from it, was Waldemar Pabst. He came from an arts-loving family and as a graduate of the main Prussian officer cadet institution in Berlin, he had without further ado and without questioning, pursued a military career and fought at the bloodbath of Verdun. After the November revolution he made himself useful in fighting the Communist opposition and notably played a part as First General Staff Officer of the Guard-Cavalry- Rifles-Division, a free corps, in the defeat of the Spartacist uprising and the murder of its leaders, Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg.

Rosa Luxemburg (1871 – 1919, murdered) during her speech at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, August 1907.

It was Ernst Röhm, one of the later founding members of the NSDAP and likewise a Freikorps man, who recommended one of his acquaintances to Waldemar Pabst for support purposes in matters to do with propaganda. He spoke of him as “his best street speaker”. It was not unusual for them to recommend staff to each other: people just knew each other in certain circles. However, the person thus praised made little impression on the arrogant and cool officer, who only respected people who had a certain pedigree or belonged to a certain old boys’ network. Pabst showed the applicant the door: “The way you look and talk, people will just laugh at you.”³⁹ The person thus ridiculed was Adolf Hitler. And if his showman-like and acting talent did not have the desired effect this time, his hour would soon come.