The Central Powers at War: The Growth of German Domestic Opposition, 1915-1916

The Central Powers at War: The Growth of German Domestic Opposition, 1915-1916

An Overview of German Wartime Politics

In Germany, opposition to the war was concentrated overwhelmingly in two broad political groups: socialists and reformist liberals. To properly grasp the nature of the domestic opposition and its challenges, a quick dive into the broader institutional forms and political forces in Imperial Germany is necessary.

In the event of a war, Germany’s 23 military districts were slated to gain a new prominence in domestic politics. These districts were not, on the whole, conterminous with the existing federal states of Germany, and though some corresponded to recognized regions of the nation, many did not. Each district was assigned a military commander as well as a deputy commander. Because the former was frequently stationed at the front, it was in practice the deputy district commanders who took control over the individual districts. These deputy commanders were given near-dictatorial powers over their districts, including the power to censor publications and break-up public and private gatherings that they deemed to be a threat to the on-going war effort. The wide latitude given to the individual deputy heads of military districts meant that different areas in the Reich had markedly different censorship regimes.

These commanders theoretically had to answer to the military chain of command, which terminated in the Kaiser himself. In practice, the arbitrary power of the deputy commanders was limited in the early years of the war by Bethman Hollweg and the civilian government. Bethmann Hollweg, against the more repressive instincts of many military figures, attempted from early in the war to build the broadest possible national consensus in its favor. The key plank of this effort was his successful conscription of the Social Democrats into the war, which he achieved by presenting the conflict as a matter of national defense against Russian aggression. This played on the long-standing Russophobia of the Social Democratic Party, which had long considered Tsarist Russia to be a uniquely backwards and oppressive state.

As the prime representative of the civilian government, Bethmann Hollweg also had the job of placating the Reichstag. As the most genuinely popular body of the German government, the Reichstag, despite its limited powers, was the only institution of the German government where the broad masses could make their voice heard. Maintaining the support of the most inclusive coalition possible within the Reichstag was crucial for sustaining support for the war.

Of course, the Reichstag also did have some actual powers. The most important of these was its ability to control finances. While Bethmann Hollweg could have pressured the Reichstag to entirely sign away this power to the more aristocratic Bundesrat at the beginning of the war, he made sure to allow the Reichstag to retain at least some decision-making capacity in order to better secure its active consent to the war effort. Many of the most contentious debates in the Reichstag would therefore concern the financing of the war: where the distribution of the tax burden should fall, whether the government “deserved” additional war credits, and how the economy as a whole should be organized in order to maximize the efficiency of production.

Opposition to the War in the Socialist Labor Movement, 1915-1916

Besides the powerless German Peace Society, the Social Democratic Party and its affiliated trade unions were the only domestic political formation at the onset of the war which might meaningfully oppose it. Yet, like many socialist parties in other states, the Social Democratic Party was quickly and willingly co-opted by the imperial state as a junior partner in the war effort. Convinced that the conflict was strictly defensive and desiring an end to years in the minority, the Social Democrats voted with the majority of other parties for war credits. All of the initial 23 abstentions and half of the 16 votes against war credits were not intended to signal disapproval of the war effort itself: later that day, all 23 of the abstaining members signed onto a statement made by Haase in support of the war, as did 8 of those who voted against the credits. The abstainers and the eight members who voted against the credits instead cast their votes primarily to signal displeasure with Haase’s purge from a leadership role and the complete seizure of the party executive by Ebert and Scheidemann’s right wing clique. Further evidence of this is can be found in the second war credits vote, in December, which saw the opposition to the war drastically decline, with only 14 abstentions and 4 opposing votes.

In 1914, the only wing of the Social Democratic Party genuinely opposed to the war were the left-radicals: most famously, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, but also the less known Mehring and Zetkin. For some time, this numerically small faction of the party had advocated for revolutionary direct action against German militarism. They believed that since the war was caused primarily by the pathologies of imperial capitalism, the only way to truly end it would be through combined revolutionary action by the international proletariat. They were opposed to the war in principle, and would brook little compromise on the matter.

To their immediate right were a group which might most perspicaciously be termed the “left-centrists”. Originally supportive of a defensive war against Russia, they nonetheless believed in the urgency of political and social reform, and thought the war would only be worth waging if it was a means to ultimately achieve such reform. This group was clustered around Haase. At least twenty-eight of those who voted against the initial war credits can be classed among its members. While skeptical of the revolutionary strike action advocated by the left-radicals, they were united internally by their opposition to Ebert and Scheidemann’s seizure of the party and by his policy of supporting the war “without conditions”. They still professed to believe in some form of Orthodox Marxism, even if the practice of parliamentary politics had diluted the radicalism of their politics and their commitment to revolution.

In the middle of the party were a mixture of left-wing revisionists and former trade union leaders and bureaucrats. The politics of the left-wing revisionists were typified by Eduard Bernstein: intensely hostile toward revolutionary socialism, but also skeptical of nationalism and the German state. Left-revisionists would likely oppose the war if they believed it had turned into a campaign of aggression, but it might take a good deal of persuasion and a preponderance of evidence to convince them that it had. On the internal vote to expel Haase, they largely abstained, and only a few crossed over in the initial war credits vote to join the left-centrists.

The trade union bureaucrats were somewhat more eclectic ideologically. While many were aligned with Ebert and Scheidemann, others were more radical in their politics. More closely connected to the German people, they were overwhelmingly pragmatic in their politics. In 1914, they believed that voicing any opposition to the war would lead to electoral disaster for the Social Democrats, but as the war dragged on and popular opposition to it mounted, at least some of them would start to change their tune.

Ebert and Scheidemenn’s hold on the party was contingent on the support of the trade union bureaucrats and left-wing revisionists. In the first two years of the war, a range of events conspired to loosen their hold over the party. Firstly, there was the controversy over annexationism. After the German military successes of 1914, a growing number of voices in the German right began pressing for a plan of annexations. Bethmann Hollweg at first resisted these right-wing activists, but eventually issued a vague statement in June 1915 in favor of annexations. In response, the outraged left-radicals assembled the signatures of over fifteen thousand party and trade-union functionaries, calling for an end of the party’s support for the imperialist war. A coalition of left-centrists and left-revisionists including Bernstein, Haase, and Kautsky issued a more mild statement at the beginning of July which called for the party to press vigorously for a “peace of understanding”, leading to Ebert nearly suspending the Leipziger Volkszeitung , the paper which published the piece.

At this point, the leadership felt the need to coordinate with the government to issue a new position on the matter of annexations. In November, Ebert attempted to placate the opposition by making a statement of only “qualified” support for annexations; perhaps unsurprisingly, this ended up backfiring spectacularly. At the next war credits vote in December, thirty-two members voted against war credits and seven abstained, signaling growing opposition to Ebert within the party.

This all occurred under an atmosphere of steadily mounting repression orchestrated primarily by Ebert and Scheidemann themselves. One of the great ironies of the first year and a half of the war is that the majority of suppression, manipulation, and censorship of social-democratic opinion came from the party rather than the government. The tenuous coalition of left-centrists and left-radicals gave the internal opposition control of many newspapers and regional party executives in more radical areas, most prominently in Berlin and Saxony, but also in a number of towns and small cities in the Westphalia-Rhineland area. The drive to curtail internal party democracy and criticism reached a fever pitch in these areas during the last few months of 1915, when the German military censors still gave wide latitude to social-democratic publications in the hopes of not forcing them into the opposition. Of course, it would also not be inaccurate to understand Ebert himself as doing the work of the German state in this period.

Regardless, the heavy-handed measures employed had the effect of forcing the left-radicals and left-centrists to put aside many of their own differences. An informal caucus was formed in the party at the beginning of 1916, intended primarily to coordinate the opposition of Liebknecht and Haase. This caucus was crucial in defeating the measure to expel Liebknecht from the Social Democrats Reichstag delegation, a great embarrassment for the Ebert government. Emboldened by this victory, the “Trier Caucus” proceeded with a nation-wide press campaign against Ebert, accusing his policy of joining the war “without conditions” of “sacrificing the sacred interests of the German working-class to the Junker and War Profiteer”. The subsequent state repression of this campaign, and Ebert’s rumored involvement in it, had the effect of radicalizing many of the left-centrists. The removal of the threat in the East by the Polish offensive and Germany’s refusal to entertain status quo peace terms also contributed to the steady growth of the caucus.

Nonetheless, 1916 did not provide the Trier Caucus with the opportunity to oust Ebert. The jailing of both Luxemburg and Liebknecht dealt an important blow to their capacity to organize opposition, and coordination between Bethmann Hollweg, Ebert, and military censors stymied communication between dissident social democratic politicians and trade union leaders. While increased labor militancy and protest signaled that the tide was turning against Ebert and Scheidemann, American grain imports and loans continued to provide crucial props to the government, allowing them to maintain the living standards of skilled workers (particularly those working in war industries).

Three events at the very end of 1916 sent shock-waves through the Social Democrats, setting up the party for an internal fight in 1917. Firstly, with the beginning of the Christmas Offensive, Falkenhayn was relieved of command and replaced by Paul von Hindenburg, placing Ludendorff in a position where he could increasingly accumulate power and dominate the civilian government. Secondly, a universal labor mobilization law was introduced into the Reichstag which would draft all male workers between the ages of 17 and 60 into the army, effectively breaking the opportunity of trade unions to organize for better labor conditions and wages.

Finally, a short statement was issued shortly thereafter by Eduard Bernstein and a number of sympathetic parliamentarians and trade union leaders calling for the party to “Reverse from the current course of capitulation and use all the means at its disposal as a parliamentary grouping to secure the interests of the working-class and an end to the present war”. Notably, this statement did not call for an end to the Ebert-Scheidemann government, and refrained from mentioning the Trier caucus or any of its members. It also was careful to clarify that it only intended to call for “parliamentary”, rather than “labor” resistance to the war. Nonetheless, it indicated that the leadership might soon not possess the votes necessary to survive a vote of no confidence.

Opposition to the War among Reformist Liberals, 1915-1916

Germany did not, like England, have a tradition of middle-class pacifism. The German pacifist league had a little under 400 members at the outbreak of the war, and like almost all other organizations of middle-class progressives, it declared support for the war in August 1914. The newly formed League for national minorities had a significantly larger and more well-known membership, but they too declared support for the war in 1914.

At the beginning of the war, German progressive liberalism was mostly confined to the prosperous regions in the southwestern portion of the country, ranging from Munich to Alsace-Lorraine. These areas had a disproportionate concentration of small to medium sized civilian industries and businesses, and also tended to have the most mild economic cartelization. The catholic religious identity of these regions provided them with a sense of distance from the Prussian-dominated Empire, and their lack of extractive industries meant that the local bourgeoisie benefited significantly less from the war effort.

In the first year and a half of the war, there was almost no sustained middle-class opposition. While the League for National Minorities and Alsatian Citizens Congress both grew steadily in the face of domestic repression, calls were restricted to peaceful, non-disruptive gatherings in support of reform, rather than overt anti-war protests. This did not truly change until 1916, when the inflationary effects of German fiscal policy started to more directly impact the middle-class. In fact, in 1916 the living standards of professors, clerks, journalists, and other white-collar workers fell significantly more than industrial workers, many of whom still had some degree of preferential access to food by virtue of their position in the war industry.

Also impacted were small business owners who dealt in primarily civilian wares. The decreased purchasing power of the average German consumer and the drafting of young men into war depressed the market for civilian goods. Simultaneously, vital inputs to many production processes, like coal, were claimed by the war industry, rendering many civilian businesses unable to procure necessary raw materials. This process accelerated in 1916, as the ramping up of war production created bottle-necks which squeezed out the civilian economy.

Despite their relatively fast decline in living standards, the mobilization of the middle-class to the anti-war cause was slow and tortuous. In 1916, the League for National Minorities officially merged with a number of similar organizations and adopted a broader platform, rechristening itself the “National Social Movement”. This body did not call for direct opposition to the war, but it did begin to press both the Catholic Centre Party and the Progressive Liberals to push for a permanent ban on unrestricted submarine warfare and German participation in peace negotiations which had been proposed by the American President William Jennings Bryan. Domestically, they advocated for the dissolution of the large industrial trusts, the enactment of laws protecting the language and religious practices of national minority groups, the liberalization of the suffrage, the relaxation of censorship, particularly over private letters, and the end of Prussian domination in the Bundesrat. Although their membership increased from just under 11,500 members to over 65,000 in 1916, the National Social Movement did not engage in any large-scale public protests, instead focusing primarily on building a parliamentary bloc in the Reichstag that would be sympathetic to their concerns.