Germany (Lonely Planet, 6th Edition) - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [15]
When pressed, Bismarck made concessions to the growing and increasingly antagonistic socialist movement, enacting Germany’s first modern social reforms, but this was not his true nature. By 1888 Germany found itself burdened with a new Kaiser, Wilhelm II, who wanted to extend social reform, and an Iron Chancellor who wanted stricter antisocialist laws. Finally, in 1890, the Kaiser’s scalpel excised Bismarck from the political scene. After that, the legacy of Bismarck’s brilliant diplomacy unravelled and a wealthy, unified and industrially powerful Germany paddled into the new century with incompetent leaders at the helm.
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Bismarck to the Weimar Republic is the focus of Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s The German Empire 1871–1918, a translation of an authoritative German work. For a revealing study of the Iron Chancellor himself, read Bismarck, the Man and the Statesman by Gordon Craig.
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THE GREAT WAR
Technological advances and the toughening of Europe into colonial power blocs made WWI far from ‘great’. The conflict began with the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, in Sarajevo in 1914 and quickly escalated into a European and Middle Eastern affair: Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey against Britain, France, Italy and Russia. In 1915 a German submarine attack on a British passenger liner killed 120 US citizens. By 1917 the USA had also entered the war.
The seeds of acrimony and humiliation that later led to WWII were sown in the peace conditions of the Great War. Russia, in the grip of revolution, accepted humiliating peace terms from Germany. Germany, militarily broken, itself teetering on the verge of revolution and caught in a no man’s land between monarchy and modern democracy, signed the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which made it responsible for all losses incurred by its enemies. Its borders were trimmed back and it was forced to pay high reparations. To allow negotiations, a chancellor was appointed who for the first time was responsible to parliament. A mutiny by sailors in the bustling port of Kiel in 1919 triggered a workers’ revolt and a revolution in Berlin, spelling a bitter end for Germany’s Kaiser, who abdicated the throne and went to the Netherlands.
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Marc Ferro’s The Great War 1914–18 is a compelling account of WWI.
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THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES
Conceived to police public meetings and enforce law, the brown-shirted Nazi state police, the Sturmabteilung (SA), had by 1934 become a troublesome bunch – for Germans and their dictator alike. So much so that, on the night of 30 June 1934, Hitler ordered Schutzstaffel (SS) troops to round up and kill high-ranking SA officers. Their leader, Ernst Röhm, was shot and 76 others were hacked to death, knifed or shot.
Hitler hushed up the gruesome night (dubbed ‘The Night of the Long Knives’) until 13 July when he announced to the Reichstag that the SA (who numbered two million, easily outnumbering the army) would, from that time forth, serve under the command of the army, which, in turn, would swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler. Justice would be executed by himself and the black-shirted SS under the leadership of former chicken-farmer Heinrich Himmler, effectively giving the SS unchallenged power and making it Nazi Germany’s most powerful – and feared – force.
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WEIMAR & THE RISE OF HITLER
The end of the war did not create stability – or peace – in Germany. Socialist and democratic socialist parties fought tooth and nail, while the radical Spartacus League (joined by other groups in 1919 to form the German Communist Party; KPD) sought to create a republic based on Marx’ theories of proletarian revolution. Following the bloody quashing of an uprising