THE ORIGINS OF NAZISM
REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION, 1918-1923

Though there is a continuity within German history, it is undeniable that the ferocity of Nazism marked it out from anything that had come before. The prison sentences handed out under the Anti-Socialist Law cannot be compared to the torture and murder of millions in concentration camps. This has led German conservatives to argue: "It is a very great mistake to believe that [Nazism] is in any way the heritage and continuation of the old, monarchic power of the princes. Neither Frederick the Great, Bismarck, nor Wilhelm II were the historical precursors of Adolf Hitler"; and because the Nazi leader was an Austrian (who only acquired German nationality in 1932): "the historical origins of Hitlerism are to be found outside the Reich."[Ritter]

THE NOVEMBER 1918 REVOLUTION

On 10 January 1919 Stinnes, the richest man in Germany, led 50 industrialists from the most illustrious firms in establishing a fund which financed the 'General Secretariat for the Struggle against Bolshevism', the 'Anti-Bolshevist League' the 'Union for the Struggle against Bolshevism', the 'Freikorps Publicity Bureau' and various other bodies. The upper classes were suddenly terrified for their property. Prince von Bülow wrote: "In Berlin on November 9, I witnessed the beginnings of revolution... I have seldom witnessed anything so nauseating, so maddeningly revolting and base, as the spectacle of half-grown louts, tricked out with the red armlets of social democracy..." The industrialist Thyssen wrote that: "During an entire year, 1918-1919, I felt that Germany was going to sink into anarchy. Strikes follow one another... It was impossible to reorganise industrial production." Thyssen had reason to fear the revolution. At one stage he was arrested by his workers and shipped to Berlin for trial by a revolutionary tribunal. Another industrialist complained that "all authority had collapsed; monarchy, State, army and bureaucracy..."

The immediate impact of the November revolution was to overthrow the Kaiser (on 9 November) and to stop the war. However, its potential did not end there. War weariness and revolution shattered the hold of the army officers. As early as June 1918, for example, the 41st Infantry Division quit the trenches in a mass desertion. Later attempts to use conscripted front line soldiers to repress the left at home failed as the hoped for troop units simply dissolved away. All over Germany revolutionary soldiers' councils linked up with workers' councils in a pattern similar to the Russian soviets. The head of the army, General Gröner reported that "The influence of the workers' and soldiers' councils prevails among whole sections of the army... All authority on the part of officers and junior officers is being undermined by the propaganda of the Independents and Spartakists. The High Command is powerless and no help can be expected from the government."

In the face of this crisis the old rulers had two options. One was to seek compromise and ride out the storm. The other was head-on confrontation. Both carrot and stick were employed, although the balance between them varied according to circumstances and the tactical judgements of those giving the orders. With the army in tatters, direct military collision with workers on a broad scale was not an immediate option. The relation of forces was clearly in labour's favour so a compromise strategy predominated. Its progress was smoothed by the influence of the moderate SPD in the working class. No doubt the mass of German workers wanted a better standard of living, plus freedom from exploitation and war; however, only a small minority regarded revolution as the necessary means to achieve it. This minority was to be found mainly in the new Communist Party of Germany (KPD), formerly the Spartakist League. The vast majority of workers supported the reformist SPD or the Independents (USPD) who vacillated between the alternatives of reform and revolution.

So, for the old rulers of Germany the main path to salvation was through compromise, and in the SPD and the unions they found willing partners. At first sight this might seem strange. It was not so long ago that socialists and trade unionists had been jailed by these very people. However, a remarkable transformation had occurred within the upper circles of the SPD and unions. The logic of their politics had always been to work within the existing system to win changes. Now revolution not only threatened that system, it had catapulted them into powerful positions. Later on Tarnow, an SPD leader asked: "Are we now to stand at the sick-bed of capitalism merely as the diagnostician, or also as the doctor who seeks to cure?... We are condemned to act as the doctor who earnestly seeks the cure." Thus the SPD set its face against the revolution.

The army had its own pressing reasons for working with the SPD. Its leader, General Gröner, wrote: "At first, of course, we had to make concessions... The task was to contain and render harmless the revolutionary movement." So he telephoned the SPD leader, Ebert, to tell him that in return for putting the army at the government's disposal:

the officer corps expected the support of the government in the maintenance of order and discipline in the army. The officer corps expected the government to fight against Bolshevism and was ready for the struggle. Ebert accepted my offer of an alliance. From then on we discussed the measures which were necessary every evening on a secret telephone line between the Reich Chancellery and the high command.

Parallel to the Ebert-Gröner alliance was the negotiations between unions and employers. The Chair of the Iron and Steel employers was "happy that the unions are still prepared to negotiate as they have; for only by negotiations, can we avoid anarchy, bolshevism, Spartakist rule and chaos - call it what you will." In return for limited concessions, the union leaderships would prevent workers taking over the factories and mines. The result was most satisfactory to the employers:

It is no exaggeration to say that this cooperation... saved Germany in the early years from chaos and from Bolshevik revolution... What happened in all other revolutions, that the workers turned against the employers, did not happen here because the unions cooperated with the employers in the preservation of order.

Nevertheless, the social crisis which had led to revolution could not be wished away by the army or SPD. The lack of real change spurred the most militant workers into action. During the so-called "Spartakus week" of January 1919 the revolutionary left in Berlin responded to a government provocation by launching a movement which turned into an insurrection. Now the compromise with the SPD and unions paid off. One tangible result had been the formation of the Freikorps. This was a new right-wing volunteer force assembled out of what remained of the disintegrated Imperial army. 400,000 strong it was composed of mercenaries, ex-officers and soldiers torn out of society by the degrading experience of war. Financed by big business and led by Noske, the Social Democrat and "bloodhound of the revolution", it was deployed to smash opposition wherever it could be found. In Berlin through fierce house to house fighting Freikorps troops took control. Some 200 people were killed, 90% coming from the revolutionary side and including the leaders of the KPD, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

Although the KPD had acted prematurely in early 1919 and so lacked the support needed to succeed, disappointment with the meagre results of its government led to disillusion. One barometer of this was elections to the Reichstag. In the first election under the republic (January 1919) the socialist parties attracted 13.8m votes of which 11.5m went to the SPD and 2.3m to the more left-wing USPD. By the next election, in June 1920 the SPD vote had more than halved - reaching just 5.6m, while the USPD's had more than doubled, at 4.9m. To this should be added the KPD's vote of 0.4m. The leftward trend showed itself in other ways. Within the USPD itself there was a vote to merge with the KPD. The new body, the "United KPD" grew from 50,000 to 450,000 by December 1920. More important than the elections was the continuous stream of radical activities including a rising strike wave (5,000 strikes in 1919 to 8,800 in 1920) and periodic uprisings.

Therefore the final outcome of the revolution had not been decided by the crushing of the Berlin left in the Spartakus week. In the months that followed Freikorps units, with the blessing of the SPD government and the finances of industrialists and bankers, sought to eradicate revolution all over Germany and the power of the workers' and soldiers' councils. Lacking an effective leadership the centres of the revolutionary left were picked off one at a time. The small but ruthless roving force of right-wing soldiers swept down from Bremen in the north, via central Germany to the Ruhr and Bavaria in the south.

Bavaria would be of particular importance because it was in here that Nazism first developed. Although this part of Germany was amongst the least industrialised, the workers of the regional capital, Munich were highly radical and the Independents gaining a third of the popular vote in local elections in the summer of 1919. Between February and April 1919 Bavaria also saw Germany's most ambitious but poorly organised seizure of power. The Bavarian Soviet Republic was led at first by disparate elements of the far left, but in the end Levine of the KPD felt obliged to step in and give some coherence to it even though he knew it was likely to fail. The hope was that outside help would save the day. This was not forthcoming and very soon the SPD representative Hoffmann was installed by brutal Freikorps tactics. Harman writes that "the outcome was a disastrous defeat for the whole working class. From that point on the Freikorps and the extreme right had a free reign in Bavaria."