Deutsch Sozialismus - German Socialism

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2015

open images in a new tab to view full size


Socialism in 19th and 20th Century Germany and Austria was split, somewhat uneasily, between the practicalities of social programs, as exemplified by Bismark's 'State Socialism', and also the activities of the Marxists and Communists, and the less practical concerns of the Lebensreform movement and völkisch socialists, - and both of these areas had profound effects on the politics of the Weimar Republic that emerged from the German defeat in the Great War.
In Germany 'socialism' could legitimately encompass any socially orientated political philosophy, ranging from the internationalist extremism of the Spartacists to the liberalism of the Christian Socialists and the SPD, while also including the völkisch, racial (national) socialism of the NSDAP.

Lebensreform and Socialism

Lebensreform ("life reform") was a social (although not always an overtly political) movement in late 19th-century and early 20th-century Germany and Austria that propagated a 'back-to-nature' lifestyle, emphasizing among others health food/raw food/organic food, nudism, sexual liberation, (including an acceptance of homosexuality and lesbianism), alternative medicine, and religious reform, and at the same time often included abstention from alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and vaccines.
Important Lebensreform proponents were Sebastian Kneipp, Louis Kuhne, Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, Fidus (Hugo Höppener), Gusto Graeser, and Adolf Just.
The Lebensreform movement in Germany originally was a diverse movement.
There were hundreds of groups across Germany dedicated to some or all of the concepts associated with Lebensreform: ecology and organic farming, vegetarianism, naturalism (Nacktkultur), and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco.
Many of these groups were socialist, - some, however, were apolitical, and some were nationalist, or rather völkisch in outlook, but also addressed socialist issues.

Parsifal by Fidus
One outstanding prophet of Lebensreform was the painter Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1861-1913), pacifist and Tolstoyan anarchist who founded the community Himmelhof near Vienna.

Fidus was the pseudonym used by German illustrator, painter and publisher Hugo Reinhold Karl Johann Höppener (October 8, 1868 – February 23, 1948). In 1892 he worked as an illustrator on the magazine 'Sphinx'. His work appeared frequently in 'Jugend' (Youth) and other illustrated magazines. He created many ornamental drawings for book decoration, as well as ex-libris, posters and designs. He also contributed to the early homosexual magazine Der Eigene, published by Adolf Brand.

Gusto Graeser
Hermann Hesse
Gusto Graeser, thinker and poet, greatly influenced the German Youth Movement and such writers as Hermann Hesse and Gerhart Hauptmann.
Other Lebensreform groups involved in völkisch Romanticism gradually became part of the ideology of the 1930s, known as 'blut und boden' - (blood and soil).

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2015
Artaman League
Heinrich Himmler
Those promoting völkisch Lebensreform ideology eventually became popular among Third Reich officials and their supporters, including Heinrich Himmler and Rudolph Höss, who belonged to the farming organization known as the 'Artaman League'.
When other groups were being banned or disbanded due to political conflict during the 1930s, the völkisch nationalist ideology became connected with National Socialism.

The Artamanen-Gesellschaft - Artaman League - was a German agrarian and völkisch movement dedicated to a 'Blood and Soil' inspired ruralism. Active during the inter-war period, the League became closely linked to, and eventually absorbed by, the NSDAP (see below). The Artaman League had its roots in the overall Lebensreform movement in late 19th-century and early 20th-century Germany and Austria (see above). 

Artaman League
The Lebenreform movement encompassed hundreds of groups throughout Germany that were involved in various experiments tied to ecology, health, fitness, vegetarianism, and naturism (Nacktkultur). These groups held positions across the political spectrum. The völkisch groups ultimately gained a following among the NSDAP members and their supporters. Publications by völkisch Lebensreformists, which sold in the tens of thousands, argued that their farming practices were "the means by which the German race would regenerate itself and ultimately prevail over its neighbours and the Jews who were intent on destroying the nation's blood and soil".

Hans Sùren
Hans Sùren, a prominent former military officer, published 'Der Mensch und die Sonne' - (Man and the Sun - 1924), which sold 240,000 copies; by 1941 it was reissued in 68 editions.
Sùren promoted the Aryan master race concept of the physically strong, who would be the "salvation" of the German people.
Both socialist and völkisch groups were espoused by German youth, and associated with such groups was the 'Wandervogel' movement, which was a precursor to the Hitlerjugend.

Bismarck's Social Legislation 

Otto von Bismarck
'State Socialism' was a term introduced to describe Otto von Bismarck's social welfare policies.
The term was actually coined by Bismarck's liberal opposition but later accepted by Bismarck.
They refer to a set of social programs implemented between 1884 to 1889 as remedial measures to appease the working class and detract support for socialism and the Social Democratic Party of Germany following earlier attempts to achieve the same objective through Bismarck's anti-socialist laws.
The Prussian welfare state was developed by the German academic Sozialpolitiker (Social Policy Supporter) group, and intellectually associated with the historical school of economics.
Despite being labeled "socialist" by his opponents, however, Otto Von Bismarck's social legislation sought to preserve the existing economic order and state in Germany.
This was in stark contrast to 'true' socialists, who sought to subvert the power of the existing state and eventually replace the capitalist order with a socialist economy.
The 1880s were a period when Germany started on its long road towards the welfare state.
The Social Democratic, National Liberal and Centre Parties were all involved in the beginnings of social legislation, but it was Bismarck who established the first practical aspects of this program.

Berlin Reichstag
Bismarck's idea was to implement the minimum aspects of these programs that were acceptable to the German government, without any of the overtly socialistic aspects. Bismarck opened debate on the subject on 17 November 1881 in the 'Imperial Message to the Reichstag', using the term 'practical Christianity' to describe his program - thus avoiding any mention of Socialism.
However, in 1881 Bismarck had also referred to this program as 'Staatssozialismus', when he made the following accurate prediction to a colleague: "It is possible that all our politics will come to nothing when I am dead but state socialism will drub[force] itself in. (Der Staatssozialismus paukt sich durch.)"
Bismarck's program centered squarely on insurance programs, designed to increase productivity, and focus the political attentions of German workers on supporting the Junker government.
The program included Health insurance, accident insurance (workman's compensation); disability insurance; and an old-age retirement Pension, none of which were then in existence to any great degree.
Retirement pensions and disability insurance were placed on the back burner for the time being.
The employers contributed one-third, the workers the rest.
Bismarck's government had to submit three draft bills relating to Accident Insurance before it could get one passed by the Reichstag in 1884.
Bismarck had originally proposed that the Federal Government should pay a portion of the accident insurance contribution, to show the willingness of the German government to lessen the hardship experienced by the German workers as a means of weaning them away from the various left-wing parties, most importantly the Social Democrats.
The National Liberals took this program to be an expression of State Socialism, which they were strongly against.
To facilitate this, Bismarck arranged for the administration of this program to be placed in the hands of “Der Arbeitgeberverband in den beruflichen Korporationen”, “the organization of employers in occupational corporations”.
This organization established central and bureaucratic insurance offices on the federal, and in some cases the state, level to perform the actual administration.
It paid for medical treatment, and a Pension of up to two-thirds of earned wages if the worker was fully disabled.
This program was expanded in 1886 to include agricultural workers.
The old-age pension program, financed by a tax on workers, was designed to provide a pension annuity for workers who reached the age of 70.
At the time, the life expectancy for the average Prussian was 45, although this reflects the high infant mortality of the era, and retired workers could expect to live until 70 years.
Unlike accident insurance and health insurance, this program covered industrial, agrarian, artisans and servants from the start.
Also, unlike the other two programs, the principle that the federal government should contribute a portion of the underwriting cost, with the other two portions prorated accordingly, was accepted without question.
This time, the state supervised the programs directly.


Christlich–soziale Partei -  (CSP)

The Christian Social Party  (CSP) was a right-wing political party in the German Empire, founded in 1878 by Adolf Stoecker as the Christlichsoziale Arbeiterpartei (Christian Social Workers' Party).
The party combined a strong Christian and conservative programme with progressive ideas on labor, and tried to provide an alternative for disillusioned Social Democrat voters.
It also focused on the "Jewish question", with a distinct antisemitic attitude.

Adolf Stoecker
In December 1877 Stoecker, domestic chaplain at the court of Emperor Wilhelm I, and board member of the Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union, together with the economist Adolph Wagner had founded the Central Association for Social Reform (Zentralverein für Sozialreform), dealing with injustice and poverty after the Industrial Revolution.
The program of the CSP included: Founding of mandatory specialized cooperatives Settlement of the apprenticeship system Commercial arbitration Social insurance: mandatory widows and orphans, disability and pension funds Eight-hour day Factory Acts Restoring laws against usury Progressive income and inheritance taxes.
In turn, Social Democrats like Johann Most led a large conjugation in protesting against the party and its "christianity", while the reformist approach repelled social conservative voters.
In the 1878 elections, the party obtained less than 1% of the vote, failing to enter the Reichstag.
Although antisemitism was only a minor theme in the early stages of the party, the antisemitic message was carried by the so-called 'Berlin Movement' (Berliner Bewegung) of the 1880s, which gathered considerable support.
The party linked anti-capitalism with hatred toward Jews, denoting both big business and social liberal or socialist movements as "judaized", fulfilling the plans of the "world Jewry" to exterminate the German people (which according to the CSP did not include Jews).
The party never gained mass support, but Adolf Stoecker was able to obtain a seat in the Reichstag after an electoral coalition with the Conservative Party (DKP).
In the parliament, he acted as a DKP "far–right", advocating the abolition of universal suffrage and intriguing against the policies of Otto von Bismarck until the chancellor's resignation in 1890.
Stoecker was even able to include some antisemitic remarks in the DKP's 1892 party manifesto, however, when the Conservatives became worried with the over-tones in his messages (although they were more targeted at Reform Judaism than orthodox Judaism), the Christian Socialists were forced from the coalition in 1896.

Friedrich Naumann

Friedrich Naumann (25 March 1860 – 24 August 1919) was a German liberal politician and Protestant parish pastor. In 1894 he founded the weekly magazine 'Die Hilfe' ("The Help") to address the social question from a non-marxist middle class point of view. In 1896 he also founded the National-Social Association, in an attempt to provide a social liberal alternative to the Social Democrats, that could address the growing social rift between rich industrialists and the poor working class. 

Adolf Stoecker died in 1909 and in November 1918, most members of the CSP, under lead of Reichstag member Reinhard Mumm (who succeeded Stoecker in representing the Arnsberg constituency), stepped over to the German National People's Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP) in 1918.

Alfred Hugenberg
The Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germanya (German: Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, abbreviated as SDAP) was a Marxist socialist political party in the North German Confederation during the period of unification.
Often termed the Eisenachers, the SDAP was one of the first political organizations established among the nascent German labor unions of the nineteenth century.


The Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands

The  Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands - Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933.
In the 1920s it was called the "Spartacists", since it was formed from the Spartacus League.
Rosa Luxemburg
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2015
Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands - Emblem
Founded in the aftermath of the First World War by socialists opposed to the war, led by Rosa Luxemburg, after her death the party became gradually ever more committed to Leninism and later Stalinism.

Róza Luksemburg; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a revolutionary socialist who was neither German or Austrian, but rather a Polish Jew, who later became a naturalized German citizen.  She was born to a Jewish family in Zamość on 5 March 1871, in Russian-controlled Congress Poland. She was the fifth and youngest child of timber trader Eliasz Luxemburg and Line Löwenstein. She was, successively, a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

During the Weimar Republic period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 per cent of the vote, and was represented in the Reichstag and in state parliaments.
The party directed most of its attacks on the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which it considered its main opponent.
Banned in the Third Reich one day after Adolf Hitler emerged triumphant in the German elections in 1933, the KPD maintained an underground organization, but suffered heavy losses.
Before the First World War the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest party in Germany, and the world's most successful socialist party.
In 1914 the SPD members of the Reichstag voted in favor of the war.

Karl Liebknecht
Extreme left-wing members of the party, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, strongly opposed the war, and the SPD soon suffered a split, with the leftists forming the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), and the more radical Spartacist League.

Karl Liebknecht (August 13, 1871 - January 15, 1919) was a communist Jew and lawyer from Germany.
Liebknecht's father was Wilhelm Liebknecht, who helped form the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1891. His mother was Natalia Reh, a Jewess. In 1912 Karl was elected into Reichstag on the left-wing ballot SDP. He was also against Germany's involvement in the First World War and in the end of 1914 he had joined up with other Communists, Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi, Ernest Meyer, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin and formed the Socialist Newspaper, Spartacus League.

In November 1918, revolution broke out across Germany.
The extreme leftists, led by Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacist League, formed the KPD at a founding congress held in Berlin in 30 December 1918 – 1 January 1919 in the reception hall of the City Council.
Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD was committed to a violent revolution in Germany, and during 1919 and 1920 attempts to seize control of the government continued.

Violent Revolution in Germany
Germany's Social Democratic government, which had come to power after the fall of the Monarchy, was vehemently opposed to the KPD's idea of socialism.
With the new regime terrified of a Bolshevik Revolution in Germany, Defense Minister Gustav Noske formed a series of anti-communist paramilitary groups, dubbed "Freikorps", out of demobilized World War I veterans.
During the failed so-called 'Spartacist Uprising' in Berlin of January 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who had not initiated the uprising but joined once it had begun, were captured by the Freikorps and executed as enemies of the republic.
Other prominent members included Clara Zetkin, Paul Frölich, Hugo Eberlein, Franz Mehring, August Thalheimer, and Ernst Meyer.
Levi led the party away from the policy of immediate revolution, in an effort to win over SPD and USPD voters and trade union officials.
Further leadership changes took place in the 1920s.
Supporters of the Left or Right Opposition to the Stalin-controlled Comintern leadership were expelled; of these, Heinrich Brandler, August Thalheimer and Paul Frölich set up a splinter Communist Party Opposition.

The KPD and the Weimar Years


Ernst Thälmann
During the years of the Weimar Republic the KPD was the largest communist party in Europe, and was seen as the "leading party" of the communist movement outside the Soviet Union.
Critics of the KPD accused it of having pursued a sectarian policy – e.g. the Social Democratic Party criticized the KPD's thesis of "social fascism" (which addressed the SPD as the Communist's main enemy).
This scuttled any possibility of a united front with the SPD against the rising power of the NSDAP.
These allegations were repudiated by supporters of the KPD: the right-wing leadership of the SPD rejected the proposals of the KPD to unite for the defeat of fascism.
The SPD leaders were accused of having countered KPD efforts to form a united front of the working class.
For instance, after Papen's government carried out a coup d'état in Prussia, the KPD called for a general strike, and turned to the SPD leadership for joint struggle - but the SPD leaders again refused to cooperate with the KPD.

The KPD During the Third Reich

Ernst Thälmann leading a Communist March
Soon after the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor, the Reichstag was set on fire and a Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe was found near the building.
The National Socialists publicly blamed the fire on communist agitators in general, although in a German court in 1933, it was decided that van der Lubbe had acted alone, as he claimed to have done.
After the fire, the 'Reichstag Fire Decree' was passed, under the pretext of snuffing out "Communist state-endangering acts of violence."
Its actual effect, however, was to suspend most civil liberties.
The KPD was banned shortly afterward.
The 'Enabling Act', which legally gave Hitler dictatorial control of Germany, was passed by a Reichstag session held after all communist deputies had been arrested and jailed.
The KPD was efficiently suppressed by the National Socialist Government.
Thousands of Communists were imprisoned in concentration camps, including Thälmann and the party's leader in the Reichstag, Ernst Torgler.
The most senior KPD leaders to escape were Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht, who went into exile in the Soviet Union.
The KPD attempted to maintained an underground organisation in Germany throughout the period of the Third Reich, but the loss of many core members severely weakened the Party's infrastructure.
Interestingly,  number of senior KPD leaders in exile in Russia were caught up in Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of 1937–38, and executed, among them Eberlein, Heinz Neumann, Hermann Remmele, Fritz Schulte and Hermann Schubert, or sent to the gulag, like Margarete Buber-Neumann.
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014

Still others, like Gustav von Wangenheim and Erich Mielke, denounced their fellow exiles to the NKVD.
The NKVD is believed to have been responsible.

The Народный комиссариат внутренних дел - (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del - People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), abbreviated NKVD (НКВД) was a law enforcement agency of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the All Union Communist Party. It was closely associated with the Soviet secret police, which at times was part of the agency, and is known for its political repression during the era of Joseph Stalin.

Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands

The Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany) abbreviated as SDAP) was a Marxist socialist political party in the North German Confederation during the period of unification.
Often termed the 'Eisenachers', the SDAP was one of the first political organizations established among the nascent German labor unions of the nineteenth century.
The SDAP was one of the earliest organizations to arise from German workers' unionizing activity, but it was not the first.
At the group's founding in 1869, the fast-growing working class of the Industrial Revolution had already established several notable associations for workers' advocacy.
Chief among these were Leopold Sonnemann's Verband Deutscher Arbeiterverein, or VDAV - Assembly of German Worker Associations - and Ferdinand Lassalle's  (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein, or ADAV General German Workers' Association.
The largest group by far was the VDAV.
Through the 1860s it remained mostly apolitical, dedicated to pocketbook matters and fully integrated with the paradigms of liberal economic interests.
The VDAV did its best to ignore the political agitation of Lassalle's much smaller but more active ADAV.
The Lassalleans were seen as insufficiently committed to basic economic matters: much of their political appeal was based on what socialists considered to be an alarming militancy in support of German nationalism and the question of Groß-Deutschland (Greater Germany), and they displayed a discomfiting closeness to the militaristic Kingdom of Prussia.
Eventually, however, the sundry turmoil created by the wars of German unification helped politicize large elements of the previously unmoved VDAV.
Some followed Sonnemann to the new, moderately socialist German People's Party, founded in 1868, while others were ready to abandon the VDAV structure altogether and establish a more radical political party.
Meeting in the city of Eisenach in Saxony, the VDAV activists founded the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) on 7–9 August 1869.
The Eisenachers, as they came to be called, were under the leadership of Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel.
The political theorist Karl Marx had significant personal influence upon the newly formed party, being a friend and mentor to both Bebel and Liebknecht.
Marx and Friedrich Engels steered the party toward more Marxian socialism, and welcomed them (as far as German law would allow) into their International Workingmen's Association (IWA).
The SDAP was typically deemed "Marxist" by most observers, although this term was somewhat amorphous during Marx's own lifetime.

Karl Marx
The party was described as such largely because of its IWA membership, and Liebknecht's close personal relationship with the Jewish economist Karl Marx.
The true nature of 'Eisenacher Marxism' was closer to democratic socialism than the Communist parties of later decades.
The party platform called for a 'freier Volkstaat' (free people's state), which could align private cooperatives with state organizations.
The party primarily supported trade unionism as the utility by which workers could prosper "in the context of capitalism".
The party press was a key element of the SDAP's political strategy, and the party's newspaper – first called 'Demokratisches Wochenblatt' (Democratic Weekly Paper), later 'Der Volksstaat' (The People's State) – was edited by Liebknecht himself.
The paper was published in Leipzig from 2 October 1869 to 23 September 1876.
The party did not yet have its own printers, but Liebknecht was ambitious in his efforts to promote its publications on a wide scale as educational tools for workers.
Although most issues of 'Der Volksstaat' were largely composed of incendiary writing about the German political situation, Liebknecht attempted as much as possible to include essays on political theory, transcripts of academic lectures, and even some popular fiction.
Despite their differences, the SDAP and Lassalle's ADAV shared a largely identical interpretation of socialism.
The similarity was great enough to mean that they were both routinely monitored and considered equally suspicious by the authorities.
The two parties were both vying for the same audience among the working class, and they were doing so simultaneously, with several more moderate liberal organizations.
The key distinction among all the groups' positions was their level of commitment to the right to strike.
The competition between moderate and radical factions reached a boiling point when SDAP and Lassalle's ADAV finally merged to form a united front.
In a convention at Gotha in 1875, the new fusion party was renamed the Sozialistiche Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, or SAPD - (Socialist Workers' Party of Germany).
The resultant Gotha Program was a mixture of socialist and liberal capitalist ideas. Though it largely satisfied the conventioneers, the new policies were denounced by Karl Marx himself in the scathing essay 'Critique of the Gotha Program' (1875).
Despite its relatively moderate stance, the SAPD organization was deemed subversive and officially banned by the German Empire under the Anti-Socialist Laws of 1878.
Under proscription, however, the party's members continued to successfully organize.
After the ban was lifted in 1890, they rechristened themselves as the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD - (Social Democratic Party of Germany), and surged at the polls.
By the elections of 1912, the SPD – direct descendant of the small SDAP – had become the largest party in Germany.

Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands

The Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein - General German Workers' Association - (ADAV), founded in 1863, and the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, (SDAP), founded in 1869, merged in 1875, under the name Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, (SAPD).
In response to this and the Bolshevik Revolution, members of the left and of the far-left of the SPD formed alternative parties, first the 'Spartacus League', then the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany and later the Communist Party of Germany (see above).
Adolf Hitler prohibited the party in 1933 under the Enabling Act - party officials were imprisoned, or went into exile.
In exile, the party used the name 'Sopade'.

Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands - (SAPD)

The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (German: Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, SAPD) was a centrist Marxist political party in Germany.
It was formed by a left-wing party with around 20,000 members which split off from the SPD in the autumn of 1931.
In 1931, the remnants of USPD merged into the party, and in 1932 some Communist Party dissenters joined the group too, as well as a part from the Communist Party Opposition. 
Nevertheless, its membership remained small.
From 1933, the group's members worked illegally against National Socialism.
In 1934, the youth of SAPD took part in the foundation of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations.
The congress, which was held in the Netherlands, was broken up by Dutch police.
Several SAPD delegates were handed over to German authorities.
The congress then re-convened in Lille.

Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands- (USPD)

The  Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands - (USPD) - Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany - was a short-lived political party in Germany during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic.
The organization was established in 1917 as the result of a split of left wing members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) (see above).
The organization attempted to chart a centrist course between electorally oriented revisionism on the one hand and Bolshevism on the other.
On December 21, 1915, several SPD members in the Reichstag, the German parliament, voted against the authorization of further credits to finance World War I, an incident that emphasized existing tensions between the party's leadership and the left-wing pacifists surrounding Hugo Haase, and ultimately led to the expulsion of the group from the SPD on March 24, 1916.

Friedrich Ebert

Friedrich Ebert (4 February 1871 – 28 February 1925) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the first President of Germany from 1919 until his death in office in 1925. Ebert was elected leader of the SPD on the death of August Bebel, and the SPD later became deeply divided because Ebert led it to support war loans for World War I. A moderate social democrat, Ebert was in favor of the Burgfrieden, in which domestic political squabbles were put aside and all forces in society were expected to support the war effort. He tried to isolate those in the party opposed to the war but could not prevent a split.

At the same time, the Spartakusbund, led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (see above), separated from the USPD again as well to merge with other left wing groups and form the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands - "Communist Party of Germany" - see above).
In 1920, four delegates from the USPD attended the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern, Ernst Däumig, Arthur Crispien, Walter Stoecker and Wilhelm Dittmann, to discuss participating in the Comintern.
Ultimately, the proposition to join the Comintern was approved at a party convention in Halle in October 1920 by 237 votes to 156, with various international speakers including Julius Martov, Jean Longuet and Grigory Zinoviev.

Григо́рий Евсе́евич Зино́вьев
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev - Григо́рий Евсе́евич Зино́вьев, (September 23 [O.S. September 11] 1883 – August 25, 1936), born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky, known also under the name Hirsch Apfelbaum (Овсей-Гершен Аронович Радомысльский, and Апфельбаум), was a Jewish Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician. He was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution: Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. Zinoviev was the longtime head of the Communist International, and the architect of several failed attempts to transform Germany into a communist country during the early 1920s.

Over time, the political differences between SPD and USPD dwindled, and following the assassination of foreign minister Walther Rathenau by right wing extremists in June 1922, the two parties' fractions in the Reichstag formed a common working group on July 14, 1922; two months later, on September 24, the parties officially merged again after a joint party convention in Nürnberg, adopting the name 'Vereinigte Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands' (VSPD, "United Social Democratic Party of Germany"), which was shortened again to SPD in 1924.
The party got 20,275 votes in the 1928 Reichstag election, but won no seats.

Völkisch Socialism

It is easy to forget that the liberals and Communists did not have a monopoly on Socialism.
Unfortunately, because of the misguided stereotyping, that divides ideologies into those of the 'left' and the 'right', we can fail to see the legitimate socialist credentials of parties such as the NSDAP, or for that matter, the nationalist and racist credentials of parties such as the Communist Party of Russia.

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2015
One of the main appeals to the average citizen of some parties of the 'so-called' right in the Weimar republic was their promise of 'social equality' as represented by the concept of the 'Volksgemeinschaft' - people's community.

Volksgemeinschaft is a German expression meaning "people's community". This expression originally became popular during World War I as Germans rallied in support of the war, and it appealed to the idea of breaking down elitism and uniting people across class divides to achieve a national purpose. At first it was used in both democratic and populist politics in Germany, but later it was adopted by the National Socialist Party, and eventually became associated solely with them.

The Deutschsozialistische Partei 

Rudolf von Sebottendorf
 © Copyright Peter Crawford 2015
The Deutschsozialistische Partei (DSP) - German Socialist Party was a German far-right, nationalist party during the early years of the Weimar Republic.
Founded in 1918, its declared aim was an ideology that would combine both völkisch and socialist elements, however, the party never became a mass movement, and after it was dissolved in 1922, many of its members joined the similar National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) instead.

The DSP was heavily influenced by the occult Thule-Gesellschaft, led by Rudolf von Sebottendorf as well as publications of engineer Alfred Brunner, who aimed to create a party that would be both nationalist, socialist and attractive to the German proletariat. The DSP aimed to win the allegiance of the German proletariat away from communism, which had become highly influential following the German Revolution of 1918–1919.

Julius Streicher
This made the DSP similar to the Deutsch Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party) DAP  (see below) - in and around Munich, which later became the NSDAP.
A merger of the two parties failed however.
In 1920, the party (which had originally only existed in Nürnberg and around Franconia) was founded for the entire German state and contested in the Reichstag elections.
Yet, the party proved unpopular with only about 7,000 votes.
This led Julius Streicher, an important party official, to ally with the so-called Völkische Werkgemeinschaft (Peoples' Workers Party) in the summer of 1921.
Yet, the DSP continued to lose members and popularity.
In late 1922, the German Socialist Party was officially dissolved, many functionaries followed Streicher to the NSDAP.

Deutsche Arbeiterpartei

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2015
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
The Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP - German Workers' Party - was the short-lived predecessor of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP).
It developed out of the Freier Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden (Free Workers' Committee for a Good Peace) league, a branch of which Drexler had founded in 1918.
Thereafter in 1918, Karl Harrer (a journalist and member of the occult Thule-Gesellschaft - 'Thule Society'), convinced Drexler and several others to form the Politischer Arbeiterzirkel (Political Workers' Circle).
The members met periodically for discussions with themes of nationalism and racism - mainly directed against the Jews.

Karl Harrer
Anton Drexler
Drexler was encouraged to form the DAP in December 1918 by his mentor, Dr. Paul Tafel.
Tafel was a leader of the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-Germanist Union), a director of the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg, and a member of the Thule-Gesellschaft.
Drexler's wish was for a political party which was both in touch with the masses and nationalist.
In January 1919 with the DAP founding, Drexler was elected chairman and Harrer was made "Reich Chairman", an honorary title.
On May 17, only ten members were present at the meeting; a later meeting in August only noted 38 members attending.

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei

The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - (National Socialist German Workers' Party - abbreviated NSDAP), was a political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945.
Its predecessor, the German Workers' Party (DAP), (see above), existed from 1919 to 1920.
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2015
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
The party emerged from the German nationalist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany.

Freikorps ("Free Corps") were German volunteer units that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, In German-speaking countries the first so-called Freikorps "free regiments" (Freie Regimenter) were formed in the 18th century from native volunteers. These sometimes exotically equipped units served as infantry and cavalry or, more rarely, as artillery. Sometimes in just company strength, sometimes in formations up to several thousand strong, there were also various mixed formations or legions. The Prussian von Kleist Freikorps included infantry, Jäger, dragoons and hussars. In the early 20th century, Freikorps were raised to fight against the Communist opponents of the German Republic, and are widely seen as a "precursor to National Socialism".

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck of the Conservative Revolutionary movement coined the term 'drittes Reich' (Third Reich), and advocated an ideology combining the nationalism of the 'right' and the socialism of the 'left' (see above).
Oswald Spengler's conception of a "Prussian Socialism" also strongly influenced the NSDAP.

Preußentum und Sozialismus
Oswald  Spengler
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book 'Der Untergang des Abendlandes' (The Decline of the West), published in 1918 and 1922, covering all of world history. Spengler's civilization model postulates that any civilization is a super-organism with a limited lifespan. He wrote extensively throughout World War I, and the interwar period, and supported German hegemony in Europe. His other writings made little impact outside Germany. In 1920 Spengler produced 'Preußentum und Sozialismus' (Prussiandom and Socialism), which argued for an organic, nationalist brand of socialism and authoritarianism. Some members of the NSDAP, including Joseph Goebbels, saw Spengler as an intellectual precursor.

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2015
Der Untergang des Abendlandes
The party was initially created as a means to draw workers away from what was seen, by some, as anti-German, Jewish led Communism, and into völkisch nationalism.
Initially, National Socialist political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist policies, although such aspects were later downplayed in order to gain the support of industrial entities, and in the 1930s the party's focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.
National Socialists, however, rejected the  misleading 'left/right' political spectrum, and were neither “rightist” nor “leftist,” favoring policies similar to those put forth by both so-called “liberals” and so-called “conservatives” on many issues.
National-Socialism in Germany could not be confined to a philosophical “pigeonhole” because the revolutionary vision of the NSDAP transcended the false stereotypes inherent in the “traditional” political spectrum.
The National Socialists sought to achieve this by a "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft - see above), with the aim of uniting all Germans as national comrades, whilst excluding those deemed either to be community aliens or of a foreign race (Fremdvölkische).
The NSDAP rejected the Marxist concept of he so-called 'class struggle', opposed ideas of international solidarity, sought to resolve internal class struggle in Germany, while it identified Germany as a basically proletarian nation fighting against plutocratic nations.
In addition, the National Socialists argued that capitalism damages nations due to international finance, the economic dominance of big business, and Jewish influences.

to be continued

No comments:

Post a Comment