Why The Weimar Republic Fell | Andre Keil - TBH #6

We're

here today to talk about

a

little bit of German history.

Happy

days,

yeah.

I'm

joined by Andre Keil, who has written Dictatorships and Authoritarianism in Modern German History. Zoom in on the book. Zoom in on the book.

Great

cover. It is. It is. Yeah, we got Frederick,

Bismarck,

Hitler, and Adolf.

Big aid, they call him.

Yeah, there's a whole story to this cover because... No, he's not joking.

There's a whole

story about Adolf.

I was like, well, fair enough. I mean, like, the thing is, the thing is, the publisher said, like, you

need

to find a nice kind of cover image that

sells,

you know, and they said, like, you know, there are certain things that work and there are certain things that don't work.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, you know,

famous

persons, that kind of thing. I thought, okay, right. I had a look around in these kind of picture databases and I found this postcard, and it's a postcard from 1933. 1933. So that was produced after

the

so-called Day of Potsdam of March 1933. And what makes this whole thing so interesting is obviously the Nazi version of their own history. So they try to present themselves as the kind of, you know, continuation

of

these long traditions and long strands of German history. Right. Which is obviously an authoritarian, dictatorial tradition of German history.

Yeah.

So this is really interesting, in a way, you know, that they came up with these kind of, you know, lines of continuity that they try to promote.

And

actually, at least in 1933, this was a very popular motive that you find a lot of postcards, a lot of posters. Interestingly, it starts to disappear at the end of 1933. The Nazis kind of tried to sweep this kind of

rest

of German history a bit under the carpet. And it's only Hitler and Nazi stuff and the propaganda.

Yeah.

But

at least at the very beginning, they really like these kind of lines of continuity, these kind of ideas of

the

Nazis are not just, they're not really a revolutionary movement. They're a new thing, you know. They're an old thing, they're establishing to continue what's already there, you know, their return to the good old days. Yeah, it's a Third Reich.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. So, and in a sense, this is the story behind the cover. Because,

you

know, it kind of feeds a little bit into the theme of the book, you know, what the book is about, about these kind of ideas of, is this really the dominant theme of German history or not, you know.

And

then, obviously, the other thing is, you know, it's something that probably sells if people see it.

If

it ever shows up in, like, you know, some kind of train station. Sure.

W.H.

Smith or what they call it now, you know. People might pick it up because

it's

sad, but it's a kind of, I think, universal truth of bookselling that Nazi stuff sells. No,

it's because of

Bismarck.

They see my man, they're like, it's Big B.

Yeah, it might

also be. You know, obviously, you know,

Bismarck has a weird community of fans around the globe as well. Really?

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I've ever

met a Bismarckian before. That's exciting.

Oh, man, you know, well, obviously, Hitler has his kind of Nazi followers. You

could say he has

his fans, yeah.

Fair play. Well, I think Bismarck is obviously very popular among conservatives of all shades, particularly New

Yorkers. Okay, sure,

sure, yeah.

So, Henry Kissinger was

a big

Bismarck fan. Yeah. You know, all these people say,

well,

realpolitik, you know, don't care too much about morals and so on. It's, you know, blood and tears that make the, and iron, you know, that make the kind of big political, you know, kind of outcomes. That's

very popular. Yeah, that's Kissinger. But also others,

obviously, they were very kind of keen on,

on

kind of getting what they believe Bismarck's creed was that, you know, you don't have to consider the democracy too much, not too much liberalism. Yeah. It's, it's basically military might that make, brings about the big historical decisions, you know. And that was something that, you know, some of, particularly New Yorkers, yeah, really, really relished in, yeah. With, you know, very problematic outcomes, of course.

Yeah, true. And I think also there's been this kind of historical warping effect where

everything

that kind of comes before the Nazis, almost the, the, some of the edges can kind of get sanded off in popular historical memory. Certainly, a lot of what happens at Weimar, which we're going to mainly be talking about today, because I think there's a lot of,

there's

a lot of people who have a lot of,

I

don't know, some of their maybe political hopes sometimes in that history. I think a lot of people on the left see that this is, I think, very understandably, a kind of a pivot point where things could have gone a different way. And to be fair, almost any way would be preferable, right?

So it's, it's easy to. Fair

play.

You can, you

can see that,

yeah.

But one of the big things that you seem to be doing in this book is trying to push back against an idea that there's something inherently authoritarian to German culture. And one thing that

you

talk about that actually I, I'd never heard of before that I've been reading about a bit since is the idea of like a, a special path

for

Germany, which it almost puts the, it's almost like saying these guys are so different from the rest of Europe that they're just doing their own thing. Not like us. We love democracy and freedom and, and, and they're over there. What's, what's the deal with the special path?

Well,

I mean, it's,

it's

in, in, in,

in

an interesting way also linked to the book, it all comes back to the book cover because obviously what the Nazis were trying to say, well, this is our path, you know, this is the German path. It's strong man, it's authoritarianism, it's, it's, it's state power that makes Germany great. Yeah. Um, and it's obviously an antithesis to liberalism, democracy, socialism, you know, they're, they're basically all just degenerating ideas that make people weak. Rather than kind of, you know, strengthen them in this kind of eternal struggle of the nations. And that's the Nazi version of things, but it's also something that you already find in the 19th century.

This, this idea that, um, well, Germany, um, you know, being a rather kind of peculiar kind of, you know, well, geographical unit, perhaps,

yeah,

because it's not really a state. Um, well, you know, so it's, that's why, you know, usually people start talking about Germany after 1871, not before, because before that, it's probably better to say the German speaking lands.

So

it's different countries that speak German and have some sort of shared history within the Holy Roman Empire, but also weren't really, you know, any kind of united polity at all. Yeah. So, and then obviously with the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, you know, people start to think differently. People think, well, if we speak the same language, if we have kind of the same culture, although

if

you think about Germany today, speaking of Germany as a unified culture is quite problematic. You know, people drink wine, people drink beer, different kinds of sausages, big deal in Germany,

you

know, um, Catholic, Protestant, no religion.

And

also it's a very diverse country. And that was already a problem in the 19th century to really define what's German. Yeah. So, and I think that kind of contributed to this idea that Germany was somehow different, you know, different from the others, um, in a, for, for some people in a very negative way, yeah, because it didn't kind of follow the same path to modern society. Um, but actually for,

for

a lot of people, um, also in a positive sense, you know, Germany was an alternative version of, of kind of modernizing the society, something that followed a different path, you know, without revolution, you know, without a turmoil, without the negative effects of mob rule and whatnot,

you

know? Um, and in a sense,

they

saw this as a positive marker, you know, this German divergence

from

the West that Germany was something different.

Different

from

Britain,

France,

you

know, later, maybe the United States, you know, so,

and

the Nazis also tried to dock on this kind of narrative is really after 1945,

when

things are really going, you know, when it's quite clear to everyone. Now, the Germany's historical development wasn't really, you know, didn't really work out, you know, it's, um,

occupation.

It's military, total military defeat. It's at least 7 million Germans who are killed as well, alongside everyone else. Um, most of the cities are in ruins,

you

know, Dresden, Humber, Cologne, whatnot, you know, see the images probably. Um, um, and this is when people then actually turn this whole thing on a set and say, actually, you know what, what's people in the 19th century, you know, military might, strong man, you know, as leaders. What they thought is the, you know, outstanding positive kind of divergence

of

Germany from the West was now seen as the, if you like, the root of all evil, where it all went wrong. And actually the idea was you need to basically purge Germany from the Prussian influences, from militarism, et cetera.

And

that actually then contributed for, you know, um,

um,

a couple of decades actually to historians thinking about this kind of special path as an explanation, how the Nazis could come to power, why Germany started the first and the second world war. You can trace this back,

you

know, without boring people too much, you know, to people like Fritz Fischer, the Fischer controversy about the origins of the first world war, something that history students, at least in Britain, you know, um, you know, have been tortured with in first year classes,

you know,

um, so that will ring a bell to, for, for many people who studied history. But then also you have,

obviously

the, um, you know, um, social stories of the seventies and eighties, um, uh,

um,

you know, Vela and others who looked at that and it came to similar conclusions. Yeah. Um, and in a way what they were all saying is actually, you know, well, after 45, this kind of long period,

uh,

East and West in a way, this is the end of the special path. You know, this is where Germany becomes on.

And

actually then in 1990, this whole thing, the argument was, has come full circle.

Now

Germany is a normal country, like any other countries with the same problems. And then I think what is really fascinating is that these ideas of special paths, you know, has then basically entered the language when people were talking about China, you know, China makes a different path towards modernity. Um, there was a long talk, um, under Trump about an American special path.

You

know, that's, that becomes like a norm, a new kind of,

you

know, so that, that, that America is not longer part of the West, but has taken a different turn, uh, after Brexit, there was talk about, you know, Britain

taking the special path.

So everyone's kind of special nowadays in this regard.

Yeah. Yeah.

But it's the origins line is kind of debated about the course of German history.

It

seems then that this is often a response to a country doing something that's viewed as illiberal. Yeah. And then what is there suddenly this, this feeling that they need to find a way to narrativize this in a way that it's not purely backwards moving by saying, actually, this is a different path forward.

Yeah. It's not just illiberal. I would say it's, it's very often used as an expression where things go terribly wrong. Well, I mean, yeah.

You know,

because, um, it's, it's like, obviously in the German case, you know, it's, it's the Holocaust, it's, it's the Civil War, it's Nazism, you know.

I guess I was thinking like Brexit. I wouldn't say

this is necessarily fascist, but it's certainly illiberal, you know, like, yeah,

you

shouldn't compare. Yeah.

It

doesn't work out. But I think it's, it's when things don't play out, you know, I think things don't run as well. And I think it's very often the thing, isn't it, for historians, we always kind of get interested in things, not so much the ordinary run-of-the-mill stuff that works perfectly

fine and usually

doesn't trigger. Because there's very often very little to explain. It's usually when things go haywire,

you know. Right.

That's when we are getting interested. And that's where we try to find explanations. And this is where we spend a lot of debating time, you know, about when did things go wrong? What's the long-term problems? What's the short-term problems that led to a certain outcome, you know? And I suppose because German history, particularly in the 20th century, is so full of catastrophes,

that's

probably also a reason why, you know, this kind of narrative, you know, was,

was,

and then obviously it offers, and that's probably the other thing about the special path debate,

it

does offer a relatively simple explanation.

Because

it kind of, you know, in its very simple form, it's Prussia, it's a problem the Prussians conquer,

which

to an extent is true, to an extent it's not true. They conquer the rest of Germany, they're unified by force, they dominate Germany, they impose their militaristic illiberal values. They suppress, if you like, you know,

the

springs of more progressive, more liberal kind of developments

that

you had in the 19th century. The idea was then, after 1945, you just remove Prussia, you purge Prussian,

you

know, images, you blow up the castles of the Hoden Solen kings everywhere, you remove the statues, you, you know, basically remove the names of Prussia. And removing Prussia from the equation, then free, it's almost like, you know, I always compare when it starts to scenes with this kind of Lord of the Rings when the old king, you know, and his advisors kind of whistling in his ear.

And

then suddenly the terrible advisors removed, and the king is funny, oh man, I'm back to normal, you know,

let's

fight the orcs. And it's a bit, this idea, you know, in a sense, this idea is actually the Germans are all right, you know, they just had some really bad kind of influences. Yeah, yeah. And when you remove these bad influences, namely Prussia, they return to being good people.

And

obviously after 1945, when you think about the emerging of the Cold War, that was a super convenient narrative for the Germans themselves, that they could say, well, you know, yeah, let's get rid of the Prussians, and we're fine, you know, we're good people now. For the Allies, that was great as well, because they could say, well, you know, now that we cleanse the Germans of these negative homelands, they're really great allies against the Soviets. No need to question and debate anything, you know,

no

need to kind of ask any awkward questions.

And you can see how this kind

of became a very convenient thing.

I think talking about turmoil in the 20th century in Germany, obviously, it's one of those statements that's almost inherently comical, because it's

so, you

know, it's so

correct.

I think if we look at Weimar, we're looking at a situation where this country is just coming out of World War I, where they famously didn't do super hot. There

was

quite a lot of political repression. There was rationing. Of course, things were getting really dire in terms of, you know, getting access to food in the final stages of the war, especially. What we run into during the Weimar period is a gratuitous use of what they call emergency powers, right? But that kind of grows out of things that were already kind of in place that the state could do beforehand. Could you talk a bit about

that

to sort of set the stage of what's going

to come? Oh,

totally. I mean, like, you're absolutely right. Like the Weimar Republic, there is a

understandable

obsession with the Weimar Republic, simply because

it

was one of those things when you, you know, are influenced by this idea that German history is inherently problematic.

Yeah.

Then

the Weimar Republic was kind of almost like a sign or an inkling that people could get an inkling that things could have turned out differently.

You

know, there are progressive potentials in German history. Yeah. And then obviously they get betrayed at the end and things return to catastrophe. But the Weimar Republic is very often kind of, you know, these kind of, well, shall we say, 14 years, 15 years, you know, they're always kind of foregrounded as a, you know, shining example of how things could have turned out. And I think

this

is to an extent, you know, talking about the political uses of history. I think that's kind of understandable and important.

This

is one of the few things where progressives in Germany could point to and say, like, you know, look,

this

is a tradition we could look towards to get inspiration. Oh, yeah. Today in the fight against the far right, that kind of stuff. But, and this is now where the historian,

the

professional historian is very often the one who's kind of ruining the party. Yeah. It's like, ah, let's take a closer look. You know, things might not be as straightforward as you might think. I think the first thing is the question to what extent the Weimar Republic is a continuation of what happened before

and

to what extent it is really a revolutionary new thing.

And

with so many things in history, it's kind of both. So, obviously, it is,

in

a way, a progressive political project.

It's the

first democracy. It is a liberal democracy. It's not a socialist democracy. It's a liberal democracy.

But

the Weimar Constitution is, in many respects, a very progressive one.

The

voting franchise

is

much more expansive and inclusive than in most other countries. So,

well,

for instance, in comparison to Britain, which is the democratic

kind

of example very often it's used. Well, you know, women have a much more expansive franchise in Germany of the revolution than they have in Britain.

Yeah,

about a decade before they get

the universal revolution. In France, you know,

the motherland of modern revolutions. In France, women only get the vote in 1944. A lot of people don't know that. And in Germany, women get equal political rights, you know, exactly the same political rights as men do.

And

this is obviously an achievement of the revolution, if you like, you know.

Same

goes for, you know, civil liberties. They're quite expansive. So, if you look at the constitution that is enacted in 1919, it's a very progressive one. The political system is built on the idea of compromise, of coalition building.

It

is a PR system, so a proportional representation system. So, no party is meant to have the absolute majority. Parties are meant to work together for compromise. And this is all actually in terms of

the

theory of democracy and so on and progressive ideas. This all sounds really good, yeah? What is also interesting is the Weimar Republic is inherently popular at the beginning. It's something that people don't

necessarily

take into account. So, the parties that are explicitly supporting the new democratic republican project, they continuously receive,

well,

two-thirds, three-quarters of the vote chair in national elections. So, Germans embrace the idea of republicanism and democracy. So, it's this kind of idea, oh, they were

all

fed up by the versatility and they hated the reforming just way. So, yes, that makes sense. So, that's the positive story.

You

know, that's the stuff

that people

can look towards. And I think it's really important because I think we now dwell a lot on the negatives, you know. So, it's just to kind of bring a bit of nuance. So, this is true. But at the same time, this kind of break with the empire before is not as straightforward as people think. So, one of the problems is the new government is coming into power in,

well,

you know, late October, early November 1918.

During

the revolution, there are moderate social democrats. They don't really know what to do. They're completely overwhelmed. And one thing they do after a short period of disarray amongst the old elites, particularly the military, they incorporate those old elites. They basically say, well, rather than kind of rocking the boats or kind of completely switching the boats completely, and abandoning the old order, we work with the old order. They depend on them for securing power. So, the old military, they depend on them. They depend on them to suppress left-wing insurrections, various left-wing insurrections that happened in 1918, 1919, 1920.

Very, you know, brutal suppression of insurrections, actually very violent ones,

something

we can talk about in a bit. But they become increasingly dependent on the old order.

And

the old powers, you know, they're not the majority.

You

know, they're actually a relatively small group inside Germany. But they manage to preserve their positions of power. And one of the biggest kind of, I suppose, mistakes of this kind of new government that comes into power in the wake of the November revolution is never to touch the positions of power

that

the military, but also people in the civil service,

the

judiciary, etc., have.

And

this ultimately becomes the, you know, the birth defect of the republic. Not the constitution, not the Versailles Treaty. I think this is all completely kind of overstated. I think the reluctance to really challenge the old authorities and to replace them

where

it met it, with republicans, democrats, socialists, whatever you want to call them. And then also, if you like the,

and

this is a very contemporary thing,

I

think these politicians that are coming into power,

they

probably look more towards people and look for the approval of people who hate the new republic anyway. Yeah, so they have their kind of ideal kind of, you

know,

people they want to get approval from generals. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Judges, etc., you know, civil servants, rather than the people who brought them into power, which seems to be a very 20th century issue of the left and power. At least the moderate leftists, they look towards people who hate them anyway. Yeah. They look for them for approval, you know, kind of for support, while at the same time completely neglecting the actual people who are their power base.

This is, the SPD is often treated as like the archetypical betrayal when people, especially people on the left, they talk about sort of liberals being more willing to cozy up to people far to their right. Despite the SPD also growing out of the labor movement alongside a lot of other groups that are socialists and communists at this point, they do, as you say, they collaborate with the military, they repress a lot of political movements to their left, and so this is seen as kind of like,

to

this day, when people,

they'll

talk about the Labour Party, even here in the UK, or the Democrats in the US, and say like the electoral, kind of liberal left, they, you know, they'll take the Republicans or the Reform Party or whatever before you, if you're too left-wing.

And

we, it's, in the SPD's case, it's, I think these critiques are pretty justified. What do you make of,

what

do you make of the decision-making process there? Like, why, why have they done this?

I think, I think the, there's, again, like, very, sorry, there's a very short answer, there's a long answer. I tried to find a middle way. So I think the short answer is that they're afraid. I think

they

look towards Russia, they see what the Bolsheviks are doing in Russia,

they

look at the fate of the moderates in, during the Russian Revolution. So they probably identify more with people like Kerensky, who is probably, when you compare them in terms of his outlook, his policy is probably a social Democrat, even though it's not called a social Democrat in a Russian context. So, and I think I look at what happens, you know, there's, there's a fear, I think there's a fear of civil war that plays a role as well. There's a fear of Bolshevism. There's a fear of the effects of civil war. You know, there's a, there's this idea of, if you nip it in the butt, you know, if you, if you suppress it

harshly

at the beginning, then you can prevent the outbreak of a civil war.

But

that's to an extent, only one of the explanations. I think the other problem is, is that Ebert tried among others to come into power in, you know, 1918, November 1918. They're, they're ill prepared for that. They don't really, they don't really know what to do with the power. So they have not been, you know, and this is the difference.

So

they're, the SPD, at least those SPD politicians, they, they have,

I

suppose,

people

like, you know, Ebert Scheidemann, you know, the key, the key players in the SPD at this time,

they've

probably given up on being revolutionaries if they ever have been revolutionaries, but they're certainly given up already way before the first world war.

So

they, they weren't really prepared in a way of thinking about what happens if we suddenly have power,

you

know, their idea was incremental change. I think what they, this part of the SPD was, was, was, um, banking on, I was thinking about was,

um,

political reforms, expansion of the voting franchise,

and

then gradual reforms, you know, welfare reforms,

kind

of legislation, you know, um, really kind of,

I

mean, for, for today's standards, for today's standards, you know, it's probably radical social democracy. I think there was an underpinning idea of transforming society, but not revolutionizing society.

And

the, the, the,

the

problem they face now is they are in the middle of a revolution against their will, or most, they've now become leaders of a revolution, you know, um, and actually the grassroots of this revolution are workers.

Um,

a lot of them are trade unionists, so there's a lot of strong trade union elements,

um,

workers councils,

and

Berlin, for instance, metal workers are very strong, we don't associate it with Berlin today, but Berlin is a metal city, a steel city, uh, for, for a long time where a lot of, um, you know, metal works are, um, and then also soldiers who come back, you are, you know, armed to their teeth, you have suddenly

hundreds

of thousands,

millions

of, of working class people who literally, because of the nature of the Germany,

if

he come back

with

their weapons. So you have these kind of

very

battle hardened guys who come back on all sides, you know, both if you like on a radical left, you know, sailors, but

also

frontline soldiers, um, who, who know how to fight, who have the weapons. But then also you have these kinds of people coming back to,

uh,

uh, you know, opponents of the revolution, very few, interestingly, uh, what we were probably called in the middle, you know, whether if you,

if

you like social mainstream social Democrats, who, who, it's usually the margins, you know, who, who, who kind of, um,

uh,

have these kinds of arm formations.

So they

find themselves in the middle of this perfect storm. Yeah. So their preferred model of social change has not materialized, you know, they've brought to power in a maelstrom of a revolution, the breakdown of the old order. So

it's

probably also the revolution in a way is of course a revolutionary act, um, but it's also just as much, just the disappearance of the old order, the Kaiser leaves overnight in a train,

you

know, suddenly the old authorities have disappeared, you know, it's a bit like in a film sometimes when people wake up and everyone's gone kind of thing and then people fill this vacuum and very often it's these workers councils. Yeah.

The

problem is this is not how they imagine this change to happen, you know, for them

it's

gradual, it's the, you know, all the authorities will slowly be transformed, you know, social Democrats

will

be integrated into the apparatus of the state and it's a long-term slow transformation,

not

a revolution. And now they're in the middle of revolution. And then the problem is they, they don't speak the language, you know, they

try to

speak the language of the revolution, but they don't necessarily know how to talk to the people on the ground who are now thinking we want more, what we want, we want stuff to happen, you know, and the big debate obviously is, well, what is this change going to look like? You know, is it this kind of very gradual, you know, slow improving of society or is it the radical transformation like the Bolsheviks in Russia? But I think it's also part of the story that the Russian model is probably not as popular as people think. So when we talk about betrayal, yeah,

it's

a question of who is betraying who? Yeah. There is a small but relevant and important minority amongst these revolutionaries

who

want to go down the Bolshevik route. Yeah.

I

think this is the future

world

revolution is just around the corner. Yeah. But

I don't

think it's a majority. There's a good example where you can actually trace this, you know, whether

they

have a majority. So because it's the betrayal narrative also has its limitations. So in December 1918, just before Christmas, there is a national meeting of all the councils, the workers and soldiers councils. So,

you

know, the German translation is Räte, yeah, councils in English. The Russian version would be Soviet. So it's the National Soviet Congress, the Räte Congress, the Reichsräte Congress in December 1918. And they actually come to Berlin. So it's basically people elected after the Soviet model,

you

know, deputies of their, you know, factory councils, and they go to Berlin.

They

meet in Berlin and they are meant to debate what the future of Germany should look like. Is it the Soviet model? Is it something else? Yeah.

And

the vast majority, there's a vote, actually, just really just before Christmas, there's a vote.

And

the vast majority of these deputies vote for what they call a democratic republic. So they reject the Soviet model

with

a centralized kind of, you know, leadership. And instead, they vote for democratic elections. Yeah.

The

tricky thing is, when we talk about Myanmar, what they have in mind is a socialist democracy or social democracy, you know, it's a bit confusing. So those people who vote for democratic republic, they want elections. They want the parliament. But they want this parliament to implement socialist policy.

I

think the problem is, when you look at it at 1919, 1920, etc., this is

probably

the disillusioning also amongst the more moderates

or

non-Bolsheviks that the republic fails to implement these

things.

So I think for context, it was a very long-winded context, but I don't think that matters.

Yeah.

So it's not necessarily betrayal as such. Yeah. And certainly, this is how the far left sees the whole thing. But it's also not really kind of implementing the radical change that people wanted to see.

Mm

-hmm. Yeah. So it's somewhere, it's kind of in this kind of, you know, in the middle of these kind of different narratives.

Yeah. Yeah. It

sounds like they tried to toe kind of an impossible line and kind of got neither.

You have to cut them some slack. I think that's, you know, I'm very critical in particular when you look at what they do.

Yeah.

And the response to these challenges from the left, they really

lose

the plot there.

But

on the other hand, they're also in a bit of an impossible position. You have to mention, so what comes together is you have politicians who are not revolutionary, who are very, very, very,

you

know, conservative, small C social conservative, not revolutionaries, neither in their appearance, neither in the way they talk, neither in their outlook and awareness. It's a very kind of, you know,

almost

petty bourgeois kind of view of the world. You know, they want to see kind of, you don't want to rock the boat too much.

You

want to see reforms, but it's, it's almost a technocratic view of the world, you know, that you can solve these problems by implementing policies in an ordered way. No way, no need to, to kind of, you know, revolutionize stuff into, you know, for too much upheaval, but there's a way of changing things in a technocratic way. So, so there are these kind of more technocratic politicians, you know, who are suddenly leaders of a revolution that they don't necessarily fully understand, nor do they control every aspect. And then they're also faced, obviously, with external pressures, the whole peace settlement matters, but

you

shouldn't overstate just how much it matters, you know, for the domestic policies. But also then you're faced with these old elites who try to obstruct and reassert themselves every step of the way. So they are between the rock and the half legs.

Yeah.

Although I suppose to cut them less slack, because I like to be mean. Yeah, fair play. The, the maintaining of the position that all the elites, they, you know, the rock might not be their fault, but the hard place was a little bit,

you

get what

I mean,

you know.

I mean, yeah, you wonder, and this is always this kind of counterfactual stuff,

you know. Yeah, of course.

It's a bit, again, you know, these kind of political debates about the failure of the left and missed opportunities. Yeah. Would it have been different if there would have been a more charismatic leadership or a leadership that would have understood to seize the moment better without necessarily turning in Germany into Soviet Republic, you know. You know, this is the dream of the left always to have a slightly more radical leader, but just about right not to rock the boat too much. It's a bit like, you know, without, you know, putting undue comparisons is a bit like the, you know, Andy Burnham, Keir Starmer thing.

Sure, sure, sure.

I'm not saying that Keir Starmer is the Friedrich Ebert of the Labour Party,

but it's kind of,

you know,

slightly,

slightly, you know, not so enthusiastic, very, very technocratic out of the world, trying to calm things

down, rather

to stir things up, you know, not necessarily a great communicator, you know, relying on institutions. But then the institutions don't always play ball, you know,

whereas his

idea is at least the projection of people who are supporting Andy Burnham is, oh, he's this guy who talks like a normal person, has charisma, you know, who will change things without changing them too much. But it's a bit like that. And

I think

it's a bit counterfactual. There was a bit of a vacuum there with regard to the SPD leadership,

for

sure.

Yeah, and I guess we see the resistance to becoming something more like a Soviet Republic, at least amongst the leadership, in a lot of the political crackdowns that they do. Actually, I wanted to, you mentioned in your book that the press was quite supportive of a lot of this, including the killing of Rosa Luxemburg and Kara Liebknecht, if that's how you say that.

Yeah, Liebknecht, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, close enough.

Who, yeah, of course, they were prominent communist leaders at that point. Why was the press so into it, and would you say that the German public generally was feeling that way as well, or were they quite far from the press's

perspective? Again, maybe for context, in the wake of this Reichsreiter Congress, you have a first armed uprising, a so-called Christmas battle, where members of the very, very impressively named People's Naval Division sees the castle, like the equivalent of Buckingham Castle, I

and

very bloody fights. One thing that shocks the government during the Christmas fight is just

how

good these insurgents fight, because they think,

oh,

there's just, you know, rubble, you know, we kind of, you know,

we kind of, you

know, brush them aside, and then they, the fights are very bloody, and the government troops

actually

suffer very heavy casualties. And what also happens is, because of the, you know, intensity of the fight, say, the first atrocity.

So,

yeah.

Captured insurgents are executed by government troops. And the government is now in a position where they need to justify what they're doing. You know, how can you justify that? You use government troops, yeah? Troops who are actually loyal to the emperor, still kind of, you know, who are not on the side of the new republic, who are, you know, basically loyalists to the old regime.

You

rely on them to put down, you know, the people who brought you into power. So, there's this kind of reversal of positions. And that becomes even worse in March. So, you have the January uprising then, which is very often called the Spartacus uprising,

but

which is wrong, because it isn't the Spartacus, the Spartacus League,

who's

pushing for it. They're just sucked into it. So, long story short, you know, this is kind of a bit of a misnomer. And then you have in March 1919, large-scale uprisings,

when

the new Minister of Defense and Gustav Norski issues a so-called shooting order, which leads to some re-executions of insurgents. So, in northeast of Berlin, for instance, there are probably 1,500 people

shot

in the streets, literally,

and

sometimes in front of their family. So, you know, it's a very brutal suppression. A similar thing happens in Munich, where there's a Munich Soviet Republic around the same time, where Freikorps march into the city and probably kill somewhere. It's hard to establish exact numbers, but probably also somewhere between 1,500 and 2,500 people. Like, literally, summary executions without any trial, just grabbing people who look like workers and just shoot them, you know? So, very violent.

And

that causes a lot of bitterness later.

So,

the interesting thing is the government now needs to justify these measures. So, they're not secret. Everyone can see, you know, when government troops enter a working-class area, you

have

these densely built working-class areas, you know, and then they pull men out of houses, put them in front of their houses, and shoot them, you

know? And

the families and the neighbors, everyone sees that. And then they let the

dead

bodies lie on the streets, you know? So, it's a very grim scene.

You

have to really imagine the brutality

of

these crackdowns.

And

now, suddenly, the government needs to justify this,

you

know? They need to say, why is it necessary

to

be so brutal? And they actually, which is, again, this weird thing about Vima Democracy, there are debates. People criticize them. People say, well, you're just as bad or actually worse than the previous regime, you know? And they say, well, you know, this is a price worth paying, yeah, to prevent a situation like in Russia.

Right.

And there's this kind of moral panic

about

the atrocities that the Bolsheviks commit, yeah?

And

to be fair, I mean, you know, if you know a little bit about the Russian Civil War, it is an exceptionally brutal war.

Yeah.

So, the Bolsheviks commit mass atrocities. The counter-revolutionaries commit, everyone in the Russian Civil War commits mass atrocities.

It's

an exceptionally violent,

exceptionally

brutal civil war. And in a way, what the government is saying, and this is very well reported, that's the other thing. So, it's not secret. People, there's newspaper reports about these atrocities

that happened in Russia. And

now the government is saying, well, if you want to prevent something, something happening in Germany,

we

have to nip these revolutionary things. And then the only way to do it is by rooting this out, you know, entirely. And if it means for a very short period of time, you know, to basically, you know, well, you know, to use a phrase that's, you know, in political theory, quite prevalent, you need to create a state of exception. Yeah. Yeah. Where the rules don't apply, you know, these workers might be innocent, you know, but they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it's sometimes, you know, you need to

kind

of, you know, just, just go for it, you know. And even if it means, you know, you illegally kill people, you know,

if

it's, you know, it's necessary for the greater good, for the survival of the state,

then

so be it. Yeah.

And

this is how they justify the killings of Luxembourg

and

Liebknecht, yeah, even though the murderers are later put on trial, which is also interesting.

So

they're not, they're not getting away. So this is this kind of conundrum. So, you know, on the one hand, they're justifying this and saying, you

know,

if you want to prevent, you know, our descent, Germany's descent into Russian kind of, you know, in a Russia situation with the Bolsheviks and everyone committing atrocities and a breakdown of order, if you want to prevent that, you know, then you need to basically, you know, we need to do the dirty thing, you know, and we need to do it

and

there's a necessity for it.

But

at the same time, and this is also interesting, there's also this idea of, if we don't do it,

the

others will do

it. You

know, there's this idea of the dehumanized Bolshevik, you know, the kind of, you know, and this is deeply rooted in the middle classes. This is how the debates about elicists, terrorism, you know, in the period before the First World War, about revolutionary socialists, you know, since the French, the Paris Commune.

Yeah.

This is a well-established theme that revolutionaries will kind of

kill

you. Yeah. They will, they will not just burn down, you know, the government building and storm the palaces. They will, you know, kill the middle classes. And this is what the press reflects in a way, you know, they basically present atrocity stories.

They

say, this is what's going to happen here.

This

creates a very visceral panic, you know,

and

that's then used as a legitimization for excessive violence and brutality. It's difficult to establish what people think about this, yeah, because the press is not so much reflection as we know as historians. Of course. Of what people think. It's always an attempt to shape public opinion.

So,

and if you look at certain papers, you know, if the papers of the, well, you know, what used to be

kind

of, you know, bourgeois papers, you know, they obviously try to push the government line and say, this is an act of self-defense. This is, this excessive violence is regrettable, but it's necessary. Yeah. But you have papers on the left,

you

basically say, well, you know, this shows the true face of the new government, you know,

and

their betrayal of the revolution. And I think the truth again is probably somewhere in the middle, you know, um, I think

the

social Democrats would have probably tried to not do it,

but

then they have the people who actually carry out this violence. There are,

you know,

the Freikors, government troops, you know, very often generals who are,

you

know, old monarchists, you know, who are very happily kind of, you know, cracked down on the far left, yeah, because

they are the

enemy

and

now they get basically sanctioning for that or they get basically the support of the new government for doing that.

Right. Yeah.

Um,

so, so that's something, um,

the

government doesn't really have control of in a military. That's another thing. The military is basically operating outside

the

control. The new government, um, doesn't have its own forces of order. They don't have their own army. Really? They rely on the old army, but the old army is run by these kind of, you know, monarchy. Um, what do you do? Yeah. So, so there, there's almost like also a bit of a helplessness

because

again, they, they weren't prepared for that. They don't understand that you need to seize the means of power for revolution to work. You know, they leave the,

all

the leads and power. And this is obviously this kind of

half

baked kind of revolution. And that shows in these instances when the government loses control of its own military.

And

then actually people like Noska

adding

to the, you know, fuel to the fire, like basically saying,

well,

this is the right thing to do.

Yeah. Because at that point you can start making an argument for stability from a place of power because these, these people who are,

are

pursuing a more Bolshevik kind of model are, they, you know, they at least correctly understand that you do need to get rid of people who are presently in power to,

to change the thing

meaningfully. Um, and now that's you. Oh no. Right.

So

it's,

it's, um,

I could see how it's a compelling argument to say, yeah, Russia's had this big civil war. It's been very bloody. What's a couple thousand people kill, you know? And, and I feel like there's a lot of very frightening kind of, um,

uh,

mirrors of that throughout the 20th century. Right. Especially when it comes to anti-communist violence, there's a lot of very preemptive violence. Yeah.

Um,

you, you obviously get a lot of that in Asia and Latin America, um, often with some support from certain Western powers as well, right. To keep a certain geopolitical situation. So it's interesting

how

similar that can feel in the shape of it,

at

least, uh, so much earlier now, now in this period. Right.

No,

I think you're absolutely right. You know, um, and, and again, it's this kind of, um, interesting question to what extent is this kind of rooted in

the

first world war? Yeah. I think there, there's a certain element of brutalization and then how politicians conceive the value of human life.

Um,

and this is something you find in most regimes, you know, I think to, to be fair, this is cuts across the political spectrum.

Yeah.

You know, from, from, from communists, the Bolsheviks, I don't think they place a lot of premium on human life

to

fascism and everything in between. So there's a, there's a reconfiguration. I think this is brought about, but experience of mass death and mass killing of the first world.

Yeah.

Although again, this is where you need to add a bit of kind of context and nuance.

Um,

most of the people carry out these acts of violence that there are not actual soldiers. Yeah. A lot of the members of these Fry Corps are,

are, are,

well,

students

and teenagers, yeah. Who were not even drafted into the army. So they've never seen a trench. They've never fought, you know, in one of the battles,

they're

basically at home, you know, being brought up in this hyper patriotic spirit.

Yeah.

And actually the violence after the war is their, you know, opportunity to prove their worth as warriors for the fatherland.

Right. Right.

And that probably also helps to explain a little bit of the exceptional violence that you see. And, um, yeah, it's this kind of generation that a lot of these kind of Fry Corps, uh, troops,

um,

there, there are quite straightforward careers from,

you

know, them being involved in this excessive violence against the left

on

behalf of a social, social democratic government.

And

they pop up again

in

the late, late twenties, early thirties as members of the SR members of the,

you

know, SS and so on. So you have quite a, quite a kind of, you know, not, not all of them, but you have an interesting kind of, you know, continuity there as well.

Um,

but you're absolutely right. Yeah. So, so I think there's, there's this element, but it's also deeply rooted, this kind of panic of the left or kind of the fear of communism, um, the tropes that emerge, you know, how revolutionaries and revolutionary socialists are depicted. And as I said, it goes back to,

you

know, the moral panics and

can

probably trace it back to the French revolution. Um, but you could definitely find it in the responses to the, um, Paris commune. And obviously the mass killings that happened, um, during and after the Paris commune, you know,

you

go to Paris today to, to tell a chaise, you see the, the grace of the communards and the walls where the mass executions took place.

Yeah.

And that was justified by the French government in 1871 by the fact that they were kind of, you know, ready to kill, you know, burning down houses. There's this image of the women, you know, the petroleurs who set fire to Paris. So this idea that, um, it's, it's not just a political,

uh,

competition about, you know, how to run a country. It's a life and death, you know, it's an existential question.

And

these existential questions justify exceptional responses.

Yeah. If

it's about survival, not just the survival of the political, about your physical own survival,

then

it's justified to kill. It's justified to inflict, you know, mass killings on your, on, on, on,

on

your political opponent. And I think this is a, and you're absolutely right. This is something that is not exclusive to Germany, something you find throughout the 20th century. Yeah. And it's something that extends beyond even the Nazi period, you know? Oh yeah, absolutely. And when you think about how, how certain, you know, emergencies in,

in

Asia, you know,

uh,

Malaya in Indonesia, millions of people killed there. Yeah.

Yeah.

And the justifications are very similar.

Yeah.

That's true. And so,

and we can even go back to the Bolsheviks because obviously, yeah, they kill a lot of people in that civil war. And I think a big part of that, and

I'm

actually not sure how true this is in Germany, but you probably know, um, a lot of it is that they don't have the prison infrastructure. If you're looking at like this big group of people and saying, right, these guys are like trying to, you know, shoot at us, we've captured them.

They

actually didn't have anywhere to put them a lot of the time.

Yeah.

So,

you

know, it doesn't necessarily mean it's chill to kill all your POWs, but it's also sort of like

it,

you either have to let them go or build a prison today, or you're going to shoot everyone. And in the middle of a war, they're going to shoot everyone.

Did,

did, did the German state at this point have the infrastructure to actually detain these people? Was there a realistic alternative or was it kind of like, if we want to deal with this, we're going to have to go shoot people?

Uh,

well, I think it's not a policy, if you like, of, um, executing prisoners. It's not, it's the policy of not taking prisoners, at least during the, the peak of these confrontations. Yeah. Uh, well, but you know, there's a, um,

a

slightly later example, um, that, that is quite interesting to look at how this develops in 1920.

So

again, for context in 1920, you have the, uh, a far right push, and there's a guy called Wolfgang Kapp, who's a civil servant together with, um,

uh,

Erich Ludendorff, who's a general from the first world, quite famous because he stages a lot of putches, you know, three years later,

he

does one with Hitler. So he's kind of like the guy who does stage his uprising against the Republic. Um, uh, so the cup push leads to, to, to basically troops, Freikors and former government troops seizing Berlin, establishing dictatorship.

Um, and

it's only brought down by mass resistance of the working classes, literally the trade unions call for general strike. Um, and it brings down the government. Yeah. So basically people refuse to work for the new regime.

And

even though they

have

the military means of power, they, they can't take over the state because civil servants refuse to work for them. Um, they, they, you know, the workers don't come to work.

And

in some areas of Germany, um, it goes even further. So for instance, in the Rhineland and in the Ruhr area, the industrial heartland of, of Germany, uh, workers take up arms.

So

you have to imagine all this, it's not very difficult in 1920 in Germany to get machine guns and rifles

because

everyone has them. And even if you went, um, you know, a revolutionary soldier in 1918, you probably just have your gun somewhere buried and you just keep in

the back. Exactly.

So, so what they do is these workers, they form formations, which they call the red army of the Ruhr. So it's, um, probably up to 50,000 armed workers

who

fights the, um,

uh,

push troops. So these far right push troops, these five right cause. And they, um, seize big cities like Dortmund, you know, people have heard of Dortmund perhaps because of the football, you know?

So, um,

so, so Essen, Dortmund, you know, these big industrial cities, they're, um, liberated or seized by these red army of the Ruhr. And actually only after the,

um,

and this is the dynamics of the

early,

of the early one of

the

Republic when, uh, the, after seven days, the, the putschers have to give up these red Ruhr army guys carry on.

Right.

They just say, well, you know, no, it's, we can't trust the government troops because they didn't protect the Republic. We have to keep up arms and we are now the guardians of the Republic. And it's really interesting because, um, the membership of this red army of the Ruhrs, um, really almost 50, 50 people who are members of the far left. So the independent social Democrats and the communists, but 50% of social Democrats, regular supporters of the government.

You

say, well, the lesson learned is you can't trust the army because they're all reactionaries.

Yeah.

So there's a crackdown.

So

you have these 50,000. So suddenly the government's reinstating itself. They send troops to the Ruhr

to

put down this kind of red Ruhr army. And they,

uh,

a lot, there are some relatively brutal fights. Um, but most of these armed workers give up their guns and surrender.

And

now suddenly the government has this problem.

What

do we do with these tens of thousands of people? They're

prisoners. Are they prisoners?

What are they? Are they prisoners of war? Are they prisoners? So what's their status? How do we treat them? What kind of laws apply to them?

And

they don't know. So, so what they do is they actually put them into a huge military installation, which is called the Zellenlager.

For

British listeners, this is actually where the British army of the Rhino stations after the second world was. It's a huge area.

Yeah.

Um, uh,

it's,

it's

basically a place for, for, for training exercises. Yeah. So it's an open field more or less.

And

they have these kinds of people who are literally kept in at the time is, it's a bit of a problematic word. So listeners should be aware that this is not linked to the Nazis in any way, but it starts to be called a concentration camp.

Um,

but how the British used the word concentration camp, literally a huge area with barracks for, for people who didn't know what, what to do with civilians, you know, not really soldiers, but also not really civilians. And they keep them there for a couple of weeks actually, until the government in Berlin thinks, wow, what, what do we actually do with these guys? You know, can we put them before courts, if we put them before courts, what do we charge them with? Should it be military courts or civilian courts? So they don't really know what to do. They don't

sense

the experience of the

regular

troops, not protecting the Republic. They also don't trust the military to deal with them. So one thing they do is actually, and this is almost a bit funny as they say, well, if people can prove that they're members of the social democratic party, if they have like their party kind of thought,

um,

they should be let go. So actually the assumption is then that those workers who took up arms, but they're members of the social democratic party, they're doing it for the right reasons. Right. So we could probably let them go. So only the

communist members

of the independent socialists, they should be kept there.

So

that's the first thing they start filtrating, you know, try to figure out who to let go. And actually in all fairness, um, in the end, they let everyone go. There's a very small number of people who are seen as ringleaders who are put before, you know,

courts

who are sentenced to, to relatively short prisons, because in a way, it's an embarrassment for the government in Berlin that they had to rely on these armed workers to protect the Republic. Whereas the,

again,

going back to this original point, this idea of how statecraft should work,

it's

the institutions that will hold.

And

this is yet another example where the institutions don't hold, you know, the regular army,

they

don't protect the Republic. You know, it's the people who do it.

But

then also they don't like the people protecting the Republic because that's a source of instability.

And it's

kind of awkward situation where after the cup push

and

the end of the Red Army of the Ruhr,

they

almost try to sweep it under the carpet. Oh, nothing really happens. You know, you know, let's, let's not talk about it too much, you know. So those who were involved in these kinds of insurrections, we let you go. You know, but also let's not kind of, you know, talk about that the army didn't really help us, you know, so let's sweep it under the carpet. So it's a bit of a, it's almost like a weirdly amicable solution to this kind of problem. You know, no one really gets, you know, no one really has a problem with it at the end

because

no one really suffers, you know. And as I said, those, those guys who are charged in the end,

they

take it away with a, with a few months in prison and then go again. Which, you know,

I

think the bottom line is, even though it's, it's not, if you like, any actual effects, you know, it's not as dramatic perhaps as people think.

It

still creates bitterness. Yeah.

This

idea, well, you know, they round us up, they put us into this prison camp that they call concentration, which is not a concentration camp as the Nazis do, but still,

you

know,

like

a prison camp kind of thing, you know.

A prison

camp, but not a death camp. No, exactly.

I think that's the

important thing. And they're let go after a couple of weeks. Yeah. It's not meant for permanent incarceration. It's literally,

if

you like, a makeshift prisoner of war camp. Yeah. With the difference that the people inside are not foreign prisoners of war, but

your own

people.

Yeah.

And I think that's the difference between, I think, if you want to look for a definition of a

early

concentration camp, that's usually what it is. It's to incarcerate on a large scale your own population.

But

you already see this in the Weimar Republic. And this is the thing that, you know, makes this story of the owner of Weimar Republic so problematic, you know, because they passed this constitution, which reads great on the paper, civil liberty, social rights, equality for women, you know, democracy, you know. But at the same time, they're using methods, you know, to establish this new republic and to, as they see it, defend it from its enemies,

only

from the left. So the violence is only ever used

against

the left in this way. Yeah. There are

the

cup push, you know, which, you know, simply because the armed forces of the republic don't do what they're meant to do.

Yeah.

And then, well, okay, the Hitler push of 1923, well, they,

they,

Bavarian police starts to shoot

at

them. And that, that basically

leads

to the whole thing to, to, to collapse. But then, you know, obviously we know the story of Hitler gets away quite, quite lightly in the court. This kind of full force of the repressive apparatus is only ever applied to the left, you know, and it's,

and

it's full force. And that, that probably leads to a lot of bitterness. So

to,

to use like an Anglo-Saxon term, you're like, they completely piss off the people they rely on.

Yeah.

So they completely alienate the people that are potentially

could,

can be won over

for

this project of a social democracy.

Well,

probably if you look at the working class response to the Russian revolution, who are probably in a majority, not keen on living in a Soviet style system, but who wants a socialist democracy,

you

know, with personal freedoms, liberties, elections, but with, you know, the,

you

know, what, what we would call a welfare state, you know, individual rights, um, and the state intervening on behalf of the working classes. So, um, but in a way they, you know, they alienate those people as well. So, so they alienate the people who can be won over.

And

at the same time, they, they constantly, if you like, you know, don't dare to touch those, you know, who are the actual enemies of the Republic and these enemies of the Republic, um, in these exceptional situations are given almost a carte blanche

and

then, then very, very hard to kind of reign in again. Yeah. Um, and this is the fundamental problem. You

know,

think of early Weimar Republic and that they kind of

make

a lot of wrong calculations.

Well, I want to talk a little bit more about, uh, I guess that towards the end of the Republic, kind of what goes wrong,

why

things sort of collapse and obviously give rise to Nazism. Uh, that's going to be in part two. Check out the book.

Buy

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It's

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very, very affordable. It's like, you know, um, so, you know, perfect book, obviously, if you have to revise for exams,

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