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It was, in some sense, a product of the world war, as discussed next
Idiots that they were, many Germans and many other Europeans were delighted by the outbreak of war in 1914: in a great rush of enthusiasm for the supposedly culturally-cleansing effects of war, people babbled happily in support of the war, rushed to support the war effort, and basked in the happy thought that it would be a brief little game that would cultivate the public virtues -- such as courage, patriotism, sacrifice, and selflessness
The reality of that enthusiasm might be indicated by the following facts: Several years before the outbreak of the Great War, the Marxists of the Second International had predicted the war, and the membership of the Second International had accordingly agreed, at its 1912 Basel Congress, that they would "exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war" and further that if "war should break out anyway, it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule." But when the expected war broke out, the membership of the Second International instead largely supported the involvement of their own countries in the war, and the Second International simply collapsed
The universal enthusiasm did not last indefinitely. The Great War was war on an industrial scale, using new high explosives, poison gases, long range high power artillery, aircraft, and other modern inventions. The British suffered 58 thousand casualties on one day, 1 July 1916, at the Somme; by November, over a million British, French, and German soldiers had been killed or wounded there. Meanwhile, back home, people suffered the economic consequences from choosing guns over butter
In Russia, the Bolsheviks took advantage of "the economic and political crisis created by the war" -- their political platform included ending Russia's involvement the war; and after the overthrow of the czar, Trotsky in 1918 negotiated a humiliating peace treaty (Brest-Litovsk) with Germany and its allies, in which Russia ceded significant territory. So German troops along the Russian front considered themselves victorious. The treaty itself was noit long-lived
The situation for German military operations elsewhere was not as rosy. By summer of 1918, the High Command had concluded the war was not winnable, and there growing dissatisfaction among troops; in late summer and early fall, naval mutinies began. By the fall of 1918, there was substantial unrest on the German home front, as well. Across Germany, crowds began storming and taking over town council meetings. The political climate became so uncomfortable that the kaiser abdicated and fled before the November 11th armistice. As the troops returned home, crowds convinced them to join the revolution, which many did immediately, being disillusioned with authority as a result of their war experience
So German had an unexpected and spontaneous revolution. But it was a revolution which arose suddenly and naturally from popular discontent, a revolution which developed so quickly that it had no recognized political structure, a revolution which never developed a definite political platform. When the accidental German revolutionaries realized they had won, they had no definite agenda to guide them and they lacked political experiences and organizations and traditions that might have helped them hold power: so, instead, they looked around for leaders. And, of course, the only leaders they easily found were their prior leaders -- that is, people whose political experience ands skills had been developed in the pre-war era. So the Social Democrats -- who were nominally Marxists but who had abandoned the Second International in a wave of German patriotism at the beginning of the war -- came to power, and they immediately formed a sort of alliance with anticommunist authoritarian veterans who had not been disillusioned by the war (because, say, they had been on the Russian front instead of being stalemated in France),. Rightwing troops were used by the new government to expel violently the new revolutionary city councils in the name of "restoring order." This produced a lasting and fatal split in the German left that persisted throughout the Weimar decade and contributed ultimately to the Nazi seizure of power, because the left remained too splintered to oppose the Nazis effectively
The lessons here are difficult and contradictory. One lesson is that the outcome of a spontaneous political movement is uncertain: if there is no definite platform, there is no real basis for further development. Moreover, a brief episode of spontaneity does not produce an ongoing political culture and it does not produce a collection of people with valuable political experience and insights and skills. Another lesson is that the search for the faddish leadser of the moment cannot eliminate the need for a political platform or or the need for experienced insightful skilled politicians. The lessons about compromise are contradictory: the wrong compromise can be fatal, but so can a refusal to compromise
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