And the Kaiser abdicates: The German Revolution November 1918-August 1919Bouton, S. Miles (Stephen Miles)
History
And the Kaiser abdicates: The German Revolution November 1918-August 1919
Bouton, S. Miles (Stephen Miles)
Germany -- History -- Revolution, 1918; Germany -- Politics and government
The third reason affecting the course of the Majority Socialists has
already been referred to in passing. This was the feeling of party
solidarity, which still existed despite the fact that the Independents
had had their own party organization for some six months. Most of the
prominent men in both Socialist parties had worked together in a common
cause for many years, and while, in the heat of purely partisan
conflicts this was sometimes forgotten for the moment, it nevertheless
united the two factions when, as now, the attack came from the extreme
Right.
Complete details of the mutiny of this summer have never been given out.
According to the best reports available, it started on the battleship
_Westfalen_ at Wilhelmshaven and included altogether four vessels, one
of which was the _Nuernberg_. The captain of the _Nuernberg_ is said to
have been thrown overboard. Rumor and enemy report made the most of the
affair and undoubtedly exaggerated it greatly, but there can be no doubt
that it was serious and that the morale of the fleet was greatly
affected by it. Some of the ring-leaders--how many it is not known--were
executed, and a considerable number were imprisoned for long terms. The
extent and severity of the sentences added fuel to the discontent
already prevailing throughout the fleet. The men's fighting spirit sank
as their revolutionary spirit rose. Von Capelle's boast that the fleet's
preparedness for battle "shall and will not be brought in question for a
moment" was a vain boast. The fleet was already rotten at the core.
Ironic fate had led the men who directed the affairs of the German
Empire to forge one of the weapons with which it was later to be
destroyed. On April 9, 1917, Nicholas Lenine, with thirty-two fanatical
followers, had been brought from Switzerland through Germany in a sealed
car and sent into Russia to sow the seeds of Bolshevism. How the plan
succeeded is only too well known. November brought the overthrow of the
Kerensky government. Released from the necessity of the intensive
pre-revolutionary propaganda at home, the Bolsheviki turned their
attention to imperialistic Germany. Their missionaries, liberally
equipped with corruption funds, entered Germany by secret routes and
worked with Germans in sympathy with their cause, notably Liebknecht.
Foremost among their propagandists was a man who called himself Radek.
His real name was Sobelsohn, a Jew from Austrian Galicia. Expelled from
his labor union before the war for robbing a _Genosse_, he had settled
in Bremen and was even then the guiding spirit in the most radical and
rabid circles. After the Russian Bolshevik revolution he quickly took up
the severed threads of his former connections. He was intimate with all
the Independent Socialist leaders already named, and with many others. A
man of acknowledged organizing and propagandizing ability, he
contributed markedly to making Germany ripe for revolution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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