April 6, 1917

This is a reposting of a posting from 2009 that I wrote about how America became involved in World War I. This is to mark the 100th anniversary of America entering the war and the emergence of the USA has the World Power.

This is not a date that most people today remember but it is likely to be remembered has the most important date and event of the twentieth century. It was the day on which the United States declared war on the Central Powers in World War One and basically decided that Germany and her allies would lose, unless they very quickly won. Germany had in effect only a little over a year to achieve this result otherwise she was doomed to lose.

Brick Wall 

Brick Wall - Duh!

The following is a revised version of a comment I posted at a website concerning the 2006 movie The History Boys1 with added references.

More is the Pity

 

Book Cover

Years ago I did a brief review of Niall Ferguson’s book The Pity of War for the Amazon website.1 I have decided to put it up here. This version is an expanded version of the original with references.

Remembering the Nightmare

Honouring the Sacrifice

 

Poppies

 

Today is November 11 which in Canada is Remembrance Day. Today and the week before lots of us Canadians go around wearing red poppies with black centres.

The “Unbearable” Treaty

Germany after the Treaty of Versailles

Shows land lost

It is sometimes stated that the Treaty of Versailles, (1919) was the cause of World War II, because it was brutal and that it inspired Hitler, because of its brutality to avenge Germany. This is to put it politely a myth.1

If you read Mein Kampf, the part were Hitler describes his life altering decision to enter politics and avenge a "betrayed" Germany he talks about when he learned Germany had been defeated, i.e., requested an armistice. Hitler indulges in some purple prose polemics there. This is many months before the treaty of Versailles. The fact is even before the Treaty the ultra-nationalist press was screaming about "betrayal". Hitler says the following about what happened after he was informed on November 10, 1918 of Germany's defeat:

As for myself, I broke down completely when the old gentleman tried to resume his story by informing us that we must now end this long war, because the war was lost, he said, and we were at the mercy of the victor. The Fatherland would have to bear heavy burdens in the future. We were to accept the terms of the Armistice and trust to the magnanimity of our former enemies. It was impossible for me to stay and listen any longer. Darkness surrounded me as I staggered and stumbled back to my ward and buried my aching head between the blankets and pillow. 

I had not cried since the day that I stood beside my mother's grave. Whenever Fate dealt cruelly with me in my young days the spirit of determination within me grew stronger and stronger. During all those long years of war, when Death claimed many a true friend and comrade from our ranks, to me it would have appeared sinful to have uttered a word of complaint. Did they not die for Germany? And, finally, almost in the last few days of that titanic struggle, when the waves of poison gas enveloped me and began to penetrate my eyes, the thought of becoming permanently blind unnerved me; but the voice of conscience cried out immediately: Poor miserable fellow, will you start howling when there are thousands of others whose lot is a hundred times worse than yours? And so I accepted my misfortune in silence, realizing that this was the only thing to be done and that personal suffering was nothing when compared with the misfortune of one's country.

…

What a gang of despicable and depraved criminals!

The more I tried then to glean some definite information of the terrible events that had happened the more my head became afire with rage and shame. What was all the pain I suffered in my eyes compared with this tragedy?

The following days were terrible to bear, and the nights still worse. To depend on the mercy of the enemy was a precept which only fools or criminal liars could recommend. During those nights my hatred increased--hatred for the originators of this dastardly crime.

During the following days my own fate became clear to me. I was forced now to scoff at the thought of my personal future, which hitherto had been the cause of so much worry to me. Was it not ludicrous to think of building up anything on such a foundation? Finally, it also became clear to me that it was the inevitable that had happened, something which I had feared for a long time, though I really did not have the heart to believe it.

Emperor William II was the first German Emperor to offer the hand of friendship to the Marxist leaders, not suspecting that they were scoundrels without any sense of honour. While they held the imperial hand in theirs, the other hand was already feeling for the dagger.

There is no such thing as coming to an understanding with the Jews. It must be the hard-and-fast 'Either-Or.'

For my part I then decided that I would take up political work.2

Further when you read Mein Kampf Hitler's aims were NOT just a revision of the injustices of Versailles but getting hegemony over Europe and turning Eastern Europe into a vast colonial empire with a subject serf population. As for democracy Hitler hated it on principle. Versailles was good propaganda for Hitler but it was not what he was angry about. What made his blood boil, (aside from his anti-Semitic ravings) was that Germany was not in its naturally dominant position. The far greater brutality of the treaty of Brest Litovsk didn't bother Hitler because it was nothingless than what "inferior" Slavs deserved.3

So some still believe that the Treaty was uniquely harsh and terrible; despite the fact it left Germany the most powerful, (economically speaking) state in Europe, and in some way improved its position because the war caused the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.4

Aside from the reparations part of the Treaty, (which were carried out in a very limited fashion in reality), the Treaty was not the horrible Carthaginian peace it was made out to be. Many of its provisions were actually quite reasonable. I note many critics also ignore the context of the Treaty in terms of allied aims and needs, and also the context of German war aims. The allies were perfectly aware of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the Treaty of Bucharest, both of which were vastly harsher than Versailles. It did not make them inclined to be generous.5

It is also heavily documented that ultra-nationalists made much hay from the Treaty of Versailles by wild exaggeration, lying and other flagrant tactics. For example the parts of the Treaty that awarded parts of Eastern Germany to the new Polish state and called for referendums in some places, were bitterly resented by the ultra-nationalists, for reasons that can only be called racist. The fact that Posen and the Polish corridor region were over 80% Polish made no difference. The idea of "German" land being given to @$%^^&&**$ Poles infuriated them. Ditto for Danish areas returned to Denmark, (by referendum). And of course the return of Alsace/Lorraine to France bothered them despite the fact the inhabitants had since 1871 wanted to be back in France. All this was greeted by the ultra-nationalists with, what at times, can be described as hysterical fury.6

Regarding what the ultra-nationalists and pan-Germans wanted during the war, Fritz Fischer's Germany's War Aims in the First World War, goes into great detail about war aims of these rather foolish men. Described are plans to annex Belgium, large areas of France, along with huge reparations. And Fischer describes the savage, punitive nature of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk and its lesser known companion the treaty of Bucharest. Both savage and ruthless. There also described are the plans to create a vast colonial empire in eastern Europe. There are also described in detail how the Germans violated Brest-Litovsk soon after signing it and forced the Russians to sign further subsequent treaties.7

These extremists played a powerful role in aiding Germany to defeat, by antagonizing their enemies and chaining German policy to unrealistic aims.

It is simply true that after the war the same ultra-Nationalists and pan German fools who propagated unrealistic aims during the war did in fact blame the treaty of Versailles for all Germany's woes and did mightily help to propagate the myth of the stab in the back.8

In the fall of 1919 the Reichstag held hearing about what happened in October - November 1918. In one of the most shameful abdications of responsibility, Ludendorf and Hindenburg stated in their testimony that the German army had been undefeated but had been stabbed in the back. Given that they knew the real story this blatant lying can only condemned.9

On the German right it became de-rigure to condemn the treaty and to blame, liberals, socialists etc., for the "stab in the back". The judiciary during the Weimar years covered itself with disgrace by its tendency to whitewash and excuse right wing violence. For example its treatment of the Kapp coup. Also their treatment of Hitler during his trial in 1924 was disgracefully lenient and the sentence a joke.10

During the period 1919-1922 there were almost 400 political assassinations in Germany of those 354 with right wing and 22 left wing. The victims came from all walks of life. Of the 354 right wing murders 326 were unpunished / unsolved. Of those right wing assassins convicted they got an average of 4 months in jail. Of the left wing assassins 10 were executed and those jailed got an average of 15 years in jail. I could here mention also the murder of Rathenau, a patriotic German, by a right wing death squad for being soft on Versailles and being a Jew. The assassins were treated by large elements of the ultra-Nationalist right wing as heroes.11

In point of fact the post war environment was economically very bad, From Portugal to Romania, authoritarian movements flourished, it wasn't just Germany. The Great Depression pushed many societies over the edge. If Italy, one of the victorious allies, could turn Fascist shortly after the war it is not surprising that authoritarian movements sprung up through out Europe. (In 1926 Poland became a Dictatorship for example).

It was to a large extent a matter of perception, the extremist right-wing chattering classes never tired of blaming the Treaty for just about every problem Germany had, which was false, while at the same time promoting the "stab in the back" lie. This continual propaganda campaign certainly was very effective, but it was based on a deliberate misperception of the Treaty and events. Finally it is a fact that the Nazi party had 2.6% of the popular vote in the last election before the Great Depression. Considering the rapid rise in voting power the Nazi's had during the early part of the Great Depression (in 1930 18.3%, in 1932, 37.4% then 33.1%), I would say the depression was the great factor in getting the Nazi's to power, but even so it was not a certainty and relied on good deal of backroom intrigue. If there had been no great depression there would have been no out of control fire. As it was by the time Hitler got into power much of the Treaty of Versailles had ceased to have any real world applicability.12

That the ultra-Nationalists led Germany to disaster in World War I is amply documented by Fischer among others. That they refused to take responsibility is also amply documented. Let me give one example of their foolishness, the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 which brought the US into the war, owed a lot to ultra nationalist nonsense and the decisive persons pushing for it were Ludendorf and Hindenburg. At the time the decision was foolish has anyone looking at US economic production figures could see. After this some of the ultra nationalists dreamed of reparations from the US!13

In the end a irresponsible set of Nationalist fools peddling myths combined with bad luck brought the Nazis to power. The results are too well known.

1. The works that peddle this myth are legion. One could start with the works of J.F.C. Fuller. See for example his The Conduct of War, Da Capo Press, New York, 1961, pp. 217-225.

2. Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, pp. 175-176, from a Internet pdf. copy. Last two pages of chapter called Chapter 7: The Revolution.

3. IBID, pp. 61-111, (chapter 3), 521-541, (chapter 14).

4. Weinberg, Gerhard L., Germany Hitler & World War II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 11-22.

5. IBID. Watt, Richard M., The Kings Depart, Penguin Books, London, 1968, pp. 555-588, Evans, Richard J., The Coming of the Third Reich, Penguin Books, London, 2003, pp. 62-76, 148, 179, Craig, Gordon A., Germany 1866 – 1945, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1978, pp. 424-432, Fischer, Fritz, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, W. W. Norton and Co. Inc., New York, 1967, pp. 247-279, 475-638.

6. Footnote 4, Craig, pp. 488-495, Weiss, Ideology of Death, Elephant Paperbacks, Chicago, 1996, pp. 206-225.

7. Footnote 5, Fischer.

8. IBID, pp. 636-638, Weiss, 222-238, Weinberg, pp. 11-22, Watt, Footnote 5.

9. Fischer, p. 637.

10. I'm not overstating the right wing sympathies of the Weimar judiciary see Hitler's Justice, by Ingo Muller, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MASS, 1991, pp. 10-24.

11. Jones, Nigel, The Birth of the Nazis, Robinson, London, 1987, p. 228, and 203-229.

12. Evans, p. 446 and 156-230, Watt, pp. 515-517. 

13. Fischer, pp. 280-309.

Pierre Cloutier

“Red” Rosa’s Prophecy

Rosa Luxemburg

In 1918 the Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg penned a short pamphlet called The Russian Revolution, that outlined her views on the then happening Russian Revolution. I have previously mentioned her in a post about the Russian Revolution and here I want to discuss Rosa Luxemburg’s critique.

Rosa Luxemburg was born in a very assimilated Jewish family near the then border of Russian Poland in 1871.1

Rosa Luxemburg became involved in radical politics in Poland and strikes. And in the mid 1890’s began writing on Marxist theory. She was always a very radical thinker. Rosa Luxemburg did not believe in any sort of compromise with the “Capitalist” system.

For example she consistently opposed the “Revisionism” of the German Social Democratic Party that, in her opinion, fatally compromised with the status-quo. She was also a suspicious of and opposed to Nationalist movements believing them a snare and a diversion from the real struggle against “Capitalism”.

In 1898 she married a German by the name of Gustav Lübeck and moved to Germany, where she spent most of the remainder of her life.2 Rosa Luxemburg wrote various books on Marxist theory including The Accumulation of Capital, that sought to explain Imperialism and its effects.3

In 1914 she opposed Germany’s entry into World War I, and violently denounced what she saw as the treason of the German Social Democrats in supporting the war. Rosa Luxemburg left the party in disgust. Rosa Luxemburg was jailed for this during which time she wrote many letters, and articles.

Rosa Luxemburg was released in October of 1918 and with Karl Liebknecht founded the Spartakist party. In In January 1919, against her advice the Spartakists rose in revolt. The revolt was crushed and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were killed and their bodies dumped into a canal.4

As a thinker Rosa Luxemburg was an all too typical Marxist dogmatician of the time period with the usual superficial appeals to science and objectivity. Both of which this sort of thinking conspictiously lacked.

However unlike the case of Lenin and many others, Rosa Luxemburg had a great distrust of the idea of the “masses” being led around by the noses by a “enlightened” elite. Rosa Luxemburg believed both in the spontaneous action of the “masses” and in democratic control of politics and politicians. This was even more the case in that although Rosa Luxemburg had little use for either “bourgeois” Parliamentary democracy of “Bourgeois” freedom of the press. In both cases she thought that the solution was in one case a massive extension and deepening of democracy and in the other a similar massive extension and deepening of press freedom.5 Which was radically different from Lenin’s solution which was to abolish both and replace them by dictatorship and censorship / press control.6

In the fall of 1918 Rosa Luxemburg wrote her pamphlet The Russian Revolution. What we have is an uncompleted rough draft that Rosa Luxemburg’s death prevented her from revising and completing. It was published after her death. Since the Spartakist party that she founded was the germ of the German Communist party, there were periodic attempts to suppress and generally ignore this work which was considered rather embarrassing to the party hacks in awe of Lenin and later Stalin.7

It is important to remember that because of Rosa Luxemburg’s disputes with the intellectual leading lights of the German Social Democratic party that Rosa Luxemburg’s attitude was strongly coloured by her strong antipathy to the leadership of the Social Democrats and to those she perceived as their allies. The result was that because the German Social Democrats had in her eyes betrayed the cause of the “masses” by supporting the war she instantly disallowed their reaction that revolution was premature in Russia given that the economic and social forces were not conducive to a “Proletariat” revolution and the best that could be hoped for would be “Bourgeois” “Capitalist” revolution. Thus Rosa Luxemburg states:

In this, the Russian Revolution has but confirmed the basic lesson of every great revolution, the law of its being, which degrees: either the revolution must advance at rapid, stormy and resolute tempo, break down all barriers with an iron hand and place its goals ever further ahead, or it is quite soon thrown backwards behind its feeble point of departure and suppressed by counter revolution. To stand still, to mark time on one spot, to be contented with the first goal it happens to reach, is never possible in revolution.8

Of course it turns out that both the Russian Mensheviks and the leadership of the German Social Democratic party were right. Russia was indeed not in a position to have a “Marxist” style revolution. What Rosa Luxemburg forgot in both her enthusiasm for revolutionary activity and antipathy to the old guard leadership of the “Revisionist” Social Democratic parties, due to their support for their various countries in World War I, was that Revolutions frequently go too far. Finally from a strictly “Marxist” perspective the bottom line was that agricultural, autocratic Russia with its backward economy and social structures, poorly developed public institutions, with a huge peasantry and a small working class (proletariat) was one of the last places on earth for a “Marxist” social revolution to be successful. "Capitalism" the supposed precursor to “Socialism” was poorly developed in Russia. The Marxist critics of the Russian Revolution were merely being Marxists when they said a Marxist revolution in Russia was a Utopian illusion.9

Some of the points in Rosa Luxemburg’s essay seem both rather doctrinaire and short sighted. For example in her section on Bolshevik land policy she critiques the policy of the Bolsheviks in allowing the seizure of large landed estates and the subsequent division of the land among the peasantry. Rosa Luxemburg argues that this has created a large class of middle and “rich” peasants who will be enemies of the revolution. Rosa Luxemburg contends that the Bolsheviks should have nationalized the large landed estates and had the state run them. Aside from being dogmatic Rosa Luxemburg seems not to know that the Bolsheviks did not give the land to the peasants but merely ratified peasant seizure of the land. Any attempt to seize back or disallow the seizure would have been both counter productive and futile. Further Rosa Luxemburg does not seem to know that the source of peasant antagonism to the regime was not just simple greed for profit but the break down of industry in the period after the Bolshevik Revolution that left little with which to buy peasant produce so of course the peasants would not sell. Further the reckless policies of “War Communism”, which included road blocks and battalions of armed men going into the country side and seizing peasant produce was another, very real, source of peasant antipathy to the regime.10

In another chapter Rosa Luxemburg criticises the nationality policy of the Bolsheviks, especially the idea the different ethnic groups of the Russian Empire have a right to self determination. Like so many Marxists Rosa Luxemburg believed that nationalism was a type of false consciousness and that the “proletariat” had no country but only their “class interests”, and that Nationalism was basically reactionary. Interestingly Rosa Luxemburg took the statements of the Bolshevik about self determination seriously, when in actuality it was in reality different. That the Bolsheviks intended to use nationalism for their own ends and once the “proletariat” (i.e., the Bolsheviks seize power), self determination becomes nothing more than quaint cultural rights and real self determination becomes “bourgeois” and “reactionary”. Rosa was so welded to the dogmatic idea of the “class interests” of the “workers” / “proletariat” that she had no real conception of the power or basis of nationalism. This is probably at least partially based on the assimilated, secular upbringing she had. It left her with little feel for particular, national, ethnic or religious interests. For example she never felt any particular link or understanding of the particular interests of the Jews living in Czarist Russia.11

However it is the above mentioned chapter that Rosa Luxemburg’s fundamental criticisms of the Bolsheviks begin. For example:

While they showed quite cool contempt for the Constituent Assembly, universal suffrage, freedom of the press and assemblage, in short, for the whole apparatus of the basic democratic liberties of the people which, taken all together, constituted the “right to self determination” inside Russia, treated the right of self determination of peoples as a jewel of democratic policy for the sake of which all practical considerations of real criticism had to be stilled.12.

It is painfully clear that Rosa Luxemburg does not approve of the particular acts enumerated.

In another chapter13 Rosa Luxemburg discusses the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January of 1918. After making the rather the rather obvious point that before and during the overthrow of the Provisional Government in October of 1917 the Bolsheviks made much to do about the Provisional Government delaying the Constituent Assembly. Further the Bolsheviks made this one of the reasons for their overthrowing the government in October of 1917. The Bolsheviks, (i.e., Lenin and Trotsky gave has reasons the “fact” that the situation had changed decisively and that the assembly was out of date. Rosa Luxemburg writes about this “reason”:

All this is very fine and quite convincing. But one can’t help but wondering how such clever people as Lenin and Trotsky failed to arrive at the conclusion that follows immediately from the above facts.

...

…then it follows automatically that the outgrown and therefore still-born Constituent Assembly should have been annulled, and without delay, new elections to a new constituent Assembly should have been arranged.14

Rosa Luxemburg then deals with Trotsky’s objections to representative institutions, that they only reflect passing moods, and are not attuned to the pace of events or what is really going on. Of course it is painfully obvious that Trotsky is simply using this as an excuse to eliminate representative institutions that might impede single party rule. Rosa Luxemburg denies this:

Yet how all historical experience contradicts this! Experience demonstrates quite the contrary: namely, that the living fluid of the popular mood continuously flows around the representative bodies, penetrates them, guides them.


…
It is precisely the revolution that which creates by its glowing heat that delicate, vibrant, sensitive political atmosphere in which the waves of popular feeling, the pulse of popular life, work for the moment on the representative bodies in most wonderful fashion.15

Rosa Luxemburg concludes:

To be sure, every democratic institution has its limits and shortcomings, things which it doubtless shares with all other human institutions. But the remedy which Trotsky and Lenin have found, the elimination of democracy as such, is worse than the disease it was supposed to cure; for it stops up the very living source from which alone can come the correction of all innate shortcomings of social institutions. That source is the active, untrammelled, energetic political life of the broadest masses of the people.16

In another chapter17 Rosa Luxemburg criticises the Bolshevik policy of restricting the right to vote to those who work with their own hands and eliminating the right to vote for members of “hostile classes”. Rosa Luxemburg considers those policies wrong headed and counter productive. Rosa Luxemburg writes:

For those attacks (on democratic rights), the arguments of Trotsky cited above, on the cumbersome nature of democratic electoral bodies, are far from satisfactory. On the other hand, it is a well-known and indisputable fact that without a free and untrammelled press, without the unlimited right of association and assemblage, the rule of the broad mass of the people is unthinkable.18

The next chapter,19 The Problem of Dictatorship, is basically a short masterpiece of political analysis which damns the entire Communist, Marxist-Leninist experiment right at birth.

Rosa Luxemburg accuses the Bolsheviks of denying the “masses” the experience that is necessary for them to exercise political power just when such experience is in fact most necessary. In one outstanding passage Rosa Luxemburg talks about freedom:

Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of “justice” but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when “freedom” becomes a special privilege.20

Thus does Rosa Luxemburg damn both one party states and severe restrictions of press freedom in such states.

Rosa Luxemburg further states:

The tacit assumption underlying the Lenin-Trotsky theory of the dictatorship is this: that the socialist transformation is something for which a ready-made formula lies completed in the pocket of the revolutionary party, which needs only to be carried out energetically in practice. This is, unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – not the case.21

This being the case Rosa Luxemburg contends that public control and freedom is absolutely necessary in order to work things out. Lack of public input will only make things vastly more difficult. For Rosa Luxemburg the Lenin / Trotsky idea of “Socialism” is that it can “be decreed from behind a few official desks by a dozen intellectuals.”22

Regarding Lenin’s methods Rosa Luxemburg states

But he is completely mistaken in the means he employs. Decree, dictatorial force of the factory overseer, draconic penalties, rule by terror – all these things are but palliatives. The only way to a rebirth is the school of public life itself, the most unlimited, the broadest democracy and public opinion. It is rule by terror which demoralizes.23

In this uncannily prophetic passage Rosa Luxemburg sees the future all to clearly:

When all this is eliminated, what really remains? In place of the representative bodies created by general popular elections, Lenin and Trotsky have laid down the soviets as the only true representation of the laboring masses. But with the repression of political life in the land as a whole, life in the soviets must also become more and more crippled. Without general elections, without un-restricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Among them, in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unanimously – at bottom, then, a clique affair – a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat, however, but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense, in the sense of the rule of the Jacobins (the postponement of the Soviet Congress from three-month periods to six-month period!) Yes, we can go even further: such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shooting of hostages, etc. (Lenin’s speech on discipline and corruption.)24

Thus within the first year of the Bolshevik’s taking power a very radical thinker, very sympathetic to the Bolshevik’s goals, saw where their methods were leading and uncannily saw the future of the Leninist style of political party and a pattern that was to be, with monotonous regularity, duplicated around the globe for the next 60+ years.

After this the final chapters of Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet are a bit of a let down. However Rosa does have a few pertinent things to say about the use of terror to deal with corruption and social breakdown.

Indeed, every persistent regime of martial law leads invariably to arbitrariness, and every form of arbitrariness tends to deprave society.


…
Against this, [corruption, social breakdown] draconian measures of terror are powerless. On the contrary, they cause still further corruption. The only anti-toxin: the idealism and social activity of the masses, unlimited political freedom.25

In the last chapter26 Rosa Luxemburg attacks her “revisionist” enemies in the German Social Democratic party and the Bolsheviks. It is fascinating to record that her idea of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” is not rule by a cast of politicians but “class” rule by workers which “…means in the broadest public form on the basis of the most active, unlimited participation of the mass of the people, of unlimited democracy.”27

Rosa Luxemburg then deals with Lenin and Trotsky’s attacks on “Bourgeois” democracy and agrees with them but says that does not mean eliminating democracy altogether but to create real or “Socialist” democracy. For Rosa Luxemburg Democracy:

…it [democracy] does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and the construction of socialism.

…
But this dictatorship [i.e., the class rule of the “Proletariat”] must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of that class -...28

Rosa Luxemburg then proceeds to attack the Social Democrats for being partially responsible for what happened in Russia and also mentions that the rather disastrous external situation did not help the Bolsheviks very much. Rosa Luxemburg does mention that she is worried the Bolsheviks may:

Make a virtue of necessity and want to freeze into a complete theoretical system all the tactics forced upon them by those fatal circumstances, and want to recommend them to the international proletariat as a model of socialist tactics.29

That is exactly what happened. For the next 60+ years Moscow sought to mold every so called Marxist-Leninist (Communist) party in precisely this way with disastrous effects all over the world.

The last page and half are a sort of backhanded hymn to the Bolsheviks for having dared to try a “Socialist” revolution, and given Rosa Luxemburg’s antipathy to both “Revisionism” and “Capitalism” not a surprise but still in the context of the work as a whole it is faint praise indeed.

Rosa Luxemburg’s Pamphlet was basically ignored by all save a few radical leftists and was an embarrassment to her former colleagues in the Spartakist party who help found the Communist party of Germany which was slavishly submissive to Russia. It is hard to believe that Rosa Luxemburg would have had much truck with the Soviet Union and given her then formidable international reputation probably very fortunate for Soviet efforts to create Communist parties in Western Europe that she was murdered in 1919, by a right wing death squad. It was so much better to have her as a dead martyr than eloquent opponent.

As for the cogency of her prophecies. They were all too accurate. Much of the history of the twentieth century was a bloody working out of the Bolshevik “mistake”. If Rosa Luxemburg was in many ways a dogmatic thinker in this instance she saw without blinkers and what she saw appalled her.

1. See Wikipedia, article, Rosa Luxemburg, Here

2. IBID.

3. A copy can be found at the Rosa Luxemburg, Internet Archive, Here

4. See Footnote 1.

5. IBID.

6. See Farber, Samuel, Before Stalinism, Verso, London, 1990, pp. 19-61 & 90-112.

7. Luxemburg, Rosa, The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism?, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1961, pp. 15-24. A copy can be found at the Rosa Luxenburg, Internet Archive, Here

8. IBID. p. 36.

9. See Ulam, Adam B., The Bolsheviks, Collier Books, New York, 1965, pp. 343-381, Leonhard, Wolfgang, Three Faces of Marxism, Paragon Books, New York, 1970, pp. 47-94, Kolakowski, Leszek, Main Currents of Marxism: 2. The Golden Age, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1978, pp. 332-336.

10, See Luxemburg, pp. 41-46. See also Figes, Orlando, A People's Tragedy, Penguin Books, New York, 1996, pp. 608-630.

11. Luxemburg, pp. 47-56, See also Leonhard, pp. 60-62, Kolakowski, pp. 88-94, 398-405.

12. Luxemburg, p. 48.

13. IBID. 57-62.

14. IBID. p. 59.

15. IBID. pp. 60-61.

16. IBID. p. 62.

17. IBID. pp. 63-67.

18. IBID. pp. 66-67.

19. IBID. pp. 68-72.

20. IBID. p. 69.

21. IBID. p. 69.

22. IBID. p. 71.

23. IBID. p. 71.

24. IBID. p. 72-73.

25. IBID. pp. 74-75.

26. IBID. pp. 76-80.

27. IBID. pp. 76-77.

28. IBID. pp. 77-78.

29. IBID. p. 79.

Pierre Cloutier

April 6, 1917

This is not a date that most people today remember but it is likely to be remembered has the most important date and event of the twentieth century. It was the day on which the United States declared war on the Central Powers in World War One and basically decided that Germany and her allies would lose, unless they very quickly won. Germany had in effect only a little over a year to achieve this result otherwise she was doomed to lose.

So just how did that epoch making event occur? In a few words it was the result of truly awesome stupidity, on the part of certain German leaders, directly related to their ignoring of Clauswitz’s dictum that war is a political tool and instead they subordinated politics to military “necessity”.

On February first 1917 the Kaiser as advised by his chief military advisers, who were in effect rulers of Germany, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, launched a campaign of unrestricted submarine campaign against Allied and neutral shipping. This was done despite knowledge that this would almost certainly get the United States in the war against Germany and her allies. So why was it done?

Hindenburg (Left) Ludendorff (Right)

At the time Britain was blockading Germany and her allies in an attempt to deprive Germany and her allies of essential materials. This caused significant distress and hunger in Germany and her allies and led to casting about for a way to retaliate, or counter blockade Britain.

Germany had tried at various times to use U-Boats to take / sink ships that were bringing goods to England during the early part of the war. There had even been various stabs at unrestricted submarine warfare, which led to such disasters as the sinking of the Lusitania, in which over 1100 people died including more than 100 Americans. This incident came close to starting a war between America and Germany and the Germans brought this experiment to an end.

Essentially submarine attacks on ships were a continuation of the old guerre de course, or privatering that European powers had engaged against each other during their past wars. In this case the u-boats were rather vulnerable to being rammed, or blown out of the water if they stuck to the recognized practice of stopping ships and searching them and enabling the crews to escape and then sinking them. This was highly dangerous. With torpedoes and deck guns there was, not surprisingly, a tendency to simply blow the ship out of the water without stopping it. Not only did stopping ships put the u-boat at risk but taking the time to search a ship put the u-boat at risk of being found in the meantime and sunk.

World War I U-Boat

Added to this was the problem that neutral vessels, especially American ships were sending war material to Britain and the other allied powers. Sinking such vessels, especially if you killed a lot of passengers at the same time, ran the risk of infuriating the neutral involved. In the case of the United States this involved infuriating a great industrial / economic power.

The U.S. was in the meantime doing excellent business with the Allied powers in terms of munitions and raw materials for war production. Also U.S. financial institutions played an important role in upholding allied finances and credit.

Not surprisingly the Germans were infuriated both by the Allied blockade and by the fact that America was aiding the allies in many ways. America was officially neutral and certainly President Woodrow Wilson made all the right noises about trying to arrange a sort of peace deal and was apparently fully sincere in wanting peace.

By then it was clear that if anything the Americans were pro-Allied, by reason of cultural and historical ties to Britain, and out of self interest. Although it must be emphasized the U.S. government and people did not want to be involved in a war. And frankly the American government wanted the war to end before it possibly interfered with American interests. A peace that in effect returned things more or less to the situation of early August 1914 before the war started was one that the American government found most appealing.

Americans were emerging only recently from a long term foreign policy direction of trying to isolate themselves from the politics and struggles and internal competitions of the European great powers. Traditionally American policy had concentrated on issues involving the Western Hemisphere with the proviso that America would not interfere with the great European powers if she was left alone in the Western Hemisphere. That had begun to change with such developments has the Spanish American War, which led to the conquest of the Philippines and acquiring of an American colonial empire. Further developments such has the acquiring of the Panama Canal Zone and the building of the Panama Canal, (opened 1914) also signaled a change indicating the emergence of the United States as a world power. In 1905 Theodore Roosevelt mediated the end of the Russian / Japanese war. All this signaled that the U.S. had arrived as a major player on the world scene.

Despite the above America was still profoundly leery of foreign entanglements and isolationism was a powerful force in the United States. Interestingly in the 1916 Presidential elections the main slogan of Woodrow Wilson’s campaign was “He kept us out of war!” Despite the fact that, if anything, Americans in general and Wilson in particular favored the Allied powers America did not want to be involved in the war. Given this how did it happen?

Woodrow Wilson

Well it was because America was heavily trading with the Allied powers, in munitions and raw materials and trade in other items. Trade with the Central Powers was virtually impossible due to the British blockade, so that there did not emerge a interest group in favor of keeping up trade with the Central Powers but there did emerge a interest group in favor of unimpeded trade with the Allied powers, which was proving to be highly beneficial to U.S., financial, trade and manufacturing interests. Further there was the simple fact that attacks on U.S. ships were obviously direct threats to the lives of U.S. citizens. Obviously attacks on British ships could be explained and justified on the grounds that British ships were ships of an enemy of Germany and therefore legitimate targets. However what about neutral vessels that were importing into Britain war material? Were they not targets? Here things get dicey if only because such vessels were from powers not at war with Germany and hence not real targets, but they did contain munitions and war material! The further complication that the rules governing such transactions in past wars involving European powers allowed the stopping and searching of neutral vessels bound for belligerent ports, especially with war material and allowed for confiscation of cargoes etc., also specified that crews would be saved and ships sunk only under very rigid circumstances. The existence of deck guns and torpedoes which allowed ships to be sunk on sight were not envisioned by these rules, neither was the fact that the “privateers” in this war, (u-boats), being so vulnerable to being sunk, made sinking ships on sight very tempting. The result was a series of mishaps and diplomatic disasters.

The Lusitania crisis was a prime example. This started after the Germans had declared an unrestricted submarine campaign in the waters around the British Isles. Due to a series of mistakes involving what the Germans thought was the prime purpose of the Lusitania. The ship was sunk by torpedo and over a thousand passengers were killed, including over 100 Americans. The idiocy of large elements of the German press in celebrating this “achievement” didn’t help. It nearly resulted in war between Germany and the U.S. It appears that the Lusitania was carrying war material, which was frankly in violation of the then current war rules. This fact and the fact that Germany rescinded the unrestricted campaign and U.S. didn’t want war prevented war from happening then.

Given the fact that the United States was by 1900 was the greatest industrial power on the planet, with huge financial, trade and raw material resources etc; war with her was an obviously iffy proposition to be engaged in only if there was little choice. Further by 1900 the United States had a larger population than any European power, with the exception of Russia. In effect the United States was second only to the British Empire in terms of overall power world wide. The British Empire was a fairly ramshackle affair that had great difficulty using / concentrating it's power in any one particular area, so that its effective power was less than adding up its resources, population would indicate. It was just common sense not to want war with the U.S.

Here however is where human idiocy / stupidity enters the picture. Simply a look at basic U.S. figures of population, industrial output etc., would have made it clear to any German statesmen that however annoying American trade during wartime with the Allied powers was, under no circumstances should Germany do anything to provoke America into a war. One should never underestimate the power of wishful thinking and sheer dumbness however. Despite the facts Germany's leaders stupidly did in fact provoke the United States into a war! It went as follows.

By the early winter of 1916 the war had entered its third year of bloody stalemate. Millions of soldiers on both sides were dead. Economies were straining at the end of their tether and Germany was going through a period of severe shortages due to the blockade, of food and other materials. The population was angry, and the generals were seeking a way out of the stalemate; for a quick easy solution. The desire to strike back at Britain was very strong so that as the winter went on pressure built up to strike at Britain through a counter blockade enforced by unrestricted submarine warfare.

Here is where the stupidity came into it. The fact is anger and rage are not conducive to clear thinking in terms of policy goals and how to achieve them, and in this case the various German generals, specifically Ludendorff and Hindenburg, who by this time had established what was in effect a Military Dictatorship over Germany dedicated to winning the war, had come to believe that Britain must be driven out the war by the quickest means possible. So various studies had been done and these studies had determined that sinking 800,000 tons of shipping per month for a period of 6 months would reduce Britain to famine and starve Britain of war material. So that Britain would be driven out the war in 6 months. The military studies done by the various elements of the German armed forces, especially the Naval department were characterized by distortion and a huge amount of wishful thinking and stunning over the top optimism of the prospects of unrestricted submarine warfare. Individuals like Admiral Tirpitz pushed for unrestricted submarine warfare with blind optimism and a cavalier disregard for alternatives or the possibility of failure.

In fact it should have been obvious that failure was not simply a distinct possibility it was a virtual certainty. The U-boats of the First World War had very slow underwater speeds, their torpedoes were very poor and their ability to coordinate operations with other U-boats virtually non-existent. Thus the vast majority of ships sunk by U-boats in this war were sunk by the deck guns of U-boats; and the vast majority of ships sunk were sailing alone. Given their technical limitations their ability to damage ships sailing in convoy was very limited. It should have been obvious that should the British convoy ships unrestricted submarine warfare would fail. A few escort or one escort ship per convoy would be enough to sink or drive off U-boats the great majority of time. This was both obvious and clear at the time. Further the time table for this too work was absurdly optimistic even if it had worked.1

At the same time it was clear by the fall of 1916 that Russia was in the process of internal collapse. The possibility of Russia falling apart or leaving the war was enormous, and in fact in February 1917 a popular insurrection overthrew the Tsarist regime and Russia’s ability to prosecute the war already visibly declining disintegrated further. This would give Germany the prospect of transferring troops etc., to the western front and enable them to either attack in an effort to gain victory or to secure a favorable peace.

So given the facts above why under those circumstances did the leaders of Germany embark on this foolish venture? To add America has their enemy just when Russia was collapsing meant replacing one enemy with a far more powerful enemy. The simple fact is many of the German leaders were prey to delusions. The fact that many in the German government thought that America's entry on the side of the Allies inevitable, if only for the Americans to help recover the huge sums they had loaned to the allies, made many people in the German government think that if America entered the war sooner rather than later it would make little difference. Of course this was nonsense the sensible policy would have been to put off American entry into the war has long as possible to the point where American help to the allies would have made no difference. Another delusion was that submarine warfare would work, ignoring the skeptics who pointed out the obvious problems. That American intervention would only add more supplies / financial aid to the Allied war effort. That any American expeditionary force would be small and so forth. In other words a stew of wishful thinking. Further America was simply underestimated and Ludendorff and Hindenburg remained quite happily ignorant of American economic power. It was pointed out that the American army was by European standards absurdly small, but ignored that given American economic power a huge Army could be created in less than two years. It was claimed that U-boats would sink troop ships and therefore prevent any substantial number of troops coming over the Atlantic. These fantasies, which is what they were, clouded clear thinking it was what Ludendorff, Hindenburg and their cortege wanted to hear so they heard it.2

The fact that since the war began the British Admiralty, in a fit of bull headed idiocy had utterly refused to institute convoys for various empty headed reasons had helped to reinforce German delusions about the efficiency of submarine warfare. In fact only if the British refused to institute convoys did the plan have even a ghost of a chance of working and frankly counting on the British being so stupid to the bitter end was foolish in the extreme. The fact that Lloyd George, who became British Prime Minister in 1917, was pressing for adoption of convoys made adoption a virtual certainty. Faced with this constellation of circumstances i.e., Russia leaving the war, unrestricted submarine warfare almost certainly to fail, and the U.S. entering the war if unrestricted submarine warfare was declared. The sensible option would have been not to do so but to sit tight.

The results were predictable, the fact that Germany allowed certain of their diplomats to make foolish moves like encouraging Mexico to attack the United States and offering an alliance with Mexico directed against the United States were mere infuriating icing on the cake. The United States simply did not want war with Germany but with great foolishness German leaders infuriated the U.S. government, citizens and businesses, (by trying to end their profitable trade with the Allied powers). It is by any standards one of the greatest examples of plain stupid policy making in world history.

The effects shaped the world we have today, even more than the Russian Revolution. America entered the war. Britain adopted the convoy system. Submarine warfare, despite the idiotic reluctance of the British Admiralty to adopt convoys, didn’t even come close to driving Britain out of the war.3 It simply failed. Replacing America with Russia ensured allied victory. More than 2 million American troops were sent to Europe and less than 50 were killed by U-boat attacks. The U-boats proved spectacularly ineffective in attacking convoys or sinking troop ships. Germany’s had to attack in the west before American troops arrived en mass. The chances of the attack working were not good and frankly any chance of Germany victory had evaporated by June 1918 and any reasonable chance of German victory had probably evaporated by the time the first German western offensive was launched in March 1918.

After the war both Hindenburg and Ludendorff helped to manufacture the stab in the back legend i.e., that politicians, liberals, Socialists etc., had betrayed Germany and caused the loss of the war. This was nonsense, it was their own single minded and foolish choices has military men that lost Germany the war, but blaming the politicians who had to clean up the mess they created was more psychologically satisfying I guess. This was part of a wholesale campaign by various people within German society to undermine the Weimer Republic. Thus did the men who lost the war for Germany help pave the way for Hitler.

In world terms this marked the establishment of the United States has the worlds predominant power, in finance, trade, culture etc., a dominance that only recently in a very Americanized world has began to fade. It appears that Communism for example, was mainly a bump that disguised the predominant fact of the twentieth century, the large scale westernization of the world through the medium of American power and culture.

And that is why April 6, 1917 is so important.

1. Blair, Clay, Hitler’s U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939-1942, Modern Library, New York, 1996, pp. 9-22. This is a brief section that briefly surveys German U-Boats in World War I.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

Books consulted.

Fuller, J.F.C., A Military History of the Western World, vol. 3, Da Capo, New York, 1956, pp. 265-275.

Stone, Norman, Europe Transformed 1878-1919, Fontana Books, London, 1983, pp. 355-358.

Keegan, John, The First World War, Vintage Canada, Toronto, 1998, pp. 350-360.

Epstein, Klaus, Gerhard Ritter and the First World War, in The Origins of the First World War, Ed. Koch, H. W., Taplinger Pub. Co., New York, 1972, pp. 298-303.

Zechlin, Egmont, Cabinet versus Economic Warfare in Germany, in Koch, pp. 206-214.

Craig, Gordon A., Germany 1866-1945, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1978, pp. 378-390.

Hart, Liddell, History of the First World War, Pan Books Ltd., London, 1934, pp. 214-216, 308-312.

Pierre Cloutier