Dolchstosslegende
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The Dolchstosslegende (German: Dolchstoßlegende, literally "Dagger stab legend" often translated into English as "stab-in-the-back legend") refers to a social mythos and persecution-propaganda theory popular in Germany in the period after World War I through World War II. It attributed Germany's defeat to a number of domestic factors instead of failed militarist geostrategy. Most notably, the theory proclaimed that the public had failed to respond to its "patriotic calling" at the most crucial of times and some had even intentionally "sabotaged the war effort."
Der Dolchstoss is cited as an important factor in Adolf Hitler's later rise to power, as the Nazi Party grew its original political base largely from embittered WWI veterans, and those who were sympathetic to the Dolchstoss interpretation of Germany's then-recent history.
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[edit] Motivation
[edit] Views of the war, Spirit of 1914
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 appeared to erase many of the political divisions that had existed in German society initially; Roman Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, socialists, right-wingers and liberals were all admittedly overcome by the phenomenon of the "Spirit of 1914". Jubilant crowds gathered to hear the news of the war and a strong wave of euphoria took hold in the midst of public celebration. National pride had shown its potential as a force of unity and cohesion; many considered the changing conditions to be the start of a new age, based almost entirely on an underestimation of the horrors of war and faith in a quick and relatively bloodless victory.
Many were under the impression that the Triple Entente had ushered in the war, and as such saw the war as one in which Germany's cause was justified. Imperial Russia was seen to have expansionist ambitions and France's dissatisfaction due to the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War was widely known. Later, the Germans were shocked to learn that the United Kingdom had entered the war, and many felt their country was being "ganged up on"; it seemed as though the United Kingdom was using the Belgian neutrality issue to enter the war and neutralize a Germany that was threatening Britain's commercial interests.
As the war dragged on, illusions of an easy victory were smashed, and Germans began to suffer tremendously from what would become an enormously costly war. With the initial euphoria gone, old divisions resurfaced. Suspicion of Catholics, Social Democrats and Jews grew as initial enthusiasms subsided. Subsequently, national loyalties came into question once again. There was a considerable amount of political tension prior to the war, especially due to the growing presence of Social Democrats in the Reichstag. This was a great concern for aristocrats in power, and this contingent was particularly successful in denying Erich Ludendorff the funds for the German Army that he claimed were necessary and lobbied for.
[edit] Profiteering and civil unrest
Those who were profiting from the war were also subject to criticism. Krupp himself was accused of manufacturing arms for both sides — an extremely profitable practice. Individual interests took precedence in other sectors. As administrators meddled with the wartime economy by introducing price ceilings and other measures, producers often responded by switching goods, which created shortages. This led to great tensions between the cities and the countryside and, more importantly, exacerbated hardships and bred discord. By 1917, labor strikes had become fairly common across Germany, and the industrial workers who took part in these events were also looked upon with scorn by certain audiences. By 1917, there were roughly five hundred strikes across Germany, resulting in over 2,000,000 total work days lost.
Civil disorder grew as a result of an inability to make ends meet, with or without the alleged "shortage of patriotism." While it is true that production slumped during the crucial years of 1917 and 1918, the nation had maximized its war effort and could take no more. Raw production figures confirm that Germany could not have possibly won a war of attrition against Britain, France and the United States combined. Despite its overwhelming individual power, Germany's industrial might and population were matched and outclassed by the Entente as a whole. Russia's exit in 1917 did little to change the overall picture, as the United States joined the war shortly thereafter on April 16, 1917. American industrial capacity overtook Germany's singlehandedly.
[edit] Allied propaganda
In his memoirs, Erich Ludendorff consistently points out that the Hohenzollern leadership failed to acknowledge the power of Allied propaganda and conduct a successful campaign of its own. British and American presses were particularly successful with their leaflet and tabloid campaign. The view that the German autocracy was an exporter of "Prussian militarism" and also guilty of crimes against humanity even resonated within German society. After Imperial Russia dropped out of the war, the claimed contrast between the "free world" that wanted peace versus the "barbaric" autocratic-led Germany that supposedly wanted war became a frequent theme.
Although frequently depicted as primordial aggressors responsible for the war, German peace proposals were all but rejected. Ludendorff was convinced that the Entente wanted little other than a draconian peace. This was not the message most Germans heard coming from the other side. Wilson's Fourteen Points were particularly popular among the German people. Socialists and liberals, especially the Social Democrats that formed the majority of the parliamentary body, were already known "agitators" for social change prior to 1914. When peace and full restoration were promised by the Allies, patriotic enthusiasm especially began to wane. Likewise, Germany's allies began to question the cause for the war as the conflict dragged on, and found their questions answered in the Allied propaganda.
When the armistice finally came in 1918, Ludendorff's prophecy appeared accurate almost immediately; although the fighting had ended, the British maintained their blockade of the European continent for a full year, leading to starvation and severe malnutrition. The non-negotiable peace agreed to by Weimar politicians in the Treaty of Versailles was certainly not what the German peace-seeking populace had expected..
[edit] The Treaty of Versailles
As a result of the Treaty, Germany's territory was reduced by about 15%, the Rhineland was demilitarized and Allied troops were to occupy many areas. There were also enormous war reparations to be paid for a period of 70 years (until 1988), although they ended in 1931 amid complicated circumstances. Perhaps the most important aspect of the Treaty relating to the Dolchstoßlegende was the War Guilt Clause, which forced Germany to accept complete responsibility for the war. The Treaty was enormously unpopular in Germany, in no small part because it impinged extensively on internal German sovereignty. The Dolchstoßlegende was the accepted antithesis of the War Guilt Clause, as the latter was in stark contrast to what the population found to be factual.
[edit] Post-war reactions and reflections
Conservatives, nationalists and ex-military leaders began to speak critically about the peace and Weimar politicians, socialists, communists, and Jews were viewed with suspicion due to their supposed extra-national loyalties. It was rumored that they had not supported the war and had played a role in selling out Germany to its enemies. These November Criminals, or those who seemed to benefit from the newly formed Weimar Republic, were seen to have "stabbed them in the back" on the home front, by either criticizing German nationalism, instigating unrest and strikes in the critical military industries or profiteering. In essence the accusation was that the accused committed treason against the "benevolent and righteous" common cause.
These theories were given credence by the fact that when Germany surrendered in November 1918, its armies were still in French and Belgian territory. Not only had the German Army been in enemy territory the entire time on the Western Front, but on the Eastern Front, Germany had already won the war against Russia, concluded with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In the West, Germany had come close to winning the war with the Spring Offensive. Contributing to the Dolchstoßlegende, its failure was blamed on strikes in the arms industry at a critical moment of the offensive, leaving soldiers without an adequate supply of materiel. The strikes were seen to be instigated by treasonous elements, with the Jews taking most of the blame. This overlooked Germany's strategic position and ignored how the efforts of individuals were somewhat marginalized on the front, since the belligerents were engaged in a new kind of war. The industrialization of war had dehumanized the process, and made possible a new kind of defeat which the Germans suffered as a total war emerged.
Nevertheless, this social mythos of domestic betrayal resonated among its audience, and its claims would codify the basis for public support for the emerging Nazi Party, under a racialist-based form of nationalism. The anti-Semitism was intensified by the Munich Soviet Republic, a Communist government which ruled the city of Munich for two weeks before being crushed by the Freikorps militia. Many of the Munich Soviet Republic's leaders were Jewish, a fact that allowed anti-Semitic propagandists to make the connnection with "Communist treason".
[edit] Origins
In the latter part of the war, Germany was practically governed as a military dictatorship, with the Supreme High Command (German: OHL, "Oberste Heeresleitung") and General Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg as commander-in-chief advising the Kaiser. After the last German offensive on the western front failed in 1918, the German war effort was doomed. In response, OHL arranged for a rapid change to a civilian government. General Ludendorff, Germany's Chief of Staff, said:
"I have asked His Excellency to now bring those circles to power which we have to thank for coming so far. We will therefore now bring those gentlemen into the ministries. They can now make the peace which has to be made. They can eat the soup which they have prepared for us!"
On November 11, 1918, the representatives of the newly formed Weimar Republic signed an armistice with the Allies which would end World War I. The subsequent Treaty of Versailles led to further territorial and financial losses. As the Kaiser had been forced to abdicate and the military relinquished executive power, it was the temporary, "civilian government" which sued for peace - the signature on the document was of the Catholic Centrist Matthias Erzberger, a civilian, who was later killed for his alleged treason. This led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Even though they publicly despised the treaty, it was most convenient for the generals — there were no war crime tribunals, they were celebrated as undefeated heroes, and they could covertly prepare for removing the republic which they had helped to create.
In 1919 the Provisional National Army began educating Adolf Hitler about the causes of the war and the defeat, firmly placing the Dolchstoßlegende in his mind; it was Ludendorff who would lead the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch on November 8, 1923 together with Hitler; it was the Reichswehr which provided early funding to the Nazi Party and it was an 85-year-old Paul von Hindenburg who would appoint Hitler as chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933.
The official birth of the term itself possibly can be dated to mid 1919, when Ludendorff was having lunch with a British general Sir Neil Malcolm. Malcolm asked Ludendorff why it was that he thought Germany lost the war. Ludendorff replied that although his soldiers fought like lions, that "parasitic jewish influences" (the vast majority of whom refused to pick up arms for their 'homeland' of Germany) had simply signed a few documents, and caused a once great nation immediate defeat, on horrific terms. "The home front failed us", he stated. Then, Sir Neil Malcolm said that "it sounds like you were stabbed in the back then?" Ludendorff recognized the truth in this objective statement from his former foe, and began to help educate the general staff as to the real reasons he believed Germany had lost the great war, and these views later disseminated throughout German society. This was picked up by right wing political factions and used as a form of attack against the SPD-led early Weimar government, which had come to power in the German Revolution of November 1918.
Richard Steigmann-Gall says that the stab-in-the-back legend traces back to a sermon preached on February 3, 1918, by Protestant Court Chaplain Bruno Doehring, six months before the war had even ended.[1] German scholar Boris Barth, in contrast to Steigmann-Gall, implies that Doehring did not actually use the term, but spoke only of 'betrayal.'[2] Barth traces the first documented use to a centrist political meeting in the Munich Loewenbraeu-Keller on November 2, 1918, in which Ernst Müller-Meiningen, a member of the Progressive coalition in the Reichstag, used the term to exhort his listeners to keep fighting:
'As long as the front holds, we damn well have the duty to hold out in the homeland. We would have to be ashamed of ourselves in front of children and grandchildren if we attacked the battlefront from the rear and gave it a dagger-stab.' ("...wenn wir der Front in den Rücken fielen und ihr den Dolchstoss versetzten.")
Barth also shows that the term was popularized when the patriotic German newspaper Deutsche Tageszeitung cited a December 17, 1918 Neue Zürcher Zeitung article that summarized two earlier articles by British General Maurice with the phrase that the German army had been 'dagger-stabbed from behind by the civilian populace' ("von der Zivilbevölkerung von hinten erdolcht."). (Maurice later disavowed having used the term himself.) Thus Barth shows that the term was in common use long before the apocryphal Ludendorff-Malcolm conversation.
The charges that the left-wing (largely communist, at this time) had been complicit in Germany's defeat drew heavily upon figures like Kurt Eisner; a Berlin born Jewish "German" who lived in Munich. He had written about the illegal nature of the war from 1916 onwards and he also had a large hand in the Munich revolution until he was assassinated in February 1919. The Weimar Republic under Friedrich Ebert violently suppressed workers' uprisings with the help of Gustav Noske and Reichswehr General Groener, and tolerated the paramilitary Freikorps forming all across Germany. In spite of such tolerance, the Republic's legitimacy was constantly attacked with claims such as the stab-in-the-back. Many of its representatives such as Matthias Erzberger and Walther Rathenau were assassinated, and the leaders were identified as criminal jews by the right-wing press dominated by Alfred Hugenberg.
German historian Friedrich Meinecke already attempted to trace the roots of the term in a June 11, 1922 article in the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse. In the 1924 national election the Munich cultural journal Süddeutsche Monatshefte published a series of articles blaming the SPD and trade unions for Germany's defeat in World War I (the illustration on this page is the April 1924 title of that journal, which came out during the trial of Hitler and Ludendorff for high treason). The editor of an SPD newspaper sued the journal for defamation, giving rise to what is known as the Munich Dolchstossprozess from October 19 to November 20, 1924. Many prominent figures testified in that trial, including members of the parliamentary committee investigating the reasons for the defeat, so some of its results were made public long before the publication of the committee report in 1928.
The Dolchstoß was a central image in propaganda produced by the many right-wing and traditionally conservative political parties that sprang up in the early days of the Weimar Republic, including Hitler's NSDAP (neither a left, nor right-wing party in the American sense of liberal and conservative). For Hitler himself, this explanatory model for World War I was of crucial personal importance. He had learned of Germany's defeat while being treated for temporary blindness following a gas attack on the front. In Mein Kampf he described a vision at this time which drove him to enter politics. Throughout his career he railed against the jewish "November criminals" of 1918 who had stabbed the German Army in the back.
Even provisional President Friedrich Ebert contributed to the legend when he saluted returning veterans with the oration that "they returned undefeated from the battlefield (sie sind vom Schlachtfeld unbesiegt). It was meant as a tribute to the German soldier but it contributed to the prevailing feeling.
[edit] Other examples of the "Stab-in-the-back" story
[edit] Britain in World War One
In other countries similar stories of internal (often jewish) betrayal were emerging towards the end of World War One, though in the eventually victorious Entente nations these soon faded. In Britain during Ludendorff's 1918 Spring Offensive the right-wing newspaper The Imperialist claimed that 47,000 members of the British establishment were secretly working for the Germans. The 47,000 were homosexuals and other "deviants" who were betraying the nation because the Germans had obtained a "black book" containing their names. These people were sexually corrupting members of the military and were passing information to the Germans. In some articles Jews were implicated along with homosexuals and people of German descent.[3] As part of this campaign Noel Pemberton Billing, a right-wing member of Parliament, published an article in the newspaper entitled "The Cult of the Clitoris", in which he claimed that followers of Oscar Wilde in the circle of Wilde's ex-lover Robert Ross were part of the cult. The article led to a sensation and to a libel trial.[4]
[edit] The USA after World War I
The dispute over the money the US had loaned the Allies, primarily the UK and France and their seeming inability or unwillingness to pay helped fuel the feeling that the country was drawn into the war largely by jewish bankers on both sides of the Atlantic in order to safeguard their financial investments. This was underscored when the British and French repudiated their obligations in the mid 1930's.
[edit] Vietnam
Other wars have been viewed as winnable but lost due to some sort of homefront betrayal. For example, similar ideas emerged in the United States in the latter stages the Vietnam War, when counter cultural movements were similarly interpreted as peopled by "degenerates" or as being secretly manipulated by international Communist forces. These claims evolved into the idea of the so-called "Vietnam Syndrome", according to which US foreign policy was crippled by the withdrawal from Vietnam. However, others believe that this "syndrome" is a myth.[5]
[edit] The War in Iraq
The July 14, 2006 issue of Harper's magazine has a article by Kevin Baker arguing that the myth should not be applied to the current war in Iraq:
Who could possibly believe in a plot to lose this war? No one cares that much about it. We have, instead, reached a crossroads where the overwhelming right-wing desire to dissolve much of the old social compact that held together the modern nation-state is irreconcilably at odds with any attempt to conduct such a grand, heroic experiment as implanting democracy in the Middle East. Without mass participation, Iraq cannot be passed off as an heroic endeavor, no matter how much Mr. Bush's rhetoric tries to make it one, and without a hero there can be no great betrayer, no skulking villain.[6]
Nevertheless, some Republicans have applied a 'stab-in-the-back' theory to opponents of the Iraq War. For example, Baker notes that talk radio host Rush Limbaugh accused Illinois Senator Dick Durbin of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy," i.e., treason. Also according to Baker, President Bush's deputy chief of staff Karl Rove said: "Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals." According to Baker, Bush said: "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will...As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them.".[7]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Richard Steigmann–Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) p. 16
- ^ Boris Barth, Dolchstosslegenden und politische Desintegration: Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg, 1914-1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2003), 167 and 340f. Barth says Doehring was an army, not a court chaplain. The following references to Barth are on pages 148 (Müller-Meiningen), and 324 (NZZ article, with a discussion of the Ludendorff-Malcolm conversation).
- ^ Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century.
- ^ Medd, Jodie ""The Cult of the Clitoris": Anatomy of a National Scandal", Modernism/modernity - Volume 9, Number 1, January 2002, pp. 21-49
- ^ Harper's Magazine, Stabbed in the Back!: The past and future of a right-wing myth
- ^ "Stabbed in the Back!: The past and future of a right-wing myth" Harper's Magazine,
- ^ Harper's Magazine, Stabbed in the Back!: The past and future of a right-wing myth
[edit] Sources
- Spielvogel, Jackson J., Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History. New Jersey, Prentice Hall: 2001.
- Feldman, Gerald D., Die Massenbewegungen der Arbeiterschaft in Deutschland am Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges 1917-1920 Politische Vierteljahrschrift 1972.
- Chickering, Rodger, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914-1918." Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 2004.
- OSS Psychological Profile of Hitler, Part Five
- Baker, Kevin Stabbed in the Back! The past and future of a right-wing myth Harper's Magazine, June 2006.
- Fleming, Thomas J. The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within World War II New York, Basic Books: 2001.
- Steninger, Rolf (1990). The German Question: The Stalin Note of 1952 and the Problem of Reunification. New York: Columbia University. ISBN 0-231-07216-3.
