Comprehending Wilhelminism

As the German economic historian Karl Erich Born noted in 1957, the Kaiserreich (1871 to 1918) certainly had an ideology. Formulated by the Prussian school of historians and shared by the educated bourgeoisie, it was a militaristic nationalism that developed into a strident imperialism, expressed in the public writings and pronouncements of the Pan German League and especially in the speeches of Kaiser Wilhelm II himself. In this ideology there was no place for the workers. It spoke of the achievements of the princely houses, of the efficiency and bravery of the army, of the dedication to duty of the civil servants, of the attainments of German science and art, of the diligence of the burgers and finally of the entrepreneurial spirit of the business community, but not of the workers.

In the Summer Semester of 1961, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich reached a minor milestone in its illustrious 600-year history: it enrolled its first Australian student in the Seminar for Modern History. I had chosen Munich as the place to continue my postgraduate studies because of the reputation of Professor Franz Schnabel, who had been appointed as Head (Vorsitzender) of that Seminar in 1947 by the US occupation authorities. In the process of de-Nazification, the Western Allies had carried out meticulous research on the background of scholars considered suitable to contribute to the re-education of the German people. Franz Schnabel (1887–1966) stood out as a staunch Roman Catholic liberal who prior to the Nazi seizure of power had already a secure reputation as a pedagogue of firmly democratic principles and during the Third Reich had been active in the resistance to the regime. He had narrowly escaped arrest by the Nazis before the war ended.

By the time I arrived, Schnabel’s reputation had become legendary. He had been lecturing twice a week for two-hour sessions in the Grosse Aule, the largest lecture hall in the university, to throngs of more than 1200 students. And among these would have been many people off the street who had wanted to hear from this distinguished authority what had gone wrong in their country’s history that had provoked virtually the entire world to such ferocious hostility towards them. The impact of Allied bombing on Munich was still very much in evidence in the city where once had stood stately buildings and where now there were only ugly gaping black pits. As later my doctoral supervisor Waldemar Besson would say, 1945 was “Das Jahr null in der deutschen Geschichte”.

Schnabel had an answer to the question in the people’s mind. He saw the root cause of the disaster in the refusal of Bismarck back in 1870-71 to introduce a liberal constitution. Instead, the Iron Chancellor had imposed a so-called constitutional monarchy in which the cabinet was chosen by the Kaiser and remained responsible to him and not to the popularly elected lower house, the Reichstag. After that the history of the Kaiserreich was dominated by the burgeoning class struggle between the established ruling classes and the ever expanding industrial working class. The aristocracy, the industrial elite and the Bildungsbürgertum, that is, the educated middle classes, feared the consequences of the growing support among the masses for social democracy and trade unionism, but the ruling classes had no workable solution to what they called die Arbeiterfrage, the labour question, except to impose obstacles to improving the rights and conditions of the workforce which was ultimately responsible for the competitiveness of German industry.

The key limitations imposed on the labour movement were as follows. First the right to organise all workers into trade unions, Organisationsrecht, was severely restricted; the right of domicile, Freizügigkeitsrecht, that is, the freedom to move around the country to find work, was also restricted; as, finally, was the right to strike, Streikrecht. These issues all remained unresolved until the outbreak of war in 1914. At that time a so-called Burgfrieden, that is “peace of the fortress”, had been negotiated between the Social Democratic Party and the socialist trade unions on the one hand and the government on the other, which meant that the labour organisations would remain immune from government interference so long as they did not hinder the war effort. One had spoken of the “negative integration” of the working class into the nation which meant that organised labour was tolerated so long as it posed no threat to the political and industrial stability of the nation. So, with the inauguration in August 1914 of the Burgfrieden there had been rejoicing in government circles that the class struggle had been laid to rest. The Kaiser himself exulted: “From now on I know no more parties; only Germans.”

It was, however, a hollow pretence at national solidarity because the ruling classes were really fighting for annexations of foreign territory in Europe and overseas and simply wanted to placate the working class to gain their “patriotic” collaboration until they had realised their extravagant war aims. Then, with the monarchical system thus strengthened, so it was imagined, the working class would be more easily kept in its place. So the power elite went into the war expecting both unimaginable territorial gains abroad and the affirmation of the reactionary monarchical system at home.

Professor Schnabel attributed this mindset to the uncompromising Prussianism of the Reich leadership. This meant the militarisation of the ruling classes, except for a few perceptive intellectuals such as Max Weber and a group of sociologists and economists known as the Kathedersozialisten, that is “professorial socialists”, as well as a handful of genuine pacifists and some of the more prudent diplomats. All of these warned against schemes for attaining world power or predominance. To no avail. The power elite were biding their time for a diplomatic situation to arise in which Germany could either go to war or threaten to go to war to defend its integrity and that of its only reliable ally, namely Austria–Hungary. So when the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his consort occurred during a state visit to Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, the circumstances seemed heaven-sent for the German power elite to manipulate the crisis to implement their long-cultivated ambitions of territorial expansion. Hence the issuing of the so-called blank cheque to Vienna to deal with Serbia as it saw fit and to prevent an international peace-keeping conference from taking place. Here we see, as Kurt Riezler, the Chancellor’s personal assistant had described, the German way of conducting Weltpolitk und kein Krieg, that is, imperialism without actually having to fire a shot in anger.

Kurt Riezler (1882–1955) has turned out to be the most perceptive analyst of Wilhelminism, as his books and surviving diaries and letters have attested. Germany was bent on becoming the European superpower at the expense of Russia, France and Britain. The Sarajevo assassination was the perfect opportunity to force an intimidation of Russia and France and thus to allow junior partner Austria-Hungary a free hand in the Balkans. This would allow Germany to further its ambitions in the Ottoman empire, the Berlin–Baghdad ideology, and eventually enable it to force the British out of India. If this could be accomplished by bluff, so much the better. However, if the Entente powers refused to back down, then Germany was ready for a two-front war with its well-thought-out Schlieffen Plan. The possibility of an intervention by the British on the side of France was dismissed as militarily insignificant. Prussianism dominated German thinking.

When, in 1961, the so-called Fischer controversy broke, in which the Hamburg professor and his team led by Dr Imanuel Geiss argued that Germany was chiefly responsible, there began a virulent debate over the question of German war guilt for the outbreak of the First World War. This had always been vigorously contested in Germany because it had been used as the chief justification for imposing severe reparations on Germany. It was this that had crippled the Weimar Republic from birth and which became fertile ground for the growth of virulent German nationalism. Many conservative elements rejected the republic out of hand and worked for its downfall, as, of course, did the incipient Communist Party which vilified the moderate socialists who supported the republic and were consequently maligned by Stalinists as “Social Fascists”.

The tragedy of the Weimar Republic, however, was that it was ultimately derailed by the Great Depression of 1929 to 1933 when unemployment became so astronomical that it brought down the last regime that was committed to the constitution. These four crisis years led to the ultimate triumph of the Nazi Party which had been as much helped into office by the machinations of the Communist Party as by the capitalist-driven right-wing parties and in particular the army who enabled Hitler to form a government in January 1933. The continuity between the elements in the Kaiserreich who took Germany into the First World War and those who “jobbed Hitler into office” in 1933 was obvious to all who had eyes to see and ears to hear.

The Kaiserreich was in short the matrix of the “rogue state” of Adolf Hitler. The Führer’s ideas of Germany’s imperial destiny were essentially no different from those of the power elite in 1914: conquest of Mitteleuropa, destruction of the British Empire in the Middle East and dominance of Mittelafrika. Only in the method of dealing with the Jewish question did the Nazi Party advance a more vigorous and radical solution. This was no problem once the Reichstag had been emasculated and the doctrine of the Führer Principle enunciated.

But back in 1914, the imperial leadership was only looking for the most opportune moment to implement a war-aims program that had been long maturing. For a long time the Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, had been of the view that some negotiated agreement with Britain would enable Germany to exercise a free hand on the continent. When it became increasingly obvious that the British would not abandon France, Bethmann Hollweg fell into line behind the military which, under the younger Moltke, had been urging for a two-front war ever since late 1912 when a “war council” of service chiefs chaired by the Kaiser had been held. There was a will to war but no constellation of powers that would enable Germany to go to war as a party defending its legitimate foreign policy position. In short, it was essential that Germany appear internationally as the aggrieved party, not as the aggressor. This opportunity presented itself with the assassination in Sarajevo.

On Bethmann Hollweg’s manoeuvring during those crisis weeks between the assassination and the outbreak of war on August 4, the latest published research available is most instructive. We have seen that the Prusso-German elite were convinced that Germany was destined to supplant Britain as the leading world power. Not all diplomats thought this was a good idea. Those like Wilhelm Solf would have preferred to see a joint Anglo-German civilising mission to the Third World, with Germany as Britain’s junior partner. But these men were a decided minority among the German ruling classes. The Pan-Germanist mentality dominated, and that meant military solutions were to be preferred.

Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers (2013) has attracted both many admirers on the German Right as well critics among the democratic Left. But Clark’s bold thesis that the Powers found themselves at war as a consequence of a somnambulist stumble has been shown to be untenable.

Dr John Moses is Professorial Associate of St Mark’s National Theological Centre in Canberra. He wrote on “The Fallacy of Presentism in History” in the January-February issue.