Berlin

Although Berlin was becoming a hotbed of leftist agitation against the war, it also housed an influential contingent of patriotic bitter-enders, which was only natural given its status as the national capital and headquarters of the military-industrial complex. Concerned about growing antiwar sentiment in Berlin and elsewhere, a coalition of military figures, right-wing lobbyists, and nationalist academics published a manifesto in 1916 demanding that Germany fight on until it had achieved an ambitious list of war aims, including domination of the European continent and parity in world affairs with Britain. The following year saw the formation of the Fatherland Party, which lobbied for an expansionist victory abroad and continued authoritarianism at home. As the organizational center of both the militant right and the radical left, Berlin confirmed and expanded its status as cynosure of political polarization in the German Reich.

A key figure in the rightist resurgence was Admiral von Tirpitz, who perhaps wanted to make up in belligerent bluster for the puny wartime performance of Germany’s High Seas Fleet, which, with the exception of the Battle of Jutland in 1916, had stayed bottled up in port, reluctant to challenge the British. Only the Kriegs-marine’s submarines had made a significant impact on the war by sinking an impressive number of enemy vessels. In February 1917 the decision was made to extend the submarine campaign against neutral shipping, especially American, in hopes of depriving Britain of the supplies it needed to continue the war. According to a police report, Berliners on the whole welcomed this step as the best means of bringing the conflict to a rapid end. The fact that it increased the likelihood of an American declaration of war did not diminish its attractiveness, for few Germans believed that America could make much of an impact before Britain was forced to surrender. However, once the United States had in fact entered the war, Berliners increasingly began to fear that this might be a “fateful” development, after all, which of course it proved to be.

While Berlin’s patriots celebrated the declaration of “unrestricted submarine warfare,” the city’s radical left was encouraged by the collapse of the czarist regime in Russia in spring 1917. In the eyes of the far left, the upheaval in Russia signaled the first crack in the edifice of world capitalism and imperialism. It also undercut the SPD’s justification of the war as a defense against czarist reaction. Writing from prison in April, Rosa Luxemburg argued that the events in Russia “faced the German proletariat with a vital question of honor.” The radicals, she said, had to step up their campaign against the war or be complicit in a conflict that was “no longer against Gzarism, but against the Russian revolution.” Russia had liberated itself from an authoritarian regime, she noted, “but who will liberate Germany from military dictatorship, from Junker reaction, from the imperialist slaughter?”

In mid-April 1917 a group of shop stewards from Berlin’s metal industry demanded that the German government inaugurate peace talks with the Russian provisional government. To put some muscle behind this demand, and to protest recent cuts in the bread ration, they organized a one-day strike in the city’s metalworking plants. According to a police report, some 148,903 workers laid down their tools, though fewer participated in the accompanying mass march mounted by the strike leaders.

Worried that the growing domestic discord might generate more far-reaching disruptions unless some movement was made toward ending the war, a group of moderates in the Reichstag, which heretofore had compliantly backed the government, launched a belated peace offensive in summer 1917. A Center Party representative, Matthias Erzberger, introduced a resolution calling for a compromise peace, without annexations or indemnities. The resolution carried the house but did not significantly affect the government’s policy. Germany was not a parliamentary democracy, and Ludendorff and Hindenburg could safely ignore the legislators’ appeal. The main result of this initiative was the dismissal of Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, whom the generals blamed for not keeping the parliamentarians in line. He was replaced by Georg Michaelis, a Prussian civil servant who was not likely to cause the military any trouble. Upon taking office he said: “I do not consider a body like the German Reichstag a fit one to decide about peace and war on its own initiative during the war.”

The “Iron Hindenburg” statue on the Königsplatz