William Tyler
The Weimar Republic

William Tyler - The Weimar Republic

- Okay, hello everyone, we’re back again with the history of Germany. Now we left the story last time at the end of the first World War in 1918 with the abdication of the Kaiser two days before the end of the war, that is to say that he abdicated, forced abdication on the night November 1918. And he hot footed it to The Netherlands where he was to die in 1941. And although the allies had made some attempt to extradite him and talk of putting him on trial, A Woodrow Wilson wasn’t at all keen to put him on trial. And secondly the Dutch refused to release him and it just petered out. There was no international system as there now is to prosecute war criminals like Putin. That legislation internationally was only introduced in 2002 remarkably. The arrangements for Nuremberg and indeed in Japan as well were one offs. And they were approved by the allies, but were indeed one off events, it was only in 2002. But as I also said, at the end of the war in 1918 revolution broke out across Germany. The revolution, German historians are a bit funny about using the word revolution, some of the object to it. But it seems to me that it was a revolution because the monarchy was abolished, the Kaiser had gone, no one thought of putting any other member of the family of ? On an imperial throne it had gone. And indeed at Kiel in Northern Germany, the German navy mutinied. They had been ordered to sea to attack Britain, but indeed by 1918 that such a move would’ve been a disaster because the British navy was stronger than it had been at Jutland and the Germany navy was weaker.

The end was and indeed importantly, that German sailors might well refuse to have fired or to have sailed into difficulty. The whole thing was a disaster. Instead, they mutinied. And that mutiny was like touching the blue touch vapour and it spread, it spread across cities across Germany. And if that isn’t revolution I don’t know what is. In 2019 I was on holiday with the family in Berlin and we were strolling through Berlin just walking looking at the sights. And in one of the squares there was an exhibition and there was no one looking at it, and I thought “I wonder what there’d”, being nosy, I thought, “I wonder what this exhibition is about.” And I don’t speak German so I couldn’t read the German but it was pretty obvious what it was about. It was about the revolution in Berlin in 1919, a revolution that caused the government in 1919 to hot foot it to the central German city of Weimar. So Germany collapsed in 1918, the whole structure of Germany collapsed. Indeed in Munich for a time there was a Marxist regime lead by a Jew called Kurt Eisner. Now Kurt Eisner’s free state or Marxist state as it was in Munich really looked as though for a time that the whole of Germany would not become necessarily Marxist but would collapse back into the multifaceted number of states that it had been before Bismark had united Germany in 1871. Just an aside, a couple of years ago I gave a lecture to some of the Eisner family who are now British, which was a very interesting opportunity. But I had known Kurt Eisner’s grandson. He was a member of the University of the Third Age.

Now I think American’s may not have u3a but the Canadian’s know all about u3a ‘cause it started there. Brackets in French damn it, well I didn’t say. But the university of de tres diomage or u3a. And Eisner’s grandson was a member of one on the London Fringe. And I used to go there annually and give a talk. And he gave me his research into his grandfather which is absolutely fascinating. But interestingly his grandfather was a Jew became a Marxist. His grandson was a practising Jew who voted in Britain conservative or autonomy. So it’s interesting how over generations political allegiances change. He had no time for his grandfathers political beliefs but he did have a lot of time for the fact that his grandfather attempted to do something in the collapse of Germany in 1918-1919. Political power shifted at the departure of the Kaiser. The chancellor at the time, a member of the aristocracy, simply handed it over to the social democrat party which was the largest in the Reichstag the German parliament, led by two men called Ebert or Ebert who became chancellor and Schneiderman. These men were models, these were genuine democrats. And they wanted to have ordered reform, they didn’t want Marxist reform, and they certainly didn’t want a right wing response to restore the Kaiser or whatever. They wanted a democracy in a European sense like Britain or France, that’s what they were aiming for. And they went to the Reichstag for the first time and they announced that we are now the German Republic. Now you would’ve thought that was the end of it, the Kaiser had gone, the monarchy was in affect abolished, and these elected members said “we are now the Germany Republic, "we will roll up our sleeves and get on with the job.”

However, at the same time as they announce it in the Reichstag the left announced it in Berlin from the back of a cart, and they announced a left wing takeover. James Hawes in his “history of Germany” writes in this way. He says this, “the republic was proclaimed from a balcony "at the Reichstag to the people "and was then proclaimed again in a rival address "from the back of a truck in the Rusgarten park "by Karl Liebknecht, "leader of the so called Spartacists.” Now the Spartacists were drawing their inspiration from the Russian revolution of a year before, the October 17 Lenin revolution. The Spartacists are well they incorporated a number of different sorts of people. They were largely Marxist but there were some non Marxist. The Spartacists sounds a funny name. All you have to remember is the Russian, sorry is the Roman slave Spartacus. And they took Spartacus name and called themselves Spartacists because their whole agenda was that power should go to the workers. In other words it was the overthrow of the aristocracy and the monarchy and indeed the middle class, and the same applied to Spartacus in Rome. The overthrow if you’re right, of the status quo. That gives you an idea of how fragmented this revolution was, that two different republics were declared in the same city within an hour of each other. That’s my short introduction. Longer introduction goes like this. The first World War may well have ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, but Germany’s rollercoaster ride since the dismissal of Bismark by the Kaiser’s grandfather in 1819, sorry by the Kaiser in 1890, less than 30 years previously, was not destined to come to an end any time soon. And this is the point I’ve been emphasising the last few weeks.

The German crisis lasts from the 1890’s to the 1990’s. And I think in future, that whole period will be taken this historians as one, whereas now we chop it up. And in schools at least in Britain, the third Reich is what we teach. But we shouldn’t be teaching the third Reich in my view, we should be teaching it from the dismissal of Bismark to the reunification of Germany, because that is the story of which the third Reich is the most dreadful part, but it is a part of that story. And this part we’re in now is this civil war after the abolition of the monarchy. Where are they going? We’ve got in crude tones we’ve got three choices, you can go the right, and by the right I mean the far right, or you can go to the left by which I mean the far less or the Marxist. Or you can go down the middle with democracy. And we know that democracy was established, we call it the Weimar Republic. The Weimar because as I said earlier, is the city in Central Germany that the government of Ebert retreated to when violence broke out on the streets of Berlin, and they kept working and they produced a constitution. If any of you are thinking of a revolution in Britain or in America, please write your constitution first because the trouble is if you write it afterwards no one ever agrees. But they did get the constitution written by the end of the summer of 1919 which is pretty good going in my book. Now the problem was, how do they deal with the left and the right in this situation? And that was the problem that they faced. So civil war begins as the other war ended. Now the British prime minister David Lloyd George at the end of the war, at the time of the armistice set. “At 11 o'clock this morning "came to an end the cruellest most terrible war "that has ever scourged mankind. "I hope we may say that this, this fateful morning, "came to an end all wars.” 11th November 1918. Come to an end all wars, but it didn’t. And in Germany they were experiencing if not war, civil unrest immediately.

Well we all know that it wasn’t a war to end all wars, and nor indeed was the '39 to '45 war a war to end all wars. But there was great optimism, and this optimism in Germany was misplaced, misplaced because of the horrors of 1919. Now the far right argument was Germany has been a humiliated, not the German army they said, but Germany has been humiliated by what Hitler and the Nazi’s are to call the stab in the back. They blame socialists and of course they blame Jews for the stab in the back. The left on the other hand believed Lenin’s view that Communism would spread right across the world in the aftermath of World War one, and it did, for a very short period in Munich, and it did for a slightly longer period in Hungary. And we note that in both Munich and Hungary the Marxist states were led by Jews, which it further inflamed the right. But of course the centre left, if you can put it like that, were also in Germany deeply antisemitic. After all there are so many Jews who are Marxist. It’s true that Trudy is going to talk more about that, and we’ll be very interested to listen to her on it, of that I’m absolutely sure. And I will just leave that point there, and just remind you that antisemitism as we’ve gone through this history of Germany is deep within German DNA. The right denounced the constitution as soon as it was produced at the end of the summer 1919 in Weimar. And the far right said this of this attempted democratic constitution. “It was all too easy,” says Hawes “for monarchies and militaristic claim "as they immediately did, "that the democratic Weimar Republic "was just another facet of Versailles, "a foreign way of doing things, "forced on Germany at gunpoint by western powers.” Well that’s of course untrue, but it is true that Germany had not experienced democracy before the Weimar Republic.

And the whole of Germany was not to experience democracy again until the reunification of the 1990’s between the Marxist east and the liberal democratic West of Germany. And for those of us in Britain, well for those of us in England in particular, it is sobering to think that our democracy, you can date from wherever you like it, in Britain you can date it from Magna Carta in 1215. American’s would also date their democracy from 1215. But we really in terms of modern democracy can date it from 1688 and the last of the Stewart’s and the arrival of the Hungarian’s. But Germany democracy had up until the 1990’s, just the period from 1919 to 1933 to Weimar. And so when the far right said “this is alien to Germany,” it was alien to Germany. But then Germany was out of step with the modern countries of Britain and France, let alone the United States across the Atlantic. And Germany’s economy which makes it, we’ve talked about this before, Germany’s economy pre to 1914 is comparable to the states, to Britain, and to France, although in terms of Britain and France it had gone forward faster than in Britain and France but not as fast as in America. But it was a modern state in terms of an economy. But under the Kaiser it remained a monarchist autocracy. And the far right wants some form of autocracy. To begin with, let’s get the king back or the Kaiser back. But gradually it turned into a different sort of ideology, that of Marxism and Fascism. I think this is very important today when we look at case of China, as I’ve said before, where China has the capitalist economy by and large. And in Marxist authoritarian political system. Now I’ve always thought that the two are incompatible and I see nothing in recent years in China to suggest that I am wrong.

I can’t tell you when it will collapse but collapse it will because it simply can’t function like that. We’ll leave that, but I have mentioned that before. I’m getting boring mentioning the same things except that the same things are in terms of German history are as golden threads that are running through. And when we come to Germany today we have to look at the position of the far left but in particular of the position of the far right in Germany today. Nothing is quite dead historically anywhere, and it certainly isn’t dead historically in Germany. And we will come to that in due course. So you can gather from all I’ve said so far, there was no general groundswell of support for this new Weimar democratic government. As the extremes on left and right both sought political gain out of the defeat of Germany. The left said, “it’s all the fault of the aristocracy, "of the army, of the Kaiser, "we must embrace communism in the name of the people.” And the far right said, “it’s all the fault "of these ghastly socialists, Marxists, and Jew’s "who stabbed the great German army in the back.” And in the middle of all this the poor Weimar Republic is trying to steer away through these extreme positions. Let me give you one quotation, this is “The Weimar Republic” in the Charles Rivers edition, and it’s just a small sentence. “The veterans,” at the time 1920 shall we say, “presume the Great War "would not be the war to end all wars.” The British said, Lloyd George said, “this is the war to end all wars.” But it goes on to say Marshall Faulk who was Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces but not including the American’s who refused to serve under Faulk’s leadership, Faulk’s said “this is not a piece, "it is an Armistice that will last 20 years.” And he was right. 1919 plus 20 gives you 1939. Faulk realised at the time that this was only an armistice and Germany would have to be defeated again. I had a student friend whose father was a friend of Marshall Faulk, they were French. And his father asked Faulk on one occasion, “why did you not press on to Berlin "and take total surrender of the German’s?”

And Faulk’s answer was, “there had been too many deaths, "I couldn’t commit myself to even more "by advancing on Berlin when we had a chance to stop.” That was a lesson of course Stalin learned in World War two. And you all remember that it was Russian forces that reached Berlin in 1945 before Allied Forces, British-American-French forces reached Berlin. Stalin had learnt the lesson of Faulk’s mistake, but if you had been in Faulk’s position I might suggest to you that you might’ve taken the same view because you didn’t know what was round the corner in terms of World War two in the same way that Faulk didn’t know. Although Faulk does say this is only an armistice. The largest party on the far right. Now we’re interested in the far right because this is sadly the immediate future of Germany when you think of Hitler and Nazi’s. “The largest party on the far right "was the so called DNVP, "the German National People’s Party.” It doesn’t really matter. Its leadership was almost entirely Prussian, it was pro monarchy, it was antisemitic, and it was overwhelmingly Protestant which made it anti Catholic. Remember the old divide in Germany between Protestants and Catholics? This far right group is anti Catholic, anti Jew, pro monarchy, and in effect is the national party of Prussia. Prussia had lost land at the Treaty of Versailles 1919 and the Prussian’s bore this huge chip on their shoulder about Versailles. There were assassins linked to this German National People’s Party that took out to use a phrase, that assassinated, killed, those Jew’s and Roman Catholic’s that they believed were a threat to Germany. This doesn’t seem like peace at all. Now sometimes history is stranger than fiction. And with the German National People’s Party it is a very strange fact that they sought to be an ally of Lenin’s Russia. Say that again, a far right antisemitic, anti Catholic, pro monarchist, traditional younker Prussian party wants to deal with Lenin’s Bolshevik party in Russia. I mean that doesn’t make sense, well it does in a twisted sort of way. This is James Hawes writing, and he writes this, “the German army after 1919 "was proportionately even more Prussian "than the one before 1914. "It was packed tight with highly decorated junior officers "of ancient military name who would never get promotion "unless the army grew vastly.”

And the army had been reduced in size at Versailles. “They had seen their beloved Prussia "republicanized and amputated,” the bit that went to Poland, “in favour of their former underlings, the Poles. "The smoke of the first world war had scarcely cleared "before their leader von Seeckt,” S-E-E-C-K-T.“ And those of you who speak German, well tell me how to pronounce it, sect or seeked, "was looking forward to the day "when this would be put right. "Beneath the superficial differences "and supposed ideologies "these Prussians and Lenin’s Bolsheviks’ "shared profound call to affinities.” So what were the things that joined these extremes on the left in Prussia, and on the right in Germany? What joined them together? Well they disliked the democratic west, Britain, France, America. They thought we were weak, they thought we were corrupt morally, they thought we were decadent. Both parties believed in sheer brute force to get their way. They both approved of a militia, military style state. They were both determinedly antisemitic, and they hated above everything, Poland. As early as 1920 one of Lenin’s diplomats visited Berlin to speak to this far right party, the German National People’s Party, with a possibility of combining the German army and the red army for a joint war on Poland. Now we all know that in the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact that is precisely what is to happen under Hitler in 1939. But here it is being discussed nearly 20 years before Hitler put it. It isn’t an idea from no one, it is this old divide between Germany and Poland, and it’s the old Russian, now modern Russian view, that Tsarist Russia must be reformed.

And Tsarist Russia included Poland. And undoubtedly on a map in his bedroom Putin has Poland coloured in pencil as part of Russia. So this is an old divide that goes a long way back, back into Mediaeval times. There’s nothing new they say under the sun, and in many respects, that is true. Obviously extraordinary century of 1819 to 1919 in the story of Germany. The leader of the right of this party at the German National People’s Party said this. And I pick up my right book I will read you what he said. “The existence of Poland” said von Seeckt in 1922, “the existence of Poland is intolerable and incomparable "with Germany’s vital interest.” Sounds like Hitler. “She must disappear, and will do so "through her own inner weakness and through Russia "with our help. "Poland is even more intolerable for Russia than for us. "Russia can never tolerate Poland. "The attainment of the objective "must be one of the firmest guiding principles "of German policy, as it is capable of achievement "but only through Russia or with her help.” The Ribbentrop Molotov Pact, there it is bluntly stated in 1922. You might well argue, why did the politicians and civil servants in Paris, in Washington, and in London never pick up on this? And the answer is, in terms of Britain and France, we wanted to dance the war years away. It was too horrible to contemplate. And is always said in Britain that the veterans of the first World War never spoke about the war, only when they were very elderly men in their late 90’s and there were few of them left, were they persuaded to talk about it. But they in the main they did not talk about it. Whereas in the second after the second World War in my when I was a child and a teenager you couldn’t stop them talking about the war. I had a neighbour who thought he defeated Montgomery alone as far as I can say. But it was very different. They wanted to forget about it, and they had major problems, as we all know, they had economic problems. America had sought to withdraw back into traditional American policy, which is isolationism from western Europe’s problems.

That’s over, we’ve done it, we’ve done our bit, now we didn’t bother about it. On the left the Spartacists who we talked about, attempted a coup in January of 1919, a Lenin-style coup. Now in order to deal with this the Weimar government didn’t call on the army. Now a small army, because it’s very Prussian. And given half a chance, they would’ve overturned the Weimar government and taken Germany to the far right. Instead of which, the Weimar government though it could use groups of ex soldiers how had joined together in what were called Freikorps or free core, independent army units, numerous groups of ex soldiers joined them. They were right wing and they feared a Marxist invasion from Russia and the establishment of a Marxist Germany by force of arms. The Weimar Republic called upon them to put down this left wing revolution in 1919, and they did. But they became dangerous in themselves, and they were dissolved in 1921. Many later joined as volunteers, Hitler’s SS. Some German historians now refer to the Freikorps as the Vanguard of terror. In other words the Vanguard of Nazi instruments of horror like the SS. So you could say that the left’s bid for power had failed.

Why did it fail? It failed because it did not have a military wing basically. The right has a military wing, that is to say in the German army, and the Freikorps. And Hitler realised that there were potentials for the recruitment of ex World War one soldiers, and after all, he was one of them, that the injured, the things like the SS, that he could create what’s in Britain we call the bully boys of the Nazi party on the streets. The left, the Marxist weren’t able to do that. Eisner in Munich is an intellectual, he’s Jewish, you would expect him to be an intellectual. But intellectualism wasn’t going to win the day in a country like Germany which was so deeply divided politically, religiously, in every way Germany was so divided. The Weimar Republic was the only, we all say from the west, sure way. And that’s why the west, France and Britain, put all their beliefs into it. You believe what you want to believe. You don’t want to turn the stone over, you’ll take it at face value. The Weimar Republic is democratic and it’s moving Germany towards democracy. After all, that’s what happened in Britain and France when our monarchy was ended in Britain in 1649, and in France in 1789, and so it’s going to happen in Germany 1919. So don’t worry about it, was the view. And let’s have another dance. But they misinterpreted before 1933, before 1933 and Hitler’s assumption of power. Here in Britain Churchill was writing and speaking about the potential danger of the far right in Germany, as he was also speaking about the danger of a militant Bolshevism, the word he always used in Russia. There were people who were aware of it, but Churchill was out of office. His own phrase was, “the wilderness years,” that’s how he describes his terms out of office in the 1930’s, the wilderness years.

And he wasn’t listened to. And the same is true of people like Degas who was involved in establishing the masineau line. And which was a perfectly sensible thing, except the government never provided the means to make sure that it didn’t have open ends to it, which the German’s used of course in 1914. From 1920 to ‘23 there is still trouble from the left and from the right against the Weimar Republic. And the Weimar Republic is dealing with it, using Freikorps troops, and to some extent using the army as well. It was under pressure from the left and right. And had we been in Berlin in 1920 to '23 we might well have said, “I think revolution is coming. "I can’t tell you whether it’s going to be the far right "or the far left, "but I can’t see the Weimar Democracy surviving.” The left accused the Weimar Republic of betraying the workers. Only Marxism was the answer, not democracy. The right were opposed to any democratic system, they wanted an authoritarian state like that of Imperial Germany from 1871 to 1918. Let me just pause for a second and say obviously there were a large number of political parties in Germany. And also to say that under the Weimar Republic the Reichstag was an important, the important place where laws are made and people are elected to the Reichstag like they’re elected in all our countries today. And the DMPP wasn’t the only far right party, it was the largest, but sometimes the largest isn’t the most important. And it was the smaller parties. Now you would’ve hoped that there would be a body like the British Intelligence Forces. The American’s had withdrawn, but the British Intelligence Forces and the French might’ve put a marker on some of these smaller parties, but they didn’t. And there’s one party in particular based in Munich called the DWP, the German workers party. It’s a small party that was founded by a Berlin, sorry a Berlin locksmith called Anton Drexler, D-R-E-X-L-E-R, Anton Drexler.

Drexler was horrified by the rise of Marxism, he’d seen it for himself in Munich. When Eisner had created this short lived Marxist state in Munich and slightly wider in Bavaria. And Drexler was horrified at it. And he formed this German workers party because he believed that he could recruit workers into a right wing party as the Communists were recruiting workers into a left wing. Now in British political terms that’s very understandable. I am I think it probably is understandable in other countries, or countries in which other people are listening from today. In Britain the right wing conservative party has always been able to draw upon a working class nationalism to vote conservative. Whereas the labour party regards itself with the trade unions as the voice of the workers. And it brings in large numbers of intellectual middle class. So we understand about the far right being able to recruit workers. Most of the far right in Britain today, and I suspect elsewhere, well I don’t suspect, I know elsewhere, are drawn from the working class. They may have a middle class leadership, but they have a working class base. So ? Isn’t mad and off the wall, far from it. He attracted however, not workers, but low and middle class. Now that’s quite interesting, why? Because the lower middle class have the means of providing a future leadership. And one of these was ex army corporal Adolf Hitler who joined the German Worker’s Party. Before I finally tell that part of the story let me say this. The political situation, although never fully resolved by the Weimar Government, was at least for the time being in the 1920’s, content. But the government had no respite from problems. And some of you are saying, “when’s William going to talk "about the other problems?” Well the greatest other problem as Clinton would tell us, is the economy stupid. And it’s the economy.

Not only did the German government face the burden of paying allies reparation in the order of something like 50 billion gold marks at 1921 prices, they never fulfilled that. They also had to deal with hunger and famine. So they first of all are faced with a problem of the far right and the far left who are prepared to take political action on the streets and not in parliament. They are then faced with these reparations. And France under Clemenceau, and indeed it was Faulk’s opinion as well, wished to reduce Germany to the state of a mediaeval agricultural country. That’s what Clemenceau said. That is not the British view, and it is wildly different from Woodrow Wilson’s view, but it was the French view. So they have to deal with hunger. And this is just a quotation from the period about hunger. This is taken from a book on the British blockade during the first World War. “According to a report entitled 'Hunger’ "issued by the school care commission section "of the Berlin teachers union,” at the time, quote, this is in Berlin, these are teachers. Teachers are often the first professionals to raise their heads above the parapet about famine. And we know that today in Britain about cost of living prices. It’s very often teachers who see it with children coming to school with nothing to eat or inappropriate food. So “in Berlin the teachers union said, ”‘the moral sense was in many cases deadened “by the animal fight for existence. "The feelings of physical pain, hunger, and thirst, "physical exhaustion and innovation "dominated nearly all sensations "and often influenced desire and action.” And David Jenike who wrote the book “The British Blockade During World War One” adds. “As food became more scarce "German civilian’s began acting out primal instincts "to feed themselves. "And in many cases, this need dominated their entire lives. "According to the same report, "morals, cultural norms, and laws "were often blatantly disregarded "as millions sought to obtain "what they and their families needed to survive. "This often calls otherwise law abiding citizens "to engage in illicit acts such as theft, "cheating, or assaulting other citizens "in their never ending quest to feed themselves.”

No democracy can exist in such a situation. And added to all this, there was rampant inflation which became hyper inflation between 1919 and 1923 in Germany. If you read five books on the inflation you will find five sets of different figures, and this is because people took different measures. And it gets you sort of nowhere. Better to look at the effects in my opinion. Many German’s took to banter. So lawyers in Berlin would accept food in payment for legal services. Many German’s on the right and on the left, and indeed publish it not in in doubt in the middle. And who did they blame? Of course they blame the Jews. They said the Jews were financially greedy and were corrupt and that’s why you’re in this state. Of course that was entirely untrue, and the truth is that there were two underpinning reasons. One, the cost of the war had been enormous for Germany. Secondly, the German government joined the war, refused to raise taxes, why? Because they feared revolution. So they borrowed money. And now in the 1920’s that borrowing or the interest on that borrowing has to be paid back. So the government is in an appalling economic crisis. In 1923 an American journalist travelled to Germany to Berlin and wrote this. “November 23, the week has witnessed looting of many shops "in various parts of the city. "Unrest in most other cities throughout the country. "An actual street fighting in many. "Looting and rioting are regarded "as so much writs to the middle of the communists "and the reactionaries alike.” IE, the far right and the far left see the Weimar government collapsing with strikes and with famine and with riots on the streets. And they meet and they say, “we could use this. "We tell them we’ve got the answer.” “The communists take advantage of it,” he writes, or she writes rather. “The communists take advantage of it "and preach their dogma.

"The monarchists do the same. "They smile cynically when they read "of a frightful increase in the cost of living, "and say, 'it’s not yet gone far enough. ”'it must be worse still before the masses “'realise the mistake they’ve made ”'in establishing a democratic republic. “'We shall wait a bit longer.’” And she comments, “but most of the times people are so weary, "so destroyed by uncertainty, "and long years of nervous strength "that they do not care what happens, "they are tired of it all.” You could’ve been born when Bismark was still running the country, say middle of the 1880’s, 1885. You would still be alive. Many in 1945, aged 60. You would’ve gone through the first World War, the catastrophe of Weimar, the horror of Nazism, and seen Germany and Bismark’s dream shattered in the division between west and east Germany. And I think historians often ignore the continuity of history. And we put, we chop up things, and we shouldn’t chop up things. We should, it annoys me as a gerontologist that when we’re old they say, “well this isn’t your world grandpa, this is our world.” No it isn’t, it’s our world as well, and we forget that. And it’s dangerous in history to forget that, because it’s dangerous to forget the individual and the individuals families. I’ll just throw that out. After the crisis of the hypo inflation gradually between 1924 and 1929 the government was in control to a large extent. It didn’t mean to say that challenges weren’t there. Then in 1929 bang, the wall street crash followed by the Great Depression. Wow, nothing like kicking a person when they’re down. The German government couldn’t really recover from that on top of all the rest that it had gone through previously. This was a storm too many for the Weimar government.

But before I return to the politics of the last part of the story today of 1929 to 1933, I want to quote another American journalist William Shirer. And Shirer wrote, you remember he wrote about the third Reich, but he also wrote as a journalist at the time. And at the time, this is what he wrote. “I was stationed in Paris and occasionally in London "at that time. "And fascinating though these capitals were, "they paled a little when one came to Berlin and Munich. "A wonderful ferment was working in Germany. "Life seemed more free, more modern, more exciting "than in any place I’d ever seen. "Nowhere else did the arts or the intellectual life "seem so lively. "In contemporary writing, painting, architecture. "In music and drama "there were new currants and fine talents. "And everywhere there was an accent on youth. "They were a healthy carefree sun worshipping lot, "and they were filled with an enormous zest "for living life to the full and in complete freedom.” Exactly as in France, , exactly as in America, and dare I say, even in England people let their hair down. Shirer finishes by saying, “the old oppressive Prussian spirit "seemed to be dead and buried. "Most German’s were met, "politicians, writers, editors, artists, professors, "students, businessmen, labour leaders, "struck you as being democratic, liberal, even pacifist.” How can even a clever journalist and writer get it so wrong? But many people did. Very few saw beneath the surface of German society that other things were stirring. And the answer is Adolf Hitler. Hitler joined you remember from half an hour ago, Anton Drexler’s German Workers Party in 1919.

By the following year he had replaced Drexler as leader of the party, and he changed the parties name to the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, or the Nazi party. Three years later Dexler resigned and died in obscurity in Munich in 1942. So point one, Hitler didn’t create a party, he infiltrated a party and changed it. The new party put forward a 25 point manifesto. Hitler wasn’t bothered about manifestos, of course he wasn’t. But if you want to understand why he wasn’t bothered about it, let me first of all say what it included. “Under Hitler’s influence, "the party took on the Nazi salute, "the brown shirted uniform, the swastika flag, "and the presence of armed squads to defend its meetings "and break up the meetings of its opponents. "These men would eventually become the brown shirted SA "led by Ernst Röhm. "The new Nazi party proclaimed beliefs including the unity "of all German speakers,” IE “tearing up the treaty of Versailles, and antisemitism. "Amongst these typical demands of the right wing, "there were also left wing, "calls for nationalisation of major industries "and profit sharing. "And the concerns of the low and middle class "appeared in please to shop department stores "in order to protect small shop keepers "and to grant lands to peasants.” But this is a book called “The Third Reich Rise and Fall of the Nazis” by Martin Witter. Incidentally I’m going to put on a book list later this week which will cover this week and next week. But Hitler was always reluctant to be tied down to a political manifesto. For him, the seizure of unfettered power was critical. Otto Strauss, a one time friend of Hitler, recalls an early argument they once had. So all this is in quotations. This is what Otto wrote. “‘Power!’” screamed Adolf. “‘We must have power!’” “‘Before we gain it,’” I replied firmly, “‘let us decide what we propose to do with the power. ”'Our programme is too vague, “'we must construct something solid and enduring.’ "Hitler thumped the table and barked, ‘power first! ”'afterwards we can act as circumstances dictate.’“

This isn’t an ordinary political party of the right at all, this is a dictator using a party to obtain power. As early as 1923 Hitler made a bid for power which failed, the Munich Beer Hall Putsch if you remember, it was a failure. He was sent to prison for five years which in the end turned out to be nine months. And during that time, he wrote with assistance, "Mein Kampf”. The year is 1929 to 1933 were crisis years that led in such a short time of four years, to Hitler’s seizure of power. It all began as we’ve seen today, with the economic consequences for Germany of the Wall Street crash and the world economic crisis of the early 1930’s. By between 1929 and 1933 unemployment in Germany more than doubled from around two million to over five million. And Latin remarks in this way, he says, “there is no dispute amongst historians "that the world economic crisis "was an event of major significance. "The crisis was felt throughout the world, "and it affected Germany in a particularly savage way. "The main issue that arises "as whether or not it should be considered "the direct cause of Weimar’s collapse. "Germany was probably more likely "to suffer the consequences of the crash. "The collapse of share prices on the New York stock exchange "than any other country. "Almost immediately the American loads and investment "dried up and this was quickly followed "by demands for the repayment for the loans "that had previously been provided so willingly. "As the demand for exports collapsed the world trade sum, "and in this situation German industry "could no longer pay its way.

"Without the support of overseas loans "and its export trade forming, prices and wages fell, "and the number of bankruptcies increased.” Unemployment rises, part-time work increases, which is a form of unemployment. And I want to read this from late because I think this is a particularly good, it’s only a short sentence. “The Great Depression speeded up "the end of the Weimar Republic, "but only because its existing economic circumstances "were already very difficult, "and the democratic basis of its government "was not sufficiently well established.” It had no history of democracy, unlike England with all the writings of the 17th century, unlike America with the English writings of the 17th century. And the enlightenment writings from France of the 18th century. Unlike France with the writings of philosophism in the 18th century, Germany had very little, it had Marx. Crisis, now facing Germany by 1933, is that Germany needed a political solution and the Weimar Republic couldn’t supply it, the left was beaten, and the only alternative was Hitler’s Nazi party. In the spring of 1932 Hindenburg, sorry the president of Germany age 85, finished his seven-year term of office. He stood again, and had he served the full term he’d have been 92 by the time the second period of office was over. The Nazi’s campaigned for Hitler to be elected president, but the chancellor brewing, stood by Hindenburg. Hindenburg won the second ballot with 53% of the vote to Hitler’s 36.8%. But having won, Hindenburg sacked as chancellor in May 1932. In January of 1933 Hitler was appointed by Hindenburg as Chancellor of Germany, following a rather short lived administrations of von Papen and von Schleicher. Hitler becomes chancellor in January 33. He was supported by the aristocratic Prussian right who felt, “oh this man is a nobody, "we can control him, pull his strings, he’s no one. "Worried about him? "Oh for goodness sake, it’s a peasant.”

Well they were going to find out something different. And I’m going to finish with a quotation from “The Third Reich” by Martin Wissick which reads like this. “On the 30th of January 1933 "Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. "That night, thousands of SA, SS, and steel helmets, "the First World War Veteran’s Association, "marched from Berlin in a vast taut lit procession. "Thousands watched them, and Hindenburg took the salute. "To many in the crowds, "it was like the unity that had swept the nation "in August 1914 at the start of the first World War. "It was as if the years of defeated humiliation "had never happened, "as if the long for national revival "was at last taking place.” But it wasn’t, we know that, and we know there is no revival, but the horror of the depths that humanity can sink with Hitler’s regime from 1933 to what we might say the inevitable end in the bunker in Berlin in 1945. But that ladies and gentlemen, children, is the story for another time. I’ll finish, I’m sure there’s lots of questions and comments. Yeah I’ve got the number. Shall I see what?

Q&A and Comments:

Q: “Do you know how the Kaiser felt about the holocaust?”

A: He died really before the holocaust took off in its final form. He was deeply antisemitic so he wouldn’t have disapproved I don’t think.

Q: “You don’t think Germany post 1945 was a democracy?”

A: Of course I don’t, only west Germany was a democracy, East Germany is Marxist, that’s the point. It has to reunite in the 1990’s. Half of Germany is not a democracy. Between 1945 and pretty well the end of the century, that’s the point.

Oh, Rachel, sorry I didn’t mention the people who kindly, Sharon said about the holocaust and Kaiser, Abigail said about democracy. Rachel has asked, “thank you William for confirming my view "that antisemitism is deep in the German DNA. "I don’t think it has changed.” That of course is a question for the last talk really. And the rise of the far right in Germany it should be concerning to us. The rise and the fall of right across Western Europe should be concerning to us. And the attack on liberal democracy from within the system should be concerning us, like Trump. And some of us feel that we also in Britain are going down that path, others would disagree.

Oh Faulk, I think Faulk semi colon, “pity Eric Sharon did not enter Kyler.” Pronunciation of Faulk should be Faulk, I’m sorry I’m never going to say that, I’ve always said Faulk for 70 odd years.

Q: “Why did this German party and the Russian party "hate Poland so much?”

A: Well the Russian’s looked down on the Poles as inferior, and Poland as being part of the Tsarist empire for a long time. The German’s looked down in an ethnic way on Poland, but Poland was, well the Prussian’s in particular looked down because Poland is Catholic, Prussia is protestant, but they had always been opposed. Had Prussia to the Polish Lithuania commonwealth of the Middle Ages. It’s both historical, ethnic, religious, every possible answer you can find underlies that division.

Peter asks, or doesn’t ask, maybe he’s going to tell me or not. “Asking how to reconcile the left and the right "is one dimensional analysis "what is probably a two dimensional conflict. "The enlightenment was an epistemological step "from identification with ideologies "to identification with empiricism. "Substituting political ideologies "for religious ideologies was a step sideways "not a step forward. "People who identified with empiricism "found the imposition of ideologies just as unacceptable "as the imposition of religious ideologies. "I doubt Foy or Ernstein wrote found political ideologies "any more philosophically mature "than religious ideologies.” But hang on, hang on. You are right about ideologies, but who are you to say, Peter I don’t know if you’re American, British, Canadian, what you are, but whether doesn’t matter which country you’re in, the political parties have ideologies. At times, political parties in democracies have an ideological swing, and at other times they don’t. If I take Britain, the labour party, the first labour government after the war had an ideology, the welfare state. Misses Thatcher had an ideology. You could say in United States that trump certainly had an ideology, and at a lesser level, so did other American presidents. So ideology doesn’t necessarily mean extremism. It can, well I did quote Trump, sorry take that out of the equation, put Reagan or someone, or Kennedy. So ideologies aren’t necessarily entirely negative. I understand the point you’re making but I think you’ll have to be slightly careful there. And if you say religious ideologies, well that denies those who’ve taken power in western democracies who are themselves deeply religious people. We just had an election today in Scotland for the leader of the Scottish nationalist party who will become first minister in Scotland tomorrow. And one of the three candidates was a very strict Evangelical Christian who objected to gay marriage, and she didn’t win, and that’s probably the reason she didn’t win. But nevertheless she had strong convictions. There have been other leaders who equally had strong religious views. It’s a bit difficult to find good examples, but certainly in America you can look at people with strong religious views. Sorry I’m sorry Peter, your question is so interesting. You’ve got another paragraph which will tell me how wrong I am.

“Try analysing these conflicts "on the point of your people "who identify with empiricism "and those who still identify with ideologies.” Still identify with ideologies? I think you’ll find lots of people identify with ideologies. “Imperialists not only find the beliefs "idealist unacceptable, they find their form "of reasoning unacceptable.

Q: "Can tolerance ever be achieved between these groups? "Can idealists stop imposing their beliefs on others?”

A: Well in a democracy they won’t be elected or if they are elected then they have to water down their ideology to one that is acceptable, because otherwise they won’t win again. I’m not, I understand the point you’re making, and it is a broad point, but looking at the detail of western democracies, I don’t think I’d buy it.

Q: Roman, “do you think there was less denial "of the horror of the second World War "than there was of the first war? "If so, why?”

A: The if so why is the difficult question. The point of the first World War, there was not, European’s had faced nothing like it. And before an American says, “yes but we had trenches outside Gettysburg.” Yes I know, but and the American, the extraordinary thing is that nobody’s seemed to learn from the American Civil War. But the first World War was the first industrialised war, it was the first war that embraced civilians in a major way, and it was something that you were taken off a farm. There’s stories in England that farm labourers were taken from Northern English counties like Lancaster and Yorkshire. And when they got by train they were going to be taken to the South of England to camps like the American’s would take these folks to camps before going across the channel. And in America’s case, going across the Atlantic. These lads who came from rural backgrounds in the North of England went by train to the south. They stopped in Birmingham. And when they got to Birmingham the Birmingham accent, for those of you aren’t British, the Birmingham accent is one of the nastiest accents in English you could ever possibly wish not to have. And the Birmingham accent was so strong these northerners couldn’t understand it. And they said to their officers, “well we’re in France now.” They didn’t even know they were still in England. And so this war came as a tremendous shock to people. When the second World War came they’d had the experience of their fathers, and some of them their own experience of World War one. So the horror didn’t hit. If you’re referring to the horror of the holocaust, that’s an event afterwards, and for non Jews it seems to have been part for many years as a separate issue. And they were always happy to talk about it, and you could find people in Britain at least, civilians as well as those in the armed forces, who would say in later life that the second World War was the greatest moment in their own lives. I don’t know.

Q: Oh hello Nicholas. “When did Degas become politicised?”

A: Oh well that’s an interesting question. Degas was always a political animal. In terms of how he became more politicised was after the German’s had broken through. You’ll remember that Degas is the only part of the French army that doesn’t actually retreat from the advancing German’s, he held the line. He then is brought into the government, and from that moment on he’s the only member of the government who gets out of France and comes to Britain. Britain got him out. And then he sees himself as the civilians of France. I love Degas but he really did have an enormous sense of his own superiority.

Q: “Do you think,” oh Paul that’s a difficult question, “do you think democracy might have survived in Germany "if the crash hadn’t happened?”

A: Bluntly, no, I think the right were going to take power. I don’t think there was a groundswell of support for the democracy, nor was there the army. In all democracies the army must be controlled, they did not control the army. The army was a law unto itself in many respects, and it didn’t represent the nation as a whole but Prussia. It’s why we in Britain are pleased that the head of the army is the king and not the prime minister. And the officers hold the kings commission, not the nation’s commission. In America, the president is Commander in Chief, and there are many American’s who worry about that position when you had Trump as president. You could worry about it if Britain had a king who was yeah well we had one, Edward the eight, and we simply got rid of him through parliament. So we feel a bit superior that our system is a more balanced one.

Oh I don’t know, oh dear I’m in trouble now. Sorry I can’t see.

Q: “Since famine is so effective in trying political seat "why do you think Putin permitted Ukraine "to distribute food through the Black Sea?”

A: That’s another very very good question. I suspect he did so because in a funny way he didn’t want to lose the support of the countries to whom the food was going in the Middle East. And he needs some support, I think that’s why he did it, but I don’t know.

Q: Erica, “in what way did Germany get stabbed in the back "or so considered at the end of World War one?”

A: Because of the riots that took place and the overthrow of the monarchy. They were not defeated, they did not surrender, they were forced into the situation two days after the Kaiser had fled to negotiate an armistice. And they blame it on socialists and Jews, and it’s called the stab in the back because it was on the home front that the army was defeated, not by the enemy. That is the lie that Hitler propagates.

Barbara. Oh, “in 2015” says Barbara, “there was an exhibition in Jerusalem "of works from the National Gallery in Berlin. "Subtitle from the beginning of the century "to the end of the war.” Oh I wish I’d seen that, that sounds fantastically interesting.

Q: Jonathan says, “don’t the right left join together?”

A: Not in Germany. If you remember, Hitler puts socialists in camps. If you’re asking the question Jonathan in terms of where ideologies meet, yes they do, we saw that in the move made in 19, early 20’s, between the German far right party and Lenin. There are things that they share in common. When I talked about the formation of the Nazi party under Hitler, he embraced both ideologies of the right and of the left. And some, like antisemitism were both right and left, he embodied nationalisation of industries on the left, and on the right he believed in thugs on the streets if you like. So they do in that sense. But if you’re saying “were the left brought into power?” No they weren’t. And I cannot, somebody will tell me I’m wrong, I cannot think of a single situation where a far right and a far left party have taken power together. You can have far left parties joining with centre left parties, you can have far right parties joining with centre right parties. We have that sort of situation in Israel for example. But I can’t think of an example where the far left and the far right would come together.

I think I’ve come to the end, so I have to say thank you all again for such interesting questions. I hope I answered some to your satisfaction. I will have answered others certainly not to your satisfaction. Hold hard to what you believe, you don’t have to accept what I say. I find your questions and comments stimulating. And if you were to hear me speaking two years time you’d thought, you might say to yourself, “well William has changed what he said, "perhaps he’d learnt from me.” And indeed I might well have done, as I hope you’ve learned in your case from me. Don’t accept it, challenge it, read it for yourselves. And if you can, read some of the original material from the period, because that is the easiest way to get under the skin of things. But I’m not going to be quoting “Mein Kampf” I’ll tell you that first off.

So there we are, we’re finished now. Thanks very much for this then.