The answer is probably "very little", but I wonder what a May rising instead of an Easter rising on its own, not even considering the lean of the organizers, would do for Irish socialist sentiment. Having a national touchstone associated with a labor symbol as opposed to a religious one. Very interesting update!
The Widening Gyre: The Great War and the Remaking of Europe
- Thread starter Curby
- Start date
- Timeline Post-1900
Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
- Location
- The Great State of Warshington
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not to mention the possibility of Irish-Americans contributing to the rebuilding of Dublin.
Speaking of Irish-Americans, what about a Boston banker who at about this time IOTL was welcoming a very special baby boy.
Speaking of Irish-Americans, what about a Boston banker who at about this time IOTL was welcoming a very special baby boy.
- Location
- Fort Worth, TX
I was surprised with A-H actually reforming themselves to a degree.
The Military History of the War, 1917
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Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
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- Pronouns
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This will be the last update for 1917, since I've come to the conclusion that internal politics and labor unrest in France and Italy are best covered in future posts. This one is a bit shorter than most, since the essential lineaments of the military campaigns of 1917 have already been covered in several of the previous entries. At the very bottom is a comparison of the strength of the various armies compared to OTL; this is important to setting the stage for the battles of 1918.
At this point, we are starting to leave the merely historical and enter the present - or at least, what the individuals in this timeline feel to be of palpable importance to their own lives. Of course, to some extent this applies to the entirety of the war, but it is particularly true of its last few years. Consequently, I'm going to give up the device of the omnipresent, omniscient narrator for future entries; more posts will be framed as debates between historians rather than as mere neutral retellings of events. Ideology will lay a thicker and more lustrous sheen on how the vast struggles of 1918 are retold. In a sense, I think this better approximates the actual spirit of the era; it was a time when it was difficult to be fully apolitical. Civilians and soldiers alike feel the need to take a stand, and their perception of events are indelibly linked to the positions they stake out. It was impossible to live through these events as a mere observer; it stands to reason that it is impossible to understand and narrate them as mere neutral spectators.
Thank you again to everyone who has been reading and providing feedback on the timeline. This has been a lot of fun, and I'm excited to hear what people think about the events to come! I've added a new poll at the top of the timeline to gauge what readers are most interested in hearing about; if it leans in one particular direction, it will probably structure the way that I do future updates.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1917 was the first year in which all of the great powers abandoned the hopes of winning the war in a decisive offensive campaign. Its principal battles occurred in peripheral theatres, with smaller numbers of troops and more limited goals. In the wake of the mammoth campaigns of Lille and Verdun, none of the principal combatants felt comfortable launching another grand attack in the west.
The British did win a number of victories in the winter. But they were incapable of winning the war alone, without the support of their exhausted allies. In truth, the decision to direct their reserves toward the Balkans rather than France was an indication that even the British believed that there could be no decisive, war-winning victory anymore. In 1917, the Entente and Central Powers targeted each other's allies, attempting to knock out the weaker members of the opposing coalition so that they could more easily concentrate their forces on the stronger ones.
Insofar as this was the strategy, none of the great powers were successful. Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey all weathered assaults from superior armies. Some of these minor powers suffered worse than others, but all were able to remain in the war. Perhaps the most crucial moment of the year came in March, when an Austro-German force defeated in detail several Greek and Romanian armies outside of Sofia, breaking the siege of the city and ensuring that Bulgaria stayed in the fight.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff believed that the "eastern problem" of Romania had to be dealt with as soon as possible; they worried that more Romanian successes might prompt Russia to launch an offensive. In this, they likely overestimated the morale of the average Russian soldier, but it ended up dictating German war policy throughout the year regardless. Germany and Austria agreed to a set of offensives in May, one to retake eastern bulgaria and split the Entente forces in Constantinople from those in Romania, and another that would drive into the Po Valley and force an Italian surrender.
The Italian offensive achieved much more immediate success than the Bulgarian one. On May 7th, twin assaults began in the Trentino and Isonzo, the former toward Asiago and the latter toward Caparetto. For three days, dug-in Italian forces stubbornly resisted the assault in Isonzo until the mass use of poison gas drove them out of the trenches. The breakthrough in the north happened on the very first day, and Asiago was seized on the 11th. News of the seemingly unstoppable advance of the Austro-German mountaineers led to panic among the Italian soldiers in the Isonzo sector, who feared encirclement from the west. Udine fell by the 11th; by the 19th, Austrian forces had crossed the Piave, threatening the cities of Vicenza, Padua, and Venice. If they broke through here, the way would be open to the rest of the industrial Po Valley. Attempts to relieve the struggling Italians were foiled by the Irish revolt and a Central Powers offensive in Bulgaria.
The Balkan offensive ran into much more trouble than the Italian one. A week into the operation, there was no decisive breakout by the Central Powers. Well-equipped Romanian and British troops repeatedly threw back waves of German and Austrian soldiers advancing toward Pleven and Pazardzhik. It was only Romanian reluctance to divert its reserves to Bulgaria and British logistical trouble which eventually forced the Entente armies in Bulgaria to retreat.
This was not a rout. The retreat of Romanian-British forces was an orderly, fighting defense which inflicted crushing casualties on the invaders, particularly the Austrians, who were still not as well-equipped as their German counterparts. British forces in the region were able to hold onto the Ottoman city of Adrianople, while Romanian forces and a British army entrenched in Dobrudja. The remainder of the Romanian army successfully retreated behind the Danube river well before any attempt to bridge it could be attempted.
The Greek Army was missing from these operations, largely because Greece proper was in a low-level civil war. Peasant revolts in the mountainous north disrupted the army's supply chain and forced it to divert divisions to its rear. The ruling government of Venizelos was wracked by assassinations of cabinet ministers, labor stoppages, and food deficits. In the event of a concerted German-Austrian assault, the nation may very well have been forced to surrender, but neither the German nor the Austrian command considered it an important enough target.
In Italy, the valiant defense of several reserve mountaineer divisions outside of Vicenza bought enough time for France to transfer eight divisions to shore up Italian morale. By June 29th, the new front stabilized along an axis that ran in the west from Verdona through Vicenza, Padua, and Venice. The eastern portion of this defensive line was the most vulnerable to assault; the Italian government feared that another Central Powers offensive would force it to surrender Venice.
Although the Austrians hoped to dedicate the next phase of the offensive to Italy, Ludendorff believed it was still imperative to deal with Romania. In mid-august came a fresh offensive. In the west, a mixed Austro-German army invaded Transylvania, targeting heavily defended mountain passes held by elite Romanian troops. Further south, the Bulgarians assaulted Dobrudja, while Austrian troops stationed in Eastern Galicia and Western Ukraine marched into Moldova.
Falkenhayn's western armies found themselves thrown back time and again from the entrenched Romanian troops in Transylvania. In the northeast, an Austrian column led by Franz Confrad von hötzendorf made its way from Galicia into Moldovia, but was plagued by supply problems and guerilla activity. On the 21st, the German high command considered calling off the assault, but Conrad assured them that his army would soon break out of the forests of Moldavia into Wallachia, rendering the position of the Romanian mountaineers in Transylvania untenable.
By the 24th, Conrad had indeed made some progress in clearing Moldavia of its British-Romanian defenders; Jassy fell on the 22nd, and Kishenev two days later. But his efforts were soon rendered futile by a mutiny in the exhausted Bulgarian Army, many of whose soldiers had been fighting for over five years. Taking advantage of the chaos, two Romanian-British armies counterattacked, decimating a Bulgarian division, capturing several more, and then heading south towards Varna.
Shortly thereafter, the OHL called off the assault, relieved Falkenhayn of his command, and placed August von Mackensen in charge of halting the counteroffensive in the south. Meanwhile, the British Army in Dobrudja swung north to confront Conrad's force; Conrad, still confident of his position, ignored the instructions of the high command and continued south toward the town of Focsani. Romanian reserves released from Transylvania cut into his northern flank, while a British assault fixed his army in place. By the time he ordered his army to retreat, Romanian soldiers occupied much of the position to his rear. The battle of Foscani led to the loss of over 100,000 Austrian troops, the vast majority of them captured. Shortly after the defeat, Conrad von Hotzendorf was dismissed from the Austrian General Staff.
The failure of the Romanian offensive led the German general staff to shift its troops over to the defensive until a peace deal with Russia could be secured. It was widely believed that the Russian government would soon collapse, which would provide another opening to begin negotiations. Increasingly, hopes were placed in the upcoming campaign of submarine warfare, which high command believed could force the western powers into a harsh peace without requiring a costly offensive in France.
In reality, Britain was aware of the possibility of unrestricted submarine warfare for some time. Suspicions were first raised when German submarine activity declined precipitously in March and April despite the imposition of the blockade, prompting British naval officers to speculate about a future campaign of more concerted submarine warfare. British intelligence later revealed a build-up in submarine manufacturing in Germany. In July, a joint franco-british offensive was planned into Flanders to seize the Atlantic Ports from which German submarines operate, though it was a mostly hypothetical operation with no set date.
Then, in October, the campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare actually began. 165 submarines operating mainly from Flemish ports began to target merchant shipping in the English Channel and Atlantic. The insurrectionary activity in Saxony and Berlin convinced the British high command to push forward the planned Flanders offensive. It was hoped that low morale among the Germans would allow for a quick breakthrough. Massing in Ypres, two french armies and six British divisions prepared for the assault. By the time they were ready on October 23rd, the October Rising in Germany had been largely suppressed. But the entente had another trick up their sleeve: the first combat use of the new Franco-British landship, a hulking behemoth of mobile armor armed with the British 6-pounder naval gun and several machine guns. While its reliability and actual combat effectiveness left a great deal to be desired, the mass deployment of the vehicles had a crushing effect on German morale. Over the next month, the bloodiest battle since Verdun unfolded on the western front as the entente seized around half of the Flanders ports, creating massive logistical problems for German submarine operations.
Compared to OTL...
The German Army is around the same strength, having taken around 2-3% less casualties.
The Austro-Hungarian Army is considerably stronger, having suffered around 25% less casualties. It is also somewhat better equipped.
The Bulgarian Army is incomparably weaker: years of fighting have depleted its manpower reserves.
The Turkish Army is considerably weaker. It has taken around 25% more casualties, and is by this point much worse equipped than any other army.
The French Army is somewhat weaker, having taken around 10% more casualties; they are beginning to have trouble replenishing battlefield losses. It is slightly worse equipped; the French government is in a worse fiscal situation, meaning munitions production is starting to face some financial bottlenecks.
The British Army is considerably stronger, with more enlisted men, more artillery pieces and shells available, and around 15% less casualties taken.
The Russian Army is considerably weaker, having suffered around 25% more captured, injured, and killed soldiers compared to our timeline.
The Italian Army is somewhat weaker, having taken around 10% more casualties. It is around as well-equipped as IOTL.
The Romanian Army is considerably stronger. It is around 20% larger, and much better equipped than IOTL.
At this point, we are starting to leave the merely historical and enter the present - or at least, what the individuals in this timeline feel to be of palpable importance to their own lives. Of course, to some extent this applies to the entirety of the war, but it is particularly true of its last few years. Consequently, I'm going to give up the device of the omnipresent, omniscient narrator for future entries; more posts will be framed as debates between historians rather than as mere neutral retellings of events. Ideology will lay a thicker and more lustrous sheen on how the vast struggles of 1918 are retold. In a sense, I think this better approximates the actual spirit of the era; it was a time when it was difficult to be fully apolitical. Civilians and soldiers alike feel the need to take a stand, and their perception of events are indelibly linked to the positions they stake out. It was impossible to live through these events as a mere observer; it stands to reason that it is impossible to understand and narrate them as mere neutral spectators.
Thank you again to everyone who has been reading and providing feedback on the timeline. This has been a lot of fun, and I'm excited to hear what people think about the events to come! I've added a new poll at the top of the timeline to gauge what readers are most interested in hearing about; if it leans in one particular direction, it will probably structure the way that I do future updates.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Military History of the War, 1917
1917 was the first year in which all of the great powers abandoned the hopes of winning the war in a decisive offensive campaign. Its principal battles occurred in peripheral theatres, with smaller numbers of troops and more limited goals. In the wake of the mammoth campaigns of Lille and Verdun, none of the principal combatants felt comfortable launching another grand attack in the west.
The British did win a number of victories in the winter. But they were incapable of winning the war alone, without the support of their exhausted allies. In truth, the decision to direct their reserves toward the Balkans rather than France was an indication that even the British believed that there could be no decisive, war-winning victory anymore. In 1917, the Entente and Central Powers targeted each other's allies, attempting to knock out the weaker members of the opposing coalition so that they could more easily concentrate their forces on the stronger ones.
Insofar as this was the strategy, none of the great powers were successful. Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey all weathered assaults from superior armies. Some of these minor powers suffered worse than others, but all were able to remain in the war. Perhaps the most crucial moment of the year came in March, when an Austro-German force defeated in detail several Greek and Romanian armies outside of Sofia, breaking the siege of the city and ensuring that Bulgaria stayed in the fight.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff believed that the "eastern problem" of Romania had to be dealt with as soon as possible; they worried that more Romanian successes might prompt Russia to launch an offensive. In this, they likely overestimated the morale of the average Russian soldier, but it ended up dictating German war policy throughout the year regardless. Germany and Austria agreed to a set of offensives in May, one to retake eastern bulgaria and split the Entente forces in Constantinople from those in Romania, and another that would drive into the Po Valley and force an Italian surrender.
The Italian offensive achieved much more immediate success than the Bulgarian one. On May 7th, twin assaults began in the Trentino and Isonzo, the former toward Asiago and the latter toward Caparetto. For three days, dug-in Italian forces stubbornly resisted the assault in Isonzo until the mass use of poison gas drove them out of the trenches. The breakthrough in the north happened on the very first day, and Asiago was seized on the 11th. News of the seemingly unstoppable advance of the Austro-German mountaineers led to panic among the Italian soldiers in the Isonzo sector, who feared encirclement from the west. Udine fell by the 11th; by the 19th, Austrian forces had crossed the Piave, threatening the cities of Vicenza, Padua, and Venice. If they broke through here, the way would be open to the rest of the industrial Po Valley. Attempts to relieve the struggling Italians were foiled by the Irish revolt and a Central Powers offensive in Bulgaria.
The Balkan offensive ran into much more trouble than the Italian one. A week into the operation, there was no decisive breakout by the Central Powers. Well-equipped Romanian and British troops repeatedly threw back waves of German and Austrian soldiers advancing toward Pleven and Pazardzhik. It was only Romanian reluctance to divert its reserves to Bulgaria and British logistical trouble which eventually forced the Entente armies in Bulgaria to retreat.
This was not a rout. The retreat of Romanian-British forces was an orderly, fighting defense which inflicted crushing casualties on the invaders, particularly the Austrians, who were still not as well-equipped as their German counterparts. British forces in the region were able to hold onto the Ottoman city of Adrianople, while Romanian forces and a British army entrenched in Dobrudja. The remainder of the Romanian army successfully retreated behind the Danube river well before any attempt to bridge it could be attempted.
The Greek Army was missing from these operations, largely because Greece proper was in a low-level civil war. Peasant revolts in the mountainous north disrupted the army's supply chain and forced it to divert divisions to its rear. The ruling government of Venizelos was wracked by assassinations of cabinet ministers, labor stoppages, and food deficits. In the event of a concerted German-Austrian assault, the nation may very well have been forced to surrender, but neither the German nor the Austrian command considered it an important enough target.
In Italy, the valiant defense of several reserve mountaineer divisions outside of Vicenza bought enough time for France to transfer eight divisions to shore up Italian morale. By June 29th, the new front stabilized along an axis that ran in the west from Verdona through Vicenza, Padua, and Venice. The eastern portion of this defensive line was the most vulnerable to assault; the Italian government feared that another Central Powers offensive would force it to surrender Venice.
Although the Austrians hoped to dedicate the next phase of the offensive to Italy, Ludendorff believed it was still imperative to deal with Romania. In mid-august came a fresh offensive. In the west, a mixed Austro-German army invaded Transylvania, targeting heavily defended mountain passes held by elite Romanian troops. Further south, the Bulgarians assaulted Dobrudja, while Austrian troops stationed in Eastern Galicia and Western Ukraine marched into Moldova.
Falkenhayn's western armies found themselves thrown back time and again from the entrenched Romanian troops in Transylvania. In the northeast, an Austrian column led by Franz Confrad von hötzendorf made its way from Galicia into Moldovia, but was plagued by supply problems and guerilla activity. On the 21st, the German high command considered calling off the assault, but Conrad assured them that his army would soon break out of the forests of Moldavia into Wallachia, rendering the position of the Romanian mountaineers in Transylvania untenable.
By the 24th, Conrad had indeed made some progress in clearing Moldavia of its British-Romanian defenders; Jassy fell on the 22nd, and Kishenev two days later. But his efforts were soon rendered futile by a mutiny in the exhausted Bulgarian Army, many of whose soldiers had been fighting for over five years. Taking advantage of the chaos, two Romanian-British armies counterattacked, decimating a Bulgarian division, capturing several more, and then heading south towards Varna.
Shortly thereafter, the OHL called off the assault, relieved Falkenhayn of his command, and placed August von Mackensen in charge of halting the counteroffensive in the south. Meanwhile, the British Army in Dobrudja swung north to confront Conrad's force; Conrad, still confident of his position, ignored the instructions of the high command and continued south toward the town of Focsani. Romanian reserves released from Transylvania cut into his northern flank, while a British assault fixed his army in place. By the time he ordered his army to retreat, Romanian soldiers occupied much of the position to his rear. The battle of Foscani led to the loss of over 100,000 Austrian troops, the vast majority of them captured. Shortly after the defeat, Conrad von Hotzendorf was dismissed from the Austrian General Staff.
The failure of the Romanian offensive led the German general staff to shift its troops over to the defensive until a peace deal with Russia could be secured. It was widely believed that the Russian government would soon collapse, which would provide another opening to begin negotiations. Increasingly, hopes were placed in the upcoming campaign of submarine warfare, which high command believed could force the western powers into a harsh peace without requiring a costly offensive in France.
In reality, Britain was aware of the possibility of unrestricted submarine warfare for some time. Suspicions were first raised when German submarine activity declined precipitously in March and April despite the imposition of the blockade, prompting British naval officers to speculate about a future campaign of more concerted submarine warfare. British intelligence later revealed a build-up in submarine manufacturing in Germany. In July, a joint franco-british offensive was planned into Flanders to seize the Atlantic Ports from which German submarines operate, though it was a mostly hypothetical operation with no set date.
Then, in October, the campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare actually began. 165 submarines operating mainly from Flemish ports began to target merchant shipping in the English Channel and Atlantic. The insurrectionary activity in Saxony and Berlin convinced the British high command to push forward the planned Flanders offensive. It was hoped that low morale among the Germans would allow for a quick breakthrough. Massing in Ypres, two french armies and six British divisions prepared for the assault. By the time they were ready on October 23rd, the October Rising in Germany had been largely suppressed. But the entente had another trick up their sleeve: the first combat use of the new Franco-British landship, a hulking behemoth of mobile armor armed with the British 6-pounder naval gun and several machine guns. While its reliability and actual combat effectiveness left a great deal to be desired, the mass deployment of the vehicles had a crushing effect on German morale. Over the next month, the bloodiest battle since Verdun unfolded on the western front as the entente seized around half of the Flanders ports, creating massive logistical problems for German submarine operations.
Note on the state of the armies by the end of 1917
Compared to OTL...
The German Army is around the same strength, having taken around 2-3% less casualties.
The Austro-Hungarian Army is considerably stronger, having suffered around 25% less casualties. It is also somewhat better equipped.
The Bulgarian Army is incomparably weaker: years of fighting have depleted its manpower reserves.
The Turkish Army is considerably weaker. It has taken around 25% more casualties, and is by this point much worse equipped than any other army.
The French Army is somewhat weaker, having taken around 10% more casualties; they are beginning to have trouble replenishing battlefield losses. It is slightly worse equipped; the French government is in a worse fiscal situation, meaning munitions production is starting to face some financial bottlenecks.
The British Army is considerably stronger, with more enlisted men, more artillery pieces and shells available, and around 15% less casualties taken.
The Russian Army is considerably weaker, having suffered around 25% more captured, injured, and killed soldiers compared to our timeline.
The Italian Army is somewhat weaker, having taken around 10% more casualties. It is around as well-equipped as IOTL.
The Romanian Army is considerably stronger. It is around 20% larger, and much better equipped than IOTL.
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- Location
- Fort Worth, TX
Will we see a discussion on the Health situation in Europe? With Turkey, France, Russia and Italy suffering more casualties will there be a breakdown in public health and the agriculture sectors?
Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Romanian Army being better equpped leads me to wonder if Romania is going to have a better go of it in TTL's 20th century than in OTL's 20th century.
Obviously, anything that avoids Nicolae Ceausecu's rise to power, is going to make Romania's 20th century better.
My (admittedly semi-serious) idea is that with Italy and France in ruins at the end of the War ITTL, instead of Peugeot, Renault, Citroen, and Fiat, we see Dacia.
Obviously, anything that avoids Nicolae Ceausecu's rise to power, is going to make Romania's 20th century better.
My (admittedly semi-serious) idea is that with Italy and France in ruins at the end of the War ITTL, instead of Peugeot, Renault, Citroen, and Fiat, we see Dacia.
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
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Ireland will indeed be taking a rather different path ITTL. The figure of Larkin (who shortly after the rising is captured, tried, and executed) is obviously going to be important, but the largest force shaping the Irish Independence struggle here is the much harsher regime of British wartime austerity. In practice, this means that economic concerns over the militarization of labor and declining standards of living play a much more prominent role in the independence struggle; as unrestricted submarine warfare picks up and starts causing real problems for Britain, matters are only going to get more inflamed.
Of course, the destruction of much of Dublin will also set the revolutionaries on a more radical course, though I think this is (mostly) a point of continuity to OTL, in which it was also the British response rather than the initial rising that caused Irish opinion to harden.
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I think this, plus the most significant Irish Republican being syndicalist, are what'll probably be what pushes the Irish independence into a much more radical far left slant. It's one thing to have your kid conscripted in an occupiers war, its another when you have to deal with an increase in taxes and services being cut while the standard of living goes down.
Well the difference is that the British didn't level the entirety of Dublin during the Easter Rising like they did in the May rising. During the Easter Rising the British military only razed the Central parts of Dublin. While this caused public opinion to turn against the British, I think them razing all of Dublin is what's going to make public opinion turn against the British much quicker and make the Irish Republican movement much more radicalized. Another difference is that due to how organized the May rising was, the British may decide to initiate a harsher crackdown upon the Irish Republicans which may also further radicalize the Irish independence movement and cement Anti-British sentiments.
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The Ludendorff Dictatorship: Three Perspectives.
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recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
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In a Communist Revolution, individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve self-activity, but also merely to safeguard their very existence.
-Karl Marx
Neumann, Franz. 1942. "Capital's True Face: On The Ludendorff Dictatorship." The Journal of Social History.
-Karl Marx
Neumann, Franz. 1942. "Capital's True Face: On The Ludendorff Dictatorship." The Journal of Social History.
The Ludendorff Dictatorship arose as an emergency government of a bourgeoisie frightened by the prospect of imminent revolution. The proletarianization of German society and the quick advance of revolutionary consciousness necessitated a military government to discipline and stymie the self-activity of the working masses. With the German laborer refusing to give his consent to the war, parliament failed to be an adequate tool of class power; no longer capable of securing the ideological hegemony of the ruling class, it now fell to the military to enforce it at the end of a bayonet. Ludendorff's new government included the industrialists Hugo Stinnes and Alfred Hugenberg, as well as the reactionary catholic trade unionist Adam Stegerwald. Not content to simply control the machinery of state through finance-power, the bourgeois now seized its commanding heights; it now increasingly bore the mark of direct class rule.
Far from auguring an end to the worker's resistance, the October insurrection merely heralded its most radical phase. The arrest or exile of the leaders of the worker's movement did not halt the spread of revolutionary consciousness or the self-organization of the working class. All through 1918, strikes, slowdowns, and wrecking hampered the German war machine, even amidst increasingly draconian labor discipline. The attempt of right-wing, social-fascist elements to wrest control of the trade union apparatus failed time and again despite their seizure of the leadership.
Shortly after the October Insurrection, the social-fascist trade union leader Carl Legien used the opportunity to purge the upper heights of the trade union bureaucracy of left-wing, antiwar officials. In their place were the lackeys of Cunow, Haenisch, and Lensch. When workers made their discontent known through a series of wildcat strikes in January, they were crushed with the assistance of the freekorp brigades. A series of "reforms" were pushed through that same month which curtailed the democratic election of shop stewards and union delegates while requiring the leadership to be consulted before a strike would be considered authorized by the union.
The centralization of the trade unions and consolidation of power in the hands of the social-fascist clique forced the workers into other modes of self-organization. This was the immediate impetus of the council movement. The first councils were simply unofficial meetings of workers, typically held in factories in which a trusted shop steward had been recalled. Workers would designate a new steward (sometimes, but not always, the old one) who would be in charge of establishing contacts with other councils. The first general meeting of the revolutionary shop stewards occurred in Berlin in July 1918.
Over time, the role and purposes of the councils grew. By the middle of 1918, minutes of council-meetings indicated that they typically stretched upward of an hour and dealt with issues both mundane and political. New methods of resistance to the war were frequently discussed, as was news that was censored in the war-time press, such as the trade union reforms, battle-field losses, and events in revolutionary russia. Not infrequently, the revolutionary shop stewards were interrogated about their progress and replaced with a different member of the council if it was found unsatisfactory. A growing proportion of the councils were dedicated to the reading of Marxist theory, both in the form of the traditional Marxist mainstays of left-wing social democrats and the new pamphlets smuggled in from Russia and written predominantly by the left-communists Luxemburg and Zetkin.
Ludendorff's government had difficulty preventing the council-meetings, which often occurred outside of the workplace in the domicile of the local steward. Instead, increasing pressure was placed on Legien and the trade unions to enforce labor discipline and halt the spree of wildcat strikes that were slowing down industrial production. The trade unions were only partially successful in this task, and their efforts ended up unwittingly radicalizing many of the mid-level trade union officials. Centrist in their political orientation, many were radicalized by the mass purge of their superiors and the role they were meant to play in maintaining labor discipline. A number of links were forged in late 1918 between these officials and the revolutionary shop stewards.
We should not neglect the growing unrest spreading in the traditionally reformist and bourgeois trade unions. With the threat of social revolution still present, Adam Stegerwald, the leader of the Catholic Trade Unions, pressed for the merger of all of Germany's traditionally non-socialist unions. These were principally the nationalist-reactionary German National Clerks Union, the progressive-liberal Hirsch-Duncker Unions, and finally the largest grouping, the Catholic Association of Trade Unions. The planned merger ran into problems from its very beginning. The previous two years witnessed the National Clerks Union steadily bleed membership to the Hirsch-Duncker Unions as white-collar discontent with the war metastasized. Many of these union members were also a part of the now disbanded national-social association. They refused to affiliate with the nationalist clerks union until Stegerwald agreed to use the newly-formed union to press for the government to relax press censorship and call the Reichstag back into session. In practice, this was an impossible demand for Stegerwald to fulfill.
Although the leaders of the Catholic Trade Union movement were aligned behind Stegerwald's push for a merger, many of the rank and file were more skeptical. The key figure in coordinating opposition to the war among Catholic workers was Vitus Heller. Prior to the war, Heller worked as a secretary in the Volskweiren, an anti-socialist catholic worker's association. His service in the war and the dictatorial repression of the Ludendorff regime radicalized his politics. After being discharged in 1918, he returned to his work in the Volksweiren but began writing a secretly distributed newspaper, Das Neue Volk. By the end of the year, the paper was advocating for the formation of a united front of socialist and catholic workers to oppose the Ludendorff dictatorship; in declamatory, pugilistic articles, it denounced Stegerwald's role in oppressing the catholic worker and called for a break with the Catholic Centre Party.
In September 1918, Heller's Christian-Socialist group organized a series of strikes to protest the planned merger between the Catholic Trade Unions and National Clerks Union. The wave of strike action rapidly spread to many workers outside the group's reach; many likely did not know of the goals of the original strike, but instead viewed the agitation as a means to protest the labor mobilization bill and worsening workplace conditions. Stegerwald was forced by Ludendorff himself to meet the primary demand of the strikers and call off the planned merger of the unions.
The Trade Union Struggles of 1918 were conditioned by a government that refused to brook any compromise, however meager, between labor and capital.The tyrannical labor mobilization bill was put to its full effect in the war's final years, as military officials increasingly oversaw industrial production, trying workers who did not submit to labor discipline in military courts. All available indices demonstrate that the pace of this repression picked up considerably in 1918; more than double the number of workers were tried in military courts than in the previous year, and more than triple were given prison sentences. The previous compromises forged by the centrist social democrats were outright ignored by the dictatorship, which expelled centrist and left-wing trade unionists from the war planning boards, replacing them with Legien's compliant lackeys. Is it any wonder that many workers lost faith for good in a trade union movement that had been utterly co-opted by the bourgeois state?
Fischer, Fritz. 1961. "Consent and Coercion in the Ludendorff Dictatorship." in Reassessing the Great War.
…Previous works of history have treated the two years of the Ludendorff dictatorship as an alien imposition upon a German society eager for revolution. This account contains a grain of truth; the Ludendorff dictatorship was certainly sustained in large measure by violent repression, but it was not and likely could not have maintained power by force alone. A close examination of the era reveals the cooperation of large sectors of the patriotic middle and working class; national liberals continued their support of the government, patriotic movements arose with rapidly growing memberships, and the parties of the progressive left had trouble raising support for measures to protest the military dictatorship.
…The question of much previous historiography has been: why did the Ludendorff regime last as long as it did if it was sustained primarily by repression? In light of the unsatisfactory answers thus far proffered, we have changed the terms of the question: If the Ludendorff regime did indeed have the support of many Germans, what precisely sustained this support? Here, we must be attentive to the growth of the Freekorps movement, the emergence of national-socialism, and the regime's efforts to pacify domestic discontent through propaganda.
1918 witnessed the proliferation of clandestine worker councils, middle-class corresponding societies, and an internal war within many of the main German trade unions over control of the labor movement. Yet concurrent with each of these developments were opposing ones: the politicization of German society was not so much a polarization against the government as it was a splitting of individuals into two opposed groups. The domestic political opposition to the antiwar movement was certainly massaged by the government, but the sentiments and loyalties it depended on would have existed without Ludendorff and Hindenburg.
These sentiments were the following: fear of social revolution, loyalty to the crown, identification with the martial heroism of Ludendurff, and a belief that the war could still be won at an acceptable cost. As the workers movement gathered steam in the final two years of the war, support for the government often did not indicate belief in the war, but instead resolute opposition to the prospect of worker's power. Of course, by the end of 1919 a growing number of even middle-class Germans had concluded that social revolution was preferable to a continuation of the war; but in the early days of the Ludendorff government, it could count on broad support among the Protestant middle-class.
The October Insurrection convinced many Germans of the need for a more stern, disciplined government to maintain order in the country. Matthias Erzberger, the leader of the progressive wing of the Catholic Centre Party, consistently failed to muster support for his movement to reopen the Reichstag. Frequent but unorganized strikes by workers calling for the reopening of the Reichstag were rarely joined by larger protests. Insofar as middle-class antiwar activity occurred, it was in the form of secret letter-writing. The "corresponding societies" which formed during 1918 did attest to a rise in antiwar feeling, but their failure to devise any political programme attest to a lack of real conviction and organization.
By any accounting, the national-socialist leagues and freekorps brigades had orders of magnitude more members throughout 1918 than any of the antiwar groupings. Booming membership in each of these organizations attest to the durability of pro-war sentiment in the German body politic. Lensch, Cunow, and Haenisch's right-wing social nationalist clique were the force behind the national-socialist leagues. Originally aimed at the blue-collar urban workers who were the core of the labor movement, they ended up having most success with patriotic clerks, secretaries, small businessmen, and farmers.The failure of the recruiting drives for the group in factories, mines, and technical institutes indicate the strength of antiwar feeling among the socialist working class and segments of the educated middle class; conversely, the phenomenal growth of the leagues among farmers and the petite-bourgeoisie demonstrates that the regime could still had a base of support among the masses.
What precisely was "National-Socialism"? The historians of the Socialist Republic have been surprisingly silent on this matter; even many Luxemburgists have been hesitant to treat National-Socialism as anything other than an aberration in the development of Social Democracy. It is true that Lensch, Cunow, and Haenisch took leadership in extraordinary circumstances; it is equally true, however, that they constituted a bloc of the party which became increasingly influential in the years leading up to the war. The emergence of corporatist social fascism was a direct consequence of adopting a policy of triangulation toward German Imperialism; it is bound up with the politics of Ebert and Scheidemann, however much they would dissociate themselves from the authoritarian nationalism of the Lensch-Cunow-Haenish Trio.
National-Socialism substituted the solidarities of the nation for those of class. It preached a doctrine of conciliation with the German bourgeoisie, and held that socialism could only be achieved in the framework of a national community. War was believed to have a purifying, unifying effect on the community. There is little daylight between national-socialism and the "Prussian Socialism" of Oswald Spengler, save that the former had a modestly more proletarian social base.
The principal purpose of the national-socialist leagues was to serve as a propaganda arm of the Ludendorff government. Their marches and donation drives served to spur flagging patriotic sentiment and mobilize resources for the war effort. They also acted not infrequently as strikebreakers, and appeared alongside the freekorps as a paramilitary arm of the government. Their activity surged throughout 1918, before beginning to decline in 1919, at first slowly and then precipitously.
The more well-known group is the freekorps brigades. Composed at first of demobilized veterans or right-wing soldiers given a temporary reprieve from the front, they recruited mostly from the upper-class youth. In contrast to the corporatist social fascism of the national-socialists, the symbolism and ideology of the freekorps expressed loyalty to the old imperial order. They were also far better organized and funded than the national-socialists, and despite their smaller numbers, they were a far more disciplined and effective paramilitary force.
The Ludendorff Government acted to shore up its legitimacy at the beginning of 1918 by creating a National Council. This body had real power to run the day-to-day affairs of the country, but its decisions had to be approved by the OHL, and it possessed no executive authority. Its first chair, Gustav Stresemann, was from the left wing of the National Liberals. By all accounts, Stresemann was an effective administrator who believed fervently in the importance of his work. His success in rationalizing food distribution and correcting the failures of the Hindenburg programme were both instrumental for the German war effort. It was also Stresemann's diplomacy that convinced the Catholic Centre Party and Progressive Liberals that Ludendorff was indeed prepared to step down from power following victory in the war.
Other appointees to the national council included the Catholic Trade Unionist Adam Stegerwald, the press baron Alfred Hugenberg, and the industrialist Hugo Stinnes. The importance of the appointment of these latter two figures should not be overestimated; each served as advisors to Ludendorff for the previous two years, and the commanding positions they already occupied in the war planning boards meant that their appointment to the governing council was more a symbolic gesture than anything else.
It is also difficult to underestimate the effects of the military successes of 1918 in boosting civilian morale. After a year of sclerotic campaigning, Ludendorff managed to knock two of Germany's adversaries out of the war in quick succession. Many were convinced that victory was finally at hand, especially when news leaked of peace talks between the Entente and Germany…
Bamgarten, Frida. 1961. "Against the New Revisionism." In Reassessing the Great War.
A spate of recent articles argue that the Ludendorff dictatorship was maintained as much through consent as coercion. This represents an important challenge to the standard great war historiography, which contends that repression replaced propaganda as the primary means of social control in the second half of the war. Ludendorf's rise to power has long been understood as the archetypal example of this process. Arguments that the dictatorship was supported by large segments of the patriotic middle and working classes, if successful, would force historians to rethink some of their larger assumptions about the war. It therefore seems prudent to address them.
…One of the key premises of the revisionist challenge is the so-called "Middle-class panic" thesis - the notion that, in the aftermath of the failed insurrections of October 1917, the non-socialist masses rallied to the government. Despite the relative quiescence of middle-class protest throughout 1918, there is little evidence that antiwar sentiment was substantially enervated by the fear of social revolution. In fact, 1918 witnessed the quickest growth of the socialist white-collar unions on record, and a hemorrhaging in members of the nationalist clerks association. Only a few diaries and private letters indicate a genuine reversal of opinion; instead, among the anti-war middle-class, much more common throughout 1918 were feelings of revulsion for both the Ludendorff dictatorship and the Socialist movement. There was a growing fear, not entirely unfounded, that the Ludendorff government was in fact paving the way for socialist revolution.
How are we to make sense, then, of the failure of middle-class groups to engage in meaningful political activity throughout 1918? In part, this may be explained by the loss of organization: the disbanding of the national-social association closed off the primary channel for non-socialist opposition to the war. Unlike the socialist workers, they did not have the same traditions and habits of collective organization, which meant that rebuilding networks of resistance was more difficult. Many were also less certain of their convictions and more hesitant to engage in illegal activity, though this compunction began to fade by the end of 1918.
Revisionists frequently cite the freekorps brigades and national-socialist leagues as evidence of the broad support for the regime. The latter group were certainly large in number, but there is not much indication that they were anything more than the nationalist fringe of German society. Many of their members were longstanding participants in the annexationist pan-german league; there was some working-class participation, but this remained a decided minority which steadily declined throughout the organization's existence. Similar points could be made about the Freekorps, which represented a small social constituency that was already liable to support Ludendorff.
…Why has the myth of mass enthusiasm for Ludendorff's government exercised such a hold over the imagination of European historians? Firstly, because it offers a convenient explanation of the regime's improbable survival, which in truth had more to do with the failure of the socialist movement to muster coordinated resistance following the decapitation of its leadership. Secondly, because it demonstrates the reactionary proclivities of the middle classes and offers a warning about the pitfalls of social nationalism, two lessons well in-line with Orthodox Luxemburgist historiography.
Finally, the changing popular responses to the war in 1918 and 1919 might appear to give credence to the revisionist interpretation. In 1919, a more broad-based opposition to the government suddenly burst forth after a year in which resistance was expressed almost solely through wildcat strikes and industrial action. For revisionists, this is easily understood as a change from tepid support to boisterous opposition. However, it is better viewed as a shift from disengagement to active political struggle. The Ludendorff Dictatorship never had broad support, but it could count on the apathy, fear, and propriety of enough of the population to maintain its hold on power throughout 1918. In the following year, the fear of starvation and illness eclipsed the fear of repression, and the Dictatorship collapsed under the weight of a renewed proletarian assault.
I like the multiple perspectives being shown here. The most interesting thing in history has always been the "why" of things, the story; having such radical differences in opinion even as they all agree on the dry facts is like catnip to me.
One thing I find interesting is how they're saying "fascist" instead of another term such as "reactionary" or similar. I had been under the impression that post-revolution Europe included Italy, which would seemingly preclude the Fascists from ever coming to power and therefore keep their name from being attached to the movement. I noticed that the proto-Nazis were always called "national socialists", presumably because they stopped being relevant before they could make a big historical splash, but something kept the fascists from the same fate. Did Mussolini trigger his coup early? Did he escape to become a philosopher? Did someone else decide to use the same imagery, possibly inspired by the Italians? Did the initial revolution miss Italy altogether? I can hardly wait to find out.
One thing I find interesting is how they're saying "fascist" instead of another term such as "reactionary" or similar. I had been under the impression that post-revolution Europe included Italy, which would seemingly preclude the Fascists from ever coming to power and therefore keep their name from being attached to the movement. I noticed that the proto-Nazis were always called "national socialists", presumably because they stopped being relevant before they could make a big historical splash, but something kept the fascists from the same fate. Did Mussolini trigger his coup early? Did he escape to become a philosopher? Did someone else decide to use the same imagery, possibly inspired by the Italians? Did the initial revolution miss Italy altogether? I can hardly wait to find out.