Iron Kingdom

by Clark, Christopher

  114. Leutwein to Foreign Office Colonial Department, Windhoek, 28 October 1904 in ibid., Bl. 21–2.

  115. Leutwein to Foreign Office, Windhoek, 23 October 1904, excerpted in ibid.

  116. Telegram (in cipher) to Trotha, Berlin, 8 December 1904, in ibid., Bl. 48. The disputes over the content of the telegram are documented in Bl. 14–20. Exact numbers of the dead are difficult to establish, since the estimates of the Herero population before the conflict vary from 35, 000to 80, 000. A headcount in the colony in 1905 produced a total of 24, 000 Herero inhabitants. It is thought that several thousand escaped across the borders and did not return. The rest, perhaps as few as 6, 000, perhaps as many as 45, 000 or 50, 000, were dead. Some had been killed in fighting, shot as they approached German encampments to surrender, or captured and executed after formulaic trials by military field tribunals; thousands more – men, women and children – had died of thirst, hunger or disease while searching for water in the desert areas into which they had been displaced. Casualties on the German side were 1, 282 – the majority from illnesses contracted during the campaign. On the Herero war, see esp. Jan Bart Gewald, Towards Redemption. A Socio-political History of the Herero of Namibia between 1890 and 1923 (Leiden, 1996); Horst Drechsler, Südwestafrika unter deutscher Kolonialherrschaft: Der Kampf der Herero und Nama gegen den deutschen Imperialismus (Berlin [GDR], 1966); Helmut Bley, South-West Africa under German Rule 1894–1914, trans. Hugh Ridley (London, 1971); Jürgen Zimmerer and Joachim Zeller (eds.), Völkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika. Der Kolonialkrieg (1904–1908) in Namibia und seine Folgen (Berlin, 2003), esp. the essays by Zimmerer, Zeller and Caspar W. Erichsen.

  117. Hans-Günter Zmarzlik, Bethmann Hollweg als Reichskanzler, 1908–1914. Studien zu Möglichkeiten und Grenzen seiner innerpolitischen Machtstellung (Düsseldorf, 1957), pp. 103–29; David Schoenbaum, Zabern 1913. Consensus Politics in Imperial Germany (London, 1982), pp. 87–105, 118–19, 148–9; Konrad Jarausch, Enigmatic Chancellor. Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (Madison, WI, 1966), p. 101; Lamar Cecil, Wilhelm II (2 vols., Chapel Hill, NC, 1989 and 1996), vol. 2, Emperor and Exile: 1900–1941, pp. 189–92.

  118. Johannes Burkhardt, ‘Kriegsgrund Geschichte? 1870, 1813, 1756 – historische Argumente und Orientierungen bei Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in id. et al. (eds.), Lange und Kurze Wege, pp. 9–86, here pp. 19, 36, 37, 56, 57, 60–61, 63.

  119. Kossert, Masuren, p. 241.

  120. Benjamin Ziemann, Front und Heimat. Ländliche Kriegserfahrungen im südlichen Bayern 1914–1923 (Essen, 1997), pp. 265–74.

  121. Gerald D. Feldman, Army, Industry and Labor in Germany, 1914–1918 (Princeton, NJ, 1966), pp. 31–3; the reference to ‘shadow governments’ is from Crown Prince Rupprecht von Bayern, In Treue fest. Mein Kriegstagebuch (3 vols., Munich, 1929), vol. 1, p. 457, cited in ibid., p. 32.

  122. For a narrative overview of the partnership, see John Lee, The Warlords. Hindenburg and Ludendorff (London, 2005).

  123. Cited from a speech by the industrialist Duisberg in Treutler to Bethmann Hollweg, 6 February 1916, GStA Berlin-Dahlem, HA I, Rep. 92, Valentini, No. 2. On the Hindenburg cult, see Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 74; Matthew Stibbe, ‘Vampire of the Continent. German Anglophobia during the First World War, 1914–1918’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Sussex (1997), p. 100.

  124. Lansing to Oederlin, Washington, 14 October 1918, in US Department of State (ed.), Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States (suppl. I, vol. 1, 1918), p. 359.

  125. Cecil, Wilhelm II, vol. 2, p. 286.

  126. Ernst von Heydebrand und der Lasa, speech to Landtag of 5 December 1917, cited in Croon, ‘Die Anfänge des Parlamentarisierung’, p. 124.

  127. Toews, Hegelianism, p. 62.

  128. Hermann Beck, The Origins of the Authoritarian Welfare State in Prussia. Conservatives, Bureaucracy and the Social Question, 1815–1870 (Providence, RI, 1993), pp. 93–100.

  129. On Wagener and Gerlach, see Hans-Julius Schoeps, Das andere Preussen. Konservative Gestalten und Probleme im Zeitalter Friedrich Wilhelms IV. (3rd edn, Berlin, 1966), pp. 203–28.

  130. On the links between Stein and Schmoller, see Giles Pope, ‘The Political Ideas of Lorenz Stein and their Influence on Rudolf Gneist and Gustav Schmoller’, D. Phil. thesis, Oxford University (1985); Karl Heinz Metz, ‘Preussen als Modell einer Idee der Sozialpolitik. Das soziale Königtum’, in Bahners and Roellecke (eds.), Preussische Stile, pp. 355–63, here p. 358.

  131. James J. Sheehan, The Career of Lujo Brentano: A Study of Liberalism and Social Reform in Imperial Germany (Chicago, 1966), pp. 48–52, 80–84.

  132. Erik Grimmer-Solem, The Rise of Historical Economics and Social Reform in Germany 1864–1894 (Oxford, 2003), esp. pp. 108–18.

  133. Hans-Peter Ullmann, ‘Industrielle Interessen und die Entstehung der deutschen Sozialversicherung’, Historische Zeitschrift, 229 (1979), pp. 574–610; Gerhard Ritter, ‘Die Sozialdemokratie im Deutschen Kaiserreich in sozialgeschichtlicher Perspektive’, Historische Zeitschrift, 249 (1989), pp. 295–362; Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 3, pp. 907–15.

  134. Gerhard Ritter, Arbeiter im Deutschen Kaiserreich, 1871 bis 1914 (Bonn, 1992), esp. p. 383; J. Frerich and M. Frey, Handbuch der Geschichte der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland, vol. 1, Von der vorindustriellen Zeit bis zum Ende des Dritten Reiches (3 vols., Munich, 1993), pp. 130–32, 141–2.

  135. Andreas Kunz, ‘The State as Employer in Germany, 1880–1918: From Paternalism to Public Policy’, in W. Robert Lee and Eve Rosenhaft (eds.), State, Society and Social Change in Germany, 1880–1914 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 37–63, here pp. 40–41.

  17 Endings

  1. Harry Count Kessler, Diary entry, Magdeburg, 7 November 1918, in id., Tagebücher 1918–1937, ed. Wolfgang Pfeiffer-Belli (Frankfurt/Main, 1961), p. 18.

  2. Ibid., p. 24.

  3. Jürgen Kloosterhuis (ed.), Preussisch Dienen und Geniessen. Die Lebenszeiterzählung des Ministerialrats Dr Herbert du Mesnil (1857–1947) (Cologne, 1998), p. 350.

  4. Bocholter Volksblatt, 14 November 1918, cited in Hugo Stehkamper, ‘Westfalen und die Rheinisch-Westfälische Republik 1918/19. Zenturmsdiskussionen über einen bundesstaatlichen Zusammenschluss der beiden preussischen Westprovinzen’, in Karl Dietrich Bracher, Paul Mikat, Konrad Repgen, Martin Schumacher and Hans-Peter Schwarz (eds.), Staat und Parteien. Festschrift für Rudolf Morsey (Berlin, 1992), pp. 579–634.

  5. Edgar Hartwig, ‘Welfen, 1866–1933’, in Dieter Fricke (ed.), Lexikon zur Parteiengeschichte (4 vols., Leipzig, Cologne, 1983–6), vol. 4, pp. 487–9.

  6. Peter Lesńiewski, ‘Three Insurrections: Upper Silesia 1919–21’, in Peter Stachura (ed.), Poland between the Wars, 1918–1939 (Houndsmills, 1998), pp. 13–42.

  7. Prussia lost about 16 per cent of its surface area as a consequence of the territorial adjustments that followed the defeat of 1918. These encompassed the Memel area (Lithuania), the land removed from West Prussia to form the Free City of Danzig, the bulk of the old provinces of West Prussia and Posen, as well as small sections of Pomerania and East Prussia (to Poland), North Schleswig with the islands of Alsen and Röm (to Denmark), Eupen and Malmédy (to Belgium), a part of the Saar region (placed under international administration, with coal mines under French control), the Hultschin district of Upper Silesia (to Czechoslovakia) and parts of Upper Silesia (to Poland, following local plebiscites). In all, Prussia’s territorial losses amounted to 56, 058 square kilometres; the total on 1 November 1918 was 348, 780 square kilometres.

  8. Cited in Horst Möller, ‘Preussen von 1918 bis 1947: Weimarer Republik, Preussen und der Nationalsozialismus’, in Wolfgang Neugebauer (ed.), Handbuch der preussischen Geschichte, vol. 3, Vom Kaiserreich zum 20. Jahrhundert und Grosse Themen der Geschichte Preussens (Berlin, 2001), pp. 149–301, here p. 193.

  9. Gisbert Knopp, Die preussische Verwaltung des Regierungsbezirks Düsseldorf in den Jahren 1899–1919 (Cologne, 1974), p. 344.
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  10.Möller, ‘Preussen’, pp. 177–9; Henry Friedlander, The German Revolution of 1918 (New York, 1992), pp. 242, 244.

  11. Heinrich August Winkler, Weimar 1918–1933. Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie (Munich, 1993), p. 66.

  12. Hagen Schulze, ‘Democratic Prussia in Weimar Germany, 1919–33’, in Dwyer (ed.), Modern Prussian History, pp. 211–29, here p. 213.

  13. Gerald D. Feldman, The Great Disorder. Politics, Economics and Society in the German Inflation 1914–1924 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 134, 161.

  14. In a classic study of German civil–military relations after the First World War, John Wheeler Bennett argued that the Ebert–Groener pact sealed the fate of the Weimar Republic; most other historians have taken a more moderate view. See John Wheeler Bennett, The Nemesis of Power. The German Army and Politics 1918–1945 (London, 1953), p. 21; cf. Craig, Prussian Army, p. 348; Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 4, Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Gründung der beiden deutschen Staaten (Munich, 2003), pp. 69–72.

  15. Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, p. 351.

  16. The cabinet, or Council of People’s Representatives, refers to the new SPD/USPD government that succeeded the old Prussian-German executive. The Executive Council, elected on 10 November, represented the diffuse interests gathered in the Soldiers’ and Workers’ Councils movement in Berlin. The relationship between the two bodies was a matter of contention during the early months of the republic.

  17. This speech was reprinted in Die Freiheit (Berlin), 16 and 17 December 1918. The text may also be consulted at http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/luxemburg/1918/12/uspdgb.htm; last accessed 26 October 2004.

  18.Möller, ‘Preussen’, pp. 188–9.

  19. Susanne Miller, Die Bürde der Macht. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie 1918–1920 (Düsseldorf, 1979), p. 226.

  20. Hagen Schulze, Weimar. Deutschland 1917–1933 (Berlin, 1982), p. 180.

  21. Diary entries of 7 January and 6 January in Kessler, Tagebücher, pp. 97, 95.

  22. Annemarie Lange, Berlin in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin/GDR, 1987), pp. 47, 198–9.

  23. This image was published in the third edition of Die Pleite (Bankruptcy), a journal produced by the leftist Malik Verlag, later one of the foremost publishing houses for Communist intellectuals in the Weimar Republic.

  24. There were further repressions in Halle, Magdeburg, Mühlheim, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Leipzig and Munich. The repressions in Munich, where the Communists actually succeeded briefly in seizing power and proclaiming a ‘Soviet Republic of Bavaria’, were exceptionally brutal.

  25. Craig, Prussian Army, p. 388.

  26. Hans von Seeckt, ‘Heer im Staat’ in id., Gedanken eines Soldaten (Berlin, 1929), pp. 101–16, here p. 115.

  27. On the ‘Prussian étatisme’ of the coalition parties, see Dietrich Orlow, Weimar Prussia, 1918–1925. The Unlikely Rock of Democracy (Pittsburgh, 1986), pp. 247, 249; Hagen Schulze, Otto Braun oder Preussens demokratische Sendung (Frankfurt/Main, 1977), pp. 316–23 and passim; Winkler, Weimar, pp. 66–7. On the Catholics, see Möller, ‘Preussen’, p. 237.

  28. Cited in Schulze, ‘Democratic Prussia’ in Dwyer (ed), Modern Prussian History, pp. 211–29, here p. 214.

  29. Heinrich Hannover and Christine Hannover-Druck, Politische Justiz 1918–1933 (Bornheim-Merten, 1987), pp. 25–7 and passim.

  30. Peter Lessmann, Die preussische Schutzpolizei in der Weimarer Republik. Streifendienst und Strassenkampf (Düsseldorf, 1989), p. 82.

  31. Ibid., p. 88.

  32. Hsi-Huey Liang, The Berlin Police Force in the Weimar Republic (Berkeley, 1970), pp. 73–81; Schulze, ‘Democratic Prussia’, p. 215.

  33. Lessmann, Schutzpolizei, pp. 211–14; Christoph Graf, Politische Polizei zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur (Berlin, 1983), pp. 43–8; Eric D. Kohler, ‘The Crisis in the Prussian Schutzpolizei 1930–32’, in George Mosse (ed.), Police Forces in History (London, 1975), pp. 131–50.

  34. Henning Grunwald, ‘Political Trial Lawyers in the Weimar Republic’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge (2002).

  35. Orlow, Weimar Prussia, pp. 16–7. On the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ right, see Hans Christof Kraus, ‘Altkonservativismus und moderne politische Rechte. Zum Problem der Kontinuität rechter politischer Strömungen in Deutschland’, in Thomas Nipperdey et al. (eds.), Weltbürgerkrieg der Ideologien. Antworten an Ernst Nolte (Berlin, 1993), pp. 99–121. On right-wing enthusiasm for the idea of a radical ‘conservative revolution’ that would break the boundaries of the traditional Prussian conservatism, see Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism. Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1984), esp. pp. 18–48; Armin Mohler, Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland, 1918–1932 (Darmstadt, 1972); George Mosse, ‘The Corporate State and the Conservative Revolution’ in id., Germans and Jews: the Right, the Left and the Search for a “Third Force” in Pre-Nazi Germany (New York, 1970), pp. 116–43.

  36. On the agrarian sector after 1918, see Shelley Baranowski, ‘Agrarian transformation and right radicalism: economics and politics in rural Prussia’, in Dwyer (ed.), Modern Prussian History, pp. 146–65; id., The Sanctity of Rural Life. Nobility, Protestantism and Nazism in Weimar Prussia (New York, 1995), pp. 128–44.

  37. On Weimar agriculture and politics, see Wolfram Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933: Die Verschränkung von Milieu und Parteien in den protestantischen Landgebieten Deutschlands in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1996); Dieter Gessner, Agrarverbände in der Weimarer Republik. Wirtschaftliche und soziale Voraussetzungen agrarkonservativer Politik vor 1933 (Düsseldorf, 1976); id., ‘The Dilemma of German Agriculture during the Weimar Republic’, in Richard Bessel and Edward J. Feuchtwanger (eds.), Social Change and Political Development in Weimar Germany (London, 1981), pp. 134–54; John E. Farquharson, The Plough and the Swastika. The NSDAP and Agriculture in Germany 1918–1945 (London, 1976), pp. 25–42; Robert G. Moeller, ‘Economic Dimensions of Peasant Protest in the Transition from the Kaiserreich to Weimar’, in id. (ed.), Peasants and Lords, pp. 140–67.

  38. See Klaus Erich Pollmann, ‘Wilhelm II und der Protestantismus’, in Stefan Samerski (ed.), Wilhelm II. und die Religion. Facetten einer Persönlichkeit und ihres Umfelds (Berlin, 2001), pp. 91–104.

  39. Nicholas Hope, ‘Prussian Protestantism’, in Dwyer, Modern Prussian History, pp. 188–208. The standard works on the Union in this period are Daniel R. Borg, The Old Prussian Church and the Weimar Republic. A Study in Political Adjustment 1917–1927 (Hanover and London, 1984) and Kurt Nowak, Evangelische Kirche und Weimarer Republik: zum politischen Weg des deutschen Protestantismus zwischen 1918 und 1932 (Göttingen, 1981).

  40. Comment by General-Superintendent Walter Kähler, cited in Baranowski, Sanctity of Rural Life, p. 96.

  41. For a survey of these groups, see Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach, Der Weg der evangelischen Kirche vom 19. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Gütersloh, 1968), esp. pp. 176–8.

  42. Cited in Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross. The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, WI, 1996), p. 28.

  43. Clark, Politics of Conversion, pp. 286–7.

  44. Committee of the Berlin Society for the Promotion of Christianity Among the Jews to all Consistories and Provincial Church Councils, 5 December 1930, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv Berlin, 7/3648.

  45. Richard Gutteridge, Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb! The German Evangelical Church and the Jews (Oxford, 1976), p. 42. On the conference of 1927 and the development of völkisch religion, see Kurt Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, 1. Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions 1918–1934, trans. J. Bowden (London, 1987), pp. 99–119. The outstanding study on ‘German Christianity’ is Bergen, Twisted Cross. On Protestant academics, see Marijke Smid, ‘Protestantismus und Antisemitismus 1930–1930’, in Jochen-Christoph Kaiser und Martin Greschat (eds.), Der Holocaust und die Protestanten (Frankfurt/Main, 1988), pp. 38–72, esp. pp. 50–55; Hans-Ulrich Thamer, ‘Protestantismus und
“Judenfrage” in der Geschichte des Dritten Reiches’, in ibid., pp. 216–40. On the Protestant press, see Ino Arndt, ‘Die Judenfrage im Lichte der evangelischen Sonntagsblätter 1918–1933’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Tübingen (1960).

  46. See Manfred Gailus, Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Durchdringung des protestantischen Sozialmilieus in Berlin (Cologne, 2001); id., ‘Deutsche, Christen, Olias, Olias! Wie Nationalsozialisten die Kirchengemeinde Alt-Schöneberg eroberten’, in id. (ed.), Kirchgemeinden im Nationalsozialismus: sieben Beispiele aus Berlin (Berlin, 1990), pp. 211–46.

  47. Stephan Malinowski, Vom König zum Führer: Sozialer Niedergang und politische Radikalisierung im deutschen Adel zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Staat (Berlin, 2003), p. 208.