The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

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“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” – Rosa Luxemburg


16 Comments

    1. The evil commies were the only group in Germany to fight the rising Nazis in the streets.

      In contrast, the Social Democrats of Weimar were like our Democrats of today: two-faced, lying, corrupt , cowardly and ready to sell out their proclaimed values and goals at the first opportunity. While they were destroying the life savings of German workers and the middle class with hyperinflation, they were accepting big bribes from the Barmat brothers.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barmat_scandal

      If you don’t want leftist and rightist extremists, then give people an alternative: jobs, homes and a chance to save money.

      1. So not true, so absolutly not true. The SPD was one of the last and only resistence to Hitler and the NSDAP in the political Arena with democratic means.
        They stood as only parts against the enabling act, all 94 SPD members of parliament voted against, the only Party to do so

        Otto Wels

        “You can take our lives and our freedom, but you cannot take our honour. We are defenseless but not honourless.”

        And then was the
        Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold
        Eiserne Front

        Who stood against the SA and Roter Frontkämpferbund in the Street, and they paid a Price in blood after that many of them would be part of the resistance.

        1. fThe SPD passed several Enabling Acts in the 1920s which set the precedent for the 1933 one that laid the basis for Nazi dictatorship.

          When the Reichstag wanted to discuss abolishing Presidential degrees in 1924 ( allowed by the SPD Enabling act ), SPD President Freidrich Ebert dismissed the Reichstag.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_act#Acts_of_1914%E2%80%931927

          And Ebert’s use of right wing paramilitary Freikorps to exterminate the Spartacists (including Rosa Luxemburg) laid the precedent for Hitler’s tactics. Many of the Freikorps later joined the Nazi Brownshirts.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacist_uprising#Attack_by_the_Freikorps

          Note also Ebert’s secret pact with Army leader Groener which allowed the German military leaders who had lost the war to undermine Germany’s move to democracy:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebert%E2%80%93Groener_pact#Consequences

          2. Both the Left and Right considered SPD’s leader Friedrich Ebert to be a traitor –albeit based on quite different judgments:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Ebert#Controversy_about_the_Freikorps_collaboration

            Part of his problem was his John Kerry persona: He supported Germany’s entry into World War I — until things got difficult whereup he led SPD in supporting the munitions strikes.

            Which overthrew the Kaiser and put SPD in charge but left Germany screwed by her enemies at Versailles. Historians argue Germany was already defeated but historians aren’t soldiers. The rule of thumb among military leaders is that the offense needs a 4 to 1 advantage to prevail over the defense.

            Then after betraying the military he turned around and used the military to destroy his former political allies.

            Of course, this may give him too much importance. After all , he was merely a rent boy for industrialist Hugo Stinnes.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Stinnes

          4. The infamous lies and slander of the Nationalist , Right and conservative mischpoke like the Stab-in-the-back ly which originated IIRC from Luddendorf(Hindburgs “second” and Hitlers Partner in crime at the Feldherrenhalle)

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth
            after the Operation Michael the german army had lost 350.000 men and then came the Empires Veteran´s from other front´s, the US army and the Blockade of the Royal Navy and some mismanagement had starved Germany out, about 800.000 People died from hunger.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnip_Winter

            The hundred days offensive forced the army out of the hindenburg line and lost About 1.3 Million men

            The revolt which overthrew Wilhelm and Ludendorf was the Kiel mutiny, in which the sailors refused blatantly a banzai attack against the royal Navy

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiel_mutiny

            OTOH look at he Workers paradise the USSR and GDR were and then tell me again, Eberts should´ve let the spartacists take power.
            the Stasi Museum in Leipzig is a very good place for that or the Lubjanka in Moscow.

            May the hand wither that signs this contract.
            Stresemann before he was forced to sign this contract which was called the Versailles treaty.
            But they ´d no choice, except senseless and useless throwing lives away like Hitler did.

            “If the allies had obliged me just one single time, I would have brought the German people behind me, yes; even today, I could still get them to support me. However, [the allies] gave me nothing and the minor concessions they made, always came too late. Thus, nothing else remains for us but brutal force. The future lies in the hands of the new generation. Moreover, they, the German youth, who[m] we could have won for peace and reconstruction, we have lost. Herein lies my tragedy and there, the allies’ crime.”
            — Stresemann, to diplomat Sir Albert Bruce Lockhart in 1928

          5. You don’t get it — as many Democrats today do not. Moral Principle counts. The German soldiers had endured years of brutal death in the trenches —nothing could justify the munitions strikes.

            It would have been far better to have let the German elites and generals suffer the consequences of their corruption than to let them dump the guilt onto the innocent.

            As Michael Lewis has noted, all the Democrats 2008 Big Bailout of Wall Street accomplished was to save the predators who are currently bribing Congress to let them steal more.

            The chickens always come home to roost. Question is — on whose porch will they land?

          7. Now could you just tell me what Ebert and the SPD ´d to do with the munitions strike, except not being able to stop it?

            After that you could explain, what Moral Principle Forces a Person to see his Family , his Children starve due to corruption and mismanagementand if the war was just?

            What ´d Ebert to do with the russian Expedition?

            Wilhelm abdictated, Ludendorf fled to sweden IIRC
            Max von Baden stepped in as Chancellor – was forced to retire and gave the staff of responsibility to Ebert, who ´d to run an herculean Task between civil war, revolt, putsch the “peace negotiatons” after the toxic Acts of the OHL in the e.g. Treaty of Brest-Litowsk, trying to build a new state out of the ruins of the old.

          8. 1) Ebert and the SPD joined in the munitions strike.

            2) Wilhelm abdicated because of pressure from the SPD — which had left Maximilian’s government and joined the leftists in the ongoing revolution.

            3) Voting to send men into the horrors of combat for years — and then supporting a munitions strike to gain political power at the opportune moment destroyed any moral authority SPD could claim.

            4) As noted in my link above, Ebert filed a libel suit against a reporter who had claimed Ebert was a traitor. The judge fined the reporter but noted that , legally speaking, Ebert was a traitor.

            5) The Russian expedition was a follow on to a post of mine which this site censored for some reason. The post quoted from David Lloyd George’s Memoirs of the Peace Conference in which he acknowledged Britain was at risk of losing the war in 1917.

            It also noted how British deceit and malign propaganda played a role in Weimar’s chaos. In my opinion, David Lloyd George’s lies created the Nazi Party long before corporal Hitler showed up. From Britain’s viewpoint, the social conflict, division, hatred and civil war in Germany was desirable in weakening an enemy for the long term.

            Ensuring that Germany’s Berlin to Baghdad railroad would not give Germany access to those lovely Iraq oil fields and the Persian Gulf/ sea routes to India.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin%E2%80%93Baghdad_railway

          9. Note also that you suggest the munitions strike was justified by the hunger and misery of Germany in 1918. But it was Ebert who shielded, protected, and kept in power the wealthy elites who had run the war — the Army officer corp, the big landowners, the bankers and big industrialists. Ebert who attacked the councils of the returning soldiers.

            That is why General Hindenburg was later able to take power and welcome Adolf Hitler into his government.

            We saw a similar behavior by Barack Obama — who shielded, protected and kept in power the Wall Street thieves who caused the Great Recession. A Recession that has driven 40,000 more Americans to commit suicide than would have been expected from the rate in the prior decade and which has greatly increased American debt.

          10. 1 Proof

            2 The Revolution and the Entente forced Wilhelm to abdictate

            3 see 1, SPD ,members of parliament were put in Jail because ther goverment didn´t liked what they say in Parliament

            4 If you could proof to me it was a fair Trial, not , mismanaged etc. and not conservative class justice i would consider the judgement worth consideration

            I asked if a Person must see gis Family starve to death due to mismanagement and corruption, could you please answer that?
            Also if german´s war was just?

          11. 1) For SPD’s involvement in the Munitions Strike of January 1918, see “The German Revolution, 1917-1923” by Pierre Broue, pages 134-137.

            http://libcom.org/files/The%20German%20Revolution,%201917-1923%20(Historical%20Materialism%20Book%20Series).pdf

            Note: The banned newspaper, Vorwarts, mentioned on p 135 is the long time newspaper of the SPD.

            See also p 12 of
            http://assets.cambridge.org/97805214/83094/sample/9780521483094ws.pdf

            2) For indepth discussion of Eberts’ lawsuit for libel– and the judge ruling he committed treason — see p 108 of

            http://www.inter-disciplines.org/index.php/indi/article/download/1017/1125/

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