Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association

The Berlin Strike of January 1918Author(s): Stephen BaileySource: Central European History, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Jun., 1980), pp. 158-174Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Conference Group for Central European History ofthe American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4545893 .Accessed: 11/04/2011 21:11

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The Berlin Strike of January 1918

STEPHEN BAILEY

MOST

historians of modern Germany, in describing the final

year of World War I, generally note that a massive strike

broke out in Berlin at the end of January 1918, spread to

virtually every other major city of the empire, and then quickly col-

lapsed.1 This said, they then usually move on to consider the events of

great portent that followed: the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Russia,

the spring offensive in the west, the military defeat of Germany, and the

abortive revolution of 1918-19. The weakness of this approach is clear:

it pays too little attention to the importance ofthe January strike.

Even a preliminary consideration ofthe strike will bear this out. The

strikers wanted to end the war, and to force the government to make a

peace without either annexations or reparations. But once the strike

failed, the government was left free to impose an annexationist peace on

Russia and to undertake an offensive in the west that was intended to

lead to an annexationist peace there as well. Indeed, the virulence ofthe

January strike only hardened the resolve of the leaders of Germany to

pursue complete victory against Bolshevik Russia and against the par-

liamentary democracies of the West.2 Such a victory, it was thought, would frighten or coax the German worker into supporting the existing

I wish to thank Professor Warren Lerner of Duke University for his encouragement and advice, and the National Endowment for the Humanities for its financial support.

1. For good general accounts of the strike see Arthur Rosenberg, Imperial Germany (Boston, 1970), pp. 208-17; A. J. Ryder, The German Revolution of 1918 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 112-19; and Peter GrafKielmansegg, Deutschland und der erste Weltkrieg (Frank? furt, 1968), pp. 475-78. For a more detailed if less balanced East German account see Walter Bartel, "Der Januarstreik 1918," in Albert Schreiner, ed., Revolutiondre Ereignisse und Probleme in Deutschland wdhrend der Grossen Sozialistischen Revolution (Berlin, 1957), pp. 143-82. For less substantial versions see Rudolf Coper, Failure of a Revolution (Cam? bridge, 1955), pp. 61-64; andjoseph Berlau, The German Social Democratic Party (New York, 1949), p. 111.

2. Martin Kitchen, for instance, has argued that one reason the army command insisted on a renewal of hostilities with Russia in February 1918 was to counteract the effects of the strike. See Martin Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship (New York, 1976), p. 177.

158

Stephen Bailey 159

order. In brief, the failure of the strike meant the continuation of the

war, and the continuation of the war would lead to defeat and revo?

lution.

A second preliminary remark about the strike is in order. In planning and executing the strike (and in reacting to it after it failed), the leaders

ofthe German left showed the same disunity they would in the revolu?

tion that followed. In the strike, as in the revolution ten months later, the real leaders of the workers were the shop stewards. They were in-

transigent, while the parliamentarians ofthe Independent Socialist Party

(USPD) were wavering and indecisive. And in the strike as in the revo?

lution, the majoritarian Socialists (SPD) sought to moderate the workers, while the Spartacists sought to lead them into general revolution. It

might be added that the January strike and the revolution of 1918-19 came to the same end: both were cut short by military repression.

Closer examination reveals how badly the strike shook the authorities

of Imperial Germany, for in its scope, if not in its duration, this strike

was a most formidable affair. On nine o'clock ofthe morning of Mon-

day, January 28, some two hundred thousand men and women downed

their tools and left their factories in Berlin,3 calling for an end to the war

and for the democratization of the government. In the days that fol?

lowed, the strike gathered momentum. By the end ofthe week, perhaps as many as half a million workers had gone on strike in Berlin,4 and this

says nothing ofthe workers who struck elsewhere in Germany. Yet on

February 3 the strike collapsed abruptly, when it was put down with

considerable force by the army and police. In the eyes ofthe officials of

the government and the heads ofthe army, the strike had been intoler-

able. The official leaders of Germany had no intention of reforming the

government or of ending the war with a peace of understanding. They viewed the strike as illegal?which it was?and as particularly abhorrent

3. This is a conservative estimate. The figure is put at 400,000 by Bartel, p. 160; by Coper, p. 61; and by Rosenberg, p. 211. A lower figure of 300,000 can be found in

Kielmansegg, p. 476, and in Vorwdrts (Berlin), Jan. 29,1918, p. 1. The state secretary of the interior, Max Wallraf, later gave an estimate of 180,000; see Verhandlungen des Reichs-

tages (Berlin, 1918), 311: 4173. 4. A journalist at the time pointed out the folly of giving any precise figures since

many who wanted to work during the strike found it impossible to get to their j obs or else found their factories shut down. See the Berliner Tageblatt, Jan. 30, 1918, p. 1. The Independent Socialists later put the figure at 650,000, as did the Spartacists. See Verhand?

lungen, 311: 4053; and the handbill "Der Massenstreik" in Institut fur Marxismus-Lenin- ismus, Dokumente und Materialien zur Geschichte der Deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (Berlin, 1957), ser. 2, 2: 105-6.

160 The Berlin Strike of January 1918

because so many of the strikers were munitions workers. They knew

that there were Spartacists active among the workers, and that these

Spartacists wanted the strike to turn into a general revolution. Finally, the leaders of Germany knew that the strike had been seen as an encour-

aging sign in Paris, London, and Washington, and also (but for very different reasons) in Petrograd. It is not surprising that repression came; it is only surprising that it was a full week in coming.

The view ofthe government, then, was that the strike was treasonous

and revolutionary. But what, precisely, did the strikers want?5 The

strikers themselves probably provided the best answer to this question on the first day ofthe strike. They elected a council of 414 delegates, and

this council then framed a program of seven demands:

1. The conclusion of a general peace without annexations or repara- tions.

2. The participation of workers in negotiating this peace.

3. The democratization ofthe Prussian franchise.

4. The democratization of the empire.

5. The abolition of siege law6 and of Patriotic Auxiliary Service.7

6. Amnesty for all political prisoners.

7. More and better food.8

Was this a revolutionary program? It certainly was sweeping, and as has

already been argued, the very act of striking could have been considered

revolutionary. Yet the specific points ofthe program called for reform

rather than revolution, and, taken as a whole, the program ofthe strikers

closely echoed the program of the Independent Socialist Party.9 The

most radical ofthe seven points were the first two, perhaps because of

5. Evidence here is embarrassingly thin, in part because the government censored or

suppressed those newspapers which sought to cover the strike. 6. Siege law or Belagerungszustand had been in effect since the beginning ofthe war. It

gave the Army Home Commands wide-ranging power to curtail civil freedom and political activity, and had been used extensively since the naval mutinies of August 1917 to stifle the Independent Socialists.

7. The Patriotic Auxiliary Service or Vaterldndischer Hilfsdienst was created in 1916 to regiment the workers. A compromise between the Army Supreme Command and the General Commission ofthe Trade Unions, it was most unpopular by early 1918. See Gerald D. Feldman, Army, Industry and Labor in Germany 1914-1918 (Princeton, 1966), pp. 226-48 and 301-32.

8. The text ofthe demands may be found in Verhandlungen, 311: 4173-74. 9. This point has been noted by a recent student of Hugo Haase; see Kenneth Caulkins,

Hugo Haase: Democrat and Revolutionary (Durham, 1979), p. 139.

Stephen Bailey 161

the strength of the radical shop stewards among the delegates.10 The

first point was timely, since the Imperial Government had, in the course

of January, begun to steer an overtly annexationist course in the negoti- ations at Brest-Litovsk. Moreover, in calling for a general peace of

renunciation, the first demand echoed the Reichstag Peace Resolution of

July 1917, which had been an expression of war-weariness and of oppo- sition to the way in which the military had interfered in formulating the

aims for which the war was being fought. The second, in asking that the

workers be given a voice in the peace negotiations, clearly drew on the

Bolshevik precedent, but was probably less than vitally important to the

workers.

The remaining five points were almost equally radical.11 The third,

demanding the democratization of the Prussian franchise, came at a

time when the Prussian Diet, with considerable support from the Su-

preme Command, had spent months resisting reform.12 Even more

portentous was the fourth, since the democratization of the empire entailed not only sweeping transformation ofthe Bismarckian constitu-

tion, but also the elimination of military influence in the internal affairs

ofthe Reich.13 The fifth point, in attacking siege law and compulsory

labor, attacked this military influence in the two areas where it was most

resented. The sixth demand must have read (like the second) as having been specially tailored for the left wing of the Independent Socialist

Party. Who else could have been meant than Klara Zetkin, Karl Lieb?

knecht, and Rosa Luxemburg, if it was a question of freeing political

prisoners? The seventh and last demand, that for more and better food,

io. On the Berlin shop stewards, see Werner Angress, Stillbom Revolution: The Com- munist Bid for Power in Germany (Princeton, 1963), pp. 25-26; Richard Miiller, Vom Kaiserreich zu Republik (Vienna, 1924), 1:103; and Fritz Opel, Der Deutsche Metallarbeiter- Verband wdhrend des ersten Weltkrieges und der Revolution (Hanover, 1957), pp. 38-73.

11. The authors ofthe points, in framing a program that fell short of being fully revolutionary, evidently sought the broadest possible base of support. They may have wished to imitate Lenin's sinuous tactics; see Edward H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution

1917-1923 (New York, 1961), 3: 10. But where Lenin was a revolutionary defeatist, the German Spartacists seem to have been genuine pacifists.

12. By November 1917 Ludendorff was urging Count Hertling to quash franchise reform. See Kuno von Westarp, Konservative Politik im letzten fahrzehnt des Kaiserreiches

(Berlin, 1935), 2: 517. See too Ludendorff's letter of Dec. 8,1917, to the Prussian minister of the interior in Erich Ludendorff, ed., Urkunden der Obersten Heeresleitung (Berlin, 1920), pp. 290-92.

13. Here the strikers clearly sought to appeal to all those Germans (including those of the middle class) who felt impatience at the glacial progress of parliamentary reforms since the fall of Bethmann-Hollweg in July 1917.

162 The Berlin Strike of January 1918

may have appeared incongruous at the end of so political a program, but there can be little doubt as to its importance to the strikers in the

fourth winter of the war.

Taken as a whole, the demands probably gave an accurate picture of

the goals of the strikers.14 If this is so, then the Berlin workers were

highly politicized, even though (or perhaps because) they came from

relatively well-paid and largely draft-exempt jobs in those Berlin fac-

tories that were vital to the German war effort.15 Given the absence of

concrete economic demands and given the highly charged atmosphere ofthe hour?when hopes of democratic reform and compromise peace seemed to be slipping away?it seems fair to conclude that the strike was

first and foremost a political strike.16 For the strikers themselves, the

various demands probably did not represent a program for negotiations so much as a list of grievances that were strongly felt and which seemed

inextricably linked to one another.17

Explicit though the program was as to the goals ofthe strike, it left

one major question unanswered: how long the strike would last. The

evidence suggests that the leaders initially planned a three-day demon-

stration strike.18 The government probably knew this, but it immedi?

ately began to take a tough line. When the 414 delegates elected by the

14- This is also the opinion of Arthur Rosenberg, who argues that the demands closely reflected the feelings ofthe Berlin workers and notes that this program is virtually identical to that produced by strikers in Leipzig in April 1917. See Rosenberg, p. 208.

15. The real wages of Berlin workers declined during the war, but no where near as

sharply as those of workers elsewhere in Germany. See Opel, p. 51; and Institut fiir Marxismus-Leninismus, Geschichte der Deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (Berlin, 1966), 3: 19.

16. This was the position that Hugo Haase of the Independent Socialist Party took in the Reichstag soon after the strike ended; see Verhandlungen, 311: 4214-16. For a similar view, seeJohnL. Snell, "Socialist Unions and Socialist Patriotism in Germany 1914-1918," American Historical Review 59 (1953): 74-

17. A different opinion is that of Kielmansegg, who thinks that the domestic demands were the ones that really counted; see Kielmansegg, p. 476. Berlau, on the contrary, asserts that the strike was in the main a protest against what was taking place at Brest; see Berlau, p. 111. The interpretation presented above draws on the Luxemburgist view of mass strikes; see Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Parties and the Trade Unions

(New York, 1971), passim. 18. Bartel, p. 151; Kielmansegg, p. 475. Wilhelm Dittmann gave testimony to this

effect in 1924 at the Magdeburg Trial of Friederich Ebert; see Friederich Ebert, Kdmpfe und Ziele (Dresden, n.d.), p. 355. Just after the strike ended Ebert argued that it had been a political one; see Friederich Ebert, "Zur Streikbewegung," Die Neue Zeit (Berlin), Feb. 15,1918, p. 461. So did an unidentified Spartacist whose papers were confiscated by the Prussian police in a raid in March 1918, probably Leo Jogiches (Marchlewski); see Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 132.

Stephen Bailey 163

workers created an Action Committee, the government first refused to

negotiate with this committee and then dissolved it. The government also outlawed meetings of strikers, and, where they took place illegally, disbanded them with use of force. In addition, the government arrested

leaders, suspended Vorwdrts, and placed factories under military direc-

tion. All this provoked the workers into continuing the strike until the

end ofthe week, but then they decided to give in. The chief reason was

that Berlin was going it alone; the sympathetic strikes that had erupted in the other principal cities of Germany were already over, ended either

by government repression19 or by negotiation.20 The workers may have also decided to give in because they lacked the funds to continue?

the hierarchy of the Socialist trade unions had refused to give backing to the strike. Even after Monday, February 3, when the strike ended,

the government did not abandon its tough policy. Perhaps fifty thou?

sand strikers were subsequently conscripted into the army, and many of these were sent straight to penal battalions.21 Other strikers were

simply arrested and brought to trial. The more fortunate were acquitted after a period of detention, the less lucky were convicted and given stiff

sentences (one worker received a sentence of nine months for encour-

aging others to strike,22 another got a sentence of two years for throwing a snowball at a policeman).23

After the strike was over the Prussian authorities prepared for a sec?

ond round, but, as it proved, the January strike was the last they heard

from the workers of Berlin until the calamitous autumn of 1918. It

may be, as one historian has argued, that after the beginning of the

spring offensive on March 21 the German workers felt that it would

have been unpatriotic to strike while their brother proletarians were

risking all on the western front.24 Yet another explanation is that the

German workers rallied to the state during the spring and summer of

19- For detailed accounts ofthe repression ofthe strike, see Miiller, pp. 104-11; and

Bartel, pp. 160-70. 20. One government official who successfully negotiated an end to a local strike was

Mayor Konrad Adenauer of Cologne. 21. Ulrich Kluge, Soldatenrdte und Revolution (Gottingen, 1975), p. 21; Bartel, p. 178. 22. Verhandlungen, 311: 4290. 23. Verhandlungen, 311: 4291. 24. Feldman, p. 493. Phillip Scheidemann, whose speeches often seemed tailored to fit

public opinion (or at least that of SPD constituents), said as much in the Reichstag on Mar. 22, 1918; see Verhandlungen, 311: 4557. Feldman has also argued that the strike failed because of lack of unity among the leaders, but the repressive power ofthe regime was probably more decisive; see Feldman, p. 453.

164 The Berlin Strike of January igi8

1918, when peace, victory, and prosperity seemed so close at hand.25

If this last theory is valid, and at the time both Ludendorff and Lenin

thought it was (for very different reasons), then the German workers

tended to be "revolutionary" in early 1918, when the government re?

jected the speedy peace offered by Trotsky at Brest; "patriotic" in the

spring and summer, when victory seemed to be the way to peace; and

"revolutionary" once again in the fall, when overthrowing the mon-

archy became essential (or was thought to be essential) for getting Woodrow Wilson to grant an armistice.

It is due to the paucity of evidence that there is doubt as to why the

strike was the last act of militancy ofthe German workers until Novem?

ber. There is, however, a good deal of evidence as to the way in which

the leaders of the workers reacted. These leaders may be considered as

breaking down into several groups, running (from left to right) from

the Spartacists26 to the shop stewards and Independent Socialists and,

finally, to the Majority Socialists. Each group had different experiences

during the strike, and each drew different conclusions from its collapse. For the Spartacists, the lesson ofthe strike was simple: the strike had

failed because ofthe hesitancy ofthe moderate Socialist leaders27 and not

because of lack of support from the workers.28 Before the strike began the Spartacists did a good deal of pamphleteering to ensure its outbreak,29 but once the strike was underway the Spartacists stressed how sponta- neous an affair it was. This stress on proletarian spontaneity seemed to

echo what Rosa Luxemburg had written ten years earlier in her Mass

Strike?0 and so too did the way the Spartacists blamed the failure ofthe

strike on the Independent Socialists. The Independents, the Spartacists

argued, were typical parliamentarians, good for little more than giving

speeches and holding conferences. In the aftermath of the strike the

25. In the opinion of Arthur Rosenberg, the strikers were not radicalized by repression; see Rosenberg, pp. 216-17.

26. Technically the Spartacists were still members of the Independent Socialist Party at this time. In practice, however, they were a separate group and are treated as such in this paper.

27. See the Spartacist papers in Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 134-36. 28. Dokumente, ser. 2, 2:135; Miiller, p. 109. At the height ofthe strike the Spartacists

moved away from a minimalist program to hint at revolution. See "Hoch der Massen- streik!" in Ernst Meyer, ed., Spartakus im Kriege (Berlin, 1927), pp. 186-89. Evidently the Spartacists hoped the Berlin strike would run the same course as the strike in Petrograd several months earlier.

29. See the pamphlets reproduced in Meyer, pp. 179-98. 30. Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, p. 27.

Stephen Bailey 165

Spartacists began to sound distinctly Leninist, calling for greater orga- nization and preparation the next time round.31 This commitment to

organization and preparation came to very little, but the millenarian

hope of a successful revolution remained. Left revolutionism character?

ized the policy ofthe Spartacists in January 1918, and this foreshadowed

the policy ofthe Communists in the early years ofthe Weimar Republic. The relationship of the Independent Socialists to the strike was far

more complex. The party had been on steadily worsening terms with

the government ever since its creation in April 1917, and especially since

the naval mutinies of August 1917, for which the government had

blamed the Independents.32 Members of the party had attended the

Stockholm Peace Conference in September 1917,33 and there had some?

what reluctantly pledged to launch mass strikes in Germany to end the

war.34 In the months that followed, the Independents did nothing to

implement this pledge,35 even as they were subjected to a crackdown

by the government36 and harassment by the Majority Socialists.37 Until

January, the Independents contented themselves with criticizing their

persecutors. They vociferated against the regime for its annexationism

and authoritarianism, and against the SPD for its collaboration with the

regime.38 Not until January did the USPD delegates in the Reichstag go

31. Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 135. 32. This led the SPD as a whole to call for the dismissal of the chancellor, Georg

Michaelis, although some members ofthe right wing ofthe party expressed agreement with the government; see Verhandlungen, 311: 3965.

33. The Supreme Command sought unsuccessfully to prohibit their attendance; Gus- tav Meyer, Erinnerungen (Zurich, 1949), p. 259.

34. Hugo Haase, one of the leaders of the party, argued against the use of strikes at Stockholm; see Angelica Balabanoff, Erringerungen und Erlebnisse (Berlin, 1927), p. 169. Timorous by nature, Haase doubted that a strike could succeed; see Caulkins, p. 137. It has been argued, and with some plausibility, that the Independent Socialists were more liberal than revolutionary; see Lenore O'Boyle, "The German Independent Socialists

during the First World War," American Historical Review 56 (1951): 824-31. Nonetheless, the Independents were to support an illegal strike with decidedly revolutionary potential.

35. Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 131. 36. Verhandlungen, 311: 3964. 37. In the fall the Independents were ousted from Die Gleichheit (Stuttgart and Berlin)

and the Bremer Bilrgerzeitung; Ryder, p. 109. In addition, the SPD stripped Karl Kautsky ofthe editorship ofDie Neue Zeit (Berlin), and the military stopped Kautsky from then starting another periodical; see the Leipziger Volkszeitung, Jan. 23, 1918, passim. The Leipziger Volkszeitung, however, continued to give the USPD a voice and had a substan- tial circulation in Berlin; Bartel, p. 166. The even more radical Arbeiterpolitik, which was published in Bremen, does not seem to have had much influence in Berlin.

38. Verhandlungen, 311: 3958-64.

166 The Berlin Strike of January 1918

beyond hinting at the possibility of a strike,39 and when the actual task

of organizing the workers began, the leaders of the USPD urged that

they settle for a brief demonstration strike.40 The real work and the

even more real risk of organizing the strike was left to the shop stewards.41

Once the strike was underway, however, the leaders ofthe USPD sup?

ported it valiantly. But ultimately their speeches counted for little against armed troops and mounted police.

After the strike was over, members ofthe party's Reichstag delegation took government ministers to task over and over again for the repres- sion ofthe strike, and especially for the imprisonment of their colleague Wilhelm Dittmann. But this seems to have been the end of it; by late

February the party had to address itself to the question of a separate

peace with the Ukraine, and, after that, the matter of the Treaty of

Brest-Litovsk. Not only was the Independent Socialist Party forced to

forget the strike in the rush of events, but it was largely powerless. This

might seem to be a paradox, since the party generally took the same

viewpoint as the workers of Berlin (and of other north German cities), but it is not. The party had a weak organizational base,42 and, what was

probably even worse, the leaders of the party were viewed with mis-

trust by many workers, evidently out of a syndicalist mistrust of poli- ticians.43 Intellectually brilliant, the party lacked organization, resolve,

and following. In brief, the party was ineffectual during the January

strike, as it was to be in the revolution a year later.

The real leaders ofthe strike were the Berlin shop stewards. In orga?

nizing the strike, they made a mockery ofthe claims ofthe regular trade

unionists to be the leaders ofthe workers. During the strike, and then in

the weeks afterwards, they furnished the government with a special tar-

get of repression.44 Yet the shop stewards, despite sweeping arrests and

39- See, for example, the vague warnings Georg Ledebour made on the floor ofthe

Reichstag in early December 1917; Verhandlungen, 311: 3978. 40. Caulkins, p. 141. 41. Miiller, p. 101. Although the USPD Executive Committee favored a strike as a

protest against what was happening at Brest, it decided against lending official party support to the strike; Caulkins, p. 137.

42. The membership of the party at the time has been estimated at 100,000. Ulrich

Kluge has also argued that the organization ofthe party was weak; see Kluge, p. 90. 43. Opel, p. 54- 44. Their leader, Richard Miiller, was drafted. The Hydra-like nature of the shop

steward movement then asserted itself; Miiller was replaced by the equally militant Otto Barth.

Stephen Bailey 167

conscription, seem to have been undaunted by failure,45 for they played a principal role in the revolution at the end ofthe year. Then again they would prove to be more radical than their followers, and then again,

they would fail.

The significance ofthe strike for the shop stewards was that it increased

their hostility to the politicians and trade unionists ofthe SPD. This may

help explain their insistence in November, when Friederich Ebert took

over the government from Prince Max, that a separate but equal council

of workers and soldiers be formed to keep watch over Ebert. Further?

more, the conscription of many of these shop stewards may not only have done much to lower morale and discipline,46 but may also have

been a major cause for the formation oiRate in the army in November.47

Although it can be argued that the Soldatenrate were imitations of the

Russian example,48 it seems more plausible to say that they were worker

syndicalism transplanted to a military milieu.

For the Majority Socialists, the strike constituted a crisis of the first

magnitude. Up to January 1918 the SPD had steadfastly supported the

war as a war of defense and had collaborated with the government in

running the war economy. The SPD had claimed that cooperation with

the regime would ultimately lead to democratic reform. The workers,

by striking, denied all this and challenged the right ofthe leaders ofthe

SPD to speak for them in the bargain. This was a source of grave em-

barrassment for the leaders of the SPD. It would have been political suicide for them to denounce the strike, much though the Supreme Command and the Prussian authorities wished them to do so. So the

SPD chose to follow. and not for the last time in its historv.49 a nolicv

45- Testimony given in the trial of Georg Ledebour in 1919 supports this; see Erhard Lucas, Die Sozialdemokratie in Bremen wdhrend des ersten Weltkrieges (Bremen, 1969), p. 102.

46. See Albrecht von Thaer, Generalstabsdienst an der Front und in der O.H.L. (Got- tingen, 1958), p. 188.

47. Ulrich Kluge does not speak to this point but does note that the Rate started in the

army and later spread to the workers; Kluge, p. 105. 48. The Spartacists, on the other hand, had the Russian precedent in mind at the time

ofthe strike. See the handbill for soldiers of January 1918 entitled "Denkt an Eure Wahre Pflicht!" in Meyer, pp. 189-90.

49. This was no great secret, even at the time. See the statement ofthe SPD Executive Committee of Jan. 30, 1918, in Friederich Ebert, Schriften, Aufzeichnungen und Reden

(Dresden, 1928), pp. 55-57. See too Friederich Ebert, "Zur Streikbewegung," p. 459; and also the testimony given by Phillip Scheidemann in the 1924 Magdeburg trial in Ebert's Kdmpfe und Ziele, p. 353. The judgment that the SPD canalized the strike can be found in Paul Frolich, Zehnfahre Burgerkrieg und Revolution (Berlin, 1924), p. 208; and in Bartel, p. 167. It also appears in the work ofa recent historian; see Caulkins, p. 140. The

168 The Berlin Strike of January 1918

of canalizing radicalism. On the very first day ofthe strike, after the 414 workers' delegates had formed an Action Committee, the SPD (by a

slim majority) got the delegates to accept the addition of Friederich

Ebert, Phillip Scheidemann, and Otto Braun to the Action Committee.50

By so doing, the Majoritarians hoped to be in a position to catch up with their followers, and also to be able to negotiate an end to the strike

as representatives of the strikers. Negotiating an end to the strike, if it

could have been done successfully, would have meant paring down the

strikers' demands and, better yet, gaining credit with the government for having done so. This approach was used elsewhere in Germany and

worked, but it did not work in Berlin.

The Prussian authorities were willing to meet with the SPD (and even the USPD) members ofthe Action Committee, but not with the

others. The pretext given?and it was a pretext?was that the socialist

politicians on the Action Committee had official standing by virtue of

their Reichstag mandates and could therefore be recognized as negotiat?

ing partners, whereas the workers on the Action Committee lacked any such standing. Everything hinged, therefore, on the willingness of the

workers on the Action Committee to be represented by the socialist

politicians on the Action Committee. The workers were not willing.51 As a consequence, there never were negotiations over the strike in Ber?

lin,52 and when it was all over, the Majoritarians were left in a most

uncomfortable position. As far as conservative public opinion was con-

cerned, the Majoritarians had lent their support to a strike that was

radical and that had halted war production in Berlin for a full week.

What was worse still, some ofthe workers felt that the SPD leaders had

participated in the Action Committee out of a desire to shore up their

own political power, and not out of any real sympathy for the strikers.53

technique of limiting radicalism by leading it was later used by Noske at Kiel and by the entire SPD leadership in the general strike that followed the Kapp Putsch.

50. Just before this, Ebert and Scheidemann had rejected the suggestion of Parvus (Alexander Helphand) that the SPD stage a strike in order to force the regime to make a moderate peace with the Russians. See Phillip Scheidemann, The Making ofNew Germany (New York, 1929), 2:101; and Z. A. B. Zeman and W. B. Scharlau, Merchant of Revolu? tion (London, 1965), p. 237.

51. See Miiller, p. 105. The socialist politicians, especially the Majoritarians, were eager to serve as the representatives ofthe workers, or so Miiller claims.

52. In this way the January 1818 strike in Berlin differed from that of April 1917, which had been ended by negotiation; Opel, p. 59.

53. See the speech of one ofthe more radical Independents (Vogtherr) to the Reichstag in Verhandlungen, 311: 4290.

Stephen Bailey 169

Caught between fire from the left and right, the SPD leaders were left

to expostulate against the regime for not having been more willing to

negotiate, and also to argue that the strike had done nothing to impair the war effort.54 The last claim, incidentally, was true. At the end of

January there was a shortage of fuel which, in the absence ofthe strike,

would have forced the factories of Berlin to shut down any way.55 For the trade unionists ofthe SPD the strike was even more unwelcome

than it was for the parliamentarians. Earlier strikes in 1916 and 1917 had

also taken place without the sanction and against the will ofthe General

Commission of the Trade Unions, but these strikes had had nowhere

near the extent or force ofthe 1918 strike. On January 26, just before

the strike began, the General Commission issued an appeal to the workers

not to strike. Then, after the strike had begun, the General Commission

declared that it was "neutral,"56 and did so at the very time that SPD

parliamentarians were participating in the Action Committee!57 Even

this declaration of "neutrality," telling sign though it was of how inde?

pendent the rightist Commission had become of the party, was not

enough to save the Social Democratic trade unions from considerable

opprobium after the strike.58 Despite this, the SPD trade unionists

54- See the speeches made at the end of February in the Reichstag by Phillip Scheide- mann and Otto Landsberg ofthe SPD in Verhandlungen, 311: 4162-70 and 4235-36.

55. This defense was made by Phillip Scheidemann; see Verhandlungen. 311: 4166. Feldman confirms the contention that the fuel shortage would have necessitated a shut- down; Feldman, p. 452. The Prussian minister of war, Heinrich von Scheiich, sought rather unpersuasively to argue that the strike had hurt production; see Verhandlungen, 311: 4298.

56. The text may be found in Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 96-97. It should be added that the Commission did draft a statement expressing qualified sympathy with the strikers, but when it was pronounced seditious by the military censors this statement was not distrib- uted; see Heinz Josef Varain, Freie Gewerkschaften, Sozialdemokratie und Staat (Dusseldorff, 1956), p. 105. The Christian Trade Union leadership also issued a declaration of neutral-

ity; see Document 140c in Herbert Michaelis and Ernst Schraepler, eds., Ursachen und

Folgen: Vom Deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutsch- lands in der Gegenwart (Berlin, 1958), 1: 248-49.

57. In a way, the autonomous position of the General Commission, especially with

regard to mass strikes, had been clear ever since the Mannheim agreement of 1906; see Carl Schorske, German Social Democracy 1905-1917: The Development ofthe Great Schism

(Cambridge, Mass., 1955), pp. 49-53 ? At the same time, the General Commission can be seen as moving towards its position in 1919, when it declared its neutrality in "party matters"; see Richard N. Hunt, German Social Democracy 1918-1933 (Chicago, Quadrangle paperback ed., 1970), pp. 163-64.

58. Particularly noteworthy was the hostility shown by the Army Supreme Command towards the trade unions after the strike. See, for example, the letter dated June 18,1918, from Field Marshal Hindenburg (but probably drafted by Erich Ludendorff or his close

170 The Berlin Strike of January 1918

remained regierungstreu, and it comes as no surprise that they did not

protest very forcefully when, after the strike, the government began

combing radical workers and shop stewards out of the factories. The

willingness ofthe unionists to countenance the repression ofthe radicals,

especially when those radicals challenged the power of the unionists, foreshadows the repression the Ebert government was to administer to

the radical left in the winter of 1918-19. The January strike was not only a harbinger of things to come for the

workers and their leaders. It was also a turning point for the men who

ruled Germany. Foremost among these was the Quartermaster General

of the German Army, Erich Ludendorff. Ludendorff, whose influence

over the government was at its zenith at this time,59 was in a way the

father ofthe January strike. It was just three months before that Count

Hertling had come to the chancellorship promising franchise reform, a

modification of siege law, and a conciliatory approach to making peace.60

By late January it was clear that nothing was going to come of Hertling's

promises, and that the workers had Ludendorff and the Army to thank

for this.61 Put differently, it had now become impossible for the SPD to

argue credibly that the government wanted either domestic reform

within or a conciliatory peace without.

It cannot be said that before the strike broke out Ludendorff was

unaware where his policies might lead. Indeed, during January he had

taken the precaution of stationing battalions of reliable troops in the

vicinity of Berlin,62 and it was these troops that were eventually sent in

to help break up the strike. After the strike was put down, Ludendorff

and the Supreme Command sought to devise ways to prevent a recur-

rence. The measures they proposed betrayed, in many instances, re-

markable ineptness. It was suggested, for instance, that all trade union

subordinate Colonel Bauer) to Chancellor Hertling warning the government not to be taken in by the sham patriotism ofthe unions, in Ludendorff, p. 108.

59. Kitchen, pp. 67-85 and 271-78; Stephen Bailey, "Erich Ludendorff as Quarter? master General ofthe German Army, 1916-1918" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1966), pp. 172-96.

60. See Hertling's baptismal speech to the Reichstag in Verhandlungen, 311: 3944-47. 61. This charge was made at the time by the Spartacists in their handbills and in only

slightly veiled form by Independent Socialist speakers in the Reichstag and Prussian Diet (to say nothing of USPD newspaper editors). Ludendorff did bring pressure to bear to block franchise reform. See his letter of Dec. 8, 1917, to the Prussian minister of the interior, in Ludendorff, pp. 290-92; see too Westarp, 2: 517.

62. Diary entry of Jan. 23, 1918, in Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, Mein Kriegs- tagebuch (Munich, 1929), 2: 324.

Stephen Bailey 171

officials should be made to take an oath promising not to strike, and

that the special committees that handled such things as draft exemptions,

wage rates, and working conditions for the factories should be stripped of their Spartacist and USPD members.63 Both proposals were foolish.

The trade union officials in fact wanted as little as possible to do with

strikes, but to make them swear not to strike could hardly strengthen their already weakened position with the workers. Similarly, the pro-

posal to purge the special committees (already heavily Majoritarian

anyway) could only drive wavering Independents further to the left.

At any rate, no thing came of these proposals; but they are significant in

showing how Ludendorff and the army feared future strikes.64 More

significant still, the Supreme Command and the government saw the

January strike as evidence that revolution a la russe was a real possibility in Germany.65 In response they chose two policies to combat the revo?

lutionary contagion: unyielding repression within and grasping annex-

ationism without. It was fear of revolution (and the January strike was

correctly seen as a harbinger of revolution) that drove the authorities to

these extreme policies. And yet these policies, in the end, only served to

make the outbreak of revolution more certain.

In all events, it had been the army that had wanted and had gotten the

suppression ofthe strike (as Arthur Rosenberg has noted).66 Within the

civilian government, however, there was also considerable support for

putting down the strike, particularly from the state secretary of the

interior, Max von Wallraf, and from the Prussian minister of war, Gen?

eral von Scheuch. The chancellor, Count Hertling, was old and unasser-

63. Michaelis and Schraepler, 1: 274-75. For other contraceptive policies proposed by the Supreme Command see Ludendorff, pp. 101-3.

64. See the letter from Colonel Bauer to General Stein of Feb. 18, 1918, requesting that troops be kept available in the event further repression was necessary, in Frolich,

p. 210. 65. Indeed, the charge that foreign agents, presumably Russian, had fomented the

strike was widespread at the time. The Supreme Command claimed that this was the

case; see Michaelis and Schraepler, 1: 274. So did Count Hertling; Dokumente, ser. 2, 2:

102-4; and the Prussian minister ofthe interior, Bill Drews, in the Leipziger Volkszeitung, Feb. 9, 1918, p. 3; and the Commander ofthe Home Army in the Berlin area, General

Wrisberg, in Ernst von Wrisberg, Der Weg zur Revolution (Leipzig, 1921), p. 50; and the state secretary ofthe interior, Count Wallraf, in Verhandlungen, 311: 4171- The most

specific allegation made at the time by a German official was that of the undersecretary of the foreign ministry, Hilmar von dem Bussche, who asserted in the Reichstag that

Trotsky had tried to make a revolution in Germany; Verhandlungen, 311: 4426. The SPD

vehemently rejected such charges; see Ebert, "Zur Streikbewegung," passim. 66. Rosenberg, p. 215.

172 The Berlin Strike of January 1918

tive and seems to have let his subordinates have their way.67 But Hert-

ling evidently had doubts about the wisdom of a policy of repression, for in February he expressed agreement with a memorandum written

by the Prussian minister of the interior, Bill Drews, in which Drews

agonized over the course the strike had taken.68 Drews argued that the

strike had been an indication of a serious problem in the German body

politic,69 and that the government, by failing to produce domestic re?

form, had driven the masses into the arms ofthe USPD. The tough line

taken by the regime, he continued, made it virtually impossible for the

SPD to stay loyal to the government.70 Drews suggested that the regime seek to win back the workers by granting reforms. He maintained that

this would make the forthcoming peace settlement in the east palatable to the people, and would give the right wing of the SPD a chance to

exercise control over the workers again. Drews concluded by noting that concessions would eliminate the danger of further strikes.

Hertling and Drews were half right. It was unquestionably true that

the discontent ofthe workers of Berlin and Germany could have been

substantially reduced by domestic reform. And it was probably also

true, as Hertling and Drews seemed to think, that the workers had

reacted in January more to what was taking place in the Prussian Diet

than to what was going on at Brest-Litovsk. But Hertling and Drews

were wrong in assuming that everything would go well for Germany if only domestic disagreements were patched up. In the realm of foreign

policy and peacemaking, they were surrendering to the va-banque ap?

proach of the Supreme Command. The consequences of this were to

come in the fall, and it can be argued that these civil officials would have

done well to heed all of the points in the strikers' program. Yet in a sense, this may be an unfair criticism. Earlier in January, be?

fore the strike had begun, a number of officials had challenged the an-

nexationism of the Supreme Command. As it happened, the Supreme

67. This is also the opinion of Gustav Mayer; see Mayer, p. 289. See too Friederich

Stampfer, Die Vierzehn fahre der ersten deutschen Republik (Carlsbad, 1936), p. 36. 68. The text of this memorandum, which bears the date Feb. 13, 1918, can be found

in Michaelis and Schraepler, 1: 256-73. 69. This phrase, as well as the arguments that follow, appear in remarkably similar

form in a speech given in the Reichstag on Feb. 28,1918, by Otto Landsberg ofthe SPD. See Verhandlungen, 311: 4233-42.

70. Before the strike, the government had thought there was a good chance of getting the SPD to vote for an ambitious eastern settlement. See the letter of undersecretary of state Radowitz to Count Limburg-Stirum of Jan. 17, 1918, in Michaelis and Schraepler, 1:239-41.

Stephen Baiky 173

Command put down this challenge to its power by late January; the

foreign minister and the representative of the Supreme Command at

Brest-Litovsk were set straight, and a moderate member ofthe emperor's

personal entourage was dismissed.71 Only after this crisis in the govern? ment had passed did the strike take place. Had the government critics

of annexation and reaction gone on the offensive at the same time as the

strikers, the consequences might have been a moderate peace in the east, an impetus for reform, and perhaps even the fall of Ludendorff.

The significance of the strike, then, is that it failed. In failing, it left

Germany free to go down the road towards cataclysm. The regime dictated first the separate peace treaty with the Ukraine and then the

punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Russians.72 These treaties

meant continued war in the west, since the Allied and Associated Powers

could scarcely accept German hegemony in eastern Europe, just as the

Spartacists and Independents had warned.73 In addition, the strike was, in Rosenberg's felicitous phrase, a "dress rehearsal" for the revolution

of 1918-19, when the participants played much the same roles they had

in January 1918. As a postscript, one can note two other ways in which the unsuccess-

ful January strike was significant. First, it affected Soviet policy. During

January 1918, Leo Trotsky hoped that mass strikes in Germany and

Austria74 would put a speedy end to the governments of the Central

Powers.75 When his hopes proved misplaced, Trotsky was driven in

February to the desperate expedient of breaking off the negotiations at

Brest. Trotsky hoped that his proclamation that there was "no war, no

peace" might deter the Central Powers from renewing hostilities, or

that revolution would break out in Germany and Austria if they did.

Events proved that Trotsky was mistaken. All this provided confirma-

tion for Lenin's theory that Russia could not depend upon outsiders

71. This was Rudolf von Valentini, the Chief ofthe Civil Cabinet, who had favored domestic reform and a moderate peace with the Russians. He was replaced with a con? servative more to the taste of the Supreme Command.

72. It is well known that in March, when the Brest treaty was presented to the Reichs? tag, the SPD abstained from voting while the USPD voted against ratification. In fact, the General Commission supported the treaty, as did a majority of the SPD delegates. See Opel, p. 41. More revealing still, the SPD voted for the Ukrainian treaty; see Ver? handlungen, 311: 4063-87 for its arguments.

73. See Meyer, pp. 179-94, for the Spartacist position. See the Leipziger Volkszeitung for Jan. 21-28, 1918, for USPD warnings.

74. In mid-January there had been a rash of strikes in Austria. 75. See Ryder, p. 110 and p. 113; see too Carr, 3: 33.

174 The Berlin Strike of January 1918

very much.76 Thus the failure ofthe January strike paved the way for

Russia to pursue a policy of "socialism in one country." The other way in which the January strike was significant was that it

helped shape American policy. The strike broke out just three weeks

after Woodrow Wilson proclaimed his Fourteen Points. One recent

historian has argued that Wilson and his advisors hoped that the Four?

teen Points, by attacking annexationism, would drive a wedge between

the German left and the annexationist government of Germany.77 This

is probably so, and what is beyond question is that Wilson was im-

pressed by the magnitude ofthe January strike,78 and, in the armistice

negotiations in the fall, sought to encourage the workers to bring pres? sure to bear upon the government of Prince Max. Wilson in the fall of

1918 may not have wanted the German workers to go so far as to

undertake their own revolution, but this is what his policies led to.

Thus, in a subtle way, the January strike may not have only foreshad-

owed the revolution of 1918-19 but helped to cause it.

76. Carr, 3: 34. Some left Bolsheviks, Karl Radek for one, found it hard to follow Trotsky into accepting peace. See Warren Lerner, Karl Radek: The Last Revolutionist (Stanford, 1970), p. 69. Doubtless Radek's ties to the radical left in Bremen made it doubly hard for him to give up on Germany.

77. This is the argument of Klaus Schwabe in Deutsche Revolution und Wilson-Friede (Diisseldorff, 1971), pp. 45-50.

78. Schwabe, p. 56.