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PART THREE: THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC - SOURCES
SECTION ONE: THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC - 1918-1923
Source A
On 1 October 1918 Ludendorff asks the SPD be brought into government.
I have asked His Majesty to bring those people into the government who are largely
responsible that things have turned out as they have. We shall therefore see these
gentlemen enter the ministries, and they must now make the peace which has to be
made. They must now eat the soup which they have landed us in !
Source B
Workers and soldiers –
Your hour has come. Now, after long endurance and days of silence, you have set
about the task. It is not too much to say: at this time the world is watching you, and
you hold the fate of the world in your hands.
Workers and soldiers! Now that the hour has come, there can be no going back. The
same ‘socialists’ who have laboured for four years in the pay of the government, who
have in recent weeks put you off with the ‘people’s government’, with parliamentary
government and other trash, are now doing everything to impair your struggle, and to
break up the movement.
(Manifesto of the Spartacus Group, 8 November 1918.)
Source C
On 9 November 1918 the SPD leader Ebert accepts the post of Chancellor.
Prince Max of Baden… Has turned over to me the task of carrying on the affairs of
the Reich Chancellor. I have in mind to form a government by consent of the parties
and will give a public report on this shortly.
The new government will be a people’s government. Its goal will be to bring peace to
the German people as soon as possible, and to establish firmly the freedom which it
has achieved.
Fellow Citizens: I ask you all for your support in the heavy tasks that await us. You
know how seriously the war has threatened the sustenance of the people … The
political revolution should not interfere with the feeding of the population.
(Chancellor Freidrich Ebert’s Manifesto, 9 November 1918)
History: Germany: Versailles to the Outbreak of World War II - 1918-1939 (AH) 50