rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

50 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHconservatives would be. But the latter had abdicated their responsibility. Theyand the Army leaders, Ludendorff and Hindenburg, had pushed political powerinto the hands of the reluctant Social Democrats. In doing so they managed alsoto place on the shoulders of these democratic working-class leaders apparentresponsibility for signing the surrender and ultimately the peace treaty, thuslaying on them the blame for Germany’s defeat and for whatever suffering alost war and a dictated peace might bring upon the German people. This wasa shabby trick, one which the merest child would be expected to see through,but in Germany it worked. It doomed the Republic from the start.Perhaps it need not have. In November 1918 the Social Democrats, holdingabsolute power, might have quickly laid the foundation for a lasting democraticRepublic. But to have done so they would have had to suppress permanently,or at least curb permanently, the forces which had propped up the HohenzollernEmpire and which would not loyally accept a democratic Germany: the feudalJunker landlords and other upper castes, the magnates who ruled over the greatindustrial cartels, the roving condottieri of the free corps, the ranking officials ofthe imperial civil service and, above all, the military caste and the members ofthe General Staff. They would have had to break up many of the great estates,which were wasteful and uneconomic, and the industrial monopolies and cartels,and clean out the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the police, the universities and theArmy of all who would not loyally and honestly serve the new democratic regime.This the Social Democrats, who were mostly well-meaning trade-unionistswith the same habit of bowing to old, established authority which was ingrainedin Germans of other classes, could not bring themselves to do. Instead they beganby abdicating their authority to the force which had always been dominantin modern Germany, the Army. For though it had been defeated on the battlefieldthe Army still had hopes of maintaining itself at home and of defeatingthe revolution. To achieve these ends it moved swiftly and boldly.On the night of November 9, 1918, a few hours after the Republic had been”proclaimed,” a telephone rang in the study of Ebert in the Reich Chancelleryin Berlin. It was a very special telephone, for it was linked with Supreme Headquartersat Spa by a private and secret line. Ebert was alone. He picked upthe telephone. ”Groener speaking,” a voice said. The former saddle maker,still bewildered by the day’s events which had suddenly thrust into his unwillinghands whatever political power remained in a crumbling Germany, wasimpressed. General Wilhelm Groener was the successor of Ludendorff as FirstQuartermaster General. Earlier on that very day at Spa it was he who, whenField Marshal von Hindenburg faltered, had bluntly informed the Kaiser thathe no longer commanded the loyalty of his troops and must go – a brave act forwhich the military caste never forgave him. Ebert and Groener had developeda bond of mutual respect since 1916, when the General, then in charge of warproduction, had worked closely with the Socialist leader. Early in November –a few days before – they had conferred in Berlin on how to save the monarchyand the Fatherland.Now at the Fatherland’s lowest moment a secret telephone line brought themtogether. Then and there the Socialist leader and the second-in-command ofthe German Army made a pact which, though it would not be publicly knownfor many years, was to determine the nation’s fate. Ebert agreed to put downanarchy and Bolshevism and maintain the Army in all its tradition. Groenerthereupon pledged the support of the Army in helping the new government