Part 17 (1/2)
The division demanded that it be permitted to increase its numbers to five thousand and that it be made a part of the Republican Soldier Guard in charge of the city's police service. This demand was refused by the City Commandant, Otto Wels, since the ranks of the Soldier Guard were already full. A compromise was eventually reached by which those of the division who had formerly been employed on police duty and who were fathers of families and residents of Berlin, would be added to the police force if the Marine Division would surrender the keys to the Palace which it was looting. The Marines agreed to this, but failed to surrender the keys. On December 21st a payment of eighty thousand marks was to be made to them for their supposed services. Wels refused to hand over the money until the keys to the Palace had been surrendered.
Wels had incurred the deep hatred of the more radical elements of the capital by his st.u.r.dy opposition to lawlessness. He was almost the only Majority Socialist functionary who had displayed unbending energy in his efforts to uphold the authority of the government, and public demonstrations against him had already been held, in which he was cla.s.sed with Ebert and Scheidemann as a ”bloodhound.” The leaders of the Marine Division decided reluctantly to give up the Palace keys, but they would not hand them over to the hated Wels. Early in the afternoon of December 23d they sought out Barth, the member of the cabinet who stood closest to them, and gave the keys to him. Barth telephoned to Wels that the keys had been surrendered. Wels pointed out that Ebert was the member of the cabinet in charge of military affairs, and declared that he would pay out the eighty thousand marks only upon receipt of advices that the keys were in Ebert's possession.
The delivery to Barth of the keys had been entrusted two marines who const.i.tuted the military post at the Chancellor's Palace. These men, informed of Wels's att.i.tude, occupied the telephone central in the palace, and informed Ebert and Landsberg that Dorrenbach, their commander, had ordered that no one be permitted to leave or enter the building. An hour later, at five-thirty o'clock, the Marines left the building, but in the evening the whole division appeared before the palace and occupied it.
Government troops, summoned by telephone, also appeared, and an armed clash appeared imminent. Ebert, however, finally induced the Marines to leave on condition that the government troops also left.
While this was going on, a detachment of Marines had entered Wels's office, compelled him at the point of their guns to pay out the eighty thousand marks due them, and had then marched him to the Royal Stables, where he was locked up in a cellar and threatened with death. Ebert, Scheidemann and Landsberg, without consulting their colleagues, ordered the Minister of War to employ all force necessary for the release of Wels. At the last moment, however, negotiations were entered into and Wels was released shortly after midnight on the Marines' terms.
Spartacans and radical Independents took the part of the Marines.
Richard Muller, Ledebour, Daumig and other members of the defunct original _Vollzugsrat_ were galvanized into new opposition. Ledebour's ”Revolutionary Foremen of Greater Berlin Industries” demanded the retirement of the Independent Socialist members of the cabinet, and the demand was approvingly published by _Die Freiheit_, the party's official organ. The head and forefront of the Majority cabinet members' offending was their order to the War Minister to use force in upholding the government's authority, and radical revolutionists condemn force when it is employed against themselves.
The position of Haase and Dittmann as party leaders was seriously shaken. The left wing of their party, led by Eichhorn and Ledebour, was on the point of disavowing them as leaders and even as members of the party. At the party's caucuses in Greater Berlin on December 26th, held to nominate candidates for delegates to the coming National a.s.sembly, Ledebour refused to permit his name to be printed on the same ticket with Haase's, and Eichhorn secured 326 votes to 271 for the party's head.
On the evening of the same day the Independents in the cabinet submitted eight formulated questions to the _Vollzugsrat_, in which this body was asked to define its att.i.tude as to various matters. The _Vollzugsrat_ answered a majority of the questions in a sense favorable to the Independents. Its answer to one important question, however, gave the Independents the pretext for which they were looking. The question ran:
”Does the _Vollzugsrat_ approve that the cabinet members Ebert, Scheidemann and Lansberg on the night of December 23d conferred upon the Minister of War the authority, in no manner limited, to employ military force against the People's Marine Division in the Palace and Stables?”
The executive council's answer was:
”The people's commissioners merely gave the order to do what was necessary to liberate Comrade Wels. Nor was this done until after the three commissioners had been advised by telephone by the leader of the People's Marine Division that he could not longer guarantee the life of Comrade Wels. The _Vollzugsrat_ approves.”
The _Vollzugsrat_ itself presented a question. It asked:
”Are the People's Commissioners prepared to protect public order and safety, and also and especially private and public property, against forcible attacks? Are they also prepared to use the powers at their disposal to prevent themselves and their organs from being interfered with in their conduct of public affairs by acts of violence, irrespective of whence these may come?”
The Independents, for whom Dittmann spoke, hereupon declared that they retired from the government. Thus they avoided the necessity of answering the _Vollzugsrat's_ question. In a subsequent statement published in their press the trio declared that the Majority members were encouraging counter-revolution by refusing to check the power of the military. They themselves, they a.s.serted, were a short while earlier in a position to take over the government alone, but they could not do so since their principles did not permit them to work with a Majority Socialist _Vollzugsrat_. What they meant by saying that they could have a.s.sumed complete control of the cabinet was not explained, and it was probably an over-optimistic statement. There is no reason to believe that the Independents had up to this time been in a position enabling them to throw the Majority Socialists out of the cabinet.
Ebert, Scheidemann and Landsberg, in a manifesto to the people, declared that the Independents had, by their resignations, refused to take a stand in favor of a.s.suring the safety of the state. The manifesto said:
”By rejecting the means of a.s.suring the state's safety, the Independents have demonstrated their incapacity to govern. For us the revolution is not a party watchword, but the most valuable possession of the whole wealth-producing folk.
”We take over their tasks as people's commissioners with the oath: All for the revolution, all through the revolution. But we take them over at the same time with the firm purpose to oppose immovably all who would convert the revolution of the people into terror by a minority.”
The _Vollzugsrat_ elected to fill the three vacancies: Gustav Noske, still governor of Kiel: Herr Wissell, a member of the old Reichstag, and Herr Loebe, editor of the Socialist _Volkswacht_ of Breslau. Loebe, however, never a.s.sumed office, and the cabinet consisted of five members until it was abolished by act of the National a.s.sembly in February.
The Majority Socialists staged a big demonstration on Sunday, December 29th, in favor of the new government. Thousands of the _bourgeoisie_ joined in a great parade, which ended with a tremendous a.s.sembly in front of the government offices in the Wilhelmstra.s.se. The size and character of the demonstration showed that the great majority of Berlin's law-abiding residents were on the side of Ebert and his colleagues.
The Majority Socialists did not take over the sole responsibility for the government with a light heart. They had begun to realize something of the character of the forces working against them and were saddened because they had been compelled to abandon party traditions by relying upon armed force. Yet there was clearly no way of avoiding it. The Spartacans were organizing their cohorts in Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel and other cities, and had already seized the government of Dusseldorf, where they had dissolved the city council and arrested Mayor Oehler. The Soviets of Solingen and Remscheid had accepted the Spartacan program by a heavy majority. The state government of Brunswick had adopted resolutions declaring that the National a.s.sembly could not be permitted to meet. At a meeting of the Munich Communists Emil Muhsam[59] had been greeted with applause when he declared that the summons for the a.s.sembly was ”the common battle-cry of reaction.” Resolutions were pa.s.sed favoring the nullification of all war-loans.[60]
[59] Muhsam was one of the characteristic types of Bolsheviki.
For years he had been an unwashed, unshorn and unshaven literary loafer in Berlin cafes, whose chief ability consisted in securing a following of nave persons willing to buy drinks for him.
[60] The left wing of the Independent Socialist Party already demanded nullification, and the whole party drifted so rapidly leftward that a platform adopted by it in the first week of the following March definitely demanded nullification.
The Spartacans (on December 30th) had reorganized as the ”Communist Laborers' Party of Germany--Spartacus League.” Radek-Sobelsohn, who had for some weeks been carrying on his Bolshevik propaganda from various hiding places, attended the meeting and made a speech in which he declared that the Spartacans must not let themselves be frightened by the fear of civil war. Rosa Luxemburg openly summoned her hearers to battle.
The authority of the national government was small in any event, and was openly flouted and opposed in some places. Sailors and marines had organized the Republic of Oldenburg-East Frisia and elected an unlettered sailor named Bernhard Kuhnt as president. The president of the Republic of Brunswick was a bushelman tailor named Leo Merges, and the minister of education was a woman who had been a charwoman and had been discharged by a woman's club for which she had worked for petty peculations. Kurt Eisner, minister-president of Bavaria, was a dreamy, long-haired Communist writer who had earlier had to leave the editorial staff of _Vorwarts_ because of an utter lack of practical common-sense.
He was a fair poet and an excellent feuilletonist, but quite unfitted to partic.i.p.ate in governmental affairs. His opposition to the national government severely handicapped it, and the Bavarian state government was at the same time crippled by the natural antagonism of a predominantly Catholic people to a Jewish president.
To the south the Czechs had occupied Bodenbach and Tetschen in German Bohemia, and were threatening the border. To the east the Poles, unwilling to await the awards of the peace conference, had seized the city of Posen, were taxing the German residents there for the maintenance of an army to be used against their own government, and had given notice that a war loan was to be issued. Paderewski, head of the new Polish Government, had been permitted to land at Danzig on the promise that he would proceed directly to Warsaw. Instead, he went to Posen and made inflammatory speeches against the Germans until the English officer accompanying him was directed by the British Government to see that the terms of the promise to the German government were obeyed. The German Government, endeavoring to a.s.semble and transport sufficient forces to repel Polish aggressions against German territory, found opposition among the Spartacans and Independent Socialists at home, and from the Bolshevik Brunswick authorities, who announced that no government troops would be permitted to pa.s.s through the state, or to be recruited there. Government troops entering Brunswick were disarmed.