Das Problem der Kontinuitat in der Deutschen Revolution: Die Politik der Staatssekretare und der Militarischen Fuhrung vom November 1918 bis Februar 1919

Abstract

THIS study, treating the policies of the state secretaries of the Reichsimter and of the military leadership between the crucial months of November I9I8 and February I919, is a significant addition to the historical literature on the German Revolution. It does not exhaust the subject, but it reveals new information and supplements earlier accounts by Tormin, Kolb, and Oertzen. The author draws extensively on archival sources, including the protocols of the Rat der Volksbeauftragten and the Zentralrat, most of which were recently published in English, the minutes of the conferences of state secretaries, and the personal papers of men like Groener and Eugen Schiffer. Presented in clear although undistinguished prose, his subject is topically arranged and proceeds from a summary description of the Social Democratic Reichsregierung and its state secretaries to a more detailed critical analysis of the policies of the high civil servants, who were charged with internal, external, and economic affairs, and the military, who presided over the demobilization of the German Army. It is Elben's contention, and here he in part repeats what others have argued, that the SPD and USPD members of the Rat der Volksbeauftragten were too overwhelmed by Germany's unanticipated economic and political collapse, too much lacking in clear-cut political conceptualization and direction, too fearful of the perpetuation of the revolution, and too impressed by the administrative expertise of the imperial civil servants and high military; and, therefore, they resorted to makeshift measures designed to restore order and ensure national unity and failed to realize the socialist program. Ebert initiated, and his fellow volksbeauftiragte supported, the continuation of the prerevolutionary state secretaries and chiefs of military authorities in their offices. Even though these men accepted the abolition of the monarchy, they behaved more like verstandesmaissige Republikaner than obedient civil servants of the new regime. Elben convincingly demonstrates that with the help of the Volksbeauftragte, who regarded them as administrative experts rather than politicians and granted them remarkable independence even where firm political control was called for, the state secretaries and military chiefs made use of the opportunity to lead Germany away from revolution and to lessen, if not prevent, the break with the past.