The 'Unpatriotic Socialists' and the State

Bibliographic Data

ID10074036
AuthorsDieter Groh (corresponding author)
Year1966
Volume1
Issue4
Pages151-177
Publication date1966-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/002200946600100406
OpenAlexW2078894498
LanguageEN
Citations received5

Seventy-eight of the ninety-two members present at the meeting of the German parliamentary Social-Democratic Party (SPD) voted on 3 August 1914 in favour of granting the government the so-called war credits needed to sustain the war effort. As the other nations became involved in the conflagration, their own socialist parties took similar action, with the exception of the Italian socialists, who in I915 voted against the granting of war credits. But for them, the socialist reaction to the events leading to the outbreak of hostilities, as well as to war itself, remained strangely uniform. The voting of the German war credits shows how the socialdemocrats denounced since the autumn of I870 as 'men without fatherland' (vaterlandslose Gesellen) had come to form by the beginning of the war an integral part of the German nation. This could be seen either as a break with the past, or as something obvious and commonplace; in the ensuing debate, protagonists and opponents of the granting of war credits used one or other of these interpretations to reinforce their arguments. Konrad Haenisch, a former left-wing radical, who had become within a few weeks of the outbreak of war one of the most vociferous and

Democracy · Economic history · Fatherland · German · Government (linguistics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science · Voting · World War II · European history and politics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Philosophy