Exercises in democracy
In 1871 following the Franco-Prussian War, the French Third Republic came into existence. The unloved bastard child of the collapsed Second Empire of Louis Napoleon and an excruciating defeat in a short war where the French were humiliated as seemingly never before in history - or at least since the Middle Ages.
The republic, with the overthrow of all of the three branches of the French monarchy (Bourbon, Orléanist and upstart Napoleonic - yes I know that the Bonapartes were a completely different issue and not "royal" in the traditional sense!) did not arise at the will and demand of the public. It got there almost by accident for lack of demand for anything else. That it lasted for some 70 years was some achievement (the First Empire and the Second Empire lasted less than 20, so did the Orléanist monarchy of Louis-Philippe). These were times of turmoil economically, the rise of all sorts of political movements (including the arrival of the French Communist Party as part of a government coalition in the 1930s), a major world war, the rise and start to fall of the French overseas Empire, the advent of universal public education and universal suffrage.
Democratic throughout, it survived - almost in spite of itself. Few historians seem to have a good word for it, De Gaulle despised it apparently ..... But it managed to hold together despite everything.
Which says something.
In fact it took the Nazi invasion in 1940 to cause its eventually demise. In a curious circle, one German occupation brought about its creation, another its destruction.
For those who wish to see the installation of democracy as a perfect work of political art should revisit the French Third Republic some time though - if only to understand that text books do not always get it right!
Stresemann and a defence of the Weimar Republic
As with France in 1871, so with Germany in 1919. Another unloved bastard child falling out of an unsuccessful war bed, the Weimar Republic was the product of the failure of its parents. Or so it appears, or so history will have you believe.
The French had dallied with republics before (maybe the UK ought to .....). Germany had become a monarchy in 1871 with the inclusion of a load of smaller states (all monarchies I believe) and had no track record of owt else. There had been calls for a republic, but mainly from voices like Karl Marx who were "revolutionary". That Germany in 1919 had nowhere else to turn .....
A lot of people found accepting defeat, militarily, in 1918 more than they could stomach, and anyone who "colluded" in the admittedly awful Treaty of Versailles - a series of huge mistakes, no matter how you choose to look at it - soon found out that the ultranationalists had never forgotten nor forgiven the acceptance of defeat.
In the circumstances whoever came to power with the huge bills from Versailles to pay and an element of violent dissidents intent on their destruction, would have had very serious problems.
Those taking a simplistic look at the Weimar Republic have the unfortunate habit of looking at the early years and the mass inflation that hit hard in 1923, or its demise with the Nazis in the Reichstag in 1933. Check out though the period between 1924 and the middle of 1929 at least and the picture of Germany under the Weimar Republic was not in fact all that bad.
Much of the credit for that goes to a rather straight-laced Protestant from Berlin called Gustav Stresemann. A conservative, Stresemann had been the architect of the policy that brought the period of mass inflation to an end. He adopted a policy, much beloved of conservatives elsewhere to this day - namely if you do not want inflation, you do not print money. This proved very painful in the short-term, but provided the basis of Germany's recovery in the second half of the decade. Then as Foreign Minister in various coalition governments, he embarked upon re-establishing Germany's reputation as a nation that could be a reliable friend, and worked on treaties not to remove Germany's requirement to repay the massive war damages inflicted at Versailles, but to change the payment schedules so that they were more realistically achievable.
By 1929 the economy was on the way to recovery, unemployment at 8% was too high but had been a lot worse, and many of the other things for which the country became famous (think of the Roaring Twenties in Berlin - seen as decadent in the rest of the country but anyway - the growth in importance in German cinema with the likes of Lang and Pabst usw) helped present a more positive view to the world and provided a gradually improving lifestyle for the populace.
Stresemann himself had guided the German economy into a position where it could enjoy trade with the booming US economy, thanks to various treaty agreements that had been signed. As he himself realised though, the potential dependence was too great, and if anything went wrong .....
In October 1929 the Weimar Republic suffered two massive blows from which it would never recover .... in a period of 27 days. On the 3rd of the month Stresemann died suddenly following a heart attack. He was only 51. On the 29th of the month came the Wall Street Crash. All European countries were to feel the impact, but Germany was particularly vulnerable.
Surviving Versailles, surviving the mass inflation of 1923 - these had been possible. Surviving the 1929 crash? It is one of those great historical questions. If Stresemann had not died when he did, would he have helped find the answer - an answer that nobody else in Europe managed upon a sustained basis (even if France, under the later notorious Pierre Laval, did manage to fend off the worse for a short time in the early 30s - interestingly by adopting protectionism!)? We will never know. But with Stresemann's death and the global financial crisis, the last years of the Weimar Republic were painful and the prelude to the historical disaster that was Hitler and the Nazis.
To note on Stresemann - he was a conservative, but a pragmatic one. He worked in coalition governments with members of other parties "for the national good". In these days of polarisation there should be lessons to learn from that.
Why always to be on your guard
In 1928 (see above) Germany was recovering. Economic good times might well have been round the corner. In the Reichstag elections of 1928 a small Bavarian party called the NSDAP earned 2.6%. of the vote. Their agenda was extreme, the stab-in-the-back, "blame the Jews", "the Bolsheviks are everywhere" policies that nobody could take that seriously in a sophisticated country like Germany. Come the economic crash of 1929, they became the biggest force in German politics without ever disguising who they were and what they would do. From nowhere to dictatorship in 5 years!
I have said it before, and it is worth repeating until we are blue in the face. In economically difficult times, the orthodox political and economic solutions look like they have failed, the mainstream political parties who embrace those solutions look like they have no answers. And then?
There is a tendency to run to extremes in times like that (and these following the global crash of 2008). A political vacuum occurs and the purveyors and pedlars of easy answers leap into the space. Chronic nationalism has its appeal. We did nowt wrong, it's all the disgusting foreigners usw. Actually analysing what went wrong, the cause and the effect, is often hidden by this series of irrelevant theories (and just plain mistaken logic). See what is happening in the political vacuum across Europe at the moment and you get more and more of this. The FN could become the biggest party in France before long. Its counterpart in the UK, the English Xenophobe Party, is making rapid strides forward where popular support is concerned.
The fact that the mainstream parties have fouled up and become complacent or incompetent does not mean that these alternatives offer in any way potential improvement. In fact they represent the unleashing of forces that are potentially dangerous and destructive. The lessons of the 1930s need not and should not be ignored. That said the mainstream parties need to unravel the maelstrom that they and their friends in the financial markets unleashed upon the masses with the attendant hopelessness and increasing poverty that is affecting much of the continent (including the UK, let it be said).
It needs action, not political deadlock. And it needs the reestablishment of hope as quickly as possible. Reversion to nationalism, and the belief that the markets can fix the problem (the people who caused the mess in the first place!!!!) though must be seen for the "solutions" that they are. Meanwhile the ghosts of the 1930s are beginning to wander round in ever-increasing numbers in their spectral brown shirts (though pin-striped suits often serve as cover). It needs a positive response and a call to action before these ghosts become reality again bringing with them the obvious consequences.
No comments:
Post a Comment