The stab-in-the-back legend

In World War I (1914-18) the bellicose German Empire fought a two-front war against Russia in the east and the united armies of France and England in the West. In the overly bloody battles of trench warfare in France, the lines were almost at a standstill for three years. In 1917 the Americans joined the fight on the side of the allies. In early 1918. General Ludendorff, subduer of the Russians at Tannenberg, began the spring offensive. After four months of fighting the Germans were fatally weakened and demoralized, facing their imminent and inevitable defeat through an allied counter-offensive. In order to avoid a suicide encounter, Ludendorff briefed Kaiser Wilhelm II that the war was lost. His crown council transferred the supreme power to a parliament. Chancellor Prinz Max von Baden asked American President Woodrow Wilson for armistice. The latter postulated that Germany renders all weapons to the allies. The German military commanders didn’t accept the condition and wanted to continue the war. They ordered their marines in Kiel to attack the English fleet, but they refused the certain suicide attack. Also the army mutinied. Prinz Max proclaimed the German republic without coordinating with the emperor. The next day however Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and went into exile in Holland.

The Weimar Republic was born on November 11, 1918 Matthias Erzberger, minister of Finance, authorized by President Friedrich Ebert, met French Marshal Foch in a railway wagon near Compigne. He was forced to sign the capitulation.

That a civilian of the much-hated republic at that, signed the armistice was unacceptable to the militarists, among them Hitler. They held that the German army is undefeated in the field. They denounced the republicans of high treason and labelled them The November Criminals for having stabbed the army in the back. The republicans on the other hand spoke of the Stab-in-the-Back Lie.

Hitler used the legend in his propaganda campaigns in order to prepare the German population for a revenge war. In a democratic election he became chancellor on January 30, 1933 but he seized the power as dictator for lifetime and brought into line all German institutions including the military.

On May 10, 1940 his armies raided Belgium and Holland and marched almost unopposed through France. On June 4, the self-declared “greatest army commander of all times” held his triumphal march into Paris. On June 22, 1940 Hitler forced the French delegation to sign a humiliating armistice in the same railway wagon where 22 years before had been signed an armistice humiliating Germany.

But that is not the end of the ‘Dolchstoslegende’ (Stab-in-the-back myth). After the lost Battle of Stalingrad, every officer knew that a final victory was impossible. But Hitler ordered the men to hold their ground. The leaders of the Allied powers were afraid that again such legend would resurrect. Therefore they decided to destroy Germany completely. They bombarded the German cities to rubble to prevent any hope for revenge in a further war. Then they marched into Germany, the French from southwest, the Americans and British from west, and the Russians from the east. Germany was occupied and divided into four zones. The three western zones were denazified and democratized. Unlike in the Versailles dictated peace, West Germany was not punished with hard reparations to pay to the victors. In the contrary she received much aid for reconstruction. The German economic miracle ensued. Today the German Federation is a peaceful even pacifist democracy.

The only people that still tries to subjugate their neighbors are the Russians. The only way to permanent peace in the world is their total defeat in the present Ukrainian war. A dictated peace must provide for the complete demilitarization including the destruction of all nuclear warheads, denazification and debarbarization. Many ethnic provinces will defect from Moscow and declare independence. China will occupy the major part of Siberia. After several decades in purgatory a truncated Russia can become a civilized democracy without imperialist ambitions.

Erich Wannemacher

Lapu-Lapu City