clearly and in a manner admitting of no doubt precisely what would be the attitude of the German Social Democracy in case of a declaration of war. If ever anywhere abroad it should be hoped that, in case of an attack directed against Germany, the aggressor could count on the German Social Democracy—in such hope one would be profoundly deceived. As soon as our country was attacked from without, there would be but a single party, and we Social Democrats would not be among the last to do our duty! And this duty we shall perform much more zealously if that enemy of all civilization—Russian barbarism—is involved.[1]
In the discussion of these views of Vollmar, at the Erfurt Congress, Bebel, though dissenting from some of their implications, had this to say:
Concerning an offensive war against Germany and its consequences I have insisted that we, equally with the gentlemen of the government, are Germans. … The German soil, the German country belongs to us, the masses, as well as to them. If Russia, the citadel of cruelty and barbarism, the foe of all human civilization, should attack Germany in order to weaken and dismember her—and such a war could have no other aim—we should have as much or more at stake than those who are at the head of Germany, and we would resist the aggressor. I have also insisted that if we should thus fight side by side with those who to-day are our adversaries, we would do so not to save them and their political and social order, but to deliver Germany, that is, ourselves and our soil, from a barbarian who is the greatest enemy of our aspirations and whose victory would signify our defeat as Socialists.[2]
The international events of 1890-1891 served likewise to silence Socialist protests against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Already at the International Congress at Paris in 1889 the Socialist delegates from those provinces had declared that their doctrines obliged them to repudiate the idea of a war of revenge; and now the whole German Social Democracy persuaded itself that the annexation, originally outrageous, was nevertheless a fait accompli, and that Socialistic internationalism, by gradually effacing all distinctions between Germans and Frenchmen, would be the surest and best solution of the problem.[3]
Now that the German Social Democracy was moved to accept the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine as a fait accompli and to extol
- ↑ Georg von Vollmar, Ueber die Nächsten Aufgaben der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie: zwei Reden gehalten am 1. Juni und 6. Juli 1891 in "Eldorado" zu München (1891), pp. 9–10. Vollmar cited as confirmation of his position remarks of Liebknecht in the Reichstag on November 28, 1888, and on May 16, 1891, and in the Congress of Halle on October 15, 1890, of Bebel in the Reichstag on June 25, 1890, and of Auer in the Reichstag on December 3, 1890, and February 9, 1891.
- ↑ Protokoll des Parteitages (1891), p. 285.
- ↑ Edgard Milhaud, La Démocratie Socialiste Allemande (1903), pp. 261–262.
