The Independent Social Democrats’ Departure from the Rat der Volksbeauftragten

Abstract

The Volksbeauftragte from Independent Social Democracy understandably saw the events of 23 and 24 December with different eyes than their colleagues from the ranks of the Majority socialists. Emil Barth, as we have seen, had been with his sympathies on the side of Dorrenbach. Dittmann and Haase had not gone through the critical events of 23 and 24 December, but instead heard Barth’s very subjectively-coloured report about them without being immediately able to confirm its correctness in all respects. So they declared the order given to the War Minister during the night of 23 December by Ebert in agreement with Landsberg and Scheidemann for the purpose of rescuing Wels to be a step that could not be justified by the state of affairs at the time. When the matter came to be discussed on 27 December in a joint session of the Volksbeauftragte and the Central Council, people’s spirits collided with one another fairly ferociously. Barth held a punctilious accusatory speech against the three Majority socialists, whom he charged with premeditated planning for the bloody confrontation and systematic deception of their colleagues, as he outlines in his own work. Haase and Dittmann would presumably have been less inclined to cast a similarly harsh verdict if they had not precisely in those days had gotten into an intense factual antagonism about questions of German Eastern policy [Ostpolitik] and the dissolution of the Heer with Ebert and his comrades. The latter wanted to preserve a body of troops in Germany that, should the situation arise, would be strong enough to protect the Germans in the Eastern provinces and the Baltics against Poland on the one hand and the Bolshevists on the other by armed force, and on the other hand, they were prepared to make various concessions to the Oberste Heeresleitung [Supreme Army Leadership] regarding the scope and timescale of carrying out the resolutions of the Council Conference about abolishing insignia of rank, etc. By contrast, the Independent Volksbeauftragte flatly rejected the idea of contemplating even the possibility of any warlike action whatsoever, and in particular condemned the idea of undertaking any such action against Soviet Russia, and insisted on strict implementation of the resolutions of the Council Congress concerning military questions. At the end of the session, they formulated their standpoint in the following eight questions, which they handed over to the Central Council to be answered: