Socialist Republic of Germany after WW1

[Corinthian]

Could post-WW1 Germany turned into a communist state after being "infested" by communist agents from the USSR?

 

If so, what would've been the implications of this on world history? WW2 being USSR v The West? Inevitable? Early Cold War?

[T19]

IT did go Socialist... National Socialist

 

oh you mean Communist.. no idea

[DemolitionMan]

A socialist republic was already declared on the very same day that the democracy was declared: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Revolu...of_the_monarchy

 

Don´t think Germany could have turned communist. The right-wing was too strong for that to happen, and the leading socialist party SPD stood on the principles of the republic. And no other leftist party was ever strong enough to launch a successful revolution. The USSR even made one of the first treaties with the Weimar Republic.

[KingSargent]

The Communists certainly tried. There was a civil war in the streets of Germany after the war, between Communists and conservatives.

 

Actually, Marx always believed an industrialized society like Germany was the most likely venue for Communism. He probably spun in his grave when the victorious venue turned out to be Russia.

[Ssnake]

Actually, Marx always believed an industrialized society like Germany was the most likely venue for Communism. He probably spun in his grave when the victorious venue turned out to be Russia.

That's where the term "Leninism" comes into play. They always called their ideology "Marxism-Leninism" and their political system "practical socialism" (as opposed to the ideal) to explain away the cognitive idssonances that were all too obvious.

 

 

But yeah, the fact of civil war in Germany after WW1 ended is often forgotten and downplayed. There were a number of uprisings in various parts of the country, several attempts of secessionism, left and right plots for a coup d'état. In hindsight I agree that a Socialist Republic of Germany could not possibly have emerged, but it certainly didn't look that way when Scheidemann declared the Republic in haste to preempt a similar declaration that was planned by the socialists.

Just to name an example of the political bias, there were about 450 political murders (not part of uprisings), of which 440 were done by the right wing and about 10 by people under the influence of a socialist or Marxist ideology. Less than ten right-wing killers were sent to jail (very brief stints, actually), and more than 20 socialists were sent to jail for life for these crimes. In several cases those killers from the right were exonerated by the judges "because they did it for the love of their country".

[lastdingo]

If it had happened then certainly not because of Russian "agents".

The Russian Leninists were busy till about 1922 with their own civil war, war with Poland and the Western Allies.

 

Germany was already a quite stable republic in 1923. It survived the hyper inflation, territorial conflicts with Poland and internal conflicts and only surrendered to the right-wing coalition including the Nazis after several years of the great economic crisis 1929-1932 (and after moderate, non-authoritarian politicians who actually wanted rather co-operation with France & UK were only partially successful due to foreign reluctance).

[Redbeard]

With a talented military leader on Red side I wouldn't exclude them winning the civil war that actually took place in 1918-19. His first job would be to have the German army go further into communist lead rebellion than it actually did, perhaps aided by official Germany trying a little more to perform just one more offensive etc. That would leave the Reds with a chance to field close to regular forces vs. the fairly well organised Freikorps crushing the Reds in historical 1918-19.

 

I doubt however, if the Entente powers would accept communists settling in Germany - so we might be in for a continuation war, incl. communist rebellions in UK, France, USA....

 

Regards

 

Steffen Redbeard.