The German Army in Politics

...During the Spartaeist uprising in 1919 and again in the face of impending civil war in 1923, the Army smashed domestic disorder and rescued shaken governments...

...Republican politicians indulged themselves in pacifist and anti-militarist propaganda without a constructive program to remake or at least control the military...

...Gordon's interpretation is new and arresting...

...Yet, as he acknowledges, service was rendered to the state and not to the Republic...

...Indeed, radical rightist and racist proclivities were even more pronounced in the non-commissioned ranks than among officers...

...In the preparation of this dissertation, the author had access to such unpublished documents as the Seeckt, Gessler, Groener and Epp papers, as well as the benefit of personal interviews with military and political survivors of the period...

...Insofar as the Army was an issue in politics, it was the political parties that made it so...

...Absolute political neutrality is extremely difficult in any case and impossible where the organization finds itself the focus of controversy among political parties.'" Thus Gordon concludes that in the rational pursuit of its own professional interest the Army could cherish little sympathy for the Republic or its main political supporters...

...In the final analysis, the failure of civilian control of the military was as much the result of the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty as of the ineptitude of political leadership...

...The author depicts the Reichswehr's motivation in terms of strict professionalism and a discipline of service...

...Indeed, there is an important germ of truth in the indictment of the republican parties, especially the Social Democrats, for their failure to devise an effective military policy...

...Like the Imperial Army before it, the Reichswehr was the proud preserve of the Junkers...

...but Mr...

...Relations were not good...

...That failure was part and parcel of the general abdication of political responsibility which contributed mightily to the eventual collapse of the Weimar Republic...

...Their utter disdain for political parties and contempt for popular control certainly did not encourage a positive military program on the part of the republican parties...

...Harvard University Harold J. Gordon, formerly a military-intelligence research specialist for the United States Army, has produced a detailed study and provocative interpretation of the role of the German Army in relation to the Weimar Republic...

...The Reichswehr's phenomenal success in molding the cadres for a future mass army certainly indicates that the left-center parties did not succeed in hindering it...

...The crux of Gordon's interpretation depends primarily upon his discussion of the relation of the Army to the political parties, especially the Social Democrats, the Democrats and the Centrists, which were avowedly republican...

...The importance of the special arrangements between the Reichswehr and Soviet Russia, so significant in this regard, is scarcely adumbrated beyond the suggestive statement that such negotiations were carried out with the approval or at the connivance of successive German cabinets...

...In his own words, "the Army was less of a disruptive element within the body politic of the Weimar Republic than has usually been thought...

...Yet it is unfair to indict the left-center parties of Weimar in these terms without raising another question: Were the self-conceived professional interests and needs of the Reichswehr self-justifying...

...It is to be hoped that, in the face of impending professionalization of the present-day West German defense forces, the SPD will not again turn away from responsible participation to the illusory haven of ideological self-righteousness...

...This was indeed the conviction of General Hans von Seeckt, who commanded the Army during six of the seven years under review and who emerges from this study a hero, albeit a rather tragic one...

...From the Ebert-Groener agreement in 1919, the German Army was inexorably enmeshed in domestic politics...

...As Defense Ministers, the Socialist Noske and the Democrat Gessler were effective spokesmen for the military...

...Does that make the Reichswehr responsible to the Government or the Government responsive to the apparent needs of the Reichswehr...

...From these and other sources he tells a story of the collapse of the Imperial Army and the creation of a professional Reichswehr that has already been told by other chroniclers...

...From the General Staff down through the ranks, the Army was permeated by profoundly anti-republican sentiments...

...Underlying this presentation is the assumption that postbellum Germany vitally needed a permanent military establishment to maintain order internally and to regain its role as a Machtstaat internationally...

...Moreover, they were obstinately and ideologically blind to the professional interests and requirements of the generals...

...This was the direct result of the professionali-zation of the German Army which was fatefully decreed at Versailles and which enabled the high command to recruit from "reliable" social groups while circumventing the treaty limitation on size and equipment...

...The author suggests that the fault was as much that of the parties as of the Army...