Military Occupation and German Revolution

William F. Sollmann

American Political Science Review, 1944, vol. 38, issue 5, 976-980

Abstract: In discussing the problems of military government, some writers have recalled critically the fact that in 1918 the armies of occupation did not coöperate with the workers' and soldiers' councils in Germany. Did this really mean that the commanding officers hampered Germany's transition from a half-absolutist monarchy to a democratic republic? What was the position of the workers' and soldiers' councils in the total population? How did the occupation armies act toward the democratic movements in Germany? As one of the leaders of the revolution against the Emperor, and as a close observer of the foreign armies in my home province, the Rhineland, I may be justified in presenting some facts and experiences.When on November 11 I read in Paragraph V of the armistice agreement that “the left bank of the Rhine shall be administered by the local authorities under the control of the troops of occupation,” I informed my friends in the Cologne workers' and soldiers' council that this undoubtedly meant the end of that council on the day of the arrival of the foreign troops. It was clear that we were no “local authorities.” Nowhere had the councils replaced the civil servant administration of the former régime. Why not? Simply because the social-democratic labor movement, which alone backed the councils, was in most places, on the left bank of the Rhine, a small minority. Only by using terror against a large majority of the population could we have eliminated the existing civil servant administration. Such terror was against the democratic principles and traditions of our movement. Incidentally, even the wildest radicals knew in those days of threatening chaos that a sudden break-up of a centuries-old civil servant administration would mean grave disaster, especially in shipping the necessary supplies to the exhausted population.

Date: 1944
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