Germany, Socialism and Nationalism 1373
c07.qxd 3/19/09 9:38 AM Page 1373 International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, ed. Immanuel Ness, Blackwell Publishing, 2009, pp. 1373–1381 Germany, socialism and nationalism 1373 issue of support for the German military effort Germany, socialism precipitated a split within the Social Democratic and nationalism Party. On the eve of the war in July 1914, the SPD’s leadership instructed the party’s Reichstag John M. Cox delegation to vote for the war budget – a decision that was deeply unpopular among the party’s rank Led by Adolf Hitler, the National Socialist, or and file. Nazi, Party took power in Germany in January The war greatly compounded the party’s 1933, promising a “thousand-year empire.” Twelve internal divisions and by 1917 open factions had years later, Germany and most of Europe lay in appeared, competing for control of local organ- ruins, German Nazism having been subdued by izations and of the party’s formidable press the armies of the Soviet Union and the Western apparatus. In April 1917 the left wing formed Allies, led by the United States and Britain. its own party, the Independent Social Demo- But while outside forces were required to bring crats (Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei down Hitler’s tyranny, the Nazi dictatorship Deutschlands) (USPD). The USPD was, how- was never free from domestic opposition. The ever, not simply a product of dissension within Third Reich, as the Nazi government was called, the SPD leadership; it also reflected the explosive found its most persistent and numerous enemies social conditions of 1917 resulting from labor in the remnants of Germany’s left-wing parties, protests and a deepening popular abhorrence of which Hitler had ruthlessly suppressed upon the war.
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