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The Kaiser Goes: the Generals Remain

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The Kaiser Goes: the Generals Remain THE KAISER GOES: THE GENERALS REMAIN BY THEODOR PLIVIER TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY A. W. WHEEN (Scanned from the Faber and Faber edition published in London, May 1933) 1 Contents A very brief introduction to the digital edition .................................................................................... 3 THE RULERS...................................................................................................................................... 4 THE RULED...................................................................................................................................... 25 KIEL................................................................................................................................................... 44 THE MUTINEERS GO INLAND ..................................................................................................... 88 BERLIN MARCHES ....................................................................................................................... 104 “GROENER SPEAKING...” ........................................................................................................... 136 POSTSCRIPT .................................................................................................................................. 152 THEODOR Otto Richard PLIVIER – Some biographical details ................................................... 153 Plievier’s Works in German ................................................................................................. 157 Plievier’s Works in English ................................................................................................. 157 2 A very brief introduction to the digital edition I first became aware of the works of Theodor Plivier when I noticed some quotations from this novel in Working Class Politics in the German Revolution1, Ralf Hoffrogge’s wonderful book about the revolutionary shop stewards’ movement in Germany during and just after World War I. I set about finding a copy of The Kaiser goes: the generals remain, read it, and immediately wanted to make it more widely available by scanning it. The results are here. The libertarian communist website libcom seemed like a good place to publish it. At the end of the novel I’ve gathered together all the most readily accessible information about Plivier that I can find. Hopefully, the sources referenced will provide a useful basis for anybody who wants to do further research. For further context about the events described in this book you could do a lot worse than start with the historical materials on the libcom site: https://libcom.org/tags/german-revolution-1918 Dan Radnika October 2015 1 Working Class Politics in the German Revolution – Richard Müller, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement by Ralf Hoffrogge, Koninklijke Brill, Leiden, 2015. Available from good bookshops or an appropriate piratical website near you. 3 The Rulers THE RULERS It is coming. He does not dare to raise his head above the edge of the shell-hole, but he feels it coming. He hears it sink gurgling into the hollows of the earth, shovel out again and push on over the level stretches. Quick-firing guns. Machine-guns. And audible amid it all, that heavy lumbering movement and the dull rumbling earth – Tanks. A squadron of oncoming tanks; one of them must be quite near. Will it pass by? And if it does pass by... Then what? And then what? Advancing, attacking, retreating, those things are done by sections, platoons, companies. Dying is for each man alone. There lies Number Two of the machine-gun crew. His tunic is open, the shirt beneath it grey and worn. The neck and back of his head are half-buried in the earth. His mouth is open, the teeth are showing. The stubble of the beard will go on growing, the finger-nails too, for a little while. The mouth – where has he seen a mouth like that before? Teeth so bared by the lips. Yes, of course, that was it – when Truda was having her baby – Like a woman in childbirth. But the wide-open mouth of the soldier chatters no longer. The outspread legs are without movement. Number Two is dead; Number Three is dead also – Karl and the fellow from Hamburg. Karl was firmly convinced that peace was coming at last: “Max my boy,” he would say, “the bloody show is over, I can feel it in my bones. Once we get back to Berlin...!” The man from Hamburg had been scooping up water from the shell-hole to cool the envelope of the machine-gun that had become hot with firing. Now he too lies with his head in the puddle, the bully-beef tin still in his hand. The machine-gun stands abandoned on the edge of the shell-hole. The tuft of grass beside it looks impossibly large. If only he could see the tank, if he, if very cautiously... good God! Five of them, eight, in a row! and a second, a third squadron – more tanks than there are heads in all no-man’s-land! And on the skyline flights of dark aeroplanes rise over the earth and climb droning into the sky. The weight of oncoming material is too much. The man sags down on his knees. In mad haste he scoops out two spadefuls of earth from the side of the crater and thrusts his head into the hole. A lump of flesh glued to the wall – And so he waits. The Americans are landing 300,000 troops a month on the French coast, ten thousand fresh soldiers every day. And tanks, aeroplanes, war material. The Germans have lain now four years in the trenches; the six million sent out have dwindled to two and a half. The casualty lists show 1,600,081 dead. Gunner Max Müller? – Here, Herr Captain! Blacksmith, 46 Boxhagener Strasse, Berlin. Married? – Yes, sir! Children? – Only one, sir! A clanking. A rumbling. The earth trembling. The man cannot stop himself-he withdraws his head from the hole; he looks upward, and sees the tank. He sees it above him, over his head. The tank makes a clumsy cradling movement against the arc of the sky, hovers a moment, its prow in the air. Gunner Müller feebly raises a hand as if to ward it off. The great belly rocking downwards upon him-the livid, striped steel armour, the double rows of rivets, the caterpillars dripping earth-all these are etched on the retina of his eyes as on photographic plates. The tank weighs three to four tons, sixty to eighty hundredweight. The human body may withstand a pressure of six hundredweight; with seven the breath goes out of it; eight and the bones crack; eighty..... 4 The Rulers The lips draw back. The teeth are bared. Max Müller’s face has the same expression as the dead Number Two; the same anguished mouth as a woman’s in childbirth. The tank slides smoothly down into the crater. Two dead Numbers and one living, it irons them out flat. Then it lifts itself up again to the level ground and rolls on in line with the rest of the squadron, clanking and firing, against the retreating German Front. A dug-out, rafters, and above them a few feet of earth. Below a lieutenant seated before a field- telephone. A man comes down the steps, he clicks his heels and reports: “Machine-gun posts have retired, out of touch with Müller’s group.” The message arrives before the tanks but hardly before the bombing planes. Telephonic communications are still intact. The lieutenant takes up the receiver and reports to Battalion Headquarters: “Front line evacuated.” Battalion H.Q. where the messages from all parts of the sector are assembled, telephones yet farther back to Brigade: “Broken through on the whole sector – Yes, four kilometres! Tank attack on a front of four kilometres!” The face of the lieutenant in the dug-out is ashen grey. He is dirty, lousy and, like his men half- starved. He has been for weeks in the front line without relief. The officer at Battalion H.Q. looks spruce and well shaven. He still gets enough to eat, he sleeps regularly and at times may even have a bath in his private quarters. The Brigade Major, who passes the messages yet farther back to Army, inhabits a villa with every comfort – conservatory, garage, stables. The Hindenburg Line, to which the people pinned its faith as if it were a new evangel in concrete, has been broken. The Hindenburg Line, the Wotan Line, the Siegfried Line, the Hermann and Hunding-Brunhild Line, built up with such unremitting, titanic toil, have been overrun and now lie behind the advancing Allied troops. From the flooded regions of Flanders to the Vosges the German Front is in full retreat. The Germans leave behind them each day a few more miles of country, each day a few more thousand dead. But behind the lines of defence the Generals and staff officers forever reassemble the fragments of broken divisions, reorganize them in new formations, fill them out with scratch drafts from home and throw them again into the battle. The military machine is still intact. Only at the Base, indeed, not at the Front. In the platoons and sections the collapsing system is relinquishing its hold. But behind the line sergeant majors still require to be saluted, they still bully, they still drill. Quartermaster-sergeants still issue rations, still arrange fatigues, still supervise the digging of burial pits, still serve out schnapps – half a litre a head – to the men going up the line. And 100 miles behind the Front, behind Battalion, Brigade, Division, and Army, at GHQ, where all the threads meet, in a room of the Hotel Britannia at Spa, a man is stooping over maps and sheets of figures-he is of the same Prussian sergeant-major type, with the same sergeant-major’s features but better tended, a closely- shaved heavy jowl, and a little turned-up moustache, a uniform with the red stripes of a general staff officer, the star of an order on his breast. He scans once more the lines, the hatchings and points which represent armies, strong points, reserves; then he bundles together a number of hastily-made sketches and memoranda and hands them to a colonel. A soldier helps him into his cloak; he takes down his cap and in company with the colonel leaves the room. Outside the hotel stands a motor-car. At the station a special train is waiting. The two general staff officers climb in. The heavy engine begins to move.
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