The Kings Depart: The Tragedy of Germany: Versailles and the German Revolution [New ed.] 9781842126585

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By Richard Al. \Vatt THE KINGS DEPART DARE CALL lT TREASON

The Kings Depart THE TRAGEDY OF GERMANY: VERSAILLES AND

THE GERMAN REVOLUTION

by RICHARD M. WATT ~

SI~tO

. AND SCHUSTER NEW YORK

ALL lUCHTS Rl!:SEl\\'EO

1:--:CLUDJXC THE RICHT OF f~

J\.EPRODVCTlO~

WllOL£ OJ\ I'.\" PART IN

COP'\'RlGJIT

@ 1968 BY

.-\~Y FOR~t

RICHARD M. WATr

PUHLlSllJ-;D BY SfMOX AND SCUUSTER

ROCKlWELLER C~~TER, ~EW

630

1-'lFTH A \'E~UJ-;

YORK, :"l:EW YORK l 0020

THIRD PRINTING LIBRARY Ot• CONCRES.S CATALOG CARO XUMBF.R;

68-22973

DF-c;lCKF.D SY RICllARD C. J\ARWOStO

,\lAt\tiJo'ACTUl\RI> 1.:-\ 1'UE

t:~IT£J) STATI~

OF AMERICA

BY .\MHl\ICA,N .BOOK-STRATFORO PRESS, INC., NJ::W YORK

Contents PART 1 1 2 3

4

Stand Not upon the Order of Your Going A Prophet Is Not The Russian Dilemma "I don•t give a damn for lo&icl,.

9

38 74 83

PART 2 5

Prelude to Revolution The Kiel ~Iutiny November Ninth

6 7

iog i58 170

PART 3 8 9 10

11 12

0

Someone must become the bloodhound" .. Volunteers to the front" \Veimar and Munich The Second Bavarian Revolution The East

zo3 z40

274 317

342

PART 4 13

Preparation for Versailles

393

14

''The hour has struck for the weighty settlement of our account',

400

15

Frontiers, Reparations and Guilt

414

16

The Last Seven Days Afterword

454 499

Aidhor's Notes and Acknowledgments

531

Bibliography

545

Index

550

Illustration Section I

(following page316)

Gustav Noske \Voodrow \Vilson Wilson on the bridge of the George Washington Karl Liebknecht Rosa Luxen1burg Lloyd George, Clen1enceau and Wilson Friedrich Ebert General \Vilhelm Croener I Field ~farshal von Hindenburg Kurt Eisner Eisner and his aides The German delcgation-1919 A F reikorps soldier Revolutionary defenders of the Vorwiirts building Freikorps formations marching into Berlin, 1919 Freikorps troops in action, 1919 Anned Spartacist supporters Karl Liebknecht at a rally in the Siegcsallee The bar of the Eden Hotel on January 16, 1919 A Freikorps patrol with flamethrowers, 1919 Noske at a Ff'eikorps formation parade Signing of the Treaty of Versailles-June 28, 1919

The Kings Depart

PARTl Yet when u:e achieved and the new u;orlcl dau.mecl, the old ·m en came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of tlte fon11er world they knew . - T. E.

LAWRENCE

Chapter One

Stand Not upon the Order of Your Going I

BY

Sunday, June zg, i919, most of the principal figures of the peace confcrcncc had left Paris. The three men \\'ho aln1ost had it in their po\vcr to rc1nake the n1odern world had gathered together for the last titnc. They \vould not meet again. On the aftcrnoon before, they had signed the treaty of peace with Germany in the llall of ~1irrors at Versailles. As \Vith almost everything else at this six-nlonths-long conference, ev~n the ending had been someho\v unsatisfactory. The only thing to be said in favor of the ceremony \Vas that it \Vas mereifully brief-less than an hour from the mon1cnt \\'hen old Georges Clen1enccau stood up to announce, "I..a seance est ouverte,,, until the last name had been scra,vlcd on the vcllurn pages of the signature copy of the treaty of peace. The Allied signatories had sat at tables arranged in a horseshoe shape in the middle of the long, narrow roon1; the rest of the room had been packed with nearly a thousand n1c1nbcrs of the press and other invited spectators. There had been trouble \\'ith the cro\vd: they could not see the treaty being signed, nor could they hear the proceedings, anOn the Order of l'our Going

11

general noted, the small cro\\•d of onlookers at the raih\'ay station "was very , reserved. almost cold. There "'·ere a fe\\' cries of 'Vive Wilson!; but they \vcre very scattered."tt Upon most of those \Yho had been delegates to the Paris Peace Conference there no\v suddenly descended a n1ood of gloo1n and despair. "Ho\\' splendid it \vonld have been had '"e blazed a hettcr trail," Colonel !louse wrote in his dian·.'* "\Vhat a \vretched mess it is, General Tasker Bliss '"-Tote his wife.~ The young British diplomat Ilarold Nicolson noted the \VorOclm\v wa.,m stood looking out an open train window and told his wJfe, ~.nt it is Snished, and, as no one u sat:lsfl~ it makes me .hope we have made a Just peace; but ft is all mthe lap of the gods.-.. In December of 1918, when they had Srst met fa Pans, it had seemed that the task of making peace would be easy. 11ae AJffe$• had extracted ·armistices· &om their enemies which m~ surrenders. Every one of the enemy monarchs had f.U~ before the power of the democracies, and their places had been taken ~ new ~ eager to proclaim a government -.cceptable to the Victor& East of Paris were a thousand miles of hunger and cha~, over which It seemed that tlle ADies-the sole possessors of ll&W., fOod.

w-.

weapons and ~lined arolfes (tot811ng more than twelve millton

men)-JDust surely have absolute control It seemed inconceivable that any nuu.a, any party, &n.).' natloll could dispute the dictates Of the three principal victors. And yet diet peace treaty had not turned out in the way that any of the pm.. pals had wanted. 'Ihe dreams of a world of happy peoples. each assembled into an entity of its own nationali~ and IMDg·~its own hJstorlCal geographic location, were now seen to have ~ imbecilic wishes whiCb could not and would not come true. 'l1le cause of the failure of the Treaty of VersaiDes to create a permanent peace bas been variously assessed. Gen..:Dy speQtng, the British place the blame on France, whose designs for the emasculation of Germany triggered of such. resentment In Germany that World War II becauie almost inevitable. AmerlCans tend to hold both Clemenceau and Lloyd George responsible as the cynieal • 'J1nougbout the period cludng whlCb the United Statea 'Wll a combatant In W:odd War I, u well u dudng the IU~t ptace oegottatlolll. the U81tecl Stltes's policy WIS to hadst that it WU not one Of tfie •Alllii'~ WbbDi ~~ ireaties bad been C*ICluded to Which the UDltecl Statel w roppo1ed. ~' the cumbenome ~ ..Alllecl pd .AllOclatecl POWflllf' WU ereatecl ·IO. ~ the United Statet and Its ~ti. For ~~:!• of ~t;y, dill liOOk wdl UM the term •Alllel" to delcilbe the mtb ~ Of viCblOat aatlOm.

Stand Not upon tlir Order of }·our Going

13

and corn1pt Europeans '"ho frustrated the altn1istic proposals of the Unite