These November Criminals, or those who seemed to benefit from the newly formed Weimar Republic, were seen to have "stabbed them in the back" on the home front, by either criticizing German nationalism, instigating unrest and mounting strikes in the critical military industries or, by profiteering. NOVEMBER CRIMINALS (Novemberverbrecher); conceived by the antirepublican Right (the DNVP and other unrepentant monarchists), the term was first used to identify any German who had a hand in either the Armistice* or the Versailles Treaty,* but it was soon applied to those prepared to fulfill the terms of Versailles (e.g., Walther Rathenau* and Gustav Stresemann*). The Nuremberg Trial and the Tokyo War Crimes Trials (1945–1948) Following World War II, the victorious Allied governments established the first international criminal tribunals to prosecute high-level political officials and military authorities for war crimes and other wartime atrocities. However, the widespread dissemination and acceptance of the "stab-in-the-back" myth came about through its use by Germany's highest military echelon. Simon and Schuster, New York, 2010. Austria and Hungary signed separate treaties following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The two generals appeared in civilian clothing, explaining publicly that to wear their uniforms would show too much respect to the commission. Many of its representatives such as Matthias Erzberger and Walther Rathenau were assassinated, and the leaders were branded as "criminals" and Jews by the right-wing press dominated by Alfred Hugenberg. The weakness of Germany's strategic position was exacerbated by the rapid collapse of the other Central Powers in late 1918, following Allied victories on the Macedonian and Italian fronts. Hindenburg refused to answer questions from the chairman, and instead read a statement that had been written by Ludendorff. Wilson's response insisted that Germany institute parliamentary democracy, give up the territory it had gained to that point in the war, and significantly disarm, including giving up the German High Seas Fleet.[15]. Did You Know? When Adolf Hitler emerged in the German political scene later that decade, he recruited these ex-soldiers, military elites, and disaffect men who believed those in power had rolled over for the Allied Armies, taking their dictation instead of negotiating a proper treaty. The Dolchstoß was a central image in propaganda produced by the many right-wing and traditionally conservative political parties that sprang up in the early days of the Weimar Republic, including Hitler's Nazi Party. Further "proof" of the myth's validity was found in British General Frederick Barton Maurice's book The Last Four Months, published in 1919. Wilde, Robert. The film has been released straight to video on demand, before a limited theatrical release. [26], Parallel interpretations of national trauma after military defeat appear in other countries. View solution. Reviews the Clear Evidence That in Reality It Simply Lost the Will to Go on Fighting", Book review by Harold Marcuse, with 15 "stab-in-the-back" illustrations, 1918–1942, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project (BAHOHP), Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), National Political Institute of Education, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stab-in-the-back_myth&oldid=1022777925, Military history of Germany during World War II, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 12 May 2021, at 12:36. November Criminals. November Criminals (film) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia November Criminals is a 2017 American crime drama film, directed by Sacha Gervasi and written by Gervasi and Steven Knight, and based on Sam Munson's 2010 novel The November Criminals. Conservatives, nationalists and ex-military leaders began to speak critically about the peace and Weimar politicians, socialists, communists and German Jews. The film stars Ansel Elgort, Chloë Grace Moretz, Catherine Keener, and David Strathairn. For Hitler himself, this explanatory model for World War I was of crucial personal importance. https://www.historyhit.com/convicted-nazi-war-criminals-who-got-off-easy November Criminals (2017) This is a crime drama about college bound friends find themselves falling for one another, but after the mysterious murder of their classmate, they defy the authorities to uncover the truth. [14], On 5 October, the German Chancellor, Prince Maximilian of Baden, contacted American President Woodrow Wilson, indicating that Germany was willing to accept his Fourteen Points as a basis for discussions. He used this narrative that Marxists, Socialists, Jews, and traitors had caused the failure of Germany in the Great War (in which Hitler had fought and been injured) and found widespread followers of the lie in the post-war German population. Charges of a Jewish conspiratorial element in Germany's defeat drew heavily upon figures such as Kurt Eisner, a Berlin-born German Jew who lived in Munich. Addison finds the shooter and gets shot... police shows up to the house and he gets rushed to hospital—ending scenes to the movie November Criminals. Nickname fo German politicians who sighned the armistice ending WW1; in November 1918; Term Stab in he back myth. These political opponents were chiefly right-wingers, and the idea that the November Criminals had ‘stabbed Germany in the back’ by engineering surrender was partly created by the German military itself, who maneuvered the situation so the civilians would be blamed for conceding a war that the generals also felt couldn’t be won, but which they didn’t wish to admit. [24] In Mein Kampf, he described a vision at this time which drove him to enter politics. Medium. Wilde, Robert. In the West, Germany had had successes with the Spring Offensive. The antisemitic instincts of the German Army were revealed well before the stab-in-the-back myth became the military's excuse for losing the war. The Allied policy of unconditional surrender was devised in 1943 in part to avoid a repetition of the stab-in-the-back myth. In spite of such tolerance, the Republic's legitimacy was constantly attacked with claims such as the stab-in-the-back. [13] The attitude of the military was "[T]he parties of the left have to take on the odium of this peace. (wenn wir der Front in den Rücken fielen und ihr den Dolchstoß versetzten.). [16] Hindenburg declared at the end of his – or Ludendorff's – speech: "As an English general has very truly said, the German Army was 'stabbed in the back'".[20]. They begin to take steps to deflect the blame to losing the war from themselves and the German Army to others. The German politicians who mediated and signed the armistice that ended World War I in November 1918 were called ‘November Criminals’. Anti-Jewish sentiment was intensified by the Bavarian Soviet Republic (6 April - 3 May 1919), a communist government which briefly ruled the city of Munich before being crushed by the Freikorps. November Criminals (2017) PG-13 | Crime, Drama, Mystery. Ludendorff's eyes lit up and he leapt upon the phrase like a dog on a bone. [3][4], To many Germans, the expression "stab in the back" was evocative of Richard Wagner's 1876 opera Götterdämmerung, in which Hagen murders his enemy Siegfried – the hero of the story – with a spear in his back. The Weimar Republic under Friedrich Ebert violently suppressed workers' uprisings with the help of Gustav Noske and Reichswehr General Groener, and tolerated the paramilitary Freikorps forming all across Germany. It was claimed that these groups had not sufficiently supported the war and had played a role in selling out Germany to its enemies. In early 1918, World War One was raging and German forces on the western front were still holding conquered territory but their forces were finite and being pushed to exhaustion while the enemies were benefitting from millions of fresh United States troops. Throughout his career, he railed against the "November criminals" of 1918, who had stabbed the German Army in the back. Kindle AZW file. At 5 o'clock in the morning on November 11, 1918, just north of Paris in the isolated Forest of Compiegne, representatives from the countries of France, Great Britain, and Germany held a clandestine meeting in a railway car. [12], In this way, Ludendorff was setting up the republican politicians – many of them Socialists – who would be brought into the government, and would become the parties that negotiated the Armistice with the Allies, as the scapegoats to take the blame for losing the war, instead of himself and Hindenburg. World War I, international conflict that in 1914–18 embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the U.S., the Middle East, and other regions. Robert Wilde is a historian who writes about European history. The last day of World War One was November 11 th 1918, known as Armistice Day. "The November Criminals." Prohibition definition is - the act of prohibiting by authority. It also led to transnational, global systems of captivity. [11] Ludendorff said to his staff on 1 October: I have asked His Excellency to now bring those circles to power which we have to thank for coming so far. Bulgaria was the first to sign an armistice on 29 September 1918, at Salonica. Rosenberg accused German Zionists of working for a German defeat and supporting Britain and the implementation of the Balfour Declaration.[b]. In the later part of World War I, Germany was essentially a military dictatorship, with the Supreme High Command (German: Oberste Heeresleitung) and General Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg as commander-in-chief advising Kaiser Wilhelm II – although Hindenburg was largely a figurehead, with his Chief-of-Staff, First Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff, effectively in control of the state and the army. Many of the November Criminals were a part of the early resistance members who eventually spearheaded the German Revolution of 1918 - 1919, several of which went on to serve as heads of the Weimar Republic which would serve as the basis for the post-war German reconstruction in the years to come. Wilde, Robert. It led to the fall of four great imperial dynasties and, in its destabilization of European society, laid the groundwork for World War II. In 1912, during the rebellion of Pascual Orozco, Villa aroused the suspicion of Gen. Victoriano Huerta, who condemned him to death, but Madero ordered a stay of execution and sent Villa to prison instead.Villa escaped from prison in November and fled to the United States.After Madero’s assassination in 1913, Villa returned to Mexico and formed a military band of several thousand men … Moreover, the Social Democrats that held the majority in the Weimar Government was pressured both by the left and right wing seeking to usurp power. Exploitation: From Soldiers to Hitler's Revisionist History. In October 1916, in the middle of the war, the army ordered a Jewish census of the troops, with the intent to show that Jews were under-represented in the Heer (army), and that they were over represented in non-fighting positions. [9] German scholar Boris Barth, in contrast to Steigmann-Gall, implies that Doehring did not actually use the term, but spoke only of 'betrayal'. )[19] and "they returned undefeated from the battlefield" (sie sind vom Schlachtfeld unbesiegt zurückgekehrt). [17] Barth traces the first documented use to a centrist political meeting in the Munich Löwenbräu-Keller on November 2, 1918, in which Ernst Müller-Meiningen, a member of the Progressive coalition in the Reichstag, used the term to exhort his listeners to keep fighting: As long as the front holds, we damned well have the duty to hold out in the homeland. 'dagger stab legend')[a] was an antisemitic conspiracy theory, widely believed and promulgated in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918. Who were called the 'November criminals'? They can now make the peace which has to be made. ThoughtCo. By "November Criminals" they meant those who had helped to form the new Weimar government and broker the peace which Germans had so desperately wanted, but which had ended so disastrously in the Versailles Treaty. When he recovered, Ludendorff decided Germany could not win and would need to seek an armistice, but he also knew the military would be blamed, and decided to move this blame elsewhere. A pair of college bound friends (Chloë Grace Moretz and Ansel Elgort) find themselves falling for one another, but after the mysterious murder of their classmate they defy the authorities to uncover the truth. Ludendorff and Hindenburg knew they had to sign the Treaty of Versailles to end the war and blamed it on all on the government for putting them in the situation where they had no choice but to sign it. [20], On 18 November 1919, Ludendorff and Hindenburg appeared before the Untersuchungsausschuß für Schuldfragen ("Committee of Inquiry into Guilt") of the newly elected Weimar National Assembly, which was investigating the causes of the World War and Germany's defeat. According to William L. Shirer, Ludendorff used the reviews of the book to convince Hindenburg about the validity of the myth. The phrase was to Ludendorff's liking, and he let it be known among the general staff that this was the "official" version, which led to it being spread throughout German society. How to use prohibition in a sentence. who negotiated and signed the armistice which ended World War I in November of 1918. Contributing to the Dolchstoßlegende, the overall failure of the offensive was blamed on strikes in the arms industry at a critical moment, leaving soldiers without an adequate supply of materiel. According to historian Richard Steigmann-Gall, the stab-in-the-back concept can be traced back to a sermon preached on 3 February 1918, by Protestant Court Chaplain Bruno Doehring, nine months before the war had even ended. Ebert had meant these sayings as a tribute to the German soldier, but it only contributed to the prevailing feeling. [19] Right-wing groups used it as a form of attack against the early Weimar Republic government, led by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which had come to power with the abdication of the Kaiser. Describe the problems faced by the Weimar Republic. Roth's work claimed that most Jews involved in the war were only taking part as profiteers and spies, while he also blamed Jewish officers for fostering a defeatist mentality which impacted negatively on their soldiers. Rumours of War – Five Outlandish Lies Spun by WW1 Propagandists Published Date: 28 October, 2013 Many German soldiers believed that they might have actually prevailed on the Western Front in the last year of World War One were it not for the ‘November Criminals’ back home. The November Criminals. [10] On 30 October the Ottoman Empire capitulated at Mudros. (2016), last German offensive on the Western Front, Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War, "Ludendorff: The Soldier and the Politician", "Stabbed at the Front: After 1918 the Myth Was Created That the German Army Only Lost the War Because It Had Been 'Stabbed in the Back' by Defeatists and Revolutionaries on the Home Front. These actions were believed to have deprived Germany of almost certain victory at the eleventh hour. Despite November 11 th being the last day of the war, on many parts of the Western Front fighting continued as normal. The attack made large gains at first but petered out and was pushed back; the allies followed this up by inflicting "The Black Day of the German Army" when they started to push the Germans back beyond their defenses, and Ludendorff suffered a mental breakdown. Despite the similarity of the German word, sfn error: no target: CITEREFKershaw2016 (, Vascik, George S. and Sadler, Mark R. eds. The Nazi propaganda depicted Weimar as "a morass of corruption, degeneracy, national humiliation, ruthless persecution of the honest 'national opposition'—fourteen years of rule by Jews, Marxists, and 'cultural Bolsheviks', who had at last been swept away by the National Socialist movement under Hitler and the victory of the 'national revolution' of 1933". The latter quote was shortened to im Felde unbesiegt ("undefeated on the battlefield") as a semi-official slogan of the Reichswehr. Official Trailer. Malcolm asked Ludendorff why it was that he thought Germany lost the war. In Spring 1919, Max Bauer – an Army colonel who had been the primary advisor to Ludendorff on politics and economics – published Could We Have Avoided, Won, or Broken Off the War?, in which he wrote that "[The war] was lost only and exclusively through the failure of the homeland. Further blame was laid at their feet after they signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which led to territorial losses and serious financial pain for the shaky new republic, including a crippling schedule of reparation payments. [28], The idea that the German Army was betrayed by Jews and socialists at the end of World War I, "Stab in the back" and "November criminals" redirect here. Watch options. Hitler wielded the stab in the back myth and the November Criminals surgically to enhance his own power and plans. Ludendorff replied with his list of excuses, including that the home front failed the army. Kevin was this quiet, stocky kid, a marching-band geek. "Stabbed in the back?" From the moment the leaders of the victorious Allied nations arrived in France for the peace conference in early 1919, the post-war reality began to … He suggests that behind these myths was a sense of communal shame, not for causing the war, but for losing it. Many prominent figures testified in that trial, including members of the parliamentary committee investigating the reasons for the defeat, so some of its results were made public long before the publication of the committee report in 1928. [24] He had learned of Germany's defeat while being treated for temporary blindness following a gas attack on the front. 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