Friedrich Stampfer and the fall of the Weimar Republic. (2024)

On Monday, 27 February 1933, as thousands of Social Democratic Party (SPD) supporters jammed the Berlin Sportspalast to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Karl Marx's death, they knew that they were doing more than simply gathering to honor one of their movement's founders. Adolf Hitler's Nazi-led government had been in power for less than one month and, with parliamentary elections scarcely a week away, the Nazis' unofficial, yet no less violent, offensive against their Social Democratic and Communist (KPD) opponents was in full swing. While the Communists bore the brunt of the storm troopers' assaults and police repression, the Social Democrats also found themselves under intensified attack. In this atmosphere of political tension and state-supported brutality, the Socialist rally at the Sportspalast was a clear act of defiance against the new regime and a statement of the Party's intent to keep Berlin "red."

The keynote speaker that night was Friedrich Stampfer, a member of the SPD's executive committee, a Reichstag delegate, and longtime editor of the party's flagship newspaper, Vorwarts. When the Nazis banned SPD cochair Artur Crispien from speaking, Stampfer had agreed to take his place, and he felt the tension in the air as he rose to address the assembled throng. Just as he began speaking, however, a police officer stepped up and declared the assembly dissolved. In anger the crowd drove the official from the hall and flowed into the street where thousands marched shouting slogans such as "Down with Hitler" and "Beat that dog to death!" Stampfer hurried to the Vorwarts offices to prepare a story about the evening's events for the morning edition.

Unfortunately for him and his fellow Social Democrats, that edition would never appear. Soon after arriving at his office, Stampfer and his colleagues learned that the Reichstag was burning, and they rushed to the scene. Unable to get through the cordon of Nazi storm troopers surrounding the building, they returned to Vorwarts just in time to hear that Hitler's government was blaming the tire on a socialist and communist conspiracy. It was no surprise, then, when police vans arrived to shut the paper down. As Stampfer later bitterly noted, "Only four weeks previously [this government] had sworn an oath to defend the constitution." Now, in one blow, it had eliminated the Social Democratic press. Within a few months it would destroy the party and drive Stampfer into exile. (1)

This story reveals a bitter truth about the demise of the Weimar Republic. Even in late February 1933 Stampfer and his colleagues in the SPD leadership were ready and willing to mobilize thousands of like-minded comrades in the effort to preserve Germany's democracy. These people fervently opposed Nazism and were willing to expose themselves to danger and even arrest for their cause. Yet, although they knew that the Nazis were unscrupulous and intent on destroying the republican order, they could not grasp the depth of Nazi ruthlessness and brutality. Unable and unwilling to match their barbarous opponents, in the end the Social Democrats stood by helplessly as the Nazis swept them aside.

Friedrich Stampfer, along with most of the SPD's top leaders during the last years of the republic, has received relatively little attention from historians. (2) In the postwar period, East German historians dismissed him as a Social Democratic traitor to the proletarian revolution. As a "right-wing" Social Democrat, Stampfer was a "hate-filled opponent of the unified action of the German working class and an anti-Communist." (3) Western historians, on the other hand, have relied upon Stampfer's journalistic or historical works, but have not yet subjected his career to close examination. The lack of private documents for the years prior to 1933, as well as the fact that the postwar SPD was trying to overcome the stigma of defeat and to jettison the party's Marxist worldview, helps to explain this neglect. (4)

This article examines Stampfer's political activities at the end of the Weimar Republic within the context of his long political career. It aims to bring his role in the leadership into sharper focus and to show how the constraints faced by the Social Democratic leaders resulted in his readiness to take desperate steps to find a way out of their political dilemma. Stampfer's views and actions during the republic's fatal crisis show him to be a perceptive, principled, but also flexible, leader, who was willing to challenge the views of his closest political allies to strengthen Germany's antifascist forces. His effort to form a united front with the Communists clearly misjudged the realities of the situation but also shows that he was anything but the model of the pedantic, self-satisfied, philistine party leader who some historians claim dominated the Weimar SPD. (5)

At the republic's founding in 1919, Friedrich Stampfer was forty-five years old and had been a socialist activist for over twenty-five years. Born in Brunn, Austria, to well-educated, secularized, and strongly republican, Jewish parents, his father's law practice provided the family with the comfortable living standard that allowed Friedrich to pursue an academic path, to read widely, and to observe his surroundings closely. The struggles of the early working-class movement in Brunn impressed him, but the ethnic nationalist conflicts in the city struck him as even more important. Initially attracted to socialism via Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, his friends at school and the works of Karl Kautsky soon led him to Marx's Capital. (6)

By the time Stampfer enrolled in the Law School at the University of Vienna, he was a committed socialist who was more interested in journalism than in pursuing legal studies. Like many of Austrian socialism's leading intellectuals, he became involved in the socialist student movement, but he also took advantage of the opportunity to study with leading non-Marxist economists such as Karl and Anton Menger and Eugen von Philippovich. He developed contacts with liberal groups and participated in the work of the Verein fur Sozialpolitik, which was an organization concerned with the study and resolution of social problems. Stampfer's wide range of political experience in Vienna convinced him that it should be possible for the working-class movement to draw support from middle-class liberals when they had clear interests in common. This outlook shaped his politics for the rest of his life.

Stampfer had begun writing articles for the socialist press while still a high school student in Brunn, and he quickly established a solid reputation even among liberal editors. In 1894 he accepted the post of Austrian correspondent to the Leipziger Volkszeitung (LVZ), one of German Social Democracy's leading newspapers. For the twenty-year-old Stampfer this more was "the decisive moment" of his life, for it marked his personal "Anschluss" to Germany and to its socialist movement. In 1900 Stampfer became an editor at the LVZ under the leadership of Bruno Schonlank. He quickly became engaged in German Social Democracy's complex factional struggles, in which he tended to side with those challenging the "orthodox" viewpoints of party leaders such as Karl Kautsky and August Bebel. Following Schonlank's death, Stampfer worked for a time with the LVZ's new chief editor, Franz Mehring, but when the latter suggested appointing the fiery theorist Rosa Luxemburg as coeditor, Stampfer expressed his reservations. He soon had to find another job. In 1902 he moved to Berlin, where he became a regular contributor to Vorwarts and came into closer proximity with the party's top political leadership. (7)

Stampfer detested the factional conflicts between the so-called "orthodox" Marxists and the "revisionists" that shaped Social Democratic politics in the pre-1914 era. Although he regarded himself as a "Marxist," he did not identify readily with any particular group. Stampfer saw clearly the importance of class struggle in the fight for social and political justice, but he also believed that nationalism, religion, and other factors played a decisive role in mobilizing people for action. As he gained experience he became impatient with the "orthodox" Marxists, who argued that capitalism was moving inexorably toward future collapse and that the SPD should be careful not to precipitate radical actions before revolutionary conditions had matured. To Stampfer, such a view pushed the fight for major reforms, such as universal suffrage, freedom of the press, separation of church and state, and equal rights for women, into the distant future; it undermined the SPD's effort to achieve the practical aims of its program, passed in Erfurt in 1891. (8)

Stampfer also was not very interested in the theoretical arguments of Edward Bernstein, whose "revisionist" critique of Marx's economic theory unleashed a storm of controversy among prewar social democrats. It was not Stampfer's understanding of theory that moved him toward socialism, but, rather, his commitment to social justice. In response to a query from a political adversary, G. R. Treviranus, about why he fought so passionately for his beliefs, Stampfer once replied that "as a schoolboy [he had become] a socialist because I saw the poverty of the Moravian weavers" It was his "sense of peoples' humanity" (menschliche Gesinnung), he later noted, and not "class interest" that motivated him to become a socialist. (9) This human sentiment, Stampfer believed, would allow people eventually to overcome conflicts of class and party. For Stampfer, theory was not as important as action. The point of his journalistic work for Vorwarts and, between 1904 and 1914, his nationally syndicated Berliner Briefe was to influence the making of policy for the achievement of immediate concrete reforms. To that end, he was ready to ally himself with those forces in the movement that were willing to co-operate with progressive liberals when it served socialist interests. (10)

Stampfer did not believe that socialism could be achieved through a violent revolution that rejected all aspects of bourgeois society. In his view, socialists had to build on that society's achievements and use them to promote their aims. Universal manhood suffrage could serve to democratize such imperial institutions as the class-bound Prussian Landtag, and these could then become instruments of more far-reaching social and political change. With such aims in mind, Stampfer supported a range of actions, from the political mass strike to the formation of liberal-socialist voting blocks, to bring about democratic reforms within the imperial system. This placed him at odds with the party's centrist and left-wing factions, who argued for "pure opposition" of believed that radical action, like the mass strike, should be used to promote the complete overthrow of the system. (11)

With the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, Stampfer stood with the pro-government majority in the SPD leadership. In an article published on 3 August, he wrote, "At the hour when the fateful bell tolls, the workers will make good on the promise given by their representatives. The men without a fatherland will fulfill their duty in a way not to be outdone by any patriots." The party had no other choice, he argued; it had to help defend the country against Tsarism. Whether Germany was defeated or victorious, the SPD's withholding of support for war credits would invite recrimination and political isolation. (12) Stampfer insisted that a socialist could be both a German and an internationalist. He saw the party's support for a defensive war and a peace of understanding as a means toward rebuilding the international workers' movement. No less importantly, for Stampfer, workers sacrificing for the nation "spoke the language of full freedom and equality more clearly than all the parliamentary speeches, booklets, and newspaper articles up to now." (13) Freedom and equality, he believed, would allow the workers' movement to intervene decisively to transform the shattered capitalist economy, reconstruct the country, and achieve social justice. The antiwar minority had the right to criticize the majority's position, but he exhorted his comrades to avoid a split and a "civil war" within the movement.

True to his patriotic principles, he joined the Austro-Hungarian army in 1915 despite the fact that, due to his age and political connections, he could easily have remained in Berlin. While serving on the Italian Front, Stampfer became ill and returned home in the fall of 1916. He arrived in Berlin just as the SPD executive committee began to purge Vorwarts of its antiwar editorial staff. Party cochairman Friedrich Ebert named Stampfer the paper's chief editor, and he remained at this post, with one brief interruption, until 1933. Stampfer's new job also brought him to the top of the party hierarchy, with membership in the party executive and the right to attend the meetings of the Reichstag delegation. (14) In the years following his appointment, Stampfer and his party faced unprecedented challenges. The formation of the antiwar Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), the collapse of the imperial state, the founding of the republic, the loss of the war, and civil unrest forced the SPD to move rapidly from what Stampfer called the "child's world of happy opposition" to that of sober responsibility. Called upon to govern, Stampfer saw the SPD's long-term goals as unchanged. What had changed, he asserted, was "the way [one] had to observe things and ... the demands that one places in a party program." (15)

Stampfer's hopes for a peace of understanding and socialist unity were dashed. For Stampfer, the Versailles treaty was a "diktat" that unfairly placed sole responsibility for the war upon Germany, represented a terrible economic burden for the German people, and sowed the seeds of future war. When the SPD decided it had no other choice but to sign the treaty, he quit his job at Vorwarts in protest. He returned a few months later, however, at the behest of the executive committee. (16) Certainly Stampfer was pleased to be back at the center of the political action. As the new republic emerged from the chaos of postwar Germany, he saw it as an enormous step forward for the workers' movement. The Weimar Constitution of 1919 achieved virtually all of the prewar SPD's political demands including women's suffrage, proportional representation, and the use of the referendum. It represented the beginning, not the end, of a process of change; socialism, he believed, could be achieved within the framework of the new parliamentary order. (17) Thus, Stampfer rejected the demands of left-wing socialists and the newly founded KPD for the creation of a republic based on workers' councils (Raterepublik) and the immediate socialization of industry. For Germany to avoid following the Bolshevik road to a new form of despotism, as he believed had happened in Soviet Russia, Stampfer argued that the movement supporting workers' councils would need to be contained within the framework of the parliamentary order. (18) Stampfer admitted that the socialist parties in the National Assembly had not been able to make radical inroads against private property, because they lacked an absolute majority. A majority in the Reichstag and time for preparation would allow workers to carry out the socialization of industry constitutionally and in an orderly and constructive manner. To proceed otherwise was to invite civil war and economic ruin as the Bolsheviks had done. (19)

Although he was not an unremitting supporter of SPD participation in government, Stampfer believed that Socialist coalitions with the moderate bourgeois parties could protect and enhance the political and social gains of the revolution. As he later noted, the SPD was "the real party of the republic because it had created it and it could not be indifferent to its fate." (20) Thus it was essential for the SPD to accept governmental responsibility at critical moments. In the summer of 1923, for example, with the French occupying the Ruhr, inflation accelerating out of control, and the government in disarray, he argued that any attempt by a divided workers' movement to seize control and rule alone would invite violent conflict. As long as the workers remained divided by the "uncritical" "unconscionable," "unthinking subversion" of the KPD, a socialist government would not be able to gain majority support in the Reichstag. Joining a bourgeois coalition was, thus, the only reasonable alternative to remaining in the opposition. (21)

Increased support from groups outside the industrial proletariat was also critical to achieving an electoral majority. In 1921 Stampfer helped draft the SPD's new Gorlitz Program, which he believed addressed the goals of Social Democracy in a new historical epoch. According to Stampfer, while the Erfurt Program of 1891 had provided theoretical and practical guidance at a time when basic democratic and social rights, not socialism, were on the party's agenda, the founding of the republic meant that Germany was now experiencing the transition to socialism and thus needed a new program. The struggle against capitalism was certainly not over, but as support for the movement grew, socialism would develop on the basis of the republican form of government. It was the SPD's task to win majority support for the fundamental changes that would characterize this transformation. By reaching out not only to factory workers but also to white-collar workers, peasants, housewives, artisans, and other groups, the SPD could truly become a party of "working people in the city and country." (22) Class struggle, Stampfer argued, would continue as long as capitalism existed. Without it there could be no progress for workers, but under the republic violent conflict was unnecessary. Communist efforts to "militarize" class struggle were "blind ... senseless and suicidal." They were derived from the world war and represented a throwback to the presocialist era. Instead, he asserted, the SPD should work to humanize class conflict by promoting enlightenment and positive change. The future task of Social Democracy, he concluded, is to "'arm' the proletariat with all the intellectual and ethical weapons it needed for victory." (23)

It was this outlook that shaped Stampfer's activity at the center of Social Democratic politics. As a member of the party executive committee and a delegate to the Reichstag, Stampfer would have been an important figure in the party under any circ*mstances. His day-to-day work as editor of Vorwarts, however, enhanced his position. With the paper and the executive housed in the same building, Stampfer and the other leaders were in constant communication concerning the presentation of party policy, and he also helped Otto Wels, the party cochair, develop his speeches. (24) Thus, Stampfer was particularly well placed not only to shape the party's outlook, but also to influence the way it educated the proletariat "for positive work as active full citizens" (25)

For Stampfer, the main task of Vorwarts was to represent the political point of view of the whole party (Gesamtpartei) to the public. This meant promoting the outlook of the SPD executive, a practice that frustrated minority factions within the party, especially on the left. But Stampfer insisted that while one should not close off political debate within the paper, it was necessary to limit its extent. Otherwise it would be difficult to maintain party unity in the midst of the country's myriad crises, especially after the SPD's reunification with the more left-leaning USPD in 1922. Stampfer rejected the arguments of those who accused the leadership of resorting to "ruthless," "Bolshevik" methods of suppressing dissent and noted that the executive actually funded the Social Democratic papers that opposed its views. He remained firm, however, in his belief that if the SPD's "central organ" opened its pages to unlimited debate, the party would become a "pile of rubble" (Trummerhaufen). (26)

With his academic background Stampfer differed from most of his colleagues in the executive, many of whom had been artisans, factory workers, or white-collar employees. Largely self-educated, many had worked their way up through the party's various organizations. By outlook and experience they tended to be people who were committed to the movement's ideals but were infused with a strong streak of pragmatism. It was this latter quality of the executive leadership that made it easy for Stampfer, who, like many other academically trained socialists, had risen to the top through the press, to work well within that body. (27) To be a member of the Social Democratic executive meant to sacrifice much of one's personal life to the needs of the cause. As his memoirs and the documentary record suggest, Stampfer, too, engaged in a truly impressive range of activities. In addition to his editorial and policy-making responsibilities, he also participated in the work of the party commission established to draft a new program following reunification with the USPD. (28) More importantly, he was a member of the SPD's Reichstag delegation, where he worked in the foreign policy committee.

Looking back on his life, Stampfer claimed not to have had much interest in pursuing parliamentary fame. For this longtime journalist, election to parliament essentially meant simply moving from the gallery, where he had long been present, to the floor of the assembly. He rarely took part in the often long-winded and cantankerous plenary debates, which he thought were quite unproductive, and instead focused his attention on committee work. Characteristically, Stampfer was pleased with the more pragmatic and generally civil atmosphere in that arena. A dearth of primary documents makes it difficult to say much about Stampfer's character and private life, but his observations of his political opponents in the Reichstag and elsewhere indicate that he could be a fair-minded and humane man. For example, he clearly recognized the professional and political talents of nationalist leader Karl Helfferich, even though the latter was notorious for his sharp and often personal attacks on various opponents, including Social Democrats. (29) Even more telling was Stampfer's outrage in 1929 when the SPD-led coalition government refused to grant Leon Trotsky asylum in Germany. In a letter to Chancellor Hermann Muller, Stampfer argued that he could not understand why the German government would deny Trotsky the same right of asylum it had granted to "countless ultra-reactionary Russians." In his view the republic should grant asylum to all those fleeing from dictatorship. It was simply a matter of principle. In taking this position in regard to Trotsky, who, along with other Bolshevik leaders, held the Social Democrats in great contempt, Stampfer showed how his empathy for Trotsky's predicament counted for more than their sharp political differences. (30)

Stampfer later described 1928 as the year in which the SPD reached the height of its postwar power. Party membership was close to its prewar high of one million, its auxiliary organizations were flourishing, and its trade union allies boasted a membership almost tire times as large. In the elections of that year the SPD emerged as the strongest party, with over 28 percent of the vote, and one of its leaders, Hermann Muller, headed a "Great Coalition" government that included the Catholic, Democratic, and German People's (DVP) Parties. For many, the new government offered hope of substantial social, economic, and political reforms that would improve the condition of Germany's workers and increase their power. Looking back, Stampfer opined that the worst effects of the war seemed to be over and that bloody civil conflict was a thing of the past. The "victory of human sentiment" appeared to have placed the republic on firm foundations that would lead to positive change. (31)

At the time, however, he was not so optimistic. In May 1928 he wrote to Kautsky that he did not think that the SPD would be able to achieve its goals within the coalition. Domestically, the exhaustion of the nation's financial reserves, the resistance of the DVP to social reforms, and the commitment to pay reparations for the First World War as arranged under the Dawes Plan sharply limited the party's room for maneuver. In the realm of foreign policy things were not much better, as the French showed no signs of ending their occupation of the Rhineland. Stampfer knew that, having campaigned under the slogan "Away with the rightist government!," there was no way for the SPD to avoid joining the coalition, but he was clearly aware that the party would be operating under severe economic and political constraints. (32)

Stampfer's fears, as events quickly showed, were well founded; the SPD failed to achieve any of its major goals in the coalition. The onset of the Great Depression of 1929 and the Nazi electoral breakthrough that followed threw the republic and its chief defenders permanently onto the defensive. Stampfer, at first, did not grasp the full political impact of the economic crisis. In August 1929 he argued that the SPD-led coalition had to defend the unemployment insurance system at all costs because it was the "crowning achievement" of the social insurance system. (33) When the coalition collapsed over this issue in March 1930, it opened the way to the semiauthoritarian presidential regimes of the next three years. In a series of parliaments dominated by antirepublican Nazis on the right and Communists on the left, the SPD found itself forced to tolerate ever more reactionary minority governments to prevent Hitler from coming to power.

To Stampfer and his colleagues in the SPD leadership, it eventually became clear that the most effective way to defend the republic against its enemies was to reunite the working class in a struggle against the extreme right. Deep-seated antagonisms, however, made such a project extremely difficult. Following the collapse of the monarchy, the SPD's suppression of Communist revolutionary actions had created a wide gulf between the two parties. In the late twenties, the KPD, following the instructions of the Bolshevik-controlled Communist International, had labeled the Socialists as "social fascists" who were the main enemy "paving the way for fascist dictatorship" in Germany. The KPD aimed to win over the SPD's mass base by educating the workers and unmasking the Social Democrats as agents of fascism. (34)

By late 1931 Social Democratic leaders of all persuasions recognized that the party's inability to find a way out of the economic and political crisis was undermining its support. (35) Stampfer backed the effort to bolster Social Democracy's sagging fortunes by bringing together republican forces in a dynamic "Iron Front" and by promoting more radical economic policies to salvage the economy. The latter position represented a reversal of his long-held gradualist views. Now, in the midst of the crisis, Stampfer joined those calling for the rapid creation of public works for the unemployed, increased state planning and regulation, reforms of the banking and credit system, and nationalization of major industries. He called these changes "an expression of the will to socialism" at the moment when "the great reconstruction of the economy had arrived." Social Democrats had to make clear to the workers that it was they, not the fascists, who had a response to the crisis and could point the way forward. (36)

Stampfer's outlook developed in the midst of a heated debate among SPD and trade union leaders over how to finance public works programs to combat unemployment. (37) He saw that it was a political necessity for the SPD to support state action, for without it workers would turn away from the republic and the party in seeking a way out of their desperate straits. Although it might be argued that the steps Stampfer supported, many of which were ultimately adopted as the party's official policy, were not "socialist," they were very substantial measures that would have represented an unprecedented intervention in the workings of German capitalism.

Stampfer's willingness to call for radical reforms was new, but he remained committed to achieving them only within the parliamentary framework. To succeed in that arena, however, majorities were necessary, and that required the dim prospect of the political unity of the left. Not only were the trade unions and the SPD divided over how to construct a joint response to the crisis, by mid-1932 Socialist rivalry with the Communists was increasingly intense. To fight the Nazi-friendly government of Franz von Papen, Stampfer was among those trade union and SPD leaders willing to suggest that the Socialists and Communists calla "truce" as a step toward a united front. (38) Stampfer was very clear about his goals. The only feasible way to bring about unity was to forma "loose combination" (lose Kombination) in which the Communists ceased attacking the Social Democrats and cooperating with the Nazis. Both parties fighting against fascism, not empty rhetoric, would lead to a proletarian united front. By framing the discussion in this way, Stampfer laid out the only option that had a chance of success. It set aside mutual recriminations, avoided complicated negotiations, and placed the focus on the fight against the right. Unfortunately, its success hinged on the Communists' willingness to cooperate. (39)

The KPD leaders were not willing. Holding fast to the Comintern's "general line," they repeatedly rebuffed Social Democratic calls for cooperation and indeed stepped up their attacks. Stampfer still did not lose hope, however; in fact, during the summer and fall of 1932, as the SPD's electoral fortunes declined, he began cultivating contacts with the Soviet embassy in Berlin. He pursued this strategy despite knowing that, following the KPD's electoral gains in November, the overwhelming majority of the SPD's leaders vehemently opposed making further approaches to the Communists. (40) In his memoirs, Stampfer later claimed that his discussions with Ambassador Chintschuk aimed to "normalize" relations between his party and the Soviet government. His real goal, however, was to convince the Soviets to re-orient the KPD's attitude toward the SPD. These discussions occurred sporadically for almost two months and ultimately came to naught. (41) Even then, however, Stampfer still argued repeatedly, in the executive and in Vorwarts, that the parties should at least tacitly, if not formally, cease attacking one another. Without informing his colleagues, he met again with an official of the Soviet embassy on 22 February 1933. At that meeting he suggested that, since all other strategies were unacceptable to either the SPD or the KPD leaders, the Soviet government should pressure Hitler's regime to relax its persecution of the left. When the Soviets rejected this proposal, he was disappointed and angry but still did not lose all hope, and indeed was willing to set up a meeting with representatives of the KPD leadership for 28 February 1933. The Reichstag fire, and the persecution of the KPD that followed, made this arrangement moot. (42)

Why did Stamper pursue this strategy? Certainly, as Henryk Skrzypczak has noted, he was aware that large numbers of Communist and Socialist workers wanted unified action, and he no doubt believed that, ultimately, the Soviets would come to their senses and urge the KPD to reverse course. (43) For the purposes of our discussion it is of secondary importance that Stampfer misjudged the Communists' attitude. More important is to recognize how this staunch anti-Communist and lifelong Social Democrat was willing to reverse course, ignore the criticism of his closest colleagues, and breech party discipline if it meant increasing the chances of saving the republic. Stampfer had always been skeptical of ideological rigidity in the pursuit of practical political aims. As Germany's crisis intensified he remained flexible and sharply changed his views on the radical transformation of the economy. In his approach to the Communists we have an even more stunning example of his readiness to set aside his ideological (and personal) differences in order to salvage the democratic order.

But such flexibility did not mean that Stampfer was ready to resort to violent action. Like his colleagues in the executive, Stampfer could not muster the will to urge the party and trade unions to undertake a general strike or resort to arms against their antirepublican opponents. Grasping at straws, he supported the majority when it rejected resistance and opted, in vain, to mobilize for coming elections and to use the courts to reverse von Papen's illegal ouster of Prussia's SPD-led government in July 1932. (44) Six months later, at the moment of Hitler's appointment, he supported the majority once again when it decided to stick to the letter of the constitution rather than calling for a general strike or mobilizing its own paramilitary Reichsbanner units for action. (45) The fear of bloody defeat at the hands of superior forces drove this effort to avoid provoking the enemy. What the Social Democrats did not understand was that the Nazis needed no provocation; they were ready to manufacture their own opportunities.

Looking back on the July debacle twenty-five years later, Stampfer recalled a conversation with a friend who summed up the failure by saying, "You are bad generals [who] could not send others to die." Stampfer agreed wholeheartedly. As noted in his history of the republic,"For decades [the SPD] had been a party of gradual development, of reasoned decision making, of peaceful understanding. Had it given the signal to fight, then it would have been attempting to be something that it was not." His appraisal was on the mark. Even when the party had reliable knowledge that its opponents aimed to undermine the republic's institutions, such as it did in Prussia early in the summer of 1932, it was unwilling to make preparations for serious resistance. Parliamentarians, not revolutionaries, led the SPD, and their imperative was to avoid civil war. (46)

Friedrich Stampfer certainly fits the mold of the Social Democratic parliamentarian, but it would be an oversimplification to see him as just one more of that "plentiful crop of mediocrities" who some, with good reason, argue dominated Weimar's parliamentary parties. (47) On the contrary, he was a tenacious supporter of that system who was willing to go to great lengths to protect it. That he, along with his colleagues in the SPD leadership, was unwilling to unleash a bloody civil war was not surprising given their long history of parliamentary practice and the fact that few could clearly foresee how the Nazis would proceed in 1933. (48)

(1) On the meeting at the Sportspalast and the subsequent events, see Friedrich Stampfer, Sie haben nicht kapituliert! (Berlin, 1947), 16-18; and idem., Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse, Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben (Cologne, 1957), 261-62.

(2) Biographical literature on the late Weimar SPD leadership is relatively sparse (especially compared to that on the Nazis), but several new works have appeared in recent years. See, for example, Thomas Alexander, Carl Severing: Ein Demokrat und Sozialist (Frankfurt am Main, 1994); Annette Hild-Berg, Toni Sender: Ein Leben im Namen der Freiheit und der sozialen Gerechtigkeit (Koln, 1994); William Smaldone, Rudolf Hilferding, The Tragedy of a German Social Democrat (DeKalb, 1998); and Thomas Albrecht, Fur eine wehrhafte Demokratie, Albert Grzesinski und die preussische Politik in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn, 1999).

(3) Paul Merker, Sozialdemokratismus: Stampfer, Schumacher und andere Gestrige (East Berlin, 1952); Dieter Fricke, "Friedrich Stampfer und der 'demokratische Sozialismus,'" Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft 6 (1958): 749-74.

(4) It is interesting to note that Stampfer was not included in the two most important postwar collections of biographical essays dealing with Weimar Social Democrats. See Werner Blumenberg, Kampfer fur die Freiheit (Berlin and Hannover, 1959), Peter Losche, Michael Scholing, and Franz Walter, eds., Vor dem Vergessen bewahren. Lebenswege Weimarer Sozialdemokraten (Berlin, 1988). There are entries on his life in some of the biographical dictionaries of the Weimar period. See Wolfgang Benz and Hermann Graml, eds., Biographisches Lexikon zur Weimarer Republik (Munich, 1988); Werner Roder and Herbert A. Strauss, eds., Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933, Bd. 1 (Munich, 1980-83), 720.

(5) For a classic description of the executive as a body of dutiful if uninspired "organization men," see Richard Hunt, German Social Democracy (Chicago, 1964), 63-75. For a different perspective see Peter Losche, et. al., ibid., 7-14. A majority of the leaders examined in this work were not in the executive, but Breitscheid and Hilferding were key figures in that body and many of the others, e.g., Aufhauser, Hertz, and Sollmann, were very influential.

(6) Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 7-23.

(7) In his role as LVZ correspondent, Stampfer particularly aggravated SPO (Austrian Social Democratic Party) leader Victor Adler when he challenged his view of the national question in an article describing the debate at the Brunn party congress of 1899. Later, when editor, he raised Karl Kautsky's ire by challenging the SPD's support for free trade. For general background and specifics on the various issues, compare Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 52-68, and Victor Adler, Briefwechsel mit August Bebel und Karl Kautsky, ed. Friedrich Adler (Vienna, 1954), 325-27, 380.

(8) Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 15, 32, 109-10. In the pre-1914 era Stampfer outlined his ideas for fundamental political and economic reforms in two important works. See Ziele Und Wege. Erlauterungen der sozialdemokratischen Gegenwartsforderungen, ed. Adolf Braun, unter Mitarbeit von Adolf Braun, Hugo Lindemann, Max Sussheim, Friedrich Stampfer, Klara Zetkin (Berlin, 1908); Friedrich Stampfer, Grundbegriffe der Politik, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1931).

(9) G. R. Treviranus, "Friedrich Stampfer," Deutsche Rundschau 84 (1958): 256; Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 110.

(10) Ibid., 93-94, 128-30.

(11) Ibid., 146-47.

(12) As quoted in Wilhem Keil, Erlebnisse eines Sozialdemkraten (Stuttgart, 1947), 1:299. See also Stampfer, Sozialdemokratie und Kriegskredite (Berlin, 1915).

(13) Stampfer, Sozialdemokratie und Kriegskredite, 15.

(14) Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 175-214; Susanne Miller, "Ein Pyrrhussieg der Mehrheit, 1914-1919," Vorwarts, Sondernummer, 7 October 1976, 26-28.

(15) Stampfer quoted by Kurt Koszyk, "Abschied vom Kinderland der Opposition, 1919-1933," in ibid., 30.

(16) Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 241-42.

(17) Stampfer, Verfassung, Arbeiterklasse und Sozialismus. Eine kritische Untersuchung der Reichsverfassung vom 11. August, 1919 (Berlin, 1919).

(18) Ibid., 20-22; and idem., Der 9. November. Gedenkblatter an seiner Wiederkehr (Berlin, 1919), 34-35.

(19) Stampfer, Verfassung, 21-24.

(20) Friedrich Stampfer, Die vierzehn Jahre der ersten Deutschen Republik (Hamburg, 1947), 342.

(21) Stampfer, "Die Arbeiterregierung," and "Antwort," in Vorwarts, Nr. 358, 31 July 1923, and Nr. 360, 3 August 1923, respectively; Heinrich August Winkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung, Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik, 1918-1924 (Bonn, 1985), 587-88.

(22) For Stampfer's remarks at Gorlitz see SPD-Parteitag 1921 in Gorlitz (Glashutten im Taunus, 1973), 303-7. For his more extensive analysis of the program see Stampfer, Das Gorlitzer Programm (Berlin, 1922).

(23) Stampfer, Das Gorlitzer Programm, 13-14.

(24) While Wels called his own shots and Stampfer was neither a "gray eminence" nor a "strong man" pulling strings behind the throne, he clearly had an influence upon the party chairman. See Hans J. L. Adolph, Otto Wels und die Politik der Deutchen Sozialdemokratie, 1894-1939 (Berlin, 1971), 114.

(25) Koszyk, "Abschied," 32.

(26) Sozialdemokratische Parteitag 1927 in Kiel (Glashutten im Taunus, 1974), 86-88.

(27) On the social background of the Weimar SPD leadership, see Heinrich August Winkler, Der Schein der Normalitat. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1924 bis 1930 (Bonn, 1988), 646-50.

(28) He withdrew from the committee when he realized its intention to revise the program more in keeping with the theoretical tradition of Erfurt than with the pragmatic emphasis of Gorlitz. In his view this tendency would make it difficult for the party to win majority support. See Stampfer, "Der Programmentwurf" Vorwarts, Nr. 410, 31 August 1925; Toni Sender, The Autobiography of a German Rebel (New York, 1939), 248-49.

(29) It is interesting to note that in his memoirs Stampfer never goes into any detail about his private affairs. One learns virtually nothing about his wives or life in his household. On his view of his colleagues in the Reichstag, see Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 247-49.

(30) Stampfer to Hermann Muller, 2 February 1929, Nachlass Hermann Muller, Kassette I, Nr. 105, Archiv der Sozialen Demokratie (AsD), Bonn.

(31) Stampfer, Die vierzehn Jahre, 513-20.

(32) Stampfer to Karl Kautsky, 25 May 1928, KDXXI 303, International Institute for Social History (ISH); Breitman, German Socialism and Weimar Social Democracy (Chapel Hill, 1981), 145.

(33) Stampfer, "Arbeitslose und Partei. Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion," Vorwarts, Nr. 399, 8 August 1929; idem., Die vierzehn Jahre, 549-50.

(34) Conan Fischer, The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism (New York, 1991), 102; Ben Fowkes, Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic (London, 1984), 154-55, 164.

(35) Donna Harsch, German Social Democracy and the Rise of Nazism (Chapel Hill, 1993), 169-73.

(36) Stampfer, "Offensive," Vorwarts, Nr. 81, 18 February 1932.

(37) Michael Schneider, "Arbeitsbeschaffung. Die Vorstellungen von Freien Gewerkschaften und SPD zur Bekampfung der Wirschafskrise" in Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterbewegung und Weimarer Republik. Materialien zur gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung 1927-1933, ed. Wolfgang Luthardt (Frankfurt am Main, 1978), 220-32; Heinrich August Winlder, Der Weg in die Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik, 1930-1933 (Bonn, 1987), 494-506.

(38) Henryk Skrzypczak, "Kanzlerwechsel und Einheitsfront. Abwehrreaktionen der Arbeiterbewegung auf die Machtubergabe an Franz von Papen," Internationale Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung (IWK) (April 1982): 482-99; Stampfer, "Einheitsfront! Ein Ziel--aber wo ist der Weg?" Vorwarts, Nr. 285, 19 June 1932.

(39) Ibid.; Heinrich August Winlder, Der Weg in die Katastrophe, 624-26.

(40) On the leadership's opposition to approaching the Communists, see especially the meeting of the Parteiauschub, 10 November 1932, described in Anpassung oder Widerstand? Aus den Akten des Parteivorstands der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 1932/33, ed. Hagen Schulze, (Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 1975), especially 29, 41, 44-45, 53-54, 66. On Stampfer's approach to the Soviets, see Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 264; and Henry Skrzypczak, "'Nichtangriffspakt:' Zu Friedrich Stampfer's Einheitsfront-Interventionen im Spannungsfeld von Papen zu Hitler," in Soziale Demokratie und sozialistische Theorie. Festschrift fur Hans-Josef Steinberg, ed. Inge Marbolek and Scheh-Brandenburg Till (Bremen 1995), 226-44.

(41) Stampfer, Erfahrungen.

(42) Stampfer, "Einheitsfront. Offener Brief an die kommunistischen Arbeiter," Vorwarts, Nr. 71, 11 February 1933; Skrzypczak, "'Nichtangriffspakt,'" 235; idem., "Anspiel. Vorabdruck aus: Mission ohne Mandar. Der Fall Friedrich Stampfer," IWK (January 1996): 53-57.

(43) Skrzypczak, "'Nichtangriffspakt,'" 236-37.

(44) Stampfer, Die vierzehn Jahre, 633-35.

(45) Anpassung, 131-36; Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 260; Winkler, Der Weg in die Katastrophe, 867-69; Erich Matthias, Das Ende der Partien (Dusseldorf, 1960), 158-62.

(46) Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 256; idem, Die vierzehn Jahre, 632; Winlder, Der Weg in die Katastrophe, 675-80.

(47) The phrase is from Klaus Epstein, "The End of the German Parties in 1933," Journal of Central European Affairs 23 (1963) 52-76. See also Klaus P. Fischer, Nazi Germany: A New History (New York, 1995), 267.

(48) The causes of their defeat and the problem of what to do next were intensely debated by many Social Democrats, including Stampfer, who managed to elude capture after 1933. Stampfer remained an important figure among the leadership in exile. From 1933 to 1940, first in Prague and, after 1938, in Paris, he edited the SPD's leading newspaper Neuer Vorwarts. The Nazi invasion ultimately drove him to New York, where he raised money for the party and contributed to the Neue Volkszeitung. He returned to Germany in 1948 and taught at the Academy of Labor in Frankfurt am Main. He died in 1957. See Mit dem Gesicht nach Deutschland: Eine Dokumentation uber die sozialdemokratische Emigration, aus dem Nachlab Friedrich Stampfer, erganzt durch andere Uberlieferungen, ed. Erich Matthias (Dusseldorf, 1968); and Stampfer, Erfahrungen, 272-91.

William T. Smaldone is a professor of history at Willamette University and would like to thank Professors Dieter Buse, Dennis Sweeney, and Jennifer Jopp for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.