The Pan-German Programme
The Petition of the Six Associations and the Manifesto of the Intellectuals
Various Authors
9781465599827
311 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The two documents presented in this pamphlet are the fullest statement of the programme of the Pan-German party in Germany. They were both drawn up in the earlier months of 1915. After the series of rapid German successes in the West, with which the war opened, had seemed to come to a check, and month after month went by without the expected advance on Paris being resumed, it was felt to be necessary that the German people should get some more precise idea of what it was fighting for, what it had to obtain before it could consider that the war had attained its end. In March, 1915, the rumour got about that the German Government was contemplating a peace of compromise, and Pan-German circles took alarm. Pan-Germanism was not strong in the working class and many of the Radical Intellectuals disapproved of it. But it was very strong among the country landowners, i.e. the class called Junkers, and the rich manufacturers, especially the great ironmasters of the Rhenish-Westphalian country, who wanted to get hold of the French iron-districts of Briey and Longwy. These interests were organised in a number of powerful Associations. If there was danger of the Government under Bethmann Hollweg's direction weakening, it appeared necessary that pressure should be brought to bear upon it in time. Five Associations in March drew up a Memorandum to be presented privately to the Chancellor. They were afterwards joined by a sixth, and the Memorandum in its final form was laid before the Chancellor on May 20, 1915. This is the first of the two documents here translated. The second is the so-called "Manifesto of the Intellectuals." It was read on June 20, 1915, to a great gathering of professors, diplomats, and high Government officials in the Artists' Hall (Künstlerhaus) in Berlin. It was not published, but circulated as a "strictly confidential manuscript," and was submitted to the Chancellor on July 8. When 1341 signatures had been appended to it the Government stepped in and forbade further canvassing. It is therefore claimed that the 1341 do not represent the amount of the support which the manifesto would have got in the country had it been allowed free course. The Intellectuals' Manifesto has a more extensive programme than that of the Six Associations. It includes, not only the demands of the Associations, but the scheme commonly designated by the term Mittel-Europa, with its appendix, the control of the Turkish Empire by Germany, implying a great belt of German power across the world from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf—about which the Six Associations said nothing. Again, whereas the Six Associations say only in general terms that they demand the possession of "a colonial empire adequate to satisfy Germany's manifold economic interests," the Intellectuals state more specifically that this means an empire in Central Africa, and more—endorsing, therefore, the scheme labelled Mittel-Afrika. These two documents will always be two of the most important documents of the Great War for students of history. Although they were not published in Germany till long after they had begun to circulate privately, their contents became rapidly known and they became main objects of attack for Radical and Socialist circles. Much has happened since they were drawn up. It has become clear to a much larger number of people in Germany that such schemes are unrealisable.
