Opinion of ingemann

[Antonio the Sixth]

He said Bismarck should have "broken" France in 1870. HP.

[Antonio the Sixth]

He's clearly the greatest Freedom Fighter on this board and I simply lack words for for how much I admire him.

He said Bismarck should have "broken" France in 1870. HP.

That was a stinker indeed and also rather unpatriotic considering how much hope Danes had in Napoleon 3. revenging our humiliation in 1864 and sticking it to those uppity Krauts.

Vive la France! and may Bismarck rot in hell, of course.

I of course respect Antonio's and yours reasons to disagree with me here. I too would have prefered a Denmark which including Altona. But I think a large stable Social Democratic imperial Germany in 1920ties and later to what we got, and that needed a France broken  and preferable without the massive losses of WW1.

There's one factor that would always have prevented a Social Democratic Germany (and that, in fact, did exactly that IRL): the SPD's utter incompetence and stupidity.

[Antonio the Sixth]

SPD pre WW1 was no difference from their Nordic sister parties

That's actually not true at all. I encourage you to read Shari Berman's The Social Democratic Moment, it's an enlightening read (though the chapters on Germany are also soul-crushingly depressing).

[Antonio the Sixth]

SPD pre WW1 was no difference from their Nordic sister parties

That's actually not true at all. I encourage you to read Shari Berman's The Social Democratic Moment, it's an enlightening read (though the chapters on Germany are also soul-crushingly depressing).

You forget that the Nordic countries was not short of its incompetent politicians and they still came out on the top. The stable institution, the strong rule of law and the general stability, allowed the Nordic Social Democrats to use their large public support to gain power and imperial Germany shared those structures, so there are no reason that the Nordic countries wouldn't have served as model for the development of imperial Germany.

There is a material aspect to it but there is also a crucial ideological component to Nordic Social Democracy's success. They got their ideas right very soon, arguably by the end of the 19th century already. They were prepared to make a constructive use of political power before actually gaining it. Meanwhile in the 1920s the SPD was still struggling with Kautsky's pseudoscientific nonsense, and when they were handed essentially complete control of Germany's institutions they managed to alienate everybody.

[Antonio the Sixth]

SPD pre WW1 was no difference from their Nordic sister parties

That's actually not true at all. I encourage you to read Shari Berman's The Social Democratic Moment, it's an enlightening read (though the chapters on Germany are also soul-crushingly depressing).

You forget that the Nordic countries was not short of its incompetent politicians and they still came out on the top. The stable institution, the strong rule of law and the general stability, allowed the Nordic Social Democrats to use their large public support to gain power and imperial Germany shared those structures, so there are no reason that the Nordic countries wouldn't have served as model for the development of imperial Germany.

There is a material aspect to it but there is also a crucial ideological component to Nordic Social Democracy's success. They got their ideas right very soon, arguably by the end of the 19th century already. They were prepared to make a constructive use of political power before actually gaining it. Meanwhile in the 1920s the SPD was still struggling with Kautsky's pseudoscientific nonsense, and when they were handed essentially complete control of Germany's institutions they managed to alienate everybody.

But it wasn't like SPD couldn't be pragmatic, their support of the War, was primarily a pragmatic policy, no matter how stupid, short sighted and immoral it may look it hindsight (but let be honest here, the Nordic Social Democrats have their own skeletons in the closet).

Oh yes obviously, but I don't think the issue was really about pragmatism vs. ideology. The SPD, in some ways, had the worst of both worlds. It operated under a theory that assumed that the exercise of power under a bourgeois State was essentially useless. Thus, because they lacked a theory on how to use their political power, they essentially went with the flow and just supported what seemed to make sense in the most shortsighted way possible. That's a form of pragmatism, but one which achieves absolutely nothing. On the other hand, the Swedish SAP was actually very ideological - but their ideology embraced the idea of using parliamentary power to improve the conditions of the working class.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Antonio, last time I checked the Swedish SAP basically copied everything from the German SDP when they started out. Could you go into more detail as to why they would end up differing so much?

I have just given back the good chunk of books that I had borrowed at the university library throughout the winter, so I'm not really able to go into much detail. From what I've seen, the SAP started out pretty similar to other European parties, but rapidly evolved in their outlook during the last decades of the 19th century, under Branting. During the turn of the century, they made of universal suffrage their policy priority and actively cooperated with the Liberals to achieve it - illustrating their commitment to a reformist and parliamentary strategy.

[Antonio the Sixth]

A very convincing refutation of the whole 'the pre-Godesberg Programme SPD were a bunch of pedantic zealots who would have had difficulty running a whelk stall let alone a government' argument exists. And that is the record of the SPD-dominated Prussian state government that lasted from 1918 until the Preußenschlag in 1932.

I might have exaggerated my argument a bit, but you can't deny that the way Ebert&co handled the 1918-1921 phase was grotesquely catastrophic.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I might have exaggerated my argument a bit, but you can't deny that the way Ebert&co handled the 1918-1921 phase was grotesquely catastrophic.

So it is often argued. I would point out that there is a tendency to let hindsight dominate; we all know what happened next* (so to speak) and so the temptation is to read this into the difficult birth of the Republic (as if antidemocratic forces didn't already exist in German society, as if political violence could have been prevented, as if the Right could ever have been prevented from exploding into an apoplectic fit over Versailles, and so on). I wouldn't personally defend everything that Ebert and the Majority SPD did, but they came to power in extremely difficult circumstances and acquitted themselves a lot better than (for instance) the Provisional Government in Russia.

_{*What makes German historians so prone to teleology? Perhaps there is a special path of German historiographical development, the roots of which can be found in the... (cont. page 838).}

That's a fair point, yeah, I guess it is hard to judge with the benefit of hindsight. Still, I remember that a few things I've read were really damning.

[Antonio the Sixth]

For people with Politici ideological background, Ingemann represents "honest insutor" important in their agenda.

Am I the only one who genuinely doesn't understand any of this guy's most recent posts? It almost seems like T-host has hacked his account...

[Antonio the Sixth]

For people with Politici ideological background, Ingemann represents "honest insutor" important in their agenda.

Am I the only one who genuinely doesn't understand any of this guy's most recent posts? It almost seems like T-host has hacked his account...

I have never understood the majority of Ethelberth's posts, so I dunno what you mean by singling out his "most recent posts". They are as  unintelligible as always.

Well, maybe I only noticed him in the last couple weeks because he has posted more than usual. He's not usually a significant presence on the forum.