Mein Kampf
lost the character of defense, and took on that of attack. The men in the trenches and dugouts of the German army drew a deep breath now that the day of retribution, after more than three years’ dogged hanging-on in the enemy inferno, was at hand at last. Once more the victorious battalions shouted exultantly, and they hung the last wreaths of immortal laurel on the standards amid the lightning flashes of victory. Once more the songs of the Fatherland roared heavenward along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord’s mercy smiled on His ungrateful children.
In mid-summer of 1918 sultry heat lay over the front. At home people were quarreling. Over what? Many stories circulated among the various divisions of the army in the field. The war was now hopeless, they said, and only fools could still believe in victory. The people had no further interest in continued resistance; only capital and the Monarchy had. That was the story from home, and it was discussed at the front as well.
At first there was scarcely any reaction. What did we care for universal suffrage? Was that what we had fought four years for? It was a piece of vile banditry thus to steal the war’s goal from the dead heroes in their graves. It was not with the cry, “Long live universal secret suffrage,” that the young regiments had gone to their deaths in Flanders, but with the shout, “Germany above everything in the world”—a small but not altogether insignificant difference. But those who were shouting for suffrage had for the most part never been there when now they wished to fight for it. The whole political party mob was a stranger to the front. One saw only a fraction of the Honorable Parliamentarians in the place where decent Germans, if they had but sound limbs, were then residing.
The old backbone of the front, therefore, was also against this new war aim of Messrs. Ebert, Scheidemann, Barth, Liebknecht, etc. and showed but little interest. People could not see why the slackers should all at once have the right to arrogate the authority in the State to themselves over the army’s head.
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