Liebknecht votes against war credits

On 2 December 1914 the German parliament, the Reichstag, voted on the second war credits bill. The government of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg demanded a further five billion marks to wage the war. The vote was taken by rising from one’s seat. Deputies of all parliamentary groups stood up, with one exception. The Social Democrat Karl Liebknecht remained in his seat. The President of the Reichstag, Johannes Kaempf, declared that the bill had been passed unanimously, with the exception of one deputy.

Burgfrieden

Four months earlier, on 4 August 1914, the Reichstag had unanimously granted the government the first five billion marks. The credits had then been supported also by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the largest group in parliament, which before the war had proclaimed international workers’ solidarity and opposition to militarism. The Social Democrats concluded that Germany was waging a defensive war, above all against Tsarist Russia. The parties concluded the so-called Burgfrieden, the “castle peace”, a suspension of political disputes for the duration of the war. The socialists in France did the same, where the “Sacred Union” was proclaimed.

Not all Social Democrats were convinced. At the meeting of the parliamentary group before the August vote fourteen deputies, Liebknecht among them, were against, but they were outvoted by a majority of 78. In keeping with the principle of group discipline, on 4 August all of them voted in the chamber for the credits. The group’s statement was read by its co-chairman Hugo Haase, although he himself was an opponent of the credits.

One vote

By December opposition within the SPD had grown. According to some sources, at the group meeting before the second vote seventeen deputies came out against the credits. The party leadership, Haase included, tried to persuade Liebknecht not to break discipline. In vain. Liebknecht, son of one of the founders of the SPD, Wilhelm Liebknecht, and a member of the Reichstag since 1912, was the only one to vote against.

He gave the reasons for his decision in a written statement. He wrote that this war had been wanted by none of the peoples taking part in it, that it was an imperialist war waged for domination of the world market, and that the aim must be the speediest possible peace without annexations. The President of the Reichstag refused to read out the statement and did not allow it to be entered in the stenographic record. No newspaper published it either. The text later circulated in copies and leaflets among opponents of the war.

Consequences

The vote of 2 December was the first open breach in the German Burgfrieden. Liebknecht became a symbol of the anti-war left throughout Europe. The authorities quickly took steps to silence him. In February 1915 he was called up into the army as a soldier in a labour battalion, which under military law restricted his political activity, although he could still sit in the Reichstag. In March 1915 a second Social Democrat, Otto Rühle, voted against the credits together with him.

Around Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg gathered the radical left, from which the Spartacus League later grew. The dispute over war credits eventually led to a split in the SPD and the founding in 1917 of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. Liebknecht himself was arrested on 1 May 1916 during an anti-war demonstration in Berlin and sentenced to penal servitude, from which he was released only in October 1918. In January 1919 he was murdered in Berlin together with Rosa Luxemburg.