- Burgfrieden
"Burgfrieden" - literally "fortress peace" or "castle peace" but more accurately "party truce" - is a German term used for the political truce the
Social Democratic Party of Germany and the other political parties agreed to duringWorld War I . The trade unions refrained from striking, the SPD voted for war credits in the Reichstag and the parties agreed not to criticize the government and its war. There were several reasons for the "Burgfrieden" politics: the Social Democrats believed it was their patriotic duty to support the government in war; they were afraid of government repression should they protest against the war; they feared living under an autocratic Russian Czar more than the German constitutional monarchy and its Kaiser; and they hoped to achieve political reforms after the war, including the abrogation of the inequitable three-class voting system, by cooperating with the government.The only SPD member of parliament to vote against war credits in the second session was
Karl Liebknecht . In the third session onMarch 20 ,1915 ,Otto Rühle joined him. Over the course of the war the number of SPD politicians opposed to the war steadily increased. Their resistance against the "Burgfrieden" politics led to the expulsion of Liebknecht,Rosa Luxemburg ,Clara Zetkin , and others from the SPD. These went on to found theSpartacist League , theIndependent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), and theCommunist Party of Germany (KPD).The only trade union to refuse the "Burgfrieden" was the
Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG), which would later become theFree Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD). [Thorpe, Wayne: "Keeping Faith: The German Syndicalists in the First World War" in Central European History 33 Volume 2, pg. 195]See also
*
Union sacrée in FranceNotes and references
*German|Burgfrieden|December 8, 2006
*Jeffrey Verhey, "The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany" (New York: Cambridge Univ., 2000).
*Wayne Thorpe, "Keeping the Faith: The German Syndicalists in the First World War," "Central European History" 33 (2000): 195-216
*Wolfgang Kruse, "Krieg und nationale Integration: Eine Neuinterpretation des sozialdemokratischen Burgfriedensschlusses 1914/15" (Essen: Klartext, 1994).
*Susanne Miller, B"urgfrieden und Klassenkampf: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie im Ersten Weltkrieg" (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1974).
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