The Reichstag inquiry into guilt for World War I was a parliamentary committee in Weimar Germany that was tasked with investigating the events that had led to the "outbreak, prolongation and loss of the First World War". It was established by the Reichstag on 21 August 1919, after Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles had imposed sole responsibility for the war on Germany and her allies.
Its four subcommittees were assigned to examine the causes for the outbreak of the war; what opportunities for peace had presented themselves during the war and why they had failed; acts by Germany that were contrary to international law; and the causes for Germany's defeat. During its thirteen-year life (1919–1932), the committee suffered under increasing interference from the government, which wanted to prevent a German admission of guilt before the world public. The committee also encountered passive resistance from the civil service and military. In many cases, it bowed to pressure and did not take decisive action to require their cooperation. The majority of Germans also shifted more and more to the side of the political forces that had no interest in a public clarification. The results of the individual subcommittees were thus of limited value.
The work itself, as far as the records show, was mostly done prudently and conscientiously. The files containing the course of the proceedings and the expert opinions are accordingly of high value as source material. The investigative committee was not re-established after the Nazi Party won the largest number of seats in the July 1932 Reichstag election. Some of its work remained incomplete and much that had been finished was either suppressed or was destroyed during World War II.
Background
In the immediate aftermath of the German Empire's defeat in World War I, a number of key military and political figures – including General Erich Ludendorff, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and the parliamentary leader of the German Conservative Party (DkP) Kuno von Westarp, all fled Germany. When the fugitives realized that they had no need to fear either revenge or punishment, they returned and raised serious accusations not only against those involved in the German Revolution of 1918–1919 that brought down the Empire and the Hohenzollern monarchy, but also against the leading authorities of the young Weimar Republic. In the spring of 1919, Minister President Philipp Scheidemann of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) called Ludendorff a "genial gambler". The latter then countered in an open letter with a demand for the establishment of a criminal court to examine the accusations against him.
On 12 March 1919, Justice Minister Otto Landsberg of the SPD submitted a bill for the establishment of a criminal court to the Weimar National Assembly, the interim parliament also charged with writing a new constitution for Germany. Although Ludendorff, retired General Erich von Falkenhayn and others had called for such a court, the conservative parties in the National Assembly spoke out against it. The governing Weimar Coalition made up of the SPD, the Catholic Centre Party and the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) also felt pushed into a more defensive role and in the end no longer considered the approach opportune. It was argued that it was more important to establish the facts than to prosecute, and that sound public opinion would then "weed out the reactionary lie". In November 1918, the new revolutionary leaders, especially those of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) – a more leftist and strongly anti-war breakaway from the originally united SPD – had sought to place the blame for the war on the German side in order to demonstrate to Germany and the world that they had broken completely with militarism. As time went on, however, the leaders of the Majority Social Democrats (MSPD) saw primarily the disadvantages of such a viewpoint for the upcoming peace negotiations.
The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, changed the discussion by establishing the so-called war guilt article as the basis for the reparations that the treaty imposed. Without using the word "guilt", Article 231 stated:The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.In an attempt to evade the burdens and challenge the treaty, the German government portrayed the article as factually incorrect. It led to "state promotion and high-level institutionalization" of propaganda regarding Germany's responsibility for the war and also for the possibility of a revision of the treaty. The Foreign Office founded and financed the Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War and the Working Committee of German Associations, a group of 2,000 organizations that included the Catholic Caritas Internationalis, the Association of German Cities (Deutscher Städtetag) and the Working Committee of Patriotic Associations. A national consensus emerged against any kind of German admission of guilt.
The original focus on the war and its perpetrators expanded to include the question of responsibility for Germany's defeat. Instead of assigning a state court to clarify the question, a resolution to establish a committee was passed on 20 August 1919 at the 84th session of the Weimar National Assembly that had adopted the new Weimar Constitution just nine days previously. The procedures of the committee of inquiry were not governed by the Rules of Procedure of the Reichstag but by the Work Plan for Committees of Inquiry of 16 October 1919.
In the resolution of the National Assembly, the committee was given the task "to determine, by gathering all evidence:
what events led to the outbreak of the war, caused its prolongation and brought about its loss, in particular: what opportunities presented themselves in the course of the war for arriving at peace discussions and whether such opportunities were handled without due diligence; whether fidelity and good faith were observed in the communication among the political agencies of the Reich leadership, between the political and the military leadership, and with the people's representatives or their confidants; whether in the military and economic conduct of the war, measures were ordered or tolerated which violated provisions of international law or were cruel and harsh beyond military and economic necessity."
The investigating committee was constituted one day later, on 21 August 1919. It had the right to summon any German for questioning and to inspect all official files. Those summoned were usually referred to as respondents; they stood somewhere between defendants and witnesses. No defense attorneys were appointed. The procedure in the investigative committee was to be similar to that of the criminal trial.
The first chairman was the Hamburg senator Carl Wilhelm Petersen of the center-left German Democratic Party (DDP), later Walther Schücking, also DDP, and in the final phase Johannes Bell of the conservative Catholic Centre Party. Ludwig Herz was initially appointed managing director but was replaced shortly thereafter by , also for a time a member of the DDP.
The committee was staffed according to the distribution of seats in the National Assembly and then, after it was constituted in June 1920, the Weimar Reichstag. The members and their staffs therefore changed in the individual election periods.
Tasks and structure On 14 October 1919, Chairman Carl Petersen presented to parliament the goals, a preliminary outline of material and an associated work plan as the initial result of the investigative committee's deliberations. The emphasis was on the questions that had been the subject of controversy in Germany since the fall of 1918:
clarification of the events that led to the outbreak of war in July 1914 as a result of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary; clarification of all possibilities for peace talks and of the reasons which caused such possibilities to fail, or plans and decisions to that effect on the part of Germany or, if talks did take place, for what reasons such talks were unsuccessful; clarification of acts of war which were prohibited by international law or, if not prohibited by international law, were nevertheless disproportionately cruel or harsh; clarification of economic war measures in the occupied territories which were illegal under international law or whose implementation, without promising any particular military advantage, entailed a hardship unjustifiable for the population concerned and for their country.
Interestingly, the issue of blame for Germany's defeat in the war, which was part of the original parliamentary resolution, did not appear in Petersen's proposal, although shortly after work began, the fourth subcommittee took over the issue, while the third handled all questions of international law.
Four subcommittees, each with six to eight members, were formed to carry out the work. The chairmanship of the committee as a whole and of the subcommittees was assigned to the various parties in accordance with a distribution formula decided in the Reichstag's Council of Elders. The chairmanship of the full committee was held by the German Democratic Party (DDP). The first subcommittee was chaired by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the second by the DDP, SPD, ant the liberal German People's Party (DVP), the third by the Centre Party and the fourth primarily by the nationalist conservative German National People's Party (DNVP).
Difficulties in the work of the subcommittees An office with four academically educated secretaries was established under the committee's Secretary General, Eugen Fischer-Baling. The secretaries, who had been civil servants trained under the Empire, gained considerable influence over the investigations they supervised. They selected literature and experts, worked out methods of investigation, prepared the examination of witnesses and oversaw the procurement and utilization of files. Their rights made them equal to the committee members, and they could make a pre-selection of the files, delay their release or classify them as secret material and thus prevent their publication by the committee.
The ministries provided the committee with civil servants and military officers to help the parliamentarians navigate the archives and provide background information. Over time the ministerial assistance evolved into censorship points that stopped the publication of unpleasant details. Historian Ulrich Heinemann concluded that "even before the investigations had begun, the committee was confronted with serious written statements and concerns from the executive branch" which intensified as work progressed.
Testimony of Hindenburg and Ludendorff
The impact of the mixture of revisionist propaganda, sometimes inadequate preparation of witnesses, questioning by the secretaries, censored or obstructed inspection of files, etc., became apparent at the first public subcommittee meetings which began on 21 October 1919 with a strong presence of the national and international press. It was a session of the second subcommittee which was to clarify the failed peace options and was chaired by Fritz Warmuth of the German National People's Party. One of the invitees was former Vice Chancellor Karl Helfferich (DNVP) who was allowed the opportunity to allege that republicans were the real culprits behind Germany's defeat in the war. In November 1919 Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff appeared before the committee. Hindenburg in particular was received servilely.