A Very German Revolution – onside report

As I slowly Germanise myself (there are those who have argued that, since my naturalisation papers were issued by the government of Upper Bavaria, I am now a Bavarian, but that’s still a bridge too far in terms of self-identification as far as I’m concerned…) I’ve been getting to grips with German history, and this game was the first tangible result (other than the successful completion of the German citizenship quest, which, interestingly, contained a lot of questions on the former GDR) of that activity.

The period of the Weimar Republic is an interesting one in German history – the very obvious what-if question being if somehow, the rise of the Nazi party and everything that followed could have been avoided and a durable democratic regime could have been installed. This particular game I started after reading a book by the German historian Joachim Käppner, subtitled “The Revolution of the Prudent” (I don’t think it’s been translated into any language other than German).

Käppner’s thesis is that during the 1918/1919 revolutions in Germany, the best chance at consigning German militarism to the dustheap of history was lost, mostly because the Social Democrat leaders of the revolution were so afraid of a communist revolution that they felt they had to cooperate with the OHL (Army High Command), who then played them like fiddles, with things like the Dolchstoßlegende as a result. Especially Friedrich Ebert, the first President of the Republic, who still has his street in every German town, does not come off well in this book.

This is the idea I wanted to explore with a committee game, playing the German provisional government, the Council of People’s Deputies, in the early days of the revolution, just after the Republic has been proclaimed, but before an armistice has been signed. Is there scope for the government to use the support of common soldiers and workers to neuter the OHL and put the new Republic on a much more democratic footing?

Game-wise, I don’t think there is much to say about the idea; probably a committee game is not the right setting to explore this, given that there was a lot of discussion about things like how to deal with the soldiers’ and workers’ councils that have appeared all over Berlin and Germany (certainly a topic that was very important during the early days, but one that can take a lot of time to properly work out) – I’d planned to drop the unilateral signing of the armistice by the OHL on the players (historically, the armistice was signed after the OHL pretended to have talked to Ebert, even though they never did – they just wanted to make sure the civilian government got the blame), to see if they would react differently and try to rein in the OHL, but that never really seemed an option.

So I agree with Nick in his earlier post that the game needs more structure, with some set topics for discussion and possibly a time limit, so that external events that influence the discussion can happen more easily. I also quite liked Jurrien’s idea during the discussion afterwards, of playing the events in Berlin over a longer timescale (a few months) as a Junta-style game, and I also think there is a great game in playing the entirety of Germany in 1918/1919, taking into account not only Berlin, but also the Versailles negotiations and other revolutions happening all over Germany and especially in Munich.

Food for thought…