November criminal

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the film of the same name see Novemberverbrecher (TV film) .

November criminal (also: “November lumpen”, “instigator of the November revolt”) was a dirty word and a political battle term used by right-wing extremist parties and media against representatives of the November revolution of 1918 or respected democratic politicians of the Weimar Republic . The NSDAP and the DNVP used the term since 1920 in frequent smear campaigns in the sense of the stab in the back of the legend and thus justified femicide . The term became an integral part of the language of National Socialism .

Origin and meaning

From 1920 nationalists fought against the Reichsgrundschulgesetz, passed in April 1920, in a campaign that lasted until 1933 as the “work of the red November criminals”.

The Nazi propaganda told Adolf Hitler after 1933, the inventor of the term. According to Philipp Bouhler (“Kampf um Deutschland”, 1942), Hitler declared “the government of November criminals in Berlin” to be deposed in the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch on November 8, 1923. After Werner Rust , who in 1943 published the 29th edition of Georg Büchmann's book “Geflügelte Words. Der Zitatenschatz des Deutschen Volkes ”(first edition 1866) published as a“ people's edition ”edited by him, Hitler claimed in an editorial in the Völkischer Beobachter of March 27, 1923 that he had coined the expression. Whether this is true is questionable, since the Nazi propaganda tendentiously revised older German dictionaries and editions of Hitler speeches from 1933 onwards and declared some word creations of others to be Hitler's “intellectual property” in the sense of the Führer cult .

According to Manfred Pechau (“ National Socialism and German Language”, 1935), Hitler is said to have used the expression for the first time on September 18, 1922 in a speech “The rise in prices as a result of the stock exchange revolution”. In this speech, the term is first demonstrated by Hitler.

Since then, “November criminal” has been one of the widespread slogans of anti-democratic agitation : against the provisional council of people's representatives , whose delegates signed the Armistice of Compiègne on November 11, 1918 , against the representatives of the Weimar coalition , which signed the peace treaty of June 28, 1919 Versailles (called "Schanddiktat", "Schanddiktat", "Schand-" or "Schmachfrieden") had signed against the alleged " war guilt lie" and the reparation conditions of this treaty, against alleged " fulfillment politicians" who were subservient to the victorious powers and who affirmed and signed these conditions.

The entire word field was supplemented by the stab- in-the-back legend, which had been widespread throughout the nationalist camp since 1919, according to which the forces of the left-wing parties "fell in the back " of the German army "undefeated in the field" during World War I and thus caused the defeat and its consequences. Anti-Semitic proponents of this legend blamed Jews , whom they equated with “ Bolsheviks ”, for the war defeat and its consequences.

The expression "November criminal " represented these processes, following the analogy of martial law, as "crimes against the German people" in the sense of high treason and treason and thus declared all supporters of the revolution, democracy and the Weimar constitution, regardless of their differences, to be criminal " enemies of the people " or " traitors to the people " . In part, he acted as an acute threat to those so designated, in part he prepared later violent measures against them by the Nazi regime.

Causes and effects

The German defeat in the First World War was the inevitable result of conquest goals , failed military strategy and failed warfare (e.g. the submarine war ) of the Supreme Army Command (OHL). Since 1917 this has been oriented towards an illusionary "victory peace", supported domestically by the annexationists. Their offensives led to the total economic and military exhaustion of Germany and thus brought about defeat, followed by a covert military strike, then a revolution.

The main responsible military officers were not disempowered and not prosecuted. Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg , the generals of the OHL, created and spread the stab in the back legend from 1919. The war innocence legend, which was widespread in the context of the much-discussed war guilt question , was also shared and upheld by most of the democratic parties and governments of the Weimar Republic. Some SPD politicians also spoke of the “Shameful Peace of Versailles”. The conspiracy theory of Jewish Bolshevism was also represented in Munich between 1920 and 1924, for example, by nationalist associations such as the German Gymnastics Federation and Catholic bishops such as Michael Faulhaber .

So the term “November criminal” fell on fertile ground in society. Hate campaigns against so or analogously named justified a series of murders of democratic politicians such as Kurt Eisner , Karl Gareis (both USPD ), Matthias Erzberger ( Center Party ), Walter Rathenau ( DDP ) and others in the first years of the Weimar Republic. The perpetrators were in many cases former members of the Reichswehr who organized themselves first in free corps, later in illegal secret societies such as the Consul organization or in "patriotic associations" tolerated by state governments . Consensus among these groups was the goal of the Weimar Republic and its government by violent coup attempts to overthrow. Terrorist attacks and murders of political opponents were tolerated or supported as political means in this environment.

On January 11, 1923, Hitler spoke under the slogan "Down with the November criminals" in the Krone Circus in Munich in front of about 8,000 listeners about the French occupation of the Ruhr on the same day. He declared the Social Democrats and the ruling parties in coalition with them to be the real perpetrators of this occupation and thus the main domestic enemy. The aim of disempowering these criminals distinguishes the NSDAP from all other German parties. Hitler had the NSDAP advertising poster for this 1928 speech attached to the third edition of his book Mein Kampf .

After the new Reich Chancellor Gustav Stresemann ( DVP ), who himself denied the German war guilt and represented a moderate form of the stab in the back, had passive resistance against the occupation of the Ruhr ceased, the NSDAP and DNVP attacked him as “vicarious agents of the November criminals”. They repeated this polemic against politicians who wanted to negotiate moderation of the reparation conditions with the victorious powers, who in 1924 advocated the Dawes Plan and 1929 the Young Plan . Pacifists and realpoliticians who advocated international reconciliation and disarmament were widely regarded by officers of the Reichswehr and in the German aristocracy as “vicarious agents of the November criminals”.

At the Ulm Reichswehr Trial in 1930, Hitler unequivocally announced the death penalty (“heads rolling”) for “November criminals” in the event of his “ seizure of power ”. Philipp Scheidemann (SPD), who had initially refused to sign the Versailles Treaty, tried to defend himself against this inflammatory propaganda in 1930 with a defense.

In Mein Kampf 1925 Hitler had equated “Hebrew corrupters of the people” and November revolutionaries and indirectly advocated mass murder against them. The editor of the conservative-liberal newspaper Die Christliche Welt , Martin Rade , warned in 1932: If Hitler becomes Reich Chancellor, then he will implement the goals set out in Mein Kampf . Because for him there is only one messianic duty to save Germany and humanity: "Extermination of the Jews and the November criminals."

From February 1933 the Nazi regime arrested, abused and murdered tens of thousands of KPD and SPD members as “November criminals ” in newly built concentration camps . In April 1933 the “National Socialist Monthly Issues” dedicated a special issue to these target groups under the title “The November Criminals” in order to prepare for further murders and party bans. Denounced Emil Barth , Hellmut von Gerlach , Rudolf Hilferding , Kurt Tucholsky , Otto Wels and Joseph Wirth . Those so named were in acute danger of death and, if possible, went into exile until the end of the year.

After the Wehrmacht's first defeats in the war against the Soviet Union , which was planned and carried out as a war of annihilation against “Jewish Bolshevism”, Hitler considered having several hundred thousand German civilians, especially Jews, murdered as potential “November criminals” and “anti-social elements” to “prevent” mutinies and revolutions in the event of further defeats . As early as November 1941, German Jews were included in the Holocaust that had been going on since June 23, 1941 .

TV movie

• November criminal (TV-FRG 1968, director: Karlheinz Caspari )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Knörzer, Karl Grass, Eva Schumacher: Educational design for the beginning of school: Study and workbook for the beginning lessons. Beltz, 2007, ISBN 978-3-407-25441-2 , p. 18.
2. ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Berlin / New York, p. 434.
3. ↑ Björn Laser: Cultural Bolshevism! On the discourse semantics of the total crisis 1929-1933. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-59416-2 , p. 373 and note 467.
4. ↑ Manfred Weissbecker, Kurt Pätzold: Keywords and battle cries from two centuries of German history. Volume 1, Militzke, 2002, ISBN 3-86189-248-0 , p. 176.
5. ↑ Burkhard Asmuss : Republic without a chance? Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-11-014197-3 , p. 143 and note 18 .
6. ^ Jörg Kammler: Volksgemeinschaft and Volksfeinde: Kassel 1933-1945. Hesse, 1987, ISBN 3-924259-03-8 , p. 6.
7. ^ Lars-Broder Keil , Sven Felix Kellerhoff : German legends. About the 'stab in the back' and other myths of history. Christoph Links, 2002, ISBN 3-86153-257-3 , pp. 39-42.
8. ^ Martin H. Geyer: Inverted world. Revolution, inflation and modernity: Munich 1914-1924. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1998, p. 127f.
9. ^ Martin H. Geyer: Inverted world. Revolution, inflation and modernity: Munich 1914-1924. Göttingen 1998, p. 128.
10. ↑ Klaus Mües-Baron: Heinrich Himmler - Rise of the Reichsführer SS (1900-1933). V&R Unipress, 2011, ISBN 978-3-89971-800-3 , p. 181.
11. ↑ Wolfgang Michalka, Marshall M. Lee: Gustav Stresemann. Scientific Book Society, 1982, ISBN 3-534-07735-0 , p. VII.
12. ^ Wilhelm von Sternburg, Silke Reimers: The history of the Germans. Campus Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-593-37100-6 , p. 215.
13. ↑ Iris Hoyningen-Huene: Aristocracy in the Weimar Republic: the legal and social situation of the imperial German nobility 1918-1933. CA Starke, 1992, p. 317.
14. ↑ Philipp Scheidemann: Heads in the Sand? The real November criminals! H. Riske and Co., Braunschweig 1930.
15. ↑ Othmar Plöckinger: History of a book: Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf": 1922-1945. A publication by the Institute for Contemporary History. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2011, p. 264.
16. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 2: Early camp, Dachau, Emsland camp. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , p. 76.
17. ↑ Ulrike Hörster-Philipps: Joseph Wirth 1879-1956: a political biography. Ferdinand Schöningh, 1998, ISBN 3-506-79987-8 , p. 442.
18. ^ Markus Behmer: German Journalism in Exile 1933 to 1945. People - Positions - Perspectives. Lit Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-8258-4615-6 , p. 51.
19. ↑ Götz Aly: Social Policy and the Extermination of the Jews: Is There an Economy of the Final Solution? Rotbuch, Evangelical Academy, Berlin 1987, p. 134.