The Rhineland Movement

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"Si nolis bellum para pacem!"

THE November revolution of 1918 relieved Germany of her various monarchies. At that time nothing seemed more obvious than that the artificial states which had been created in accordance with dynastic considerations should be wiped out in favor of others which should really correspond to the several branches of the German race; and, indeed, the first drafts of the new constitution actually did provide for a re-division of Germany into states of this character.

Such a new alignment would naturally have included a Rhine state (stock of the Rhenish Franks), consisting of the Rhine province, the western part of Westphalia (the Ruhr), Hesse-Nassau, and the Rheinpfalz; a Swabian state (Swabian stock), consisting of Baden and Wurttemburg; a Bavarian state (stock of the Bajuvaren), consisting of Bavaria and Coburg; a Lower Saxon state (stock of the Lower Saxons), consisting of the eastern part of Westphalia, Oldenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, and Braunschweig; and, finally, an Upper Saxon state (stock of the Upper Saxons), consisting of the Province of Saxony and Thuringia, the former kingdom of Saxony. Thus the minimum number of individual states would be set up, in order that the necessities of economic life might be more equitably adjusted, yet all the old German racial divisions would have been respected. East of the Elbe, in the German colonial territories, formerly inhabited by Slavs and still showing Slavic characteristics, a new division would have led to the erection of states about as follows: Mecklenburg and Pomerania, Brandenburg, Silesia, and Prussia.

Resistance on the part of the Prussian Junkers to any such scheme manifested itself forthwith, but in view of their complete demoralization it had no particular significance. Rather more unexpectedly, though really quite logically, the Social Democrats later emerged as bitter opponents of the proposed new division. Their leaders recognized that, being a minority, they could retain their leadership only by virtue of the most extreme centralization. They therefore adopted the Prussian system of the Hohenzollerns, with its centralized uniformity and its stock of disciplined officials, which in its time had grown up as a result of much the same considerations...