Illusions from Erzberger to Brüning

When the November Revolution of 1918 broke out, the flag of illusion was raised high, and has waved above all governmental actions, whether domestic or foreign, ever since. Your faction leader and party comrade Mattias Erzberger was one of Germany’s armistice negotiators in the Forest of Compiegne. On 11 November 1918 he spoke the following memorable and statesmanlike words: “We must accept everything. We have to accept it all. That is the fastest way to get them to forgive us.” That was an illusion. It was an illusion with dreadful and terrible consequences, just as terrible as the illusions of the naval units and battleship crews who thought that when they raised their treasonous red flags English ships would do the same.

All the programs of that time, all the promises whether from official government offices or party leaders were, to put it mildly, illusions. The promise of a coming life of “beauty, freedom, and dignity” was just as tragic an illusion as the promises of coming social happiness, social welfare, and upward mobility. They, too, were lies.

There was the illusion of promised reductions in prices, the illusion of “reducing bureaucracy” in government, the illusion of “abolishing secret diplomacy,” the illusion of “true democratic equality!” Our whole people back then chased only after illusions, Mr. Reich Chancellor. I was one of the few who even in those years dared to attack these illusions openly in public meetings!