1918: The roots of German anti-war intelligence
Hugo B- was an early student of journalism, watching his father's independent press feed the 1918 "November Revolution" that ended World War I.
A different version of this story ran last year. I’m still working on Hugo B- as a character in a future book, another well-researched fact-fiction hybrid, like my 2015 novel Carla Rising (unfortunately out-of-print in the United States since 2017). The German-language sources for this story are listed below. -ts
Hugo B- (1899-1983) began learning about politics at least a decade before the First World War, when he was a small child. He remembered enjoying Sunday walks with his father through the park of their small Westphalian town. As they walked, Hugo’s father — we’ll call him “Martin” — told his son about the political battles he was fighting, not just as a newspaper editor, but also as a leading advocate for the People’s Freedom-of-Thought Party (Freisinnige Volkspartei).
Hugo once remembered asking his father why he’d refused an invitation to attend a recent birthday celebration of Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941).
“Because the kaiser is a very bad man,” the editor told his little boy.
By 1916, Martin B-’s newspaper was printing the opinions of German peace activists, a direct and dangerous wartime affront to the German monarchy….
By time he graduated secondary school, Hugo had become used to the public controversies stirred by his father’s liberal politics. Before the start of the “Great War,” for example, Martin had written editorials supporting labor strikes called by Germany’s industrial unions. After 1916, the war’s second year, his newspaper was carrying anonymous columns, penned by peace activists. This, of course, represented a direct affront to the kaiserliche regime.
While Martin’s journal wasn’t the only German publication to call for peace, there was no safety in numbers: By the end of that year, during the height of the war, Social Democratic legislators were being arrested and jailed for openly protesting it. By 1918, Hugo knew his father was in a truly dangerous situation. Martin’s position as chief editor of a strong newspaper might not be enough to protect him and his journal against the ruling German monarch.
The dam broke that fall. The family was celebrating Hugo’s birthday at a restaurant near Wuppertal, when a telegram arrived for Martin. Word was spreading that unionized shipyard workers and marines had peacefully taken over the German Naval fleet at the port of Kiel. Long organized in their socialist military-labor councils, even the Kiel sailors (Mariner) were collaborating with the civil-service longshoremen; together the well-organized German workers and soldiers put a stop to plans by the German “brass” to launch a new, terrible sea attack against Great Britain….