1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
Summary
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, born in 1884, witnessed the increasing turmoil that enveloped Jews in Eastern Europe during and after the First World War. He engaged in efforts to influence the fate of the Jews from the moment when Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in Germany in 1933. The events leading up to this sea change in German politics formed a part of Goerdeler's political and social consciousness.
When in October 1918 the German Empire could no longer withstand the overwhelming numbers of fresh American troops and their vastly superior quantities in weaponry and munitions, the imperial government addressed its request for an armistice to the American president Woodrow Wilson and invoked the Fourteen Points that he had declared as his basis for peace. The president replied that an armistice would be granted on condition that the monarchies were removed and a representative government put in place. Secretary of State Robert Lansing signed the final note of 23 October 1918 that contained this condition. On the following day, the leading German newspapers published the full text of Lansing's note on their front pages. Soldiers and socialists mounted demonstrations and other means of pressure, which by 9/10 November resulted in the departure of Emperor William II into exile in Holland, and in the abdications of his German brother monarchs. A temporary government, the Council of People's Commissars, presided over the withdrawal of the imperial armed forces from occupied territories, the evacuation of territories the enemies were going to annex, the military occupation of additional German territories, and the handing over of thousands of units of railway rolling stock including 5,000 locomotives, and most of Germany's artillery and other weapons, aeroplanes, submarines.
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- Information
- Carl Goerdeler and the Jewish Question, 1933–1942 , pp. 1 - 22Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011