A HISTORY OF THE GERMAN REPUBLIC.
1918-1930
By Arthur Rosenberg
nerr Rosenberg, now at Liverpool, has continued his History of the German Republic, here translated from the German edition, which was reviewed at length in these columns last year, from the point, November 10th, 1918, at Which his Birth of the German Republic ended. He is perhaps tOO anxious to assign historical praise and blame and speaks sciOnetintes with too much post-mortem wisdom, but these n'elalutesses cannot conceal the excellence of his book (Methuen, 15s.). The Republic began to die as soon as it was born, owing to the failure of the Revolution to destroy the adminis- tration, judiciary and economic organisation, as well as the constitution, of pre-War Germany. Using the evidence published by the Reichstag Commission for the Investigation of the Vehm Murders, Herr . Rosenberg slows the importance of the illegal Freikorps and Black Reichs- wehr, with their methods of gang-justice, in the growth of the Revolution. With their help, the soldiers, bureaucrats and industrialists successfully re-established their power behind the camouflage of the Weimar Republic. Hitler is but the legal inheritor of these criminal and illegal forces, and Herr Rosenberg shows clearly that, before IIitler, Bruning had already killed the Republic. In contrast with the determined advance of the reaction are the party struggles and indecision of the Left. Herr Rosenberg ends his history with the words, " The counter-revolution triumphed because the working classes squandered their immense forces in internecine warfare."
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