The German Question, Part One Hundred Two

"Germany's Weimar Republic" Part Five
"The Right Wing Strikes Back-Blaming Democratic Forces and Jews For Germany's Defeat"

To halt the hyperinflation and to stabilize the country's economy, the Germans came up with a temporary currency (called the "Rentenmark") backed by land, agricultural and manufactured products; that is, assets (and they limited the printing of such currency, thus boosting its value). The inflationary spiral halted, the democratic government regained its footing.

The man responsible for much of Germany's World War One military matters, General Erich Ludendorff, along with other military and right wing political operatives, began a "campaign," so to speak, of telling Germans that their armies had not actually been defeated on the battlefield during the war. They claimed that the civilian protests and, essentially, forced abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, near the end of the war, which brought a left-leaning democratic government to power, had "stabbed the army in the back." The near total collapse of the German Army was seemingly forgotten by many Germans. It was easier to lay unpleasant truths aside and to believe that everything could have been different, if only the army hadn't been stabbed in the back by Bolsheviks, socialists and Jews.* While it was all a bunch of nonsense, and not all Germans bought into the nonsense, it played well with many Germans who were resentful of the Versailles Treaty, dispirited by the loss of national pride, and fearful of the economic turmoil. The "stab in the back," or "Dolchstoss," as it came to be called (literally "dagger stab"), was a popular tool used by right wing groups, including Hitler's Nazis, against the democratic Weimar Republic throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. The right wing called the backers and participants of the original protests, "die November Verbrecher;"** that is, "the November criminals," since the protests that brought the new government to power took place in November 1918.

* Obviously not all protesters in 1918 wanted some form of democracy. The extreme left wanted a system similar to that being put together in Russia at the time.

** German "die" is not pronounced like English "die," but as "dee," and it is the feminine (grammatically speaking) form that means "the" (definite article). English once also used "grammatical gender," something (thankfully!) discarded long ago.

WORD HISTORY:
Rue-This is not the French word for street, but rather the word in the expression, "You will rue the day," also in "rueful," and further, in slightly altered form, in the first part of "ruthless." This "seems" to go back to Indo European "kreu/krew," which had the notion of "push, break, hit." Old Germanic "khrewanan" or "hrewwanan," which had the general notion of "grief, sorrow, regret," seemingly developing the meaning from the "result" of the original meaning of "push, hit, break." The Germanic form gave its offspring Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "hreowan," with the meaning "feel grief, feel sorrow." A variant verb form, "hreowan," meant "to repent;" that is, if you feel sorry for something, you want to repent. Later, "hreowan" came to be simplified to "ruen," and still meant "feel sorrow, regret." Besides modern English "rue," German has "reuen" (regret, remorse), Dutch has "rouwen" (mourning), Low German has "rüün" (regret) and West Frisian has "rouwe" (grief, sadness). The North German languages once had a related word, "hryggia," which meant "to feel sad, be saddened," but apparently it died out. In English, a noun "rue," meaning "regret, sorrow," once existed, but it has now died out, except for its descendant "rueful." Then another variant came along, a noun "ruth," which meant "pity," but it too has died out, but not the derived "ruthless" (without pity, lacking pity), which is still alive and kicking.