Who was the first person on record to write about the British Isles?

 
The British Isles, tucked away in the northwest of Europe, has been inhabited by humans since Paleolithic times, but the people who lived there didn't develop a writing system until much later, and the first local account of the isles did not appear until Anglo-Saxon times, around the seventh century A.D.

So who was the first person to write about the British Isles and describe its inhabitants? To find out, we need to look to the south — to the Mediterranean world of the ancient Greeks.

A Greek mariner named Pytheas made the first recorded voyage to the British Isles in the fourth century B.C. He circumnavigated the island of Britain, explored the northern lands of Europe and was the first to describe the Celtic tribes of Britain, the midnight sun, dramatic tidal shifts and polar ice. When he returned home, he wrote an account called "On the Ocean" ("Peri tou Okeanou" in Greek) that circulated widely throughout the ancient world and was read, discussed and debated by scholars for centuries.

Little is known about Pytheas. He was a citizen of Massalia, a Greek colony in what is now Marseilles in southern France, and it is uncertain whether he was a merchant or simply a gentleman scientist. The Greco-Roman historian Polybius referred to him as a "private citizen" and a "poor man." But, whatever his economic or social status, Pytheas was a skilled navigator and keen observer.

"We can judge from his writings that Pytheas had a scientific education," Barry Cunliffe told Live Science. Cunliffe is an emeritus professor of European archaeology at the University of Oxford and author of "The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek" (Walker & Company, 2002).

Pytheas made a series of astronomical calculations of latitude during this journey with a device called a gnomon, which was an instrument similar to a modern-day sundial. He accurately estimated the circumference of the British Isles — that is, the distance around the islands of what is now Great Britain and Ireland — placing it at approximately 4,000 miles (6,400 km), according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. It is not known whether he produced a map from his endeavors, though the first century A.D. Greek geographer Ptolemy, who later made a map of the British Isles, may have used Pytheas' measurements and descriptions.  

An illustration depicting Pytheas, a Greek explorer who is the first known person to write about the British Isles.

Most historians believe that Pytheas sailed from Massalia through the Straits of Gibraltar (then known as the Pillars of Hercules) aboard a trading ship and cruised north along the western coasts of what is now Portugal, Spain and France, according to Cunliffe. (Cunliffe, however, believes Pytheas went overland across France and used local Celtic boats for all water crossings.) Next, Pytheas crossed the English Channel and made landfall in what is modern-day Cornwall, where he described the flourishing trade of tin, an important commodity that was alloyed with copper to make bronze.

Pytheas continued north along the west coasts of what are now England, Wales and Scotland, where he described the area's inhabitants, a Celtic-speaking people he called the "Pretanni," or the "painted ones" in the ancient Celtic language, from which the word Britain is derived, according to Cunliffe.

From Scotland, some scholars have argued that Pytheas left Britain and ventured into the North Sea, eventually encountering a landmass he called Thule, which some have identified as Iceland, though others believe it refers to Norway.

"There is no hard archaeological evidence that Pytheas reached Iceland," Cunliffe said, "but it's not impossible."

Pytheas wrote "On the Ocean" once he returned to Massalia. Until the writings of Tacitus and Julius Caesar some 300 years later, "On the Ocean" was likely the only source of information about Britain and the northern latitudes for most of the world, Cunliffe told Live Science. There were likely copies of Pytheas's work in the great libraries of Pergamum in what is now Turkey; Rhodes, Greece; and Alexandria, Egypt.

Unfortunately, "On the Ocean" has not survived. Only fragments of it remain, paraphrased or excerpted in the writings of other classical writers such as Strabo, Polybius, Timaeus, Eratosthenes, Diodorus Siculus and Pliny the Elder. But the fragments we have are significant, Cunliffe said, as they contain a multitude of astronomical, geographic, biological, oceanographic and ethnological observations that have considerable scientific and anthropological significance.

"If we're right about the kind of person Pytheas was — with his razor-sharp, inquiring mind — he would want to communicate all this new knowledge," Cunliffe said. "He opened up people's minds to the size of the world."

https://www.livescience.com/first-western-description-british-isles

Most lies are told by a few 'superliars' and the rest of people are fairly honest, finds study analysing 116,000 fibs told by 632 students over 91 days

From little white lies to whoppers, it’s long been claimed that people on average tell two fibs a day. But according to a new study, most untruths are told by a few ‘super-liars’ and the rest of us are in fact fairly honest.

Social scientists trying to uncover the truth about lying analysed 116,336 fibs told by 632 undergraduates at a US university over a period of 91 days.

The academics discovered that most of the fibs were told by ‘a few prolific liars’ – while also concluding that only one person in a hundred never told a lie.

The authors, who were led by communication expert Kim Serota at Oakland University, added: ‘Most participants lied infrequently and most lies were told by a few prolific liars.’

They added: ‘Most people report telling few or no lies on a given day.

‘Over the past decade, the skewed distribution of lie prevalence has emerged as an exceptionally robust phenomenon.

‘The current understanding is that prolific liars are distinct and potentially identifiable people with particular characteristics that manifest through consistently telling an unusually large number of lies relative to the majority of people.’

Their analysis discovered that 75 per cent of those in the study were classed as ‘low-frequency’ liars. They also found that 90 per cent of all untruths were little white lies.

Dr Serota, whose study was published in the journal Communication Monographs, said: ‘Above all, findings from the current study document that for most people lying is less prevalent than often believed.’

He added that his work could have implications for research seeking to link lie behaviour with specific personality traits or demographic characteristics.

Dr Serota accepted that the study produced ‘inconsistent findings and has had limited success predicting who will lie’.

Analysing the difficulty of identifying liars, he said: ‘On any given day, a person’s behaviour may reflect either their dispositions or their situational good or bad lie days or both… future research needs to further unpack the interplay of individual differences, situational features, and specific deception motives.

‘Presumably, individual differences such as demographics, occupation, and personality lead people to experience different situations where the truth will be more or less consistent with communication goals.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10099793/Most-lies-told-superliars-rest-people-fairly-honest-finds-study.html

Snake oil was used as traditional medicine throughout history. How did it get such a bad name?


Since the pandemic began, there's been talk of numerous dubious cure-alls for COVID-19.

President Trump spruiked the malaria treatment hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus, even though the World Health Organization says that clinical trials show it doesn't prevent illness or death.

And earlier this year, US TV pastor Jim Bakker was ordered to pay restitution for selling a health supplement that he falsely claimed could cure COVID-19.

Historically, dodgy remedies have been dubbed 'snake oil' and those that push them 'snake oil salesmen'.

But what are the origins of snake oil and how did selling it get such a bad name?

Healing benefits

According to Dr Caitjan Gainty, who lectures on the history of science, technology and medicine at London's King's College, snake oil was sold throughout America in the 18th and 19th century.

"Snake oil was regarded as something that was a very effective cure for a lot of different kinds of things, especially for things like rheumatism and arthritis," Dr Gainty tells ABC RN's Sunday Extra.

Some advertisements went a step further and claimed it could cure a sore throat, catarrh, hay fever, cramps and even deafness.

"Whether or not it helped in every case isn't totally clear," she says.

"But certainly, in the cases of arthritis, it seems like it did make a difference."

Snake oil has always had exotic origins, Dr Gainty says.

"Some people would say: 'This is from an African Voodoo doctor that I met or this is from a Native American or this is secured from China and brought here by the Chinese migrants who are working on the railroad'," she says.

It was used medicinally in many different cultures because of the benefits from the omega-3 fatty acids found in the flesh of certain snakes, particularly the water snake in China. This could have been why it seemed to help with ailments such as arthritis.

"But whatever the origins, the idea was that snake oil in this form was actually helpful and curative."

In the 19th century, the American pioneers, who'd likely heard about the reputed healing benefits of snake oil, would capture many of the native rattlesnakes and sent them off to be turned into oil in the hope of making some extra money, Dr Gainty explains.

Snake oil was also cheaper than other available medicines at the time. So when unorthodox medical practitioners started selling it on the travelling medicine show circuits, the public was open to trying it.

"These traveling entertaining events would move from town to town," Dr Gainty says.

"You would get great entertainers like Harry Houdini and lots of bluegrass and country music people playing. And you'd also get these people who were selling their snake oil."

What's in it?
Initially the product was what it claimed to be — namely actual snake oil. But over the years, it became unclear exactly what was in these remedies.

That was until the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act came into force and investigators began taking a closer look.

It turned out that snake oil wasn't as authentic as it was purported to be.

Dr Gainty said there was a classic example at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

"This snake oil salesman Clark Stanley boiled up some snakes on the spot and then sort of skimmed [the oil] off and put it in bottles and said 'Here is your snake oil'," she says.

"They said, 'This is red pepper and camphor — that's not snake oil. This is a problem'," she adds.

The legislation went even further. Manufacturers were required to label their products if ingredients such as alcohol, opium, morphine, heroin, cannabis indica, chloral hydrate were present.

The Vandals sacked Rome, but do they deserve their reputation?

Their name is synonymous with destruction, but the group may not deserve such a harsh legacy.

Over the centuries, their name became so interchangeable with destruction that it became its synonym. But it turns out the Vandals, a Germanic tribe that managed to take over Rome in 455, may not deserve that connotation.

The first known written reference to the tribe was in A.D. 77, when Pliny the Elder mentioned “Vandilii.” However, the Vandals’ roots are uncertain, and their early history is contested. They are thought to have migrated into what is now Germany from Scandinavia. They may also have included members of the Przeworsk culture, an Iron Age culture that lived in what is now Poland. Historians think they were farmers and cattle herders.

During the 2nd century A.D., the Vandals began clashing with the Roman Empire. They participated in multiple wars along the Roman frontier, including the Marcommanic Wars along the Danube River, which raged from the 160s A.D. through 180.

A people on the move

A more significant migration toward Rome occurred when the Huns pushed “barbarian” tribes, including the Vandals, south and west into the Roman Empire beginning in the 370s A.D. During this time, the Vandals adopted Christianity, espousing Arianism. This belief that Christ was not equal to God put them in conflict with the Church.

As they traveled, the Vandals duked it out with the locals, capturing territory as they went. In 406 A.D., they crossed the Rhine River, pouring into first Gaul, then what is now Spain, then northern Africa. They captured Carthage (in what is now Tunisia) in 439 A.D.

Gaiseric (also known as Genseric), the Vandals’ king, made Carthage the Vandals’ capital, and conquered more and more Roman territory as the years went on. Carthage’s strategic location on the Mediterranean gave the Vandals an advantage, and they became a formidable naval power. “If the Romans ever attempted a naval assault on [Gaiseric’s] realm in North Africa,” writes historian Thomas J. Craughwell, “the Vandal fleet in the Mediterranean could intercept the Roman ships before they came anywhere near Carthage.”

Desperate, the Roman Empire recognized the Vandals and made a treaty that ensured they would leave Rome itself alone. The Vandals adopted many facets of Roman culture, including its dress and arts.

But the Vandal king was a shrewd observer of Rome’s disintegrating empire. In 455 he saw his opening when Petronius Maximus murdered the current Roman Emperor, Valentinian III. Gaiseric declared the Vandals’ treaty with Rome invalid and marched on Rome.

The sack of the Roman capital made history books, but was not the violent event many assume. Though the Vandals were considered heretics by the early Church, they negotiated with Pope Leo I, who convinced them not to destroy Rome. They raided the city’s wealth, but left the buildings intact and went home.

Years of clashes followed. Between 460 and 475 A.D., the Vandals successfully repelled a Rome now intent on taking back what it had lost. But Gaiseric’s death sounded the death knell for the Vandals. In 533, the Romans took back North Africa, expelling the Vandals for good.

Their kingdom had ended, but their legacy never did. To this day, “vandal” is associated—perhaps unfairly—with the group’s successful sack of Rome.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/vandals-sacked-rome-deserve-reputation

Scientists solve the mystery of the Etruscans' origins

A new genetic analysis may have finally revealed the origin of the Etruscans — a mysterious people whose civilization thrived in Italy centuries before the founding of Rome.

It turns out the enigmatic Etruscans were local to the area, with nearly identical genetics to their Latin-speaking neighbors.

This finding contradicts earlier theories that the Etruscans — who for centuries spoke a now extinct, non-Indo-European language that was remarkably different from others in the region — came from somewhere different from their Latin-speaking neighbors.

Instead, both groups appear to be migrants from the Pontic-Caspian steppe — a long, thin swath of land stretching from the north Black Sea around Ukraine to the north Caspian Sea in Russia. After arriving in Italy during the Bronze age, the early speakers of Etruscan put down roots, assimilating speakers of other languages to their own culture as they flourished into a great civilization.

The finding "challenges simple assumptions that genes equal languages and suggests a more complex scenario that may have involved the assimilation of early Italic speakers by the Etruscan speech community," David Caramelli, an anthropology professor at the University of Florence, said in a statement.  

With cities as sophisticated as those of the ancient Greeks; trade networks as lucrative as the Phoenicians’; and a vast wealth to rival ancient Egypt’s, the Etruscan civilization, the first known superpower of the Western Mediterranean, had a brilliance matched only by the mystery surrounding its language and its origins. Rising to the height of its power in central Italy in the 7th century B.C., Etruria dominated the region for centuries until the advent of the Roman republic, which had all but conquered the Etruscans before the middle of the 3rd century B.C., fully assimilating them by 90 B.C.

Archaeologists have long known that the Etruscans had bequeathed to the later Roman Republic their religious rituals, metalworking, gladiatorial combat and the innovations in architecture and engineering, which transformed Rome from a once crude settlement into a great city. However, not much was known about the geographical origins of the Etruscans or their enigmatic, partially-understood language — making them the subject of more than 2,400 years of intense debate.

The ancient Greek writer Herodotus (widely considered to be the first historian) believed that the Etruscans descended from Anatolian and Aegean peoples who fled westward following a famine in what is now western Turkey. Another Greek historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, countered that the pre-Roman civilization, despite their Greek customs and non-Indo-European language, were natives of the Italian peninsula. 

While recent archaeological evidence, which shows little evidence of migration, has been tilting in favor of Halicarnassus’ argument, "a lack of ancient DNA from the region has made genetic investigations inconsistent," the study researchers said in the statement. To resolve this, the scientists collected ancient genomic information from the remains of 82 individuals who lived between 2,800 and 1,000 years ago across 12 archaeological sites in central and southern Italy.

After comparing DNA from those 82 individuals with that of other ancient and modern peoples, the scientists discovered that despite the strong differences in customs and language, the Etruscans and their Latin neighbors shared a genetic profile with each other. In fact, the ancestry of both groups points to people who first arrived in the region from the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the Bronze Age. After these early Etruscans settled in northern and eastern Italy, their gene pool remained relatively stable — across both the Iron Age and the absorption of the Etruscan civilization into the Roman Republic. Then after the rise of the Roman Empire, there was a great influx of new genes, likely as a result of the mass migrations the empire brought about. 

"This genetic shift clearly depicts the role of the Roman Empire in the large-scale displacement of people in a time of enhanced upward or downward socioeconomic and geographic mobility," Johannes Krause, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropologyin Germany, said in the statement.

Now that the ancient debate could have finally been settled, the scientists plan to conduct a broader genetic study using ancient DNA from other regions of the Roman Empire. This will help them to not only pin down further details of the origins of the Etruscans and their strange, now extinct, language, but to discover the movements of peoples that transformed their descendants into the genetically diverse citizens of a global superpower.

The researchers published their findings Sept. 24 in the journal Science Advances. 

Just How Dark Were the Dark Ages?

Whether it’s the idea of barbarian hordes run amok across a continent ruled by the Romans for centuries, or the notion that science and the arts went through a 300-year freeze, the concept of the Dark Ages has always titillated the imagination.

In truth, a big part of what makes the era dark to modern eyes is the relative lack of surviving information. But what we don’t know has always been at least as interesting as what we do know. Did King Arthur really exist, let alone send his knights on a quest to find the Holy Grail? Was there ever a legendary hero named Beowulf, and how long had his story existed before the oldest known surviving manuscript appeared in roughly the 10th century?

Of course, the Dark Ages also refers to a less-than-heroic time in history supposedly marked by a dearth of culture and arts, a bad economy, worse living conditions and the relative absence of new technology and scientific advances. While the period continues to fascinate history buffs, scholars and fantasy fans looking for some tangible link to their favorite mytho-historical heroes, the term “Dark Ages” has largely fallen out of use among serious researchers, due to some of the implications and assumptions made by those who first propagated its use.

“No academic uses it today — because it’s actually one of the most fascinating and vibrant periods about which we are discovering new knowledge every year,” says Julia Smith, a professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford’s All Souls College.

Let’s take a closer look at those aspects of the period that scholars typically refer to now as the Early Middle Ages to separate, the dark from the light.

Shadows of the Empires

The origin of the term “Dark Ages” is itself a little murky in the historical record, but typically it was used in contrast to the praise heaped on the shining cultural achievements of the Greek and Roman empires, compared to the knowledge and culture that existed after their decline and fall.

This concept carried on into the Age of Enlightenment, when many scholars of the day pointed to the great architectural achievements of the Romans and compared them to a return to simpler wood structures of the following period, says Alban Gautier, a professor of medieval history at the University of Caen-Normandy in France. The idea of a dark, barbarian period was also pointed out in contrast to 19th century civilizations in Europe and America.

“This phrase is deeply steeped in the 19th century western European idea that some civilizations are superior to others, which today sounds very difficult to hear,” Gautier says.

Gautier believes the term still has some use in a strictly academic sense — particularly as it applies to historians. While the Romans were excellent record keepers, historical texts and documents are comparatively scarce starting with the 5th century and for several hundred years thereafter.

“It’s dark for historians. It’s difficult for historians to understand what happened,” he says.

Art in Darkness

But Gautier points to notable exceptions. After the Roman apparatus collapsed, taking with it many of its institutions, such as secular schools, the Catholic Church stepped in to provide some form of learning and scholarship in many parts of Europe.

“The Church in western Europe and all the regions north of the Mediterranean becomes the biggest element of stability,” he says. Monks worked to copy much of the literature and scientific texts of the Roman period, and to a lesser degree the Greek period.

“Of course they had a religious agenda, but in order to forward this agenda, they had to know Latin,” Gautier says. “Knowing Latin grammar meant keeping knowledge and learning from the Latin texts.”

Meanwhile in England, the absence of many works of significant writing dating to this period doesn’t mean society was idle. In fact, some of the most enduring legendary characters of England emerged in this period. In what’s attributed to a 6th century Welsh poet, the earliest known reference to England’s most famous heroic monarch comes in a form of comparison, when the poet describes a warrior who killed many people, but noted that this fighter "was no Arthur," says Bryan Ward-Perkins, a professor at the University of Oxford and author of The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization.

And while the oldest written poem of warrior Beowulf dates roughly to the 10th century, some scholars believe the legend was taken from oral traditions that date back far earlier.

Dark Economy

Another common characteristic associated with the Dark Ages is the relative lack of monumental architecture. Towns and cities no longer built large new stone structures. And the slow deterioration of Roman infrastructure such as aqueducts likely had an effect on quality of life in cities, Gautier says.

Populations of major cities like Rome and Constantinople shrank in this period. But Gautier believes rural life may have actually improved, especially in the largely bucolic British Isles. During the Roman period, farmers would have had to pay regular taxes to support the empire and local cities. But as administration fell apart, the tax burden likely diminished.

“The cities and the towns were smaller. It was less necessary for farmers to produce and work a lot in order to feed the cities,” Gautier says.

But Ward-Perkins says that archaeological evidence does suggest some scarcity of resources and goods for common people. “The other way it might be dark is just the lack of evidence, which is probably a symptom of economic decline,” he says. By 450, the evidence of simple day-to-day items such as new coins, pottery or roof tiles largely disappeared in many parts of Europe, and wasn’t found again until roughly 700.

Barbarian Science

As for the claims that societies took a step back in terms of science and understanding during this period? While it’s true that western Europe didn’t show as many achievements in technology or science in the Dark Ages as it would demonstrate later, those shortcomings were countered by an explosion in culture and learning in the southern Mediterranean, with the first few Islamic caliphates.

Europe itself did maintain some practical technology, such as watermills. In terms of learning, Isidore of Seville, an archbishop and scholar, created an encyclopedia of classical knowledge, much of which would have been otherwise lost, in his massive Etymologiae.

The relative isolation of the British Isles also allowed people there to develop unique styles of jewelry and ornate masks, Ward-Perkins says. Some of these can be found today in the archaeological excavation of graves of Sutton Hoo in eastern Anglia, which included a Viking ship burial.

“The relative dearth of written sources is more than counterbalanced by the huge amount of archaeological evidence,” Smith says.

While the Dark Ages may have started with the fall of the Roman Empire, the Medieval period, around the end of the 8th century, begins to see the rise of such leaders as Charlemagne in France, whose reign united much of Europe and brought continuity under the auspices of the Holy Roman Empire.

Although most scholars would agree that the so-called Dark Ages represent a distinct period throughout most of Europe, many of the assumptions that first made that term popular are no longer valid. Even the most persistent idea that the period represents one of violence, misery and backwards thinking has been largely disproven.

“The idea that’s completely out of fashion these days is that it was dark because it was morally worse,” Ward-Perkins says. But these days, he notes with a touch of dark humor, “everybody pretty much accepts that humans are pretty horrid all the time.”

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/just-how-dark-were-the-dark-ages?utm_source=pocket-newtab-intl-en

The End of the Democratic German Revolution

Doug Bandow

For four years, the German Empire took on much of the world in what was originally called the Great War. Berlin had allies, after a fashion — the decrepit Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, along with Bulgaria, a smaller kingdom on the outs with its Balkan neighbors. Against them was a formidable array: United Kingdom and its dominions/colonies, France, the Russian Empire, Italy, Japan, Romania, Serbia, and the United States.

The Germans did surprisingly well, defeating Russia and Romania, stalemating and almost knocking out France, and undergirding Vienna against Italy and Serbia. But preserving the Ottomans against the UK and an Arab revolt was beyond Germany’s power. The German military ultimately could not stop the disintegration of the ramshackle, multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. Nor could the Reichsheer, the world’s finest fighting force, withstand years of privation from the crippling British blockade, increasing spread of destructive Bolshevik propaganda through German troops redeployed from the east, and arrival of the ever-expanding American Expeditionary Force.

By September 1918, the German army was losing ground as Berlin’s allies collapsed. The Supreme Army Command, represented by Gen. Erich Ludendorff, Germany’s de facto dictator, informed the Kaiser that a ceasefire was imperative. The government was turned over to the elected Reichstag as negotiations with the Allies commenced. The Entente agreed, but only on condition that the Reich surrender its heavy weapons to prevent resumption of hostilities. The result was the armistice that took effect on November 11.

The Kaiser wanted to remain, but his people had different ideas. The navy planned a last suicidal sortie for the Imperial Fleet, sparking a mutiny by sailors that grew as workers and soldiers joined in. Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils spread across the country. In Bavaria, socialist journalist Kurt Eisner led a revolution that proclaimed a Volksstaat, or People’s Republic. Widely hated for making public documents from Germany’s diplomatic campaign, he was later murdered as he prepared to resign. Secondary monarchs of individual states, who retained some authority, abdicated before mobs forced them to act. The Councils ended up in conflict with the Social Democrats, who pushed constitutional, democratic reform.

In early November, the Kaiser still hoped to return with the army from the battlefield to suppress opposition, but his plans were disconnected from reality. Friedrich Ebert, head of the Social Democrats, warned, “If the Kaiser does not abdicate, the social revolution is unavoidable. But I do not want it, indeed I hate it like sin.” On November 9, the civilian authorities announced the Kaiser’s abdication without his approval, followed by Ebert’s appointment as chancellor. Ebert’s short-lived predecessor, Prince Maximilian von Baden, a liberal, said to Ebert, “I entrust you with the German Reich.” That latter responded, “I have lost two sons for this Reich.”

Ebert was born in 1871 and later learned the saddlemaker trade. He became active politically and settled in Bremen, where he became local party chairman. In 1905, he became SPD secretary general and in 1913 was elected party co-chairman. A moderate, he led the majority into the Burgfrieden, a pact in which the political parties agreed to set aside their differences for the duration of the war. By backing the government, as most socialists in the other combatants also did, he ensured a split with radicals, who then left the SPD. In January 1918, he simultaneously supported striking workers at a munitions plant and urged them back to work. Some saw him as a traitor to Germany, others to the workers. Increasingly he cooperated with more moderate bourgeois parties, which continued after the Kaiser’s fall.

As Ebert took over as chancellor, Karl Liebknecht, founder of the radical Marxist Spartacus League, proclaimed a socialist republic, which envisioned revolutionary change. An intense power struggle ensued in the following weeks, with the moderate Social Democrats maintaining control of the government and ultimately relying on army troops and nationalist auxiliaries to rebuff communist rebellion. After the Kaiser’s departure, the pragmatic Ebert made what became known as the Ebert–Groener deal with Gen. Wilhelm Groener, successor to Ludendorff as army quartermaster general. Ebert promised to protect the military’s autonomy and suppress left-wing revolts while Groener pledged the armed services’ loyalty to the government.

The two set up a secret hotline for daily communication and worked together in December to suppress a short-lived revolt by naval personnel. Nationalist Freikorps forces also fought against revolutionaries with great ferocity. Such battles were replicated across the country. Many on the left turned against Ebert and the Social Democrats. In early January, the Spartacists, named after the famous Roman slave, and the newly founded Communist Party of Germany attempted to seize Berlin and oust the Ebert government. The army and Freikorps prevented the putsch.

A week later a constituent assembly was elected, which met in the city of Weimar, outside of Berlin, and chose Ebert as provisional Reichpräsident. A constitution was drafted for what became known as the Weimar Republic. Ebert’s presidential term was extended to 1925 to avoid an election amid political upheaval.

Perhaps his gravest challenge in 1919 was the Versailles Treaty. Negotiated by the allies without German input, it was presented as what the Germans called a Diktat. Government officials resigned rather than sign, leaving Gustav Bauer, a leading social democrat, head of the cabinet. He sought changes, but the allies issued an ultimatum: If Berlin did not sign, they would resume their march, which the German army admitted that it could not prevent. Bauer capitulated to the allied ultimatum. When the treaty came before the National Assembly, Ebert asked Germany’s military command if the army could defend Germany against an allied invasion. Told no, he urged the legislators to ratify the document, which they did on July 9.

Weimar’s life was more short than sweet. Regional resistance to Berlin’s rule continued elsewhere in Germany. Ebert turned to the security forces to eliminate radical workers’ councils. In 1920, disaffected army troops and Freikorps members staged a coup, known as the Kapp Putsch, named after civil servant Wolfgang Kapp. The government was forced to flee, but a general strike ended the revolt. The SPD-dominated regime told the German people, “Only a government based on the constitution can save Germany from sinking into darkness and blood. If Germany is led from one coup to another, then it is lost.”

In the following years, however, officials were assassinated by nationalists and Adolf Hitler joined the Nazi Party and in 1923 attempted to seize power in Bavaria with the Beer Hall Putsch, which was put down by the Germany police and army. Ebert appointed right-leaning officials and employed the president’s emergency powers — which eventually supplanted parliamentary rule — 134 times. The republic slowly gained authority, but not legitimacy.

Opponents concocted the infamous Dolchstoßlegende, or “stab-in-the-back myth.” Ludendorff’s request that the Kaiser seek a truce was conveniently forgotten as nationalists argued the military was not defeated in the field, but instead had been betrayed at home. This claim was reinforced by the fact that civilians signed the hated Versailles Treaty.

The agreement detached Germany territory, placed ethnic Germans under foreign rule, blamed the war on Berlin, restricted the German military, and obligated the Germans to pay reparations for the entire cost of the conflict. The Allies fell between two stools. They neither imposed a Carthaginian peace, effectively dismantling Germany, nor conciliated Berlin, creating a stable international order. And when Berlin failed to comply, the former Entente powers neither enforced nor rewrote the treaty’s terms. It fueled political discontent and extremism.

The result was disaster, but Ebert did not live to see the future. Sickly, he died of septic shock after an attack of appendicitis on February 28, 1925. In a tragedy that Germans did not then understand, he was replaced by conservative authoritarian Paul von Hindenburg, the talented field marshal whose reputation survived Germany’s defeat. The latter narrowly defeated Wilhelm Marx, the candidate of the moderate Centre Party of Germany, dominated by Catholics. Had Marx been elected, German democracy would have had a better chance to survive, despite the manifold challenges to come.

A decade later, wild inflation and the Great Depression had ravaged the German middle class. The Nazis and Communists gained a parliamentary majority, forcing the aging Hindenburg, no fan of Hitler, to rule by emergency decree. Eventually appointed chancellor, Hitler quickly consolidated power. And on the president’s death on August 2, 1934, the Nazi Führer took over those powers, as well. The sadly imperfect Weimar democratic experiment was over. From there the political road led directly to World War II and the Holocaust.

Ebert’s role remains controversial. Today’s Social Democrats embrace him, having named their party think tank after him. But some on the left attack his support for the German state in World War I and later tactical alliance with conservative, even reactionary forces. Some on the right argue that he undermined the German state when it was at its most vulnerable in World War I.

In fact, Ebert balanced conflicting responsibilities unusually well, despite inevitable missteps. He faced challenges beyond the abilities of most statesmen. Whatever his initial plans, he became Germany’s most pivotal defender of democracy and liberal governance. He steadfastly backed elections even when presented with the opportunity to seize power in the name of a socialist workers’ state. He turned to the military, but only against radicals determined to impose their rule on others. And he governed with prudence and restraint, refusing to wreck an already ravaged nation by embarking on hopeless resistance to the Allies and the Versailles Treaty.

Ebert was only 54 when he died. Had he lived, his nation still would have faced abundant economic and political crises. But it is hard to imagine him appointing Hitler as chancellor. Ebert might have found a way to create and preserve a Left–Right alliance against the extremes. Perhaps that, too, would have proved to be a dead end. But we shall never know since, tragically, it was the road not taken.

https://www.cis.org.au/commentary/articles/the-end-of-the-democratic-german-revolution/