Albert Reich, Im Felde Unbesiegt

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				Price: € 2.600

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‘Im felde Unbesiegt’ (‘Undefeated on the battlefield), 1918
Biography: Albert Reich

Dolchstoss Legende (Stab-in-the-back myth)
The Dolchstoß Legende is the notion, widely believed in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that the German Army did not lose World War I but was instead betrayed by politicians and civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy. Advocates of this legend denounced the German government leaders who signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, as the ‘November Criminals’ (Novemberverbrecher). When the Nazis came to power in 1933 they made the legend an integral part of their official history of the 1920s.They portrayed the Weimar Republic as the work of the ‘November criminals’ who used the stab in the back to seize power while betraying the nation. The Nazi propaganda depicted Weimar as ‘a morass of corruption, degeneracy, national humiliation, ruthless persecution of the honest ‘national opposition’. In 1919 Hindenburg testified for a Reichtags commission that the German Army had been on the verge of winning the war in the autumn of 1918 (the German troops were still fighting in foreign lands and even at the time of the armistice, no Allied force had crossed the German border). He claimed that the defeat had been precipitated by a Dolchstoß  by disloyal elements on the home front and by unpatriotic politicians. Despite being threatened with a contempt citation for refusing to respond to questions, Hindenburg simply walked out of the hearings after reading his statement. Hindenburg’s status as a war hero provided him with a political shield and he was never prosecuted.

In this painting by Albert Reich we see German troops, neither defeated nor injured, withdrawing to Köln. They are crossing the river Rhine via a military pontoon bridge (floating bridge). We see the Hohenzollernbrücke (this bridge is still in place), the huge Cologne Cathedral in the background and at the right the flag in black, white and red, the colours of the Deutsche Kaiserreich. The Weimar Republic changed the flag colours in 1921 to black, red and gold. The first thing the Nazis did in 1933 was reinstall the previous colours: black, white and red. And after WWII, very predictable, the colours were changed again into black, red and gold.

Left: Cologne Cathedral and Hohenzollernbrücke, 1945.
Right: photo taken in 2013.
   

Dolchstoss Legende
This is an illustration from a 1919 Austrian postcard showing a caricatured Jew stabbing the German Army in the back with a dagger. The capitulation was blamed on the unpatriotic populace, the Socialists, Bolsheviks, the Weimar Republic, and especially the Jews (Wikipedia).

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