#sdap

Needless to say, in a society already inclined to fear and distrust the organized workers’ movement, the antiwar posture eventually assumed by both the ADAV and SDAP did not increase their popularity with officials and much of the public. No single event in the history of German social democracy did as much to create the image of lack of patriotism (vaterlandlos, literally “without a fatherland”) and opposition to the Reich (reichsfeindlich) as did the socialists’ posture in 1870-1871… Arrests, suppression of newspapers and meetings, and general harassment were directed at the socialists as a result of the antiwar stand. In one of the most famous trials in the movement’s history (the Leipzig Hochverratsprozess), Bebel and Liebknecht were sentenced to two years in prison for high treason… Thus did the relationship between German socialists and the new state begin.

1912 brought a major change in SPD election tactics when shortly after the general election, the party executive entered into a secret agreement with the Progressives to trade support in the runoff election. Prior to this time socialists had never entered into such agreements… In the earliest years of the movement, such a thought was anathema. The congresses of the SDAP had regularly renounced the casting of votes for nonsocialists, let along entering into election agreement… But the 1912 agreement with the Progressives… revealed the nature of the party leadership. By this time the SPD executive largely consisted not of old-timers who had gone through the great struggles of the early years, but of new party functionaries and politicians who placed a great deal of store by electoral victories. Led by Friedrich Ebert and Phillip Schiedemann, these new people tended to be more conservative than the veterans who had prevailed previously… The newcomers were the products of the success of the social democratic movement — a success that increasingly bred a spirit of compromise and acceptance of the status quo.