Transcribing the Past

   Link https://youtu.be/UC9PEkbC6Y8 Hello and welcome to the Witness podcast from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last. And today using recordings from the BCC archive we go back 100 years to November 1918, when in the final weeks of World War One Germany was on the point of collapse and facing revolution. Archival Witness One: The whole life of the country was becoming grimmer, it was getting very difficult. The war was lasting too long and Germany didn’t have much chance of winning it because conditions within the country were getting so very difficult and there was a general feeling that the war as a whole had to stop. This feeling was spreading very fast among the civilian population and I saw that the war would have to end soon. That was the feeling shared by most of the soldiers I met in those days, they were fed up with the whole thing and they wanted to go home badly. Alex Last: After four years of war by late 1918 the situation in G...

    Key figures in Hitler's rise to power, Left to right, Dietrich Klagges, Alfred Hugenberg, Paul von Hindenburg and Franz von Papen A translation of Johann Chapoutot's article for Le Monde Diplomatique   Contrary to the popular belief, Adolph Hitler was not empowered by a popular vote. Instead, his rise was thanks to frequent parliamentary crisis and moral panics exploited by a press controlled by a far right magnate and the willing support of key industrialists and bankers. They all shared a desire to break the electoral momentum of the left and kill the social state.  The installation of the Nazis on the 30th of January 1933 was the gravest trauma to the conscience of every democrat. In the West Germany was a nation of high culture, science, research and technology, full of music, literature and philosophical glory and Nobel Prizes. It was also proudly the country with the oldest and most well-organised left wing movement in the world. With large Social Democrati...

    Discussion and analysis with a member of the KAPD on the party and its activity. Workers Councils in the German Revolution Introduction The Kommunistische Arbeiter Party Deutschland (KAPD) originated in a split in the German Communist Party at the second congress in Heidelberg in October 1919. The majority of the Communist party were expelled for their opposition to parliamentary and Trade Union activity, and founded a new party the KAPD. The interview below is with a founder member of the KAPD, who was active in the German revolution, and is part of the material we plan to us in the [unreadable] a pamphlet on the struggles for WORKERS COUNCILS in the German revolution. The relevance of the struggle in Germany in 1918-23 has been heightened by the rise of SDS and the recent wave of unofficial strikes in the coal, steel and ship building industries. As in France and Italy the question of workers councils is now being debated. AN ACTIVIST S...