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Postcard, German Reich, c. 1923

Postcard "Germans, remember!"

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Holding a dagger in his hand, the man in the suit is stabbing soldiers in the back as they are bravely fighting. This cartoon from 1923 depicts what became known as the ‘stab-in-the-back’ myth. Soon after the First World War, that myth reframing Germany’s defeat was already making the rounds in the first years of the new Weimar Republic. The myth claimed that German troops were forced to surrender in 1918 because they had been betrayed by Jewish revolutionary circles back home in Imperial Germany.

This cartoon depicts two political figures who were allegedly traitors. In November 1918, SPD politician Philipp Scheidemann – holding the dagger – proclaimed a German republic, and so sealed the end of the monarchy in the country. Shortly afterwards, the man behind him, Matthias Erzberger from the Catholic Centre Party, signed the armistice ending German military operations in the First World War. On the right, the alleged war profiteers – two Jews – are sitting on sacks bursting with money. The newspapers in front of them are a reference to the allegedly Jewish dominated media.

Many Germans who still regarded defeat in 1918 as a humiliation readily welcomed the explanation offered by this reinterpretation of history. The myth of the German army remaining ‘undefeated in the field’ proved stubbornly intractable, and it put the blame for the surrender somewhere else entirely. The search for a scapegoat led back to old enemy images – mainly socialists, Catholics and Jews.

Many of those attending the meeting in 1942 here at the Wannsee lake had internalised this legend in their youth. They thought the Nazi regime could overcome the humiliation they associated with the end of the First World War.