THE
PAN-GERMAN
PROGRAMME
THE
PETITION OF THE SIX ASSOCIATIONS
AND THE
MANIFESTO OF THE INTELLECTUALS
Translated from the German
With an Introduction by
EDWYN BEVAN
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1
1918
THE PAN-GERMAN PROGRAMME.
INTRODUCTORY.
The two documents presented in this pamphlet are the fullest statement of the programme of the Pan-German party in Germany. They were both drawn up in the earlier months of 1915. After the series of rapid German successes in the West, with which the war opened, had seemed to come to a check, and month after month went by without the expected advance on Paris being resumed, it was felt to be necessary that the German people should get some more precise idea of what it was fighting for, what it had to obtain before it could consider that the war had attained its end.
In March, 1915, the rumour got about that the German Government was contemplating a peace of compromise, and Pan-German circles took alarm. Pan-Germanism was not strong in the working class and many of the Radical Intellectuals disapproved of it. But it was very strong among the country landowners, i.e. the class called Junkers, and the rich manufacturers, especially the great ironmasters of the Rhenish-Westphalian country, who wanted to get hold of the French iron-districts of Briey and Longwy. These interests were organised in a number of powerful Associations.