| March 5 |  |
Editor says, what if Rosa Luxemburg had survived the Spartacist uprising? muses Robbie Taylor. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the March 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1871, on this day revolutionary heroine Rosa Luxembourg is born in Zamos, Poland.
Worker's ParadiseAfter marrying a German worker in 1898, she began a labor movement in her adopted country, merging with the Social Democratic Party just prior to the Great War. The mass disillusionment with the royalist system that had led Germany into the war gave the SDP a huge boost, and they took control of the country in the elections of 1932, defeating the hard-right National Socialists in a hard-fought, corrupt campaign that was marred by violence and barely recognized by the rest of Europe.
Once in office, Chancellor Luxembourg sought to create a true "Worker's Paradise" to match the slogans that the reality of Russia's revolution had made so laughingly absurd. The SDP proved equal to the task, though, with their revolutionary fervor moderated slightly by their right-wing enemies. Germany pulled out of the world-wide depression and became a model of labor-government-business cooperation. Its model spread to France, then the smaller nations of central Europe and Scandinavia. Frau Luxembourg died in 1948, her dream of a just German society fulfilled.
Entry posted by Alternate Historian Robbie Taylor
© Robbie Taylor, 2004-Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: History Channel Labels: Rosa Luxembourg, Germany, Socialism, Revolutionary, Twenties. Editor says, in reality Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were executed by the Freikorps during the Spartacist uprising.
~ I doubt Luxembourg would have created any sort of "workers' paradise," if only because that's probably unattainable--and the West would likely have slapped an embargo on her country so fast it would make heads spin (to "make the economy scream," in Henry Kissinger's deathless words re 1970s Chile).
On the other hand, her Germany could hardly have been worse than Hitler's.
~ Not _impossible_, but a Red Germany that got that way remotely democratically would be less terrifying without the whole example of Stalin and the messiness of the Russian Revolution... unless Luxumberg is among the loudest critics Moscow had.
~ The Soviets would have done all they could to destabilize things. The new god of the Kremlin was a jealous god that allowed no rivals.
~ Was Red Rosa a constitutional democrat?
~ Consensus seems to be a coming German-Soviet War... over Finland, perhaps?
~ I have no sympathy for communists. She was executed before she could execute milllions.
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© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
