Pierre Broué, The German Revolution, 1917-1923, (translated by John Archer, edited by Ian Birchall and Brian Pearce), London: Merlin Press, 2006. ISBN: 0850365791.

Thanks are owed to Brill and to Merlin for bringing out this English translation, thirty-five years after La Révolution en Allemagne first appeared in France. In the intervening period, Broué's book has acquired an underground following: I remember the first time I was told of it, browsing in the Porcupine bookshop beneath Housmans. 'It's the best thing that has been written on the period', I was told, 'just you wait and see when it comes out.' For once, a book does indeed live up to its advance billing.

Broué's thesis can be stated simply: in 1919, 1920 and again in 1923, a large enough number of people in Germany desired a communist revolution and a small enough number opposed it, so that such a revolution (or at least a communist government) was capable of being achieved. That this revolution failed to happen was a result of a combination of determined opposition by the majority social democrats, the murder of key communists in 1919, and the contradictory mood of many rank-and-file socialists in Germany, who wanted (Broué argues) more than the SPD would offer, while remaining tied to that party by considerable bonds of loyalty.

To make this argument compelling, Broué addresses key moments in German history, which will be familiar to many readers, but he does so in a fashion which makes them seem new. 'Everyone knows' that the Spartacist uprising of 1919 was ill-conceived. Opposed by its own leaders, with no support other than from a few dozen deluded fanatics, the movement deserved to go down to defeat. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht's murder was history's verdict against the error of putschism.

Read Broué's German Revolution, however, and this suicidal mission is treated in the light of its protagonists' views at the time. The central committee of the newly founded communist party played the opening moves with caution. Luxemburg was opposed to any uprising, fearing that it was indeed premature. What swung her towards insurrection were the signs that a majority of workers in Berlin favoured this approach. The great demonstrations of 5 January 1919, during which workers blocked the centre of the city, from the Siegesallee to the Alexanderplatz, were among the largest protests Germany had then ever seen. There was no absence of mandate. Communists, Independent Socialists and revolutionary shop stewards worked as one. Within forty-eight hours, however, it was apparent that the mood had gone. Organised and determined retreat now was necessary. It was in this second stage of the struggle, Broué argues (convincingly) that the decisive mistakes were made.

Broué makes much again of the second opening, that produced by workers' successful resistance to the Kapp putsch of 1920. With the elected government in voluntary exile, prominent trade unionists displaced the SPD at the head of the movement. Their demand was for socialist unity. Although this was not achieved, a period followed which was open to the left. The communist party, which had practically ceased to exist by spring 1919, was rebuilt under the leadership of Paul Levi, Rosa Luxemburg's last disciple. Levi successfully wooed the membership of the Independent Socialists, who then voted for fusion with the communists. By the end of 1922, membership was around 250,000: the KPD employed some 230 full-time staff, and published some thirty-eight daily newspapers, including publications for women, for peasants, for trade unionists, adolescents and children. The KPD was especially influential in unions such as the seamen's union, the ship carpenters' union, the building workers' union, the rail union, the local government and the transport workers' union. The party had 50,000 members in Rhineland-Westphalia alone.

The frittering then of this revolutionary base, Broué explains in terms of the removal of the one communist, Paul Levi, best trained in the habits of campaigning unity with the SPD; the ascendancy of a KPD 'left' around individuals such as Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow (who were the most hostile to the SPD); and a general failure of collective will in 1923, the year of inflation, during which the KPD seemed constantly on the brink of leading a successful insurrection, while lacking at every stage any sort of thought-out plan to make this next step happen.

A very great deal of the book is dedicated to the decisions of individuals in positions of leadership. Levi is generally treated sympathetically, in contrast to Karl Radek who, despite his hostility to the 1919 uprising (which Broué endorses), is dismissed ultimately as a populariser of other people's ideas, incapable of matching up to a period of crisis. If anything, Broué seems to pull his punches with regard to Zinoviev, the leader of the International for much of this period, who disastrously shielded the KPD ultras. Great criticisms could also be made of Lenin, who was often ill-informed of events, but who did at least acknowledge his errors afterwards.

I was not persuaded by Broué's sympathetic account of the attempts made in 1923 by some communists to woo the nationalist fringe: Broué argues that the nazis' audience was winnable to the left. I think he exaggerates the coherence of the approaches made as well as their integrity. The tactic might be excusable in general, it may even have been necessary at this time - but its execution was all wrong.

This latter criticism aside, Broué's book is a superb testament to a period which until now has lacked the major English-language study that it deserves.

David Renton, Johannesburg University