Editing Stab-in-the-back myth (section)

==Aftermath==
The ''Dolchstoß'' was a central image in propaganda produced by the many right-wing and traditionally conservative political parties that sprang up in the early days of the Weimar Republic, including Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party. For Hitler himself, this explanatory model for World War I was of crucial personal importance.<ref name="brendon8">{{cite book |author-link=Piers Brendon |last=Brendon |first=Piers |title=The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s |page=[https://archive.org/details/darkvalleypanora00bren/page/8 8] |isbn=0-375-40881-9 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/darkvalleypanora00bren/page/8 |year=2000 |publisher=Knopf }}</ref> He had learned of Germany's defeat while being treated for temporary blindness following a gas attack on the front.<ref name="brendon8" /> In ''[[Mein Kampf]]'', he described a vision at this time which drove him to enter politics. Throughout his career, he railed against the "November criminals" of 1918, who had stabbed the German Army in the back.{{fact|date=December 2024}}

German historian [[Friedrich Meinecke]] attempted to trace the roots of the expression "stab-in-the-back" in a 11 June 1922 article in the Viennese newspaper ''[[Neue Freie Presse]]''.{{citation needed|reason=Seems more likely he was talking about the German word "Dolchstoß"|date=March 2022}} In the 1924 national election, the Munich cultural journal ''[[Süddeutsche Monatshefte]]'' published a series of articles blaming the SPD and trade unions for Germany's defeat in World War I, which came out during the trial of Hitler and Ludendorff for high treason following the [[Beer Hall Putsch]] in 1923. The editor of an SPD newspaper sued the journal for [[defamation]], giving rise to what is known as the ''Munich Dolchstoßprozess'' from 19 October to 20 November 1925. Many prominent figures testified in that trial, including members of the parliamentary committee investigating the reasons for the defeat, so some of its results were made public long before the publication of the committee report in 1928.
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 | quote = "And which was more certain dishonor for our people: the occupation of German areas by the enemy, or the cowardice with which our bourgeoisie surrendered the German Reich to an organization of pimps, pickpockets, deserters, black marketeers and hack journalists? Let not the gentlemen prattle now about German honor, as long as they bow under the rule of dishonor....Whoever wants to act in the name of German honor today must first launch a merciless war against the infernal defilers of German honor. They are the not the enemies of yore, but they are the representatives of the November crime. That collection of Marxist, democratic-pacifistic, destructive traitors of our country who pushed our people into its present state of powerlessness."
 | source = Adolf Hitler, [[Hitlers Zweites Buch|''Zweites Buch'']], Chapter 8: "Military Power and Fallacy of Border Restoration as Goal"<ref>{{cite book |last=Hitler |first=Adolf |title=Hitler's Secret Book |translator=[[Salvator Attanasio]] |publisher=[[Grove Press]] |location=New York |year=1961 |orig-year=1928 |pages=89-90}}</ref> 
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===World War II===
[[File:Jože Beranek - V usodnem trenutku nož v hrbet.jpeg|thumb|1944 poster from [[World War II in the Slovene Lands|German-ruled Slovenia]]: the legend reads "''A knife in the back at the fatal moment!''". It depicts [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|British Prime Minister]] [[Winston Churchill]] stabbing Europa in the back while Europa fights the [[Red Army]]; a stereotyped Jew watches on with glee.]]
The Allied policy of [[unconditional surrender]] was devised in 1943 in part to avoid a repetition of the stab-in-the-back myth. According to historian [[John Wheeler-Bennett]], speaking from the British perspective,<blockquote>It was necessary for the Nazi régime and/or the German Generals to surrender unconditionally in order to bring home to the German people that they had lost the War by themselves; so that their defeat should not be attributed to a "stab in the back".<ref name="JWB1954">{{cite book|last=Wheeler-Bennett|first=John W.|title=The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918–1945|url=https://archive.org/details/nemesisofpowerge0000whee |url-access=registration|year=1954|location=London|publisher=Macmillan|page=[https://archive.org/details/nemesisofpowerge0000whee/page/559 559]}}</ref></blockquote>