ABSTRACT
Prompted by the insistence of the Revisionists that Lenz Marx’s position was substantially wrong as well as tactically embarrassing, the leaders of the Social Democratic party endorsed a plan for land reform. There were several reasons why—ideological problems aside—domestic colonization should have recommended itself to the socialist governments of the Reich and Prussia in 1918–1919. Popular expectations of land reform had grown in Germany during the war. Popular enthusiasm for land reform was also a product of a calculated effort by the government to boost morale by promising land as a reward for the people’s wartime sacrifices. Popular enthusiasm for land reform was also a product of a calculated effort by the government to boost morale by promising land as a reward for the people’s wartime sacrifices. Otto Braun was being neither fair nor accurate when he laid the responsibility for the public’s unrealistic expectations of land reform solely on the old regime’s wartime propaganda.
