Flammable Material: German Chemical Workers in War, Revolution, and Inflation 1914-1924.

Flammable Material: German Chemical Workers in War, Revolution, and Inflation 1914-1924. By Craig D. Patton (Berlin: Haude & Spener 1998. viii plus 368pp.).

Patton's study of chemical workers in the decade 1914-1924 is a clarifying addition to German labor history. The author combines attention to detail with economic and political perspectives to achieve a nuanced interpretation of war, revolution, inflation, and the dynamics of collective action. Patton argues that labor protest in the chemical industry was directly linked to specific grievances that affected labor militancy, class solidarity, and political radicalism. Politicization of working conditions and economic distress formed a more powerful provocation for radicalization than ideological visions of a restructured society. This study brings the reader to the factory floor, where workers faced extraordinary demands and pressures that drove them to spontaneous action. Although Patton stresses specificity and immediateness, his analysis shows the interconnections among labor, the trade unions, and political parties. In order to understand class consciousness, solidarity, militancy, and radicalization, the author addresses those elements that both encouraged and limited collective action within the reality and rhetoric of massive dislocations and rising expectations.

The book's structure reinforces the balance between content and conceptualization, between narrative and analysis. There is an introductory chapter on prewar conditions and patterns in the chemical industry followed by a chapter on the decade's economic, political, and social context. Patton's study is not for the general reader, but more effort should have been made to explain the significant events, organizations, and programs that influenced the regulation and disciplining of industrial labor, as well as to explore the radicalization and splintering of the Social Democratic Party. While the interaction between employers and workers is clear and well developed, the role of the government is somewhat vague. There is a chapter devoted to each of "The Big Three", Bayer, Hoechst, and BASF. Careful examination of individual firms, including their outlying factories, indicates that the timing, goals, and scope of militancy were to some extent unique. Specific conditions made chemical companies different from oth er industries and also caused variations among them. The book concludes with a valuable chapter containing historical and analytical conclusions.

An examination of the chronology and characteristics of worker protest challenges conventional assumptions about working class formation and worker consciousness. In order to maintain the civic truce (Burgfrieden) and to assure a steady supply of labor in armaments industries, the government and employers understood the importance of organized labor in the management of the workforce. Trade unions were recognized, and workers' committees and arbitration boards were established. Organized protest gradually increased during the war, reaching its highest level in 1917-1918. Chemical workers supported the November Revolution, but there were few intense confrontations in 1918. Following defeat, the territory where the main factories were located was under Allied occupation, which retarded workers' possiblities. Because of disillsionment, frustration, and deteriorating economic conditions, strikes and radicalization increased in 1920 and 1921. Worker confidence declined after 1922 as hyperinflation and stabilizati on eroded their position and made organized protest less feasible. There was relative calm in the chemical factories in 1923 and 1924 despite economic hardship and political unrest. By looking at the decade as a whole it is apparent that most episodes were linked to specific triggers. Mobilization resulted from clusters of factors that retained a remarkable similarity over time and against vastly altered political configurations from the command economy of wartime Germany to Weimar uncertainties. Initiators and leaders were mostly skilled workers, not proletarians; workers chose "wild" direct action because it seemed most effective; authority issues provoked as much discontent as economic distress; workers were disinclined to conform to trade union directives or socialist promises when these conflicted with their own grassroots goals.

The richness of the author's sources is obvious in the case studies of Bayer, Hoechst, and BASF. There were similarities in workers' attempts to change their circumstances and also in employers' methods of resistance. However, variations occurred in the incidence of strikes and violence, as well as in the effectiveness of the trade unions and socialist political parties to achieve cohesion among workers and to influence the outcome of worker discontent. Distinctions reveal that plants related to the main factory complexes such as Leuna, a Hoechst facility in the Halle-Merseburg region, and Oppau, a BASF plant that produced synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, were the most disruptive. Patton shows how worker grievances, industrial militancy, and political radicalism combined synergistically to produce mobilization and protest. Especially interesting is Pattons narrative of socialist radicalization as chemical workers made individual and collective decisions about the risks and benefits of militancy, as well as the ir hesitation to embrace the ideology of social reconstruction. Patton rightfully concludes that the tensions and splintering of the socialists increased the potential for militancy, while at the same time, it eroded the solidarity of the SPD and the affiliated trade unions.

Flammable Material is part of the series, Schriften der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin, Beitr[ddot{a}]e zu Inflation und Wiederaufbau in Deutschland und Europa 1914-1924. In addition to a full bibliography of published sources, Patton used city archives, official publications, newspapers, and company archives, which are not easily accessible in Germany. Footnotes are excellent, generous with information and explanation and nicely integrated with the text. The Appendix, consisting of27 tables, gives comparative data for the labor force at the three firms including skill level, wages, turnover, union membership, and political election results. The absence of a full Abbreviations List, however, is annoying since names of associations, agencies, trade unions and political parties are neither introduced in the text, nor provided in the footnotes, and one must search the index. Research for the study was completed before 1989, and therefore, does not contain material from the former DDR. Also, published sources are pre-1990, indicating a time lag between research and writing, and publication. To compensate, the author should have incorporated current studies in the introduction, where he gives an overview of the literature and a refutation of conventional models. Flammable Material has some shortcomings, but they are minor. It is an important monograph because it focuses on the chemical industry, an area that has received much less attention than coal, iron, and steel in German industrial and labor history and equally valuable, because it makes this new material available in English.