Social-Democratic party

The Social-Democratic party (SPD) was a left-wing, Marxist-inspired political movement. The two most appealing SPD campaign promises were old-age pensions and unemployment insurance for workers. Marxism maintained that wars were fought among workers to benefit their capitalist oppressors. As such, The SPD was strongly in favor of peace and cooperation between nations. All European Socilist parties, made a solemn pledge to one another to never to vote for war.

German right-wing conservatives feared that if such attitudes controlled the Reichstag, Germany and its aggressive foreign policy would be radicalized. German conservatives didn't intend to surrender "their" country to the Socialists.

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, in an attempt to stop its growth, first prohibited Socialist candidates to campaign freely, but this didn't achieve anything as the German workers knew who the Socialists were and what they stood for. Every election (1884 and 1887) saw a steady increase in the Social-Democrat vote.

The conservative governments provided the workers with provisions that SDP promised, hoping that they would have no reason to stay with the party. Instead, the SPD vote shot up even more sharply in the following elections of '90. They knew that the government only feared the party's political clout, and the workers kept voting for it as the best way to get more things from the government.

No right-wing politician after Bismarck managed to stop the SPD. In the 1912 election, SPD came near the 50% mark. The German right wing feared that soon the SPD would win a clear majority in the Reichstag.

As Germany feared Russia, the conservatives who wished to stop both the SPD and Russia, thought that a Reichstag vote on a declaration of war against Russia would present the SPD with an insoluble dilemma: either being accused as unpatriotic by voting against war, or betraying its ideology by voting for war.