For men such as Matthias Erzberger, or Bethmann Hollweg’s close collaborator Kurt Riezler, democratization at home was the only possible basis on which Germany could pursue a great-power policy capable of matching that of Britain and the United States.14 The stalwart commitment of the vast majority of the Social Democratic Party had demonstrated the powerful force of German working-class patriotism. But if democracy would give the projection of German power a new energy and legitimacy, it would also impose its own self-limiting logic, restraining the tendency toward heedless territorial
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