Such a vision was self-serving of course. But the advocates of this alternative version of German hegemony should not be dismissed either as dupes or as forerunners of Nazi empire.27 Their opponents on the German right regarded them as a real threat. The bitterness of the nationalist vitriol poured on Philipp Scheidemann, the leader of the SPD, for his advocacy of a German version of a democratic peace was shocking even to hardened veterans of the Bismarckian era.
