The Spirit of 1914 refers to the alleged jubilation in Germany at the outbreak of World War I. Many individuals remembered that euphoria erupted on 4 August 1914 after all the political parties in the Reichstag, including the previously antimilitarist Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), supported the war credits in a unanimous vote, later referred to as the Burgfrieden (literally fortress peace, but more accurately party truce). Many, particularly those in the middle class, believed Germany had ended its decades of bitter domestic political conflict. The string of military victories in the following weeks, which demonstrated what Germany could accomplish when unified and suggested that the war would be short, reinforced the ebullience. Many on the political right accordingly believed, and continued to believe into the Nazi era, that these first weeks of the war were Germany's finest hour, the German equivalent to 1789 in France.
