National Liberal Party of Germany

(National-liberale Partei), a Prussian and later (from 1871) an all-German bourgeois political party that existed from 1867 to 1918. It was formed by the right wing of the Progressive Party, which had seceded in 1866. The National Liberal Party was one of the mainstays of the Junker-bourgeois bloc. The party’s program called for equality before the law and bourgeois-democratic liberties, but as the workers’ movement grew stronger in Germany the National Liberals dropped these demands and contented themselves with Bismarck’s limited reforms. They actively supported colonial expansion, the arms race, and the policy of suppressing the workers’ movement. In World War I (1914–18) the National Liberal Party supported the German monopolies’ program of aggression. After the November Revolution of 1918, the National Liberal Party disbanded and was replaced by the German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei).