German Revolution of 1918-1919 - Wikipedia

12/30/21, 5:23 PM German Revolution of 1918–1919 - Wikipedia
German Revolution of 1918–1919
The German Revolution or November

German Revolution
Revolution (German: Novemberrevolution)
was a civil conflict in the German Empire at the Part of the Revolutions of 1917–1923 and
end of the First World War that resulted in the Political violence in Germany (1918–33)
replacement of the German federal
constitutional monarchy with a democratic
parliamentary republic that later became
known as the Weimar Republic. The
revolutionary period lasted from November
1918 until the adoption of the Weimar
Constitution in August 1919. Among the factors
leading to the revolution were the extreme

burdens suffered by the German population
during the four years of war, the economic and
psychological impacts of the German Empire's
defeat by the Allies, and growing social tensions
between the general population and the Barricade during the Spartacist Uprising of 1919
aristocratic and bourgeois elite.
Date First stage:
The first acts of revolution were triggered by the 29 October – 9 November 1918
policies of the Supreme Command of the (1 week and 4 days)

German Army and its lack of coordination with Second stage:
the Naval Command. In the face of defeat, the

3 November 1918 – 11 August 1919
Naval Command insisted on trying to

(9 months and 1 week)
precipitate a climactic pitched battle with the
British Royal Navy by means of its naval order Location German Empire
of 24 October 1918, but the battle never took Result Weimar Republic victory:
place. Instead of obeying their orders to begin
preparations to fight the British, German Abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II
sailors led a revolt in the naval ports of Monarchy of Germany and its 22
Wilhelmshaven on 29 October 1918, followed constituent monarchies abolished
by the Kiel mutiny in the first days of
November. These disturbances spread the spirit Suppression of leftist uprisings,
of civil unrest across Germany and ultimately including Spartacist uprising
led to the proclamation of a republic to replace End of the First World War
the imperial monarchy on 9 November 1918, Establishment of the Weimar Republic
two days before Armistice Day. Shortly
thereafter, Emperor Wilhelm II fled the country Belligerents
and abdicated his throne.
1918:
Revolutionaries
The revolutionaries, inspired by liberalism and German Empire
socialist ideas, did not hand over power to SPD (Until 9 Nov. 1918)
Soviet-style councils as the Bolsheviks had done
in Russia, because the leadership of the Social USPD (From 9 Nov. 1918)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Revolution_of_1918–1919 1/29
Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) opposed 1918–1919:

Spartacus League
their creation. The SPD opted instead for a German Republic
national assembly that would form the basis for KPD
a parliamentary system of government.[1] Reichswehr
IKD
Fearing an all-out civil war in Germany Freikorps
Revolutionary Stewards
between militant workers and reactionary Der Stahlhelm
conservatives, the SPD did not plan to strip the FVdG
old German upper classes completely of their SPD
power and privileges. Instead, it sought to Supported by:
Soviet Republics:
peacefully integrate them into the new social France
democratic system. In this endeavour, SPD People's State of Bavaria
leftists sought an alliance with the German (Until March 1919)
Supreme Command. This allowed the army and Bavarian Soviet Republic
the Freikorps (nationalist militias) to act with
Bremen Soviet Republic
enough autonomy to quell the communist
Spartacist uprising of 4–15 January 1919 by Saxonian Soviet Republic
force. The same alliance of political forces Würzburg Soviet Republic
succeeded in suppressing leftist uprisings in
Alsace Soviet Republic
other parts of Germany, with the result that the
country was completely pacified by late 1919. Supported by:
Russian SFSR
The first elections for the new Constituent
Commanders and leaders
German National Assembly (popularly known
as the Weimar National Assembly) were held Emperor Wilhelm II Rosa Luxemburg
on 19 January 1919, and the revolution Ludwig III of Bavaria Karl Liebknecht
effectively ended on 11 August 1919, when the
Erich Ludendorff Kurt Eisner †
Constitution of the German Reich (Weimar
Constitution) was adopted. Wilhelm Groener Clara Zetkin
Franz von Hipper Paul Levi
Reinhard Scheer Franz Mehring #
Contents Leo Jogiches
Friedrich Ebert
SPD and the World War Wilhelm Pieck
Gustav Noske
SPD's split Ernst Toller
Philipp
Impact of the Russian Revolution Erich Mühsam
Scheidemann
Request for ceasefire and change of Richard Müller
Otto Wels
constitution Emil Barth
Waldemar Pabst
Third Wilson note and Ludendorff's Gustav Landauer
dismissal Matthias Erzberger
Eugen Leviné
Revolution Hugo Preuß
Karl Radek
Sailors' revolt Eugen Schiffer
Spread of revolution to the entire German Emil Eichhorn
Empire
Reactions in Berlin
Saturday, 9 November 1918: two
proclamations of a republic
Sunday, 10 November: revolutionary
councils elected, Armistice
Double rule
Stinnes–Legien Agreement
Interim government and council
movement
General Council Convention
Christmas crisis of 1918
Founding of the Communist Party and
the January Revolt of 1919
Murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg
Further revolts in tow of the revolution
National Assembly and New Imperial
Constitution
Aftermath
Impact on Weimar Republic
Contemporary statements
Historical research
See also
References
Further reading
External links
SPD and the World War

In the decade after 1900, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was the leading force in
Germany's labour movement. With 35% of the national votes and 110 seats in the Reichstag elected in
1912, the Social Democrats had grown into the largest political party in Germany. Party membership
was around one million, and the party newspaper (Vorwärts) attracted 1.5 million subscribers. The
trade unions had 2.5 million members, most of whom probably supported the Social Democrats. In
addition, there were numerous co-operative societies (for example, apartment co-ops and shop co-
ops) and other organizations either directly linked to the SPD and the labor unions or at least
adhering to Social Democratic ideology. Other notable parties in the Reichstag of 1912 were the
Catholic Centre Party (91 seats), the German Conservative Party (43), the National Liberal Party (45),
the Progressive People's Party (42), the Polish Party (18), the German Reich Party (14), the Economic
Union (10), and the Alsace-Lorraine Party (9).
At the congresses of the Second Socialist International beginning in 1889, the SPD had always agreed
to resolutions asking for combined action of Socialists in case of a war. Following the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the SPD, like other socialist parties in Europe, organised anti-
war demonstrations during the July Crisis. After Rosa Luxemburg called for disobedience and
rejection of war in the name of the entire party as a representative of the left wing of the party, the
Imperial government planned to arrest the party leaders immediately at the onset of war. Friedrich
Ebert, one of the two party leaders since 1913, travelled to Zürich with Otto Braun to save the party's
funds from being confiscated.
After Germany declared war on the Russian Empire on 1 August 1914, the majority of the SPD
newspapers shared the general enthusiasm for the war (the "Spirit of 1914"), particularly because they
viewed the Russian Empire as the most reactionary and anti-socialist power in Europe. In the first
days of August, the editors believed themselves to be in line with the late August Bebel, who had died
the previous year. In 1904, he declared in the Reichstag that the SPD would support an armed defence
of Germany against a foreign attack. In 1907, at a party convention in Essen, he even promised that he
himself would "shoulder the gun" if it was to fight against Russia, the "enemy of all culture and all the
suppressed".[2][3] In the face of the general enthusiasm for the war among the population, which
foresaw an attack by the Entente powers, many SPD deputies worried they might lose many of their
voters with their consistent pacifism. In addition, the government of Imperial Chancellor Theobald
von Bethmann-Hollweg threatened to outlaw all parties in case of war. On the other hand, the
chancellor exploited the anti-Russian stance of the SPD to procure the party's approval for the war.
The party leadership and the party's deputies were split on the issue of support for the war: 96
deputies, including Friedrich Ebert, approved the war bonds demanded by the Imperial government.
There were 14 deputies, headed by the second party leader, Hugo Haase, who spoke out against the
bonds, but nevertheless followed party voting instructions and raised their hands in favour.
Thus, the entire SPD faction in the Reichstag voted in favour of the war bonds on 4 August 1914. It
was with those decisions by the party and the unions that the full mobilisation of the German Army
became possible. Haase explained the decision against his will with the words: "We will not let the
fatherland alone in the hour of need!" The Emperor welcomed the so-called "truce" (Burgfrieden),
declaring: "Ich kenne keine Parteien mehr, ich kenne nur noch Deutsche!" ("I no longer see parties, I
see only Germans!").[4]
Even Karl Liebknecht, who became one of the most outspoken opponents of the war, initially followed
the line of the party that his father, Wilhelm Liebknecht, had cofounded: he abstained from voting
and did not defy his own political colleagues. However, a few days later he joined the Gruppe
Internationale (Group International) that Rosa Luxemburg had founded on 5 August 1914 with Franz
Mehring, Ernst Meyer, Wilhelm Pieck, and others from the left wing of the party, which adhered to
the prewar resolutions of the SPD. From that group emerged the Spartacus League (Spartakusbund)
on 1 January 1916.
On 2 December 1914, Liebknecht voted against further war bonds, the only deputy of any party in the
Reichstag to do so. Although he was not permitted to speak in the Reichstag to explain his vote, what
he had planned to say was made public through the circulation of a leaflet that was claimed to be
unlawful:
The present war was not willed by any of the nations participating in it and it is not waged
in the interest of the Germans or any other people. It is an imperialist war, a war for
capitalist control of the world market, for the political domination of huge territories and
to give scope to industrial and banking capital.
Because of high demand, this leaflet was soon printed and evolved into the so-called "Political Letters"
(German: Politische Briefe), collections of which were later published in defiance of the censorship
laws under the name "Spartacus Letters" (Spartakusbriefe). As of December 1916, these were
replaced by the journal Spartakus, which appeared irregularly until November 1918.
This open opposition against the party line put Liebknecht at odds with some party members around
Haase who were against the war bonds themselves. In February 1915, at the instigation of the SPD
party leadership, Liebknecht was conscripted for military service to dispose of him, the only SPD
deputy to be so treated. Because of his attempts to organise objectors against the war, he was expelled
from the SPD, and in June 1916, he was sentenced on a charge of high treason to four years in prison.
While Liebknecht was in the army, Rosa Luxemburg wrote most of the "Spartacus Letters". After
serving a prison sentence, she was put back in jail under "preventive detention" until the war ended.
SPD's split
As the war dragged on and the death tolls rose, more SPD members began to question the adherence
to the Burgfrieden (the truce in domestic politics) of 1914. The SPD also objected to the domestic
misery that followed the dismissal of Erich von Falkenhayn as Chief of the General Staff in 1916. His
replacement, Paul von Hindenburg, introduced the Hindenburg Programme by which the guidelines
of German policy were de facto set by the Supreme Army Command (German: Oberste
Heeresleitung), not the emperor and the chancellor. Hindenburg's subordinate, Erich Ludendorff,
took on broad responsibilities for directing wartime policies that were extensive. Although the
Emperor and Hindenburg were his nominal superiors, it was Ludendorff who made the important
decisions. Hindenburg and Ludendorff persisted with ruthless strategies aimed at achieving military
victory, pursued expansionist and aggressive war goals and subjugated civilian life to the needs of the
war and the war economy. For the labour force, that often meant 12-hour work days at minimal wages
with inadequate food. The Hilfsdienstgesetz (Auxiliary Service Law) forced all men not in the armed
forces to work.
After the outbreak of the Russian February Revolution in 1917, the first organised strikes erupted in
German armament factories in March and April, with about 300,000 workers going on strike. The
strike was organized by a group called the Revolutionary Stewards (Revolutionäre Obleute), led by
their spokesman Richard Müller. The group emerged from a network of left-wing unionists who
disagreed with the support of the war that came from the union leadership.[5] The American entry
into World War I on 6 April 1917 threatened further deterioration in Germany's military position.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff had called for an end to the moratorium on attacks on neutral shipping
in the Atlantic, which had been imposed when the Lusitania, a British ship carrying US citizens, was
sunk off Ireland in 1915. Their decision signaled a new strategy to stop the flow of US materiel to
France to make a German victory (or at least a peace settlement on German terms) possible before the
United States entered the war as a combatant. The emperor tried to appease the population in his
Easter address of 7 April by promising democratic elections in Prussia after the war, but lack of
progress in bringing the war to a satisfactory end dulled its effect. Opposition to the war among
munitions workers continued to rise, and what had been a united front in favour of the war split into
two sharply divided groups.[6]
After the SPD leadership under Friedrich Ebert excluded the opponents of the war from his party, the
Spartacists joined with so-called revisionists such as Eduard Bernstein and centrists such as Karl
Kautsky to found the fully anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) under
the leadership of Hugo Haase on 9 April 1917. The SPD was now known as the Majority Social
Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD) and continued to be led by Friedrich Ebert. The USPD
demanded an immediate end to the war and a further democratisation of Germany but did not have a
unified agenda for social policies. The Spartacist League, which until then had opposed a split of the
party, now made up the left wing of the USPD. Both the USPD and the Spartacists continued their
anti-war propaganda in factories, especially in the armament plants.
Impact of the Russian Revolution

After the February Revolution in Russia and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II on 15 March 1917, the
Russian Provisional Government, led by Alexander Kerensky as of 21 July 1917, continued the war on
the side of the Entente powers. Nevertheless, Russian society was severely strained by the opposing
motivations of patriotism and anti-war sentiment. There was sizable support for continuing the war to
defend Russia's honour and territory, but also a strong desire to remove Russia from the conflict and
let the other countries of Europe destroy one another without Russian involvement.
The German Imperial Government now saw one more chance for victory. To support the anti-war
sentiment in Russia and perhaps turn the tide in Russia toward a separate peace, it permitted the
leader of the Russian Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin, to pass in a sealed train wagon from his place of
exile in Switzerland through Germany, Sweden and Finland to Petrograd.[7] Since he had heard about
the February Revolution, Lenin had been scheming on how to get back into Russia, but no option
previously available to him proved successful.[7] Within months, Lenin led the October Revolution, in
which the Bolsheviks seized power from the moderates and withdrew Russia from the world war.
Leon Trotsky observed that the October Revolution could not have succeeded if Lenin had remained
stuck in Switzerland.[7]
Thus, the Imperial German government had an important influence in the creation of what would
become the Soviet Union by turning over Russia's socialist transformation decisively into the hands of
the Bolsheviks, whereas in February, it had been oriented toward parliamentary democracy.
In early and mid-1918, many people in both Russia and Germany expected that Russia would now
"return the favor" by helping to foster a communist revolution on German soil.[7] European
communists had long looked forward to a time when Germany, the homeland of Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, would undergo such a revolution. The success of the Russian proletariat and
peasantry in overthrowing their ruling classes raised fears among the German bourgeoisie that such a
revolution could take place in Germany as well. Furthermore, the proletarian internationalism of
Marx and Engels was still very influential in both Western Europe and Russia at the time, and Marx
and Engels had predicted that for a communist revolution to succeed in Russia, there would probably
need to be a Western European communist revolution earlier or at least simultaneously. Lenin had
high hopes for world revolution in 1917 and 1918.[7] The communism of Marx and Engels had had a
sizable following among German workers for decades, and there were quite a few German
revolutionaries eager to see revolutionary success in Russia and have help from Russian colleagues in
a German revolution.
The moderate SPD leadership noted that a determined and well-managed group of the Bolshevik type
might well try to seize power in Germany, quite possibly with Bolshevik help, and they moved their
behavior towards the left as the German Revolution approached. Otto Braun clarified the position of
his party in a leading article in Vorwärts under the title "The Bolsheviks and Us":
Socialism cannot be erected on bayonets and machine guns. If it is to last, it must be

realised with democratic means. Therefore of course it is a necessary prerequisite that the
economic and social conditions for socializing society are ripe. If this was the case in
Russia, the Bolsheviks no doubt could rely on the majority of the people. As this is not the
case, they established a reign of the sword that could not have been more brutal and
reckless under the disgraceful regime of the Tzar.... Therefore we must draw a thick,
visible dividing line between us and the Bolsheviks.[8]
In the same month in which Otto Braun's article appeared (October 1918), another series of strikes
swept through Germany with the participation of over 1 million workers. For the first time during
these strikes, the so-called Revolutionary Stewards took action. They were to play an important part
in further developments. They called themselves "Councils" (Räte) after the Russian "Soviets". To
weaken their influence, Ebert joined the Berlin strike leadership and achieved an early termination of
the strike.
On 3 March 1918, the newly established Soviet government agreed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
negotiated with the Germans by Leon Trotsky. The settlement arguably contained harsher terms for
the Russians than the later Treaty of Versailles would demand of the Germans. The Bolsheviks'
principal motivation for acceding to so many of Germany's demands was to stay in power at any cost
amid the backdrop of the Russian Civil War. Lenin and Trotsky also believed at the time that all of
Europe would soon see world revolution and proletarian internationalism, and bourgeois nationalistic
interests as a framework to judge the treaty would become irrelevant.
With Russia ommitted from the war, the German Supreme Command could now move part of the
eastern armies to the Western Front. Most Germans believed that victory in the west was now at
hand.
Request for ceasefire and change of constitution

After the victory in the east, the Supreme Army Command on 21 March 1918 launched its so-called
Spring Offensive in the west to turn the war decisively in Germany's favour, but by July 1918, their
last reserves were used up, and Germany's military defeat became certain. The Allied forces scored
numerous successive victories in the Hundred Days Offensive between August and November 1918
that yielded huge territorial gains at the expense of Germany. The arrival of large numbers of fresh
troops from the United States was a decisive factor.
In mid-September, the Balkan Front collapsed. The Kingdom of Bulgaria, an ally of the German
Empire and Austria-Hungary, capitulated on 27 September. The political collapse of Austria-Hungary
itself was now only a matter of days away.
On 29 September, the Supreme Army Command, at army headquarters in Spa, Belgium, informed
Emperor Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling that the military situation
was hopeless. Ludendorff said that he could not guarantee to hold the front for another 24 hours and
demanded a request to the Entente powers for an immediate ceasefire. In addition, he recommended
the acceptance of the main demand of Wilson to put the Imperial Government on a democratic
footing in hopes of more favourable peace terms. This enabled him to protect the reputation of the
Imperial Army and put the responsibility for the capitulation and its consequences squarely at the feet
of the democratic parties and the Reichstag.
As he said to his staff officers on 1 October: "They now must lie on the bed that they have made us."[9]
Thus, the so-called "stab-in-the-back legend" (German: Dolchstoßlegende) was born, according to
which the revolutionaries had attacked the undefeated army from the rear and turned an almost-
certain victory into a defeat.
In fact, the Imperial Government and the German Army shirked their responsibility for defeat from
the very beginning and tried to place the blame for it on the new democratic government. The
motivation behind it is verified by the following citation in the autobiography of Wilhelm Groener,
Ludendorff's successor:
It was just fine with me when Army and Army Command remained as guiltless as possible
in these wretched truce negotiations, from which nothing good could be expected.[10]
In nationalist circles, the myth fell on fertile ground. The nationalists soon defamed the
revolutionaries (and even politicians like Ebert who never wanted a revolution and did everything to
prevent it) as "November Criminals" (Novemberverbrecher). When Adolf Hitler planned his
attempted coup d'état of 1923 in collaboration with Ludendorff, the heavily symbolic date of 9
November (the anniversary of the proclamation of the republic he was trying to overthrow) was
chosen for its launch.
Although shocked by Ludendorff's report and the news of the defeat, the majority parties in the
Reichstag, especially the SPD, were willing to take on the responsibility of government at the eleventh
hour. As a convinced royalist, Hertling objected to handing over the reins to the Reichstag, thus
Emperor Wilhelm II appointed Prince Maximilian of Baden as the new Imperial Chancellor on 3
October. The prince was considered a liberal, but at the same time a representative of the royal family.
In his cabinet, Social Democrats dominated. The most prominent and highest-ranking one was
Philipp Scheidemann, as under-secretary without portfolio. The following day, the new government
offered to the Allies the truce that Ludendorff had demanded.
It was only on 5 October that the German public was informed of the dismal situation that it faced. In
the general state of shock about the defeat, which now had become obvious, the constitutional
changes, formally decided by the Reichstag on 28 October, went almost unnoticed. From then on, the
Imperial Chancellor and his ministers depended on the confidence of the parliamentary majority.
After the Supreme Command had passed from the emperor to the Imperial Government, the German
Empire changed from a constitutional to a parliamentary monarchy. As far as the Social Democrats
were concerned, the so-called October Constitution met all the important constitutional objectives of
the party. Ebert already regarded 5 October as the birthday of German democracy since the emperor
voluntarily ceded power and so he considered a revolution unnecessary.
Third Wilson note and Ludendorff's dismissal

In the following three weeks, American President Woodrow Wilson responded to the request for a
truce with three diplomatic notes. As a precondition for negotiations, he demanded the retreat of
Germany from all occupied territories, the cessation of submarine activities and (implicitly) the
emperor's abdication.[11] This last demand was intended to render the process of democratisation
irreversible.
After the third note of 24 October, General Ludendorff changed his mind and declared the conditions
of the Allies to be unacceptable. He now demanded the resumption of the war that he had declared
lost only one month earlier. While the request for a truce was being processed, the Allies came to
realise Germany's military weakness. The German troops had come to expect the war to end and were
anxious to return home. They were scarcely willing to fight more battles, and desertions were
increasing.
For the time being, the Imperial government stayed on course and replaced Ludendorff as First
General Quartermaster with General Groener. Ludendorff fled with false papers to neutral Sweden.
On 5 November, the Entente Powers agreed to take up negotiations for a truce, but after the third
note, many soldiers and the general population believed that the emperor had to abdicate to achieve
peace.
Revolution
Sailors' revolt
While the war-weary troops and general population of Germany

awaited the speedy end of the war, the Imperial Naval Command
in Kiel under Admiral Franz von Hipper and Admiral Reinhard
Scheer planned to dispatch the Imperial Fleet for a last battle
against the Royal Navy in the southern North Sea. The two
admirals sought to lead this military action on their own initiative,
without authorization.
The naval order of 24 October 1918[12] and the preparations to sail

Kiel mutiny: the soldiers' council of
Prinzregent Luitpold.
triggered a mutiny among the affected sailors. The revolt soon
precipitated a general revolution in Germany that would sweep
aside the monarchy within a few days. The mutinous sailors had
no intention of risking their lives so close to the end of the war. They were also convinced that the
credibility of the new democratic government, engaged as it was in seeking an armistice with the
victorious Entente, would have been compromised by a naval attack at such a crucial point in
negotiations.
The sailors' revolt started in the Schillig Roads off Wilhelmshaven, where the German fleet had
anchored in expectation of battle. During the night of 29–30 October 1918, some crews refused to
obey orders. Sailors on board three ships of the Third Navy Squadron refused to weigh anchor. Part of
the crew of SMS Thüringen and SMS Helgoland, two battleships of the I Battle Squadron, committed
outright mutiny and sabotage. However, when some torpedo boats directed their guns onto these
ships a day later, the mutineers gave up and were led away without any resistance. Nonetheless, the
Naval Command had to drop its plans for a naval engagement with British naval forces since it was
felt that the loyalty of the crews could not be relied upon any more. The III Battle Squadron was
ordered back to Kiel.
The squadron commander Vice-Admiral Kraft carried out a maneuver with his battleships in
Heligoland Bight. The maneuver was successful, and he believed that he had regained control of his
crews. While moving through the Kiel Canal, he had 47 of the crew of SMS Markgraf, who were seen
as the ringleaders, imprisoned. In Holtenau (the end of the canal in Kiel), they were taken to the
Arrestanstalt (military prison) in Kiel and to Fort Herwarth in the north of Kiel.
The sailors and stokers were now pulling out all the stops to prevent the fleet setting sail again and to
achieve the release of their comrades. Some 250 met in the evening of 1 November in the Union
House in Kiel. Delegations sent to their officers requesting the mutineers' release were not heard. The
sailors were now looking for closer ties to the unions, the USPD and the SPD. Then, the Union House
was closed by police, leading to an even larger joint open air meeting on 2 November. Led by the
sailor Karl Artelt, who worked in the torpedo workshop in Kiel-Friedrichsort, and by the mobilised
shipyard worker Lothar Popp, both USPD members, the sailors called for a mass meeting the
following day at the same place: the Großer Exerzierplatz (large drill ground).
This call was heeded by several thousand people on the afternoon of 3 November, with workers'
representatives also present. The slogan "Peace and Bread" (Frieden und Brot) was raised, showing
that the sailors and workers demanded not only the release of the prisoners but also the end of the
war and the improvement of food provisions. Eventually, the people supported Artelt's call to free the
prisoners, and they moved towards the military prison. Sub-Lieutenant Steinhäuser, in order to stop
the demonstrators, ordered his patrol to fire warning shots and then to shoot directly into the
demonstration; 7 people were killed and 29 severely injured. Some demonstrators also opened fire.
Steinhäuser himself was seriously injured by rifle-butt blows and shots, but contrary to later
statements, he was not killed.[13] After this eruption, the demonstrators and the patrol dispersed.
Nevertheless, the mass protest turned into a general revolt.
On the morning of 4 November, groups of mutineers moved through the town of Kiel. Sailors in a
large barracks compound in a northern district mutinied: after a divisional inspection by the
commander, spontaneous demonstrations took place. Karl Artelt organised the first soldiers' council
and soon many more were set up. The governor of the naval station, Wilhelm Souchon, was compelled
to negotiate.
The imprisoned sailors and stokers were freed, and soldiers and workers brought public and military
institutions under their control. In breach of Souchon's promise, separate troops advanced to end the
rebellion but were intercepted by the mutineers and sent back or decided to join the sailors and
workers. By the evening of 4 November, Kiel was firmly in the hands of about 40,000 rebellious
sailors, soldiers and workers, as was Wilhelmshaven two days later.
On the same evening, the SPD deputy Gustav Noske arrived in Kiel and was welcomed
enthusiastically, but he had orders from the new government and the SPD leadership to bring the
uprising under control. He had himself elected chairman of the soldiers' council and reinstated peace
and order. Some days later he took over the governor's post, and Lothar Popp of the USPD became
chairman of the overall soldiers' council.
During the following weeks, Noske succeeded in reducing the influence of the councils in Kiel, but he
could not prevent the spread of the revolution throughout Germany. The events had already spread
far beyond Kiel.
Spread of revolution to the entire German Empire
Around 4 November, delegations of the sailors dispersed to all of the major cities in Germany. By 7
November, the revolution had seized all large coastal cities as well as Hanover, Brunswick, Frankfurt
on Main, and Munich. In Munich, a "Workers' and Soldiers' Council" forced the last King of Bavaria,
Ludwig III, to issue the Anif declaration. Bavaria was the first member state of the German Empire to
be declared a Volksstaat, the People's State of Bavaria, by Kurt Eisner of the USPD who asserted that
Ludwig III had abdicated his throne via the Anif declaration. In the following days, the dynastic rulers
of all the other German states abdicated; by the end of the month, all 22 German monarchs had been
dethroned.
The Workers' and Soldiers' Councils were almost entirely made up of MSPD and USPD members.
Their program was democracy, pacifism and anti-militarism. Apart from the dynastic families, they
deprived only the military commands of their power and privilege. The duties of the imperial civilian
administration and office bearers such as police, municipal administrations and courts were not
curtailed or interfered with. There were hardly any confiscations of property or occupation of
factories, because such measures were expected from the new government. In order to create an
executive committed to the revolution and to the future of the new government, the councils for the
moment claimed only to take over the supervision of the administration from the military commands.
Thus, the MSPD was able to establish a firm base on the local level. But while the councils believed
they were acting in the interest of the new order, the party leaders of the MSPD regarded them as
disturbing elements for a peaceful changeover of power that they imagined already to have taken
place. Along with the middle-class parties, they demanded speedy elections for a national assembly
that would make the final decision on the constitution of the new state. This soon brought the MSPD
into opposition with many of the revolutionaries. It was especially the USPD that took over their
demands, one of which was to delay elections as long as possible to try to achieve a fait accompli that
met the expectations of a large part of the workforce.
Notably, revolutionary sentiment did not affect the eastern lands of the Empire to any considerable
extent, apart from isolated instances of agitation in Breslau and Königsberg. But interethnic
discontent among Germans and minority Poles in the eastern extremities of Silesia, long suppressed
in Wilhelmine Germany, would eventually lead to the Silesian Uprisings.
Reactions in Berlin
Ebert agreed with Prince Maximilian that a social revolution must be prevented and that state order
must be upheld at all costs. In the restructuring of the state, Ebert wanted to win over the middle-
class parties that had already cooperated with the SPD in the Reichstag in 1917, as well as the old
elites of the German Empire. He wanted to avoid the spectre of radicalisation of the revolution along
Russian lines and he also worried that the precarious supply situation could collapse, leading to the
takeover of the administration by inexperienced revolutionaries. He was certain that the SPD would
be able to implement its reform plans in the future due to its parliamentary majorities.
Ebert did his best to act in agreement with the old powers and intended to save the monarchy. In
order to demonstrate some success to his followers, he demanded the abdication of the emperor as of
6 November. But Wilhelm II, still in his headquarters in Spa, was playing for time. After the Entente
had agreed to truce negotiations on that day, he hoped to return to Germany at the head of the army
and to quell the revolution by force.
According to notes taken by Prince Maximilian, Ebert declared on 7 November, "If the Kaiser does not
abdicate, the social revolution is unavoidable. But I do not want it, indeed I hate it like sin." (Wenn
der Kaiser nicht abdankt, dann ist die soziale Revolution unvermeidlich. Ich aber will sie nicht, ja,
ich hasse sie wie die Sünde.)[14] The chancellor planned to travel to Spa and convince the emperor
personally of the necessity to abdicate. But this plan was overtaken by the rapidly deteriorating
situation in Berlin.
Saturday, 9 November 1918: two proclamations of a republic
In order to remain master of the situation, Friedrich Ebert demanded the chancellorship for himself
on the afternoon of 9 November, the day of the emperor's abdication.
The news of the abdication came too late to make any impression on the demonstrators. Nobody
heeded the public appeals. More and more demonstrators demanded the total abolition of the
monarchy. Karl Liebknecht, just released from prison, had returned to Berlin and re-founded the
Spartacist League the previous day. At lunch in the Reichstag, the SPD deputy chairman Philipp
Scheidemann learned that Liebknecht planned the proclamation of a socialist republic. Scheidemann
did not want to leave the initiative to the Spartacists and without further ado, he stepped out onto a
balcony of the Reichstag. From there, he proclaimed a republic before a mass of demonstrating people
on his own authority (against Ebert's expressed will). A few hours later, the Berlin newspapers
reported that in the Berlin Lustgarten – at probably around the same time – Liebknecht had
proclaimed a socialist republic, which he affirmed from a balcony of the Berlin City Palace to an
assembled crowd at around 4 pm.
At that time, Karl Liebknecht's intentions were little known to the public. The Spartacist League's
demands of 7 October for a far-reaching restructuring of the economy, the army and the judiciary –
among other things by abolishing the death penalty – had not yet been publicised. The biggest bone of
contention with the SPD was to be the Spartacists' demand for the establishment of "unalterable
political facts" on the ground by social and other measures before the election of a constituent
assembly, while the SPD wanted to leave the decision on the future economic system to the assembly.
Ebert was faced with a dilemma. The first proclamation he had

issued on 9 November was addressed "to the citizens of Germany".
Ebert wanted to take the sting out of the revolutionary mood and
to meet the demands of the demonstrators for the unity of the
labour parties. He offered the USPD participation in the
government and was ready to accept Liebknecht as a minister.
Liebknecht in turn demanded the control of the workers' councils
over the army. As USPD chairman Hugo Haase was in Kiel and
the deliberations went on. The USPD deputies were unable to
reach a decision that day.
Neither the early announcement of the emperor's abdication,

Ebert's assumption of the chancellorship, nor Scheidemann's
proclamation of the republic were covered by the constitution.
These were all revolutionary actions by protagonists who did not Crowds outside the Reichstag on 9
want a revolution, but nevertheless took action. However, a real November as the creation of the
revolutionary action took place the same evening that would later republic was announced.
prove to have been in vain.
Around 8 pm, a group of 100 Revolutionary Stewards from the larger Berlin factories occupied the
Reichstag. Led by their spokesmen Richard Müller and Emil Barth, they formed a revolutionary
parliament. Most of the participating stewards had already been leaders during the strikes earlier in
the year. They did not trust the SPD leadership and had planned a coup for 11 November
independently of the sailors' revolt, but were surprised by the revolutionary events since Kiel. In order
to snatch the initiative from Ebert, they now decided to announce elections for the following day. On
that Sunday, every Berlin factory and every regiment was to elect workers' and soldiers' councils that
were then in turn to elect a revolutionary government from members of the two labour parties (SPD
and USPD). This Council of the People's Deputies (Rat der Volksbeauftragten) was to execute the
resolutions of the revolutionary parliament as the revolutionaries intended to replace Ebert's function
as chancellor and president.
[15]
Sunday, 10 November: revolutionary councils elected, Armistice
The same evening, the SPD leadership heard of these plans. As the elections and the councils' meeting
could not be prevented, Ebert sent speakers to all Berlin regiments and into the factories in the same
night and early the following morning. They were to influence the elections in his favour and
announce the intended participation of the USPD in the government.
In turn, these activities did not escape the attention of

Richard Müller and the revolutionary shop
stewards.[16] Seeing that Ebert would also be running
the new government, they planned to propose to the
assembly not only the election of a government, but
also the appointment of an Action Committee. This
committee was to co-ordinate the activities of the
Workers' and Soldiers' Councils. For this election, the
Stewards had already prepared a list of names on
which the SPD was not represented. In this manner,
they hoped to install a monitoring body acceptable to
them watching the government.
In the assembly that convened on 10 November in the

Circus Busch, the majority stood on the side of the
SPD: almost all Soldiers' Councils and a large part of
the workers representatives. They repeated the
demand for the "Unity of the Working Class" that had
been put forward by the revolutionaries the previous
day and now used this motto in order to push through
Ebert's line. As planned, three members of each
"Berlin seized by revolutionists": The New York
socialist party were elected into the "Council of
Times on Armistice Day, 11 November 1918.
People's Representatives": from the USPD, their
chairman Hugo Haase, the deputy Wilhelm Dittmann
and Emil Barth for the Revolutionary Stewards; from
the SPD Ebert, Scheidemann and the Magdeburg deputy Otto Landsberg.
The proposal by the shop stewards to elect an action committee additionally took the SPD leadership
by surprise and started heated debates. Ebert finally succeeded in having this 24-member "Executive
Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils" equally filled with SPD and USPD members. The
Executive Council was chaired by Richard Müller and Brutus Molkenbuhr.
On the evening of 10 November, there was a phone call between Ebert and General Wilhelm Groener,
the new First General Quartermaster in Spa, Belgium. Assuring Ebert of the support of the army, the
general was given Ebert's promise to reinstate the military hierarchy and, with the help of the army, to
take action against the councils.
In the turmoil of this day, the Ebert government's acceptance of the harsh terms of the Entente for a
truce, after a renewed demand by the Supreme Command, went almost unnoticed. On 11 November,
the Centre Party deputy Matthias Erzberger, on behalf of Berlin, signed the armistice agreement in
Compiègne, France, and World War I came to an end.
Double rule
Although Ebert had saved the decisive role of the SPD, he was not happy with the results. He did not
regard the Council Parliament and the Executive Council as helpful, but only as obstacles impeding a
smooth transition from empire to a new system of government. The whole SPD leadership mistrusted
the councils rather than the old elites in army and administration, and they considerably
overestimated the old elite's loyalty to the new republic. What troubled Ebert most was that he could
not now act as chancellor in front of the councils, but only as chairman of a revolutionary
government. Though he had taken the lead of the revolution only to halt it, conservatives saw him as a
traitor.
In theory, the Executive Council was the highest-ranking council of the revolutionary regime and
therefore Müller the head of state of the new declared "Socialist Republic of Germany". But in
practice, the council's initiative was blocked by internal power struggles. The Executive Council
decided to summon an "Imperial Council Convention" in December to Berlin. In the eight weeks of
double rule of councils and imperial government, the latter always was dominant. Although Haase
was formally a chairman in the council with equal rights, the whole higher level administration
reported only to Ebert.
The SPD worried that the revolution would end in a Council (Soviet) Republic, following the Russian
example. However, the secret Ebert-Groener pact did not win over the Imperial Officer Corps for the
republic. As Ebert's behaviour became increasingly puzzling to the revolutionary workers, the soldiers
and their stewards, the SPD leadership lost more and more of their supporters' confidence, without
gaining any sympathies from the opponents of the revolution on the right.
Stinnes–Legien Agreement
The revolutionaries disagreed among themselves about the future economic and political system.
Both SPD and USPD favoured placing at least heavy industry under democratic control. The left wings
of both parties and the Revolutionary Stewards wanted to go beyond that and establish a "direct
democracy" in the production sector, with elected delegates controlling the political power. It was not
only in the interest of the SPD to prevent a Council Democracy; even the unions would have been
rendered superfluous by the councils.
To prevent this development, the union leaders under Carl Legien and the representatives of big
industry under Hugo Stinnes and Carl Friedrich von Siemens met in Berlin from 9 to 12 November.
On 15 November, they signed an agreement with advantages for both sides: the union representatives
promised to guarantee orderly production, to end wildcat strikes, to drive back the influence of the
councils and to prevent a nationalisation of means of production. For their part, the employers
guaranteed to introduce the eight-hour day, which the workers had demanded in vain for years. The
employers agreed to the union claim of sole representation and to the lasting recognition of the
unions instead of the councils. Both parties formed a "Central Committee for the Maintenance of the
Economy" (Zentralausschuss für die Aufrechterhaltung der Wirtschaft).
An "Arbitration Committee" (Schlichtungsausschuss) was to mediate future conflicts between

employers and unions. From now on, committees together with the management were to monitor the
wage settlements in every factory with more than 50 employees.
With this arrangement, the unions had achieved one of their longtime demands, but undermined all
efforts for nationalising means of production and largely eliminated the councils.
Interim government and council movement
The Reichstag had not been summoned since 9 November. The Council of the People's Deputies and
the Executive Council had replaced the old government, but the previous administrative machinery
remained unchanged. Imperial servants had only representatives of SPD and USPD assigned to them.
These servants all kept their positions and continued to do their work in most respects unchanged.
On 12 November, the Council of People's Representatives published its democratic and social
government programme. It lifted the state of siege and censorship, abolished the "Gesindeordnung"
("servant rules" that governed relations between servant and master) and introduced universal
suffrage from 20 years up, for the first time for women. There was an amnesty for all political
prisoners. Regulations for the freedom of association, assembly and press were enacted. The eight-
hour day became statutory on the basis of the Stinnes–Legien Agreement, and benefits for
unemployment, social insurance, and workers' compensation were expanded.
At the insistence of USPD representatives, the Council of People's Representatives appointed a

"Nationalisation Committee" including Karl Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding and Otto Hue, among others.
This committee was to examine which industries were "fit" for nationalisation and to prepare the
nationalisation of the coal and steel industry. It sat until 7 April 1919, without any tangible result.
"Self-Administration Bodies" were installed only in coal and potash mining and in the steel industry.
From these bodies emerged the modern German Works or Factory Committees. Socialist
expropriations were not initiated.
The SPD leadership worked with the old administration rather

than with the new Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, because it
considered them incapable of properly supplying the needs of the
population. As of mid-November, this caused continuing strife
with the Executive Council. As the Council continuously changed
its position following whoever it just happened to represent, Ebert
withdrew more and more responsibilities planning to end the
"meddling and interfering" of the Councils in Germany for good.
But Ebert and the SPD leadership by far overestimated the power Proclamation of the Bremen
not only of the Council Movement but also of the Spartacist revolutionary republic, outside the
League. The Spartacist League, for example, never had control town hall, on 15 November 1918.
over the Council Movement as the conservatives and parts of the
SPD believed.
In Leipzig, Hamburg, Bremen, Chemnitz, and Gotha, the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils took the city
administrations under their control. In addition, in Brunswick, Düsseldorf, Mülheim/Ruhr, and
Zwickau, all civil servants loyal to the emperor were arrested. In Hamburg and Bremen, "Red Guards"
were formed that were to protect the revolution. The councils deposed the management of the Leuna
works, a giant chemical factory near Merseburg. The new councils were often appointed
spontaneously and arbitrarily and had no management experience whatsoever. But a majority of
councils came to arrangements with the old administrations and saw to it that law and order were
quickly restored. For example, Max Weber was part of the workers' council of Heidelberg, and was
pleasantly surprised that most members were moderate German liberals. The councils took over the
distribution of food, the police force, and the accommodation and provisions of the front-line soldiers
that were gradually returning home.
Former imperial administrators and the councils depended on each other: the former had the
knowledge and experience, the latter had political clout. In most cases, SPD members had been
elected into the councils who regarded their job as an interim solution. For them, as well as for the
majority of the German population in 1918–19, the introduction of a Council Republic was never an
issue, but they were not even given a chance to think about it. Many wanted to support the new
government and expected it to abolish militarism and the authoritarian state. Being weary of the war
and hoping for a peaceful solution, they partially overestimated the revolutionary achievements.
General Council Convention
As decided by the executive committee, the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils in the whole empire sent
deputies to Berlin, who were to convene on 16 December in the Circus Busch for the "First General
Convention of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils" (Erster Allgemeiner Kongress der Arbeiter- und
Soldatenräte). On 15 December, Ebert and General Groener had troops ordered to Berlin to prevent
this convention and to regain control of the capital. On 16 December, one of the regiments intended
for this plan advanced too early. In an attempt to arrest the Executive Council, the soldiers opened
fire on a demonstration of unarmed "Red Guards", representatives of Soldiers' Councils affiliated with
the Spartacists; 16 people were killed.
With this, the potential for violence and the danger of a coup from the right became visible. In
response to the incident, Rosa Luxemburg demanded the peaceful disarmament of the homecoming
military units by the Berlin workforce in the daily newspaper of the Spartacist League Red Flag (Rote
Fahne) of 12 December. She wanted the Soldiers' Councils to be subordinated to the Revolutionary
Parliament and the soldiers to become "re-educated".
On 10 December, Ebert welcomed ten divisions returning from the front hoping to use them against
the councils. As it turned out, these troops also were not willing to go on fighting. The war was over,
Christmas was at the door and most of the soldiers just wanted to go home to their families. Shortly
after their arrival in Berlin, they dispersed. The blow against the Convention of Councils did not take
place.
This blow would have been unnecessary anyway, because the convention that took up its work 16
December in the Prussian House of Representatives consisted mainly of SPD followers. Not even Karl
Liebknecht had managed to get a seat. The Spartacist League was not granted any influence. On 19
December, the councils voted 344 to 98 against the creation of a council system as a basis for a new
constitution. Instead, they supported the government's decision to call for elections for a constituent
national assembly as soon as possible. This assembly was to decide upon the state system.
The convention disagreed with Ebert only on the issue of control of the army. The convention was
demanding a say for the Central Council that it would elect, in the supreme command of the army, the
free election of officers and the disciplinary powers for the Soldiers' Councils. That would have been
contrary to the agreement between Ebert and General Groener. They both spared no effort to undo
this decision. The Supreme Command (which in the meantime had moved from Spa to Kassel), began
to raise loyal volunteer corps (the Freikorps) against the supposed Bolshevik menace. Unlike the
revolutionary soldiers of November, these troops were monarchist-minded officers and men who
feared the return into civil life.
Christmas crisis of 1918
After 9 November, the government ordered the newly created People's Navy Division
(Volksmarinedivision) from Kiel to Berlin for its protection and stationed it in the Royal Stables
(Neuer Marstell) across from the Berlin City Palace (Berlin Schloss or Berlin Stadtschloss). The
division was considered absolutely loyal and had indeed refused to participate in the coup attempt of
6 December. The sailors even deposed their commander because they saw him as involved in the
affair. It was this loyalty that now gave them the reputation of being in favor of the Spartacists. Ebert
demanded their disbanding and Otto Wels, as of 9 November the Commander of Berlin and in line
with Ebert, refused the sailors' pay.
The dispute escalated on 23 December. After

having been put off for days, the sailors occupied
the Imperial Chancellery itself, cut the phone lines,
put the Council of People's Representatives under
house arrest and captured Otto Wels. The sailors
did not exploit the situation to eliminate the Ebert
government, as would have been expected from
Spartacist revolutionaries. Instead, they just
insisted on their pay. Nevertheless, Ebert, who was
in touch with the Supreme Command in Kassel via
a secret phone line, gave orders to attack the
Residence with troops loyal to the government on
the morning of 24 December. The sailors repelled Leftist soldiers during Christmas fighting in the
the attack under their commander Heinrich Pfeilersaal of the Berlin City Palace
Dorrenbach, losing about 30 men and civilians in
the fight. The government troops had to withdraw
from the center of Berlin. They themselves were now disbanded and integrated into the newly formed
Freikorps. To make up for their humiliating withdrawal, they temporarily occupied the editor's offices
of the Red Flag. But military power in Berlin once more was in the hands of the People's Navy
Division. Again, the sailors did not take advantage of the situation.
On one side, this restraint demonstrates that the sailors were not Spartacists, on the other that the
revolution had no guidance. Even if Liebknecht had been a revolutionary leader like Lenin, to which
legend later made him, the sailors as well as the councils would not have accepted him as such. Thus
the only result of the Christmas Crisis, which the Spartacists named "Ebert's Bloody Christmas", was
that the Revolutionary Stewards called for a demonstration on Christmas Day and the USPD left the
government in protest on 29 December. They could not have done Ebert a bigger favor, since he had
let them participate only under the pressure of revolutionary events. Within a few days, the military
defeat of the Ebert government had turned into a political victory.
Founding of the Communist Party and the January Revolt of 1919
After their experiences with the SPD and the USPD, the
Spartacists concluded that their goals could be met only by
forming a party of their own, thus they joined with other left-
socialist groups from the whole of Germany to found the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD).[17]
Rosa Luxemburg drew up her founding programme and presented

it on 31 December 1918. In this programme, she pointed out that
the communists could never take power without the clear will of The occupation of the Silesian
the people in the majority. On 1 January, she demanded that the railway station in Berlin by
KPD participate in the planned nationwide German elections, but government troops, 1919
was outvoted. The majority still hoped to gain power by continued
agitation in the factories and from "pressure from the streets".
After deliberations with the Spartacists, the Revolutionary Stewards decided to remain in the USPD.
This was a first defeat.
The decisive defeat of the left occurred in the first days of the new year in 1919. As in the previous
November,, a second revolutionary wave developed, but in this case, it was violently suppressed. The
wave was started on 4 January, when the government dismissed the chief constable of Berlin, Emil
Eichhorn. The latter was a member of the USPD who had refused to act against the demonstrating
workers in the Christmas Crisis. This action resulted in the USPD, Revolutionary Stewards and the
KPD chairmen Karl Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck to call for a demonstration to take place on the
following day.
To the surprise of the initiators, the demonstration turned into an assembly of huge masses. On
Sunday, 5 January, as on 9 November 1918, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the centre
of Berlin, many of them armed. In the afternoon, the train stations and the newspaper district with
the offices of the middle-class press and Vorwärts were occupied. Some of the middle-class papers in
the previous days had called not only for the raising of more Freikorps, but also for the murder of the
Spartacists.
The demonstrators were mainly the same ones who participated in

the disturbances two months previously. They now demanded the
fulfillment of the hopes expressed in November. The Spartacists
by no means had a leading position. The demands came straight
from the workforce supported by various groups left of the SPD.
The so-called "Spartacist Uprising" that followed originated only
partially in the KPD. KPD members were even a minority among
the insurgents.
Spartacist militia in Berlin The initiators assembled at the Police Headquarters elected a 53-
member "Interim Revolutionary Committee" (Provisorischer
Revolutionsausschuss) that failed to make use of its power and
was unable to give any clear direction. Liebknecht demanded the overthrow of the government and
agreed with the majority of the committee that propagated the armed struggle. Rosa Luxemburg as
well as the majority of KPD leaders thought a revolt at this moment to be a catastrophe and spoke out
against it.
On the following day, 6 January, the Revolutionary Committee

again called for a mass demonstration. This time, even more
people heeded the call. Again they carried placards and banners
that proclaimed, "Brothers, don't shoot!" and remained waiting on
an assembly square. A part of the Revolutionary Stewards armed
themselves and called for the overthrow of the Ebert government.
But the KPD activists mostly failed in their endeavour to win over
the troops. It turned out that even units such as the People's Navy
A British Mark IV tank, captured
Division were not willing to support the armed revolt and declared during World War I, in use by
themselves neutral. The other regiments stationed in Berlin German government troops. Berlin,
mostly remained loyal to the government. January 1919
While more troops were moving into Berlin on Ebert's order, he

accepted an offer by the USPD to mediate between him and the
Revolutionary Committee. After the advance of the troops into the city became known, an SPD leaflet
appeared saying, "The hour of reckoning is nigh". With this, the Committee broke off further
negotiations on 8 January. That was opportunity enough for Ebert to use the troops stationed in
Berlin against the occupiers. Beginning 9 January, they violently quelled an improvised revolt. In
addition to that, on 12 January, the anti-republican Freikorps, which had been raised more or less as
death squads since the beginning of December, moved into Berlin. Gustav Noske, who had been
People's Representative for Army and Navy for a few days, accepted the premium command of these
troops by saying, "If you like, someone has to be the bloodhound. I won't shy away from the
responsibility."[18]
The Freikorps brutally cleared several buildings and executed the occupiers on the spot. Others soon
surrendered, but some of them were still shot. The January revolt claimed 156 lives in Berlin.
Murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
The alleged ringleaders of the January Revolt had to go into hiding. In spite of the urgings of their
allies, they refused to leave Berlin. On the evening of 15 January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl
Liebknecht were discovered in an apartment of the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. They were
immediately arrested and handed over to the largest Freikorps, the heavily armed Garde-Kavallerie-
Schützen-Division. Their commander, Captain Waldemar Pabst, had them questioned. That same
night both prisoners were beaten unconscious with rifle butts and shot in the head. Rosa Luxemburg's
body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal that ran through Berlin, where it was found only on 1 July.
Karl Liebknecht's body, without a name, was delivered to a morgue.
The perpetrators for the most part went unpunished. The Nazi Party later compensated the few that
had been tried or even jailed, and they merged the Gardekavallerie into the SA (Sturmabteilung). In
an interview given to "Der Spiegel" in 1962 and in his memoirs, Pabst maintained that he had talked
on the phone with Noske in the Chancellery,[19] and that Noske and Ebert had approved of his
actions. Pabst's statement was never confirmed, especially since neither the Reichstag nor the courts
ever examined the case.
After the murders of 15 January, the political differences between the SPD and KPD grew even more
irreconcilable. In the following years, both parties were unable to agree on joint action against the
Nazi Party, which dramatically grew in strength as of 1930.
Further revolts in tow of the revolution
In the first months of 1919, there were further armed revolts all
over Germany. In some states, Councils Republics were
proclaimed, most prominently in Bavaria (the Munich Soviet
Republic), even if only temporarily.
These revolts were triggered by Noske's decision at the end of

February to take armed action against the Bremen Soviet
Republic. In spite of an offer to negotiate, he ordered his Dead revolutionaries after summary
Freikorps units to invade the city. Approximately 400 people were execution in March 1919
killed in the ensuing fights.
This caused an eruption of mass strikes in the Ruhr District, the Rhineland and in Saxony. Members
of the USPD, the KPD and even the SPD called for a general strike that started on 4 March. Against
the will of the strike leadership, the strikes escalated into street fighting in Berlin. The Prussian state
government, which in the meantime had declared a state of siege, called the imperial government for
help. Again Noske employed the Gardekavallerie-Schützendivision, commanded by Pabst, against the
strikers in Berlin. By the end of the fighting on 16 March, they had killed approximately 1,200 people,
many of them unarmed and uninvolved. Among others, 29 members of the Peoples Navy Division,
who had surrendered, were summarily executed, since Noske had ordered that anybody found armed
should be shot on the spot.
The situation in Hamburg and Thuringia also was very much like a civil war. The council government
to hold out the longest was the Munich Soviet Republic. It was only on 2 May that Prussian and
Freikorps units from Württemberg toppled it by using the same violent methods as in Berlin and
Bremen.
According to the predominant opinion of modern historians,[20] the establishment of a Bolshevik-

style council government in Germany on 9–10 November 1918 was impossible. Yet the Ebert
government felt threatened by a coup from the left, and was certainly undermined by the Spartakus
movement; thus it co-operated with the Supreme Command and the Freikorps. The brutal actions of
the Freikorps during the various revolts estranged many left democrats from the SPD. They regarded
the behavior of Ebert, Noske and the other SPD leaders during the revolution as an outright betrayal
of their own followers.
National Assembly and New Imperial Constitution
On 19 January 1919, a Constituent National Assembly (Verfassungsgebende Nationalversammlung)

was elected. Aside from SPD and USPD, the Catholic Centre Party took part, and so did several
middle-class parties that had established themselves since November: the left-liberal German
Democratic Party (DDP), the national-liberal German People's Party (DVP) and the conservative,
nationalist German National People's Party (DNVP). In spite of Rosa Luxemburg's recommendation,
the KPD did not participate in these elections.
With 37.4% of the vote, the SPD became the strongest party in the Reichstag and secured 165 out of
423 deputies. The USPD received only 7.6% of the vote and sent 22 deputies into the parliament. The
popularity of the USPD temporarily rose one more time after the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in 1920, but
the party dissolved in 1922. The Centre Party was runner-up to the SPD with 91 deputies, the DDP
had 75, the DVP 19 and the DNVP 44. As a result of the elections, the SPD formed the so-called
Weimar Coalition with the Centre Party and the DDP. To get away from the post-revolutionary
confusion in Berlin, the National Assembly met on 6 February in the town of Weimar, Thuringia,
some 250 km to the southwest of Berlin, where Friedrich Ebert was elected temporary Reich
President on 11 February. Philipp Scheidemann was elected as Prime Minister (Ministerpräsident) of
the newly formed coalition on 13 February. Ebert was then constitutionally sworn in as Reich
President (Reichspräsident) on 21 August 1919.
On the one hand, the Weimar Constitution offered more possibilities for a direct democracy than the
present Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, for example by setting up a mechanism for
referenda. On the other hand, Article 48 granted the president the authority to rule against the
majority in the Reichstag, with the help of the army if need be. In 1932–33, Article 48 was
instrumental in destroying German democracy.[21]
Aftermath
From 1920 to 1923, nationalist forces continued fighting against the Weimar Republic and left-wing
political opponents. In 1920, the German government was briefly overthrown in a coup organized by
Wolfgang Kapp (the Kapp Putsch), and a nationalist government was briefly in power. Mass public
demonstrations soon forced this regime out of power. In 1921 and 1922, Matthias Erzberger and
Walter Rathenau were shot by members of the ultra-nationalist Organisation Consul. The newly
formed Nazi Party, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler and supported by former German army chief
Erich Ludendorff, engaged in political violence against the government and left-wing political forces
as well. In 1923, in what is now known as the Beer Hall Putsch, the Nazis took control of parts of
Munich, arrested the president of Bavaria, the chief of police, and others and forced them to sign an
agreement in which they endorsed the Nazi takeover and its objective to overthrow the German
government. The putsch came to an end when the German army and police were called in to put it
down, resulting in an armed confrontation in which a number of Nazis and some police were killed.
The Weimar Republic was always under great pressure from both left-wing and right-wing extremists.
The left-wing extremists accused the ruling Social Democrats of having betrayed the ideals of the
workers' movement by preventing a communist revolution and unleashing the Freikorps upon the
workers. Right-wing extremists were opposed to any democratic system, preferring instead an
authoritarian state similar to the Empire founded in 1871. To further undermine the Republic's
credibility, right-wing extremists (especially certain members of the former officer corps) used the
Dolchstoßlegende to blame an alleged conspiracy of Socialists and Jews for Germany's defeat in
World War I, largely drawing fuel from the fact that eight out of the ten leaders of the communist
revolution were Jewish. Both sides were determined to bring down the Weimar Republic. In the end,
the right-wing extremists were successful, and the Weimar Republic came to an end with the ascent of
Hitler and the National Socialist Party.
Impact on Weimar Republic

The Revolution of 1918/19 is one of the most important events in the modern history of Germany, yet
it is poorly embedded in the historical memory of Germans. The failure of the Weimar Republic that
this revolution brought into being and the Nazi era that followed it obstructed the view of these events
for a long time. To this very day, the interpretation of these events has been determined more by
legends than by facts.
Both the radical right and the radical left – under different circumstances – nurtured the idea that a
Communist uprising was aiming to establish a Soviet Republic following the Russian example. The
democratic centre parties, especially the SPD, were also barely interested in assessing the events
which turned Germany into a Republic fairly. At closer look, these events turned out to be a revolution
supported by the Social Democrats and stopped by their party leadership. These processes helped to
weaken the Weimar Republic from its very beginning.
After the imperial government and the Supreme Command shirked their responsibilities for the war
and the defeat at an early stage, the majority parties of the Reichstag were left to cope with the
resulting burdens. In his autobiography, Ludendorff's successor Groener states, "It suited me just
fine, when the army and the Supreme Command remained as guiltless as possible in these wretched
truce negotiations, from which nothing good could be expected".[10]
Thus, the "Myth of the Stab in the Back" was born, according to which the revolutionaries stabbed the
army, "undefeated on the field", in the back and only then turned the almost secure victory into a
defeat. It was mainly Ludendorff who contributed to the spread of this falsification of history to
conceal his own role in the defeat. In nationalistic and national minded circles, the myth fell on fertile
ground. They soon defamed the revolutionaries and even politicians like Ebert, who never wanted the
revolution and had done everything to channel and contain it, as "November Criminals"
(Novemberverbrecher). In 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff deliberately chose symbolic 9 November as
the date of their attempted "Beer Hall Putsch".
From its very beginning, the Weimar Republic was afflicted with the stigma of the military defeat. A
large part of the bourgeoisie and the old elites from big industry, landowners, military, judiciary and
administration never accepted the democratic republic and hoped to get rid of it at the first
opportunity. On the left, the actions of the SPD Leadership during the revolution drove many of its
former adherents to the Communists. The contained revolution gave birth to a "democracy without
democrats".[22]
Contemporary statements
Depending on their political standpoint of view, contemporaries had greatly differing opinions about
the revolution.
Ernst Troeltsch, a Protestant theologian and philosopher, rather calmly remarked how the majority of
Berlin citizens perceived 10 November:
On Sunday morning after a frightful night the morning newspapers gave a clear picture:
the Kaiser in Holland, the revolution victorious in most urban centres, the royals in the
states abdicating. No man dead for Kaiser and Empire! The continuation of duties ensured
and no run on the banks! (...) Trams and subways ran as usual which is a pledge that basic
needs are cared for. On all faces it could be read: Wages will continue to be paid.[23]
The liberal publicist Theodor Wolff wrote on the very day of 10 November in the newspaper Berliner
Tageblatt, lending himself to far too optimistic illusions, which the SPD leadership also might have
had:
Like a sudden storm, the biggest of all revolutions has toppled the imperial regime
including everything that belonged to it. It can be called the greatest of all revolutions
because never has a more firmly built (...) fortress been taken in this manner at the first
attempt. Only one week ago, there was still a military and civil administration so deeply
rooted that it seemed to have secured its dominion beyond the change of times. (...) Only
yesterday morning, at least in Berlin, all this still existed. Yesterday afternoon it was all
gone.[24]
The extreme right had a completely opposite perception. On 10 November, conservative journalist
Paul Baecker wrote an article in Deutsche Tageszeitung which already contained essential elements of
the Stab-in-the-back myth:
The work fought for by our fathers with their precious blood – dismissed by betrayal in the
ranks of our own people! Germany, yesterday still undefeated, left to the mercy of our
enemies by men carrying the German name, by felony out of our own ranks broken down
in guilt and shame.
The German Socialists knew that peace was at hand anyway and that it was only about
holding out against the enemy for a few days or weeks in order to wrest bearable
conditions from them. In this situation they raised the white flag.
This is a sin that can never be forgiven and never will be forgiven. This is treason not only
against the monarchy and the army but also against the German people themselves who
will have to bear the consequences in centuries of decline and of misery.[25]
In an article on the 10th anniversary of the revolution the publicist Kurt Tucholsky remarked that
neither Wolff nor Baecker were right. Nevertheless, Tucholsky accused Ebert and Noske of betrayal,
not of the monarchy but of the revolution. Although he wanted to regard it as only a coup d'état, he
analysed the actual course of events more clearly than most of his contemporaries. In 1928 he wrote
in "November Coup":
The German Revolution of 1918 took place in a hall.
The things taking place were not a revolution. There was no spiritual preparation, no
leaders ready in the dark; no revolutionary goals. The mother of this revolution was the
soldiers' longing to be home for Christmas. And weariness, disgust and weariness.
The possibilities that nevertheless were lying in the streets were betrayed by Ebert and his
like. Fritz* Ebert, whom you cannot heighten to a personality by calling him Friedrich
opposed the establishment of a republic only until he found there was a post of chairman
to be had; comrade Scheidemann è tutti quanti all were would-be senior civil servants. (*
Fritz is the colloquial term for Friedrich like Willy – William)
The following possibilities were left out: shattering federal states, division of landed
property, revolutionary socialization of industry, reform of administrative and judiciary
personnel. A republican constitution in which every sentence rescinds the next one, a
revolution talking about well acquired rights of the old regime can be only laughed at.
The German Revolution is still to take place.[26]
Walter Rathenau was of a similar opinion. He called the revolution a "disappointment", a "present by
chance", a "product of desperation", a "revolution by mistake". It did not deserve the name because it
did "not abolish the actual mistakes" but "degenerated into a degrading clash of interests".
Not a chain was broken by the swelling of spirit and will, but a lock merely rusted through.
The chain fell off and the freed stood amazed, helpless, embarrassed and needed to arm
against their will. The ones sensing their advantage were the quickest.[27]
The historian and publicist Sebastian Haffner in turn came out against Tucholsky and Rathenau. He
lived through the revolution in Berlin as a child and wrote 50 years later in his book about one of the
myths related to the events of November 1918 that had taken root especially in the bourgeoisie:
It is often said that a true revolution in Germany in 1918 never took place. All that really
happened was a breakdown. It was only the temporary weakness of the police and army in
the moment of military defeat which let a mutiny of sailors appear as a revolution.
At first sight, one can see how wrong and blind this is comparing 1918 with 1945. In 1945
there really was a breakdown.
Certainly a mutiny of sailors started the revolution in 1918 but it was only a start. What
made it extraordinary is that a mere sailors' mutiny triggered an earthquake which shook
all of Germany; that the whole home army, the whole urban workforce and in Bavaria a
part of the rural population rose up in revolt. This revolt was not just a mutiny anymore, it
was a true revolution....
As in any revolution, the old order was replaced by the beginnings of a new one. It was not
only destructive but also creative....
As a revolutionary achievement of masses the German November 1918 does not need to
take second place to either the French July 1789 or the Russian March 1917.[28]
Historical research
During the Nazi regime, works on the Weimar Republic and the German Revolution published abroad
and by exiles in the 1930s and 1940s could not be read in Germany. Around 1935, that affected the
first published history of the Weimar Republic by Arthur Rosenberg. In his view the political situation
at the beginning of the revolution was open: the moderate socialist and democratic-oriented work
force indeed had a chance to become the actual social foundation of the republic and to drive back the
conservative forces. It failed because of the wrong decisions of the SPD leadership and because of the
revolutionary tactics employed by the extreme left wing of the work force.
After 1945 West German historical research on the Weimar Republic concentrated most of all on its
decline. In 1951, Theodor Eschenburg mostly ignored the revolutionary beginning of the republic. In
1955, Karl Dietrich Bracher also dealt with the German Revolution from the perspective of the failed
republic. Erich Eyck shows how little the revolution after 1945 was regarded as part of German
history. His two-volume History of the Weimar Republic gave barely 20 pages to these events. The
same can be said for Karl Dietrich Erdmann's contribution to the 8th edition of the Gebhardt
Handbook for German History (Gebhardtsches Handbuch zur Deutschen Geschichte), whose
viewpoint dominated the interpretation of events related to the German Revolution after 1945.
According to Erdmann, 1918/19 was about the choice between "social revolution in line with forces
demanding a proletarian dictatorship and parliamentary republic in line with the conservative
elements like the German officer corps".[29] As most Social Democrats were forced to join up with the
old elites to prevent an imminent council dictatorship, the blame for the failure of the Weimar
Republic was to be put on the extreme left, and the events of 1918/19 were successful defensive
actions of democracy against Bolshevism.
This interpretation at the height of the Cold War was based on the assumption that the extreme left
was comparably strong and a real threat to the democratic development. In this point, West German
researchers ironically found themselves in line with Marxist historiography in the German
Democratic Republic (GDR), which attributed considerable revolutionary potential most of all to the
Spartacists.[30]
While in the postwar years the majority SPD (MSPD) was cleared of its Nazi odium as "November
Criminals", GDR historians blamed the SPD for "betrayal of the working class" and the USPD
leadership for their incompetence. Their interpretation was mainly based on the 1958 theories of the
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany according to which the German
Revolution was defined as a "bourgeois-democratic revolution", led in certain aspects by proletarian
means and methods. The fact that a revolution by the working class in Germany never happened
could be put down to the "subjective factor", especially the absence of a "Marxist-Leninist offensive
party". Contrary to the official party line, Rudolf Lindau supported the theory that the German
Revolution had a Socialist tendency.
Consistently, the founding of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) was declared to be the decisive
turning point in German history, but in spite of ideological bias, historical research in the GDR
expanded detailed knowledge of the German Revolution.[31]
During the 1950s, West German historians focused their research on the final stages of the Weimar
Republic. In the 1960s, they shifted to its revolutionary beginnings, realising that the decisions and
developments during the revolution were central to the failure of the first German Republic. The
workers' and soldiers' councils especially moved into focus, and their previous appearance as a far-left
movement had to be revised extensively. Authors like Ulrich Kluge, Eberhard Kolb and Reinhard
Rürup argued that in the first weeks of the revolution the social base for a democratic redesign of
society was much stronger than previously thought and that the potential of the extreme left was
actually weaker than the MSPD's leadership, for example, assumed.
As "Bolshevism" posed no real threat, the scope of action for the Council of the People's Deputies (also
supported by the more reform-oriented councils) to democratise the administration, military and
society had been relatively large, but the MSPD's leadership did not take that step because it trusted
in the loyalty of the old elites and mistrusted the spontaneous mass movements in the first weeks of
the revolution. The result was the resignation and radicalisation of the council movement. The
theories have been supported by the publications of the minutes of the Council of the People's
Deputies. Increasingly, the history of the German Revolution appeared as the history of its gradual
reversal.
This new interpretation of the German Revolution gained acceptance in research rather quickly even
though older perceptions remained alive. Research concerning the composition of the Worker's and
Soldier's Councils which today can be easily verified by sources is undisputed to a large extent, but the
interpretation of the revolutionary events based on this research has been already criticised and
partially modified since the end of the 1970s. Criticism was aimed at the partially idealised description
of the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils which especially was the case in the wake of the German
Student Movement of the 1960s (1968). Peter von Oertzen went particularly far in this respect
describing a social democracy based on councils as a positive alternative to the bourgeois republic. In
comparison, Wolfgang J. Mommsen did not regard the councils as a homogeneous focused movement
for democracy but as a heterogeneous group with a multitude of different motivations and goals. Jesse
and Köhler even talked about the "construct of a democratic council movement". Certainly, the
authors also excluded a "relapse to the positions of the 1950s: "The councils were neither communist
oriented to a large extent nor can the policies of the majority SPD in every aspect be labelled
fortuitous and worth praising."[32]
Heinrich August Winkler tried to find a compromise, according to which the Social Democrats
depended to a limited extent on cooperation with the old elites but went considerably too far: "With
more political willpower they could have changed more and preserved less."[33]
With all the differences concerning details, historical researchers agree that in the German
Revolution, the chances to put the republic on a firm footing were considerably better than the
dangers coming from the extreme left. Instead, the alliance of the SPD with the old elites constituted a
considerable structural problem for the Weimar Republic.[34]
See also
Finnish Civil War
Greater Poland Uprising (1918–1919)
Hungarian Soviet Republic
Luxemburgism
Silesian Uprisings
Revolutions of 1917–23
References
1. Ralf Hoffrogge, Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution. Richard Müller, the
Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement, Brill Publications 2014,
ISBN 978-90-04-21921-2, pp. 93–100.
2. Ullrich, Die nervöse Großmacht p. 446
3. Scharrer, Manfred. "Das patriotische Bekenntnis" (http://geschichte.verdi.de/jahrestage_gedenkta
ge/1._august_1914_beginn_des_ersten_weltkriegs/manfred_scharrer_august_1914_-_patriotism
us_und_internationalismus/#das_patriotische_bekenntnis). ver.di (in German).
4. Sebastian Haffner, Der Verrat p. 12
ISBN 978-90-04-21921-2, pp. 35–61.
6. Winkler, Der lange Weg nach Westen, Beck Verlag Munich, 2000, p. 362
7. Volkogonov, Dmitri (1994). Lenin: A New Biography (https://archive.org/details/leninnewbiograph0
0volk). ISBN 978-0-02-933435-5.
8. Schulze, Weimar. Germany 1917–1933, p. 158
9. Haffner, Der Verrat p. 32f.
10. Schulze, Weimar. Deutschland 1917–1933 p. 149
11. Tucker, Spencer (2014). World War I: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection.
Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. p. 2069. ISBN 978-1-85109-964-1.
12. "1918 German sailors begin to mutiny" (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/german-sailors-
begin-to-mutiny). history.com. Retrieved 17 July 2018.
13. See Hauptkrankenbuch Festungslazarett Kiel, Nr. 15918, Krankenbuchlager Berlin, zit. bei Dirk,
Dähnhardt, Revolution in Kiel. p. 66.
14. v. Baden: Erinnerungen und Dokumente p. 599 f.
pp. 61–79.
16. See: Ralf Hoffrogge, From Unionism to Workers' Councils – The Revolutionary Shop Stewards in
Germany 1914–1918, in: Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini(Eds): Ours to Master and to Own:
Worker's Control from the Commune to the Present, Chicago 2011
17. Winkler, Weimar p. 55 f.
18. Winkler, Weimar p. 58
19. Der Spiegel of 18.04.1962
20. Schulze, Weimar. Deutschland 1917–1933 S. 169 u. 170
21. Mosler: Die Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs vom 11. August 1919
22. Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken
23. Haffner, Der Verrat p. 85
26. Kurt Tucholsky: Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works), Vol. 6, p. 300
27. Sösemann, Demokratie im Widerstreit, p.13
28. Haffner, Der Verrat p. 193 f.
29. Kluge, Deutsche Revolution 1918/19, p. 15
30. On East German historiography of the German Revolution see Mario Keßler: Die
Novemberrevolution in der Geschichtswissenschaft der DDR – Die Kontroversen des Jahres 1958
und ihre Folgen im internationalen Kontext, in: Jahrbuch für Forschungen zur Geschichte der
Arbeiterbewegung, No. III/2008.
31. Eberhard Kolb: Die Weimarer Republik. Wien, 1984. p. 154f
32. Kolb, op. cit. p. 160f
33. Kolb, op. cit. p. 161
34. Kolb, op.cit. pp. 143–162; Kluge, Deutsche Revolution pp. 10–38
Further reading
English language literature:
Mark Jones: Founding Weimar. Violence and the German Revolution of 1918–19, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 2016, ISBN 9-781-107-11512-5
Broue, Pierre (2006). The German Revolution 1917–1923 (https://books.google.com/books?id=ia
gWb0Pc2PgC). translated by John Archer. Chicago: Haymarket Books. ISBN 1-931859-32-9.
Chris Harman The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918–1923 (https://archive.org/details/lostrevolution
ge0000harm). Bookmarks. 1982. ISBN 0-906224-08-X.
Coper, Rudolf (1955). Failure of a Revolution Germany in 1918–1919. Cambridge University
Press.
Paul Frolich: Rosa Luxemburg – Her Life and Work, Hesperides Press, ISBN 1-4067-9808-8
Ralf Hoffrogge: Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution, Richard Müller, the
Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement, Brill Publishers, Leiden
2014, ISBN 978-90-04-21921-2.
Ralf Hoffrogge: From Unionism to Workers' Councils – The Revolutionary Shop Stewards in
Germany 1914–1918, in: Immanuel Ness, Dario Azzellini (Ed): Ours to Master and to Own:
Worker's Control from the Commune to the Present, Haymarket Books Chicago 2011.
Lutz, Ralph Haswell (1922). The German Revolution, 1918-1919 (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=ebU4AQAAMAAJ).
Watt, Richard M. (1968). The King's Depart (https://books.google.com/books?id=_3YZuwEACAA
J). ISBN 1-84212-658-X.
German language literature:
Max von Baden: Erinnerungen und Dokumente, Berlin u. Leipzig 1927

Eduard Bernstein: Die deutsche Revolution von 1918/19. Geschichte der Entstehung und ersten
Arbeitsperiode der deutschen Republik. Herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Heinrich August
Winkler und annotiert von Teresa Löwe. Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-8012-0272-0
Pierre Broué: Die Deutsche Revolution 1918–1923, in: Aufstand der Vernunft Nr. 3. Hrsg.: Der
Funke e.V., Eigenverlag, Wien 2005
Bernt Engelmann: Wir Untertanen und Eining gegen Recht und Freiheit – Ein Deutsches Anti-
Geschichtsbuch. Frankfurt 1982 und 1981, ISBN 3-596-21680-X, ISBN 3-596-21838-1
Sebastian Haffner: Die deutsche Revolution 1918/1919 – wie war es wirklich? Ein Beitrag zur
deutschen Geschichte München 1979 (ISBN 3-499-61622-X); also published under the titles Die
verratene Revolution – Deutschland 1918/19 (1969), 1918/1919 – eine deutsche Revolution
(1981, 1986, 1988), Der Verrat. Deutschland 1918/19 (1993, 2002), Der Verrat. 1918/1919 – als
Deutschland wurde, wie es ist (1994, 1995), Die deutsche Revolution – 1918/19 (2002, 2004,
2008)
Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich and Irina Renz, 1918. Die Deutschen zwischen Weltkrieg und
Revolution. Chr. Links Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86153-990-2.
Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED (Hg.): Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen
Novemberrevolution 1918/1919. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1978.
Mark Jones: Am Anfang war Gewalt. Die deutsche Revolution 1918/19 und der Beginn der
Weimarer Republik, Propyläen, Berlin 2017, ISBN 9-783-549-07487-9
Wilhelm Keil: Erlebnisse eines Sozialdemokraten. Zweiter Band, Stuttgart 1948
Harry Graf Kessler: Tagebücher 1918 bis 1937. Frankfurt am Main 1982
Ulrich Kluge: Soldatenräte und Revolution. Studien zur Militärpolitik in Deutschland 1918/19.
Göttingen 1975, ISBN 3-525-35965-9
Ulrich Kluge: Die deutsche Revolution 1918/1919. Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-11262-7
Eberhard Kolb: Die Weimarer Republik. München 2002, ISBN 3-486-49796-0
Ottokar Luban: Die ratlose Rosa. Die KPD-Führung im Berliner Januaraufstand 1919. Legende
und Wirklichkeit. Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-87975-960-X
Erich Matthias (Hrsg.): Die Regierung der Volksbeauftragten 1918/19. 2 Bände, Düsseldorf 1969
(Quellenedition)
Wolfgang Michalka u. Gottfried Niedhart (Hg.): Deutsche Geschichte 1918–1933. Dokumente zur
Innen- und Außenpolitik, Frankfurt am Main 1992 ISBN 3-596-11250-8
Hans Mommsen: Die verspielte Freiheit. Der Weg der Republik von Weimar in den Untergang
1918 bis 1933. Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-548-33141-6
Hermann Mosler: Die Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs vom 11. August 1919, Stuttgart 1988
ISBN 3-15-006051-6
Carl von Ossietzky: Ein Lesebuch für unsere Zeit. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin-Weimar 1989
Detlev J.K. Peukert: Die Weimarer Republik. Krisenjahre der klassischen Moderne. Frankfurt am
Main 1987, ISBN 3-518-11282-1
Gerhard A. Ritter/Susanne Miller (editors/compilers): Die deutsche Revolution 1918–1919.
Dokumente. 2nd edition substantially extended and reworked, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-
596-24300-9
Arthur Rosenberg: Geschichte der Weimarer Republik. Frankfurt am Main 1961 (Erstausgabe:
Karlsbad 1935), ISBN 3-434-00003-8 [zeitgenössische Deutung]
Hagen Schulze: Weimar. Deutschland 1917–1933, Berlin 1982
Bernd Sösemann: Demokratie im Widerstreit. Die Weimarer Republik im Urteil der Zeitgenossen.
Stuttgart 1993
Kurt Sontheimer: Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik. Die politischen Ideen
des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933, München 1962
Volker Ullrich: Die nervöse Großmacht. Aufstieg und Untergang des deutschen Kaisserreichs
1871–1918, Frankfurt am Main 1997 ISBN 3-10-086001-2
Richard Wiegand: "Wer hat uns verraten ..." – Die Sozialdemokratie in der Novemberrevolution.
New edition: Ahriman-Verlag, Freiburg i.Br 2001, ISBN 3-89484-812-X
Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. München 1993
External links
Gallus, Alexander: Revolutions (Germany) (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/revol
utions_germany), in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War (https://
encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/home.html).
Tunstall, Graydon A.: The Military Collapse of the Central Powers (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918
-online.net/article/the_military_collapse_of_the_central_powers), in: 1914-1918-online.
International Encyclopedia of the First World War (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/hom
e.html).
Weinhauer, Klaus: Labour Movements and Strikes, Social Conflict and Control, Protest and
Repression (Germany) (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/labour_movements_and
_strikes_social_conflict_and_control_protest_and_repression_germany), in: 1914-1918-online.
International Encyclopedia of the First World War (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/hom
e.html).
Jones, Mark: Kiel Mutiny (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/kiel_mutiny), in: 1914-
1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-o
nline.net/home.html).
An overview of the German Revolution (https://web.archive.org/web/20080705200236/http://mars.
wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/germany/lectures/18rev1918.html) by Gerhard Rempel of Western
New England College
Library of materials on the German Revolution (https://www.marxists.org/subject/germany-1918-2
3/) at marxists.org
Archive of texts on the German Revolution (http://libcom.org/tags/german-revolution-1918) at
libcom.org
Homepage from Kiel (http://www.kurkuhl.de/en/novrev/novrev_intro.html) Interview with one of the
leaders of the mutiny in Kiel: Lothar Popp; CV of Lothar Popp; interviews with other contemporary
witnesses; evaluations; time-line
Bernhard Grau, Revolution, 1918/1919 (https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/EN:
Revolution,_1918/1919), published 9 May 2008, English version published 4 March 2020 ; in:
Historisches Lexikon Bayerns
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12/30/21, 5:23 PM German Revolution of 1918–1919 - Wikipedia

German Revolution of 1918–1919

The German Revolution or November

leading to the revolution were the extreme

policies of the Supreme Command of the (1 week and 4 days)

the Naval Command. In the face of defeat, the

Naval Command insisted on trying to

Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) opposed 1918–1919:

SPD and the World War

Impact of the Russian Revolution

Socialism cannot be erected on bayonets and machine guns. If it is to last, it must be

Request for ceasefire and change of constitution

Third Wilson note and Ludendorff's dismissal

While the war-weary troops and general population of Germany

The naval order of 24 October 1918[12] and the preparations to sail

Spread of revolution to the entire German Empire

Saturday, 9 November 1918: two proclamations of a republic

Ebert was faced with a dilemma. The first proclamation he had

Neither the early announcement of the emperor's abdication,

Sunday, 10 November: revolutionary councils elected, Armistice

In turn, these activities did not escape the attention of

In the assembly that convened on 10 November in the

An "Arbitration Committee" (Schlichtungsausschuss) was to mediate future conflicts between

Interim government and council movement

At the insistence of USPD representatives, the Council of People's Representatives appointed a

The SPD leadership worked with the old administration rather

General Council Convention

Christmas crisis of 1918

The dispute escalated on 23 December. After

Founding of the Communist Party and the January Revolt of 1919

Rosa Luxemburg drew up her founding programme and presented

The demonstrators were mainly the same ones who participated in

On the following day, 6 January, the Revolutionary Committee

While more troops were moving into Berlin on Ebert's order, he

Murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

Further revolts in tow of the revolution

These revolts were triggered by Noske's decision at the end of

According to the predominant opinion of modern historians,[20] the establishment of a Bolshevik-

National Assembly and New Imperial Constitution

On 19 January 1919, a Constituent National Assembly (Verfassungsgebende Nationalversammlung)

Impact on Weimar Republic

The German Revolution of 1918 took place in a hall.

The German Revolution is still to take place.[26]

only destructive but also creative....

German language literature:

Max von Baden: Erinnerungen und Dokumente, Berlin u. Leipzig 1927

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