History of Europe

The November Revolution of 1918 and its consequences for Germany

The year 1918 is considered to be one of the really great times in recent history. The course for the modern world was set in this very year, when the First World War, often referred to as the "primal catastrophe of the 20th century", came to an end. In Europe, the world of great empires perished with him. The German Empire, the Habsburg monarchy, the Russian Tsarist Empire... Suddenly they were all gone. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the USA is slowly becoming the new great power. Europe and its new nation states, on the other hand, got into conflicts again after only a few years, which would soon lead to the Second World War.

However, what is lost in this familiar and quick perspective are the smaller developments and the individual players who drove all these major changes in the first place. It is precisely this that I would like to take a closer look at today, using Germany as an example. In this country, too, the monarchy did not simply end overnight and then happily merged into the Weimar Republic. And after all, everything could have turned out differently... If it hadn't been for the November Revolution of 1918, the consequences of which we are still feeling in many ways today.

The Kiel Sailors' Rebellion

If you want to take a closer look at what exactly the November Revolution was like, you first have to imagine the state in which Germany was in November 1918. The situation was sad. After the summer at the latest, it was clear to most of them that the German Reich could no longer win the World War. The ally Bulgaria was already out, the remaining partners Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire weren't exactly at the height of their power either and, oh yes... the German western front had just been breached! This, coupled with the ubiquitous hunger that people in Germany have been suffering from for four years now, caused a tense mood as early as late summer. For weeks there have been repeated demonstrations and strikes throughout Germany. The last straw, however, was a fleet order from the Supreme Naval Command.

At the end of October, this naval command decided to carry out a final attack on the British fleet. The war may have been lost anyway, but at least one could go down with honor - the leadership may have thought so and meant it quite literally. The affected sailors in Wilhelmshaven were naturally less enthusiastic about this idea and many then also refused to weigh anchor. At some point the management realized that the attack would not take place like this and ordered the fleet back to Kiel, where some spokesmen for the sailors were arrested immediately after arrival. That was finally too much of a good thing. The sailors began to revolt, quickly joined by Kiel workers and socialist parties, and after just a few days Kiel was under the control of the demonstrators, who were now openly demanding the fall of the Kaiser.

But the events in Kiel were far from the end of the story. This first major revolt against Germany's ruling system was just the spark that would blow up the rest of the country in no time. After November 4th, when Kiel was finally in the hands of the demonstrators, the revolution spread across the whole country. The procedure was pretty much the same everywhere. The existing imperial bureaucracy was sawed off (or at least stone-cold ignored). Workers' and soldiers' councils were then elected in their place to take over the administration. All this was no longer a rebellion for an end to the war or for the Kaiser to abdicate. The step towards a socialist revolution was not a big one at this point, as Russia had shown just a year earlier.

The old order is history. And now?

It was barely three days after that until the first German prince had to give up his hat. But the place is a bit surprising. Ironically, in Munich, the Wittelsbach King Ludwig III. fleeing the revolutionary masses on November 7, while the Bavarian Free State was being proclaimed in its magnificent capital. I talk about this part of the November Revolution, its causes and its course in detail in this week's podcast episode. Another two days passed and the revolution also reached the capital Berlin. Two politicians even set about proclaiming a German republic there, one the social democrat Philipp Scheidemann and one the communist Karl Liebknecht. As a result, the government was taken over by Friedrich Ebert, the chairman of the SPD, who was to remain president until 1925. On the other hand, after the proclamation of the republic, Kaiser Wilhelm fled honorably as always from the headquarters of the army general staff in Belgium to the Netherlands, where he would die more than twenty years later.

At this point you might think that things would have gone quite well. The emperor was de facto deposed less than a week after the success of the Kiel sailors' uprising, as were the other federal princes, there was a new SPD government in Berlin and Germany was now a republic. But things weren't that simple. Because it wasn't the case that the SPD and Ebert led the November Revolution alone. There were other players within the left camp, all of whom were now fighting for influence. Obviously there was also this Karl Liebknecht, to whom we shall speak later. Another group were the Independent Social Democrats, the USPD, which now became part of Ebert's government. In contrast to the so-called “Majority Social Democrats” in the SPD (the allusion to Bolsheviks and Mensheviks may not have been entirely coincidental), this party was far less inclined towards a parliamentary republic and wanted to see a form of government based on the new councils. A real soviet republic like in Russia. Or at least that's what people thought back then.

But the Left would not be the Left if there hadn't been splits from the splits as well. And so, of course, there were still groups to the left of the USPD that sought their influence in this November revolution. The most important of them were the so-called Spartacists under Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who would later be merged into the newly founded KPD. In contrast to the USPD, this "Spartacus League" was clearly located in the revolutionary-Marxist camp, was no longer connected to the parliamentary idea in any way and wanted to see the state and capitalism as a whole overcome. You can imagine how great it was to work with them.

The November Revolution after November

The name November Revolution is a bit misleading in that sense. Because in November 1918 the matter in Germany was far from over. On the contrary! The struggles over the future form and appearance of the German state dragged on well into 1919. Disagreements between the various left parties remained a constant source of friction during this period. And also on the bourgeois-conservative side, the first parties were soon founded again, which again had a completely different state in mind. However, after the armistice in the First World War came into force on November 11 and the Kaiser resigned on November 28, there was a little silence at first. Relatively at least.

Of course, this silence would not last long. After bloody riots around the Christmas holidays, the situation heated up again at the beginning of January. In early January, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators appeared for days in central Berlin in a general strike, an event later recorded in history as the "Spartacus Uprising," though the Spartacus League's involvement in all of this may have been minimal. The demonstrators came from all corners of the left camp and, with the best will in the world, did not agree on all the detailed questions that they were chanting. Nonetheless, this strike and the huge crowd behind it openly questioned the course of the November Revolution. The general strike dragged on for a whole week. Ultimately, like all other attempts to build a more left-leaning republic, he was unsuccessful.

A less than revolutionary ending for such a revolution

In this so-called Spartacus uprising, something finally became apparent that would shape the future of the November Revolution and the German Republic for the entire interwar period:the SPD wanted to prevent a communist-dominated Soviet Republic at all costs and was also willing to work with counter-revolutionary forces. The general strike in Berlin was ultimately brutally crushed by the government. And of all things in cooperation with the Supreme Army Command, an ultra-conservative holdover from the imperial era, and mostly right-wing Freikorps. As a result, both Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered under dubious circumstances. It later turned out that both the SPD leadership and the army command were in fact involved.

In other parts of Germany, the November Revolution took a very similar course. At the end of January, an attempted Soviet Republic was violently suppressed in Bremen, followed in April by the bloody struggle against the Munich Soviet Republic, which was also brought to an end at the beginning of May with the help of the Freikorps. After free elections were held for the first time in mid-January (in which, by the way, women were also entitled to vote for the first time), Friedrich Ebert was now officially President of the Reich. However, he ruled in a coalition with bourgeois parties, a constant that remained constant throughout the Weimar period. This government also passed the Weimar Constitution in August 1919, turning Germany into a democratic republic. Nothing more was heard from the councils and the left camp remained fragmented for all eternity. We also know how the story went on.

As already mentioned, in the podcast episode for this episode you can now learn more about the events in Munich and Bavaria, where the November Revolution first claimed the throne of a king and where another high point was reached with the Soviet Republic in April. The dear colleagues from the Zeitsprung podcast also dedicated this week to the November revolution. That's what you get when you orientate yourself on such obvious anniversaries. Nevertheless, I can only recommend the episode there to you! If you want to hear more stories, I recommend this one at the end
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