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"Many ascribe Germany's capitulation to the threat of riots/revolution inside Germany"
They weren't just threats and they weren't happening in a void disconnected from military realities. The most important riots/revolts took place in the naval shipyards of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, in support of the mutiny of the Imperial Fleet anchored there. On the 29th of October, 1918 men and officers of the Kaiser's Navy in Wilhelmshaven refused an order to set sail from their harbor for a final (for them) battle with the British Navy. In the first week of November this mutiny had spread to Kiel as well. There, with the striking workers and the sailors linked up, simple refusal to go became open revolt, with the Red Flag raised over the Kaiser's warships. Other support trades in these ports went on strike in solidarity with the sailors and then promptly declared a revolt, replacing the presence of the Imperial government with Workers and Soldiers Councils, first in Kiel then elsewhere. They wanted an end to the war, an absurd demand if the war's end was already all but accomplished. The revolts spread quickly to other ports of northern Germany, Lubeck, Bremen, and Hamburg. The revolt spread as strikes, riots, and Workers' Councils from the northern ports and reached southwards all over Germany; but it started as a disobeyed order on a ship.
Before the mutiny the writing was on the wall for Germany to be sure--they were definitely going to lose the war; but the war was still in France. Before it swept into Germany wreaking total devastation on German civilian life, as would happen at the end of WW2, German sailors, soldiers and workers simply came to their senses and realized that they had no interest in continuing any actions that helped the war continue another day. They could stop the disaster before the worst of it reached their homes and families, simply by refusing to participate any more. In the face of this the old political order of Germany withered and blew away practically overnight. The King of Bavaria Ludwig III, fled the country, as did many other princes and dukes. The Kaisar abdicated. These revolts happened not because German forces were beaten militarily (though it was known that this would occur), but in order to end the war and rebel against the authority of the elites who had started it and refused to quit.
If there is a signal event that prompted the German capitulation, the mutiny of the Imperial Navy that began in the last days of October 1918, is it.
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