The spontaneous failure of Germany’s November 1918 revolution

[struggle4progress]

Although the Great War was not fought in Germany, the war had significant effects there.

The economic situation inside the country deteriorated, and an increasing number of Germans required food aid simply to survive: a quarter of a million died of hunger in 1917. In Berlin and other cities in January 1918, a million workers held a general strike, demanding that food issues be addressed and an end to the war be negotiated. The government broke the strike with martial law: over a hundred thousand strikers were arrested and sent as soldiers to the front.

German losses of battlefield position and troops continued throughout the summer. By September 1918, the Kaiser’s armies, having suffered significant losses at the end of the summer, were vastly out-numbered by Allied troops in Europe, and the Austrians began exploring possibilities for an armistice. At the end of September, the military informed the Kaiser that the war was unwinnable, and Germany itself proposed an armistice in early October.

In late October, sailors began to mutiny near Wilhelmshaven; in very early November, Kiel openly revolted, forming a council of under the slogan “Bread and Peace.” The Kiel revolt immediately inspired widespread action across Germany: Germans and returning soldiers took over local government, exercising political and law enforcement powers. Berlin fell to the uprising a few days later, and the Kaiser abdicated a few days afterwards.

The Armistice signed not long after the Kaiser fled. A rightwing attempt to re-seize Berlin failed in early December. A leftwing attempt at more thorough revolution was crushed by rightwing troops in January. The first President of the Weimar Republic was elected in February. A separate Bavarian Republic was declared in April but that rebellion was quickly put down by the Weimar government with the aid of the rightwing Freikorps. The army refused to act against a rightwing putsch in March 1920, and the Republic survived only as a result of a general strike. This inspired further leftwing insurrections, which the government again suppressed with the help of rightwing troops. Rightwing putsch attempts and leftwing uprisings continued for several more years.

Thus the November revolution overthrew the monarchy but did so only by organizing discontent against the status quo: it produced no coherent political agenda, no cohesive political movement, and no well-organized political party. The Republic spawned by the revolution was plagued from its birth by political extremism: the Weimar governments were forced to ride standing on two horses simultaneously, with one foot atop one and its second atop the other; it was forced to govern with a “centrism” despised by both the left and the right, in a political environment where every pragmatic compromise was denounced as capitulation by someone.

:banghead:

[demosincebirth]

1. ...and the rest is History. nt

[jwirr]

2. Getting to sound a bit familiar. Wonder what they could have done

to avoid the rise of the Nazi party?