The German revolution of 1918–1919, also known as the November Revolution (German: Novemberrevolution), was an uprising started by workers and soldiers in the final days of World War I. It quickly and almost bloodlessly brought down the German Empire. In its more violent second stage, the supporters of a parliamentary republic were victorious over those who wanted a Soviet-style council republic. The defeat of the forces of the far left cleared the way for the establishment of the Weimar Republic. The key factors leading to the revolution were the extreme burdens suffered by the German people during the war, the economic and psychological impacts of the Empire's defeat, and the social tensions between the general populace and the aristocratic and bourgeois elite.
The revolution began in late October 1918 with a sailors' mutiny at Kiel. Within a week, workers' and soldiers' councils were in control of government and military institutions across most of the Reich. On 9 November, Germany was declared a republic. By the end of the month, all of the ruling monarchs, including Emperor Wilhelm II, had been forced to abdicate. On 10 November, the Council of the People's Deputies was formed by members of Germany's two main socialist parties. Under the de facto leadership of Friedrich Ebert of the moderate Majority Social Democratic Party (MSPD), the Council acted as a provisional government that held the powers of the emperor, chancellor and legislature. It kept most of the old imperial officer corps, administration and judiciary in place so that it could use their expertise to address the crises of the moment.
The Council of the People's Deputies immediately removed some of the Empire's harsh restrictions, such as on freedom of expression, and promised an eight-hour workday and elections that would give women the right to vote for the first time. Those on the left wing of the revolution also wanted to nationalise key industries, democratise the military and set up a council republic, but the MSPD had control of most of the workers' and soldiers' councils and blocked any substantial movement towards their goals.
The split between the moderate and radical socialists erupted into violence in the last days of 1918, sparked by a dispute over sailors' pay that left 67 dead. On 1 January 1919, the far Left Spartacists founded the Communist Party of Germany. A few days later, protests resulting from the violence at the end of December led to mass demonstrations in Berlin that quickly turned into the Spartacist uprising, an attempt to create a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was quashed by government and Freikorps troops with the loss of 150 to 200 lives. In the aftermath of the uprising, the Spartacist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered by the Freikorps. Into the spring, there were additional violently suppressed efforts to push the revolution further in the direction of a council republic, as well as short-lived local soviet republics, notably in Bavaria, Bremen and Würzburg. They too were put down with considerable loss of life.
The revolution's end date is generally set at 11 August 1919, the day the Weimar Constitution was adopted, but the revolution remained in many ways incomplete. It failed to resolve the fracture in the Left between moderate socialists and communists, while anti-democratic voices from the imperial government remained in positions of power. The Weimar Republic as a result was beset from the beginning by opponents from both the Left and – to a greater degree – the Right.
Background
German socialist parties
When World War I started, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was the one socialist political party of any significance in the German Empire and as such played a major role in the revolution. It had been banned from 1878–1890 and in 1914 continued to adhere to the tenets of class conflict. It had international ties to other countries' socialist parties, all of which were ideologically anti-war. Patriotism nevertheless proved the stronger force when the war broke out, and the SPD threw its support behind the Fatherland.
By 1917, some on the left of the party had become so outspokenly anti-war that they were expelled from the SPD and formed a new party, the Independent Social Democrats (USPD) – from which the Communist Party of Germany broke off shortly after the end of the war. The SPD and USPD tried to work together during the early days of the revolution, but their differing goals – parliamentary versus council republics – proved irreconcilable. After the fall of the German monarchy, the increasing antagonism between the three socialist parties drove the violence of the revolution's second stage.
SPD and the World War
By 1912, the Social Democrats had grown into the largest political party in Germany, with 35% of the national vote and 110 seats in the last imperial Reichstag. In spite of its predominance, the party had no role in the imperial government. Its official espousal of Marxist revolutionary socialism aroused the distrust of the parties of the centre and right, and its members were often disparaged as "journeymen without a fatherland" (Vaterlandslose Gesellen) because their class antagonism was seen to transcend national boundaries.
The SPD had attended the congresses of the Second International beginning in 1889, where they had agreed to resolutions asking for combined action by socialists in the event of a war. Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, the SPD, like other socialist parties in Europe, organised anti-war demonstrations during the July Crisis that led up to the war's outbreak.
In contrast to the widespread enthusiasm for the war among the educated classes (the "Spirit of 1914"), the majority of SPD newspapers were strongly anti-war, although some supported it by pointing out the danger posed by the Russian Empire, which they saw as the most reactionary and anti-socialist power in Europe. Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg turned down plans by high-ranking military officials to dissolve the SPD at the start of the war and exploited the party's anti-Russian stance to gain its approval for it.
After Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914, 96 SPD deputies, among them Friedrich Ebert, agreed to approve the war bonds requested by the imperial government. Fourteen deputies, headed by party co-leader Hugo Haase, and including Karl Liebknecht, spoke out against the bonds but nevertheless followed party discipline and voted in favour. The support was based primarily on the belief, actively fostered by the government, that Germany was fighting a defensive war. Haase explained the decision that the party had made with the words: "We will not abandon our Fatherland in its hour of danger!" Many SPD members were eager to show their patriotism, in part to free themselves from the charge of being "journeymen without a fatherland".
Since the SPD was the only party whose position was in any real doubt, its unanimous vote for the war bonds was greeted with great enthusiasm as a sign of Germany's national unity. The Emperor welcomed the political truce (Burgfriedenspolitik) among the Reichstag's parties in which they agreed not to criticise the government's handling of the war and to keep their disagreements out of public view. He declared: "I no longer know parties, I know only Germans!"
SPD's split
As the war dragged on and the death toll rose, more SPD members began to question the party's support for the war. The dissatisfaction increased when the Supreme Army Command (OHL) introduced the Auxiliary Services Act in December 1916. It proposed full mobilisation and deployment of the workforce, including women, and the "militarisation" of labour relations. It met with such strong criticism that the OHL had to agree to participation by trade unions and the Reichstag parties in the act's implementation. It accepted their demands for arbitration committees, the expansion of trade union powers and the repeal of the act at the end of the war.
After the outbreak of the Russian February Revolution in 1917, the wartime's first organised strikes erupted in German armament factories in January 1918. 400,000 workers went on strike in Berlin and around a million nationwide. Their primary demand was an end to the war. The SPD took part in the strike in order to keep the Spartacists from having control of the strike's leadership, but its participation soured the SPD's relationship with the other parties in the Reichstag. The strike was put down by the military after a week.
Because of the increasing intra-party conflicts centering around the opponents of the war, the leadership of the SPD under Friedrich Ebert expelled them from the party in January 1917. The Spartacists, who had formed the SPD's far left wing, joined with revisionists such as Eduard Bernstein and centrist Marxists such as Karl Kautsky to found the anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) under the leadership of Hugo Haase on 6 April 1917. After that point, the SPD was officially named the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD), although it was still generally referred to as the SPD. The USPD called for an immediate end to the war and a further democratisation of Germany but did not have a unified agenda for social policies. Both the USPD and the Spartacists continued their anti-war propaganda in factories, especially in armament plants.
End of the war
Impact of the Russian Revolution
In April 1917, the German government facilitated Vladimir Lenin's return to Russia from his exile in Switzerland in the hope that he would weaken the tsarist regime and its conduct of the war. After the 1917 October Revolution that put Lenin and the Bolsheviks in power, many in both Russia and Germany expected that Soviet Russia would in return help foment a communist revolution in Germany. For Germany's far Left, it provided hope for its own success, and for the moderate socialists, along with the middle and upper classes, it was a source of fear that the kind of bloody civil war that was occurring in Russia could also break out in Germany.
The moderate SPD leadership consequently shifted away from the party's official stance as revolutionary socialists. Otto Braun clarified the SPD's position in an article titled "The Bolsheviks and Us" (Die Bolschewiki und Wir) in the party newspaper Vorwärts of 15 February 1918: "Socialism cannot be erected on bayonets and machine guns. If it is to last, it must be realised with democratic means. ... Therefore we must draw a thick, visible dividing line between ourselves and the Bolsheviks."
On 3 March 1918, the newly established Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany to end Russia's involvement in the war. It arguably contained harsher terms for the Russians than the later Treaty of Versailles would demand of the Germans.
Military collapse
On 29 September 1918, the Supreme Army Command informed Emperor Wilhelm II and Chancellor Georg von Hertling that the military situation was hopeless in the face of the enemy's overwhelming advantage in manpower and equipment. General Ludendorff said that a request for an immediate ceasefire should be sent to the Entente powers. In hopes of more favourable peace terms, he also recommended accepting American president Woodrow Wilson's demand that the imperial government be democratised. His aim was to protect the reputation of the Imperial Army by placing the responsibility for the capitulation and its consequences at the feet of the democratic parties and the Reichstag. In a veiled reference to the workers who had struck the armaments plants, the Social Democrats who had helped pass the Reichstag Peace Resolution in July 1917 and the radical Spartacists who wanted a dictatorship of the proletariat, he said to his staff officers on 1 October:I have asked His Majesty to bring into the government those circles to whom we mainly owe it that we have come this far. ... Let them now make the peace that must be made. They should eat the soup they have served up to us!His statement marked the birth of the "stab-in-the-back myth" (Dolchstoßlegende), according to which revolutionary socialists and republican politicians had betrayed the undefeated army and turned an almost certain victory into a defeat.
Political response
Although shocked by Ludendorff's report and the news of the certain defeat, the majority parties in the Reichstag, especially the SPD, were willing to take on the responsibility of government. Chancellor Hertling objected to introducing a parliamentary system and resigned. Emperor Wilhelm II appointed Prince Max of Baden as the new imperial chancellor on 3 October. The Prince was considered a liberal and at the same time was a representative of the royal family. Most of the men in his cabinet were independents, but there were also two members of the SPD. The following day, the new government offered the Allies the truce that Ludendorff had insisted on, and on the fifth the German public was informed of the dismal situation that it faced. Even up to that late point, government propaganda and the press had led the people to believe that the war would still be won. The shock of the impending defeat caused a "paralytic bitterness and deep resignation" which eased the way for those who wanted an immediate ceasefire.
During October, President 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. Following the third note of 24 October, which emphasised the danger to international peace inherent in the power of the "King of Prussia" and the "military authorities of the Empire", General Ludendorff resigned and was replaced as First General Quartermaster by General Wilhelm Groener.
On 28 October, the Reichstag passed constitutional reforms that changed Germany into a parliamentary monarchy. The chancellor and his ministers were made dependent on the confidence of the parliamentary majority rather than the emperor, and peace treaties and declarations of war required the Reichstag's approval. Because the chancellor was also responsible for the emperor's acts under the constitution, the emperor's military right of command (Kommandogewalt) became the chancellor's responsibility and thus subject to parliamentary control. As far as the Social Democrats were concerned, the October Constitution met all the party's important constitutional objectives. Ebert regarded the formation of the Baden government as the birthday of German democracy. Since the Emperor had voluntarily ceded power, he considered a revolution unnecessary.
On 5 November, the Entente Powers agreed to take up negotiations for a truce. After the third note, many soldiers had come to expect the war to end and were anxious to return home. They had little willingness to fight more battles, and desertions were increasing.
Revolution, first stage: fall of the Empire
The sociologist Max Weber attributed the collapse of the Empire to the "hollowing out" of Germany's traditional standards during the war. The expansion of black markets also revealed the economic and monetary failures of the Wilhelmine system. Since it was Emperor Wilhelm who embodied the system that had led to the long years of hardship and privation for the people at home and to the impending defeat in the war, the conviction spread that he would have to abdicate. Historian Eberhard Kolb saw a vast "paralysis of the will" in the state's power to preserve order and a corresponding desire among the people for a more complete transformation of the political and social order. The German populace was already war weary when the request for a ceasefire came like a thunderbolt. From that point, they wanted only peace. Wilson's Fourteen Points fed the belief that Germany would get a just peace if it democratised, and so the desire for peace led to demands for democracy. The revolutionary groups that had been weak and disorganized were emboldened, and even the middle class began to fear that the constitutional reforms would not be enough to bring the war to a quick end without the Emperor's abdication.
Sailors' revolt
The German revolution was triggered by a sailors' mutiny centered on the North Sea ports of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven in late October 1918. While the war-weary troops and general population of Germany awaited the end of the war, the Imperial Naval Command in Kiel under Admiral Franz von Hipper and Admiral Reinhard Scheer planned without authorization to dispatch the Imperial Fleet for a last battle against the British Royal Navy in the southern North Sea.
The naval order of 24 October 1918 and the preparations to sail triggered a mutiny among the sailors involved. They had no intention of risking their lives so close to the end of the war and were convinced that the credibility of the new government, engaged as it was in seeking an armistice with the Entente, would be compromised by a naval attack at such a crucial point in the negotiations.
The mutiny began on a small number of ships anchored off Wilhelmshaven. Faced with the sailors' disobedience, naval command called off the offensive during the night of 29–30 October, arrested several hundred of the mutineers and had the ships return to port. On 3 November, police and soldiers confronted a protest march by the sailors towards the prison in Kiel where the mutineers were being held. The soldiers opened fire and killed at least nine protestors. The following day, workers in Kiel declared a general strike in support of the protest, and sailors from the barracks at Wik, north of Kiel, joined the march, as did many of the soldiers sent to help control the protests.
Faced with the rapidly escalating situation, Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, the naval commander in Kiel, released the imprisoned sailors and asked the protestors to send a delegation to meet with him and two representatives of the Baden government who had arrived from Berlin. The sailors had a list of fourteen demands, including less harsh military punishment and full freedom of speech and the press in the Empire. One of the representatives from the Reich government, Gustav Noske of the Majority Social Democrats (SPD), calmed the immediate situation with a promise of amnesty, but by then Kiel was already in the hands of a workers' and soldiers' council, and groups of sailors had gone to nearby cities to spread the uprising. Within days the revolution had encompassed the western part of Germany.
Spread of the revolution
By 7 November, the revolution had taken control in all large coastal cities – Lübeck, Bremen, Hamburg – and spread to Braunschweig, Cologne and as far south as Munich. There, Kurt Eisner of the radical Independent Social Democrats (USPD) was elected president of the Bavarian Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Council, and on 8 November he proclaimed the People's State of Bavaria. King Ludwig III and his family fled Munich for Austria, where in the 12 November Anif declaration he relieved all civil servants and military personnel from their oath of loyalty to him, effectively abdicating the Wittlesbach throne. By the end of the month, the dynastic rulers of all the other German states had abdicated without bloodshed.
There was little to no resistance to the establishment of the councils. Soldiers by simple acclamation often elected their most respected comrades; workers generally chose members of the local executive committees of the SPD or USPD. With the support of local citizens, they freed political prisoners and occupied city halls, military facilities and train stations. The military authorities surrendered or fled, and civic officials accepted that they were under the control of the councils rather than the military and carried on with their work. Little changed in the factories except for the removal of the military discipline that had prevailed during the war. Private property was not touched. The sociologist 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 who were gradually returning home.
The workers' and soldiers' councils were made up almost entirely of SPD and USPD members. Their program called for an end to the war and to the authoritarian monarchical state. Apart from the dynastic families, they deprived only the military commands of their power and privilege. There were hardly any confiscations of property or occupations of factories. The duties of the imperial civilian administration and office holders such as police, municipal administrations and courts were not curtailed or interfered with. In order to create an executive committed to the revolution and to the future of the new government, the councils for the moment left government officials in place and took over only their supervision from the military commands that had been put in place during the war.
Notably, revolutionary sentiment did not affect the eastern parts of Germany to any considerable extent, apart from isolated instances of agitation at Breslau in Silesia and Königsberg in East Prussia.
Reaction in Berlin
Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the SPD, agreed with the chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, that a social revolution had to be prevented and order upheld at all costs. In the restructuring of the state, Ebert wanted to win over the middle-class parties that had 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 was also worried that the precarious food supply situation could break down, 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 hopes that the Emperor's departure and the establishment of a regency would save the constitutional monarchy that had been established on 28 October, the SPD called for Wilhelm's abdication on 7 November. According to notes taken by Prince Max of Baden, Ebert told him, "If the Emperor does not abdicate, the social revolution is unavoidable. But I do not want it, indeed I hate it like sin."
Wilhelm II, still at his headquarters in Spa, was considering returning to Germany at the head of the army to quell any unrest in Berlin. Even when General Groener told him that the army no longer supported him, he did not abdicate. The Chancellor planned to travel to Spa to convince Wilhelm personally of the necessity, but his plans were overtaken by the rapidly deteriorating situation in Berlin.
By this time, Wilhelm accepted that he would have to give up his imperial crown but still believed he could remain king of Prussia. This was not possible under the imperial constitution, which defined the empire as a confederation under the permanent presidency of Prussia. The imperial crown was thus tied to the Prussian crown, and Wilhelm could not renounce one throne without renouncing the other.
Abdication and proclamations of a republic
On 9 November, Chancellor von Baden telephoned the Emperor and tried to persuade him to give up the throne to a regent who would then constitutionally appoint Ebert as chancellor. He did so rather than meet the Emperor in person at Spa. After his efforts failed, Baden, without authorization, issued a proclamation that the Emperor and the Crown Prince had renounced the German and Prussian thrones. Immediately thereafter, following a short meeting of the cabinet, the Prince resigned and transferred the chancellorship to Friedrich Ebert, a move that was not allowed under the constitution. Ebert quickly released a statement announcing the formation of a new "people's government" whose immediate tasks were to end the war as quickly as possible and to ensure a sufficient supply of food for the German people, who were still suffering under the impact of the Allied blockade. The statement ended with "Leave the streets! Keep order and peace!"
The premature news of the abdication came too late to make any impression on the demonstrators who had filled the streets of Berlin. Nobody heeded the public appeals. While having lunch in the Reichstag building, the SPD deputy chairman Philipp Scheidemann learned that Karl Liebknecht of the Spartacus League planned to proclaim a socialist republic. Scheidemann did not want to leave the initiative to the Spartacists and stepped to a window of the Reichstag building where he proclaimed a republic before the mass of demonstrators gathered there. Ebert, who believed that the decision about the future form of the government of Germany belonged to a national assembly of the people's democratically elected representatives, stormed angrily at Scheidemann for his spontaneous decision to announce a republic. A few hours later, in the Berlin Lustgarten, Liebknecht proclaimed a socialist republic, which he reaffirmed from a balcony of the Berlin Palace to an assembled crowd at around 4 pm.
Facing an untenable situation, Wilhelm left for exile in the Netherlands the following day, effectively ending 400 years of Hohenzollern rule over Prussia and Germany. It was not until 28 November that he issued a formal statement of abdication. Finally acknowledging he had lost both of his crowns for good, he permanently renounced "the rights to the Crown of Prussia and the associated rights to the German Imperial Crown".
Revolution, second stage: defeat of the radical Left
Once the monarchy had collapsed under the pressure of the workers' and soldiers' councils, it was up to the leadership of the socialist parties in Berlin to quickly establish the new order and address the many critical problems the defeated nation faced. From the beginning, the moderates of the SPD held the leading position. They had the broadest support from the working class and the at least grudging backing of the imperial bureaucracy, most of which remained in place. When Ebert showed himself willing to use the military and Freikorps against opposing members of the socialist Left, it quickly led to fractures between the SPD and USPD and then to street battles with the Spartacists and communists.
The councils
Establishment, pact with the military and armistice
Ebert wanted to take the sting out of the revolutionary mood and to meet the demands of the 9 November demonstrators for the unity of the labour parties. He offered the USPD equal participation in the government and was ready to accept Karl Liebknecht as a minister. The USPD, at Liebknecht's insistence, demanded that elected representatives of the unions and soldiers have full executive, legislative and judicial control. The SPD refused, and negotiations got no further that day.
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 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 unprepared for the revolutionary events since Kiel. In order to take the initiative from Ebert, they decided to announce elections for the following day, a Sunday. Every Berlin factory was to elect workers' councils and every regiment soldiers' councils that were then to elect a revolutionary government from members of the two labour parties (SPD and USPD) in the evening. The government would be empowered to execute the resolutions of the revolutionary parliament, since they intended to replace Ebert's function as chancellor.
On the evening of the ninth, the SPD leadership learned of the plans for the elections and the councils' meeting. Since they could not be prevented, Otto Wels used the party apparatus to influence the voting in the soldiers' councils and won most of them over to the SPD. By morning it was clear that the SPD would have the majority of the delegates on its side at the councils' meeting that evening.
USPD chairman Hugo Haase returned from Kiel the morning of 10 November and was able to broker a compromise in the negotiations with the SPD about the new government. The revolutionary government, to be called the Council of the People's Deputies (Rat der Volksbeauftragten) at the USPD's insistence, gave the USPD much of what it wanted. The Council was to be made up of three representatives of the SPD (Ebert, Scheidemann and Otto Landsberg) and three from the USPD (Haase, Wilhelm Dittmann and Emil Barth). The workers' and soldiers' councils were to be given political power – not full executive, legislative and judicial control – and a national assembly would be discussed only "after a consolidation of the conditions created by the revolution".In the assembly of the newly elected councils that convened in the afternoon at the Circus Busch, almost all of the soldiers' councils and a large part of the workers' representatives stood on the side of the SPD. After it ratified the membership of the Council of the People's Deputies, Emil Barth called for an action committee to oversee it and presented a list of names drawn up by the Revolutionary Stewards. The proposal took the SPD leadership by surprise and started heated debates in the assembly. Ebert was able to push through an "Executive Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of Greater Berlin" (Vollzugsrat des Arbeiter- und Soldatenrates Grossberlin) made up of seven SPD members, seven from the USPD and fourteen mostly independent soldiers' representatives. It was to oversee the People's Deputies until the creation of a national assembly and was chaired by Richard Müller of the USPD and Brutus Molkenbuhr representing the soldiers.