The German Revolution of 1918–1919

Defeat and the Kiel mutiny

As German defeat became clear in autumn 1918, the liberal-minded Prince Max of Baden became chancellor in early October, brought the Social Democrats (SPD) into government for the first time and asked the Allies for an armistice. The constitutional amendment of 28 October made the Empire a monarchy responsible to parliament. Reform came from above, before the war-weary soldiers and workers had moved. 1 2 3

But on 24 October the naval command, without the government’s knowledge, ordered a last battle with the British fleet. Sailors at Wilhelmshaven, unwilling to die on the eve of an armistice, refused to sail; the navy called off the operation and arrested hundreds. On 3 November troops in Kiel fired on sailors and workers marching for their comrades’ release, killing at least nine. The next day the workers struck, soldiers sent to suppress them joined in, and Kiel passed into the hands of a workers’ and soldiers’ council. 4 2

The spread of the councils and 9 November

Berlin sent the SPD’s Gustav Noske to Kiel to promise an amnesty, but the sailors had already fanned out to neighbouring cities. By 7 November councils held power from Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg to Cologne and Munich. In Munich Kurt Eisner of the Independent Social Democrats (USPD) proclaimed the People’s State of Bavaria on 8 November, and by the end of the month every German prince had abdicated without bloodshed. The councils, mostly SPD and USPD members, stripped military commands of their power but left private property and the civil service untouched. 2 4 5

The SPD leader Friedrich Ebert told Prince Max: “If the Emperor does not abdicate, the social revolution is unavoidable. But I do not want it, indeed I hate it like sin.” On 9 November, with Berlin’s streets full of demonstrators, Max announced the emperor’s abdication without authority and handed the chancellorship to Ebert. That afternoon Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a republic from a window of the Reichstag, and hours later Karl Liebknecht proclaimed a “free socialist republic” from a balcony of the royal palace. Wilhelm II went into exile in the Netherlands the next day. 2 6 7

The Council of People’s Deputies and the Ebert–Groener pact

On the night of 9 November the Revolutionary Stewards of Berlin’s big factories, led by Richard Müller and Emil Barth, occupied the Reichstag and called council elections for the next day. On 10 November a Council of People’s Deputies was formed with equal numbers from the SPD (Ebert, Scheidemann, Landsberg) and the USPD (Hugo Haase, Dittmann, Barth), and the Berlin councils assembled in the Circus Busch endorsed it. The Executive Council of the Greater Berlin workers’ and soldiers’ councils was formally the highest body, but real power lay with Ebert’s government. 2 8 9)

That night Ebert reached an agreement over a secret telephone line with General Wilhelm Groener of the Supreme Army Command: the army would support the new government, and the government would leave the officer corps’ chain of command intact. Groener wrote in his memoirs that “the best and strongest element of the old Prussianism was saved for the new Germany.” On 11 November Erzberger signed the armistice at Compiègne and the war ended. 10 2 3

On 12 November the Council of People’s Deputies lifted the state of siege and censorship, amnestied political prisoners, guaranteed freedom of association, assembly and the press, and promised universal suffrage for all men and women over twenty and the eight-hour day — the first promise of votes for women. The imperial civil service, courts and schools remained almost unchanged. 2 8

Socialisation stalled and the Congress of Councils

At the USPD’s insistence a Socialisation Commission including Karl Kautsky and Rudolf Hilferding was set up, but it studied the nationalisation of coal and dissolved in April 1919 without result. Meanwhile, on 15 November, the union leader Carl Legien and the industrialist Hugo Stinnes signed an agreement recognising the unions as bargaining partners, with the eight-hour day and works councils. The unions won long-standing demands, but by accepting private enterprise they made socialisation of the means of production more remote. 2 11

On 6 December armed students and soldiers attempted a coup to make Ebert president, and the same day a Guards regiment fired on a Spartacist demonstration, killing 16. On 10 December Ebert greeted returning troops with the words “No enemy overcame you”, later fuel for the stab-in-the-back myth. The Reich Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils, which opened in Berlin on 16 December, rejected a Spartacist–USPD motion to vest all power in the councils and set elections to a National Assembly for 19 January 1919. It unanimously adopted the “Hamburg Points” for democratising the army — no rank insignia, elected officers — but the Army Command blocked them. 2 12

The Christmas crisis and the founding of the KPD

When the People’s Navy Division, brought from Kiel to guard the government quarter, leaned towards the left, the government ordered it on 23 December to shrink and stopped its pay. The sailors occupied the Chancellery and took the SPD’s Otto Wels hostage; Ebert, in contact with the Army Command by secret line, had the Royal Stables attacked on the morning of the 24th. Armed workers joined the sailors and the government troops withdrew with 56 dead. The USPD left the government in protest on 29 December, and Noske, who took one of its places, began building up Freikorps units against internal enemies. 13 2 14

From 30 December the Spartacus League and other left socialists met to found the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Rosa Luxemburg’s “What Does the Spartacus League Want?”, adopted as its programme, promised never to take power “except in response to the clear, unambiguous will of the great majority of the proletarian mass of all of Germany”. Luxemburg proposed taking part in the National Assembly elections, but the congress voted 62 to 23 to boycott them. The Revolutionary Stewards stayed in the USPD rather than join the new party. 15 16 17 2

The January rising and the murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht

When the Prussian government dismissed the USPD Berlin police chief Emil Eichhorn on 4 January 1919, hundreds of thousands poured into the streets the next day, and some occupied railway stations and the newspaper district, including the SPD’s Vorwärts. A 53-member Revolutionary Committee declared the government deposed but gave no direction. Liebknecht backed an armed rising; Luxemburg, Jogiches and Radek thought it premature. Even the People’s Navy Division declared itself neutral. 2 18

On 8 January the government declared that “force can be fought only with force.” On the 11th Freikorps troops retook the Vorwärts building with heavy weapons and summarily shot six men who came out to negotiate a surrender. By the 12th the rising was over, with an estimated 156 dead. On the 14th Luxemburg wrote in “Order prevails in Berlin” that “your order is built on sand”; Liebknecht’s last article was “In spite of everything!” 2 19 20

On the evening of 15 January the two were caught in a flat in Wilmersdorf and handed to the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division. On the orders of its staff officer, Waldemar Pabst, both were clubbed with rifle butts and shot in the head; Luxemburg’s body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal and found only on 1 July. The killers went largely unpunished. Pabst claimed in 1962 that Noske and Ebert had approved his action, a claim never confirmed. 2 21 22

The March battles and the council republics

With the socialisation and recognition of councils hoped for in November not forthcoming, general strikes followed from January to March 1919 in Upper Silesia, the Ruhr, Saxony and Thuringia. In Berlin a general strike called by the USPD and KPD on 4 March turned into street fighting, and on the 9th Noske ordered anyone found carrying a weapon shot on sight. At least 1,200 had died by the 16th. Jogiches was murdered in prison on 10 March. The Bremen Soviet Republic, declared on 10 January, was crushed by army and Freikorps troops on 4 February. 23 2 24 25

In Bavaria Eisner, heavily defeated in the January election, was assassinated on 21 February by the far-right young officer Count Arco-Valley as he went to parliament to resign. On the night of 6–7 April USPD members and anarchists, encouraged by the Hungarian Soviet Republic, proclaimed a Bavarian Soviet Republic headed by Ernst Toller, and the Hoffmann government fled to Bamberg. The KPD chairman Paul Levi denounced it as “revolutionary adventurism”, but on the 13th the KPD took over under Eugen Leviné. 26 27 2

Leviné’s government raised a Red Army and put factories under workers’ control, but food shortages worsened. At the end of April Red forces executed hostages, and from 1 to 3 May the Reichswehr and Freikorps took Munich; about 600 died in the suppression. Leviné told the court martial that “we communists are all dead men on leave” and was shot in Stadelheim prison on 5 June. 27 28 2

The Weimar National Assembly and constitution

In the National Assembly election of 19 January 1919, the first in which women voted, the SPD came first with about 38 per cent and formed the “Weimar coalition” with the Catholic Centre and the German Democratic Party. The USPD won only 7.6 per cent and the KPD stayed out. Meeting in Weimar from 6 February to escape the turmoil of Berlin, the Assembly elected Ebert provisional president on the 11th and Scheidemann head of government on the 13th. 29 30 2

Scheidemann resigned rather than accept the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, but under Allied pressure the Assembly voted in June to accept, and the treaty was signed on 28 June. On 31 July the Assembly adopted the new constitution by 262 votes to 75; Ebert signed it on 11 August and it took effect on the 14th. It set out a catalogue of basic rights and a cabinet responsible to parliament, but gave the president, under Article 48, power to declare an emergency and rule by decree. 6 31 32

Outcome and interpretations

The revolution toppled the monarchy and left women’s suffrage, the eight-hour day and parliamentary democracy, but the army, civil service, judiciary and big business survived almost intact. The Freikorps called in to defend the republic turned on it in the Kapp Putsch of 1920, and many of their men later drifted into the Nazi movement. The murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht and Noske’s repression left an unbridgeable gulf between the SPD and the communists. 2 33 14

Interpretations long diverged. Many West German historians held that the only choice was between parliamentary democracy and Bolshevik dictatorship and defended Ebert, but research from the 1960s re-examined the moderate majority of the council movement and the room for democratic reform. The shop stewards’ leader Richard Müller wrote a three-volume history of the revolution in the 1920s, and Pierre Broué retold it in The German Revolution 1917–1923 (1971) as the defeat of a European revolution. 2 9) 34