November 11 marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, but not before tens of millions died in the four-year-long unprecedented industrial carnage. Amid all the media coverage, almost entirely missing is the actual story of how听such bloodshed and misery was ended: by听a mass popular rebellion in Germany that brought down the monarchy and established a republic.
The rebellion did not end in Germany on November 11, but continued for a further five years in听revolutionary waves that nearly established a soviet republic. The failure of the workers' movement to win full power opened the way for a fascist-led counter-revolution -- and the rise of the Nazis.听
The war was already a major cause of rebellion from Ireland's 1916 Easter Rising to the October 1917 socialist revolution in Russia. but this听radicalisation across Europe by the war's victims is often written out.听
Responding to this crucial omission, British journalist听: "We鈥檙e about to witness a commemoration in which the human preference for restraint and dignity will be under pressure from the televisual tendency for wittering on without knowledge or feeling. So one crucial piece of knowledge should be, for schoolchildren and for TV presenters alike: how and why did [WWI] actually end?"
Mason noted that mutinous German sailors in the Kiel on the Blatic Sea听refused orders by their aristrocratic officers for a "suicidal mass foray", and launched an armed rebellion.
"On 4 November 1918 they armed themselves and set off, in their thousands, for the industrial centres of northern Germany. Jan Valtin, a participant, remembered: 'That night I saw the mutinous sailors roll into Bremen on caravans of commandeered trucks 鈥 from all sides masses of humanity, a sea of swinging, pushing bodies and distorted faces were moving toward the centre of town. Many of the workers were armed with guns, with bayonets and with hammers.'
"By 9 November, with workers swarming into the streets of Berlin, the Kaiser abdicated: only the declaration of a republic, with a Labour government and the promised 'socialisation of industry', prevented outright Soviet-style revolution.
"These incredible events do not fit easily into the narrative the mass media has been feeding us about the 1914-18 war ... But the termination of war by working-class action fits uneasily at a deeper level: for most of history the existence of a workforce with its own consciousness and organisations is an afterthought, or an anomaly.
"I鈥檝e tried this quiz question again and again on highly-educated people and, even once they know the answer, there are looks of 'does not compute'.
"For Hitler, the German workers鈥 role in ending the war became the 'stab in the back': it was his ultimate justification for eradicating the German labour movement after 1933. In the British imperialist version of events the Kiel sailors become useful ancillaries: Yanks and tanks turn the western front and, naturally, the Germans throw the towel in once their front starts to crumble.
"But to social historians the German workers鈥 role in ending the war is no surprise. Because exactly 100 years ago this week, they had also turned out in their hundreds of thousands to try and prevent it starting. The German socialist party was a massive social institution 鈥 with libraries, schools, choirs, nurseries 鈥 and during the fatal slide to war they called their members onto the streets in every major city.
"Then, under the pressure of war fever and fearing their institutions would be outlawed, the socialist leaders swung behind the war effort.
"We know now, thanks to the publication of records and memoirs, that听听Key members of the British cabinet were against it; large parts of the social elite in most countries, including Germany, were stunned and appalled by the unstoppable process of mobilisation.
"But within 18 months of its outbreak, dissident German socialist MPs were leading mass strikes, demonstrations and riots against the war. Despite censorship, mobilisation and the natural moral solidarity people have with troops sent to the front, the German arms industry was repeatedly hit by strikes after 1916.
"When they reached Berlin, the first thing the insurgent sailors did was try to seize its radio tower: their aim was to send a message of solidarity to Russian sailors at Kronstadt in the eastern Baltic Sea, who they had been fighting until a year before."
Mason noted the story is written out in part because the working class tends to be reduced to the role of passive participants in history, and partly because: "People who command armies, and politicians who order them to fight, have to believe 'the nation' is united behind them ...听And the war ideologies of the present demand the war ideologies of the past be perpetuated.
"Alongside the tragic and glorious place names of the 1914-18 war 鈥 Ypres, Gallipoli and the Somme 鈥 we should also remember听: they stopped the war."
But while the war was stopped, the mass German workers' movement had only just begun as millions fought not just to end the war, but the out-of-control capitalist system that produced it.
Below, in a piece from US ,听听tells the largely ignored story of the German revolution, andhow its defeat by 1923 opend the road for Adolf Hitler and the freshhorros of World War II.
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ON NOVEMBER 9, 1918, Germany鈥檚 last emperor, Wilhelm II, abdicated 鈥 or at least that was the date of the official announcement by German Chancellor Prince Maximilian of Baden.
The last Kaiser actually relinquished his position three weeks later, on November 28, from Dutch exile, renouncing not only the imperial, but the Prussian throne. At that point, however, he and all the other ruling princely heads of state within the German empire were already largely part of the past.
Germany was in a state of mass upheaval, the population in revolt against four long years of the First World War and all the suffering it brought. The rebellion took hold among workers and among soldiers and sailors, and it spread with lightening speed.
On the other side, the monarchy took some time to collapse completely. The peculiar composition of imperial Germany had established 22 separate sovereign rulers 鈥 four of whom held the title of king (of Prussia, Bavaria, W眉rttemberg and Saxony), six the title of grand duke, along with five dukes and seven sovereign princes.
Revolutionaries take to the streets of Berlin on November 9, 1918 (Wikimedia Commons)
Wilhelm II was the emperor of Germany and the Prussian king since 1888, and his Hohenzollern family had occupied the imperial throne since 1871, when the so-called Second Reich was created. His family鈥檚 claim to Prussian rule extended even further, going back to 1415.
Thus, Wilhelm鈥檚 resignation was a landmark event, bringing to a close a historical era. At the same time, though, the pressure to resign was an attempt to save as much of the old order as possible. As the German war novelist Theodor Plivier put it, it was only the Kaiser who left, the generals remained.
While renouncing the imperial throne for himself and his family, Wilhelm nevertheless nursed hopes, until his death in 1941, of becoming emperor again. In doing so, he forged various alliances with far-right wing groups 鈥 most infamously, the Nazis, who used him for propagandistic purposes with no intention of following through on his schemes.
The emperor鈥檚 resignation had been preceded by the abdication of the Bavarian King Ludwig III on November 7.
On that day, a large pro-peace demonstration drew over 60,000 people to the outskirts of Munich to commemorate the Russian Revolution of 1917. Two speakers from Germany鈥檚 main socialist party for decades, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), spoke to the crowd: the centrist politician Erhard Auer and the left-winger Kurt Eisner.
Afterward, Eisner and the blind peasant leader Ludwig Gandorfer led a large crowd into the city. The Bavarian monarchy crumbled unceremoniously and quickly, despite having been there since 1180.
The story goes that Ludwig III, taking his customary stroll through his 鈥淓nglish garden,鈥 ran into a worker, who politely lifted his hat, looked at the king and said, in a thick Bavarian accent: 鈥淢ajesty, you should go home, revolution has broken out.鈥 Apparently, the king followed this advice and departed Munich for one of his more remote castles in the countryside.
Meanwhile, the previous demonstration had highlighted the clear divisions among socialists.
Since before the turn of the century, the SPD had been the biggest and most developed party of the international socialist movement, with more than 1 million members by 1913. But with the beginning of the war, SPD representatives in Germany鈥檚 parliament voted to support their own side in the conflict. Revolutionary socialists such as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht eventually split from the SPD.
THE COLLAPSE of imperial Germany and its network of monarchies was a product of Germany鈥檚 defeat in the First World War after four long years.
Having been engaged in a two-front war since 1914, Germany鈥檚 inevitable defeat had become increasingly clear to its military leadership, which was concentrated in the hands of two generals: Paul von Hindenburg and especially Erich Ludendorff.
Ludendorff, who had long pushed for expansionist war aims and opposed any attempts by German diplomats and politicians to explore a negotiated end to the First World War, concluded in the early fall of 1918 that all was lost, and Germany must enter peace negotiations.
Being a manipulative and calculating schemer, Ludendorff prepared for his own exit from power and advised the emperor, who by then was largely a figurehead, that Liberal and Social Democratic politicians should be brought into the government. The latter, Ludendorff hoped, would have to take up the unhappy responsibility of administering Germany鈥檚 surrender.
In this way, the Liberal Prince Max von Baden became the new imperial chancellor, and his cabinet included some SPD ministers. These ministers weren鈥檛 thrilled to join what one of them, Philipp Scheidemann, correctly called a 鈥渂ankrupt company.鈥 But party leader Friedrich Ebert insisted that it was the duty of Social Democrats to support the state in its hour of need.
Ludendorff and Hindenburg would later become key instigators of the poisonous so-called听Dolchsto脽legende 鈥斕the legend of the stab-in-the-back, which claimed that it was civilian leftist politicians who had betrayed Germany by opening peace negotiations while the military was still on its way to winning the war.
In reality, of course, the situation was just the opposite. With the military leadership responsible for the catastrophic state of affairs, the new cabinet, SPD ministers and all, was saddled with the impossible task of finding a way out that would not include major concessions to the allied victors.
AS LUDENDORFF and the military establishment made plans to wind down the war effort, they decided simultaneously to mobilize the German Navy for what could only be regarded as a suicide mission.
After having been confined for most of the war, because of a British blockade, to its bases in German ports, Germany鈥檚 battle fleet was now ordered to break through the well-defended British positions.
Victory was never a possibility, nor was it the objective. On the contrary, the generals hoped for the destruction of the fleet 鈥 in order to create a militaristic cult of martyrdom that could be tapped into after the war. The calculated drowning of sailors was to be exploited by commanding officers and military planners who were not in harm鈥檚 way.
However, the sailors, disillusioned by and tired of the war effort for some time, refused to play their assigned role, and instead engaged in acts of resistance and open mutiny.
On the battle cruiser Thuringia, a large segment of the crew barricaded themselves in the bow. The ship鈥檚 officers had to call in 250 naval infantry soldiers, threatening the rebellious crew, which only surrendered after several torpedo boats and submarine cannons targeted the Thuringia. Some 600 crewmen were imprisoned, together with 400 mutinous sailors from other ships.
The admiralty understood that it was about to lose control over the battle fleet and tried to regain some measure of control by sending different parts of the fleet to various ports.
Several of the ships were sent to the Baltic Sea harbor of Kiel in late October. This turned out to be a fateful decision, since it increased contact between rebellious sailors and the increasingly militant workers in the shipbuilding industry of Kiel.
On November 3, an antiwar demonstration took place on the outskirts of Kiel, consisting of about 3,000 sailors, snipes (boiler-room personnel) and soldiers, as well as male and female workers, to protest the action of the commanding admiral in imprisoning several sailors.
Demonstrators demanded their release and raised chants calling for the downfall of the emperor. As they marched to the city center, the antiwar demonstrators came under fire by a military patrol, resulting in eight dead and 29 wounded, including women and children.
At that point, things escalated toward an armed uprising. During the course of the night, sailors鈥 and soldiers鈥 councils formed, red flags were hoisted over several ships, and workers in factories around Kiel prepared for a general strike.
The 鈥渁uthorities鈥 could only watch as power slipped from their hands. By the evening of November 4, Kiel was under revolutionary control.
Very quickly, the revolution spread from Kiel to L眉beck, Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Hanover, Munich and other cities. The Dukes of Braunschweig and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and the King of Bavaria were forced to abdicate.
On November 8, there was a mass demonstration in Dresden, the capital of Saxony. With soldiers鈥 and sailors鈥 councils spreading all over Germany and news of the victorious revolution reaching the court, Saxony鈥檚 King Friedrich Augustus III had to decide whether he should deploy the few troops still loyal to his monarchy.
Ultimately, he rejected the advice of his more militaristic counselors, saying that he did not want to continue the world war that was about to end on the outskirts of the royal palace. At around 8 p.m., he discreetly slipped out of the city palace, accompanied only by his daughter and a major general.
They hopped into a car that drove him to Moritzburg Palace in the countryside. From there, Augustus acknowledged the official transformation from a kingdom to a free state on November 10, and on November 13, he abdicated.
AS THE revolution arrived in Berlin, two different versions of Germany鈥檚 future emerged.
On November 9, revolutionary socialist Karl Liebknecht, speaking from the balcony of the old Imperial Palace, declared a free and socialist republic. Just two hours later, Philipp Scheidemann, the centrist SPD leader, declared a liberal parliamentary republic.
The differences between these two rival proclamations were not semantic, but illustrated fundamentally different propositions for the times ahead.
Liebknecht advocated a radical break, not only with the capitalist system that had just fueled a world war, but also with the institutions and traditions of authoritarian power in the state apparatus, the military and the judiciary.
Scheidemann, on the other hand, promoted a power-sharing compromise with those reactionary forces 鈥 which went hand in hand with plans to suppress all revolutionary uprisings with utmost force, including the torture and murder of revolutionaries.
The SPD leader Friedrich Ebert contacted Gen. Wilhelm Groener, the new head of the German military, and proposed an alliance based on mutual support. He hoped that by giving right-wing forces听carte blanche听to run their own affairs and to eradicate the revolutionary left, these forces could be integrated into the fledgling republic.
Infamously, on January 15, 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were tortured and killed by right-wing military units known as the Freikorps听鈥 with the green light of several key SPD leaders.
The pact between Ebert and Groener was based on Ebert鈥檚 erroneous assumption that Germany鈥檚 conservative military establishment could be reconciled to parliamentary democracy 鈥 and would, in return for large concessions toward the generals, be loyal to the new republic.
The subsequent history of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) illustrates just the reverse. The military and business elites regarded their Social Democratic partners as temporary and were ultimately more comfortable with a right-wing dictatorship.
Already in 1920, during the so-called Kapp Putsch, the military establishment deserted the Social Democrats and their republic. In 1923, Ludendorff made a comeback to the world of politics 鈥 as a co-conspirator, together with Adolf Hitler, to overthrow the republic.
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, he was appointed chancellor by Paul von Hindenburg. Other leading politicians, such as conservative Franz von Papen and media tycoon Alfred Hugenberg, played key roles in this decision.
The conservative elites couldn鈥檛 be incorporated into even a limited democratic republic. Instead, they forged an alliance with the Nazis as capitalism entered deeper into crisis. Social Democratic leaders who had looked the other way when right-wing militias murdered revolutionary socialists would find themselves confined to the same concentration camps with communists after the Nazi seizure of power.
The abdication of the last German emperor, the culmination of the first stage of the German Revolution, marked a period of high hopes and great promise. Ordinary working people entered the stage of history in Germany, attempting to build a more just and truly democratic society.
While they succeeded in toppling the monarchical system, the generals, state bureaucrats, judiciary and police apparatus of the old regime survived, finding new allies among centrists. The defeat of the revolutionary left ended not in a liberal republic, but a far-right fascist dictatorship.
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