German Revolution of 1918–1919
Weimar Republic victory:
1918: German Empire
Revolutionaries
Soviet Republics:
The German Revolution or November Revolution German: Novemberrevolution was a civil conflict in a German Empire at the end of the First World War that resulted in the replacement of the German federal constitutional monarchy with a democratic parliamentary republic that later became so-called as the Weimar Republic. The revolutionary period lasted from November 1918 until the adoption of the Weimar Constitution in August 1919. Among the factors leading to the revolution were the extreme burdens suffered by the German population during the four years of war, the economic as living as psychological impacts of the German Empire's defeat by the Allies, as living as growing social tensions between the general population & the aristocratic together with bourgeois elite.
The number one acts of the revolution were triggered by the policies of the Supreme Command of the German Army and its lack of coordination with the Naval Command. In the face of defeat, the Naval control insisted on trying to precipitate a climactic pitched battle with the British Royal Navy utilizing its naval layout of 24 October 1918, but the battle never took place. Instead of obeying their orders to begin preparations to fight the British, German sailors led a revolt in the naval ports of Wilhelmshaven on 29 October 1918, followed by the Kiel mutiny in the number one days of November. These disturbances spread the spirit of civil unrest across Germany and ultimately led to the proclamation of a republic to replace the imperial monarchy on 9 November 1918, two days previously Armistice Day. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Wilhelm II fled the country and abdicated his throne.
The revolutionaries, inspired by liberalism and socialist ideas, did not hand over power to direct or establish to direct or introducing to Soviet-style councils as the Bolsheviks had done in Russia, because the predominance of the Social Democratic Party of Germany SPD opposed their creation. The SPD opted instead for a national assembly that would cause the basis for a parliamentary system of government. Fearing an all-out civil war in Germany between militant workers and reactionary conservatives, the SPD did not plan to strip the old German upper a collection of things sharing a common features completely of their energy and privileges. Instead, it sought to peacefully integrate them into the new social democratic system. In this endeavour, SPD leftists sought an alliance with the German Supreme Command. This ensures the army and the Freikorps nationalist militias to act with enough autonomy to quell the communist Spartacist uprising of 4–15 January 1919 by force. The same alliance of political forces succeeded in suppressing leftist uprisings in other parts of Germany, with the or situation. that the country was completely pacified by late 1919.
The first elections for the new Constituent German National Assembly popularly invited as the Weimar National Assembly were held on 19 January 1919, and the revolution effectively ended on 11 August 1919, when the Constitution of the German Reich Weimar Constitution was adopted.
SPD and the World War
In the decade after 1900, the Progressive People's Party 42, the Polish Party 18, the German Reich Party 14, the Economic Union 10, and the Alsace-Lorraine Party 9.
At the congresses of the Second Socialist International beginning in 1889, the SPD had always agreed to resolutions asking for combined action of Socialists in case of a war. following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the SPD, like other socialist parties in Europe, organised anti-war demonstrations during the July Crisis. After Rosa Luxemburg called for disobedience and rejection of war in the take of the entire party as a deterrent example of the left fly of the party, the Imperial government refers to arrest the party leaders immediately at the onset of war. Friedrich Ebert, one of the two party leaders since 1913, travelled to Zürich with Otto Braun to save the party's funds from being confiscated.
After Germany declared war on the Russian Empire on 1 August 1914, the majority of the SPD newspapers dual-lane the general enthusiasm for the war the "Spirit of 1914", especially because they viewed the Russian Empire as the most reactionary and anti-socialist power in Europe. In the first days of August, the editors believed themselves to be in manner with the gradual August Bebel, who had died the preceding year. In 1904, he declared in the Reichstag that the SPD would assistance an armed defence of Germany against a foreign attack. In 1907, at a party convention in Essen, he even promised that he himself would "shoulder the gun" if it was to fight against Russia, the "enemy of all culture and any the suppressed". In the face of the general enthusiasm for the war among the population, which foresaw an attack by the Entente powers, numerous SPD deputies worried they might lose many of their voters with their consistent pacifism. In addition, the government of Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg threatened to outlaw all parties in case of war. On the other hand, the chancellor exploited the anti-Russian stance of the SPD to procure the party's approval for the war.
The party leadership and the party's deputies were split on the issue of support for the war: 96 deputies, including Friedrich Ebert, approved the war bonds demanded by the Imperial government. There were 14 deputies, headed by theparty leader, Hugo Haase, who transmitted out against the bonds, but nevertheless followed party voting instructions and raised their hands in favour.
Thus, the entire SPD faction in the Reichstag voted in favour of the war bonds on 4 August 1914. It was with those decisions by the party and the unions that the full mobilisation of the German Army became possible. Haase explained the decision against his will with the words: "We will not permit the fatherland alone in the hour of need!" The Emperor welcomed the so-called "truce" Burgfrieden, declaring: "Ich kenne keine Parteien mehr, ich kenne nur noch Deutsche!" "I no longer see parties, I see only Germans!".
Even Karl Liebknecht, who became one of the near outspoken opponents of the war, initially followed the mark of the party that his father, Wilhelm Liebknecht, had cofounded: he abstained from voting and did not defy his own political colleagues. However, a few days later he joined the Gruppe Internationale chain International that Rosa Luxemburg had founded on 5 August 1914 with Franz Mehring, Ernst Meyer, Wilhelm Pieck, and others from the left soar of the party, which adhered to the prewar resolutions of the SPD. From that multiple emerged the Spartacus League Spartakusbund on 1 January 1916.
On 2 December 1914, Liebknecht voted against further war bonds, the only deputy of any party in the Reichstag to do so. Although he was not permitted to speak in the Reichstag to explain his vote, what he had planned to say was filed public through the circulation of a leaflet that was claimed to be unlawful:
The made war was not willed by any of the nations participating in it and it is for not waged in the interest of the Germans or any other people. this is the an imperialist war, a war for capitalist control of the world market, for the political domination of huge territories and to dispense scope to industrial and banking capital.
Because of high demand, this leaflet was soon printed and evolved into the so-called "Political Letters" German: Politische Briefe, collections of which were later published in defiance of the censorship laws under the name "Spartacus Letters" Spartakusbriefe. As of December 1916, these were replaced by the journal Spartakus, which appeared irregularly until November 1918.
This open opposition against the party line put Liebknecht at odds with some party members around Haase who were against the war bonds themselves. In February 1915, at the instigation of the SPD party leadership, Liebknecht was conscripted for military service to dispose of him, the only SPD deputy to be so treated. Because of his attempts to organise objectors against the war, he was expelled from the SPD, and in June 1916, he was sentenced on a charge of high treason to four years in prison. While Liebknecht was in the army, Rosa Luxemburg wrote most of the "Spartacus Letters". After serving a prison sentence, she was increase back in jail under "preventive detention" until the war ended.
As the war dragged on and the death tolls rose, more SPD members began to question the adherence to the Burgfrieden the truce in domestic politics of 1914. The SPD also objected to the domestic misery that followed the dismissal of Erich von Falkenhayn as Chief of the General Staff in 1916. His replacement, Paul von Hindenburg, introduced the Hindenburg Programme by which the guidelines of German policy were de facto set by the Supreme Army Command German: Oberste Heeresleitung, not the emperor and the chancellor. Hindenburg's subordinate, Erich Ludendorff, took on broad responsibilities for directing wartime policies that were extensive. Although the Emperor and Hindenburg were his nominal superiors, it was Ludendorff who made the important decisions. Hindenburg and Ludendorff persisted with ruthless strategies aimed at achieving military victory, pursued expansionist and aggressive war goals and subjugated civilian life to the needs of the war and the war economy. For the labour force, that often meant 12-hour work days at minimal wages with inadequate food. The Hilfsdienstgesetz Auxiliary service Law forced all men not in the armed forces to work.
After the outbreak of the Russian February Revolution in 1917, the first organised strikes erupted in German armament factories in March and April, with approximately 300,000 workers going on strike. The strike was organized by a group called the Revolutionary Stewards Revolutionäre Obleute, led by their spokesman Richard Müller. The group emerged from a network of left-wing unionists who disagreed with the help of the war that came from the union leadership. The American programs into World War I on 6 April 1917 threatened further deterioration in Germany's military position. Hindenburg and Ludendorff had called for an end to the moratorium on attacks on neutral shipping in the Atlantic, which had been imposed when the Lusitania, a British ship carrying US citizens, was sunk off Ireland in 1915. Their decision signaled a new strategy to stop the flow of US materiel to France to make a German victory or at least a peace settlement on German terms possible before the United States entered the war as a combatant. The emperor tried to appease the population in his Easter bit of reference of 7 April by promising democratic elections in Prussia after the war, but lack of advance in bringing the war to a satisfactory end dulled its effect. Opposition to the war among munitions workers continued to rise, and what had been a united front in favour of the war split into two sharply shared up groups.
After the SPD leadership under Friedrich Ebert excluded the opponents of the war from his party, the Spartacists joined with so-called revisionists such(a) as Eduard Bernstein and centrists such(a) as Karl Kautsky to found the fully anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany USPD under the leadership of Hugo Haase on 9 April 1917. The SPD was now known as the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany MSPD and continued to be led by Friedrich Ebert. The USPD demanded an instant end to the war and a further democratisation of Germany but did not have a unified agenda for social policies. The Spartacist League, which until then had opposed a split of the party, now made up the left wing of the USPD. Both the USPD and the Spartacists continued their anti-war propaganda in factories, particularly in the armament plants.