Debates on The German Revolution of 1918–19,

Writing shortly after the First World War, in his examination of the economic demobilization in Bavaria, Kurt Konigsberger described the German revolution as ‘nothing other than the demobilization of the nerves’ (‘nichts anderes als die Demobilmachung der Nerven’) . While this characterization of the revolutionary upheavals of 1918 and 1919 may have been something of an oversimplification, it has the merit of placing those upheavals into a revealing if often overlooked framework. By relating the revolution to the processes of demobilization in the widest sense, and thus implicitly to the processes of wartime mobilization, it suggests how the events of 1918–19 may have been linked to what had occurred in Germany during the war, and that the revolutionary unrest might be seen as a reaction to wartime political, economic and social mobilization. Viewed from this angle, the German revolution itself might appear a sort of political demobilization, and an expression of the failure of wartime attempts to mobilize the German people. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the limits of wartime mobilization. It proceeds from the suggestion outlined above that one way to understand the ‘German revolution’ might be to regard it as a political demobilization which followed the extraordinary and ultimately unsuccessful attempts at mobilization of the war years and which paralleled the military, economic and social demobilization at the end of the conflict. Thus the attempts at economic and political mobilization during the second half of the war may be seen to have led directly to the economic and political collapse which followed.

The article aims to consider the history of the Weimar Republic through the prism of the algorithm of the German revolution (that began in November, 1918 and is known as the November Revolution) and its continuation that discloses regularities of the origin, development and disappearance of the first German democracy. A comparative-historical approach to the German revolution (1918-1923), the Great French revolution (1789-1799), the French revolution of 1848, the Russian revolution (1917-1922), the events of the Italian history of the period of Mussolini, the Spanish Franco's period, the Portuguese history from 1926 to 1974 has become the cornerstone of the analysis. The author divides the German revolution into three stages: 1918-1923, 1924-1929, 193033. The first stage lasted from the revolt in Kiel (November 3-10, 1918) to the beer putsch in Munich and the revolt of communists in Hamburg in November, 1923. The open civil war in the country ended at that stage: the social protest splashed out in the streets, led to mass demonstrations, strikes and disorders, but not to revolts and big armed conflicts. This protest fell down during the economic stabilization of 1926-1928, but it began to rise again with the world economic crisis of 1929. The second stage (1924-1929) came to an end with the beginning of the world economic crisis. The third stage was connected with the new aggravation of opposition in the German society which led to the polarization and radicalization of society and, eventually, to the rise of the Nazis to power. The analysis shows that the German revolution has common features with the French revolution of 1848 and the Russian revolution in its February-October stage. Besides, the German revolution of 1918-1923 and the subsequent history of the Weimar Republic has broad analogies with the Great French and Russian revolutions in the stages known as the Thermidor and the Bonapartist regime. The author comes to a conclusion that events of the end of 1923 in Germany can be regarded as the Thermidor - a kickback of the revolution to the right, and Hitler's coming to power could be qualified as the Bonapartist regime. This period of the German history finds analogies in contemporary events: the Italian history of the period of Mussolini, Spain in Franco's period, the Portuguese history from 1926 to 1974. The author comes to a conclusion that the Weimar Republic became the same period of revolutionary development of Germany as the First Republic in France, which caused its history, many regularities of its emergence, development and falling.

This introductory chapter claims that the German Revolution was a significant event in European politics that had a decisive impact on the development of twentieth-century political thought. After sketching a brief historical introduction, it provides a conceptual map of the major political groups and ideologies during the German Revolution. It then examines the existing historiography on the revolution and outlines the structure of the book.

This article argues that the German Revolution of 1918–19 was a formative event in the politicization of Hannah Arendt and Herbert Marcuse, significantly influencing their understanding of revolutionary action and their reflections on the 1960s New Left movement. The German Revolution draws these often polarized thinkers closer together as both characterize the unfulfilled political possibility of the revolution in substantially similar ways. In the work of Arendt, the staunch critic of Marx, this highlights a critical engagement with the socialist tradition; while for Marcuse, the self-proclaimed “orthodox” Marxist, the revolution reveals the importance of a revised idea of revolutionary action. By tracing the influence of the German Revolution on the work of these two theorists, this paper aims to recover the importance of this historical moment in their later political thought, particularly in their readings of the renewed political possibilities of the 1960s.

Many contemporary observers of the Nazi takeover in 1933, and many Nazis themselves, were at pains to stress the peaceful nature of the ‘German revolution’. Agreeing with the Nazi Party leader in the Schleswig-Holstein town of Eutin, who boasted of ‘how peacefully the revolution has occurred in Ger many’, they often contrasted the smooth transfer of power in 1933 with the bloodshed and chaos of the revolutionary events in Germany during 1918 and 1919. In 1933 the State did not crumble, the army did not intervene, civil war did not break out. German nationalists could take satisfaction from the appar ent orderliness and the absence of large-scale violence which accompanied Hitler’s takeover: here, it seemed, was a true ‘Ger man’ revolution, one during which the trains continued to run on time.

The German Revolution: its Meaning and its Menace and Swastika: the Nazi Terror 31. The German Revolution: Its Meaning and its Menace. By Joseph King. 1933. (London: Williams and Norgate. 8vo. 152 pp. Paper, 2s 6d; paper boards, 3s. 6d.)32. Swastika: the Nazi Terror. By James Waterman Wise. 1933. (New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas. 8vo. 128 pp. $1.00.) John W. Wheeler-Bennett John W. Wheeler-Bennett Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 12, Issue 5, September 1933, Pages 678–679, https://doi.org/10.2307/2601812 Published: 01 September 1933

This chapter considers the revolution that broke out in November 1918 in Germany that encompassed a naval and army mutiny, the spread of sailors, soldiers and workers’ councils across Germany and the declaration of the republic. The chapter assesses the contested readings of the German revolution on its centenary and tries to make sense of the event through the lens of contemporaries. In particular, amongst several other observes, it probes Alfred Döblin’s rich literary account of the revolution, an author most famed for Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929). At a conceptual level, the chapter analyzes the German revolution through a comparative typology: revolution of the people, revolution for the people, and revolution without the people. These three frames help to explain the contested meanings of, and uses to which, the revolution has been put. Rather than a singular revolution, then, the German Revolution was the sum of different understanding of revolution of both observers and participants.

This chapter analyses the role of Jewish writers and activists in the revolutionary events of 1918–1919, including Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi, Gustav Landauer, Erich Muhsam, Ernst Toller and Eugen Levine. The visibility of these Jewish intellectuals during the revolution justified right-wing ideas of a supposed “Jewish-Bolshevik” conspiracy and viewing the Weimar regime with a “Jew Republic.” The German Revolution and its direct aftermath were catalysts for the intensification of anti-Semitism in Germany. The Jewish people were no longer depicted as mere heretics or profiteers, but also as traitors to the monarchy and executors of a “stab in the back” to soldiers at the frontline. This chapter traces the contributions of Jewish intellectuals in this contested and increasingly violent environment.

This chapter introduces the key aims and objectives of the book and explains its place in the MUP series Issues in Historiography. It identifies the late 1970s as a key turning point in debates on the German Revolution of 1918–19, marking a transition from political and social science to cultural history approaches, but also argues that this break should not be seen as too clean-cut or overdetermined. It further defines key terms used to frame the arguments presented in the book – ‘the new cultural history’, ‘revolutionary scripts’, ‘political imaginaries’, ‘the German Revolution’ and ‘historiography’ – as a scientific and political endeavour undertaken by professional historians who are themselves influenced by the times and places in which they live.

The Socialist Left and the German Revolution. A History of the German Independent Social Democratic Party, 1917–1922. By David W. Morgan. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1976. Pp. 499. £12.70. - Volume 20 Issue 2

Introduction - Social Movements in Leninist Regimes - Regime and Opposition in East Germany - Detente and the Peace Movement - The Incomplete Turn to Human Rights Dissidence - A German Revolution - Why Was There No 'Dissidence' in East Germany? - Appendix - Notes - Bibliography - Index

Languishing his revolutionary career with the Trinidadian Marxist writer and critic C. L. R. James. James had just completed World Revolution, 1917-1936) his anti-Stalinist history of Communism, and the two men discussed the failures of revolution since 1917, and in particular Trotskii's supposed 'degeneration' at the height of the revolutionary crisis in Germany in 1923. James was referring to an interview Trotskii had given at the end of September 1923 in his capacity as head of the Soviet military the Workers'-Peasants' Red Army to a group of visiting American congressmen. With Germany on the verge of civil war, and Heinrich Brandler, the head of the German Communist Party (KPD), in Moscow for consultations on how best to launch an armed uprising, Trotskii's statements had been remarkably cautious, restrained, and pacifist. Senator William King, a Democrat from Utah, asked first about the prospects for war in view of the disintegration of German society: 'Is it possible that the USSR may intervene in the event of revolution in Germany?' Trotskii did not rule out war, but only a defensive war, for 'we shall not despatch a single Red Army soldier across the frontiers of Soviet Russia unless we are forcibly compelled to do so.' He disavowed any intention of interfering in an internal German affair, pointing out that 'we could intervene only by making war on Poland.' Revolutions can only succeed or fail on their own merits, Trotskii asserted, not through external aid. While the Soviet Union would welcome a German revolution, it would not go to war to bring that about; intervention in Germany would mean war with Poland, and 'war between us and Poland would mean an all-European conflagration, which would wipe the remnants of European civilization from the face of the earth. After such a war, Americans would visit Europe in order to study here the graveyard of an old culture.'1

This chapter examines how the German Revolution was interpreted in the first fourteen years after it took place. It looks first at views presented by military historians, including key proponents of the 'stab-in-the-back' legend, which blamed the revolution for Germany's failure to find an 'honourable' way out of the First World War. A second section examines divisions on the Weimar-era left over the character and meaning of the revolution, whether between or within the Social Democrat and Communist camps. Finally, the chapter looks at attempts by self-proclaimed 'non-political' experts in the medical profession to offer an ethnological-criminological explanation of the 1918–19 Revolution (and social-biological solutions to the 'problem' of revolutions more generally), and demonstrates the link between their ideas and later Nazi thinking.

This article contends that the revolutionary event in 1870, as far as British foreign policy was concerned, was the collapse of French power, rather than the unification of Germany. By focusing on the unification of Germany and Anglo-German relations, historians have missed the centrality of France in nineteenth-century British foreign policy. Despite friction over Belgium, Britain and France co-operated on many issues in the eighteen-sixties, most notably checking Russian ambitions in the Near East. Once French power collapsed in 1870, Britain could no longer resist Russian revisionist claims in the Black Sea. At the same time, Britain was forced to compromise with the United States over outstanding differences dating from the civil war. Isolated on the international stage, the British government had to reorient its policy around the world and the events of 1870 shaped the options open to policymakers in subsequent years.

(1976). The Socialist Left and the German Revolution: A History of the German Independent Social Democratic Party, 1917–1922. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 4, No. 6, pp. 132-132.