Volta
Politics3 November 1918 – January 1919

German Revolution

Also called: November Revolution, Kiel mutiny

A mutiny of sailors at the naval port of Kiel spread across the country; Wilhelm II abdicated and Germany became a republic, with the Social Democrat Ebert at the head of a provisional government.

Sailors and workers assembled on the Wilhelmplatz in Kiel, 10 November 1918
Sailors and workers assembled on the Wilhelmplatz in Kiel, 10 November 1918

Meyer, Ernst (1885-1960) · CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Source

In autumn 1918, with defeat certain, the naval command still ordered a last sortie, and on 3 November sailors and workers in Kiel rose in revolt. Workers’ and soldiers’ councils on the Russian model sprang up and within days the movement had spread across Germany.

On 9 November in Berlin Chancellor Max von Baden announced the emperor’s abdication and handed the chancellorship to the Social Democratic leader Ebert. The same day the Social Democrat Scheidemann proclaimed a republic from the Reichstag, and Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands the next day. Two days later the new provisional government signed the armistice.

The Spartacists, who wanted a Russian-style revolution, rose in January 1919, but the government crushed them with the army and Freikorps volunteers, and their leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered. Germany chose parliamentary democracy, but conflict between left and right and quarrels over blame for defeat, such as the “stab in the back” myth, burdened the new republic.

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States at the time
Germany
Places
Berlin

People

  • Friedrich Ebert1871 – 1925

    leader · Leader of the Social Democratic Party who took over as chancellor in the German Revolution of 1918 and became the first president of the Weimar Republic (1919–1925)

  • Wilhelm II1859 – 1941

    monarch · Last German emperor (1888–1918), whose Weltpolitik and naval build-up set Germany against Britain; he abdicated in the German Revolution of 1918 and went into exile in the Netherlands

Before and after

Earlier
1884 Berlin Conference and the Partition of Africa
Later
1919 Founding of the Weimar Republic

Themes that include this event

  • World War I and the Russian Revolution1908 – 1923

    From the Balkan crises to a war of trenches and total mobilization that toppled four empires; the Russian Revolution it unleashed, which created the first socialist state; and the Versailles settlement of national self-determination and the League of Nations