The fall of Germany’s monarchy was not the culmination of some sinister grand plan.
The Social Democratic Party, which replaced the Kaiser’s regime in 1918, didn’t even
really lead the revolution and had to catch up with citizens on the streets.
But unlike some other places, Germany was a mostly cohesive nation-state, and the monarchy
was instrumental in originally uniting the country.
So then, why couldn’t its imperial system, the brainchild of Otto von Bismarck, survive
the end of World War One?
Why did Kaiser Wilhelm II have to abdicate?
Well, Germany’s Social Democrats were instrumental players in establishing the Weimar Republic.
They were the largest grouping in the German Parliament, the Reichstag, and they represented
a genuinely popular pro-worker, pro-peace mandate.
Which was all well and good, but Imperial Germany was not a parliamentary democracy.
Before the revolution real power rested with the Emperor, and Kaiser Wilhelm II was far
from a democrat or a pacifist.
He, and Germany’s militaristic ruling class, were focused totally on winning the war.
With Wilhelm’s blessing, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff
had effectively been military dictators of the country since 1916.
From the people’s perspective then, the Kaiser was complicit in offering up an entire
generation to the war as sacrificial lambs.
On the homefront blockades that had lasted for years and a loss of colonial territories
also brought about shortages of food and other vital supplies.
That’s not to say that Germans were totally united in their opposition though.
In fact, the Social Democrats towards the end of the war had split into two factions
(the Majority and Independent SPD), but everyone was certainly upset.
Ludendorff himself informed the Kaiser that the war could not be won on the 29th of September,
1918, and the military high command then encouraged
Wilhelm to begin the process of democratising
his empire. Why would they do that?
Two reasons: One, they believed (rightly) that the Entente powers would more readily
negotiate with a democratic Germany, and two, more cynically, von Hindenburg and Ludendorff
wanted the blame for the war―that make no mistake they had lost―to fall upon a socialist
civilian government.
The Kaiser was very much on board with that shift-the-blame plan, and on the third of
October Wilhelm appointed his last Imperial Chancellor, Prince Max von Baden to head a
reformist government.
Von Baden included the first Social Democrats in the history of the Reich in his cabinet―notably
Philipp Scheidemann―and began to legislate for a number of reforms that were supposed
to limit the Kaiser’s power but keep Wilhelm on the imperial throne.
However, whatever they might have liked it to look like, and how it was made to look
later, Germany’s entire system, embodied
by the person of the Kaiser, was totally discredited
by the disaster that was WW1.
The people felt that their rulers had failed them, and appointing a liberal Chancellor
and just letting a few socialists into government was not going to be enough to placate them.
But plenty of Emperors had suffered angry citizens before.
They can be stopped if your army remains loyal, and the Kaiser’s, while it was battered
by the war, still could have been.
Unfortunately for Wilhelm II it wasn’t going to be.
The straw that broke the camel’s back came about on October 30th 1918 when seamen stationed
in Kiel were given orders to sail out and engage the Royal Navy.
The men flatly refused and began to protest after several were shot.
Emboldened by the sailors, Kiel’s workers turned that mutiny into the sparks of revolution
when they joined them on strike on November 4th.
With hindsight, the question now was not whether the Kaiser’s regime would fall, but whether
it would only be Wilhelm II’s personal departure or the end of the monarchy entirely? The
Emperor didn’t necessarily realise that though, and remained at his military command
post at Spa in occupied Belgium, while Prince von Baden worked to save his dynasty in Berlin.
Already by November 2nd, the Socialists in the cabinet were pressing the Chancellor to
demand the Kaiser’s abdication.
They could do that because the Majority Social Democrats, led by Friedrich Ebert, were the
most powerful and popular political force in the country.
But the MSPD wasn’t devoutly republican and its leadership may very well have accepted
a symbolic monarchy in the style of Britain’s parliamentary system, if only Wilhelm would
go, and if events hadn’t gotten ahead of them.
For the moment, anyway, the political right was biding its time, so the only real competitor
to Ebert’s Social Democrats came from the
farther-left USPD and particularly the Spartakusbund,
another splinter group that later reorganised as the Communist Party of Germany.
Founded by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the Spartacists began as an anti-war faction
of the Social Democrats in 1914.
They then joined the breakaway USPD when the party split three years later, and inspired
by the Russian October Revolution, began to call for the overthrow of state and society
and the establishment of a German Soviet regime.
Suffice to say, they definitely weren’t fans of men wearing crowns.
Come the last week of the war the challenge that they presented Ebert and the bulk of
the Social Democrats was to manage a balancing act.
On the one hand, the political system of Bismarck and fifty-years-past was going to be replaced:
following the mutiny at Kiel, crowds of workers and soldiers began to form in urban centres
across Germany all demanding peace and a new government to negotiate it.
On the other hand, Ebert saw risk in promoting taking to the streets, as most Social Democrats
feared the agitation of Marxists like the Spartakusbund who may very well have used
that to start a Russian Bolshevik-style bloody civil war if left unchecked.
On the 6th of November, the Socialist Ministers
Scheidemann and Gustav Bauer demanded that von Baden represent the Social Democrats fully
in cabinet, and, again, the abdication of the Kaiser.
The first demand was accepted.
Things went a step further in Bavaria, Germany’s 2nd largest state, after the capitulation
of neighbouring Austria-Hungary to the Entente.
The centuries-old von Wittlesbach dynasty there was forced from power and a republic
was proclaimed in Munich on November 8th by the USPD and MSPD working in tandem; intentionally
to the exclusion of their Spartacist cousins.
Back in Berlin on November 9th a contingent of MSPD politicians led by Ebert confronted
the Chancellor.
That morning their patience had broken.
A General Strike was organised, and the Berlin garrison had sided with the strikers.
The rest of the army, still commanded by Field Marshal von Hindenburg was unwilling to fight
against the bulk of Germany’s population, and of course, he personally still hoped to
pin blame for an armistice on the democrats and Marxists.
And yet, with virtually no one of significance wanting him to stay, Kaiser Wilhelm just couldn’t
bring himself to voluntarily go into exile.
Briefly, he considered abdicating as Emperor, but not from the lesser title King of Prussia.
That was shot down as legally impossible by von Baden
So with millions on the streets, the army unwilling to fight for the Kaiser, and the
country paralysed by strikes, von Baden handed over power to the MSPD at their meeting.
Technically that was also illegal.
Even under a recently amended Constitution the present Chancellor couldn't just hand
the job over to whomever he liked.
Of course, the thing about revolutions is that during them laws go out the window, so Germany’s
new Chancellor Friedrich Ebert became. Von Baden’s last act in government was to
announce Wilhelm’s abdication, forgoing actually asking him first.
Germany was still not a republic though, that happened minutes later when Philipp Scheidemann
announced the end, not just of Wilhelm, but of the monarchy outright in a speech to strikers
gathered around the Reichstag.
Clearly, consultation had fallen completely out of fashion as he did so without first
informing his party leader.
Ebert was furious, but the deed had been done.
Scheidemann’s justification was to emulate Bavaria, outmanoeuvre the Spartacists, and
hopefully, keep the revolution peaceful.
Unhappy about that, 1919 became a much bloodier year in contrast to the massive but largely
peaceful protests that brought down the Kaiser.
Predictably, the Spartacists did try to overthrow the new government, but that was a fight between
Social Democracy and Bolshevism, not over monarchy.
As for Wilhelm II, once Max von Baden relinquished power he could see that the game was up, and
fled from Spa to the Netherlands where he lived in exile for another twenty-three years.
The ex-Kaiser never set foot in Germany again, and even willed that his body not be returned
home until the monarchy is restored.
He’s still in the Netherlands.
The empire that Wilhelm lost worked for decades before WW1 though.
To find out how, you should check out the video on the German Empire’s creation and
Bismarck, its Iron Chancellor to the left.
And as always, I’ve been James and I’ll see you there.