Collapse
On 29 September Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff told Kaiser Wilhelm II that the war was lost and that negotiations for an armistice based on President Wilson's peace proposals should begin at once.
'Germany was rapidly falling apart in the last few weeks of the war.'
The German High Command (OHL) was now determined that the blame for a lost war should be placed squarely on the shoulders of the majority parties in the Reichstag rather than on the military and the imperial elite. On I October Ludendorff told a group of senior officers: 'We shall now see these gentlemen enter various ministries. They can make the peace that has to be made. They can now eat the soup they have served up to us!'
For the time being the Kaiser remained on the throne, but power was now vested in the majority parties in the Reichstag, the largest of which was the Social Democratic Party (SPD), as part of the 'revolution from above' masterminded by Admiral Paul von Hintze, a devious, blasé and ambitious opportunist who had been appointed secretary of state for foreign affairs in July.
The 'stab in the back' legend that was to play such a critical role in the eventual downfall of the Weimar Republic (in January 1933) was thus carefully constructed in the late summer of 1918 - the leaders of the SPD party were set up to take the blame for Germany's defeat, while those who had pursued the war were soon portrayed as having been 'betrayed' by all around them.
Germany was rapidly falling apart in the last few weeks of the war. By October many soldiers had had enough, and there were mass desertions. The navy mutinied in November, when orders were issued for the High Sea's Fleet to launch a massive attack on the Royal Navy in an attempt to sabotage the armistice negotiations.
On 7 November a motley crew of socialists and anarchists under Kurt Eisner seized power in Munich. The King abdicated in Bavaria, and a republican 'Free State of Bavaria' was proclaimed. On the following day, revolutionary sailors and workers took over control in Brunswick. By 8 November Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Leipzig, Halle, Osnabrück and Cologne were in the hands of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils. The mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, calmly announced that he fully accepted the new circumstances.
Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and the armistice was signed on 9 November to go into effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Germany was now a republic in the joint hands of the theoretically Marxist Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the theoretically monarchist army.
Published: 2003-04-03
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