My Amazon Review of Robert Gerwarth's "November 1918: The German Revolution"

The Socialist Center Holds

University College of Dublin historian Robert Gerwarth has written an important book on the creation of the Weimar Republic that rose out of the ashes of Hohenzollern Empire in 1918. Although many historians have viewed the new republic as doomed from the start, Gerwarth rightly believes it had a fighting chance to succeed. His history is largely written through the lens of the MSPD (Majority Social Democratic Party) and its leader Friedrich Ebert.

His story begins in 1914 with the start of World War I with the Social Democratic Party unified save for Karl Liebknecht in supporting war credits to finance the war. The party splits a year later between pro-war (MSPD) and anti-war factions (USPD) with the majority supporting the war. In late 1917 and early 1918 with Russia’s withdrawal from the war a wave of optimism sweeps Germany. That was quickly dispelled as the Americans enter the war and the final German offensive is crushed in August of that year. Nevertheless, even with potential defeat Germans remain optimistic that President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points would lead to a just settlement.  

With Germany headed for defeat in the fall of 1918 a revolution starting with sailors in Kiel spreads throughout the country. Unlike the French and Russian revolutions which started in the capitals, here the German revolution starts in the periphery and ends up in Berlin in November.  On November 9 a republic is proclaimed in Weimar with Friedrich Ebert as its president.

Then things go to hell in a handbasket. A revolution from the Left is orchestrated by the Spartacists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. That revolution is crushed by the army with the rightwing paramilitary Freicorps. Similarly the so-called Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich is again crushed by the army and the paramilitaries. Here we see Ebert showing no mercy for his former colleagues on the Left. From the Right there is the Kapp Putsch which is put down by Ebert calling for a general strike. Ebert and the MSPD genuinely believed in democracy and order and even though they were men of the Left, they rightly feared the chaotic consequences of a Bolshevized Germany.

So here we have new government challenged from the Left and the Right and further it is demoralized by the harsh terms of Versailles in complete contradiction of what they believed to be the moderate terms of a Wilsonian Peace. Simply put, they were sold out by Wilson. And if that were not enough the government faces a French occupation of the Ruhr, a runaway inflation and the assassination of its highly regarded finance minister, Walter Rathenau.  Yes despite all of this by 1925 the government is stable, the center parties are in control and the extreme parties of the Right and Left are marginalized. It would take a global depression and a conspiracy of the Right and the Left to bring down Weimar. Absent that, sitting from the vantage point of 1925, the prospects for Weimar looked good.

My two quibbles with Gerwarth’s book is that he spends way to little time on the events of 1920-23 that he advertises in the beginning and he doesn’t spend much time on the role of the nonsocialist center parties had in forming the government. Otherwise “November 1918” makes for interesting history.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1W9DUGA4109F4/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv