German Revolution

In November 1918 sailors mutinies and workers councils toppled the German Empire and cleared the way for the Weimar Republic.

Overview

Plans of the naval command for a suicidal final sortie against the Royal Navy triggered the sailors mutiny at Kiel at the end of October 1918. Councils of workers and soldiers spread across Germany within days, ruling cities from Hamburg to Munich, while princes abdicated and on 9 November the republic was proclaimed. The armistice followed on 11 November. The Spartacist rising in Berlin in January 1919 was crushed by Freikorps units, and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered. The Weimar assembly gave Germany a democratic constitution, but the revolution left the imperial officer corps, judiciary, and landowning classes intact, an inheritance that weakened the republic until its end in 1933.