Europe in Turmoil

I. The German November Revolution



A. The March 1918 Offensive

1. Brest-Litovsk Treaty--the concessions wrung out from the Soviet Union at Brest-Litovsk allowed Germany to move troops and war material from the Eastern Front to the Western Front (which was also why the Allies were putting so much pressure on Russia to stay in the war); Germany then quickly developed a plan to execute an offensive to win the war before the United States could land troops in Europe and push the advantage toward the Anglo-French side.


2. New Strategy--planned as a four-stage offensive, to break out of the trench warfare stalemate that had lasted nearly three years by this time, each stage of the offensive was to consist of three parts:

a) Artillery bombardment--the new strategy called for relatively short, intense bombardment with artillery; in the firs of the four offensive, the German army shot more than 1 million artillery shells along a 160 mile front in under 5 hours.

b) Stormtroopers--the initial attack was instigated by a select group of soldiers, called stormtroopers, chosen because of their military skill. The were to attack the weakest part of the enemy’s defense, disrupt command and communications, and then hold their position until the regular troops arrived.

c) Consolidation--while the stormtroopers made the initial attack, the rest of the army was to advance shortly afterward to consolidate the new position.

3. Initial success--despite intelligence reports that tipped off the Allies of the impending attack, Allied forces were initially overrun, and the German army made the greatest advances since before the war bogged down in trench warfare in late 1914.


4. Ultimate failure--the Germans were unable to follow-up on this initial success. The Allies quickly shifted their own strategic defensive tactics, and moved most of their troops and command structure further behind the forward trenches, beyond the reach of German artillery, which meant that the initial bombardment was less effective. The front lines were largely guarded by snipers and machine gun nests, and the areas the stormtroopers attacked were quickly reinforced. The casualty rate for the stormtroopers quickly became atronomical, meaning that the German army was depleting itself of its best soldiers. Even the early success was illusionary, because the greatest success of the new strategy took place in those area of the least strategic importance.



B. Entry of United State Armed Forces--was essentially the turning point of the war, because the troops and war material the Allies could now bring to the point of attack along the Western Front simply overwhelmed the German forces there. The arrival of US forces occurred several months before the Germans anticipated it happening; even if the offensive had been successful, it is doubtful whether the Germans would have been able to hold their advanced positions.

1. 100 Day Offensive--began August 18, 1918 and lasted until the formal German surrender in November.

2. Breakdown of German Army--despite continued communication problems between the Allied forces--and the fact that American commanders refused to place US troops under the command of any “foreign” officer (except for the all African American battalion from Harlem), the US entry into the war force the German army to begin to retreat along the western front.

a) German General Ludendorff,, the commander of the German army, in the midst of what was apparently a nervous breakdown, asked the Kaiser to form a new government. The Kaiser brought in several pro-war Social-Democratic Party (SPD) to be ministers in the new government.


b) The eventual surrender by the civilian government, rather than by the German, permitted the creation of the “stabbed in the back” myth, which helped create the atmosphere for the re-establishment of militarism in Germany in the 1930s; defeat was blamed on the weakness of the civilian government--the socialist in particular.


C. Naval mutiny--the German Naval high command, hoping to stave off defeat and rehabilitate the reputation of the navy, order the High Seas Fleet to leave their blockades ports and enter the North Sea to engage the British Royal Navy.


1. Kiel Mutiny--rank and file sailors, realizing that this was a death warrant for themselves, mutinied instead. The sailors armed themselves, and joined with dockworkers in the city to disarm opponents, and the group also established a sailor’s and workers council to run the city.




D. Revolution in Germany--the Kiel Mutiny touched off protests against the war and the government in a number of cities: Bremen, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig, Dresden, and a number of smaller cities, as well.

1. Munich--socialists took control of the royal palace and declared the ‘Bavarian Free State.”

2. Berlin


a) Karl Liebknecht--recently freed from prison, Liebknecht led a procession of workers and soldiers with guns and red flags through the streets of Berlin to the imperial palace--recently abandoned by the Kaiser, who fled to Holland--and declared a socialist republic from the balcony.

b) Phillipe Scheidermann--a pro-war Social Democratic Party(SPD) leader in the Kaiser’s last government, proclaimed a republic from the balcony of the imperial parliament.

c) Factions reunite--the two SPD factions (temporarily) reunited to present a “revolutionary” government of people’s commissars for endorsement by an assembly of 1,500 workers’ and soldiers’ delegates--in effect, a German soviet.

3. “Moderate” socialists--pro-war socialists outnumbered radicals in the new socialist government, and they used their greater numbers--and collaboration with the military and others on the right--to suppress the opposition on the left.

a) Friedrich Ebert--President of the short-lived Socialist Republic, and first president of the Weimar Republic. Worked with the military and the Freikorps (right-wing former soldiers, many of whom eventually found their way to the National Socialist Party--the Nazis) to put down the Spartikus Revolution, led by Liebknecht and Luxemberg. Members of the Freikorps murdered both Liebnecht and Luxemberg.

b) The failure of the war led to a greater sympathy for left-wing solutions, and many people who previously had supported liberal political solutions moved left and looked to the SPD as a proponent of those left-wing solutions--only the moderate politicians who controlled the party, while advocating radical solutions for public consumption, acted in a “gradualist” fashion, making only piecemeal reforms.

c) Public impatience with the slow pace of reform led many to back the Independent Socialist Party, whose members had broken with the SPD over the war. The government could no longer rely on the army, either, since rank-and-file soldiers, also dissatisified with the slow pace of reform, joined workers in the streets in larger cities.


d) Emergence of the Freikorps--the government turned to the Freikorps to put down the Spartikus Revolution, and to intimidate their opponents on the left. The members of the Freikorps were drawn largely from the ranks of the stormtroopers, many of whom felt alienated from the rest of German society because of their experiences during the war, and also feeling that they had been betrayed by that society--that they had not suffered a military defeat, but abandoned by other members of German society. This alliance nearly backfired in 1920, when members of the Freikorps staged the Kapp Putsch in 1920, and attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic. While Adolph Hitler was not himself a member of the Freikorps, many members migrated to the Nazi Party and the SA

II. The Spirit of Revolution--Germany was not the only country where revolutionary firmanent took place.

A. Austria--had a socialist party similar in structure to Germany, and worked to tone down worker protest to remain “respectable.”

B. Turkey--no socialist revolution, but Greece declared its independence; the conflict here quickly devolved into atrocities on both side. The Turks, however, in reaction to the defeats their army experienced to Russian forces on the battlefield, blamed another Christian minority in the country--the Armenians, and began a program of genocide that eventually murdered somewhere between 1 and 1.5 million men, women, and children.

C. France--French troops in Archangel, like their British and American counterparts, refused to take any a part in battles in Russia, and French sailors had to be evacuated from the Black Sea after several mutinies.


D. Great Britain--strikes by workers in Glasgow (“Red Clydeside”), London, Liverpool, and Belfast, which nearly turned into a general strike that united Catholics and Protestants.


E. United States--witnessed the greatest strike wave in history--steel, meat packing, metal workers. A general strike in Seattle.


F. Spain--inspired by events in the Soviet Union, farm workers in the south of the country had a number of strikes and meetings to attempt to organize. In Barcelona, workers went on strike for next several years; when local business leaders hired gunmen to murder labor leaders, anarchist leaders took matters into their own hands to strike back.