Putschcast
A global podcast about Riots, Rebellions and Revolutions. Putschcast explores how power changes hands, whether through internal social and political decay, external pressure, popular resistance or a pure stroke of luck.
Featuring experts in their field, every episode explores a unique moment in history that led to profound changes in the lives of the people affected by it.
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Putschcast
#10 Imperial Germany - A Kaiser prefers Exile over Empire
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He was once hailed as the "Kaiser of Peace." By 1918, his empire lay in ruins, and millions had died in vain. To avert a "Russian scenario" like the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Germany's military dictatorship under Hindenburg and Ludendorff made a desperate, calculated move: they handed power to civilians to seek peace.
We trace the sailors' mutiny in Kiel and the Kaiser's sudden flight into exile, events that ignited the November Revolution. But on Putschcast we also ask, was this a true revolution? And why did the old elites remain so firmly in power?
Joined by historian Andrew Bonnell, we explore why many Germans were unaware of defeat until the Treaty of Versailles was signed, and how the generals' "Stab-in-the-Back Myth" cynically transferred blame, poisoning the new Weimar democracy from the very start.
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November 1918. The guns on the Western Front finally fell silent. Amistice is the magic word, a loaded word. Did you know that most Germans still believed they were winning the war until the very end? The sudden collapse wasn't just a military defeat, it was a psychic rupture. The world flipped upside down in a matter of weeks, and the old order was gone. The Kaiser abdicated, or was abdicated, and fled the country. Generals responsible for the deaths of millions suddenly handed over power to civilians, politicians who had to make peace at any cost. Sailors refused to die a hero's death, and soldiers flooded off to the streets. To navigate this complicated foundational crisis that shaped the rest of the 20th century, we're joined by Andrew Bonnell, an associate professor of history at the University of Queensland and an expert on the November Revolution. Welcome to Pudgecast. I'm Oliver Heuter. And a quick hello to my co-host James Bennett, who has spent the last couple of weeks preparing for this much anticipated episode. You're on Pudgecast. Together, let's travel back in time more than 100 years. So, James, 1918, most people, especially in the English-speaking world, armistice until today, the 11th of November, is a very important day in the calendar because finally the killing has stopped on the Western Front. However, did you until this episode today have any awareness of what happened behind the scenes on the German side of politics?
SPEAKER_03I think like with most of the English-speaking world that we didn't really have that much of a conception about what was um happening.
SPEAKER_01Because I went to I went to school in Germany, always loved history, hence this podcast, and of course we did spend quite a bit of time in history lessons dealing with the immediate aftermath of World War One. But for example, the abdication of the Kaiser, which we'll be talking about today, I thought he voluntarily did that. But as we might learn today, he was uh more pushed than um by choice. And also the republic that came about, which is still celebrated in German culture today as the first serious attempt on democracy in Germany, was more an accident than uh an initially planned big concept that was you know thought of many, many years in advance. It really just unfolded over a certain number of days. And that's why I'm very happy to now speak to an expert who knows a lot more than we do.
SPEAKER_04Yes, thanks. Uh Andrew Bonnell, I'm professor of history at University of Queensland. My work is mainly on modern European history, especially German history.
SPEAKER_01So uh And uh you have um published a new book that came out uh last year that we'll be referring to throughout the interview, throughout the podcast, revolutions in modern German history. And we've just heard the plural there revolutions, James. Did you know there was a number of revolutions in Germany?
SPEAKER_03Uh until I read Andrew's book, no. I I was sort of vaguely aware of like the Kaiser's reign coming to an end in the Weimar Republic, and then obviously, you know, the ascent of Hitler. But otherwise, no, my my knowledge was uh pretty scant.
SPEAKER_01Because our podcast obviously has the word putsch in it. The word putsch has entered the English language uh in the aftermath of the Beerhole Putsch 1923. Do you know more about the word putsch? And then how commonly is it used in English? Because I still have to explain it to a lot of people.
SPEAKER_04Uh in in English, we mostly use the word coup d'etat, and so I you know joke to my students when I explained the concept to them that uh you know putsch is uh German for coup d'etat, which is French for coup d'etat.
SPEAKER_01Borrowed from other languages, but the concept is the same. It's um yeah, can you define it for us? Is this is there a definition for a coup or a putsch?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think uh a revolution could be more of a mass upheaval of uh uh a significant section of the population, uh, whereas a putsch is more a sort of grab for power by uh often by a smaller organized group. And of course uh historians still argue about the extent to which, say, the November 1917 Russian Revolution is a was it was was a sort of putsch by the well-organized Bolsheviks or a mass revolution. I mean, that's the definitions can be can be fluid.
SPEAKER_01And you've just given us a perfect timeline here, uh Andrew, because you just mentioned the October Revolution, November, depending which calendar you go by in Russia, exactly one year before. The world war was going on for three years. Initially, everyone thought they're home by Christmas in 1914. That didn't happen. There was a stalemate on the Western Front, millions of people dead on both sides. Uh 1917 also America entered the war, so that shifted the dial. Not immediately, but uh within a few months' time, you know, the first troops started to appear, and also the economic boost obviously behind the uh the Western Allies against Germany made a difference. Germans obviously thought they were on a winning streak because Russia was out of the war by late 1917. Then there was a big offensive, the Kaiserschlacht, as it was called, starting in March 1918, which I think is really important to understand, to understand why this uh revolution later occurred. Who were the people behind this offensive? Because what many people, including myself, are not aware of is how Germany was run politically in those dying years of the war. The names Hindenburg and Ludendorff come to mind.
SPEAKER_04Yes, the uh you know commander of the German uh uh army uh uh Field Marshal Hindenburg and and his you know effective deputy uh Ludendorff were pretty much the most powerful people in Germany from late 1916 uh well into late 1918. You know, the Kaiser was once quoted that uh the generals are running everything and he had nothing to do except go and chop wood, he's uh supposed to have said once. And uh while you still had a parliament sitting, the German Reichstag, uh the German parliament is still sitting, the military have an effective veto over who is going to be the Chancellor, the German prime minister. Hindenburg and Ludendorff are largely dictating the strategic policy. As you mentioned, with November 1917, the Russian Revolution, the uh Bolshevik leadership pledged to end the war. Uh, this is one of the greatest reasons for their success and the discrediting of the Russian Provisional Government that had been in place from uh March to November 1917. The uh uh provisional government had tried to continue the war for various reasons. The Germans, again driven by the military leadership, uh the German High Command is pushing for large-scale dismemberment of the western regions of the Russian Empire. So there could be a ring of German satellite states and buffer states where the Germans would control uh essentially the natural resources of uh areas like Ukraine and uh and Poland, etc. But one of the reasons why the Russian provisional government had been reluctant to uh make peace with the Germans is they knew that the Germans would dictate very hard terms. So the Germans actually have to leave a very large number of troops in the East to enforce the peace settlement that is agreed by the Bolsheviks in March 1918. So this frees up some German troops for this big decisive offensive in the West. And the rationale for that is that uh uh Germany's uh manpower reserves are getting very low. They've pretty much called up you know everyone from you know from the age of 19 to uh mid-40s and uh um and they've lost two million dead and uh uh similar number wounded, and uh the uh Americans are going to start arriving in the middle of 1918, potentially inexhaustible numbers. There could be a million fresh troops from on their way from from the from the US, but the economic impact of America joining the war is immediate. Really, the March offensive is the Germans' last attempt to uh the German army's last attempt to uh get a decisive victory before they're overwhelmed by uh masses of uh fresh American troops and equipment.
SPEAKER_01It was successful at the start.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it has initial successes, but does grind to a halt by June, July uh 1918. And this is also the time when when US American troops start to arrive.
SPEAKER_01And I just mentioned before that a lot of Germans at the time, even there was no freedom of the press or anything, actually believed they were winning. Is that accurate from your research?
SPEAKER_04Yes, no one no one realizes just how serious the uh war situation is for Germany, uh, although uh there is a lot of popular unrest in January 1918. There are uh anywhere between half a million and a million workers go on strike, especially in the munitions industry, starting in Berlin, but it spreads quite widely. And it's a spontaneous strike. The trade union leadership didn't organize it, they try to uh shut it down, in fact. But uh the population have suffered two very severe winters. Uh there's no end to the war in sight. Uh, they've seen that uh a revolution in Russia could just end the war for Russia. There is this sort of gradual radicalization of the working class, but uh even the civilian uh heads of the political parties are unaware of how uh serious Germany's military situation is in 1918 because uh the army very tightly controlled the what information gets uh out into the public about the military situation.
SPEAKER_03Um Andrew, when I was reading about the the history of the sort of the inception of the Weimar Republic, you know, I read a bit about like when it when Prince uh Max of Baden, he uh it was sort of like in early October a new government was formed. In your opinion, do you think this was a move by the military uh or the Kaiser, sort of a step towards parliamentary democracy, or like what what were their intentions behind it?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think it's a little bit hard to to read uh the the the intentions. I think what is happening at the end of September 1918 is uh the uh army supreme command send a a general staff major to go and brief the uh the Reichstag, the political party leaders of the you know German civilian parties that uh sorry guys, that you know the uh offensive in the West uh you know has has failed, the Allies are pushing uh uh on the Western Front. Uh they've got increasingly large numbers of tanks and aircraft. Germany has like a couple of dozen tanks in the First World War. They're there uh uh and and you have all these fresh American troops arriving, and Germany's manpower resources are exhausted. By the end of September, Germany's main ally, Austria-Hungary, is starting to disintegrate. Germany's other ally, Bulgaria, is uh quitting the war. Uh Bulgaria's exhausted as well. And and this is when it does come to a shock to Germany's civilian political leaders that the army is saying, sorry guys, the war's basically lost. Uh, there's nothing more we can do. Now it's up to you to negotiate a peace with the Allies on as best terms as possible. The reasoning from the Army Command and the Kaiser appears to have been that, well, this is when we need to have a more liberal-looking uh government which uh might uh be able to get on better with uh President Woodrow Wilson and the Western Allies and and and might get the best deal possible. The other thing they're trying to do is uh I I think quite cynically, is they're flicking responsibility to uh the civilian politician saying, Okay, well, we've done our bit, the war's lost, now uh uh over to you to try and uh salvage what you can out of this situation.
SPEAKER_01Clean up the mess.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and the army, uh army leaders like Ludendorff are very quick to propagate the uh uh myth that to Germany didn't lose the war, it was stabbed in the back. The German government manages to negotiate an armistice, which is a ceasefire that comes into effect on uh 11th of November, which is two days after the uh uh fall of the Kaiser, which we're getting to. Yeah, so the armistice is just a temporary ceasefire before there's a peace treaty negotiated at Versailles the next year.
SPEAKER_01So just talking, just talking in there, Andrew. So we have an exhausted German army, the other middle powers are collapsing as well. The offensive wasn't successful after all, and they have now realized Hindenburg and Ludendorff have both realized this is lost. There's not much we can do. However, that shouldn't be our responsibility. Let's pass it on to civilian politicians. Were civilian politicians ever in charge of Germany until that day? Like uh even prior to the war?
SPEAKER_04And this is still hotly debated by historians, um, and I've you know sort of participated in some of these uh debates in in writing uh articles and book reviews. But uh Germany has a functioning parliament. Uh all men over the age of 25 can vote for the national parliament, the Reichstag. But uh the Reichstag's powers are incredibly limited. Uh and yes, if the government wants to change laws, it has to get the the Reichstag to agree. But uh the main power of the Reichstag is to approve the military budget. But the German governments uh before 1914 managed to make the army budget something which gets agreed to for a while. It's seven years, every seven years, and every five years, they managed to reduce the power of the uh parliament. The head of government, the chancellor, is only answerable to the emperor, the Kaiser, but not to Parliament. He doesn't have to have a parliamentary majority to enjoy the confidence of the uh of the Kaiser.
SPEAKER_01So until the end of the war, it's not a constitutional monarchy as we saw it in the UK at that stage. It was a lot more authoritarian state with with similar structures, but not the same strength of the parliament.
SPEAKER_04No, and and the the emperor has the the uh capacity, has uh rights to command the army, and the army isn't answerable at all to parliament.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_04And that's of course crucial during the war, where uh you know parliament are trying to uh formulate peace resolutions, trying to you know formulate bases to negotiate for for peace at different stages during the war. But uh the uh army could just turn around and tell the emperor, and they do this uh on a couple of occasions, well, we can't work with this chancellor anymore, uh replace him, and the emperor just replaces him. He doesn't have to have a parliamentary majority.
SPEAKER_03Andrew, just for context and so so our listeners who may not know, could you tell us a bit about Prince Max von Baden? Because he seemed quite quite an interesting character to me.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, Baden in Southwest Germany had the reputation of being one of the most liberal states imperial Germany. There was quite a strong popular democratic and liberal tradition in in Baden. Prince Max von Baden's a cultivated liberal heir to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Baden. It was recently uh revealed by uh one a couple of researchers that uh uh he uh was also uh had a friendly correspondence with uh a guy called Houston Stuart Chamberlain, who was one of the biggest intellectual influences on Adolf Hitler, uh a sort of uh very strange guy who was uh uh Richard Wagner's son-in-law, son-in-law of the famous composer Wagner, convinced racist and anti-Semite. So on the one hand, Baden is quite has reputation, of Prince Max has reputation, of being very liberal and uh and and enlightened, but uh he's also in touch with some of these stranger far-right nationalist individuals like Chamberlain.
SPEAKER_01And how did he end up with this crucial job, especially now that the military wants to actually hand over power?
SPEAKER_04Firstly, he's from one of Germany's ruling monarchical families, and uh it's useful to point out if everyone's heard of I think of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was also king of Prussia, so he had both crowns, the King of Prussia, Kingdom of Prussia and the Imperial Crown. But uh Germany has 22 monarchical families in before 1918. So the German constitution is quite complex. It's it sort of looks very federal, although Prussia predominates, especially in military affairs. So the Allies uh regarded Prussia as the source of uh all of Germany's militarism and authoritarianism. So having a uh a prince from Baden, which is a more liberal southwestern state, was a much better one. And in Baden also there'd been a greater tradition of uh the political parties cooperating, so liberals trying to cooperate with this with the socialists or social democrats, which rarely happened elsewhere in Germany. What they're trying to do is also to bring the moderate right wing of the social democrats in into the tent, uh, because uh this is the biggest party in in Germany, uh, which has been excluded from any share of government power for decades. And you you now want someone who can try to bring the uh moderate social democrats into the government tent and uh and get a broad-based coalition that will look democratic to the allies, and and Max is seen as the person who can do this.
SPEAKER_01Did he want the job?
SPEAKER_04Good question. I think uh I think he sort of uh is is somewhat reluctant and takes it out of a sense of responsibility, uh uh because it's it's very ungrateful.
SPEAKER_01It's very ungrateful, isn't it? Like everyone wants the job in 1913 and 14, but then in 1918, when the military even admitted that there's all hope lost, like what an ungrateful role.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah. I mean the situation is pretty catastrophic, and uh you know, his his his main job is to try to uh you know look make Germany look more uh liberal and democratic to the Allies and to try to get the best peace terms. I mean, his main job is to try to negotiate an armistice uh with the Allies, uh and he's he's also trying to uh pull together a war cabinet that includes a couple of the more right-wing or moderate social democrats. He's really getting overtaken by uh events because uh in the West the German army is losing territory day by day. And the next thing that happens is that even though the army leadership at the end of September says the war's lost, all we can do is make the best peace deal we can, and that's up to the civilians, the Navy wants to fight on, or if not fight on, uh go down in one big blaze of glory. And on the 26th of October, the uh Navy command issue this uh order to set sail for one last battle against the British Navy or you know the Allied navies by this stage, which uh would have been completely suicidal. The the sailors twig very quickly to what's going on and don't see any sense in being the last people to get killed in the First World War. The naval mutiny starts, which uh so so Max is has has three weeks where he's trying to manage this deteriorating military situation, signal uh willingness to peace to the Allies, and then the Navy start this uh plan for a a last ditch uh suicide offensive, and they don't tell Max von Baden about it, by the way. They they they don't uh uh inform you know the government uh what they're doing. So sort of highlights the the limits of civilian power in uh Imperial Germany.
SPEAKER_03Andrew, is this what was known as a Kiel mutiny? Is that correct?
SPEAKER_04This is the start of the Kiel mutiny, yes.
SPEAKER_03Why was it such a sort of crucial event leading up to the revolution? What was this significance?
SPEAKER_04Oh this is this is really the start of the revolution, the sort of mass disobedience of the Imperial in the last week of October, and and the preparations for this have been going on for days, so uh uh they'd been loading live ammunition onto onto ships. Uh preparations have been going on for some time. Uh officers have been putting their personal affairs uh in into order because they don't expect to come back from this battle. Uh and uh uh and and they try to keep it a secret from the rank and file sailors, but of course it's very hard to keep this scale of preparations secret. Uh and so when the first ship uh is supposed to, and you're talking about coal-fired steamships here, uh, which you need uh stokers to uh keep large fires going to get the coal power, steam power from the coal, the uh stokers let the fires go out, uh, and then the next few ships, sailors just refuse to board the ships, they stay on shore or they let the fires go out, and and there's increasing mass disobedience in the last days of October. Then the the naval command uh get uh uh loyal torpedo boat crews and and uh Marines to uh arrest the mutineers, but there are so many mutineers that you're you know locking up your the crews of your ships and so they can't go out to sea if they don't have crews. There's this sort of mass refusal that spreads very fast from from ship to ship to engage in preparations for uh an all-out attack on the the British Navy and the Channel. Basically, the uh authority of the naval officers just breaks down, and uh, and of course, this then spreads because uh you you have uh sailors being locked up uh in in keel in in military prisons, you then have uh large numbers of sailors and soldiers going to demand their. Release and you know, in some cases forcing their release, and uh uh attempts by uh officers to get loyal uh naval cadets or other elements to to suppress this mutiny, but it just keeps escalating. Then the uh Admiralty uh sort of give up the plans for the offensive and they uh disperse the fleet to different ports, and uh this is a sort of strategic error from the naval command because you're getting boatloads of mutinous sailors then going to uh uh Cuxhafen, Hamburg, Bremen, and all these other northern North German port cities, and uh wherever the sailors go, they're uh spreading uh demands for an end to the war and an abdication of the Kaiser. So the mutiny then quite quickly takes on a political aspect. So but it starts about 25th, 26th of October. By 4th of November, Kiel is basically in the hands of uh revolutionary sailors.
SPEAKER_01Just for context, like this is Imperial Germany, so Kaiser Wilhelm was in charge, what, over 30 years by then? And again, he would have always been the Kaiser of Peace until he started World War I. And you mentioned Prussia before. This was a highly militarized society where orders are not disputed or challenged even until that very moment. Is that the society that's happened and therefore it was a much greater shock to the system?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I'm very very much so. I think during the course of 1918, there has been a case of gradual uh reluctance of German soldiers to uh carry out orders. You don't get mutinies on the scale of the French army in 1917 or the big desertions you had in the Russian army in 1916 and 17. But uh one German military historian Wilhelm Deist has argued that in the course of 1918, as the war situation gets more and more hopeless and uh uh troops get more and more demoralized, and also they've the troops on the Eastern Front are fraternizing with uh Russian soldiers who are helping to set an example of revolution to their German comrades. Wilhelm Deist uh has spoken about a sort of passive military strike or a quiet military strike with uh soldiers just uh increasingly trying to evade combat uh if they can do so without openly defying officers, spending more and more time in the rear areas. So there's a gradual crumbling of morale in the German army and in the Navy there had been protests by uh sailors against their very poor food. So remember that there are terrible food shortages in Germany in 1917 and 18 because of the Allied blockade. And it's estimated that hundreds of thousands of civilians are dying. In the winter of 1916-17, all there is to eat is basically turnips. Uh, they have turnips for everything. The uh Navy is cooped up in their ports, uh except for the U-boats, which have a very high uh casualty rate. Uh, but the high seas fleets cooped up in their ports with poor food and uh harsh discipline. And when they protest against the poor food in 1917, uh uh a couple of sailors are summarily executed for mutiny. So there was kind of pent-up radicalization of uh the Navy uh in particular.
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SPEAKER_01We're talking to Professor Andrew Bonnell about the November Revolution 1918 in Germany. Obviously, it had implications for all of Europe and the world eventually. And here on Podcast, we believe this revolution needs more airtime because it changed the outcome of the 20th century. We've just learned about the disastrous situation on the front. The Navy were sent on an almost Wagnerian mission, because you made a Wagner link there before, to die a last final hero's death. Uh the High Command had the smart idea of the Navy to disperse them, spread them to different ports, which is like a spark that we so often talk about on this podcast. The powder cake is obviously there, we talked about that. But the mutiny then was the spark that was carried from city to city. And we've talked about the man at the center of it, Prince Max von Baden, who just got this ungrateful job to sort it all out, make peace in the meantime. Can I just ask, where was the Kaiser on all this?
SPEAKER_04So the Kaiser is at his field headquarters in uh Spa in Belgium, uh surrounded by the Army High Command. And that's significant for course of developments because uh, you know, the the communications uh uh over a hundred years ago uh uh between Berlin and uh the Kaiser's field headquarters are not great. Uh I think there are two telephone lines, uh which didn't always work. So the Kaiser is kind of cut off from uh from Berlin and uh whatever political decisions uh people are trying to make in Berlin.
SPEAKER_01Did he want to be cut off?
SPEAKER_04Uh well he uh he he could have returned to to Berlin, but he's still sort of uh you know cosplaying the role of great military commander in in in in Belgium.
SPEAKER_01Even though he wasn't, as we've learned, because it was two generals running the show.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. At this point, did the Kaiser have, or do you think that he could have had the backing of the military?
SPEAKER_04I think that's that's uh crumbling away uh quite quite fast. Uh and uh when you know the sailors in in Kiel and then quickly in in other North German ports uh uh are disobeying their uh officers, as I said, they have two main demands apart from the fact they don't want to go out and on a uh uh on a suicide mission, and the demand is immediate end to the war and abdication of the Kaiser. So the the Kaiser is now heavily identified with the uh continuation of the war and uh the example of the Russian Revolution that uh the uh overthrow of the uh Tsar of Russia had been the precondition for uh Russia leaving the the war as well.
SPEAKER_01At that stage, was it well known what happened to the royal family in Russia in Germany? Did people know that?
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01So just for the record that the Bolsheviks wiped out, massacred the entire royal family, who were previously refused exile in Britain as well, which is another anecdote in history. So they knew that. So there's clearly pressure because the parallels are there. Losing the war, mutiny, it's not looking good, and even his highest supporters that owed him their positions basically are now doubting his authority. Back to Max von Baden. You took us to the 4th of November before. What happened in the days after?
SPEAKER_04So day days after the uh uh Social Democrats uh agree to send one of their uh members of parliament, uh one of their sort of prominent uh members of parliament, Gustav Nosker, to Kiel, along with a liberal politician called Konrad Hausmann. And uh that their job is to try to talk down the uh revolutionary sailors. Nosker accepts the uh position of being elected as governor of uh of the city of Kiel by the revolutionary sailors and soldiers in the city, but uh he's really there to try to uh reign in the revolution and uh and and stop it spreading. This uh gives a temporary break in in Kiel because at the same time you have revolutionary sailors in Hamburg demanding that uh you have uh uh the uh and and again, you know, raising the same demands for an end to the war and abdication of the Kaiser. It's you you can trace it day by day on the map that you go from uh you know Kiel and a few other uh North German uh coastal uh towns in the fourth, fifth of November, and then by the 9th you've got revolution uh over much of North Germany. You also have revolution breaking out in Munich on the 7th of November. This is the thing about Germany. We often tell the story just through the perspective of Berlin because that's where the center of power is supposed to be. But uh, you know, Germany has 22 states plus three cities, and uh, they all have their own governments and uh 22 monarchies. Uh in Bavaria on the 7th of November uh you have uh a republic breaking out even before it happens in Berlin because the uh independent socialist leader then uh caught Eisner and the socialists had split at the uh end of 1916 between the majority socialists who are trying to work with the existing government and the independent socialists who are calling for peace, basically, and uh the they're the the anti-war left of the socialist party that had been uh a mass party before 1914 with a million members.
SPEAKER_01I think that's uh that's important to understand is the the social democrats, which is you know similar to Labour, right, in the in the British world, breaking into halves because that is crucial for that, what then happens as as part of the revolution. So we've got the independent social democrats that you've just mentioned, declared a republic before Berlined in Munich, and you know they had their own monarch and their own state, so that makes sense. And then simultaneously you've got the mainstream, which I assume the Western allies would also more likely talk to conventional social democrats. Let's call them that. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's correct. And and uh Max von Baden is trying to work with the uh sort of the the right-wing majority faction led by Ebert and Scheidemann, uh uh Friedrich Ebert and and uh Philip Scheiderman, whereas the uh independent social democrats are taking a more radical uh anti-government uh stance. While you've got the sailors in the north spreading revolution from along the coast into other North German towns, you have uh Court Eisner uh trying to stage a big demonstration for peace in in Munich. And uh after that uh peace rally, uh revolutionary troops go from barrack to barrack calling on other soldiers to uh join the revolution to join a republic. Uh and uh on the 7th of November, the King of Bavaria is told that it's not safe for him to stay in the capital anymore. The king jumps in a car, goes to one of his castles in the countryside, uh, and uh and shortly afterwards abdicates. And this becomes a pattern that's followed in other German states. So even before the national revolution in in Berlin, the the Munich Revolution, interestingly, sailors play a part there too, because uh there are about a thousand German sailors who'd worked with the uh who'd served in the Austrian fleet on the Adriatic, and they're on their way home and they get out at Munich railway station and join the revolutionary soldiers who are uh uh staging the uprising. Uh it might have happened without the reinforcement of sailors, but again the sailors are involved.
SPEAKER_03Uh Andrew, I'm interested to know, look, von Baden announced um the Kaiser's abdication, I think, on November the 9th, without his consent. Do you think this this was sort of like an attempt to save the monarchy by sacrificing the Kaiser, or was it uh to sort of preempt, you know, maybe like a full socialist revolution or the things that they most feared that could be coming down the line if the monarchy wasn't in place?
SPEAKER_04On the 9th of November, we we've been talking about how things are changing by the day. On the 9th of November, they're changing by the hour.
SPEAKER_01And uh There's there's no Twitter social media, you know, nowadays it's almost normal that you check every hour what happened since, but back then, obviously, most things were word of mouth, I assume.
SPEAKER_04Back then, this is also uh you know where where it becomes relevant that there are two phone lines between uh uh the Chancellor's office and the Kaiser's headquarters in Belgium because uh uh they can't even reach the Kaiser on the morning of 9th of November. So what's happening in the 9th of November is uh you've already had the revolution breaking out in Munich and in northern coastal cities, but uh the independent Social Democratic Party announces a general strike for the morning of the 9th of uh November. And uh a lot of workers had actually just done their breakfast shift, workers in the arms industry, uh, big arms factories in the Berlin suburbs had already done their early morning shift, and then that you know about eight or nine in the morning they're starting to flock into the city centre. Uh, and so you have these mass demonstrations in the Berlin city centre uh calling for immediate peace and the abdication of the Kaiser. Generals, uh, the Army Command in Belgium had already done a straw poll of divisional commanders. You know, could you order your troops to uh restore order on behalf of the Kaiser and restore the authority of the Kaiser? The Army Command's already getting the intelligence in the Western Front that uh there's no possibility of the military keeping the Kaiser in power. Uh, you've got mass demonstrations in Berlin. Max von Baden has been consulting with the Social Democrats, and they say, well, we'll only keep supporting the government if the Kaiser abdicates, because the Social Democrats are being told by their party organizers that you know all the armaments workers in Berlin and other other workers who are supporters of the Social Democrats, they they want to see the Kaiser gone, and uh they won't accept the Crown Prince either, because the Crown Prince was known also as being a very uh hardline militarist, and uh and and uh so he isn't seen as any any better. You know, Max von Baden is uh toying with the idea of you know, can you get the Kaiser to abdicate as uh and and find someone else from the Hohenzollern family, the Prussian royal family to uh to rule, but there are no obvious candidates. Um and uh back in in Spa in Belgium, the Kaiser is toying with the idea of if he has to abdicate as emperor, could he stay on as King of Prussia, which would be constitutionally impossible, and also because the constitution had been designed by Otto von Bismarck in 1871 to sort of really lock in Prussian dominance of Germany. And Max von Baden can't actually reach him while all of this is going on on the ninth of morning of the 9th of November. So uh Max then makes this announcement to try to keep some kind of uh command of the situation that's quickly getting out of his hands in in Berlin with all these mass demonstrations for for peace and uh for a republic. Also, the army barracks in Berlin increasingly troops are going over to the revolutionaries, so the situation's getting completely out of the hands of Max von Baden. And at this point, he uh decides that uh he's done all he can and uh hands over to Friedrich Ebert, uh the majority socialist leader, because he thinks you know Ebert is uh a moderate, he's uh more likely to be able to uh bring this situation under control than uh Max von Baiden can.
SPEAKER_01And he's not a nobleman. Yes. For the first time in German history, I assume, Friedrich Ebert.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and he'd been, you know, one of the co-chairmen of the uh uh biggest German political party whose members are kind of seizing power in the streets uh uh and uh uh Noska showed in Kiel that the moderate social democrats were going to try and steer the uh revolution into more moderate, uh uh more moderate course because Ebert and Scheidemann uh both sort of fear and detest a kind of Russian Bolshevik situation.
SPEAKER_01We're still in the morning here, so yeah, we're going through this. We could do a whole episode just on the 9th of November. I think it's a very historical day. Um and so Maxim Barton really makes the captain's call. He does what he was uh asked to do to find a peaceful way out, and he does that by undoing a monarchy that's been quite successful up until the start of the war, and he makes history. How did he do that? Did he put a news statement out in the newspapers? Or how did the Kaiser find out that he just lost his own?
SPEAKER_04He does, he does sort of issue a proclamation uh goes out as a sort of you know flyer on uh uh you know the government gazette uh to uh that uh you know the Kaiser has abdicated and uh uh and the new chancellor is will be uh Friedrich Ebert, the majority socialist leader.
SPEAKER_01So he handed over his own job as well, did himself out of a job, obviously didn't join the unemployment ranks, but he must have known that there won't be much of a chance for aristocracy.
SPEAKER_04Well, I mean in the I forget what what what day it was, but uh in in in Karlsruhe the uh the the Grand Duke uh his close family member was uh in the in the process of uh abandoning his uh his palace in Karlsruhe uh when a group of uh revolutionary soldiers turn up at the front gate with a red flag and they want to put the red flag on the palace instead of the uh uh royal standard of uh the the Grand Duchy of uh of uh or the Grand Duckal's standard of Baden. And uh again the the Grand Duke jumps into a car and goes to one of his other castles and eventually you know is is is abdicating as well. And this is being repeated all over Germany that uh revolutionary soldiers are turning up.
SPEAKER_01So everyone's seen the proclamation, the Kaiser's gone, history's made, everyone's hoping for peace, and then things really get out of hand.
SPEAKER_04Philip Scheiderman is the uh one of the key pro-government uh figures in the majority socialists, he actually hears that the revolutionary breakaway group from the independent socialists, uh the Spartacus League, was about to proclaim a socialist republic from the uh one of the balconies of the Royal Palace is in the middle of in the middle of Berlin. To get in first, before Karl Liebknecht uh proclaims a socialist republic, which he does, Liebknecht goes on to do that. Philip Scheiderman stands out the front of the Reichstag building, which is kind of the other end of the centre of Berlin. If you know Berlin, it's uh you know about a 15-minute walk from the Royal Palace to the uh to the uh to the Reichstag building down the main Unterden Linden Avenue of Berlin. Uh Scheiderman gets out in front of the Reichstag and he proclaims uh a German republic, but doesn't call it a socialist republic.
SPEAKER_03Andrew, do you know what was the sort of the strength of public opinion at the time? Was it behind the monarchy? Was it behind a new republic? Is there anything that sort of points to what it may have been?
SPEAKER_04What sort of struck me about reading up on the history of November 1918 is that really no one wants to lift a finger to uh uh defend any of the German monarchs in November 1918. There's a sense that you know the monarchy has sort of led them to disaster. People have been enduring years of hunger and deprivation and uh you know the the heavy loss of life during the war. There's you know a lot written about how uh you know successful the monarchy is in generating popular support before the first world war, although there's social democrats were always opposed to uh the cult of the monarchy, so there's just deep and almost universal disillusion with the monarchy in uh in November 1918.
SPEAKER_01Because they weren't suffering, I assume their sons were officers, and behind the front lines their wives and children weren't starving. I think it's that frustration, I guess.
SPEAKER_04When the Kaiser goes to Holland, but so you know, when he's finally told that uh you know his abdication's been announced in Berlin, yeah, and uh and the generals tell him, Look, sorry, you know, we can't guarantee your safety anymore. Yeah, he then sets out to Dutch uh border initially with uh his royal train gilded and gleaming, full of expensive furniture and possessions. Halfway along he uh he uh changes to a a car to uh be less conspicuous, and the train catches up to him the next day.
SPEAKER_03I mean it seems almost like an accidental republic. Um, because I was reading about I think it was it Frederick Ebert. They consolidated control like very, very quickly. Like, how did they do that and how did they secure the army's loyalty? Because obviously the army had once loyal to the geyser, and now all of a sudden there was this whole new system, and it seemed to happen sort of very rapidly.
SPEAKER_04Ebert is incredibly cautious, he uh he's uh very much a party bureaucrat. There's some evidence that uh he would have actually been open in principle to uh a constitutional monarchy until the Germans got used to the idea of a democratic republic. But the rank and file of the of the social democrats, uh the working class base has no interest in perpetuating the monarchy uh under any form, and it's hard to see that there would have been viable candidates for a German constitutional monarchy.
SPEAKER_01And just for the record, so our podcast is called Putschcast, and so we haven't really spoken. We won't have time to talk about Friedrich Eber too much. But he was not a putschist, was he? He wasn't seizing the moms like, yes, I want to become the most Powerful man in the land. No, no, no, he wasn't.
SPEAKER_04And he and Scheideman are kind of most worried about, as you've touched on before, you know, what happened in Russia in uh November 1917, because uh March, February, March 1917, uh the fall of the Tsar had been followed by the creation of a coalition government led by moderate socialists. So Alexander Kerensky is a social revolutionary, one of the non-Bolshevik socialist parties in Russia. Uh, and Kerensky gets swept away by the Bolsheviks after a matter of months. And uh Scheidemann and Ebert are really very very aware of what's been happening in Russia, and they uh uh are very afraid, just as some German monarchs might be afraid of ending up like the Tsar of Russia. Uh Ebert and Scheidemann are worried about ending up like Kerensky and being driven out by the far left. So getting back to the question about the army, one one of the uh leading army generals, Wilhelm Groener, who had replaced Ludendorff, who'd resigned, rings up Ebert the the day after on the 10th of November and says, you know, we will we will back your government provided you uh stop any of these attempts by the soldiers' councils, which are springing up everywhere, to democratize the army and reform the officer corps. Because one of the things that you get all over Germany with the outbreak of the revolution is on the Russian model, you have the formation of workers and soldiers councils, and in the Navy it had sailors' councils.
SPEAKER_01Which is again the equivalent to a Soviet. That's what Soviet literally means.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's the same word, uh, Soviet in Reta in German, uh, and councils in English. And these are kind of grassroots democratic bodies that said, okay, well, you know, workers should manage the factories, the we should have elected officers elected by the workers' councils. The the left wing of the labor movement, which is the base of the Social Democratic Party, there's a lot of sympathy for the council movement. And so the army are offering conditional support to Abert, provided you don't try and you know break the power of the officer corps, we'll support you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it seems to me like it was almost um a containment of a revolution. Would that be correct?
SPEAKER_04Yes, I think very much so. I mean, Abert's very much uh trying to uh he's he's in a very fluid situation which he's not comfortable with. There's a there's the sort of dynamic which could lead to greater radicalization and things getting out of his control, and he's kind of grasping at uh anything which will give him greater security, and uh and the army are offering it but on on terms.
SPEAKER_01Because civil war could have been on the cards, and it's sort of there was elements of it for years to come after, which we'll talk about on different episodes. But was that another motivation, I guess?
SPEAKER_04I I I think there are again, there's that sort of fear of you know the the Bolshevik example. One of the things that really strikes me is up until the 9th of November, uh you've got 20 D 22 dynasties collapsing in the space of a few days, you know, going to the 10th, 11th of November. You've got the major naval mutiny. It's it's an extraordinarily small number of people are killed, though. Almost bloodless revolution. So in Kiel, when the naval mutiny starts, there's some shooting when uh Navy officers resist being disarmed. They don't want to hand over their side arms to revolutionary sailors, they don't want to run down the imperial flag and put up the red flag. And the number of deaths in in the revolution until you know 9th, 10th of November is actually very it's extraordinarily low. Uh and I I even argue in my book that the first act of the revolution is to save thousands of lives because they stopped the naval offensive, which would have killed, you know, who knows how many thousands of sailors if it had gone ahead. But that that changes by December when you have the provisional government under Abert using right-wing troops and this these sort of paramilitary volunteer groups called FRICOR to put down unrest from uh uh from the far left. They don't have the people to do it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, do you think that sort of could have undermined the revolution in a in a sense? Because we're saying we're going into this sort of brave new era, but also the old elites uh are still in control.
SPEAKER_04I mean, this is where the big difference between the uh majority socialists and the independent socialists are. You know, they both want a democratic republic, but uh the independent socialists, along with some of the uh workers' councils, are saying, okay, we've got a very fluid situation here. The old regime is has collapsed, it's discredited. What we need to do is sort of put some changes in place so that we when we have elections for democratic republic, we'll have Democrats in charge, basically. There's a push to have greater social control of industry. So you've got radical workers occupying factories in the RUR, you know, but the big industrialists are very unpopular because they're seen as having made big profits out of the war. So there's a lot of popular support for socializing industry or putting it under some kind of public control. There are demands for you know breaking the power of the old officer corps, uh, democratizing the army, which is largely melting away as as we speak, because uh uh as soon as the uh Kaiser abdicates and an armistice is announced, uh, most soldiers don't wait to be demobilized in an orderly fashion, which the army had planned for. They just get on the next train home. So the the army is kind of melting away.
SPEAKER_03Andrew, in your book, you talked um, I think it was about the horizon of expectations. And I was really struck by this because I thought it was especially you know, with some of the things that are happening these days as well, like what people see is politically possible with a revolution, but then what often comes after it or what actually happens. And do you think that like especially with the Weimar Republic, that was sort of encapsulated in that?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think you know, there's a very open situation in in November 9th, you know, when sort of power's kind of been dropped by the old regime, uh, and and Abert kind of reluctantly picks it up, but then tries to work with as much of the old regime as possible to sort of have some kind of orderly uh process. So uh you've still got a lot of the rank and file participants in the revolution and the independent socialists who've got other perspectives that okay, let's you know, Germany's been dominated by big landowners who dominated the Prussian government and the Prussian state. It's been dominated by the big industrialists and the imperial army. Uh, we need to break the power of these groups, and then you can have a democratic republic uh on a secure foundation. Whereas Abert is very reluctant to do anything until you've had national elections and a new constitution and everything is sort of done in an orderly way. So Abert is kind of uh, you know, he's he's you know a sort of bureaucrat with a very, I think, I think also with a very highly developed sense of responsibility. He's kind of almost crushed by the sense of responsibility that he's had to take on. But uh he he sort of lacks imagination as to uh how things could be done differently. And in in Austria, there's a very similar process of revolution with the collapse of the Habsburg uh uh dynasty and the Habsburg Empire, and it's more complex because of course the Austro-Hungarian Empire is breaking up into several different states in 1918. But one of the things Austrian socialists do when they have control of Vienna is they create a workers' militia to uh defend the uh new socialist government in in Vienna. And Ebert doesn't try to do that, he he could have tried to create a workers' militia out of the uh soldiers' councils and and uh and that was actually done successfully for a while in in Austria. Instead, he he leans on the uh support which is apparently being offered by the military. But if you look ahead to March 1920, when there's a right-wing putsch, uh and this is another famous German putsch, the Kap putsch of uh March 1920, when uh uh right-wing Freikorps troops and uh and and their political uh supporters uh seize power in Berlin and their coup d'etat collapses within a week because of a general strike. But the army doesn't lift a finger to defend the elected government in March 1920 because they say, oh, the the Freikorps are our friends, they're our army comrades, we don't want to shoot on them. So the uh the army proves to be a very unreliable ally to uh the republican democracy. They're willing to shoot uh workers who are rebelling under the Spartacist flag, but they're not willing to defend the Republic against the far right.
SPEAKER_01Andrew, you've taken us all the way up to the 10th of November before. Um no one got the guillotines out for the nobility, which is really surprising. Ebert is now in charge. Ungrateful job again, trying to just calm things down, collaborating with the old elites with the army. But we still have a war going on, and we started this podcast talking about the armistice and uh that it's very well known. We're not quite there yet, it's still 24 hours to go. I've got the cover of the New York Times here from the 11th of November. Headlines were a new thing back then. I think they were just invented at the start of uh World War I from uh remember that from my journalism studies, and it reads Armisties signed, end of the war, Berlin seized by revolutionists, new chancellor begs for order, ousted Kaiser flees to Holland. This is one headline. So this is all again within 24 hours. People can even digest all the things that have happened. So what did happen on the 11th?
SPEAKER_04The uh new new government sends a multi-party commission. It doesn't just include socialists, it also includes the leader of the Catholic uh political party, the Catholic Center Party, uh Matthias Erzberger, uh, to uh negotiate an armistice with the uh with the Western Allies. And the armistice is a ceasefire preliminary to uh a peace treaty, so it's not the peace treaty, but it's the armistice is essentially uh you know cessation of hostilities prior to a peace treaty. And uh this is then signed in a uh railway carriage in Compaigne in in France by uh French uh military uh leaders and the German Armistice Commission and is the uh effective end of hostilities, although it takes till uh the middle of nineteen nineteen before the Versailles Treaty comes into force.
SPEAKER_01Armistice I actually also went to the good old Cambridge uh dictionary to to look it up. What's the German word they use? They probably don't use the word armistice.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the Germans would say a Waffenstillstand, the resting of arms, basically. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And James, can you just let us know what Cambridge says?
SPEAKER_03So we had a look at the uh Cambridge Dictionary, and an armistice um is an agreement between two countries or groups at war to stop fighting for a period of time, especially to talk about possible peace.
SPEAKER_01And isn't this where the devil is in the detail? Because we also earlier talked that until those very weeks many Germans didn't actually believe they were losing. The revolution unfolded all of a sudden, but I think people could still have thought that there is a chance of an armistice, i.e., an agreement to end the war. What the Versailles Treaty then became was a very different thing.
SPEAKER_04Yes. Desire for an end to the war, I think, is is sort of you know overwhelming in the German population after the sort of privations of food shortages uh and a loss of life. Uh the Treaty of RSI is still uh comes as a big blow, and you know, even you know, Philip Scheiderman, uh veteran social democrat, uh resigns as Chancellor rather than sign it, and famously says, May the hand wither that signs this treaty. So there are a couple of things that are relevant, I think, here. One is the British blockade of Germany actually remains in force until the Treaty of Versailles comes into effect. Germany is still suffering food shortages, um, and the British still effectively have their foot on the throat of Germany through the naval blockade until Versailles comes into force. The other thing is that there would have been uh hope among many Germans that now the Kaiser has gone, and the Allies always said that they were waging the war against the Kaiser and Prussian militarism and German authoritarianism and so forth. Now Germany has a new democratic government with the support of the people. Will Germany be able to get a better deal? And basically, you know, uh uh it's not really a spoiler alert because everyone knows Germany doesn't get a better deal. Uh, a democratic republic. So uh so the British uh and the French in particular have no interest in giving Germany better peace terms just because they've become a democratic republic and got rid of the Kaiser.
SPEAKER_03Um, Andrew, uh as part of uh my research for um this podcast, I had a look, or I had a had a read of uh Eric Ludendorff's um war memories. And I just want to read you something that he wrote and get your views on it. So he said, by the revolution, the Germans have made themselves pariahs among the nations, incapable of winning allies, heelots in the service of foreigners and foreign capital, and deprived of all self-respect. In twenty years' time, the German people will curse the parties who now boast of having made the revolution. Were your thoughts?
SPEAKER_04I mean, Lut Ludendorff's, of course, uh you know, uh an interesting uh witness. I mean, partly, you know, he's he's trying to uh pass responsibility to uh the civilians for getting the best deal possible in November 1918. He's uh one of the key uh supporters of the stab in the back legend that Germany didn't really lose the war. They were sort of stabbed in the back by you know sinister forces within Germany, you know, who who who often tend to be Jewish in in the view of Ludendorff and other leaders of the German right, and uh and you know Ludendorff is a participant in Hitler's Bihar Putsch in 1923.
SPEAKER_01In fact, in German it's called the Hitler-Ludendorf Putsch.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, giving giving Hitler sort of you know massive legitimacy in German conservative circles. Uh and and Ludendorff's completely unscathed by this. Hitler has to do a short prison term, but Ludendorff gets off entirely for for leading this uh attempted revolution against the German state.
SPEAKER_01But I think what is so crucial about this quote is the last part in particular, James, you know, people will curse the parties who now boast of having made the revolution. This is coming from Eich Ludendorff. This is com coming from the man who's responsible for most of it, who put people like Max von Baden and later Ebert in charge who had to sort out his mess. Because he could have made peace in 1917 and would have probably walked away with a larger Germany, millions of people still alive, and the monarchy would have been preserved. He did the opposite, but then already insinuates quite openly that those democratic parties are to wear the blame. I mean, what a coward.
SPEAKER_04Yes, there's no no sense of responsibility for for anything he's he's done, which is quite striking. What's interesting, but by the way, is that the first elections for the Weimar Republic in January 1919, you often read the phrase that the Weimar Republic uh was a republic without Republicans, but in January 1919, 85% of Germans vote for parties that support a democratic republic. So the Social Democrats miss out on an absolute majority, but the two social democratic parties between them get about 45% of the vote, and they just miss out on a majority. The Catholic Centre Party and the Liberal Democratic Party uh also get very respectable uh votes and uh in in 1919. So it shows again this going back to this question about what was popular opinion. Popular opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of a uh parliamentary democratic republic in uh in January 1919. Uh things get worse, of course, because of the uh inflation that Germany undergoes in the early 1920s, and that leads to increasing disillusionment with the Weimar political parties. But the inflation really started with uh Germany's war indebtedness, which started from August 1914 because they eventually tried to uh they essentially try to pay for the war on credit, uh hoping that the the losers will have to pay. Well, the losers did have to pay, and it was Germany.
SPEAKER_01This is a topic we could talk on forever. We could uh make multiple episodes. We actually talked about it, James, before you know is this uh is this enough for one episode? We're trying to squeeze it in. Um, Andrew Bonnell, you've mentioned other ones before. You've mentioned the Spartacus Uprising, the Cup Putsch, you've mentioned the 1923 Beerholpsch. Now Putschka is not a German exclusive uh podcast, but we will get back to those, we will explore those. One thing that really struck me was that many soldiers, including Hitler, as I've read, still didn't realize Germany had lost the war until Versailles was signed. And that really helped me to understand this bitterness and the desperation that led to buying into the stab in the backmouth, because they were just never communicated that things weren't going well. They were thinking they were on a winning streak until the last dying months of the war.
SPEAKER_04And even when you know Versailles is being the Treaty of Versailles is being handed down, uh, you know, of course the Weimar government, uh uh which had just been constituted, asks the army leadership again, you know, do we have any military options left? And the army says, no, of course not. You know, the British still have their blockade in force, you know, there's no way we could get the troops out again. Um so yeah, again, the army says there's no alternative, but they still propagate this myth they've been betrayed.
SPEAKER_01And just because we mentioned it so many times, and you've got another book written on it, for everyone who doesn't quite know the Weimar Republic, you just said constituted again. Why was the new German government in Weimar? Did that have to do with another coup, perhaps?
SPEAKER_04Well, it's partly to avoid another coup. I mean, you have the Spartacus uprising in January uh uh 1919. There's still uh a lot of worker unrest which is being suppressed with a great deal of uh brutality by uh pro-government troops. It also you know has uh had cultural associations, of course, with the great period of German culture in the early 19th century, but uh it would you know primarily it was a quiet, safe provincial town which didn't have a large uh radical working class population uh Berlin had.
SPEAKER_01James, I've already given my my bit of feedback, so I've really learned about the figure that it's Ludendorff, which I think is not talked about enough in German history in particular. Uh real crucial character here, and a nasty man, I think. But James, what did you take away from what you know now?
SPEAKER_03Thanks for uh writing the book, Andrew. I found it sort of really interesting. I found like the thesis in it about how revolutions can be contained by counter-revolutions and how that sort of led into you know the rise of the nineteen thirties and and stuff like that. Reading this, and I mentioned this before, I I don't know, was it a missed opportunity? That something else could have been created better, but this seemed to be a compromise which was there in order to save you know people who are involved in a lot of like the disorder and their chaos anyway.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think some of the people who are left in positions of power and influence in 1919 uh uh assisted uh the the Nazis coming to power in 1933. And when there was the centenary of the German Revolution of 1918, there are a number of books saying, well, actually, you know, they did okay, they created the first German Democratic Republic, uh, it was quite progressive for the time, had good social legislation, gave the votes to women. I mean, women didn't get the vote in France and Italy till after the Second World War, for example. There's been a kind of attempt to positively reassess the revolution, but I'm still in the camp of those who say that you know, if Habert had had more imagination and was willing to uh sort of uh make more use of the uh sort of rank and file momentum for change, then uh they they might have put the Weimar democracy on a more secure footing.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much, Andrew Bonnell from University of Queensland. We will link your book on our website, also in the show notes. You will find a link where you can purchase the book. Again, thank you very much for your time, and uh we'll stay in touch. There's many more revolutions uprisings to talk about. And if you want to find more of our revolutionary content, visit putchcast.com. Please subscribe to us. Um, have you subscribed yet, Andrew?
SPEAKER_04Uh no, but uh I I now you've alerted me to it, I will.
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