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The German Revolution of November 1918 is nowadays largely forgotten outside Germany. It is generally regarded as a failure even by those who have heard of it, a missed opportunity which paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and the catastrophe to come.
Robert Gerwarth argues here that to view the German Revolution in this way is a serious misjudgement. Not only did it bring down the authoritarian monarchy of the Hohenzollern, it also brought into being the first ever German democracy in an amazingly bloodless way.
Focusing on the dramatic events between the last months of the First World War in 1918 and Hitler's Munich Putsch of 1923, Robert Gerwarth illuminates the fundamental and deep-seated ways in which the November Revolution changed Germany. In doing so, he reminds us that, while it is easy with the benefit of hindsight to write off the 1918 Revolution as a 'failure', this failure was not somehow pre-ordained. In 1918, the fate of the German Revolution remained very much an open book.
List of contents
- Preface
- Introduction: "Like a Beautiful Dream"
- 1: 1917 and the Revolution of Expectations
- 2: Hoping for Victory
- 3: Endgame
- 4: The Sailors' Mutiny
- 5: The Sailors' Mutiny
- 6: Showdown in Berlin
- 7: Making Peace in the West
- 8: Challenges for the Young Republic
- 9: Fighting Radicalization
- 10: The Triumph of Liberalism
- 11: Democracy Besieged
- 12: Undermining Weimar: Versailles
- The Defiant Republic: Germany 1919-23
- Index
About the author
Robert Gerwarth is Professor of Modern History at UCD and Director of the Centre for War Studies. He is the author of The Bismarck Myth (Oxford UP, 2005) and a biography of Reinhard Heydrich (Yale UP, 2011). His third monograph, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End was published by Penguin (UK) and FSG (US) in the autumn of 2016. He has authored several articles in leading international journals such as Past & Present, The Journal of Modern History, Geschichte & Gesellschaft, and Vingtième Siècle. His work has been translated into some thirty languages.
Summary
The story of an epochal event in German history, this is also the story of the most important revolution that you might never have heard of.
Additional text
Meticulously researched, judiciously argued, and written with enviable panache, November 1918 is an engaging history with much original insight that should become the standard work on the subject.
Report
Gerwarth argues in his polished narrative drawing on the eyewitness testimony of famous writers and thinkers that Weimar was not "the doomed republic" of legend, a hopeless 14-year interval between a warmongering Kaiser and Hitlers Nazi dictatorship, but a success in its own right... 'November 1918' is a perceptive study of an orderly people who proved that a revolution need not lead to extremes of left and right. Martin Ivens, The Times
