![]() Liebknecht and Luxembourg were both captured, interrogated, tortured and summarily executed on January 15. But Ebert successfully deployed the Freikorps to take control. ![]() On January 4, 1919, the dismissal of independent socialist Robert Emil Eichhorn sparked a wave of protests and a general strike, which became known as the Spartacist Uprising. However, when Ebert was liberated by soldiers he began organising a militia, mostly from returned servicemen, to take care of his political opponents. But on December 23 revolutionary socialist sailors occupied the Chancellery and took Ebert into custody. On December 19 Ebert announced that elections for a new constituent assembly would be held in January. Liebknecht tried to complete the revolution but the signing of the Armistice on November 11 took the wind out of the sails of his movement.ĭespite the setback, he and other Left-wing socialists maintained popular support. Shortly after, Liebknecht stood before a crowd at the Berlin City Palace to, somewhat prematurely, declare the formation of a Free Socialist Republic.īut on November 10, the Workers and Soldiers Council of Berlin threw its support behind new chancellor Friedrich Ebert.Įbert became head of a Council of People’s Commissars, comprised of socialist groups who were opposed to all-out revolution. ![]() In the Reichstag on November 9, Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann declared Germany a republic and Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and fled to the Netherlands. Socialist leader Karl Liebknecht, founder of the Spartacist League, and one of the leaders of the 1918-19 German revolution. A resolution was passed in the Reichstag and ratified by the Kaiser to say that the Chancellor could not make decisions without its support. The German government was already discussing peace terms and one demand of the Allies was the introduction of constitutional monarchy. In Russia the Tsar had been overthrown and the communists were in power, leading Liebknecht to believe it was only a matter of time before the same happened in Germany. When he was released on October 23, 1918, the world was very different. Liebknecht organised protests against the war, but in 1916 was thrown into prison after he was arrested at one his protests. In 1914 he formed the Spartacist League with several other prominent socialists including Rosa Luxembourg. Left wing member of the party, Karl Liebknecht, split with the SPD over their support for the war. At the outbreak of World War I most of the SPD supported the war. In the years before the war, despite Germany’s apparent depth of conservatism, the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD) had grown to be a major player in the Reichstag. Germany was the birthplace of Karl Marx, the most influential socialist theorist. The revolution had its origins in the powerful socialist and labour movements that emerged in Germany in the 19th century. Mutinous German sailors at the Kiel Canal helped spark a revolution in 1918 that ended World War I. So while the revolution ended one destructive war, it laid seeds for another. Ultimately it was quashed and key revolutionaries were executed but it would spark the “stab-in-the-back” myth that Germany’s military had been betrayed by its civilians and elected government, a notion used years later by the Nazis to attain power. The open mutiny spread across Germany, leading to a revolution that toppled the Kaiser and brought the war to an end. But on Octoa century ago today - the sailors at Kiel Canal, in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, refused. ![]() On October 24 the German high command ordered ships in the naval fleet head to the North Sea for a battle against the British Grand Fleet. But they could no longer depend on blind obedience. They believed that nationalist fervour and a resolve not to let the fatherland fall, were the elements that would see them prevail. Some in the military were not ready to give up. Many believed the government and the military had let them down and that it was time for a change of leadership. After four years of war most of its population was sick of the privations those in the armed forces were exhausted from years of fighting. ![]()
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