The Decisive Moment: The German November Revolution

Ibid., p. 109.

Friedrich Ebert, as quoted in: Heinrich August Winkler, Germany: The Long Road West. Translated by Alexander J. Sager, Vol. I: 1789–1933 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 331. The Austrian émigré Socialist Adolf Sturmthal concedes Ebert and Scheidemann that socialism should “be introduced in Germany by cautious and gradual reforms which would not interfere with essential production.” Adolf Sturmthal, The Tragedy of the European Labour 1918–1939 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1944), p. 41. However, if Scheidemann and Ebert in particular ever referred to “socialism” as a popular slogan, it was surely nothing more than lip service in order to pacify the workers.

For these negotiations, see e.g., Francis L. Carsten, Revolution in Central Europe, 1918–1919 (London: Temple Smith, 1972), pp. 55–56. General Erich Ludendorff was succeeded as Quartermaster by General Groener who after his dismissal promoted the so-called Dolchstoßlegende or “Stab-in-the-Back Myth.” According to this fabricated story the German defeat in the war was caused by the betrayal of Bolsheviks, Marxists, and Jews who supposedly sabotaged the efforts to win the war. Without this sabotage good prospects would have existed for a German victory. See Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London: Penguin Books, 2005), pp. 69–70. An abundant literature exists in German about the Stab-in-the-Back Myth’ and its fateful consequences. See most recently Rainer Sammet, “Dolchstoß”: Deutschland und die Auseinandersetzung mit der Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg (1918–1933) (Berlin: Trafo-Verlag, 2003); Boris Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration: Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2003). The “stab-in-the-back” campaign and the subsequent campaign against the Treaty of Versailles contributed to the ideological resurgence of the Right. However, all German parties, including the Communists, stood in firm opposition to “Versailles.”

Gérard Sandoz, La gauche allemande de Karl Marx à Willy Brandt (Paris: Julliard, 1970), p. 42.

See Francis L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics, 1918–1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 11–12.

Ebert and Noske did not trust their “own” republican forces, whose growing push toward socialism led to increasing dissatisfaction with Ebert and Noske. See Harold J. Gordon, Jr., The Reichswehr and the German Republic, 1919–1926 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 20.

On the way to their headquarters, the Berlin Castle, sailors mistreated Wels and told him that he was going to die. See Alex de Jonghe, The Weimar Chronicle: Prelude to Hitler (New York and Scarborough, Ontario: New American Library, 1978), p. 34.

The sailors lost nine men and the Spartakists who participated in the fighting lost twenty. The army lost two soldiers. See idem, pp. 35–36.

Rosa Luxemburg, “Parteitag der Unabhängigen SP (November 1918),” Idem, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 4 (East) Berlin: Dietz, 1974), p. 423.

The most recent comprehensive account in English on the formation of the KPD is Ottokar Luban, “The Role of the Spartacist Group after 9 November 1918 and the Formation of the KPD,” Ralf Hoffrogge and Norman LaPorte (eds.), Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2017), pp. 45–65. According to this source, Karl Radek, the Bolshevik representative in Berlin, and Soviet ambassador Adolf Joffe did not push for the establishment of a separate party. Luxemburg may have reconsidered her viewpoint if she had lived longer: She demanded to postpone the founding of the Third (Communist) International right after the founding of the KPD. Her wish was expressed by the German delegate Hugo Eberlein at the first congress of the Comintern in March 1919 in Moscow. The KPD joined the new International; Eberlein was murdered in Soviet exile in October 1941.

On the Revolutionary Shop Steward Movement and its most important representative, see Ralf Hoffrogge, Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution: Richard Müller, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement. Translated by Joseph B. Keady (Leiden: Brill, 2015). See also the overview of Sean Larson, “Red Flags Over Germany,” Jacobin, November 9, 2018, https://​jacobinmag.​com/​2018/​11/​german-revolution-centennial-rosa-luxemburg-social-democrats.

Eric J. Hobsbawm, Revolutionaries: Contemporary Essays (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), p. 44.

Rosa Luxemburg, “Unser Programm und die politische Situation (31. Dezember 1918),” Idem, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 4, p. 499. Luxemburg’s hopes for the workers’ and soldiers’ councils were not unfounded, considering that in November the councils had organized and secured the return of German troops from the Western front and the functioning of the local administration.

Traditional (West German) historiography claimed that in 1918 the only alternative was between “democracy” and “council dictatorship” (Rätediktatur), which was considered synonymous with Bolshevism. Today the opinion is widely accepted that the councils were essentially agents of a transformation of society toward an order that corresponded with social democratic ideas. The Spartakusbund and the young KPD had far less influence in the councils than the SPD and USPD. For recent trends in historiography see Wolfgang Niess, Die Revolution von 1918/19 in der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung: Deutungen von der Weimarer Republik bis ins 21. Jahrhundert (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2013); and the excellent survey of Rüdiger Hachtmann, “Blick zurück und in die Zukunft: Die Sicht auf die ‘Novemberrevolution’ 1919 bis 2018 und mögliche Perspektiven einer kritischen Revolutionshistoriographie,” Sozial.Geschichte Online, No. 23 (2018), pp. 107–165, https://​sozialgeschichte​-online.​org.

Chris Harman, The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923 (London, Chicago and Sydney: Bookmarks, 1997), p. 65.

Ibid., p. 66.

See Heinrich August Winkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1918–1924, 2nd ed. (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz, 1985), p. 119; Hans-Erich Volkmann, “Die Gründung der KPD und ihr Verhältnis zum Weimarer Staat im Jahre 1919,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Vol. 23 (1972), No. 1, pp. 65–80.

Lea Haro, The Beginning of the End: The Political Theory of the German Communist Party to the Third Period. Ph.D. Thesis (University of Glasgow, 2007), p. 113. The dissertation is available online under: http://​theses.​gla.​ac.​uk/​1337/​1/​2007harophd.​pdf. Among the numerous biographies of Rosa Luxemburg, the classic accounts of Paul Frölich, Peter Nettl and Annelies Laschitza’s more recent book deserve to be mentioned. See Paul Frölich, Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Work. Translated by Edward Fitzgerald (London: Victor Gollancz, 1940); J. Peter Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg (London, New York, and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1966—last printing 2017); Annelies Laschitza, Im Lebensrausch, trotz alledem: Rosa Luxemburg, eine Biographie (Berlin: Aufbau, 1996). Of note are the following shorter surveys: Norman Geras, The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg (London: New Left Books, 1976); Stephen Eric Bronner, Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary of Our Times (London: Pluto Press, 1981); Jörn Schütrumpf (ed.), Rosa Luxemburg or the Price of Freedom. Translated by Natascha M. Hirth (Berlin: Karl Dietz, 2008). The best biography of Liebknecht available in English is still Helmut Trotnow, Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919): Political Biography (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1984). Annelies Laschitza’s standard biography in German, Die Liebknechts: Karl und Sophie – Politik und Famlie (Berlin: Aufbau, 2007) has not been translated.

In October and November 1925 many prominent figures testified in the so-called Dolchstoßprozess in Munich (when the SPD sued a nationalist newspaper). On this occasion General Groener said that Ebert had told him: “If the Liebknecht crowd takes this opportunity to seize power, there will be nobody here to prevent them from it.” Groener, as quoted from: Illustrierte Geschichte der deutschen Revolution (Berlin: Internationaler Arbeiter-Verlag, 1929), p. 272. The book was written by a team of authors that included Hermann Duncker, Paul Frölich, Albert Schreiner, and Jacob Walcher.

See Gordon, The Reichswehr and the German Republic, p. 28; Harman, The Lost Revolution, p. 80.

On the history of the so-called “Spartakus Uprising” see ibid., pp. 280–281; Eric Waldman, The Spartacist Uprising of 1919 and the Crisis of the German Socialist Movement (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1958); Ottokar Luban, Die ratlose Rosa: Die KPD-Führung im Berliner Januaraufstand 1919 – Legende und Wirklichkeit (Hamburg: VSA, 2001); and Jörn Schütrumpf (ed.), Spartakusaufstand: Der unterschlagene Bericht des Untersuchungsausschusses der verfassunggebenden Preußischen Landesversammlung über die Januar-Unruhen 1919 in Berlin (Berlin: Karl Dietz, 2019). Schütrumpf documents that the unrest had not been caused by the Communists, but instead by Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Berlin organization of the USPD as well as by agents provocateurs. The USPD leadership made clear that it did not stand behind the uprising during subsequent mediations.

Volker R. Berghahn, Europe in the Era of Two World Wars: From Militarism and Genocide to Civil Society, 1900–1950 (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 54.

Ibid.

See Klaus Gietinger, The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg. Translated by Loren Balhorn (London: Verso Books, 2019). It should be noted that one of the killers was sentenced to two years imprisonment for “attempted manslaughter,” another to four months (he escaped after a brief custody). Two others remained unpunished. See Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg, pp. 487–490; Heinrich and Elisabeth Hannover, Der Mord an Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg: Dokumentation eines politischen Verbrechens (Frankfurt-Main: Edition Suhrkamp, 1968).

For an overview of the conflicting judgments about Ebert see Helga Grebing, “Die Rezeption Eberts im Wandel: Historiographische und persönliche Rückblicke,” Moving the Social, Vol. 45 (2011), pp. 153–162. It must be noted that the SPD daily Vorwärts printed a hate “poem” by Arthur Zickler on January 13, 1919 that called for the murder of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Karl Radek. It is reprinted in facsimile in: Illustrierte Geschichte […], p. 293. In 1933 Zickler joined the Nazi Party.

Sebastian Haffner is not alone in his verdict about Noske. In his controversial book about the German revolution he called him “a primitive brute who conducted policy according to a simple friend-foe-pattern” and someone who was “unable to differentiate love from violence and whose whole mentality would have fitted better into the Nazi Party than into the SPD.” Sebastian Haffner, Der Verrat: 1918/19 – als Deutschland wurde, wie es ist (Berlin: Verlag 1900, 1994), p. 153. The book was first published in 1969 under the title Die verrratene Revolution: Deutschland 1918/19 (Hamburg: Stern-Buch, 1969). For the debate see Martin Sabrow, “Zeitgeschichte als politische Aufklärung. Sebastian Haffners Buch über die Novemberrevolution als Diagnose der ‘deutschen Krankheit’,” Jürgen Danyel et al. (eds.), 50 Klassiker der Zeitgeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), pp. 118–122.

Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, new and expanded ed. (Princeton, NJ and Oxford, 2013), p. 31.

Isaac Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays, ed. by Tamara Deutscher (London: Merlin Press, 1981), p. 33.

Siobhán Dowling, “Remembering Rosa: Luxemburg Still Popular 90 Years After Assassination,” Spiegel Online, January 15, 2009, www.​spiegel.​de. See also Elke Schmitter, “Auch eine Kassandra: Vor 100 Jahren starb Rosa Luxemburg – Ihr Tod spaltete die deutsche Linke unwiderruflich, ihre politischen Fragen rumoren bis heute,” Der Spiegel, January 15, 2019, pp. 102–107.

„Demokratische Republik,“ Die Rote Fahne (cited henceforth as: RF), February 24, 1919, as quoted in: Rudolf Luz, KPD, Weimarer Staat und politische Einheit der Arbeiterbewegung in der Nachkriegskrise 1919–1922/23 (Konstanz: Hartung-Gorrre, 1987), p. 150.

See for Berlin Dietmar Lange, Massenstreik und Schießbefehl: Generalstreik und Märzkämpfe in Berlin 1919 (Münster: Edition Assemblage, 2012); Axel Weipert, Die zweite Revolution: Rätebewegung in Berlin 1919/1920 (Berlin: Bebra-Verlag, 2015). For Bavaria see Sebastian Zehetmair, “Arbeiterparteien und Räte in der bayerischen Räterepublik,” Z: Zeitschrift marxistische Erneuerung, No. 117 (March 2019), pp. 156–167. Alan Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 1918–1919: The Eisner Regime and the Soviet Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965) is still noteworthy.

Albert S. Lindemann, A History of European Socialism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 213. No biography of Leo Jogiches exists in any language to date. The most comprehensive biography of Levi is Cyr, Paul Levi – rebelle devant les extrêmes. Of note is also the older biography by Charlotte Beradt, Paul Levi: Ein demokratischer Sozialist in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt-Main: E.V.A., 1969). While Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and Jogiches were caught and executed by the Free Corps, Paul Levi was arrested by a regular army unit, which probably saved his life.