The old regime felt the ground moving from under its feet. The growing revolutionary ferment at the front combined with the strike waves in the cities engendered a panic-stricken mood in the ruling class. In the words of the Secretary of State, Hintze, “It is necessary to prevent an upheaval from below by a revolution from above.” As a result “parliamentary” government was quickly established with the Kaiser’s cousin, Prince Max von Baden, at its head. Included in its ranks, as a measure to appease the masses, was the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann. In October an amnesty was announced for political prisoners, resulting in the release of Karl Liebknecht, who was greeted by 20,000 Berlin workers. But the amnesty did not apply to Rosa Luxemburg who continued to be held in “protective custody.”
But the reforms were too late. The military fronts began to collapse and there were more than 4000 desertions in 1918. Generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg of the General Staff had written to the new government proposing an armistice to the Allies but were refused. On 28 October, 1918, the German High Command, in a desperate gamble, decided on a decisive naval battle on the North Sea in order to save the honour of the German Navy, risking the lives of 80,000 men. This proved the final straw.
Jan Valtin, a member of the Spartacist League of Youth, relates what happened in his autobiography Out Of The Night:
Toward the end of October, 1918, my father wrote that the High Seas Fleet had received orders for a final attack against England. No secret was made of it. The officers, he reported in his blunt fashion, revelled all night. They spoke of the death ride of the fleet. Rumour had it that the fleet was under orders to go down in battle to save the honour of the generation that built it. Their honour is not our honour, my father wrote.
Two days later the fleet was under way. People in Bremen were more surly than ever.
Then came stirring news. Mutiny in the Kaiser’s fleet! Young sons of the bourgeoisie who had been sporting sailors caps now left them at home. I saw women who laughed and wept because they had their men in the fleet. From windows and doors in the front of the food stores sounded the anxious voices: ‘Will the fleet sail out!…No, the fleet must not sail! It’s murder! Finish the war!’ youngsters in the street yelled, ‘Hurrah!’
The mutineers at Kiel had seized the ship Thueringen, dropped the anchors and disarmed the officers. The battleship Helgoland then followed suit. The fleet began to return to port. As a result of the mutiny 580 men from both ships were arrested and jailed. Valtin continues:
That night I saw the mutinous sailors roll in to Bremen in caravans of commandeered trucks – red flags and machine guns mounted on the trucks. Thousands milled in the streets. Often the trucks stopped and the sailors sang and roared for free passage…
I circled toward the Brill, a square in the western centre of the town. From there on I had to push my bicycle through the throngs. The population was in the streets. From all sides masses of humanity, a sea of swinging, pushing bodies and distorted faces was moving toward the centre of the town. Many of the workers were armed with guns, with bayonets, with hammers. I felt then, and later, that the sight of armed workers sets off a roar in the blood of those who sympathize with the marchers. Singing hoarsely was a sprawling band of demonstrating convicts freed by a truckload of sailors from Oslebshausen prison. Most of them wore soldiers grey coats over their prison garb. But the true symbol of this revolution, which is really nought but a revolt, were neither the armed workers nor the singing convicts – but the mutineers from the fleet with their reversed headbands and carbines slung over their shoulders, butts up and barrels down…
At the foot of the Roland statue a frightened old woman crouched. ‘Ach du liebe Gott,’ she wailed piercingly, ‘what is all this? What is the world coming to?’ A huge-framed young worker who gave intermittent bellows of triumph and whom I had followed from the Brill, grasped the old woman’s shoulders. He laughed resoundingly. ‘Revolution’, he rumbled. ‘Revolution, Madam.’
On 3 November, the revolution had begun with the naval mutiny at Kiel. Forty thousand sailors and dockers surged through the streets and a workers’ and sailors’ council took control of the town. On 4 November, the revolution spread: red flags flew over every ship. On 6 November, sailors’, soldiers’ and workers’ councils were now in power in Hamburg, Bremen and Luebeck. On 7 and 8 November, Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Magdeburg, Brunswick, Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart, Nuremberg and Munich all followed suit. It was not until 9 November that workers’ and soldiers’ councils were established in the capital, Berlin, the previous centre of revolution – at the supreme army headquarters!
Over the last decade or so, a new breed of careerists had floated to the top of the SPD, people like Friedrich Ebert, Gustav Noske and Philipp Scheidemann. It is ironic that individuals like Eduard Bernstein had moved to the left during the war and ended up in the centrist USPD. The new Social Democratic leaders looked with contempt at the ordinary workers. Scheidemann for instance, exclaimed with absolute horror that he “was carried shoulder high by soldiers decorated with the Iron Cross!” He urgently warned the Emperor’s Palace: “We have done all within our power to keep the masses in check,” and urged the Kaiser to abdicate in order to quell the anger of the workers.