Germany 1918-1919

Synopsis

At the end of a lost world war, Germany's divided labor movement attained political power. The reluctant revolutionaries, however, achieved limited gains for working people because of each leading group's different priorities, methods, and relations to bourgeois parties. The revolution attained a republican form of state, parliamentary democracy, women's suffrage, an eight-hour day workday, and some social reforms. Differences over the pace of change, conflicts on new forms versus representation such as workers' councils, and finally engagement in civil war divided labor even more than had the international conflict. The revolution attained few institutional alterations, and most of the social gains were lost within five years.

Timeline

• 1907: Great Britain, France, and Russia form the Triple Entente, which will form the core of the Allies in World War I—even as the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, signed in 1882, will constitute the...