November 1918

The German Revolution
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-0-19-891186-9
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 368 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 216 mm

Reihe: Making of the Modern World

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, 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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gerwarth, Robert

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- 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

- Epilogue: The Defiant Republic: Germany 1919-23

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Robert Gerwarth is Professor of Modern History at University College Dublin and Director of UCD’s Centre for War Studies. He studied history in Berlin and Oxford, and later held visiting fellowships at Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the EUI in Florence. He is the author of numerous publications on early twentieth-century German and European history, including The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (2017), Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (2011), and The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor (2007), also published by Oxford University Press. His work has been translated into some forty languages.