ABSTRACT
The purpose of this essay is exploratory: to delineate the extent and character of unemployment in Germany in the aftermath of the First World War; to consider how it shaped and was shaped by the processes of demobilisation; and finally, to suggest how it affected the social and political upheavals which marked the early years of the Weimar Republic. As such, this forms part of an attempt to examine the processes by which a modern industrial society made the transition from war to peace.
