ABSTRACT
THE DAY OF 9 November 1918 marked a watershed in 20th-century German history. In Berlin on that day, two rival social-democrat groups proclaimed, almost simultaneously, the German Republic and the German Socialist Republic. The political expression of the workers' movement was, indeed, divided at the end of World War I. Those who had supported the conservative Burgfrieden (Holy Union) regrouped under the banner of the Mehrheitssozialdemokratische Partei (MSP; Social Democratic Majority Party), while those who had opposed the war and had been excluded from the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD; Social Democratic Party of Germany) on that account had created a new party in 1917. This latter opposition party was the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD; Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany), which brought together the Left—that is to say, the Spartakusbund (Spartacus Group) and the Revolutionäre Obleute (Revolutionary Shop Stewards), an opposition labor organization that had taken root during the war, primarily among metalworkers. Further divisions occurred on 31 December 1918, when the Spartacists withdrew from the USPD to form the Kommunistische Partei Deutschland (KPD; German Communist Party).
