ABSTRACT
Revolution in Germany originated in the country's prewar divisions. In August 1914 these had suddenly disappeared. The nation united to defend itself against Russia. Whether it remained united would depend on what it thought it was fighting for. War aims thus became the test of leadership. The Emperor retreated into the background until October 1918. Leadership was Bethmann Hollweg's responsibility until he fell in July 1917, and then that of the Army Command, which usurped power from the civilians and whose instruments succeeding Chancellors, Georg Michaelis and Georg von Hertling, were. Both Bethmann Hollweg and the Army Command failed the test. The old divisions reappeared. First the extreme Left of the Socialists, then the Socialists and the proletarian masses, then the liberal classes, made demands that were unsatisfied. They were not united among themselves, however, so that there was really no alternative leadership. When the Socialist leaders took power, they did not make a socialist revolution. They co-operated with the liberals and with the Catholic Centre Party to lead Germany in a reformed version of her old self. This was the Weimar Republic. The revolution of 1918–19, therefore, stopped half-way. The Weimar Republic fell in 1933 when there was again a revolutionary situation. But power was captured then not by revolutionary Communists but by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Workers' Party.
