The German Revolution 1918-1924

The German Revolution 1918-1924: False Hope or Missed Chance?
Revolutions Study Group at The MEP
12-week session
Mondays, October 3-December 19, 7:30-9:30 p.m.

At the end of 1918, the workers of Germany rose up and overthrew the Kaiser. The Bolsheviks thought that the success of the Russian Revolution hinged upon the rapid unfolding of the a world revolution, and placed their hopes for its beginning on Germany more than any other country. For the next five years, fractious German revolutionaries agitated for and launched a series of uprisings aimed at the creation of a workers╒ state: the Sparticist uprising in 1919, in which Luxemburg and Liebknecht were killed; the March Action in 1921; the “German October” in 1923. They fought, but they lost. In the process, the working class was divided and demoralized, the capitalist class went looking for a savior, and the foundations of Nazism were laid.
In it’s beginnings, the revolution in Germany appears very similar to the events in Russia the year before. Why was the outcome so different? We will try to answer many questions in the course of this reading group, but that is the essential question.
Primary reading: Pierre Broue, The German Revolution. Other readings include selected original documents and selections from Haffner, Failure of a Revolution, and Angress, The Stillborn Revolution.
The Revolutions Study Group (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting since 2009. Individual participants have come and gone, however the group has held together, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya, the Haitian Revolution, the European Revolutions of 1848, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year, the Spanish Civil War, the Mexican Revolution, the Socialist (2nd) International, and Russian Social Democracy prior to World War I.