On November 9, 1918, two different republics were declared on the squares of Berlin. One declaration aimed to usher in socialist revolution in the heart of capitalist Europe. The other sought to forestall events and contain the social explosion.

The German Revolution had many sources: the world-shattering transformations brought on by the Great War, the legacy of strong socialist organization among German workers, and the drastic expansion of political horizons announced by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

Besides the particular names, faces, events, and features of the era, the revolution was, at bottom, driven by the conditions of industrialized capitalism and the contours of collective action inherent in a class society. It was the German working class, building on the achievements of its Russian counterparts, that traveled the furthest along the road of socialist transformation, coming closer to full-fledged workers’ power than any other industrialized Western country in the postwar revolutionary wave.