1. For good general accounts of the strike see Rosenberg, Arthur, Imperial Germany (Boston, 1970), pp. 208–17Google Scholar; Ryder, A. J., The German Revolution of 1918 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 112–19Google Scholar; and Kielmansegg, Peter Graf, Deutschland und der erste Weltkrieg (Frankfurt, 1968), pp. 475–78Google Scholar. For a more detailed if less balanced East German account see Bartel, Walter, “Der Januarstreik 1918,” in Schreiner, Albert, ed., Revolutionäre Ereignisse und Probleme in Deutschland wāhrend der Grossen Sozialistischen Revolution (Berlin, 1957), pp. 143–82.Google Scholar For less substantial versions see Coper, Rudolf, Failure of a Revolution (Cambridge, 1955), pp. 61–64Google Scholar; and Berlau, Joseph, The German Social Democratic Party (New York, 1949), p. 111.Google Scholar

2. Martin Kitchen, for instance, has argued that one reason the army command insisted on a renewal of hostilities with Russia in February 1918 was to counteract the effects of the strike. See Kitchen, Martin, The Silent Dictatorship (New York, 1976), p. 177.Google Scholar

3. This is a conservative estimate. The figure is put at 400,000 by Bartel, p. 160; by Coper, p. 61; and by Rosenberg, p. 211. A lower figure of 300,000 can be found in Kielmansegg, p. 476, and in Vorwärts (Berlin), Jan. 29, 1918, p. 1. The state secretary of the interior, Max Wallraf, later gave an estimate of 180,000; see Verhandlungen des Reichstages (Berlin, 1918), 311: 4173.Google Scholar

4. A journalist at the time pointed out the folly of giving any precise figures since many who wanted to work during the strike found it impossible to get to their jobs or else found their factories shut down. See the Berliner Tageblatt, Jan. 30, 1918, p. 1. The Independent Socialists later put the figure at 650,000, as did the Spartacists. See Verhandlungen, 311: 4053; and the handbill “Der Massenstreik” in Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus, Dokumente und Materialien zur Geschichte der Deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (Berlin, 1957), ser. 2, 2: 105–6.Google Scholar

5. Evidence here is embarrassingly thin, in part because the government censored or suppressed those newspapers which sought to cover the strike.

6. Siege law or Belagerungszustand had been in effect since the beginning of the war. It gave the Army Home Commands wide-ranging power to curtail civil freedom and political activity, and had been used extensively since the naval mutinies of August 1917 to stifle the Independent Socialists.

7. The Patriotic Auxiliary Service or Vaterländischer Hilfsdienst was created in 1916 to regiment the workers. A compromise between the Army Supreme Command and the General Commission of the Trade Unions, it was most unpopular by early 1918. See Feldman, Gerald D., Army, Industry and Labor in Germany 1914–1918 (Princeton, 1966), pp. 226–48 and 301–32.Google Scholar

8. The text of the demands may be found in Verhandlungen, 311: 4173–74.

9. This point has been noted by a recent student of Hugo Haase; see Caulkins, Kenneth, Hugo Haase: Democrat and Revolutionary (Durham, 1979), p. 139.Google Scholar

10. On the Berlin shop stewards, see Angress, Werner, Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany (Princeton, 1963), pp. 25–26Google Scholar; Müller, Richard, Vom Kaiserreich zu Republik (Vienna, 1924), 1: 103Google Scholar; and Opel, Fritz, Der Deutsche Metallarbeiter-Verband während des ersten Weltkrieges und der Revolution (Hanover, 1957), pp. 38–73.Google Scholar

11. The authors of the points, in framing a program that fell short of being fully revolutionary, evidently sought the broadest possible base of support. They may have wished to imitate Lenin's sinuous tactics; see Carr, Edward H., The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923 (New York, 1961), 3: 10.Google Scholar But where Lenin was a revolutionary defeatist, the German Spartacists seem to have been genuine pacifists.

12. By November 1917 Ludendorff was urging Count Hertling to quash franchise reform. See von Westarp, Kuno, Konservative Politik im letzten Jahrzehnt des Kaiserreiches (Berlin, 1935), 2: 517.Google Scholar See too Ludendorff's letter of Dec. 8, 1917, to the Prussian minister of the interior in Ludendorff, Erich, ed., Urkunden der Obersten Heeresleitung (Berlin, 1920), pp. 290–92.Google Scholar

13. Here the strikers clearly sought to appeal to all those Germans (including those of the middle class) who felt impatience at the glacial progress of parliamentary reforms since the fall of Bethmann-Hollweg in July 1917.

14. This is also the opinion of Arthur Rosenberg, who argues that the demands closely reflected the feelings of the Berlin workers and notes that this program is virtually identical to that produced by strikers in Leipzig in April 1917. See Rosenberg, p. 208.

15. The real wages of Berlin workers declined during the war, but nowhere near as sharply as those of workers elsewhere in Germany. See Opel, p. 51; and Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus, Geschichte der Deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (Berlin, 1966), 3: 19.Google Scholar

16. This was the position that Hugo Haase of the Independent Socialist Party took in the Reichstag soon after the strike ended; see Verhandlungen, 311: 4214–16. For a similar view, see Snell, John L., “Socialist Unions and Socialist Patriotism in Germany 1914–1918,” American Historical Review 59 (1953): 74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. A different opinion is that of Kielmansegg, who thinks that the domestic demands were the ones that really counted; see Kielmansegg, p. 476. Berlau, on the contrary, asserts that the strike was in the main a protest against what was taking place at Brest; see Berlau, p. 111. The interpretation presented above draws on the Luxemburgist view of mass strikes; see Luxemburg, Rosa, The Mass Strike, the Political Parties and the Trade Unions (New York, 1971), passim.Google Scholar

18. Bartel, p. 151; Kielmansegg, p. 475. Wilhelm Dittmann gave testimony to this effect in 1924 at the Magdeburg Trial of Friederich Ebert; see Ebert, Friederich, Kämpfe und Ziele (Dresden, n.d.), p. 355.Google Scholar Just after the strike ended Ebert argued that it had been a political one; see Ebert, Friederich, “Zur Streikbewegung,” Die Neue Zeit (Berlin), 02 15, 1918, p. 461.Google Scholar So did an unidentified Spartacist whose papers were confiscated by the Prussian police in a raid in March 1918, probably Leo Jogiches (Marchlewski); see Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 132.

19. For detailed accounts of the repression of the strike, see Müller, pp. 104–11; and Bartel, pp. 160–70.

20. One government official who successfully negotiated an end to a local strike was Mayor Konrad Adenauer of Cologne.

21. Kluge, Ulrich, Soldatenräte und Revolution (Göttingen, 1975), p. 21Google Scholar; Bartel, p. 178.

22. Verhandlungen, 311: 4290.

23. Verhandlungen, 311: 4291.

24. Feldman, p. 493. Phillip Scheidemann, whose speeches often seemed tailored to fit public opinion (or at least that of SPD constituents), said as much in the Reichstag on Mar. 22, 1918; see Verhandlungen, 311: 4557. Feldman has also argued that the strike failed because of lack of unity among the leaders, but the repressive power of the regime was probably more decisive; see Feldman, p. 453.

25. In the opinion of Arthur Rosenberg, the strikers were not radicalized by repression; see Rosenberg, pp. 216–17.

26. Technically the Spartacists were still members of the Independent Socialist Party at this time. In practice, however, they were a separate group and are treated as such in this paper.

27. See the Spartacist papers in Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 134–36.

28. Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 135; Müller, p. 109. At the height of the strike the Spartacists moved away from a minimalist program to hint at revolution. See “Hoch der Massen streik!” in Meyer, Ernst, ed., Spartakus im Kriege (Berlin, 1927), pp. 186–89.Google Scholar Evidently the Spartacists hoped the Berlin strike would run the same course as the strike in Petrograd several months earlier.

29. See the pamphlets reproduced in Meyer, pp. 179–98.

30. Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, p. 27.

31. Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 135.

32. This led the SPD as a whole to call for the dismissal of the chancellor, Georg Michaelis, although some members of the right wing of the party expressed agreement with the government; see Verhandlungen, 311: 3965.

33. The Supreme Command sought unsuccessfully to prohibit their attendance; Meyer, Gustav, Erinnerungen (Zurich, 1949), p. 259.Google Scholar

34. Hugo Haase, one of the leaders of the party, argued against the use of strikes at Stockholm; see Balabanoff, Angelica, Erringerungen und Erlebnisse (Berlin, 1927), p. 169.Google Scholar Timorous by nature, Haase doubted that a strike could succeed; see Caulkins, p. 137. It has been argued, and with some plausibility, that the Independent Socialists were more liberal than revolutionary; see O'Boyle, Lenore, “The German Independent Socialists during the First World War,” American Historical Review 56 (1951): 824–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Nonetheless, the Independents were to support an illegal strike with decidedly revolutionary potential.

35. Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 131.

36. Verhandlungen, 311: 3964.

37. In the fall the Independents were ousted from Die Gleichheit (Stuttgart and Berlin) and the Bremer Bürgerzeitung; Ryder, p. 109. In addition, the SPD stripped Karl Kautsky of the editorship of Die Neue Zeit (Berlin)Google Scholar, and the military stopped Kautsky from then starting another periodical; see the Leipziger Volkszeitung, Jan. 23, 1918, passim. The Leipziger Volkszeitung, however, continued to give the USPD a voice and had a substantial circulation in Berlin; Bartel, p. 166. The even more radical Arbeiterpolitik, which was published in Bremen, does not seem to have had much influence in Berlin.

38. Verhandlungen, 311: 3958–64.

39. See, for example, the vague warnings Georg Ledebour made on the floor of the Reichstag in early December 1917; Verhandlungen, 311: 3978.

40. Caulkins, p. 141.

41. Müller, p. 101. Although the USPD Executive Committee favored a strike as a protest against what was happening at Brest, it decided against lending official party support to the strike; Caulkins, p. 137.

42. The membership of the party at the time has been estimated at 100,000. Ulrich Kluge has also argued that the organization of the party was weak; see Kluge, p. 90.

43. Opel, p. 54.

44. Their leader, Richard Müller, was drafted. The Hydra-like nature of the shop steward movement then asserted itself; Müller was replaced by the equally militant Otto Barth.

45. Testimony given in the trial of Georg Ledebour in 1919 supports this; see Lucas, Erhard, Die Sozialdemokratie in Bremen während des ersten Weltkrieges (Bremen, 1969), p. 102.Google Scholar

46. See von Thaer, Albrecht, Generalstabsdienst an der Front und in der O.H.L. (Göttingen, 1958), p. 188.Google Scholar

47. Ulrich Kluge does not speak to this point but does note that the Räte started in the army and later spread to the workers; Kluge, p. 105.

48. The Spartacists, on the other hand, had the Russian precedent in mind at the time of the strike. See the handbill for soldiers of January 1918 entitled “Denkt an Eure Wahre Pflicht!” in Meyer, pp. 189–90.

49. This was no great secret, even at the time. See the statement of the SPD Executive Committee of Jan. 30, 1918, in Ebert, Friederich, Schriften, Aufzeichnungen und Reden (Dresden, 1928), pp. 55–57.Google Scholar See too Ebert, Friederich, “Zur Streikbewegung,” p. 459Google Scholar; and also the testimony given by Phillip Scheidemann in the 1924 Magdeburg trial in Ebert's Kämpfe und Ziele, p. 353. The judgment that the SPD canalized the strike can be found in Frölich, Paul, Zehn Jahre Bürgerkrieg und Revolution (Berlin, 1924), p. 208Google Scholar; and in Bartel, p. 167. It also appears in the work of a recent historian; see Caulkins, p. 140. The technique of limiting radicalism by leading it was later used by Noske at Kiel and by the entire SPD leadership in the general strike that followed the Kapp Putsch.

50. Just before this, Ebert and Scheidemann had rejected the suggestion of Parvus (Alexander Helphand) that the SPD stage a strike in order to force the regime to make a moderate peace with the Russians. See Scheidemann, Phillip, The Making of New Germany (New York, 1929), 2: 101Google Scholar; and Zeman, Z. A. B. and Scharlau, W. B., Merchant of Revolution (London, 1965), p. 237.Google Scholar

51. See Müller, p. 105. The socialist politicians, especially the Majoritarians, were eager to serve as the representatives of the workers, or so Müller claims.

52. In this way the January 1818 strike in Berlin differed from that of April 1917, which had been ended by negotiation; Opel, p. 59.

53. See the speech of one of the more radical Independents (Vogtherr) to the Reichstag in Verhandlungen, 311: 4290.

54. See the speeches made at the end of February in the Reichstag by Phillip Scheidemann and Otto Landsberg of the SPD in Verhandlungen, 311: 4162–70 and 4235–36.

55. This defense was made by Phillip Scheidemann; see Verhandlungen. 311: 4166. Feldman confirms the contention that the fuel shortage would have necessitated a shutdown; Feldman, p. 452. The Prussian minister of war, Heinrich von Scheüch, sought rather unpersuasively to argue that the strike had hurt production; see Verhandlungen, 311: 4298.

56. The text may be found in Dokumente, ser. 2, 2: 96–97. It should be added that the Commission did draft a statement expressing qualified sympathy with the strikers, but when it was pronounced seditious by the military censors this statement was not distributed; see Varain, Heinz Josef, Freie Gewerkschaften, Sozialdemokratie und Staat (Düsseldorff, 1956), p. 105.Google Scholar The Christian Trade Union leadership also issued a declaration of neutrality; see Document 140c in Michaelis, Herbert and Schraepler, Ernst, eds., Ursachen und Folgen: Vom Deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutsch lands in der Gegenwart (Berlin, 1958), 1: 248–49.Google Scholar

57. In a way, the autonomous position of the General Commission, especially with regard to mass strikes, had been clear ever since the Mannheim agreement of 1906; see Schorske, Carl, German Social Democracy 1905–1917: The Development of the Great Schism (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), pp. 49–53.Google Scholar At the same time, the General Commission can be seen as moving towards its position in 1919, when it declared its neutrality in “party matters”; see Hunt, Richard N., German Social Democracy 1918–1933 (Chicago, Quadrangle paperback ed., 1970), pp. 163–64.Google Scholar

58. Particularly noteworthy was the hostility shown by the Army Supreme Command towards the trade unions after the strike. See, for example, the letter dated June 18, 1918, from Field Marshal Hindenburg (but probably drafted by Erich Ludendorff or his close subordinate Colonel Bauer) to Chancellor Hertling warning the government not to be taken in by the sham patriotism of the unions, in Ludendorff, p. 108.

59. Kitchen, pp. 67–85 and 271–78; Bailey, Stephen, “Erich Ludendorff as Quarter master General of the German Army, 1916–1918” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1966), pp. 172–96.Google Scholar

60. See Hertling's baptismal speech to the Reichstag in Verhandlungen, 311: 3944–47.

61. This charge was made at the time by the Spartacists in their handbills and in only slightly veiled form by Independent Socialist speakers in the Reichstag and Prussian Diet (to say nothing of USPD newspaper editors). Ludendorff did bring pressure to bear to block franchise reform. See his letter of Dec. 8, 1917, to the Prussian minister of the interior, in Ludendorff, pp. 290–92; see too Westarp, 2: 517.

62. Diary entry of Jan. 23, 1918, in Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, Mein Kriegstagebuch (Munich, 1929), 2: 324.Google Scholar

63. Michaelis and Schraepler, 1: 274–75. For other contraceptive policies proposed by the Supreme Command see Ludendorff, pp. 101–3.

64. See the letter from Colonel Bauer to General Stein of Feb. 18, 1918, requesting that troops be kept available in the event further repression was necessary, in Frölich, p. 210.

65. Indeed, the charge that foreign agents, presumably Russian, had fomented the strike was widespread at the time. The Supreme Command claimed that this was the case; see Michaelis and Schraepler, 1: 274. So did Count Herding; Dokumente, scr. 2, 2: 102–4; and the Prussian minister of the interior, Bill Drews, in the Leipziger Volkszeitung, Feb. 9, 1918, p. 3; and the Commander of the Home Army in the Berlin area, General Wrisberg, in von Wrisberg, Ernst, Der Weg zur Revolution (Leipzig, 1921), p. 50Google Scholar; and the state secretary of the interior, Count Wallraf, in Verhandlungen, 311: 4171. The most specific allegation made at the time by a German official was that of the undersecretary of the foreign ministry, Hilmar von dem Bussche, who asserted in the Reichstag that Trotsky had tried to make a revolution in Germany; Verhandlungen, 311: 4426. The SPD vehemently rejected such charges; see Ebert, “Zur Streikbewegung,” passim.

66. Rosenberg, p. 215.

67. This is also the opinion of Gustav Mayer; see Mayer, p. 289. See too Stampfer, Friederich, Die Vierzehn Jahre der ersten deutschen Republik (Carlsbad, 1936), p. 36.Google Scholar

68. The text of this memorandum, which bears the date Feb. 13, 1918, can be found in Michaelis and Schraepler, 1: 256—73.

69. This phrase, as well as the arguments that follow, appear in remarkably similar form in a speech given in the Reichstag on Feb. 28, 1918, by Otto Landsberg of the SPD. See Verhandlungen, 311: 4233–42.

70. Before the strike, the government had thought there was a good chance of getting the SPD to vote for an ambitious eastern settlement. See the letter of undersecretary of state Radowitz to Count Limburg-Stirum of Jan. 17, 1918, in Michaelis and Schraepler, 1: 239–41.

71. This was Rudolf von Valentini, the Chief of the Civil Cabinet, who had favored domestic reform and a moderate peace with the Russians. He was replaced with a conservative more to the taste of the Supreme Command.

72. It is well known that in March, when the Brest treaty was presented to the Reichstag, the SPD abstained from voting while the USPD voted against ratification. In fact, the General Commission supported the treaty, as did a majority of the SPD delegates. See Opel, p. 41. More revealing still, the SPD voted for the Ukrainian treaty; see Verhandlungen, 311: 4063–87 for its arguments.

73. See Meyer, pp. 179–94, for the Spartacist position. See the Leipziger Volkszeitung for Jan. 21–28, 1918, for USPD warnings.

74. In mid-January there had been a rash of strikes in Austria.

75. See Ryder, p. 110 and p. 113; see too Carr, 3: 33.

76. Carr, 3: 34. Some left Bolsheviks, Karl Radek for one, found it hard to follow Trotsky into accepting peace. See Lerner, Warren, Karl Radek: The Last Revolutionist (Stanford, 1970), p. 69.Google Scholar Doubtless Radek's ties to the radical left in Bremen made it doubly hard for him to give up on Germany.

77. This is the argument of Klaus Schwabe in Deutsche Revolution und Wilson-Friede (Düsseldorff, 1971), pp. 45–50.Google Scholar

78. Schwabe, p. 56.