This book is about how and why Germany became a parliamentary democracy on October 28, 1918. That fact and that date – nearly two weeks before the November Revolution, before the Social Democratic leader Friedrich Ebert as- sumed the post of the Imperial Chancellorship, and before Wilhelm II abdicated his throne – will come as a surprise to many readers, and that surprise in turn provides perhaps the most compelling rationale for this book.
For a variety of reasons, we have neglected the rise and development of dem- ocratic thought in Germany during the First World War. As a consequence, we have lost sight of the many individuals and events discussed here that contributed to the complete transformation of the German political system in the final months of 1918. Although that formal change occurred in some ways unexpectedly, it also took place as a logical result of intentional efforts by a large number of peo- ple who had argued and fought for increased democratization in Germany over the previous four years, and in many cases for long before that. During the war, growing numbers of Germans even thought that democracy – for their own coun- try and in general – was inevitable and unstoppable. That was probably too opti- mistic, but the fact that so many believed it tells us something significant about their outlook and helps to explain their actions. At the same time, of course, there had always been opposition to democracy in Germany, and as the conflict wore on that opposition grew into virulent hostility, only to intensify once the war was lost and the forces of democracy prevailed. But that is the point: democracy did prevail, and it did so not in the form of some foreign imposition, and not because there seemed to be no better alternative immediately available, but because it represented the conscious choice of countless Germans themselves who viewed it as providing the best path forward for the future.