The German Revolution. A revolution, no doubt, but an ambiguous one. It defeated the monarchical

German Empire, the Second Reich, led by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and replaced it ultimately with a

liberal parliamentary democracy, known as the Weimar Republic. It was certainly a more left-wing

revolution than the American one, but further to the right than the French one.

All three saw the end of monarchy and the birth of a republic, though only the American revolution, perhaps the most economically conservative revolution in modernity, survived continuously, whereas the French revolution ended ultimately in Napoleon being crowned emperor

in the halls of Notre Dame, and the German Revolution ended ultimately with the rise of Hitler's

Third Reich. While the American and French revolutions were both incredibly violent, the German

revolution, at least of November 9, 1918, was virtually bloodless. In fact, walking the streets of Munich the day after

the monarchy fell, the liberal German novelist and future Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Mann said,

quote, the German revolution is a very German one, even if it is a proper revolution. No French

savagery, no Russian communistic excesses, end quote.

Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, representing the general sentiment of the German reactionary

right, had a quite different interpretation of events.

Hitler had been severely wounded and rendered unconscious in a gas attack in the closing days

of World War I and woke up in a

field hospital on November 12 to the news that the Second Reich had fallen, the German Empire

had lost the war, and his homeland of Austria-Hungary no longer existed. He later wrote about the

experience, saying, quote, I threw myself on my bed and buried my burning head in a pillow. I had not

cried since the day I stood at my mother's grave. Now I couldn't do anything else. In the pages of

Mind Kampf, Hitler would repeatedly bring up November 9th and rail bitterly against it. Five years

after the revolution, to the very day, Hitler would launch his failed beer hall

pooch. The day he chose for his desperate attempt at coup d'etat was no coincidence. All through the

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