Germany after ww1
The mighty eagle's wings were clipped
Armistice of 1918
Armistice of 1918 was an agreement that ended fighting on the western front and was the German surrender to the Entente. It went into effect at 11 a.m. Paris time on 11 November 1918 ("the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month"), and marked a victory for the Allies and a complete defeat for Germany
A new germany: 1918-1920
After the armistice, the German state fell apart. German General Wilhelm Groener suggested that the Kaiser go to the front and die at the head of his armies, an invitation politely declined by the Kaiser who choose ignominious exile in the Netherlands.
The German army almost evaporated into thin air, units fragmenting once they crossed the German border where men simply packed up and went home.
1919 was a time of chaos for Germany. Allied soldiers occupied the west side of the Rhine river, Germany underwent a revolution with short lived states like the Bavarian Soviet Republic and the beginning of the Spartacus Uprising which was crushed by the paramilitary, ultra right-wing Freikorps on the orders of the new Weimar republic.
Kaiser Wilhelm in exile
Out from the dust
This new Germany, upon the loss of land to Poland and France and the imposition of of war reparations which would be enforced by the Treaty of Versailles, would undergo huge economic turmoil, especially after the Great Depression. The fragile German state would be a battleground for left and right wing ideologues. We all know which side won the bitter battle: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party
Stabbed in the back myth
The stab-in-the-back myth was the notion, widely believed in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19. Advocates denounced the German government leaders who signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, as the "November Criminals"
Scholars inside and outside Germany unanimously reject the notion, pointing out the German army was out of reserves and was being overwhelmed in late 1918.
