In Europe

barefaced lie – he himself, the highest army commander, was the one who bore primary responsibility for ‘this concoction’ – but for the disgraced officers and humiliated nationalists the legend was too attractive not to believe.
    On the day of capitulation, half blinded by mustard gas in a ward at the military hospital in Pasewalk, Corporal Adolf Hitler buried his burning face in the pillows and sobbed. ‘So everything had been in vain. All the sacrifices and hardships had been in vain … Had all this taken place only so that a gang of miserable criminals could now have their way with our fatherland? Was it for this that the German soldier had borne the burning sun and snowstorms? … Was it for this that he had lain amid the thundering volleys and exploding shells of gas? … During those nights my hatred grew against those who had perpetrated this deed. In the days that followed I came to realise my own destiny … I decided to become a politician.’
    The effect which winter 1918–19 had on the history of Germany and that of the whole of Europe is still underestimated. During those months the foundation was laid in Berlin, just as it had been earlier in Petrograd, for a political movement that was to have a formative effect on the continent for the rest of the century. What's more, this German civil strife would create so much bad blood between the moderate and the radical left that all further cooperation, even that needed to keep Hitler from power, was ruled out. It was a drama, and as in most dramas, the action can be divided into a number of acts.
    To start with, the people of Berlin had viewed the entire war through rose-tinted spectacles. Sebastian Haffner remembers how, as a ten-year-old boy, he had stood on tiptoe each day in his attempts to decipher the army bulletins posted on walls. That lent excitement to life, and spice to the day. ‘When there was a major offensive underway, with the number of prisoners taken listed in five digits and fortresses taken and an “enormous quantity of military material”, then life was a party, your imagination could run on endlessly and you walked with a spring in your step, just as you did later when you fell in love.’
    That mood had everything to do with the peculiar situation in which Germany found itself. Although, strategically speaking, the country had long been fighting a defensive war, it appeared the army was still on the offensive. The front lines, after all, remained fixed and far from German territory. As late as 27 September, 1918 the army bulletins were still saying that the war was all but won. Three days later, however, it had all become clear that nothing could be further from the truth. Today we know what was going on behind the scenes, but the Berliners of that day were dumb-founded. The strict imperial order, the world of the ‘Hauptmann of Köpenick’, all came tumbling down. In the months that followed some 1.8 million rifles, 8,452 machine guns and 4,000 mortars went ‘missing’ from the country's arsenals.
    The new social-democrat government was still busy negotiating a truce when the first rebellion broke out on 30 October, 1918 aboard the
Schillingrede
, off Wilhelmshaven. It was a sailors’ mutiny, in response to another mutiny by the country's naval leaders. Despite orders from Berlin to cease all fighting at sea immediately, the naval command had decided of its own accord to stage a major battle. The entire German fleet wasordered to set sail for a battle that could in no way tip the balance of the war. The only issue at hand was the honour of the
Kaiserliche Marine
: the admiralty simply had no intention of surrendering without a fight. That their action would foil the ceasefire negotiations and needlessly prolong the war for months was no concern of theirs. Approximately 1,000 sailors from the battleships
Thüringen
and
Helgoland
had the courage to stand up to this plan. They brought all activity aboard their ships to a complete halt. This, in other words, was a
pro
-government mutiny.
    The mutineers elected councils of their peers, disarmed their officers, ran up the red flags, marched into the military brigs to free their comrades and occupied public buildings. The mutiny became a revolution, and within a few days the movement was rolling through the major cities in western Germany. The same thing happened everywhere: soldiers and workers joined forces, elected their own councils, officers were forced to capitulate