By the Autumn of 1918, it had become clear that Germany was losing the World War. In a last ditch effort, the German High Command prepared a final offensive. Unwilling to continue risking their lives for a losing cause, sailors in Kiel mutinied in early November. The uprising spread like wildfire, igniting the German Revolution. In the German state of Bavaria, after a long struggle, workers declared a Council Republic, under the leadership of communists and anarchists. The Bavarian Soviet Republic did not last long, but it was one of the highest peaks in the wave of revolutions that followed the World War. In the end, all of the forces of the old Europe, Social Democracy, pre-fascist freikorps, and the military, entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter. In the suppression of the Council Republic, the nucleus of German fascism was developed.
On November 7, 1918, the Bavarian workers, farmers, and soldiers expelled King Ludwig III, thereby ending the 738-year-old reign of the Wittelsbach Dynasty over Bavaria. That day, sixty thousand people gathered at Munich’s Theresienwiese for a demonstration against the war. At the rally, two factions of Social Democracy faced each other.
In opposition to the complacency of Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) towards the First World War, the left wing of the party had split from the majority, forming the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD). The SPD’s Erhard Auer called for peace and reforms, including the eight-hour day. Kurt Eisner, a journalist and leading figure in the USPD, on the other hand, argued that only revolution could bring a lasting peace, that the king and emperor must be deposed in favor of a people’s democracy, and that extensive social reforms were only possible as part of the march towards socialism. Anarchists were also among the crowd, including the famous author Erich Mühsam, one of the main protagonists of the revolutionary left in Munich at the time. As the revolution unfolded, the tension between these three poles defined much of the drama.