On this day, 3 November 1918, in the German port city of Kiel, sailors and workers elected the first Council of Soldiers in Germany. Before, in the morning, hundreds of armed sailors of the German Navy had gathered at the house of the local trade unions. A few days earlier, around 1,000 sailors had been imprisoned for mutiny after refusing to go into battle against the British navy. Fearing a wide-spread rebellion, the admirals had called off the attack.
After Karl Artelt, a sailor and machinist from Magdeburg, and the sailor Lothar Popp from Bavaria called the sailors to free their comrades, the men marched to local factories first to ask workers to join, and workers began to walk out on strike. When 6,000 sailors and workers were about to approach the prison on the Landstraße near the Cafe Kaiser, they faced a line of soldiers, rifles in hand. Their lieutenant, named Steinhäuser, gave the order to shoot. Nine demonstrators died. A sailor shot back, killing the lieutenant. A few minutes later the local admiral, unsure of the loyalty of his own troops opened the prison gates and the prisoners were free.
In the evening, the sailors and workers introduced working class democracy to Kiel, to Germany by electing the Council of Soldiers with Karl Artelt as chairman. As their first action, the Council presented demands to the local military commander, Bartels: Abdication of the Kaiser, free elections and women’s right to vote. Flabbergasted, Bartels responded: “But gentlemen, this is a political program.” Afterwards, dozens of sailors’ delegations set off into the night by railroad to carry the revolt into the country. By November 5, the red flag was flying over ships in Kiel harbour, while the mutiny spread, and the German revolution gathered momentum.
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