Free The Downfall of Money: Germany’s Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class by Frederick Taylor

withdraw the army from the remaining occupied areas, in a third and increasingly harsh exchange of communications President Wilson also demanded guarantees of changes in the German political system and of military measures that would make a resumption of the war impossible. Ludendorff promptly withdrew support for the peace negotiations upon which he had formerly been so insistent. Now, he demanded in an order to his soldiers, co-signed by Field Marshal Hindenburg, Germany must continue to ‘resist to the utmost of her power’.
    Such defiance of government and Kaiser could not be permitted. On 26 October 1918 Ludendorff, for more than two years the real ruler of Germany, was dismissed, though to save embarrassment it was claimed that he had resigned of his own volition. He was replaced as Quartermaster-General and Deputy Chief of Staff by fifty-year-old General Wilhelm Groener, a transport and logistics expert who had been the High Command’s linkman with the Food Supply Office and, for some months after August 1916, Deputy Prussian Minister of War and head of the Reich War Production Office.
    Two days later, a crucial change in the Reich constitution finally made the Chancellor and his ministers no longer responsible only to the Kaiser, as had been the case since 1871, but to the Reichstag. Germany was now formally a constitutional monarchy. 3 Prince Max was from this point on theoretically free to conduct policy as he desired, or at least as events dictated, but in fact power had already begun to slip from his hands. This time, it was not the High Command that presented the threat, but the mood of the common people.
     
    On 24 October, Admiral Scheer, commanding the German North Sea Fleet, issued secret orders for the fleet to prepare to put to sea once more. Senior naval commanders had decided, in defiance of the Berlin government, which was in the middle of delicate armistice negotiations, to take on the British fleet in a ‘decisive battle’ ( Entscheidungsschlacht ) – a final, suicidal attempt to salvage what they perceived to be the German navy’s honour.
    Despite the secrecy surrounding Scheer’s order, word spread through the ships waiting at anchor off the North Sea naval port of Wilhelmshaven. The men below decks had been penned up in port in cramped conditions and under harsh discipline for more than two years since the inconclusive Battle of Jutland (known in Germany as the Skagerrakschlacht ) in June 1916. Unsurprisingly, most were not keen on dying just as peace was about to break out, simply to satisfy the naval elite’s desire for a heroic seaborne Götterdämmerung . Open mutiny followed. During the night of 29-30 October, several warships in Wilhelmshaven were seized by their crews. One of the sailors would write in his diary attributing the cause: ‘Years and years of injustice have been converted into a dangerously explosive force that is now coming to a head.’ 4
    The Imperial Navy stood on the brink of disintegration, but the naval command held its nerve. German submarines and torpedo boats took up position among the ships off Wilhelmshaven. The mutineers were given a deadline. If they did not return to their stations, these vessels would torpedo their ships. At the last minute, the crews gave in. The ships were handed back to their commanders. The mutiny was, for the moment, over.
    Nonetheless, in a victory of sorts for the men, the plan for the ‘decisive battle’ was abandoned. The ordinary crew could clearly not be trusted to die ‘with honour’. The fleet was split up, with the 3rd Squadron – whose crews had been the most troublesome – ordered to enter the North Sea Canal and sail through to Kiel, the great German naval port on the Baltic. On the way through the canal, forty-seven naval ratings and stokers considered to have been ringleaders in the rebellion were picked out and placed under arrest. On arrival at Kiel, they were transported to a naval prison.
    The uprising at sea