Uploaded September 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This video is a what if scenario about the result of the November revolution. I ask myself the question of what would have happened if the communist revolution in 1918 Germany was successful. I explain how this may have been possible, how it would have affected the peace negotiations at the end of world war one, the potential German civil war, the interwar settlement and the inevitable second great war.
Patreon: patreon.com/viki1999
Second channel: youtube.com/channel/UCtXcyUuCaUMY2GGU_8iM1hg
Subreddit: reddit.com/r/viki1999
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
E-Mail Address: viki1999mail@gmail.com
The song in the outro was produced by 08 (who gave me no way to credit them), you can listen to the whole remix on my second channel: youtu.be/jZOrMsIOZh0
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:45 Summary of the situation
4:08 Support from the SPD
8:22 The armistice
13:17 Civil war
21:20 Post war settlement
29:04 The buffer states
32:42 A second war
37:01 Conclusion
5 person discord invite. Hit the bell to catch it under the next video. And please only use it if you willbe active on the server, otherwise leave it for others: discord.gg/8QEBdr28MN
Transcript:
Hello everybody, this video will be a first. My first alternative history video to be exact. Tell me how well you like or don’t like. Like, not now, do it after the video, obviously, which is also when you should subscribe and donate on patreon. We have a patreon Minecraft server.
Anyways, my last video was about the Sailor’s rebellion in Kiel as well as the wider November revolution which brought down the German empire. Which begs the question, what if it went differently? The classical youtuber thing to do would be to demand you watch that other video first to get all the context, but it’s 27 minutes and you want to see the what if scenario now, not later. So here goes the painfully short summary.
Germany and the rest of Europe were rivals, specifically France and the UK. When the Austro-Hungarian archduke was shot Austria went to war with Serbia and Germany went to war with everyone. Because of the technology of the day defence was a lot more effective than offense so it quickly turned into a so called trench war were people shoot each other with machineguns wile hiding in trenches as to not be shot by machine guns.
After a lot of death Russia got a communist revolution in 1917 which lead to it leaving the war. In the same year the United states joined the war on the allied side. For this reason many generals in the German army started considering that they may lose the war and may have to negotiate an armistice.
To facilitate this they wanted to send the entire german army and the imperial navy into suicide attacks. The sailors and soldiers decided against dying for the gernerals and started a full blown rebellion that rose up all across the German Empire. Which had two main goals. Remove the Kaiser and end the war.
Eventually two factions formed, the communists, mostly lead by rebellion and also these two people and the Reichstag which was a democratic parliament set up by the Kaiser to make people stop asking for a democratic parliament. It had no real power at this time and the main faction was the social democratic SPD.
Then because of the uncontrollable communist uprisings all across the empire the chancellor said the Kaiser is abdicating without the Kaiser being aware of it. Naturally the Kaiser decided that all is lost and fled to the Netherlands, which cost him the rest of his supporters. What would have happened if he had contested this announcement could be another video.
But historically, and in our scenario he just left. And then nobody was quite sure what to do now. The Kaiser quite literally was the government, the divine monarch and suddenly he’s gone. Who will be in charge now?
The communists? The Parliarment? It was up to the SPD, which theoretically agreed with the communists but practically decided to betray them so they could make the parliament be the government so they could be in charge. Then they made promises to the army so they would fight on behalf of the social democratic parliament, not the communists. Remember this part.
Naturally the communists didn’t think much of this proclamation of a republic and they proclaimed their own republic on the same day. So who was in charge? Nobody knew. But the social democrats sent a representative to negotiate an armistice with he allies to end the unpopular war so that was a thing.
After a few months of nobody being sure who was the real government the communists decided to put some facts on the ground. Using what communists are best at. Strikes and armed worker’s militias. Remember what I told you to remember 4 sentences ago?
Yea, the armies killed them all. All the communists. Including the unarmed and surrendered ones.
This video is a what if scenario about the result of the November revolution. I ask myself the question of what would have happened if the communist revolution in 1918 Germany was successful. I explain how this may have been possible, how it would have affected the peace negotiations at the end of world war one, the potential German civil war, the interwar settlement and the inevitable second great war.
Patreon: patreon.com/viki1999
Second channel: youtube.com/channel/UCtXcyUuCaUMY2GGU_8iM1hg
Subreddit: reddit.com/r/viki1999
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
E-Mail Address: viki1999mail@gmail.com
The song in the outro was produced by 08 (who gave me no way to credit them), you can listen to the whole remix on my second channel: youtu.be/jZOrMsIOZh0
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:45 Summary of the situation
4:08 Support from the SPD
8:22 The armistice
13:17 Civil war
21:20 Post war settlement
29:04 The buffer states
32:42 A second war
37:01 Conclusion
5 person discord invite. Hit the bell to catch it under the next video. And please only use it if you willbe active on the server, otherwise leave it for others: discord.gg/8QEBdr28MN
Transcript:
Hello everybody, this video will be a first. My first alternative history video to be exact. Tell me how well you like or don’t like. Like, not now, do it after the video, obviously, which is also when you should subscribe and donate on patreon. We have a patreon Minecraft server.
Anyways, my last video was about the Sailor’s rebellion in Kiel as well as the wider November revolution which brought down the German empire. Which begs the question, what if it went differently? The classical youtuber thing to do would be to demand you watch that other video first to get all the context, but it’s 27 minutes and you want to see the what if scenario now, not later. So here goes the painfully short summary.
Germany and the rest of Europe were rivals, specifically France and the UK. When the Austro-Hungarian archduke was shot Austria went to war with Serbia and Germany went to war with everyone. Because of the technology of the day defence was a lot more effective than offense so it quickly turned into a so called trench war were people shoot each other with machineguns wile hiding in trenches as to not be shot by machine guns.
After a lot of death Russia got a communist revolution in 1917 which lead to it leaving the war. In the same year the United states joined the war on the allied side. For this reason many generals in the German army started considering that they may lose the war and may have to negotiate an armistice.
To facilitate this they wanted to send the entire german army and the imperial navy into suicide attacks. The sailors and soldiers decided against dying for the gernerals and started a full blown rebellion that rose up all across the German Empire. Which had two main goals. Remove the Kaiser and end the war.
Eventually two factions formed, the communists, mostly lead by rebellion and also these two people and the Reichstag which was a democratic parliament set up by the Kaiser to make people stop asking for a democratic parliament. It had no real power at this time and the main faction was the social democratic SPD.
Then because of the uncontrollable communist uprisings all across the empire the chancellor said the Kaiser is abdicating without the Kaiser being aware of it. Naturally the Kaiser decided that all is lost and fled to the Netherlands, which cost him the rest of his supporters. What would have happened if he had contested this announcement could be another video.
But historically, and in our scenario he just left. And then nobody was quite sure what to do now. The Kaiser quite literally was the government, the divine monarch and suddenly he’s gone. Who will be in charge now?
The communists? The Parliarment? It was up to the SPD, which theoretically agreed with the communists but practically decided to betray them so they could make the parliament be the government so they could be in charge. Then they made promises to the army so they would fight on behalf of the social democratic parliament, not the communists. Remember this part.
Naturally the communists didn’t think much of this proclamation of a republic and they proclaimed their own republic on the same day. So who was in charge? Nobody knew. But the social democrats sent a representative to negotiate an armistice with he allies to end the unpopular war so that was a thing.
After a few months of nobody being sure who was the real government the communists decided to put some facts on the ground. Using what communists are best at. Strikes and armed worker’s militias. Remember what I told you to remember 4 sentences ago?
Yea, the armies killed them all. All the communists. Including the unarmed and surrendered ones.
