The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923

Revolutions that are defeated are soon forgotten.

Yet of all the upheavals after the First World War, it was the events in Germany that prompted British Prime Minister Lloyd George to write:

“The whole existing order, in its political, social and economic aspects, is questioned by the masses from one end of Europe to another.”

Here was a great revolutionary upheaval in an advanced industrial country—in the heart of Europe.

Without an understanding of this defeat, the great barbarisms that swept Europe in the 1930s cannot be understood. The swastika first entered modern history in the uniforms of the German counterrevolutionary troops of 1918 to 1923—and because of the defeat in Germany, Russia fell into the isolation that gave Stalin his road to power. Here, Chris Harman unearths the history of the lost revolution in Germany, and reveals its lessons for the future struggles for a better world.