In October 1918, war-weary German sailors mutinied rather than engage in one final, fruitless battle with the British Royal Navy. That revolt, coming as World War I slowly ended, quickly became far bigger, erupting into a full-scale revolution that toppled the monarchy and inaugurated a brief period of radical popular democracy. This book tells that mostly forgotten story, going beyond the handful of familiar names such as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht to present the revolution from the bottom up. Through stories of the actions of rank-and-file activists and ordinary workers, Willam A. Pelz builds a compelling case that, for a brief period, the actions of the common people shaped a truly revolutionary society.

William Pelz was director of the Institute of Working Class History in Chicago and professor of history at Elgin Community College. 

— Ottokar Luban, International Rosa Luxemburg Society

— Raquel Varela, New University of Lisbon, IISG Honorary Fellow