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A color map of Germany before and during the war from a French postcard, including the German states, views of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Rhine. Alsace and Lorraine are in the southwest.

A color map of Germany before and during the war from a French postcard, including the German states, views of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Rhine. Alsace and Lorraine are in the southwest.

Image text

Allemagne, Duitschland, Mer du Nord, Mer Baltique, Russie, Hongrie, Autriche, Suisse, France, Belgique, Pays Bas

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Monday, January 28, 1918

"A meeting of the Turners' Union was held on January 27 [1918] in Berlin to which all the principal industries sent representatives. On the proposal of Richard Müller the meeting unanimously resolved to call a general strike for the following day. On January 28, therefore, four hundred thousand workmen in Berlin and the outlying districts laid down their tools; while on the same day four hundred delegates, representatives of all the industrial unions in Berlin, met as a Berlin Workmen's Council in the Trades Union building in order to formulate the strikers' demands. . . . The strikers demanded above all else a speedy conclusion of peace without annexations, and a radical democratization of the whole governmental system in Germany. They further demanded the abolition of martial law and the auxiliary services law in addition to a political amnesty and improved rationing."

Quotation Context

Workers in Austria-Hungary and then Germany went on strike in January, 1918 as hunger and war-weariness bit. Hopes for an end to the war that arose from the December, 1917 armistice between Russia and the Central Powers were dashed on January 12 when German military representative General Max Hoffman made it clear Germany would not evacuate occupied territory on the Eastern Front. Anticipating revolutionary activity across war-weary Europe, Russian representative Leon Trotsky played for time. On January 25, workers of the Torpedo Yard in Kiel, the German Empire's major port on the Baltic Sea, went on strike. Richard Müller was a leader of the Turners' Union in Berlin. The auxiliary services law of December, 1916 required every German between the ages of sixteen and sixty to perform war service.

Source

Imperial Germany; The Birth of the German Republic 1871–1918 by Arthur Rosenberg, page 211, publisher: Beacon Press, publication date: 1964

Tags

1918-01-28, 1918, January, strike, Berlin, Reichstag