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Women workers in a German munitions factory. The man on the right is holding a cigarette.

Women workers in a German munitions factory. The man on the right is holding a cigarette.

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Thursday, January 31, 1918

"Unrest came to a head in January 1918, when a wave of strikes swept the Reich. The strikes, like those earlier in the Dual Monarchy, were driven by three major concerns: hunger, cold, and war weariness. But, again as in the Austro-Hungarian case, the strikers also had political motives: suffrage reform in Prussia, speedy conclusion of peace negotiations with the Bolsheviks at Brest-Litovsk then being held up by German demands for territorial gains, and an end to the domestic 'state of siege' that had existed since August 1914. The strikes were to highlight the desperate plight of labour, not to simulate the Bolshevik example in Petrograd. They were led in the main by so-called 'revolutionary foremen' elected by workers in individual factories and not by leaders of either of the two socialist parties."

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 and subsequent peace negotiations between Russia and the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk 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. The Bolshevik Revolution began in Petrograd, the Russian capital.

Source

The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, page 378, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997

Tags

1918-01-31, 1918, January, strike, Brest-Litovsk, Petrograd, Bolshevik, woman munitions worker, hunger, cold, war weariness, German woman munitions worker