Stab-in-the-back myth
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The stab-in-the-back myth was an antisemitic conspiracy theory that was widely believed and promulgated in Germany after 1918. It maintained that the Imperial German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield, but was instead betrayed by certain citizens on the home front – especially Jews, revolutionary socialists who fomented strikes and labour unrest, and republican politicians who had overthrown the House of Hohenzollern in the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Advocates of the myth denounced the German government leaders who had signed the Armistice of 11 November 1918 as the "November criminals".
An illustration from a 1919 Austrian postcard showing a caricatured Jew stabbing a German Army soldier in the back with a dagger. The capitulation of the Central Powers was blamed on socialists, Bolsheviks, and the Weimar Republic, but in particular on Jews.
Hagen takes aim at Siegfried's back with a spear in an 1847 painting by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld of a scene from the epic poem Nibelungenlied ("Song of the Nibelungs") – which was the basis for Richard Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung.
First Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff
Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg
The German Revolution of 1918–1919, also known as the November Revolution, was an uprising started by workers and soldiers in the final days of World War I. It quickly and almost bloodlessly brought down the German Empire, then in its more violent second stage, the supporters of a parliamentary republic were victorious over those who wanted a soviet-style council republic. The defeat of the forces of the far Left cleared the way for the establishment of the Weimar Republic.
Barricade during the Spartacist uprising of 1919
Erich Ludendorff in 1918. His calculated shifting of responsibility for the war's loss from the army to the civilian government gave rise to the stab-in-the-back myth.
Kiel mutiny: the soldiers' council of the battleship Prinzregent Luitpold. The sign reads in part "Long live the socialist republic."
Proclamation of the Bremen Soviet Republic outside the city hall on 15 November 1918