There's a book in English called The Kings Depart (can't remember the author but if you Google it you'll find it). It's more of an academic work than something from a Trot stable, although from memory the author makes rather dubious links between what he calls the Red Revolution and the Brown Revolution (i.e. the Nazis).
It's still a good read for all that, amply detailing both the confusion and the machinations of the ruling class in that period.
Quint. The author of The Kings Depart is R M Watt
There is a real lack of books on the German Revolution. However, there is a book by P Broue,The German Revolution 1918-23. I have not read this book but from what I have heard about it, it is meant to be interesting. You can get it from Amazon.
We -the ICC- also deal with the question of the German Revolution in our book The Dutch and German Communist Left. It is not a detailed history of the German Revolution but is a detailed analysis of the emergence and history of the Dutch and German Communist Left up until the late 1940's. This is available from Amazon or our website.
In the 1990's we produced a series of articles on the history of the German Revolution, seeking to understand it and draw the lessons of this important event. If you were interested we could send you these, you can e-mail us if you want them [http://en.internationalism.org/contact].
There is also a book by Victory Serge Witness to the German Revolution, published by Redwords.
Hopefully, this will be of help to you. The German Revolution was an extremely important expression of the proletariat's effort to liberate itself and it is no surprise that bourgeois seeks to hid it.
The best book that I have read on Germany at that time is, Sebastien Hafner, Failure of a revolution, which unlike most political books, is difficult to put down once you have started
it, and reads more like a novel than a political book.
Also, Before the deluge, by Otto Friedrich has a load of stuff on germany at that time.
Larissa Reisner, Hamburg at the barricades, about an attempted armed uprising through out Germany, which only got of the ground in Hamburg, although its about a period a couple of years later on.
You could also read Paul Frolich's biography of Rosa Luxemburg which is all about the German revolution in its concluding chapters. 
Actually as it happens about half the people who interested in the reading group speak french, so yeah french titles would be interesting. We were thinking of reading the book Gilles Dauvé co-wrote "La Gauche Communiste en Allemagne". Has anyone read this?
Anyway, thanks for the ideas... and further suggestions are welcome.
The Hamburg debacle of 1923 was instigated at the orders of the Comintern, at a time when working class combativity in the city (indeed throughout Germany) was at a low ebb following the crushing of the revolution of 1918-19 by Noske, the SPD, and the Freikorps. Hardly a moment to look on as any kind success for our side.
I found the ICC book quite disapointing. It focuses almost entirely on the political programs and congress decisions of the various groups, and has very little on the actual class struggle taking place outside of the political faction fights.
You will find a lot of mostly shorter texts about the German council communist movement on The Council Communist Archive: http://www.kurasje.org
You will find a lot of mostly shorter texts about the German council communist movement on The Council Communist Archive: http://www.kurasje.org
From that excellent source, now in library;
http://libcom.org/library/anti-bolshevist-communism-germany-paul-mattick
I think the leading book on the German Revolution in English is now the recently translated one by Pierre Broue; see http://www.merlinpress.co.uk/acatalog/THE_GERMAN_REVOLUTION__1917_1923.html
Actually as it happens about half the people who interested in the reading group speak french, so yeah french titles would be interesting.
Our series on the German Revolution is available in French. None of them are available on our English site yet, but we are working on it! They are available in English in print. Here are the links...
REVOLUTION ALLEMANDE(I) : les débuts de la révolution
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte81/all.htm
REVOLUTION ALLEMANDE (II) : les débuts de la révolution
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte82/revo_all.htm
REVOLUTION ALLEMANDE (III) : l'insurrection prématurée
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte83/revo_all.htm
Revolution allemande (IV) : fraction ou nouveau parti ?
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte85/allemagne.htm
Révolution allemande (V) : du travail de fraction à la fondation du K.P.D
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte86/revo_allemande.htm
Revolution allemande (VI) : L'échec de la construction de l'organisation
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte88/allemagne.htm
Revolution allemande (VII) : la fondation du K.A.P.D
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte89/allemagne.htm
Révolution allemande (VIII) : le putsch de Kapp
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte90/all.htm
Révolution allemande (IX) : L'action de mars 1921, le danger de l'impatience petite-bourgeoise
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte93/revo_all.htm
Révolution allemande (X) : le reflux de la vague révolutionnaire et la dégénérescence de l'Internationale
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte95/revoall.htm
Révolution allemande (XI): La Gauche Communiste Et Le Conflit Croissant Entre L'Etat Russe Et Les Interets De La Revolution Mondiale
http://fr.internationalism.org/rinte97/revoall.htm
Révolution allemande (XII) : 1923 - I - La bourgeoisie veut infliger une défaite décisive à la classe ouvrière
http://fr.internationalism.org/french/rint/98_revolution_allemande
REVOLUTION ALLEMANDE (XIII) - 1923 - II - Une défaite qui signe la fin de la vague révolutionnaire mondiale
http://fr.internationalism.org/french/rint/99_revo_allemande
Beltov.
The ICC's book on the Dutch and German Lefts is an excellent but complex study of the positions of the left but does not look at the class struggle in any detail. I strongly recomment the series of articles in the ICC's International Reviews nos. 11, 71 and 12 subsequent issues from 1995 to 1999.
Against the betrayal by (German and all) Social Democracy and the trade unions in their support for nationalism and imperialist war, the left wing (of SD) maintained its internationalist position against the first world war. The split came in 1917 when the SDP expelled the left.
1915 in Germany saw workers' demonstrations and anti-war confrontations. In Austria there waves of wildcats, in Britain hundreds of thousands of workers where on strike from South Wales and Kent to the Clyde. The poison of nationalism was being rejected by the working class.
April 1917 saw mass strikes in Germany and confrontations with the unions, with fraternisation between German and Russian troops on the Eastern Front.. Mutinies broke out among sailors particularly where the Spartacists and Bremen Left had an influence. Strikes followed in the Czech and Slovak provinces and a political strike in Vienna covered almost all of the Hapsburg Empire. In Finland, following a mass uprising, more than 25 thousand workers were massacred. In February 1918, sailors of the Austro-Hungarian fleet rose up joining armed, striking workers. The Baltic ports mutinied in 1918 and in Cologne 45 thousand soliders deserted en masse.
The widespread upheaval, part of an international revolutionary wave, put an end to the imperialist war and revolutionaries, who had been a handful in 1914, intervened massively to denounce social chauvinism and the unions, and to defend internationalism and the Russian Revolution. In October 18, the Kaiser was deposed, the SDP, the "left wing" of capitalism par excellence, was included in government, set up their "worker's councils", which were analysed by the Spartacists as "the counter-revolution on the march".
The revolutionary wave in Germany lasted for about half a decade and was pivotal for the world revolution. The extent of the betrayal of Social Democracy and the unions was clear with its complicity in the murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht and tens of thousands of unnamed workers.
There are many lessons drawn from the events in Germany in the International Reviews, not least the federalist, dispersed and uncoordinated nature of the civil war against the bourgeoisie.
quint, here are tangentially relevant libcom articles I was reading a few weeks ago which all have something to do with the german revolution in one way or another:
Hans Shcmitz
http://libcom.org/history/schmitz-hans-1914-2007
Otto Reimers
http://libcom.org/history/reimers-otto-1902-1984
Proletarischer Zeigeist
http://libcom.org/history/1919-1945-the-proletarischer-zeitgeist
Willi Jelinek
http://libcom.org/history/jelinek-wilhelm-willi-1889-1952
Bump.
I just read http://libcom.org/library/wilhelmshaven-revolt-ikarus which is amazing- and remembered that i read http://libcom.org/library/origins-movement-workers-councils a few years ago which is where my interest started.
I heartily recommend these two articles, and I'll read the Mattick one Ret Marut posted previously. i'll get "the Failure of a revolution" as well- what an incredible point in time that was!
David in Atlanta wrote:
One to avoid is Barricades In Berlin, a propagandistic novel sometimes seen in Maoist bookstalls.Why? It being propagandistic doesn't mean it's bad. Is it Leninist?
It's pure "third period" Stalinist and as i recall, badly written and/or translated.
these from butchers (posted on his behalf as he's deleted his account)
Revolution in Central Europe - F.L Carsten
The German Revolution of 1918 - A.J Ryder
Revolutionary Hamburg - Richard A Comfort
Failure of a Revolution - Sebastian Hafner
The Political Institutions of the German Revolution 1918/19 - Burdick and Lutz
Hamburg at the Barricades - Reisnner
Failure of a revolution - Rudolf Coper
Red Rising in Bavaria - Richard Grunburger
Levine : the life of a revolutionary - Rosa Levine-Meyer
War Against War - F.L Carsten
Mutiny On the hight Seas: the imperila germna navel mutinies of WW1 - Daniel Horn
Serge - Wieness to the German revolution
The lost revolution - Chris Harman (usual warnings apply...)
*The Ruhr and Revolution - Tampke
The Origins of the Movement for Workers’ Councils in Germany – H. Canne Meijer
The KAPD in Retrospect – B. Reichenbach
The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power (Documents, compiled by Trots, but useful anyway)
History of Socialist Thought, Vol. 4 - GDH Cole
The German Revolution, 1918-1919 - Ralph H. Lutz
War and Revolution in Leipzig 1914-1918: Socialist Politics and Urban Evolution in a German City - David McKibbin
*The Socialist Left and the German Revolution : A History of the German Independent Social Democratic Party, 1917-1922 - David W., Morgan
The German Revolution of 1918 - Henry Friedlander
A German Revolution : Local Change and Continuity in Prussia, 1918-1920 - Stephen C. MacDonald
Stillborn revolution : the Communist bid for power in Germany - Angress
Chris Wright
Is the introduction to 'From the Bourgeois Revolution to the Proletarian Revolution, by Otto Ruhle, issued in pamphlet form by a UK group more than twenty five years ago, available anywhere on-line? I believe the group that put out the pamphlet was called 'Socialist Reproductions.'
Also, the intro to 'Pannekoek and Gorters' Marxism, edited by D.A. Smart (I think that's his name) from Pluto Press was quite good.
These are both relatively short works and might serve as a good introduction to the German/Dutch Left.
The Broue text is supposed to be from a Trot perspective, but that doesn't necessarily mean its gets its facts wrong -- just the interpretations, I suppose.
And Gilles Dauve and Denis Autheir's (sp?) text is supposed to be quite good, but the people I know who've read it read it in either French or Italian. I don't think it's available in English, but if the people in the reading group are fluent in either French or Italian -- I'm not -- then I'd go for that.
I haven't read anything by Victor Serge on the German Revolution, but I assume anything he wrote on it must be taken with a grain of salt. I liked some of his fiction, a long while ago, but in spite of all that he saw happening around him he only left the Russian CP when Stalin kicked him out in the early thirties. He was a loyal Bolshevik oppositionist, essentially a left social democrat, and he supported the allies in World War Two. I don't think Serge would really get what the communist left in Germany were all about; I think it would have escaped him
Hi,
There is of course the ICC's excellent book on the history of the Dutch and German Communist Left, 1900-1950, which is available from Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dutch-German-Communist-Left-Revolutionary/dp/1899438378/
Packed full of references to other books, journals and research on that period too!
[/shameless plug]
B.
And Gilles Dauve and Denis Autheir's (sp?) text is supposed to be quite good, but the people I know who've read it read it in either French or Italian. I don't think it's available in English, but if the people in the reading group are fluent in either French or Italian -- I'm not -- then I'd go for that.
Dauve - Authier The Communist Left in Germany 1918-1921
http://us.share.geocities.com/collectiveact/dauve11.htm
cheers
i'm finding Broue's book to be... difficult to get through, to be honest. for precisely the same reasons Felix said he didnt like the ICC book,
"It focuses almost entirely on the political programs and congress decisions of the various groups, and has very little on the actual class struggle taking place outside of the political faction fights."
i *hate* histories like that. oh, and every couple pages (or less), Broue seems to feel compelled to quote Lenin 
but, i admit, i'm not terribly far in. hopefully it gets better as it goes on.
Scotland faces more council strikes after local government employers refused to increase a 2.5% pay offer.
Texts about and from 1966 British magazine Heatwave, which was linked to American Surrealists and radical unionists.
The Mass Strike in France May-June 1968
Informations et Correspondance Ouvrieres (ICO)
Root and Branch Pamphlet 3
First issue of an irregular workers' bulletin put together by users of the website, libcom.org. This issue focuses on the 2008 pay dispute over sub-inflation pay offers.
I'm in the process of putting together a reading group on the German revolution / German communist left. I was hoping for reading suggestions. There are a number of shorter articles online on Marxists.org and Libcom etc... but I haven't been able to find many books that discuss it in depth. And the few that I have found discuss it from the standpoint of the social democrats or the are trotskyist. Does anyone have any suggestions?