German Empire
The high command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff increasingly controlled the country, but in October after the failed offensive in spring 1918, the German armies were in retreat, allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, and Bulgaria had surrendered. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution with the abdications of its monarchs. This left a postwar federal republic and a devastated and unsatisfied populace, which later led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism.
Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
The political and economic situation in the last year of the war became more and more hopeless. On 6 November 1918, the new German imperial Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, met with Minister Wilhelm Solf to discuss the future of the German Empire. They were both of the opinion that the monarchy could only survive with the removal of the Kaiser and his son the Crown Prince and the setting up of a Regentship under the nominal rule of the young son of Crown Princess Cecilie. Such idea quickly disappeared with Friedrich Ebert becoming Chancellor and a republic being declared a few days later. Both the Kaiser and the Crown Prince crossed the border to seek exile in neutral Netherlands. The monarchy collapsed with the defeat of Germany at the end of the war. Cecilie with her young children was living in Potsdam during the revolutionary period. She had moved from her new home of Cecilienhof with her children to join her mother-in-law in the relative safety of the New Palace. It was here that the Empress Auguste Viktoria informed her daughter-in-law, "The revolution has broken out. The Kaiser has abdicated. The war is lost."