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.
German Empire (1848–49)
The state was created by the Frankfurt Parliament in spring 1848, following the March Revolution. The empire officially ended when the German Confederation was fully reconstituted in the Summer of 1851, but came to a "de facto" end in December 1849 when the Central German Government was replaced with a Federal Central Commission.