History of Germany during World War I
In November 1918, with internal revolution, a stalemated war, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire suing for peace, Austria-Hungary falling apart from multiple ethnic tensions, and pressure from the German high command, the Kaiser and all German ruling princes abdicated. On 9 November 1918, the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a Republic, in cooperation with the business and middle classes, not the revolting workers. The new government led by the German Social Democrats called for and received an armistice on 11 November 1918; in practice it was a surrender, and the Allies kept up the food blockade to guarantee an upper hand. The war was over; the history books closed on the German Empire. It was succeeded by the democratic, yet flawed, Weimar Republic.
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."