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.
List of current pretenders
The German Empire was a federation of a score of smaller monarchies, all of which are now abolished under modern republican Germany although a handful never abdicated their titles. As a result, there are a large number of claimants to various German thrones. Since the dissolution of the empire, however, a number of former royal households have become extinct in the male line, and are therefore not represented in the list below. Mecklenburg–Schwerin became extinct in 2001, Saxe-Altenburg in 1991, and Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen in 1971.