The massive strikes that swept Austria in January 1918 culminated in a mutiny of the Austrian fleet in the Adriatic.15 In Germany too, tensions were rising to an unbearable pitch. On 28 January, a week after the protests in Vienna had ebbed away, the factory cities of Germany were swept by an unprecedented wave of industrial action. The strikers’ demands were openly political – a reasonable peace with Russia and domestic political reform, an end to martial law and the abolition of Prussia’s three-tiered electoral system.
