Why exactly did Germany implode during World War I but not during World War II?
WW-II Germany utilized a different labor market.
Because it was mostly sane and was fucking tired of eating rutabagas for a hopeless cause that didn’t mean anything and evidently at this point the military was up its own arse.
Whereas in WW2 they were fucking tired of eating rutabagas for a hopeless cause that didn’t mean anything anymore and the military was not so much up its own arse as existing on an different planet altogether… but they also did not want to be shot in the face for saying so.
So, still sane.
Err, really ? The SPD (socialist-democrat party) was founded in 1875. In 1878 it was banned by Bismarck, its opinions forbidden from the press under threat of jailtime and its leaders sent into exile (and it still managed to grow in power and win elections all the way to the War, which is the funny part).
You want they should all have been summarily shot to not count as “kid gloves” ?
Not according to Fischer - a German historian from the 60s who quite eloquently showed that Germany was very much to blame for WW1 as well, and that it had followed a continuous political and cultural trend for the pursuit of an hegemonic position acquired over the other nations of Europe by violent means, from ~1890 onwards. He didn’t out and out say “we were nazis all along, guys”, but it’s very much implied.
His thesis was criticized a lot back then (because it was really inconvenient, politically), but these days it’s seen as roughly true.
Gah, fucked up the edit. Replace “true” (which is meaningless) by “roughly accurate, by many historians”.
I would argue Germany was in a much worse state after WW2 than WW1. The difference is the allied occupation. If they had simply withdrawn and left the Germans to it (not something that was ever on the cards), the result would have been far more chaotic than the end of WW1, but as it was German went straight from imploding Nazi regime to being ruled by military occupiers.
Weren’t the Social Democrats always allowed to participate in German elections under Kaiser Wilhelm II, though?
Honestly, I need to read Fischer’s entire book, but Fischer appears to be correct that Germany purposely caused World War I. Indeed, Germany wanted to fight Russia sooner rather than later and thus felt that if war was inevitable, then it better occur as soon as possible.
Yes and no.
They definitely weren’t from 78 onwards. But to simplify things, they still had support and candidates who campaigned as “independants” under the banner of “We’re totally really honestly not SPD, guys, pinky swear wink, wink” and over time the party had enough success that the Reich was kind of forced to soften the ban informally - and eventually to repeal it when Bismarck resigned in 1890.
I meant fighting on until the bitter end, though. Indeed, Mexico only agreed to the U.S.'s peace terms after U.S. troops have already captured Mexico City, no?
Kaiser Wilhelm II only came to power in 1888, though. Thus, events between 1878 and 1888 certainly can’t be associated with his reign.
Yes, this certainly makes sense. Of course, I think that the odds that the West would have actually accepted such a separate peace had Stauffenberg and his buddies fully succeeded in their coup attempt would have been close to zero.
Yes, this certainly makes sense as well. Indeed, the Nazis were certainly extremely thuggish in regards to this! 
For what it’s worth, the Wikipedia article about the July Crisis and some of the sources that it lists also appear to strongly implicate Germany (and Austria-Hungary as well) for causing World War I.
Why exactly would it have been far more chaotic, though?
Right you are, they still had hope, they still had ideas of help from abroad, they still thought the rest of the adult population may gain supplies, or unbury them, and form a militia… They still had the idea that the USA would avoid trying to capture a large city… It wasn’t in their book of war… what ? The enemy is taking out capital city ? They are massively outnumbered, they can’t do that !
It just doesn’t apply to WW II, and that is YOUR question… Sure the Kaiser gave up in WW I, why would the Nazi’s fail to give up in WW II ? They were freaking crazy, they were crazy from the start to the end, they believed that commitment to the idea was a replacement for actual tangible strength.
I guess you could say, compared to the Nazis, the Imperial government treated the SPD with kid gloves. It’s sort of damning with faint praise, though.
A good book to check out, though, on the question of just why Germany kept fighting in WWII is Ian Kershaw’s “The End”
And Ernst Röhm and the SA had their loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rewarded with the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, little more than a year after Hitler took power. All of that is neither here nor there though; the Germans weren’t afraid of Soviet reprisals because Stalin purged the Soviet officer corps in the 30s, they feared reprisals for the genocide and atrocities the Nazis had just carried out in the Soviet Union and the East.