A hundred years ago, in November 1918, revolutionary sailors who had refused to take part in the last plan of the German Navy to attack the British blockade seized power in the harbor town of Kiel – it was the beginning of the end of the First World War. In the early afternoon of November 5, a day after the sailors had taken over the city, a man named Völkert had to be carried on a stretcher from a local Sparkasse bank office. He had been shot by an unknown man from a short distance with a revolver. While Völkert was on the operating table of a local surgeon, other employees of the Sparkasse relayed the story of what happened: Despite the revolutionaries seizing the city, the Sparkasse had opened their office normally. At about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, its head manager had opened a window to let some air in. At about 10 minutes after 2, another employee, Frau Stender, had seen a group of armed sailors who pointed with their fingers towards the window. Seconds later she saw them readying their rifles. While she screamed for her colleagues to take cover, shots rang out and the window was smashed by bullets. The Sparkasse employees scrambled to the cellar and hid there. When no more shots could be heard, they waited for a few minutes until Völkert decided, he would go back up again to prevent any thefts (some also suspected to impress his female co-workers). Nobody heard what happened to Völkert. When about 20 minutes later a group of soldiers entered the cellar and told them it was safe to come back up, he was already being transported away. Minutes later a higher ranking sailor arrived and informed the employees of the Sparkasse that they were all under arrest as suspected counter-revolutionaries and were in custody to be transported to headquarters.

The subsequent investigation by revolutionary authorities revealed what had occurred: A sailor passing the building had claimed he had heard a shot coming from the window of the Sparkasse. When he called others for help, they saw the open window and opened fire. Climbing in, they assumed Völkert to be the sniper. Searching the office, no weapon could be produced and while the sailor who originally claimed to have heard the shot swore up and down that a sniper had been at the window, the authorities released the employees after a short time and Völkert survived his wounds.

This was far from the only such incident that would occur in Germany in November and the following months. Gripped by fear of a counter-revolutionary officer conspiracy, revolutionary soldiers and sailors in Kiel, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt saw snipers and marksmen behind every open window and on every rooftop. In early December in Berlin, a whole company started firing several hundred rounds at a building in Friedrichstraße where some poor inhabitant had opened a window that was blown against the wall by the wind. Nobody got hurt but a lot of glass was broken that day.

The counter-revolutionary officer conspiracy never materialized. Despite constant fear and paranoia among the revolutionaries, it simply didn't exist; it was a rumor. At the same time, it wasn't the only rumor that had gripped the imagination of the participants of the German revolution in 1918/19. When street fighting first between different left-wing groups and later between left-wingers and the Freikorps broke out, newspapers and leaflets would accuse various factions constantly of using dumdum bullets, which had been designed to expand on impact in the body. No such use is attested by actual sources but it seems the violence of this weapon had gripped the collective German imagination and it's consequences were seen everywhere despite them never actually being used. Similarly, the idea that Liebknecht and the Spartakus League had behind them hundreds of communist revolutionaries ready to strike at any moment – something else not true – played a huge role in how the new German government responded to them, f.ex. in their decision to attack the People's Navy Division in the Stadtschloss, who was suspected of having sympathies for Liebknecht and Spartakus.

Historian Mark Jones, who has written about this phenomenon in his recent book Founding Weimar. Violence and the German Revolution of 1918-19 discusses this phenomenon of rumors and fears heavily shaping the behavior of historical actors in situations of unrest and revolt utilizing the concept of auto-suggestion.

Auto-suggestions describes how certain self-generated convictions and expectations have shaped the behavior of historical actors in that they were convinced and fully believed that certain things had happened or would happen despite no evidence existing that they occurred and would occur. In short: If a group, an army or a population expects the enemy to come, it would be strange if he didn't show up sooner or later.

This concepts of the power of auto-suggestion as a useful method to approach understanding historical actors was pioneered by historian Georges Lefebvre in his 1932 book La Grande Peur de 1789. (The Great Fear of 1789). Examining a series of rural riots in revolutionary France in 1789, Lefebvre shows that the various outbreaks of these riots all over France, which due to their spontaneity and seeming randomness had baffled historians before him were related to a good faith fear of the figure of the "aristocrat brigand", a mixture of common tropes about criminal outsiders plaguing the French countryside since the drought in 1788 and the counter-revolutionary aristocrat seeking to undo the revolution. No such figure existed. While brigandage was real, the counter-revolutionary aristocrat joining them wasn't and the riots of the great fear were not caused by actually existing brigands but rather by the believe of their imminent arrival in the town. At various places in France citizens reported to the town watch claiming they were convinced, the aristocrat brigand would arrive the next day or during the night. People were arrested, unrest broke out, food riots occurred and the French countryside henceforth heavily armed themselves.

George Rudé in his introduction to the English translation of Lefebvre's book writes:

Rumour, panic and fear, for all their irrationality and for all the reflections they cast on the frailty of human behaviour, are presented as a new and significant dimension in the historical process. This is the first and the most important lesson we learn from this book. As Lefebvre him­ self puts it: 'What matters in seeking an explanation for the Great Fear is not so much the actual truth as what the people thought the aristocracy could and would do'; and it was not so much what had happened as what the townsmen and peasants believed to have happened that stirred them into feverish activity.

While rumors can also always point us to economic, social and political circumstances that gave rise to them, the examples by Lefebvre, Jones and others who have done historical research into this subject shows that rumors and auto-suggestion need to be taken seriously as factors explaining the behavior of historical actors. Something that is not real necessarily, can have very real consequences if actors believe in its realities. Such is the way that self-generated believe and rumors have shaped historical events and the way historians need to distinguish between what they know about what occurred and what historical actors at the time believed to be occurring. The rumor, the untrue can give us valuable historical insight and should not be overlooked.