After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, he went into exile because he was considered one of the "November criminals" held to be responsible for Germany's defeat in the war and the collapse of the German Empire.

In 1883 Scheidemann joined the SPD, which had been banned under the Anti-Socialist Laws of Otto von Bismarck, and became a member of the Free Trade Union of Book Printers.

In 1912 Scheidemann became the first Social Democrat to be elected one of the vice presidents of the Reichstag,[1] but since he refused to make the inaugural visit to the emperor – the "going to court" that the party had always frowned on – he was unable to take office.

Wilhelm Keil, a friend and party comrade of both men, described Ebert as "always serious, dignified and energetic", while Scheidemann was a "brilliant rhetorician with somewhat boisterous manners ... which at times allowed doubts to arise as to what percentage of his seemingly holy fire was to be ascribed to theatricality".

When he directed sharp attacks against the imperial Hohenzollern family in the Reichstag in 1912, Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and the members of the Bundesrat who were present left the hall in protest.

A speech given by Scheidemann in Paris in 1912 caused a great public stir and was published in Germany in a distorted form to defame him specifically and the Social Democrats in general as "traitors to the fatherland".

[2] In view of the worsening social hardships of the working class caused by the war, the SPD had been pressing since the beginning of 1917 to fulfill its promise of a political reorganization of Germany.

To prevent radicalization at home, Scheidemann, Friedrich Ebert and Otto Braun joined the leadership of the January strikes of 1918 in which over a million workers demanded better living and working conditions, an end to the war and a democratization of the constitution.

[16] As parliamentary group chairman and leading figure of his party in the inter-party committee, Scheidemann played a significant role in ousting the government of Reich Chancellor Georg von Hertling in September 1918.

[12][19] In the face of an impending defeat in the war and the threat of revolutionary developments at home, Scheidemann said on 5 November 1918 that he thought Bolshevism a greater danger than the external enemy.

Communist propaganda and historiography later attributed the Reich government's severance of relations with Soviet Russia on that day to Scheidemann and declared him "the author of the anti-Soviet provocation directed against the Spartacus League".

"[20] By use of an ultimatum the MSPD parliamentary group was able, among other things, to push through the parliamentarization of Prussia, Germany's largest state, without being able to stop the outbreak of revolutionary actions in Berlin.

[26] That evening a group of several hundred followers of the Revolutionary Stewards – workers' representatives who were independent of the formal unions – occupied the Reichstag and held an impromptu debate.

During the fighting in Berlin in late December 1918 known as the Christmas crisis, Scheidemann backed Ebert's decision to use military force against the occupation of the Palace by the leftist People's Marine Division.

Historians attribute the relatively conflict-free work of the coalition government to Scheidemann's role as a moderator rather than as a true leader in the administration of his office.

In response to a general strike in central Germany in February 1919 involving three-quarters of all workers, Scheidemann had the Reichswehr (German army) occupy the city of Halle, but at the same time he announced steps to democratize the economy.

[32] Scheidemann's government adopted a law in the National Assembly on 6 March 1919 that, in the words of one historian, "greatly modified and liberalized the code of military justice", bringing it into the realm of social policy.

[35] Political realists such as Matthias Erzberger of the Centre Party, Gustav Noske, and Eduard David drew attention to the fact that a rejection would threaten the occupation of all of Germany by the Allies.

Based on it, Scheidemann took the position that, in cases of tension between government action on the one hand and party's political line and basic direction on the other, the latter should be given preference.

[39] In November 1923 Scheidemann admitted in a newspaper article in the Casseler Volksblatt that the course he had followed a year earlier, which had led to the end of Joseph Wirth's (Centre Party) second government, had been a grave and irreparable mistake.

[41] In April 1921 Scheidemann called on Reich President Friedrich Ebert to resign because his office compelled him to use his Social Democratic name in support of the center-right minority government formed after the MSPD withdrew following its loss of 62 seats in the 1920 election.

It had allowed the government to bypass parliament and impose restrictions on the right to strike (November 1920) and to introduce special courts to suppress the communist-led March Action uprising (1921) in central Germany.

During his tenure in the Reichstag, Scheidemann wrote political treatises that were widely read[1] and in parliament made several speeches that had significant consequences.

In 1926 Scheidemann revealed in the Reichstag the illegal collaboration between the Reichswehr and the Soviet Army in an attempt to rebuild the German armed forces beyond the limitations of the Versailles Treaty.

During a walk with his daughter, Hans Hustert (who would later be an SS adjutant to Heinrich Himmler) and Karl Oehlschläger sprayed him in the face with prussic acid.

The assassination attempt against him was part of a series of political murders that included among others Matthias Erzberger, one of the signers of the Armistice of 11 November 1918, and Walther Rathenau.

The perpetrators were members of the Organisation Consul (the group mainly responsible for the murder series), the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Federation for Protection and Defense), the Freikorps Ehrhardt Brigade and the Iron Division.

He described Ebert as a calculating lone wolf who hardly ever explained himself, who was a "master in organizational and tactical issues,"[51] and who usually avoided direct confrontation and discussion in the official committees but always understood how to get his way through parallel informal consultations with different interest groups.

[54] Scheidemann demanded of the SPD executive committee in exile that self-criticism not be limited to the years 1918 and 1919; what was required was "at least a few lines about the fifteen years that lie behind us, but at a minimum about 20 July 1932"[55] – the date of 1932 Prussian coup d'état, when Reich President Paul von Hindenburg invoked an emergency clause of the Weimar constitution to replace the elected government of the state of Prussia with Franz von Papen as Reich Commissioner.

Scheidemann himself, like many other Social Democrats, had counted on the call for a general strike in July 1932 and February 1933, partly because "influential comrades" had repeatedly assured him that "the button would be pressed" at the decisive moment.