How did society and politics deal with the escalating economic and social crisis? What threatened and what preserved the cohesion of urban society? The significance of World War I for the border city of Basel is a question that has hardly been researched. For the first time, the pressing issues are presented vividly and closely tied to sources, and are interpreted historically: the panic at the outbreak of war, the city's supply problems, the humanitarian engagement of civic circles, as well as the confrontation between the working class and citizen militias, which escalated in the national strike of 1918.