Thanks to the length of his parallel careers in journalism and politics, Wilhelm Blos was very much a "known quantity" for many of those who selected him to head up the Württemberg provisional government. The choice was also a reflection of his political moderation. Even within the Soldiers' Soviet, most of the foot-soldiers of the "German revolution" were not longstanding "Bolsheviks" as their frightened enemies might suppose, but simply hungry and desperate ex-soldiers, home from a war that had been disastrously lost, who found themselves without prospects and without jobs. Blos was a figure around whom both "radical democrats" and many "bourgeois traditionalists" might hope to find common ground. The provisional government formed on 9 November 1918 comprised at this stage both "Independent" Social Democrats and "mainstream" Social Democrats. Two days later, on 11 November 1918, the was joined by ministers from two of the more "centrist" and left-leaning "bourgeois parties".