Walter Beling was born in Berlin, the son of a tailor. His mother is described simply as a . He attended school locally between 1906 and 1913, also finding time to work as a messenger-boy. Between 1913 and 1917 he served an apprenticeship in , which he combined with six terms as a student at Berlin's Machine Construction Academy ("Berliner Maschinenbauschule"). After concluding the course at the academy he briefly took office job with a succession of trading businesses. However, notwithstanding his participation in peace demonstrations on the streets of Berlin during 1915 and 1916, by the end of 1916 he had been conscripted for military service. After briefly serving "alongside machine gunners" he was transferred to the "war navy" ("""Kriegsmarine") with four others who, like him, had worked as machinists. According to his own later explanation, this was in order that the five of them might be used as "consultants" in connection with the ever more "feverish" programme of submarine construction that was an important feature of the First World War (1914-1918). Thew Kiel mutiny which broke out at the start of November 1918 in response to what was seen as a desperate and suicidal set of orders from the German admirals is widely viewed as a final trigger point which unleased twelve months of riots and insurrections across Germany - especially in the naval ports and industrial heartlands - which came to be known as Germany's November revolution. Beling was stationed in Kiel at the time, and took part in the insurrection, although surviving details of his personal involvement are vague. As the revolt spread across Germany he moved across to Berlin where he took part in the Spartacist uprising at the start of 1919.