Wrapping My Head Around the Weimar Republic, Pt. 5: When Putsch Comes to Shove*
Armed uprisings against the Weimar Republic came from the far right as well as the far left. They often claimed to support “tradition”—a call to Protestantism, family values, or loyalty to the monarchy—but what they had in common was a deep hatred for democracy and a call for an authoritarian alternative to the Weimar Republic. Presumably with them in charge. Case in point: the Kapp putsch of 1920, in which a 62 year old civil servant named Wolfgang Kapp and a cabal of German army officers attempted to overthrow the Weimar Republic and establish an autocratic government.
Even though the attempted coup is known as the Kapp Putsch it was instigated by a group of right-wing military officers. On February 29, the German defense minister, Gustav Noske ordered that two powerful Freikorps units be disbanded.** Both had been active in Munich and Berlin during the Sparticist uprising and both were violently opposed to the idea of a democratic German government in general and Friedrich Ebert’s Weimar Republic in particular. The commander of one of these brigades, Hermann Ehrhardt refused to dissolve his unit. (Does this come as a surprise to anyone?) Worse, General Walther von Lüttwitz, who commanded regular army units stationed in Berlin, announced that he would not accept the loss of such an important unit. (Guess who was involved in the formation of several Freicorps units?) In a meeting with Noske and President Ebert on March 10, Lüttwitz not only demanded that the order to dissolve the Freicorps units be revoked, but that the National Assembly be dissolved, new elections be held for the Reichtag, and that he himself be named the supreme commander of the German army. Not surprisingly, Noske and Ebert told him to shove it (though they were probably more polite about it) and that they expected his resignation the next day.
Instead of resigning, Lüttwitz went to Ehrhardt and asked him if he could occupy Berlin that evening. Ehrhardt asked for another 24 hours to put things in motion. (In other words, he and his Freikorps were organized to start a military coup on 24 hours notice.)
This is the point at which Lüttwitz turned to Kapp and a group of conspirators that included retired general Erich Ludendorff and Waldemar Pabst who had given the order for the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in the Spartacist uprising. The group had already been plotting [in a low grade way] to establish an authoritarian government that would restore the imperial federal structure, minus the emperor. (Their goal could be described as “government by the upper bureaucrats for the upper bureaucrats.) Lüttwitz asked them to be ready to take over the government on March 13. Unlike Ehrhardt and his militia, they weren’t really prepared for a coup, but they agreed.***
Ehrhardt’s militia marched into the center of Berlin at 10 o’clock on the evening of March 12. (Many of them sported swastikas on their helmets and armbands.)
The regular army, which had put down the far-left Sparticist uprising without compunction, refused to defend the city against the far right-wing militia. Some commanders suggested that the government negotiate with the rebels. Some claimed that their soldiers could not defeat the elite Freicorps. The German commander-in-chief, General Hans von Seeckt, is reported to have said “Reichswehr does not fire on Reichswehr.”
Without the army’s support, the cabinet fled, ten minutes before the Freikorps arrived to occupy the chancellor’s office. By 6:30 in the morning on March 13, the rebels were in possession of Berlin. Kapp declared himself chancellor and formed a provisional government, thus ensuring that the revolt would be known as the Kapp putsch rather than the Lüttwitz putsch. Lüttwitz became commander in chief and Minister of Defense.
It appeared that the conspirators had succeeded. After all, they had the military and the upper echelons of the government bureaucracy on their side.
That turned out not to be enough. On their way out of Berlin, Friedrich Ebert and the other cabinet members who were part of the Social Democratic party put out a call for a general strike to defeat the putsch. The trade unions stepped up. The strike began in Berlin on March 14. By the next day it had spread across the country. Roughly 12 million workers went on strike, including the rank and file of the government bureaucracy who did not share their bosses’ taste for an authoritarian regime. The country was paralyzed.
On March 20, the legitimate government returned to power, after considerable negotiation between the putsch members and the four major political parties. Among other questionable agreements, Hermann Ehrhardt was given a written promise that he would not be arrested as long as he remained in command of his Freikorps brigade. (May I remind you that this whole mess began with the government trying to disband that same unit?) The brigade marched out of Berlin, spraying a crowd of heckling bystanders with machine gun fire as they left, leaving twelve dead and thirty badly wounded.
The unions called off the general strike on March 22. Fifty thousand workers in the Ruhr refused to return to work and began a little uprising of their own. Apparently having learned nothing from the prior six days, Ebert’s cabinet sent in the army and a few Freicorps brigades to put down the Ruhr uprising. (Good way to damage your relationship with the people who saved your bacon, boys.)
The government had survived the Kapp putsch, but it did nothing to solve the underlying problems that led to the coup. The high-ranking army officers (including Lüttwitz!!!) and government functionaries who supported the coup remained in place, as did the Freikorps militia units.
Not good.
* Sorry, I couldn’t resist
**For those of you who missed the last installment in this series of blog posts, the Freikorps were volunteer militias made up of former soldiers of the imperial German army. They were trained and equipped by right-wing officers of the Weimar army. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the term “volunteer militia,” I tend to think of the Minute Men of the American Revolution and other home guard units. That’s not a good analogy for the Freikorps. They were basically groups of right-wing thugs who would evolve into enthusiastic supporters of Hitler and the Nazis.
***Because hey, if someone hands you the coup you’ve been plotting and asks you to be in charge, why not say yes? What could possibly go wrong.
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Obviously there is a lot more to say about the Weimar Republic, and I will doubtless be circling back to Weimar-related topics as they catch my attention. In the meantime, I offer this essay from the Five Best Books website, which appeared in my inbox today: The best books on The Weimar Republic, recommended by Robert Gerwarth
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the Five Best Books website is a fascinating and dangerous place to learn about books on a wide variety of topics, recommended by experts in those topics. Tread warily.
Wrapping My Head Around the Weimar Republic, Pt. 4: The Sparticist Uprising.
The Weimar Republic almost died soon after it began.
Conditions were bad in Germany during the first months of the Weimar Republic. Food and fuel shortages continued after the end of the war and many Germans were cold and starving. The economy was in disarray. Unemployment was high, as both the army and the industries that supported it were demobilized. The third-wave of the worldwide flu pandemic showed no signs of ending. And the imperial government had left the leaders of the new republic the humiliating and thankless task of signing the Versailles peace treaty, earning the nickname the “November Criminals”.
The Weimar Republic would go on to create an innovative and far-reaching social security net, but they had barely had time to get themselves organized when a small, determined group of Marxist revolutionaries made a bid to re-create the Russian Revolution in Germany.
On January 5, 1919, a group who called themselves the Spartacists* staged an uprising against the Weimar republic, armed courtesy of the recently fired Berlin police chief, a radical sympathizer who provided the Sparticists with weapons. Led by “Red Rosa” Luxemburg and Karl Lieibknecht,** the Spartacists called for a general strike that brought thousands of demonstrators to the center of Berlin, where they erected barricades in the streets and seized the offices of socialist newspaper that was pro-Weimar and anti-Sparticist.*** They tried to get army regiments to repeat the glory days of the Kiel mutiny and join the revolt, with no success.
Instead of joining the revolt, the army and right wing volunteer militias**** attacked the revolutionaries with the full approval of Ebert’s cabinet. The army and the Freikorps re-captured the buildings the rebels had seized (including the police headquarters and the war ministry) and shot hundreds of the demonstrators, including many who had surrendered.
On January 15, a Freikorps unit captured Luxemburg and Liebknecht. They smashed in Luxemburg’s skull with a rifle butt, then shot her and threw her into the Landwehr Canal. (Her body was found and identified four months later.) Liebknecht was shot in the back and his corpse taken to the morgue.***** The official account of their deaths said that Liebknecht had been shot while trying to escape capture and that Rosenburg had been killed by an angry mob. The Freicorps unit commander later admitted, with some pride, that he ordered them executed.
The defeat of the Separatist revolt saved the republic in the short run, but in fact that defeat held within it the seeds of the republic’s death fourteen years later.
*After the Roman gladiator Spartacus, who led a slave rebellion in Rome in the first century BCE. In retrospect, naming themselves after the leader of a rebellion that failed and ended in the crucifixion of six thousands of its participants was perhaps not such a good idea.
**You met Liebknecht several weeks ago, when he declared the creation of a socialist republic republic from the balcony of the royal palace.
***If you have any doubts about the fact that socialists and communists are not the same thing politically, spend some time reading about the Weimar republic. The two parties disagreed on just about everything–loudly, often, and occasionally with the use of violence.
****Known as the Freikorps, these militias were made up of former soldiers of the imperial German army. They were trained and equipped by right-wing officers of the Weimar army. Despite the fact that they were used in putting down the Spartacist revolt, these units were not citizen soldiers with official standing. They would remain a problematic element of society throughout the Weimar Republic and became stalwart supporters of the Nazi movement.
*****Nothing I’ve read explains, or even asks about, the difference in how their assassins treated the bodies. Personally, I believe it was rooted in the disdain for women that became part of the Nazi ethos. But I am just making this up.
In which I recommend a women’s history newsletter
I had planned to tell you another story from the Weimar Republic in today’s post, but quite frankly the post is at the Hot Mess stage*, a regular part of my process for writing articles and books but one I usually manage to avoid in blog posts. I’ve been working at it for the better part of a week. And I’ll keep poking at it.
In the meantime, I’d like to share a women’s history newsletter that I’ve been enjoying for several months now, Julia Carpenter’s A Woman to Know. It comes out more or less daily** and it’s one of the few newsletters that I read as soon as I see it in my inbox. In each issue, Carpenter shares the story of a relatively unknown woman from history. (At best I’m familiar with one in ten.) And she includes a list of references in case you want to know more. (This is actually a problem as it contributes to my To-Be-Read list/pile/shelf, which is spiraling out of control. )
With any luck, my next post will be the story of the Spartacist Uprising in Berlin. In the meantime, enjoy a few stories about kickass women you probably haven’t heard of.
* Several years ago I accepted that the Hot Mess Draft is an official part of my process. It is the stage after the initial research and just before the Shitty First Draft that Anne Lamott describes so vividly in Bird By Bird. (Essential reading for anyone who wants to write.) I pour everything I know about the subject–and everything I don’t know but need to find out–onto the page. (Or more accurately, the screen.) I highlight things in yellow and ask questions in ALL CAPS. I try to clump similar ideas into a rough structure that may or may not bear a resemblance to the final shape of the piece. I repeat myself. Worse, I contradict myself.
**How does she do it???