Germany and Revolution, 1918-19

The Spartacists

In power in Berlin at the close of World War I were Germany's Social Democrats – moderate socialists led by Friedrich Ebert. They saw themselves as patriotic Germans and favored reforms, Ebert having favored a British-style monarchy and parliamentary government. Allied with Ebert's government was Germany's military – despite Hindenburg's detestation for socialists of any kind.

Ebert and the moderate socialists and trade unionists had established domination over the Workers and Soldiers' councils. Against Ebert and his government were Germany's revolutionary socialists, the Spartacist League, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, both having recently been released from prison. Ebert had long been opposed to Luxemburg, believing that her faith in the natural impulses of "the working class" was romantic nonsense.

Luxemburg, in a recent article had criticized the Bolshevik revolution for its lack of guarantees of freedom of the press and rights of association and assembly. She aimed at creating a revolution in Germany that maintained these freedoms but doubted that Germany was ready for a successful uprising.

A political revolution had already taken place, the monarchy having been replaced. Ebert was eager to avoid making the mistakes that Kerensky had made in Russia, and he feared those Germans who wanted a Bolshevik-style revolution. On December 6, soldiers allied with Ebert occupied the editorial offices of Spartacus' newspaper. Another detachment of soldiers fired on a Red Soldiers' League demonstration, killing 18 and wounding 30. And a detachment of soldiers marched on Ebert's offices and proclaimed him President of Germany.

On 10 December around 75,000 soldiers from the no longer existing front marched into Berlin, sent by Ebert's ally, the army's high command: General Groener. Ebert spoke to them in front of the Brandenburg Gate, telling them that no enemy had defeated them and that Germany's unity now lay in their hands. Desertions began among the soldiers that encouraged the revolutionaries.

On December 16, 1918, Germany's first "Congress of Workers and Soldiers' Councils" opened in Berlin. Ebert's moderate socialists held a majority of the 489 delegates to the Congress and control. On December 20, the Congress rejected by 344 to 98 the demand for a government based on councils, similar to Lenin's call that all power be given to the Soviets. The Congress agreed on the creation of a National Assembly – comparable to Russia's Constituent Assembly. And as a sop to socialist ideology, the Congress passed two resolutions: one for the socialization of all "ripe" industries, especially coal mining; the second for the establishment of a people's militia. These were resolutions that embarrassed Ebert, who did not intend to support them. Ebert was sticking with his ally, Germany's established army.

Germany was substantially different from what Russia was at the time of the Bolshevik coup. Germany had a much larger middle-class than Russia. Most Germans still supported law and order. Unlike the powerless provisional government that Lenin faced, and a dispirited and indifferent multitude, German revolutionaries had a significant force with which to contend. Nevertheless, the Spartacists continued to push for armed revolt. Toward the end of December a good percentage of the troops that had arrived on the tenth had deserted. On December 23, revolutionary sailors occupied the chancellery and took Ebert prisoner. The following day, Ebert was rescued by troops that had been garrisoned nearby. On Christmas Day, government troops exchanged fire with the revolutionary sailors, and 56 of the government troops and 11 of the revolutionary sailors were killed.

In late December Ebert and General Groener worked at the organization of military units that could be relied upon, many of them former soldiers and other young men opposed to communist revolution, who formed what were called Free Corps (Freikorps) battalions. Also at the end December the Spartacist League declared itself the German Communist Party. Liebknecht and other representatives of the new Communist Party agreed with representatives of Berlin's Independent Social Democrats, the People's Marines and some shop stewards to launch another armed uprising. Weapons were distributed. The Spartacus newspaper had a headline that read "Rise Proletarians! To Battle!" Thousands of workers took to the streets. Strikes broke out in Berlin. Armed Spartacists occupied the building that housed the Social Democrat newspaper, and they invaded other buildings. Communists in other cities followed suit and attempted to take control of their cities.

When Free Corps troops entered Berlin they were applauded along the way by people opposed to the uprising – far from the mood in Petrograd in November, 1917. Street fighting in Berlin was heavy, with the armed revolutionaries poorly led and poorly coordinated.

The fighting in Berlin ended on January 12 with a government victory. Three days later, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were rounded up and taken to the hotel that the Free Corps was using as headquarters. Both were taken out the back door. Luxemburg was called a whore. Both were clubbed with rifle butts, taken away and shot, and Luxemburg's body was dumped in a canal, to be found days later.

Meanwhile, most of the uprisings were crushed, and the advisor that Moscow had sent to the German communists, Karl Radek, was imprisoned. Elections for the National Assembly promised at the Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils took place on schedule. The Social Democrat Party won 163 seats, the Center (Catholic) Party won 91 seats, the German Democratic Party won 75 seats, a monarchists party won 44 seats, and Independent Socialists (USPD) won 22 seats. On February 6, Ebert opened the National Assembly with a speech urging the victorious Allied powers not to cripple the young republic by its demands. And, on February 11, the National Assembly elected Ebert as President of the new German Reich.

Most Germans still believed in law and order, and those responsible for the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht were put on trial. The one who had done the actual shooting was a former army officer who was ruled a psychopath and not responsible for his actions. He was commended for his fine war record and given a sentence of two years in prison. Others involved also received light sentences. The judges could not condone murder, but they were in sympathy with the motives of the killers regarding the need to suppress communist revolution.

More Bloodshed

By February 5, what had remained of the uprisings against the government - in Bremerhaven, Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven - had been crushed. The revolutionist regime in Munich was still in power, but it was without popular support. Its leader, a former journalist named Kurt Eisner, had mistakenly believed that he represented the will of the people in Bavaria, but in elections held in January he had received less than two percent of the vote. Unable to win enough support from those elected to Bavaria's parliament, he was on his way to a government building to resign when he was gunned down by a rightist aristocrat, Count Anton von Arco-Valley. Count Valley was a member of the racist Thule Society. His mother was Jewish, and he wanted to demonstrate that even a half-Jew could perform an act of heroism.

In Berlin, Spartacists were calling Ebert "the mass executioner of the German proletariat." On March 3 they called for "a new struggle for the revolution" and "a new battle against the oppressors." They told Berlin's municipal employees and factory workers that the fate of the world was in their hands, and they called on the workers to cease all work and remain in their factories. Again the Free Corps came. The Ebert government heard rumors of Spartacist terrorism in Berlin and gave orders to shoot on the spot anyone bearing arms against government troops. Tanks, flame-throwers, artillery and trench mortars were used against the revolutionaries, and members of the Free Corps gunned down some captured Spartacists. A week of bloodshed ended with more than one thousand Berliners dead. And the Spartacists, somewhat sobered, called off their strike and made overtures of peace to the Ebert government.

On March 20, 1919, Béla Kun established a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in Budapest, Hungary. This excited German communists who believed in a domino theory of revolution and who still believed that revolution must be imminent in Germany. In Munich, the new shaky coalition government led by a Social Democrat, Adolf Hoffman, did not yet have a police or military force, and a few ragtag revolutionaries led by a neurotic young poet, Ernst Toller, took up arms, chased Hoffmann out of town and declared Bavaria as Soviet Republic. Toller's government of coffeehouse intellectuals declared that universities were to be open to all, that everyone was to be educated according to his own ideas and that teaching the history of civilization was to be suppressed because history was bunk.

Coffeehouse intellectuals are normally at odds with orthodox Marxists, and it was a small army of Marxist-led Spartacists who overthrew Toller and his group, after Toller had been in power only one week.

The Spartacist regime in Munich enrolled numerous men into their little army by offering good pay and free living quarters. Weapons were forbidden to all but revolutionaries. The new government declared that the right to the streets belonged only to class-conscious workers. Picking up a leaflet dropped by airplanes was made a capital offense. Placards and handbills called on workers to expropriate the bourgeoisie. The land of "kulaks" (rich peasants) was to be confiscated. Automobiles were confiscated. The revolutionaries hunted supporters of Hoffmann. Homes were broken into and plundered. Food was confiscated. Merchants were warned not to sell food or other goods at market prices. And money was produced in great abundance on government printing presses.

In Moscow, news from Munich was encouraging. The Bolshevik head of the Communist Internationale, Gregory Zinoviev, believed that within a few months the communists would win in Germany. Lenin was encouraged, and on April 27 he sent a letter to Munich asking to be informed as to what concrete measures they were taking against the "bourgeois hangmen" who supported Ebert's government. He asked if they had armed the workers and had disarmed the bourgeoisie, whether they had taken over factories and large farms, or canceled mortgages and land rents for small farmers.

By April 27, Free Corps units were spread around the outskirts of Munich, preparing an assault against the city's revolutionary regime. Some in the regime's army began to desert. The revolutionaries had taken some of Munich's leading citizens hostage, and the commander of the regime's army ordered them shot. Ernst Toller rushed to the scene and saved some of the hostages, but twenty of Munich's prominent citizens were killed and their bodies mutilated. Horrified by the massacre and encouraged by the Free Corps outside of town, small groups of armed citizens within the city began attacking the regime's army.

News of the massacre set the Free Corps into motion. And, as the Free Corps converged on the city, Spartacists took ten members of the rightist Thule Society hostage and executed them. Word was out among the revolutionaries that because millions of proletarians had been killed in the war for the benefit of capitalism it did not matter that thousands of bourgeoisie had their throats cut.

In a matter of days, the Free Corps defeated the revolutionaries and took power in Munich. Known leaders of the revolutionary regime were shot on sight. Some others were summarily tried and executed. The Free Corps burst into a meeting of Catholic Workers of the Saint Joseph Society – a meeting of people discussing educational and cultural matters – and, confusing the meeting with a communist conspiracy, selected twenty and had them shot.

Ernst Toller was captured, but he escaped and lived to write plays. He became a screenwriter in Hollywood, and in 1939 he hanged himself in Manhattan.

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