Impact of the Russian Revolution

In April 1917, the German government facilitated Vladimir Lenin's return to Russia from his exile in Switzerland in the hope that he would weaken the tsarist regime and its conduct of the war.^[18] After the 1917 October Revolution that put Lenin and the Bolsheviks in power, many in both Russia and Germany expected that Soviet Russia would attempt to foment a communist revolution in Germany. For Germany's far left, it provided hope for its own success, but for the moderate socialists and the middle and upper classes, it was a source of fear that the kind of bloody civil war that was occurring in Russia could also break out in Germany.^[19]

The moderate SPD leadership consequently shifted away from the party's official stance as revolutionary socialists. Otto Braun clarified the SPD's position in an article titled "The Bolsheviks and Us" (Die Bolschewiki und Wir) in the party newspaper Vorwärts of 15 February 1918:^[20] "Socialism cannot be erected on bayonets and machine guns. If it is to last, it must be realised with democratic means. ... Therefore we must draw a thick, visible dividing line between ourselves and the Bolsheviks."^[21]

On 3 March 1918, the newly established Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany to end Russia's involvement in the war. The terms of the treaty, under which Russia lost 34% of its population, 54% of its industrial land, 89% of its coalfields and 26% of its railways,^[22] were arguably harsher for the Russians than the later Treaty of Versailles would be for the Germans.^[23] Brest-Litovsk revived the German people's hopes for a final victory in the West, but social tensions increased when the foodstuffs expected from the eastern regions did not arrive, and the shock of the final defeat that came six months later was that much worse because of the raised expectations.^[24][25]

Military collapse

Following the Allied breakthrough at the Battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918 – Ludendorff's "black day of the German Army" – military morale began to deteriorate rapidly. Troops increasingly refused to obey orders, deserted and voluntarily surrendered to the enemy. Ludendorff later wrote in his war memoirs: "Retreating troops, passing by a fresh division that was fighting bravely, called out: 'Strike breakers!' and 'You're dragging out the war!'"^[26] The collapse of military morale was echoed in the civilian population. A Reichstag representative from Baden reported in late September that many southern Germans felt "enormous bitterness against Prussia; not against the Prussian people but against the Junkers and the military caste. The dominant feeling among us is that Prussia must fail, and if Prussia does not fail, Germany will fail because of Prussia."^[27]

On 29 September 1918, the Supreme Army Command informed Emperor Wilhelm II and Chancellor Georg von Hertling that the military situation was hopeless in the face of the enemy's overwhelming advantage in manpower and equipment. General Ludendorff said that a request for an immediate ceasefire should be sent to the Entente powers. In hopes of more favourable peace terms, he also recommended accepting American president Woodrow Wilson's demand that the imperial government be democratised. His aim was to protect the reputation of the Imperial Army by placing the responsibility for the capitulation and its consequences at the feet of the democratic parties and the Reichstag.^[28][29] In a veiled reference to the workers who had struck the armaments plants, the Social Democrats who had helped pass the Reichstag Peace Resolution and the radical Spartacists who wanted a dictatorship of the proletariat, he said to his staff officers on 1 October:^[30]

I have asked His Majesty to bring into the government those circles to whom we mainly owe it that we have come this far. ... Let them now make the peace that must be made. They should eat the soup they have served up to us!

His statement marked the birth of the "stab-in-the-back myth", according to which revolutionary socialists and republican politicians had betrayed the undefeated army and turned an almost certain victory into a defeat.^[31]

Political response

Although shocked by Ludendorff's report and the news of the certain defeat, the majority parties in the Reichstag, most notably the SPD, were willing to take on the responsibility of government. Chancellor Hertling objected to introducing a parliamentary system and resigned. Emperor Wilhelm II then appointed Prince Max of Baden as the new imperial chancellor on 3 October. The Prince was considered a liberal and at the same time was a representative of the royal family. Most of the men in his cabinet were independents, but there were also two members of the SPD. The following day, the new government offered the Allies the truce that Ludendorff had insisted on, and on the 5th the German public was informed of the dismal situation that it faced.^[32][33] Even up to that late point, government propaganda and the press had led the people to believe that the war would still be won. The shock of the impending defeat caused a "paralytic bitterness and deep resignation" which eased the way for those who wanted an immediate ceasefire.^[34]

During October, President Wilson responded to the request for a truce with three diplomatic notes. As a precondition for negotiations, he demanded the retreat of Germany from all occupied territories, the cessation of submarine activities and (implicitly) the Emperor's abdication.^[35] Following the third note of 24 October, which emphasised the danger to international peace inherent in the power of the "King of Prussia" (Wilhelm II) and the "military authorities of the Empire",^[36] General Ludendorff resigned and was replaced as First General Quartermaster by General Wilhelm Groener.^[37]

On 28 October, the Reichstag passed constitutional reforms that changed Germany into a parliamentary monarchy. The chancellor and his ministers were made dependent on the confidence of the parliamentary majority rather than the emperor, and peace treaties and declarations of war required the Reichstag's approval.^[38] Because the chancellor was also responsible for the emperor's acts under the constitution, the emperor's military right of command (Kommandogewalt) became the chancellor's responsibility and thus subject to parliamentary control.^[39] As far as the Social Democrats were concerned, the October Constitution met all the party's important constitutional objectives.^[40] Ebert regarded the formation of the Baden government as the birthday of German democracy. Since the Emperor had voluntarily ceded power, he considered a revolution unnecessary.^[41]

The October constitutional reform was not a thorough break with the existing state and its legal order.^[24] It had been conceived of as a "revolution from above" that was the only means of preventing a "revolution from below".^[42] The reforms on paper did not convince angry and exhausted workers and soldiers.^[24] The population as a whole saw the Emperor as responsible for the suffering and outcome of the war, and calls for his abdication grew.^[43]

Establishment, pact with the military and armistice

Ebert wanted to take the sting out of the revolutionary mood and to meet the demands of the 9 November demonstrators for the unity of the labour parties. He offered the USPD equal participation in the government and was ready to accept Karl Liebknecht as a minister. The USPD, at Liebknecht's insistence, demanded that elected representatives of the unions and soldiers have full executive, legislative and judicial control. The SPD refused, and negotiations got no further that day.^[72]

Around 8 pm, a group of 100 Revolutionary Stewards from the larger Berlin factories occupied the Reichstag. Led by their spokesmen Richard Müller and Emil Barth, they formed a revolutionary parliament. Most of the participating stewards had been leaders during the strikes earlier in the year. They did not trust the SPD leadership and had planned a coup for 11 November independently of the sailors' revolt, but were unprepared for the revolutionary events since Kiel. In order to take the initiative from Ebert, they decided to announce elections for the following day, a Sunday. Every Berlin factory was to elect workers' councils and every regiment soldiers' councils that were then to elect a revolutionary government from members of the two labour parties (SPD and USPD) in the evening. The government would be empowered to execute the resolutions of the revolutionary parliament, since they intended to replace Ebert's function as chancellor.^[73]

On the evening of the ninth, the SPD leadership learned of the plans for the elections and the councils' meeting. Since they could not be prevented, Otto Wels used the party apparatus to influence the voting in the soldiers' councils and won most of them over to the SPD. By morning it was clear that the SPD would have the majority of the delegates on its side at the councils' meeting that evening.^[74]

USPD chairman Hugo Haase returned from Kiel the morning of 10 November and was able to broker a compromise in the negotiations with the SPD about the new government. The revolutionary government, to be called the Council of the People's Deputies (Rat der Volksbeauftragten) at the USPD's insistence, gave the USPD much of what it wanted. The Council was to be made up of three representatives of the SPD (Ebert, Scheidemann and Otto Landsberg) and three from the USPD (Haase, Wilhelm Dittmann and Emil Barth).^[75] The workers' and soldiers' councils were to be given political power – not full executive, legislative and judicial control – and a national assembly would be discussed only "after a consolidation of the conditions created by the revolution".^[76]

In the assembly of the newly elected councils that convened in the afternoon at the Circus Busch, almost all of the soldiers' councils and a large part of the workers' representatives stood on the side of the SPD.^[74] After it ratified the membership of the Council of the People's Deputies, Emil Barth called for an action committee to oversee it and presented a list of names drawn up by the Revolutionary Stewards. The proposal took the SPD leadership by surprise and started heated debates in the assembly. Ebert was able to push through an "Executive Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of Greater Berlin" (Vollzugsrat des Arbeiter- und Soldatenrates Grossberlin) made up of seven SPD members, seven from the USPD and fourteen mostly independent soldiers' representatives. It was to oversee the People's Deputies until the creation of a national assembly and was chaired by Richard Müller of the USPD and Brutus Molkenbuhr [de] representing the soldiers.^[77][78]

On the evening of the same day, a phone call between Ebert and General Wilhelm Groener, the new First Quartermaster General, resulted in the unofficial and secret Ebert–Groener pact. In exchange for Groener's assurance of the army's support "for the good of the state", Ebert promised Groener that the military's hierarchies and command structures would not be changed. He thus made no attempt to democratise the authoritarian military. As Groener stated in his memoirs: "The best and strongest element of the old Prussianism was saved for the new Germany."^[79]

In the turmoil of the day, the Ebert government's acceptance of the Entente's harsh terms for a ceasefire after a renewed demand from the Supreme Army Command went almost unnoticed. On 11 November, the Centre Party deputy Matthias Erzberger signed the armistice agreement at Compiègne, France, on behalf of the government in Berlin, and World War I came to an end.^[80]

Interim government

On 12 November, the Council of People's Deputies published its government programme in the proclamation "To the German People". It lifted the state of siege and censorship, granted amnesty to all political prisoners, guaranteed freedom of association, assembly and the press and abolished the rules that governed relations between servant and master. It also promised the introduction of direct, equal and universal suffrage for all women and men from the age of 20 years, the eight-hour workday and improvements in benefits for unemployment, social insurance and workers' compensation.^[81]

In theory, the Executive Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of Greater Berlin was the highest-ranking council of the revolutionary regime and therefore Richard Müller the head of state of the newly declared "Socialist Republic of Germany",^[82] but in practice the Executive Council's initiative was blocked by internal power struggles. In the eight weeks of the double rule of the Executive Council and the Ebert-led government, the latter was always dominant. Although Haase was formally co-chairman in the Council of the People's Deputies with equal rights, the higher-level administration almost always preferred to work with the more moderate Ebert and the SPD.^[83]

The government saw its immediate tasks as fulfilling the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, demobilisation, providing adequate food and fuel supplies for a nation still under the Allied blockade and ensuring both internal and foreign security against separatists in the Rhine Province and Polish insurgents in the East. In order to make sure that the new democracy was firmly anchored, the government would have had to make an almost complete break with the old institutions, but the SPD decided that facing the immediate post-war crises was more important. To do that, it had to rely on existing structures and expertise within both the government and private enterprise.^[3] Even after 9 November, far from everything had collapsed. The administration continued to function. Civil servants from the imperial era were under the supervision of the councils but kept their positions and continued to do their work in most respects unchanged.^[65] The judiciary and education systems had been only minimally affected by the revolution if at all, and after the Ebert–Groener Pact, the Supreme Army Command became a partner of the Council of the People's Deputies.^[84] Generals and other high-ranking officers kept their positions. The Ebert government needed the OHL to manage the monumental problem of demobilisation, but the Council of the People's Deputies did not try to limit its powers to the most essential tasks. No attempt was made to dispossess the East Elbian nobility (which had historically provided much of the officer corps) or the bourgeois owners of large estates.^[3]

The SPD and USPD were under great time pressure to act. When the two parties formed their alliance, it chose to govern outside the imperial constitution. It instructed the Reichstag not to reconvene and decreed that the existing Federal Council of the states (Bundesrat) should exercise only its administrative functions, not its legislative powers.^[85] The Council in essence took over the former roles of the emperor, chancellor, Bundesrat and Reichstag. The Council began working according to rules of procedure on 12 November. The rules prohibited unauthorised intervention in the administration by individual members of the Council. Its instructions to the state secretaries had to be issued collectively and only as guidelines, not for individual cases.^[86]

Through the various councils, the socialists were able to establish a firm base at the local level. But while they believed that they were acting in the interest of the new order, the party leaders of the SPD regarded them as elements that threatened the peaceful changeover of power that they imagined had already taken place.^[87] Along with the middle-class parties, they pushed for speedy elections to a national assembly that would make the final decision on the form of the new state. The position soon brought the SPD into opposition with many of the revolutionaries. The USPD continued to want to delay elections until after the achievements of the revolution had been consolidated.^[88]

Although Ebert had saved the decisive position of the SPD and prevented a social revolution, he was not happy with the results. He did not regard the council assembly or the Executive Council as helpful, but rather as obstacles impeding a smooth transition from monarchy to a new system of government. The entire SPD leadership mistrusted the councils rather than the old elites in the army and administration. At the same time they considerably overestimated the old elite's loyalty to the new republic. Ebert could no longer act as chancellor in front of the OHL or his middle-class colleagues among the ministers and in the Reichstag, but only as chairman of a revolutionary government. In spite of having taken the lead of the revolution in order to halt it, conservatives saw him as a traitor.^[89]

Nationalisation and labour unions

At the insistence of the USPD representatives, the Council of People's Deputies appointed a "Nationalisation Committee" that included the Marxist theoreticians Karl Kautsky and Rudolf Hilferding, the chairman of the Socialist Miners' Union Otto Hue and a number of leading economists. The committee was to examine which industries were "fit" for nationalisation and to prepare for the nationalisation of the coal industry. It sat until 7 April 1919 without producing any tangible results.^[90] "Self-Administration Bodies" were installed only at coal and potash mines.^[91] From those bodies emerged the modern German Works Councils, or Factory Committees.

Like the SPD moderates, the unions also feared the councils because their supporters saw them as replacing the unions.^[92] To prevent such a development, union leader Carl Legien (SPD) met with representatives of heavy industry led by Hugo Stinnes in Berlin from 9 to 12 November. On 15 November, they signed the Stinnes–Legien Agreement, which had advantages for both sides. Employers acknowledged trade unions as the official representatives of the workforce and recognised their right to collective bargaining. The agreement also introduced the eight-hour day, allowed for the creation of workers' councils and arbitration committees in firms with more than 50 employees, and guaranteed that returning soldiers would have a right to their pre-war jobs.^[93] Future disputes were to be resolved through a newly created organisation called the "Central Working Group" (Zentralarbeitsgemeinschaft, or ZAG).^[94]

With the agreement, the unions achieved several of their longtime demands, and by their recognition of private enterprise, they made the efforts towards nationalising the means of production more difficult.^[93]

Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils

The Executive Council called for a meeting of the workers' and soldiers' councils from the entire country to be held in Berlin beginning on 16 December. When the Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils (Reichskongress der Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte) met in the hall of the Prussian House of Representatives, it consisted mainly of SPD followers. Not even Karl Liebknecht or Rosa Luxemburg had been chosen to attend, leaving the Spartacus League without influence. On 19 December, the Council voted 344 to 98 against the creation of a council system as the basis for a new constitution. Instead, they supported the government's decision to call for elections as soon as possible for a constituent national assembly to decide on the future state system.^[95]

The Congress then approved a proposal by the SPD to give the Council of the People's Deputies lawgiving and executive power until the national assembly made a final decision on the form of government. Oversight of the Council was switched from the Berlin Executive Council to a new Central Council of the German Socialist Republic (Zentralrat der Deutschen Sozialistischen Republik). After the Congress accepted the SPD's definition of parliamentary oversight, the USPD boycotted the election to the Central Council, with the result that it had only SPD members.^[96]

With the oversight of the Berlin Executive Council, the People's Deputies were to exercise military command authority and to see to the ending of militarism.^[65] The Congress voted unanimously for the democratisation of the military as laid out in the Hamburg Points: there were to be no more rank insignia and no carrying of weapons when not in service; soldiers were to elect officers; soldiers' councils were to be responsible for discipline; and the standing army was to be replaced by a people's army (Volkswehr). The Army Command strongly objected to the Hamburg Points, and no trace of them was left in the Weimar Constitution.^[97]

Opposition from the Right

On 6 December 1918, in what was likely a putsch attempt, a group of armed students and soldiers, including some members of the People's Navy Division (Volksmarinedivision), went to the Reich Chancellery and asked Friedrich Ebert to accept the office of president with nearly dictatorial powers, an offer that Ebert carefully refused.^[98] At around the same time – although some sources say that it involved the same demonstrators who spoke to Ebert^[99] – a group of soldiers briefly took the members of the Executive Council into custody.^[100] In an unrelated incident several hours later, members of the Garde-Füsilier-Regiment, which was responsible for security in Berlin's government quarter, fired on an approved Spartacist demonstration, killing 16 and seriously wounding 12.^[101][102] It is not certain who gave the order to fire or who was behind the assumed putsch.^[103] The historian Heinrich August Winkler attributes it to "high-ranking officers and officials" who planned to have Ebert disband the workers' and soldiers' councils with the military's support.^[99]

Ebert and the Army High Command (OHL) had agreed that troops returning from the front would parade through Berlin on 10 December. Ebert greeted them with a glowing speech that included words that would help give rise to the stab-in-the-back myth: "No enemy overcame you." General Groener had wanted to use the soldiers to disarm the civilians of Berlin and rid it of Spartacists, but the majority of the soldiers wanted only to return home for Christmas with their families and simply dispersed into the city after the parade. Their lack of interest in more fighting put an end to Groener's hope that he could lead the troops to domestic successes that would make the OHL the recognized force in restoring order.^[99]

As a result of the events, the potential for violence and the danger of a coup from the Right became visible. Rosa Luxemburg, in the Spartacist newspaper Rote Fahne ("Red Flag"), demanded the peaceful disarmament of returning soldiers by the workers of Berlin. She wanted the soldiers' councils to be subordinated to the revolutionary parliament and the soldiers to be "re-educated".^{[citation needed]}

Christmas crisis

Because the People's Navy Division had been helpful to the government in Kiel and was considered loyal,^[104] it was ordered to Berlin in early November to help protect the city's government quarter and stationed in the Royal Stables across from the Berlin Palace. Following the coup attempt of 6 December, the sailors deposed their commander because of his alleged involvement in it.^[105] The government came to see the division as generally standing with the leftist revolutionaries,^[106] and on 23 December, the Council of the People's Deputies ordered it out of Berlin, considerably reduced its size and refused the men their pay.^[107]

The sailors then occupied the Reich Chancellery, cut the phone lines, put the Council of People's Representatives under house arrest, and took Otto Wels hostage and physically abused him. Ebert, who was in touch with the Supreme Command in Kassel via a secret phone line, gave orders on the morning of 24 December to attack the Palace with troops loyal to the government. The sailors repelled the attack after they were joined by armed workers and the security forces of the Berlin police.^[108] The government troops had to withdraw with the loss of 56 soldiers. The People's Navy Division, which counted just 11 deaths, was allowed to remain intact, and the sailors received their pay.^[107]

The main result of the Christmas crisis, which the Spartacists named "Ebert's Bloody Christmas",^[109] was that the USPD resigned from the government in protest on 29 December. Its three members were replaced on the Council of the People's Deputies by two from the SPD: Gustav Noske (responsible for the military) and Rudolf Wissell (labour and social affairs).^[108] In light of the military's failure at the Berlin Palace, Noske ordered a strengthening of the Freikorps for use against internal enemies.^[107]

Founding of the Communist Party and Spartacist uprising

After their experiences with the SPD and the USPD, the Spartacists concluded that their goals could be met only by forming a party of their own. They therefore joined with other left-socialist groups from across Germany to found the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).^[110]

Rosa Luxemburg drew up a founding programme and presented it on 31 December 1918. She wrote that the communists could never take power without the clear will of the majority of the people. She proposed that the KPD participate in the elections for a national assembly, but a motion to boycott the elections passed 62 to 23. In the words of Marxist historian Arthur Rosenberg, the majority still implicitly hoped to gain power through "putschist adventures". After deliberations with the Spartacists, the Revolutionary Stewards decided to remain in the USPD.^[111]

A wave of violence started on 4 January when the Prussian government dismissed the chief of the Berlin police, Emil Eichhorn (USPD), for supporting the People's Navy Division during the Christmas crisis. His dismissal led the USPD, Revolutionary Stewards and KPD chairmen Karl Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck to call for a demonstration the following day. On 5 January, as on 9 November 1918, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the centre of Berlin, many of them armed. In the afternoon, the train stations and the newspaper district with the offices of the middle-class press and the SPD' Vorwärts were occupied.^[65]

The demonstrators were mainly the same people who had participated in the revolutionary actions in November who were demanding the fulfilment of their wish for a workers' government expressed two months previously. The so-called "Spartacist uprising" that followed originated only partially in the KPD. The Spartacists did not have a leading position in January 1919. KPD members were a minority among the insurgents.^[112]

The initiators of the revolt, who had gathered at the Police Headquarters, elected a 53-member "Interim Revolutionary Committee" (Provisorischer Revolutionsausschuss) that failed to make use of its power and was unable to give any clear direction.^[113] Liebknecht wanted the government overthrown and agreed with the majority of the Committee that supported an armed struggle. Rosa Luxemburg and other KPD leaders (Leo Jogiches, Karl Radek) thought a revolt at that time to be premature and spoke out against it, although Luxemburg later gave in and followed the will of the majority of the Committee.^[114]

On the following day, 6 January, the Revolutionary Committee again called for a mass demonstration. Even more people heeded the call and filled the streets from the Siegesallee to the Alexanderplatz. But the masses were leaderless; the Committee provided no direction and no orders to act.^[115] In addition, the protestors lacked support from the military. Even the People's Navy Division was unwilling to support the armed revolt and declared themselves neutral. The other regiments stationed in Berlin mostly remained loyal to the government.^[116] As a result, very little happened that day.

While more troops were moving into Berlin on Ebert's order, he accepted an offer by the USPD to mediate between the government and the Revolutionary Committee, but the negotiations failed the following day. On 8 January, in an appeal to the people of Berlin, the Council of the People's Deputies stated that "force can be fought only with force. ... The hour of reckoning approaches!"^[117] The USPD and KPD leadership decided to press ahead with the revolutionary overthrow of the Ebert government, but the masses were more interested in the unification of the parties of the Left. Finally, on 11 January, Freikorps forces attacked and took the Vorwärts building with heavy weaponry.^[118] Six parliamentarians who came out to negotiate a surrender were summarily shot. The remaining occupied buildings were taken the same day, and by 12 January the uprising was over.^[119] The death toll was estimated at 156.^[120]

The historian Eberhard Kolb calls the January Revolt the revolution's Battle of the Marne (Germany's July 1918 battlefield defeat that led directly to the Armistice). The 1919 uprising and its brutal end exacerbated the already deep divisions in the workers' movement and fuelled more political radicalisation.^[45]

Murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the ringleaders of the January Revolt, were forced to go into hiding after its failure, but in spite of the urgings of their associates, they refused to leave Berlin. On the evening of 15 January 1919, the two were found by the authorities in an apartment in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. They were immediately arrested and handed over to the largest Freikorps unit, the heavily armed Guards Cavalry Rifle Division. Its staff officer, Captain Waldemar Pabst, had them questioned. The same night both prisoners were clubbed with the butt of a rifle and shot in the head. Karl Liebknecht's body, without a name, was delivered to a nearby morgue. Rosa Luxemburg's body was thrown into Berlin's Landwehr Canal, where it was found only on 1 July.^[121]

The perpetrators for the most part went unpunished. The Nazi Party later compensated the few who had been put on trial or jailed,^[122] and they merged the Garde-Kavallerie into the SA (Sturmabteilung). In an interview given to Der Spiegel in 1962 and in his memoirs, Pabst maintained that he had talked on the phone with Noske in the Chancellery^[123] and that Noske and Ebert had approved of his actions.^[124] Pabst's statement was never confirmed, especially since neither the Reichstag nor the courts ever examined the case.

Final revolts

In the first months of 1919, there were additional armed revolts in parts of Germany that culminated in the Berlin March Battles. The overall cause was continued disappointment among workers of the radical left that the revolution had not achieved the goals they had hoped for in November 1918: nationalisation of key industries, recognition of the workers' and soldiers' councils and establishment of a council republic. In 1919, however, attaining the goals would have required the overthrow of the Ebert government.^[125] General strikes were called in Upper Silesia in January, in the Ruhr district in February^[126] and in Saxony and Thuringia in February and March.

In Berlin, members of the USPD and KPD called for a general strike, which started on 4 March. Its key aims were the socialisation of major industries, democratisation of the military and the safeguarding of the position of the remaining workers' and soldiers' councils. Against the will of the leadership, the strikes escalated into street fighting. The Prussian state government, which had declared a state of siege, called on the Reich government for help. It responded with the deployment of both government and Freikorps troops. On 9 March, Gustav Noske, to whom executive power had been transferred, gave the order to shoot on sight anyone found carrying a weapon. By the end of the fighting on 16 March, the uprising had been bloodily quashed, with a death toll of at least 1,200.^[125]

Short-lived soviet republics were proclaimed in a number of cities and towns into early 1919, but only those in Bavaria and Bremen lasted longer than a few days. They were overthrown by government and Freikorps troops with considerable loss of life: 80 in Bremen (February) and about 600 in Munich (May).^[127][128]

According to the predominant opinion of modern historians, the establishment of a Bolshevik-style council government in Germany following the war would have been all but impossible. The Ebert government felt threatened by a coup from the Left and was certainly undermined by the Spartacus movement. That underlay its cooperation with the Supreme Army Command and the Freikorps. The brutal actions of the Freikorps during the various revolts estranged many left democrats from the SPD. They regarded the behaviour of Ebert, Noske and the other SPD leaders during the revolution as a betrayal of their own followers.^[129]