Wir Sind Spartakus!
- Thread starter Zimmerwald1915
- Start date
Zimmerwald1915
Banned
Even if there is, it looks much better now. Thanks for that...and for giving the thread a second page.
Zimmerwald1915
Banned
Windows on the North
Lack of replies makes me very sad. Here's another update to spice things up:
Lack of replies makes me very sad. Here's another update to spice things up:
Zimmerwald1915
Banned
Thank you for commenting, both of you. It helps keep my spirits up. 
Neither party is very well centralized. Both the Independents and the Communists have applied their experience with the SPD's centralism to their own parties; consequently, the Independents' Executive Committee and the Communists' Central Committee have much less power than does the SPD Executive. The local sections have a large amount of autonomy, especially for the Independents.
The Communists' case is made more complex by the fact that they're less than a week old and merging two distinct organizations: the Spartacists and the International Communists of Germany. As mentioned in the update, the former IKD basically controls the Bremen section, while former Spartacists are in the majority everywhere else, especially in Berlin (actually, the section they control the most is Stuttgart, as the situations in Berlin, Thuringia, and the Ruhr are complicated by the presence of the Obleute, a distinct faction currently outside the party). The lack of time given to integration means that the local sections have even more autonomy than they normally would. However, at the moment, they're using that autonomy to follow the course they think Berlin is setting (which may not actually be the course Berlin is setting, due to optimism and bad communication).
The Independents are pretty well organized, where they have a strong presence. They've been a party since the spring of 1917, and can count on strong sections in the Kingdom of Saxony, the Thuringian states, Berlin, Stettin, the countryside around Frankfurt, and the Ruhr. The Communists have strong sections in Berlin, the Ruhr, Bremen, Stuttgart, Thuringia, and Brunswick.
Neither party is very well centralized. Both the Independents and the Communists have applied their experience with the SPD's centralism to their own parties; consequently, the Independents' Executive Committee and the Communists' Central Committee have much less power than does the SPD Executive. The local sections have a large amount of autonomy, especially for the Independents.
The Communists' case is made more complex by the fact that they're less than a week old and merging two distinct organizations: the Spartacists and the International Communists of Germany. As mentioned in the update, the former IKD basically controls the Bremen section, while former Spartacists are in the majority everywhere else, especially in Berlin (actually, the section they control the most is Stuttgart, as the situations in Berlin, Thuringia, and the Ruhr are complicated by the presence of the Obleute, a distinct faction currently outside the party). The lack of time given to integration means that the local sections have even more autonomy than they normally would. However, at the moment, they're using that autonomy to follow the course they think Berlin is setting (which may not actually be the course Berlin is setting, due to optimism and bad communication).
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Zimmerwald1915
Banned
Abortive Overtures
'scuse me for the double post. If a mod could delete this one I'd be grateful.
'scuse me for the double post. If a mod could delete this one I'd be grateful.
Last edited:
Zimmerwald1915
Banned
Abortive Overtures
January 7 opened in deadlock, and ended with said deadlock only beginning to be resolved. Berlin’s fate was held in limbo on Eiswerder, where both pairs refused to budge on crucial issues, though both had given up their more grandiose demands. Ebert and Noske held, not unreasonably, that they would only concede to a settlement that involved the restitution of SPD property—a demure way of saying that the Vorwärts building must be evacuated. Hasse and Crispien, also not unreasonably, contended that they had very little control over that particular situation, half a city away as they were, and that they didn’t recognize SPD ownership of Vorwärts, such ownership being the result of quasi-legal and not court-sanctioned “piracy” by the Imperial government during the war. In their view, the paper should be returned to its independent (not necessarily Independent; independent in terms of legal ownership and obligation to promote a political viewpoint) status. The Independents also demanded the reinstatement of Eichhorn, which the Social Democrats by this point opposed as a matter of pride rather than of utility or principle. While the “wise men”, as the Rote Fahne on the seventh called them, deliberated, the actual situation hadn’t changed much. The number of workers in the streets remained relatively constant at around six hundred and forty thousand, the strike was still in effect (only a few public services, such as food and coal distribution, and power generation, were running at this point), and the Freikorps waited over the Havel. Several aircraft from Freikorps Hülsen flew over the city, and one dropped several bombs into the Spree by way of demonstration, but actual violence in and around the city was held in check.
The deadlock began eroding when the Obleute, who Müller had indeed been able to strong-arm in a way his memoirs and other sources are curiously quiet about, persuaded the workers to evacuate Vorwärts on their own. This move, meant as the opening of a slow draw-down of the strike, with further developments predicated on other events, became known to the negotiators in the early evening. Crucially, two pieces of information were absent in the report which reached them: who had instigated the evacuation, and why they had done so. This development cut both ways, but worked in the favor of the Social Democrats. It effectively put an end to the Independents’ claim that Vorwärts should regain independence, and it highlighted the fact that Hasse and Crispien were not the only ones with the power to influence events. Crispien was able to successfully spin this into a display that he and Hasse might be made irrelevant very quickly, and that the time to make a deal was now, but in so doing he recognized his and Hasse’s now-weaker bargaining position. On the other hand, it did remove the most severe block to a settlement, which would emerge over the course of the night.
In its final form, the compromise reached ran thus. The questions of socialization, of control over the armed forces, and the other points the Independents had raised were not treated at all, and the actual settlement was quite limited. The Independents would withdraw their support from the strike (which would presumably end it), in exchange for which Eichhorn would be reinstated, with immunity from dismissal as long as the current Prussian government held office. There would also be no resistance to the occupation of the city by the Freikorps currently outside it, though they were to demolish their barracks and no other troops were to be ordered to Berlin. In reality another forty thousand Freikorps would eventually find their way to Berlin’s environs over the coming months, and the Independents must have known that the injunction not to move more troops to the capitol was unenforceable. However, they conceived of the move as one that would ensure the loyalty of the existing garrison to the revolution, and would inoculate the workers against premature risings. For the garrison, the Freikorps were a living reminder that they were not trusted by the Council of People’s Deputies. Indeed the garrison saw the Freikorps as the Council’s police on them, a police they would come to resent and long to throw off. The workers’ reaction was also of resentment: of the Independents. While it was true that they did draw down from the strike rapidly after this decision was promulgated (they greeted a demonstration of Freikorps through the city center three days later with nothing more violent than glares and the Communist salute), the Berlin workers never fully trusted the Independents again. This, along with the Obleute’s change of heart, helps explain the Berlin workers’ shift towards Communist sympathies over the course of the winter and early spring.
From this point, too, the pace of events in Berlin wound rapidly down. The strike had largely petered out by the end of the eighth, with most workers back to work by the ninth, and all of them back to work the following Monday (the thirteenth). The occupation of the city by the Freikorps was by no means smooth, as they clashed jurisdictionally with the garrison. For the most part, the garrison troops refused to abandon their barracks, and while the Freikorps officers and men menaced and blustered, they had no desire whatsoever to fight men they regarded as comrades, albeit partially-addled comrades. This led to the “shantytowns”, where Freikorps soldiers eventually installed themselves in the public parks, substituting field tents for barracks. Freiheit made light of this situation, remarking that the “troops of the counter-revolution have conquered—such is their might—the Teirgarten, while despite their best efforts the Imperial Palace remains in the hands of the people”. The last part of this sentence was not strictly true; the People’s Naval Division was one of the only units to abandon its strongpoint. The reason for this can be found in the logs of Heinrich Dorrenbach, its commander. To his mind, Fishers’ Island would become a gigantic trap for whoever deigned to occupy it should the city devolve into street fighting. This consideration outweighed the hardships his men would face (they ended up camped on the east bank of the Spree) and also the propaganda victory the Freikorps would gain by occupation of the scene of the fighting over Christmas. The decision as to who would control Berlin was thus put off, the radicals gaining the loyalty of the garrison, while the Freikorps gained not-so-strategic positions inside the city.
The epilogue to the events of Eichhorn Week, as it became known, was the Communists’ Extraordinary Congress. It opened as scheduled on the ninth. There was some talk among the Council of People’s Deputies to have the Freikorps disperse it, but the Freikorps were at that point having difficulty finding a place to sleep that night, and a move against the Congress would probably have resulted in a renewed strike and street fighting, so these musings came to nothing. If they had been appraised of the Communists’ situation, they probably would have come to this decision much quicker; the first motion the Congress entertained was one advanced by Pieck to shut itself down. Jogiches, Luxemburg, and the rest of the Central Committee were accused of manipulating the Congress, of not holding it on a convenient date, and of, as mentioned, selling out the party programme. Luxemburg took particular umbrage at the last point, and indeed spent most of her time addressing it, as she considered the first two to be mainly questions of procedure and form. She argued that the programme called for the party’s actions to be based on events, and events had developed immensely rapidly over the course of the week since the party’s foundation, so much so that a new Congress was required to legitimize a new direction. Liebknecht scoffed that a party which held a Congress every week was doomed to impotence, and besides that a new direction was not necessary anyway. The last Congress had demanded revolution. The Communist party still demanded revolution, and the working class would make the revolution. Paul Frölich, indignant at the treatment of his mentor by her co-chairman, denied the appropriateness of questioning any delegate’s revolutionary credentials. Paul Levi argued that since they were all assembled anyway, they might as well stay and listen to the presenters, at the very least. Pieck’s proposal was eventually voted down, but the proceedings took most of the day.
The question of running candidates in the National Assembly elections almost split the young party. Indeed, if the proposal had been to run a party list, it almost certainly would have. As it was, Otto Rühle, an experienced parliamentarian and a man Jogiches had been counting on to run, declared that not only would he not submit his name for candidature, but that he would never consent to be in a party that participated in bourgeois parliaments. His declaration received considerable cheers. Liebknecht declined to intervene, but his silence was pointed, and the delegates perceived that he would probably end up running, as indeed he did. Jogiches only made the situation worse by revealing that the Obleute would affiliate if this motion carried: he was subjected to almost twenty minutes of attacks from both the gallery and the rostrum, calling him a sellout among other things. Pieck voiced the opinion that they were all being manipulated and that the party was in reality the subject of a coup that would put it at the mercy of the counter-revolution. Liebknecht, his sympathies now clear, got up and castigated his confederates from the previous day. They would have been all too happy for the Obleute to affiliate with themselves a week ago, and it was precisely bickering like this, and the lack of reflection, shallowness of thought, and weakness of character that went with it that had disenchanted them. “Second chances,” he reminded the delegates “are rare in this world, and for the workers as for no other class. If the Independents have bartered away its revolution, the proletariat can only turn to us, and we must make every move to secure its confidence. The confidence of the people cannot be won by behaving like a sect; it can only be won by behaving like a party, with all the necessary planning, reflection, and foresight that implies.” He couldn’t stop Rühle from walking out of the Congress, but his intervention did get the motion passed. The Obleute would cease to exist as an independent organization the following day.
January 7 opened in deadlock, and ended with said deadlock only beginning to be resolved. Berlin’s fate was held in limbo on Eiswerder, where both pairs refused to budge on crucial issues, though both had given up their more grandiose demands. Ebert and Noske held, not unreasonably, that they would only concede to a settlement that involved the restitution of SPD property—a demure way of saying that the Vorwärts building must be evacuated. Hasse and Crispien, also not unreasonably, contended that they had very little control over that particular situation, half a city away as they were, and that they didn’t recognize SPD ownership of Vorwärts, such ownership being the result of quasi-legal and not court-sanctioned “piracy” by the Imperial government during the war. In their view, the paper should be returned to its independent (not necessarily Independent; independent in terms of legal ownership and obligation to promote a political viewpoint) status. The Independents also demanded the reinstatement of Eichhorn, which the Social Democrats by this point opposed as a matter of pride rather than of utility or principle. While the “wise men”, as the Rote Fahne on the seventh called them, deliberated, the actual situation hadn’t changed much. The number of workers in the streets remained relatively constant at around six hundred and forty thousand, the strike was still in effect (only a few public services, such as food and coal distribution, and power generation, were running at this point), and the Freikorps waited over the Havel. Several aircraft from Freikorps Hülsen flew over the city, and one dropped several bombs into the Spree by way of demonstration, but actual violence in and around the city was held in check.
The deadlock began eroding when the Obleute, who Müller had indeed been able to strong-arm in a way his memoirs and other sources are curiously quiet about, persuaded the workers to evacuate Vorwärts on their own. This move, meant as the opening of a slow draw-down of the strike, with further developments predicated on other events, became known to the negotiators in the early evening. Crucially, two pieces of information were absent in the report which reached them: who had instigated the evacuation, and why they had done so. This development cut both ways, but worked in the favor of the Social Democrats. It effectively put an end to the Independents’ claim that Vorwärts should regain independence, and it highlighted the fact that Hasse and Crispien were not the only ones with the power to influence events. Crispien was able to successfully spin this into a display that he and Hasse might be made irrelevant very quickly, and that the time to make a deal was now, but in so doing he recognized his and Hasse’s now-weaker bargaining position. On the other hand, it did remove the most severe block to a settlement, which would emerge over the course of the night.
In its final form, the compromise reached ran thus. The questions of socialization, of control over the armed forces, and the other points the Independents had raised were not treated at all, and the actual settlement was quite limited. The Independents would withdraw their support from the strike (which would presumably end it), in exchange for which Eichhorn would be reinstated, with immunity from dismissal as long as the current Prussian government held office. There would also be no resistance to the occupation of the city by the Freikorps currently outside it, though they were to demolish their barracks and no other troops were to be ordered to Berlin. In reality another forty thousand Freikorps would eventually find their way to Berlin’s environs over the coming months, and the Independents must have known that the injunction not to move more troops to the capitol was unenforceable. However, they conceived of the move as one that would ensure the loyalty of the existing garrison to the revolution, and would inoculate the workers against premature risings. For the garrison, the Freikorps were a living reminder that they were not trusted by the Council of People’s Deputies. Indeed the garrison saw the Freikorps as the Council’s police on them, a police they would come to resent and long to throw off. The workers’ reaction was also of resentment: of the Independents. While it was true that they did draw down from the strike rapidly after this decision was promulgated (they greeted a demonstration of Freikorps through the city center three days later with nothing more violent than glares and the Communist salute), the Berlin workers never fully trusted the Independents again. This, along with the Obleute’s change of heart, helps explain the Berlin workers’ shift towards Communist sympathies over the course of the winter and early spring.
From this point, too, the pace of events in Berlin wound rapidly down. The strike had largely petered out by the end of the eighth, with most workers back to work by the ninth, and all of them back to work the following Monday (the thirteenth). The occupation of the city by the Freikorps was by no means smooth, as they clashed jurisdictionally with the garrison. For the most part, the garrison troops refused to abandon their barracks, and while the Freikorps officers and men menaced and blustered, they had no desire whatsoever to fight men they regarded as comrades, albeit partially-addled comrades. This led to the “shantytowns”, where Freikorps soldiers eventually installed themselves in the public parks, substituting field tents for barracks. Freiheit made light of this situation, remarking that the “troops of the counter-revolution have conquered—such is their might—the Teirgarten, while despite their best efforts the Imperial Palace remains in the hands of the people”. The last part of this sentence was not strictly true; the People’s Naval Division was one of the only units to abandon its strongpoint. The reason for this can be found in the logs of Heinrich Dorrenbach, its commander. To his mind, Fishers’ Island would become a gigantic trap for whoever deigned to occupy it should the city devolve into street fighting. This consideration outweighed the hardships his men would face (they ended up camped on the east bank of the Spree) and also the propaganda victory the Freikorps would gain by occupation of the scene of the fighting over Christmas. The decision as to who would control Berlin was thus put off, the radicals gaining the loyalty of the garrison, while the Freikorps gained not-so-strategic positions inside the city.
The epilogue to the events of Eichhorn Week, as it became known, was the Communists’ Extraordinary Congress. It opened as scheduled on the ninth. There was some talk among the Council of People’s Deputies to have the Freikorps disperse it, but the Freikorps were at that point having difficulty finding a place to sleep that night, and a move against the Congress would probably have resulted in a renewed strike and street fighting, so these musings came to nothing. If they had been appraised of the Communists’ situation, they probably would have come to this decision much quicker; the first motion the Congress entertained was one advanced by Pieck to shut itself down. Jogiches, Luxemburg, and the rest of the Central Committee were accused of manipulating the Congress, of not holding it on a convenient date, and of, as mentioned, selling out the party programme. Luxemburg took particular umbrage at the last point, and indeed spent most of her time addressing it, as she considered the first two to be mainly questions of procedure and form. She argued that the programme called for the party’s actions to be based on events, and events had developed immensely rapidly over the course of the week since the party’s foundation, so much so that a new Congress was required to legitimize a new direction. Liebknecht scoffed that a party which held a Congress every week was doomed to impotence, and besides that a new direction was not necessary anyway. The last Congress had demanded revolution. The Communist party still demanded revolution, and the working class would make the revolution. Paul Frölich, indignant at the treatment of his mentor by her co-chairman, denied the appropriateness of questioning any delegate’s revolutionary credentials. Paul Levi argued that since they were all assembled anyway, they might as well stay and listen to the presenters, at the very least. Pieck’s proposal was eventually voted down, but the proceedings took most of the day.
The question of running candidates in the National Assembly elections almost split the young party. Indeed, if the proposal had been to run a party list, it almost certainly would have. As it was, Otto Rühle, an experienced parliamentarian and a man Jogiches had been counting on to run, declared that not only would he not submit his name for candidature, but that he would never consent to be in a party that participated in bourgeois parliaments. His declaration received considerable cheers. Liebknecht declined to intervene, but his silence was pointed, and the delegates perceived that he would probably end up running, as indeed he did. Jogiches only made the situation worse by revealing that the Obleute would affiliate if this motion carried: he was subjected to almost twenty minutes of attacks from both the gallery and the rostrum, calling him a sellout among other things. Pieck voiced the opinion that they were all being manipulated and that the party was in reality the subject of a coup that would put it at the mercy of the counter-revolution. Liebknecht, his sympathies now clear, got up and castigated his confederates from the previous day. They would have been all too happy for the Obleute to affiliate with themselves a week ago, and it was precisely bickering like this, and the lack of reflection, shallowness of thought, and weakness of character that went with it that had disenchanted them. “Second chances,” he reminded the delegates “are rare in this world, and for the workers as for no other class. If the Independents have bartered away its revolution, the proletariat can only turn to us, and we must make every move to secure its confidence. The confidence of the people cannot be won by behaving like a sect; it can only be won by behaving like a party, with all the necessary planning, reflection, and foresight that implies.” He couldn’t stop Rühle from walking out of the Congress, but his intervention did get the motion passed. The Obleute would cease to exist as an independent organization the following day.
Zimmerwald1915
Banned
The January Days
Your patience is rewarded. Thank you for posting, by the way. I didn't want this thread to turn into a long string of my posts.
Your patience is rewarded. Thank you for posting, by the way. I didn't want this thread to turn into a long string of my posts.
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Zimmerwald1915
Banned
This post serves two purposes. The first is a shameless bump. The thread's fallen to the fourth page and the odds of someone commenting on it when it's at that state are extremely slim. The second, so that Ian or one of his acolytes doesn't warn me or do some other terrible thing to my account or posting abilities, is to provide a short summary of just what has changed from OTL since the beginning of the thread. I've decided I'll do this whenever there's a blip in the story, so that people who don't really feel like wading through a couple pages' worth of semi-long posts, or who have missed a couple chapters, can keep up with what's going on.
By early February 1919, not much, seemingly, has changed. There were still a series of abortive risings around Germany, many were still put down rather brutally, the National Assembly elections have gone off without a hitch, with the governing coalition the same as IOTL (SPD, Democrats, Center). The big differences within Germany are thus:
Please comment.
By early February 1919, not much, seemingly, has changed. There were still a series of abortive risings around Germany, many were still put down rather brutally, the National Assembly elections have gone off without a hitch, with the governing coalition the same as IOTL (SPD, Democrats, Center). The big differences within Germany are thus:
- The strike in Berlin ended peacefully without turning into a rising. This leaves Berlin still dangerous, the Freikorps with a somewhat less formidable reputation (though their actions in Bremen do establish it), and the two Communist leaders whose surnames begin with "L"--whom we all know and love--alive.
- The decision of the Obleute to affiliate with the Communists instead of remaining a seperate organization (the path they took IOTL) gives the latter a stronger presence and influence in the Ruhr, especially Essen, in Prussian Saxony, and in Berlin.
- Liebknecht and Munzenberg, by virtue of election to the National Assembly, now have parliamentary immunity to play with. What fun!
Please comment.
This timeline is outside my current knowledge of history, however be that as it may I am reading and enjoying it. Any timeline which keeps Rosa Luxembourg alive must be interesting
Perhaps you could do a post on the different ideological platforms of the three socialist parties; the SDP, Independents, and Communists?
Perhaps you could do a post on the different ideological platforms of the three socialist parties; the SDP, Independents, and Communists?
I would very much advise you to put summaries like these in the main text of your timeline. Your timeline is very detailed, which means your readers might either miss the main points or not know exactly how each part is different from OTL.
As this timeline covers my favorite period of history I’ll definitely try to fallow it.
Zimmerwald1915
Banned
Thank you so much for your comments. I'll get an update up as soon as possible.
No, you know what, I have a better idea. Ask a specific question about the ideological platfrms, and it shall be answered. I hope this will increase reader participation more than my posting another wall'o'text.
Good idea. I assume you don't mean the actual texts of the programmes (those of the Independents and the Social Democrats are the same), but rather a summary of their viewpoints on various important issues of the day.
No, you know what, I have a better idea. Ask a specific question about the ideological platfrms, and it shall be answered. I hope this will increase reader participation more than my posting another wall'o'text.
Dedicated readers are always appreciated, and thank you for your suggestion. I'll make use of it.
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Zimmerwald1915
Banned
Here's a summary of the positions of the SPD, USPD, and KPD on fourteen important issues on, say, January 10, 1919.
Zimmerwald1915
Banned
No more questions? Okay...
Update coming right up.
EDIT: I realized I'd forgotten some information in the last update. It's there now.
Update coming right up.
EDIT: I realized I'd forgotten some information in the last update. It's there now.
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Zimmerwald1915
Banned
The Ruhr Crisis
The January Days were a response to the perceived revolutionary crisis in Berlin. The risings failed because Berlin was unable to provide leadership, and because the other major industrial regions of the country—the Ruhr, Prussian and Independent Saxony, and Upper Silesia—didn’t participate, at least not in time to influence that set of events. However, given the pace and course of events after the recognized end of the January Days (the capture of Bremerhaven on February 9), it is tempting to ignore the convention of setting the January Days apart from later developments. For one thing, they lasted for over a month, much longer than, for example, the July Days in Russia in 1917, which episode lasted three days according to the longest estimates. For another, and this consideration is usually given more weight among the school which advocates abandoning the January Days designation, the next epoch of the German Revolution opened up on February 6, three days before the January Days supposedly ended.
Supposedly buttressing this consideration is that the impetus for this new epoch emerged from one of the more important organizations created by the January Days. It will be recalled that there had been set up in the Ruhr a Commission of Nine to produce a plan for socialization of the mines. Under the influence of Communist “advisor” Julian Marchlewski, the Commission had proposed a program of relatively rapid socialization to be completed by November 1919, and had presented this plan to both the regional Ruhr workers’ council based in Essen, and to the Government that had been formed in Weimar. This point seems, however, to backfire; the January Days had been a movement in support of Berlin, while the Commission of Nine’s program became a rallying call in and of itself. Pointedly, the Ruhr council threatened a general strike if the Government did not accept the plan and introduce it to the National Assembly for consideration. A parallel development of radicalism in the Ruhr occurred in the Münster soldiers’ council, which refused to recognize the power of officers to impose discipline, and reserved that right for itself. This development was occasioned by the Münster soldiers’ impatience with the Government’s reluctance to democratize the army, a demand advanced by the soldiers since December 1918.
Emboldened by the ease in which the Lichtschlag Freikorps had occupied Bremen and taken Bremerhaven, General von Watter, who commanded the military and paramilitary in Westphalia, ordered the Münster soldiers’ council arrested and the Freikorps Lichtschlag to occupy the city on the eleventh. Meanwhile the new Weimar Government had been negotiating with the Essen council and the Commission of Nine, and had gone so far as to promise to introduce the Commission’s program to the National Assembly for approval. Von Watter’s repressive measures, however, threw a wrench into the works, and the council once again threatened a strike unless Freikorps Lichtschlag was withdrawn from Münster and the soldiers’ council released. The Government’s negotiators, annoyed at having wasted their time and feeling that all the concessions so far had been on their end, left the negotiations on the fourteenth, leaving the Ruhr in a face-off situation similar to that in Berlin the month before. Von Watter was quick to take advantage of this, moving Freikorps Lichtschlag deeper into the Ruhr. It occupied Hervest-Dorsten on the fifteenth in the face of light but pregnant resistance by the local militia, and proceeded to execute leading members of the workers’ council. In protest, the Essen council finally made good on its threats and declared a general strike in the Ruhr on the sixteenth. It also issued a call for all the striking workers to arm themselves as best they can, and to prepare to defend themselves against armed attack.
Two days later the council moved to Mülheim as Essen itself, as well as Elberfeld, came under attack. The Social Democratic delegates took this opportunity to walk out of both the Commission of Nine and the council itself. Their reasons for doing so are not hard to understand. On the fourteenth, they had opposed the renewed threat of a strike, and were willing to accede to military occupation of the area, as a necessary sacrifice in order to get the Commission’s program to the National Assembly. Since then, to them, the council had been in the grip of irresponsible zealots. The council needn’t have left Essen, however. Lichtschlag proved unable to enter or occupy the city, nor did other detachments prove able to enter and occupy Gelsenkirchen, Bochum, and Bottrop. On the twenty-first, with ninety-one people killed in the fighting, with 183,000 miners on strike, and with little prospect of extending the territory under his control until he could raise more troops (to which task he devoted all his energy), von Watter announced that his forces would withdraw to their positions of the fourteenth if the strike were declared over. The Essen councilors, with more credulity than was sensible, duly issued the declaration. Von Watter’s forces, needless to say, stayed where they were, occupying the routes in and out of the cities they had tried to invade. The Ruhr strike thus ended like the Berlin crisis; dual power continued, and the workers’ leaders had gained little in exchange for the Freikorps’ occupation of a little more ground.
The Ruhr episode is more significant in terms of the relationship between the Independents and the Communists. It will be remembered that their relationship in Berlin was dominated by mistrust, disdain, and backbiting. Paul Frölich, in a moment of self-delusion, is recorded as saying that Luxemburg opposed Barth’s plan only because Ledebour supported it. While this assertion is untrue, it serves to illustrate the hostility that existed between the two parties at that time and in that place. However, a month later and half a country away, a consonance of demands and policies prevailed. The Communists and Independents had established a working relationship in the Essen council and the Commission of Nine; in the former, an Independent held the Presidency while a Communist was responsible for security. Marchlewsky’s role in directing the Commission’s direction has already been commented upon. The role of former Obleute can also not be understated. Before affiliation with the Communists, if they had been identified with any party, it was with the Independents. They had maintained contact with Independent leaders and held nexuses in Independent networks. Though their organization merged with the Communists, on an individual, personal level, the old relationships continued, and helped partisans overcome their rather dim view of each other.
Also, while the revolutionaries continued to see in the Freikorps a threat, the Government began to see them increasingly as an imperfect instrument to contain the revolutionaries. So far they had had only one unqualified success in a small port town: when called upon to pacify a great city or a collection thereof, they had been either defanged or successfully resisted. Noske, who, as Defense Minister, currently held the civilian post most responsible for the Freikorps, continued to espouse their usefulness, but others, notably Democrat Interior Minister Otto Landsberg, felt their domestic function could be better performed by police (there was not a small bit of self-interest here, as expansion of the police force meant expansion of Landsberg’s bailiwick), and began to urge the wisdom of avoiding wasting resources on the recruitment of more Freikorps. He was supported not by his own party, but by the Independent and Communist deputies, who urged the disbandment of the Freikorps at every opportunity.
The January Days were a response to the perceived revolutionary crisis in Berlin. The risings failed because Berlin was unable to provide leadership, and because the other major industrial regions of the country—the Ruhr, Prussian and Independent Saxony, and Upper Silesia—didn’t participate, at least not in time to influence that set of events. However, given the pace and course of events after the recognized end of the January Days (the capture of Bremerhaven on February 9), it is tempting to ignore the convention of setting the January Days apart from later developments. For one thing, they lasted for over a month, much longer than, for example, the July Days in Russia in 1917, which episode lasted three days according to the longest estimates. For another, and this consideration is usually given more weight among the school which advocates abandoning the January Days designation, the next epoch of the German Revolution opened up on February 6, three days before the January Days supposedly ended.
Supposedly buttressing this consideration is that the impetus for this new epoch emerged from one of the more important organizations created by the January Days. It will be recalled that there had been set up in the Ruhr a Commission of Nine to produce a plan for socialization of the mines. Under the influence of Communist “advisor” Julian Marchlewski, the Commission had proposed a program of relatively rapid socialization to be completed by November 1919, and had presented this plan to both the regional Ruhr workers’ council based in Essen, and to the Government that had been formed in Weimar. This point seems, however, to backfire; the January Days had been a movement in support of Berlin, while the Commission of Nine’s program became a rallying call in and of itself. Pointedly, the Ruhr council threatened a general strike if the Government did not accept the plan and introduce it to the National Assembly for consideration. A parallel development of radicalism in the Ruhr occurred in the Münster soldiers’ council, which refused to recognize the power of officers to impose discipline, and reserved that right for itself. This development was occasioned by the Münster soldiers’ impatience with the Government’s reluctance to democratize the army, a demand advanced by the soldiers since December 1918.
Emboldened by the ease in which the Lichtschlag Freikorps had occupied Bremen and taken Bremerhaven, General von Watter, who commanded the military and paramilitary in Westphalia, ordered the Münster soldiers’ council arrested and the Freikorps Lichtschlag to occupy the city on the eleventh. Meanwhile the new Weimar Government had been negotiating with the Essen council and the Commission of Nine, and had gone so far as to promise to introduce the Commission’s program to the National Assembly for approval. Von Watter’s repressive measures, however, threw a wrench into the works, and the council once again threatened a strike unless Freikorps Lichtschlag was withdrawn from Münster and the soldiers’ council released. The Government’s negotiators, annoyed at having wasted their time and feeling that all the concessions so far had been on their end, left the negotiations on the fourteenth, leaving the Ruhr in a face-off situation similar to that in Berlin the month before. Von Watter was quick to take advantage of this, moving Freikorps Lichtschlag deeper into the Ruhr. It occupied Hervest-Dorsten on the fifteenth in the face of light but pregnant resistance by the local militia, and proceeded to execute leading members of the workers’ council. In protest, the Essen council finally made good on its threats and declared a general strike in the Ruhr on the sixteenth. It also issued a call for all the striking workers to arm themselves as best they can, and to prepare to defend themselves against armed attack.
Two days later the council moved to Mülheim as Essen itself, as well as Elberfeld, came under attack. The Social Democratic delegates took this opportunity to walk out of both the Commission of Nine and the council itself. Their reasons for doing so are not hard to understand. On the fourteenth, they had opposed the renewed threat of a strike, and were willing to accede to military occupation of the area, as a necessary sacrifice in order to get the Commission’s program to the National Assembly. Since then, to them, the council had been in the grip of irresponsible zealots. The council needn’t have left Essen, however. Lichtschlag proved unable to enter or occupy the city, nor did other detachments prove able to enter and occupy Gelsenkirchen, Bochum, and Bottrop. On the twenty-first, with ninety-one people killed in the fighting, with 183,000 miners on strike, and with little prospect of extending the territory under his control until he could raise more troops (to which task he devoted all his energy), von Watter announced that his forces would withdraw to their positions of the fourteenth if the strike were declared over. The Essen councilors, with more credulity than was sensible, duly issued the declaration. Von Watter’s forces, needless to say, stayed where they were, occupying the routes in and out of the cities they had tried to invade. The Ruhr strike thus ended like the Berlin crisis; dual power continued, and the workers’ leaders had gained little in exchange for the Freikorps’ occupation of a little more ground.
The Ruhr episode is more significant in terms of the relationship between the Independents and the Communists. It will be remembered that their relationship in Berlin was dominated by mistrust, disdain, and backbiting. Paul Frölich, in a moment of self-delusion, is recorded as saying that Luxemburg opposed Barth’s plan only because Ledebour supported it. While this assertion is untrue, it serves to illustrate the hostility that existed between the two parties at that time and in that place. However, a month later and half a country away, a consonance of demands and policies prevailed. The Communists and Independents had established a working relationship in the Essen council and the Commission of Nine; in the former, an Independent held the Presidency while a Communist was responsible for security. Marchlewsky’s role in directing the Commission’s direction has already been commented upon. The role of former Obleute can also not be understated. Before affiliation with the Communists, if they had been identified with any party, it was with the Independents. They had maintained contact with Independent leaders and held nexuses in Independent networks. Though their organization merged with the Communists, on an individual, personal level, the old relationships continued, and helped partisans overcome their rather dim view of each other.
Also, while the revolutionaries continued to see in the Freikorps a threat, the Government began to see them increasingly as an imperfect instrument to contain the revolutionaries. So far they had had only one unqualified success in a small port town: when called upon to pacify a great city or a collection thereof, they had been either defanged or successfully resisted. Noske, who, as Defense Minister, currently held the civilian post most responsible for the Freikorps, continued to espouse their usefulness, but others, notably Democrat Interior Minister Otto Landsberg, felt their domestic function could be better performed by police (there was not a small bit of self-interest here, as expansion of the police force meant expansion of Landsberg’s bailiwick), and began to urge the wisdom of avoiding wasting resources on the recruitment of more Freikorps. He was supported not by his own party, but by the Independent and Communist deputies, who urged the disbandment of the Freikorps at every opportunity.
Zimmerwald1915
Banned
This is me, wasting my three-hundredth post on a pointless bump. Please post so I don't have to do this again. I really hate it.
Zimmerwald1915
Banned
Saxon Ironies
As the strike movement wound down in the Ruhr—the militias supposedly disarmed, though later events would show this to be facetious, on the twenty-fifth—workers in Halle were organizing a strike in sympathy with it. The timing of the Halle strike—it was decided upon on the twenty-third, and declared on the twenty-fourth—recalls the timing of the January Days’ response to the Berlin almost-insurrection. Similarly, it was too late to influence the development of the event it was declared in response to. However, unlike the January Days, the Halle strike ultimately became the flashpoint for a wave of strikes that spread across Thuringia, Saxony, Prussian Saxony, and the rest of central Germany.
While the strike in the Ruhr involved mostly coal and lignite miners, due to there being a virtual mining monoculture in the region, the economy of Thuringia was more diversified. The center of the strike movement was in Halle’s gigantic chemical works, but it soon spread to other industries. Notable among these were the railroads, whose workers (who had received generous pay increases and other benefits from the Council of People’s Deputies in order to prevent just this sort of thing) walked off the job for the first time since before the beginning of the Great War. This fact is not merely of interest to historians interested in the spread of radical, revolutionary ideas between November 1918 and the end of the German Revolution. It was significant in its own time too, and not merely as a propaganda tool. The decision of the railway workers to no longer operate their beasts of steel and steam meant that the National Assembly was effectively isolated in Weimar. Transport in and out of Thuringia was now a matter of walking or of the employment of horseflesh. This fact also helps explain why the Freikorps Freiwilligen Landesjägerkorps (which, it will be remembered, took part in the occupation of Berlin) took so long to respond to the disorder in Thuringia; it was late in getting information, and it perforce was slow in reaching the scene. The fact that this Freikorps alone, instead of most of the Berlin garrison, was sent is suggestive of the fact that the message the Freiwilligen Landesjägerkorps received contained information long out of date. In any event, when the Landesjägerkorps arrived in Halle on March 1, the 8,000-strong unit was disarmed with only a few shots fired, and its commander, General Ludwig von Maercker, captured and incarcerated.
Even if Halle had been subdued, the Landesjägerkorps alone would still have been insufficient to quell the region; Leipzig’s council called another general strike in sympathy with Halle’s that began on the twenty-seventh. Leipzig’s case is instructive inasmuch as the Independents were by this time the only significant socialist party in the city. They had established this position during the war, when the Leipzig section departed in a body from the Social Democrats to join the new party. The Leipziger Volkszeitung, before the foundation of Freiheit in 1917, was the central organ of the Independent party. What is more, hitherto Leipzig had been a relatively stolid section, a stronghold of the right and center of the Independent party, a check upon the left-leaning elements in Berlin and Thuringia (who had helped make the Halle strike). The fact that such a section as this instigated a major political strike indicates the leftward drift of even the right wing of the Independent party under the pressures of the moment.
The day after, February 28, Berlin itself joined Thuringia and Leipzig in strike. The fact that it did so, so soon after stepping away from a precipice in January, has baffled many historians, and part of the reason that Noske felt safe dispatching Freikorps from Berlin to elsewhere was his confidence that Berlin would not throw itself into the ferment. Berlin is yet another incidence of concord between Independents and Communists; where in January they had been divided over the question of whether or not to rise, here they became unanimous over the need to support Thuringia and Leipzig, and of their ability to do so. Moreover, Berlin went beyond Thuringia and Leipzig in making their strike not merely one of sympathy (Thuringia had struck in sympathy with the Ruhr, Leipzig with Thuringia), but of positing positive political demands. In addition to reemphasizing the program of the Commission of Nine, the program behind which Thuringia and Leipzig had gotten, the Berlin council demanded that all workers’ councils across Germany be re-elected in light of the changing conditions. For the same reason, they also demanded that a Second Congress of Councils convene as soon as possible after the election had taken place. These two demands eerily echo those made by the Bolsheviks two years before; indeed, in terms of a move towards revolutionism and away from republicanism, the German working class was following a path analogous to that of the Russian. Other demands included the perennial demand for a worker’s militia, for the dissolution of the Freikorps, for the release of political prisoners (including Georg Ledebour, who, unable or unwilling to go into hiding, had been arrested during the January Days), and for a resumption of diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia, such relations having been severed in December 1918. As an example to the rest of the nation, the Berlin council dissolved itself and organized a hasty election (another which by modern standards would almost certainly have been declared irregular), said election returning an Independent and Communist majority.
The following day, the day Maercker was getting arrested in Halle, the Berlin council expelled its Social Democrats, who had been protesting loudly against the irresponsibility of a strike wave while both a peace treaty and a Constitution were being drawn up. It also passed a resolution authorizing peaceful demonstrations only. Apart from a few rogue units, the police followed Eichhorn’s orders to leave the demonstrators alone, and the few resultant clashes between demonstrators and police (mostly in the Pankstrasse) failed to escalate into armed fighting. The Freikorps units that remained in the city, a sizable fifty thousand even at this late date, failed to make much of an impact. The police, rather than controlling demonstrators, took in some cases to menacing the encampments of the Freikorps, and the garrison and elements of the former Republican Guard, by this point far more indoctrinated with Communist and other revolutionary propaganda than they had been in January, still occupied the strategic points of the city. In this atmosphere, the proclamation of a State of Siege in Berlin and Leipzig by the National Assembly was largely ignored, and served only to advertise the inability of the government to enforce its own decrees.
This atmosphere also explains the willingness of the government to make concessions. Why the strike leaders were willing to accept them is harder to understand. After all, did they not have mastery of the situation? The answer is that, despite all appearances, they did not. For one thing, the government’s authority had collapsed only in central Germany. Its writ ran true in Westphalia, in Swabia, in Bavaria, and in the Prussian provinces east of Brandenburg, where the Polish threat provided a convenient reason to obey the central authority. Any attempt by the strikers to, for example, declare the government deposed, would have occasioned a brutal civil war in which the government had a better chance than did the revolutionaries. Taking Berlin as a case study, military analysts today are largely agreed that the Freikorps then in the city, provided they got help from units stationed in Posen and West Prussia, could have occupied it, albeit with heavy losses. Indeed, it was only for fear of those losses, and the same insecurity about the ability of eastern troops to come to Berlin that stayed the hand of the revolutionaries in January, on the part of the Freikorps generals that kept Berlin from becoming the scene of an urban battle hitherto unmatched in savagery. Thuringia was the only scene where the revolutionaries had undoubted military predominance, which would rapidly disappear if Saxony and Berlin were subdued. To the revolutionary leaders, it seemed far better to wring concessions from the government and emphasize its relative lack of power so that the final confrontation would see a clear victor emerge in advance. It was for this reason that the strike wave ended March 3. The government, in return, promised to lift the state of siege, begin disbanding Freikorps units in and around Berlin, and to introduce bills in the National Assembly to include the workers’ councils in the Constitution and to enact the Commission of Nine’s socialization program. Of these, the promise to begin disbanding Freikorps was the most significant, as, despite the government’s ability to lobby and influence, there was no guarantee that the National Assembly would accept the proposals put before it. Indeed, by the time they were introduced March 15, it was clear that they would not be accepted. Some (notably the Communist MP Münzenberg) were clever enough to spin this to make the government seem dishonest and not worthy of loyalty, and thus to drive more reformists into the arms of the revolutionaries, but it cannot be denied that this was a major blow.
As the strike movement wound down in the Ruhr—the militias supposedly disarmed, though later events would show this to be facetious, on the twenty-fifth—workers in Halle were organizing a strike in sympathy with it. The timing of the Halle strike—it was decided upon on the twenty-third, and declared on the twenty-fourth—recalls the timing of the January Days’ response to the Berlin almost-insurrection. Similarly, it was too late to influence the development of the event it was declared in response to. However, unlike the January Days, the Halle strike ultimately became the flashpoint for a wave of strikes that spread across Thuringia, Saxony, Prussian Saxony, and the rest of central Germany.
While the strike in the Ruhr involved mostly coal and lignite miners, due to there being a virtual mining monoculture in the region, the economy of Thuringia was more diversified. The center of the strike movement was in Halle’s gigantic chemical works, but it soon spread to other industries. Notable among these were the railroads, whose workers (who had received generous pay increases and other benefits from the Council of People’s Deputies in order to prevent just this sort of thing) walked off the job for the first time since before the beginning of the Great War. This fact is not merely of interest to historians interested in the spread of radical, revolutionary ideas between November 1918 and the end of the German Revolution. It was significant in its own time too, and not merely as a propaganda tool. The decision of the railway workers to no longer operate their beasts of steel and steam meant that the National Assembly was effectively isolated in Weimar. Transport in and out of Thuringia was now a matter of walking or of the employment of horseflesh. This fact also helps explain why the Freikorps Freiwilligen Landesjägerkorps (which, it will be remembered, took part in the occupation of Berlin) took so long to respond to the disorder in Thuringia; it was late in getting information, and it perforce was slow in reaching the scene. The fact that this Freikorps alone, instead of most of the Berlin garrison, was sent is suggestive of the fact that the message the Freiwilligen Landesjägerkorps received contained information long out of date. In any event, when the Landesjägerkorps arrived in Halle on March 1, the 8,000-strong unit was disarmed with only a few shots fired, and its commander, General Ludwig von Maercker, captured and incarcerated.
Even if Halle had been subdued, the Landesjägerkorps alone would still have been insufficient to quell the region; Leipzig’s council called another general strike in sympathy with Halle’s that began on the twenty-seventh. Leipzig’s case is instructive inasmuch as the Independents were by this time the only significant socialist party in the city. They had established this position during the war, when the Leipzig section departed in a body from the Social Democrats to join the new party. The Leipziger Volkszeitung, before the foundation of Freiheit in 1917, was the central organ of the Independent party. What is more, hitherto Leipzig had been a relatively stolid section, a stronghold of the right and center of the Independent party, a check upon the left-leaning elements in Berlin and Thuringia (who had helped make the Halle strike). The fact that such a section as this instigated a major political strike indicates the leftward drift of even the right wing of the Independent party under the pressures of the moment.
The day after, February 28, Berlin itself joined Thuringia and Leipzig in strike. The fact that it did so, so soon after stepping away from a precipice in January, has baffled many historians, and part of the reason that Noske felt safe dispatching Freikorps from Berlin to elsewhere was his confidence that Berlin would not throw itself into the ferment. Berlin is yet another incidence of concord between Independents and Communists; where in January they had been divided over the question of whether or not to rise, here they became unanimous over the need to support Thuringia and Leipzig, and of their ability to do so. Moreover, Berlin went beyond Thuringia and Leipzig in making their strike not merely one of sympathy (Thuringia had struck in sympathy with the Ruhr, Leipzig with Thuringia), but of positing positive political demands. In addition to reemphasizing the program of the Commission of Nine, the program behind which Thuringia and Leipzig had gotten, the Berlin council demanded that all workers’ councils across Germany be re-elected in light of the changing conditions. For the same reason, they also demanded that a Second Congress of Councils convene as soon as possible after the election had taken place. These two demands eerily echo those made by the Bolsheviks two years before; indeed, in terms of a move towards revolutionism and away from republicanism, the German working class was following a path analogous to that of the Russian. Other demands included the perennial demand for a worker’s militia, for the dissolution of the Freikorps, for the release of political prisoners (including Georg Ledebour, who, unable or unwilling to go into hiding, had been arrested during the January Days), and for a resumption of diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia, such relations having been severed in December 1918. As an example to the rest of the nation, the Berlin council dissolved itself and organized a hasty election (another which by modern standards would almost certainly have been declared irregular), said election returning an Independent and Communist majority.
The following day, the day Maercker was getting arrested in Halle, the Berlin council expelled its Social Democrats, who had been protesting loudly against the irresponsibility of a strike wave while both a peace treaty and a Constitution were being drawn up. It also passed a resolution authorizing peaceful demonstrations only. Apart from a few rogue units, the police followed Eichhorn’s orders to leave the demonstrators alone, and the few resultant clashes between demonstrators and police (mostly in the Pankstrasse) failed to escalate into armed fighting. The Freikorps units that remained in the city, a sizable fifty thousand even at this late date, failed to make much of an impact. The police, rather than controlling demonstrators, took in some cases to menacing the encampments of the Freikorps, and the garrison and elements of the former Republican Guard, by this point far more indoctrinated with Communist and other revolutionary propaganda than they had been in January, still occupied the strategic points of the city. In this atmosphere, the proclamation of a State of Siege in Berlin and Leipzig by the National Assembly was largely ignored, and served only to advertise the inability of the government to enforce its own decrees.
This atmosphere also explains the willingness of the government to make concessions. Why the strike leaders were willing to accept them is harder to understand. After all, did they not have mastery of the situation? The answer is that, despite all appearances, they did not. For one thing, the government’s authority had collapsed only in central Germany. Its writ ran true in Westphalia, in Swabia, in Bavaria, and in the Prussian provinces east of Brandenburg, where the Polish threat provided a convenient reason to obey the central authority. Any attempt by the strikers to, for example, declare the government deposed, would have occasioned a brutal civil war in which the government had a better chance than did the revolutionaries. Taking Berlin as a case study, military analysts today are largely agreed that the Freikorps then in the city, provided they got help from units stationed in Posen and West Prussia, could have occupied it, albeit with heavy losses. Indeed, it was only for fear of those losses, and the same insecurity about the ability of eastern troops to come to Berlin that stayed the hand of the revolutionaries in January, on the part of the Freikorps generals that kept Berlin from becoming the scene of an urban battle hitherto unmatched in savagery. Thuringia was the only scene where the revolutionaries had undoubted military predominance, which would rapidly disappear if Saxony and Berlin were subdued. To the revolutionary leaders, it seemed far better to wring concessions from the government and emphasize its relative lack of power so that the final confrontation would see a clear victor emerge in advance. It was for this reason that the strike wave ended March 3. The government, in return, promised to lift the state of siege, begin disbanding Freikorps units in and around Berlin, and to introduce bills in the National Assembly to include the workers’ councils in the Constitution and to enact the Commission of Nine’s socialization program. Of these, the promise to begin disbanding Freikorps was the most significant, as, despite the government’s ability to lobby and influence, there was no guarantee that the National Assembly would accept the proposals put before it. Indeed, by the time they were introduced March 15, it was clear that they would not be accepted. Some (notably the Communist MP Münzenberg) were clever enough to spin this to make the government seem dishonest and not worthy of loyalty, and thus to drive more reformists into the arms of the revolutionaries, but it cannot be denied that this was a major blow.
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