Communists Move to Take Power
Hundreds Shot Down in the Streets by Own Army,
Street Fighting Turns Ferocious.
Special to The Great War Project.
(10 January) While the American president Woodrow Wilson is feasting on worshipful applause in Italy in the early days of January a century ago, Germany is confronting a Bolshevik onslaught.
Reports historian Thomas Fleming, “Soldiers and People’s Councils had taken over many cities. Berlin remains unconquered, but it’s teetering on the brink. Demonstrations, strikes, and armed mobs were everywhere.”
Communists take power in Berlin.
“Behind most of the demonstrations was the Spartacist Union, a radical group that found inspiration in the story of the gladiator Spartacus, leader of a revolt against Rome in 73 B.C.”
Fleming writes: “The Spartacists were led by Karl Liebknecht, son of a founder of the German Socialist Party, and Rosa Luxemburg, a brilliant Polish activist.”
Luxemburg and Liebknecht
“Behind them was the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, who shipped them gold from Russia’s treasury and ordered them to turn Germany into a Soviet satellite.”
Under this pressure, it becomes clear that control of Berlin is slipping away from Germany’s more moderate leaders, led by the new German chancellor, Friedrich Ebert.
Ebert panics and moves to place the German army under his control. He is not successful. “Public disorder only increased.”
An emboldened Liebknecht decides that the capital is ready for revolution. Luxemburg disagrees.
“On the night of January 5th, a century ago, thousands of armed leftists poured down Berlin’s broad streets. They swiftly captured major buildings in the center of Berlin and prepared to take over the capital.”
Liebknecht exhorts the crowd.
By this time, reports historian Fleming, the Spartacists had changed their name to the Communist Party, leaving no doubt about their goals.
Reports Fleming, Ebert called on the army for help. Into action went thousands of demobilized veterans, recruited into new units called Free Corps.”
The Free Corps are told, “The place of the Imperial Government has been taken by that of Chancellor Ebert. He needs strength for the struggle on our borders. And the struggle within.”
Plunder and disorder are everywhere, nowhere is there respect for law and justice.
Communist militants in Berlin.
“We must intervene.”
On January 10th an all-out battle erupts in the center of Berlin. The army uses flamethrowers, machine guns, hand grenades, mortars, and artillery to smash the Communists out of major buildings and improvised street forts.
“An estimated 1000 bystanders and pedestrians are killed in the ferocious fighting, which leaves several buildings gutted.”
“Hundreds of Spartacists were executed on the spot, even when they tried to surrender under white flags.”
Continues historian Fleming, “Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were hunted down and dragged to a nearby hotel for a brief interrogation.” Then they are ordered to prison.
“Enroute, their heads were smashed by rifle butts. Pistols added the coup de grace.”
Funeral of Karl :Liebknecht, Berllin 1919.
Luxemburg’s body was thrown into a canal where it remained until May.
The public was informed that the two revolutionaries were shot while trying to escape.
Well, for me, this is filed under, “I Had No Idea”. Ignorant no more; what an awful period. Of and Wilson – yea, pretty much sums up much of his time in Europe.
If a powerful elite of war profiteers and racists (including Woodrow Wilson) had not used the war as an excuse to repress the international labor movement, I wonder whether more Nations would have pursued a path of Social Democracy. Maybe demilitarization and reconstruction would have been accomplished in a way that better served fundamental human needs. Maybe Fascists and Nazis and post WWI White Supremacists wouldn’t have gotten as much of a following and caused as much mayhem? Maybe Communism wouldn’t have taken as repressive forms as it did in countries under siege by Western Imperial powers?
Since WWI the US has been the major war profiteer of the world (about 60% of federal discretionary budget through recent Republican and Democratic administrations) and is now spending more than the next 9 Nations combined.) One hundred years later there are glimmers of hope (i.e. with international movements to DIVEST from war and fossil fuels ) that the existential threat of nuclear destruction and climate disaster is giving birth to a more successful reprise of the broad-based movement that took hold to prevent the disaster of WWI in the first place! (See Michael Kazin’s great 2017 book, “War Against War: The American Fight for Peace 1914-1917).
The communists would have done exactly as they did. Fascists in Italy were well on the way to repression and would have done as they did. The black citizens and immigrants to Germany from German East would have still fought for the Freikorps. Only the arrogance of socialism leads people to proclaim “if only they too had been socialist there would have been no evil”
Hmm. Your mention of Freikorps makes me think of how our government has been deporting US Veterans including refugees fleeing Honduras where our taxes supported a coup (identified as such by our Ambassador) which should have resulted in an immediate cut-off of military aid. But I was not defending repression under any ideology or regime, but pointing out how militarist imperialism and racism and bigotry and war undercut civil society and lead to repression not empowerment of most people other than a small group of war profiteers on both sides. Unionists and some enlightened Capitalists realized WWI was the type of imperial foreign entanglement that would jeopardize our Republic but unfortunately couldn’t stop us from fueling the conflagration which might have wound down more quickly without US.