The Second Phase of the German Revolution Begins
The socialist call-to-arms rang like a clarion call throughout Germany. Appended to Berlin’s declaration was a hastily-written account of the
Deutsches Heer’s attack on the city, thus the dreaded prospect of a military coup had suddenly become a stark reality and was chillingly confirmed shortly afterwards by Friedrich Ebert’s announcement of a new, transparently military, government. In Thuringia, most of the military-aged workers who had participated in the demonstration in Weimar withdrew to Erfurt under the command of
Communist brothers Wilhelm and Bernhard Koenen, while the revolutionary leadership who had been present made haste towards Berlin. Leipzig and Chemnitz, the latter city represented almost unanimously by
Communists within the revolutionary current, became the main centres for organisation in neighbouring Saxony under the leadership of Fritz Heckert. In the Ruhr, workers from all four socialist parties mobilised in Essen under Otto Brass, while Artur König was elected to organise the military efforts. Meanwhile, the Bavarian government of Kurt Eisner had already been engaged in a low-level war against
Freikorps elements and rural militias, reducing its effective authority to Munich and a few other cities such as Nuremberg and Ingolstadt.[1] The dockworkers and partially demobilised sailors of the industrialised port cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Wilhelmshaven swiftly asserted control and began efforts to coordinate between themselves. In the Entente-occupied areas of the Rhineland, the soldiers of the occupation forces maintained vigilance but ultimately remained passive as workers and former soldiers mobilised under Franz Dahlem.
Soldiers of the Red Guard in Dortmund
The call to revolution also spread beyond German borders. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was accompanied by the proliferation of workers’ councils and militias much like in Germany. In the multicultural Czechoslovakia there were two major Marxist parties: the
Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers’ Party (
Československá Sociálně Demokratická Strana Dělnická/
ČSDSD) and the provincial branch of the
Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (
Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs/
SDAPÖ). Like the pre-fractured
SPD, both of these parties were riven with factionalism between revolutionaries, centrists, reformists, and social democrats. Moreover, in the previous year, the
Czech National Social Party had absorbed the Kropotkinist
Federation of Anarcho-Communists, dropped the ‘National’ from their name, and adopted a platform of non-Marxist reformism and so emerged as the
Czechoslovak Socialist Party (
Československá strana socialistická/
ČSS). The
ČSDSD and the
ČSS were both members of the exclusively Czechoslovak (that is to say non-German) coalition government of President Tomáš Masaryk and Prime Minister Karel Kramář. The Prime Minister was a staunch anti-communist who saw the ideology as a German ploy against pan-Slavic unity and therefore was supportive of the Czechoslovak Legion’s pivotal role in the Russian Civil War. Masaryk, and his protégé Foreign Minister Edvard Beneš in Paris, on the other hand were in favour of withdrawing the Legion and following a more pragmatic foreign policy of looking toward the Entente; furthermore, they suspected Kramář of holding reactionary, Czech chauvinist views which would be detrimental to the establishment of Czechoslovakia as a functional state.
Meanwhile in Austria, the pan-German, Marxist
SDAPÖ had fell short of a majority of seats in the Constituent Assembly election which was held on the same day as its German counterpart.[2] As a result the party had established a fragile coalition with the conservative, Austrian nationalist
Christian Social Party (
Christlichsoziale Partei/
CS) and a few assorted pan-German nationalists. The
Communist Party of German-Austria (
Kommunistische Partei Deutsch-Österreichs/
KPDÖ) and the
Federation of Revolutionary Socialists were both under the sway of their ultra-leftist factions, leading them to boycott the election. On the same day as the coup in Germany (15th March), the Austrian Constituent Assembly abolished its State Council, a triumvirate of Franz Dinghofer (from the
Greater German Association), Johann Nepomuk Hauser (
CS), and Karl Seitz (
SDAPÖ), and replaced it with the position of President of the Constituent Assembly, which was given to Seitz. Simultaneously a new cabinet was elected, though it was just a reshuffling of
SDAPÖ Chancellor Karl Renner’s previous coalition government. Though he was a prominent member of the moderate wing of the party, Renner was intensely interested in the ongoing revolutionary events in Germany as they perhaps represented the best opportunity for the unification of Austria with Germany. The Austrian government’s Foreign Minister Otto Bauer, who was on the left of the
SDAPÖ, had already been engaged in secret negotiations with the German Weimar government concerning unification. For the moment though the situation was in its infancy, leading Renner to continue his support for the alliance with the
CS.
When the revolutionary politicians returned to Berlin from Weimar, they immediately set to work on establishing a revolutionary government. It had already been decided that Hermann Paul Reisshaus, Karl Liebknecht, and Emil Barth would be the three co-Chairmen of the new Council of People’s Deputies (
Rat der Volksbeauftragten). The three men received additional responsibilities in the cabinet: Reisshaus the People’s Deputy for Trade; Liebknecht the People’s Deputy for Foreign Affairs; and Barth the People’s Deputy for Industry. Heinrich Dorrenbach was unsurprisingly appointed People’s Deputy of Defence, where he was to coordinate with People’s Deputy for Transport Anton Grylewicz and People’s Deputy for Communications Emil Eichhorn. As an overture to the
USPD right, Oskar Cohn was appointed as the People’s Deputy of Justice and Luise Zietz as People’s Deputy for Education. Similarly for the
SPD, Erich Zeigner was appointed People’s Deputy for Finance and Wilhelmine Eichler as People’s Deputy for Food and Agriculture. The position of People’s Deputy of Internal Affairs was given to Albert Schreiner, who was subsequently informed of the existence of the
Communist Military Apparatus. As the People’s Deputy of Labour, Robert Dissmann was to work in close collaboration with Barth. Karl Radek, who had officially joined the
KPD, was appointed People’s Deputy of Minority Affairs. The less pressing issues of Health, Welfare, and Culture were assigned, respectively, to Raphael Silberstein, Wilhelm Pieck, and Paul Levi. In terms of party composition there were seven
Communists, four
Social Democrats, and five
Independents. A notable absence was Rosa Luxemburg, but her position as co-leader of the
KPD and her general fame ensured that she had an unofficial measure of influence on the Council of People’s Deputies. Meanwhile, the Berlin branch of the ultra-left
International Communists articulated their stance as a ‘loyal opposition’ to the new workers’ government.
The first task of the Berlin-based Council of People’s Deputies was to consolidate the territory that had so far been brought under proletarian control and establish a unified military command structure. Once that was accomplished, a new All-German Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils would be safe to convene. The work would be difficult though as the nascent socialist army suffered from an understandable deficiency in higher ranked commissioned officers, in addition to governance over partially non-contiguous territory. The Hamburg Articles, which were introduced at the First All-German Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils, were adopted by the Council of People’s Deputies. Their overall purpose was to ensure democratic civilian control of the military through soldiers’ councils and prevent abuses of power by the officers. In accordance with the Hamburg Articles, and influenced by the
Bolsheviks, the Council of People’s Deputies decreed that traditional ranks were abolished and a new simplified system of positional ranks would replace them. On 17th March, the notification of the organisational changes were telegraphed from Berlin to the areas of the country which were under firm socialist control. The same day People’s Deputy of Defence Dorrenbach ordered two reorganised divisions of
Rote Garde, numbering 28,000 men under the command of
Korpsführer Ernst Reuter, to Dallgow-Döberitz to extirpate General Erich Ludendorff’s reactionary contingent, but they had already retreated to Magdeburg by the time the
Rote Garde arrived.
In Weimar the coup’s military forces had established control and imprisoned many suspected revolutionaries, including some
SPD deputies. The rest of the National Assembly deputies were released; those belonging to the
DNVP were invited by Chancellor Gustav Noske to form an Emergency Advisory Council to serve as the basis for a new parliament.
Generalleutnant Wilhelm Groener accepted his appointment to the Ministry of Defence as the coup plotters had foreseen, while Paul von Hindenburg and Hans von Seeckt recognised the coup as a fait accompli and so threw the full weight of their support behind the new government. Similarly to the Council of People’s Deputies, the immediate concern of the Weimar government was to establish its writ in as much territory as possible and to assess the reliability of the remaining military forces. Furthermore, Weimar itself was far too close to the hotbed of socialist activity in Thuringia, so the government would have to relocate. The non-contiguous industrial belt running through eastern, central, and western Germany was obviously unsuitable for a new headquarters, as was the western Rhineland due to the Entente occupation. On 17th March the generals decided to move northwest to Paderborn, where they would be able to make use of the nearby Senne training ground. On the way there they were joined by Ludendorff, who had ordered the remainder of his forces to hold Magdeburg against potential revolutionary incursions. At the same time, the junta ordered what was left of the 2nd Royal Bavarian Army Corps, numbering about 22,000 soldiers under the command of
Generalleutnant Otto von Rauchenberger, to begin operations against the socialist government of Eisner in Munich.
[1] Without the Spartacist Uprising of OTL, there is no wave of repressions by the
Freikorps in the following months and so Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley doesn’t have the confidence to murder such an important socialist figure.
[2] Same result as OTL: 72 for the SDAPÖ, 69 for the Christian Socials.
Dramatis Personae (OTL biographies)
Bernhard Koenen: After having served during the war, Koenen (like his brother) joined the USPD upon its foundation. He was a supporter of the USPD left's merger with the KPD and thereafter carried out work for the Comintern in France and Belgium, before being elected to the Central Committee in 1923. As a member of the party's centre faction, Koenen was demoted in 1929 and fled to the USSR in 1933. There he was imprisoned from 1937 to 1939 but rose to the KPD's leadership during the war. Koenen joined the SED's Central Committee after the war and was the ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1952 to 1958. He died in 1964.
Fritz Heckert: One of the original Spartacists, Heckert was allied to Heinrich Brandler and the right of the KPD. By bringing the majority of the Chemnitz USPD into the new party, Heckert created the strongest branch of the KPD and was thus elected to the Central Committee (which he mostly retained until his death). Due to his trade union contacts and expertise, Heckert often worked in Moscow for the Profintern and Comintern and was at the forefront of the KPD's efforts in the trade union movement. He was also briefly the Economy Minister of Saxony in October 1923. From 1932, Heckert remained in Moscow where he died in 1936.
Otto Brass: A member of the USPD's Central Committee, Brass joined the majority of the party in merging with the KPD in 1920. He was briefly elected to the new Zentrale but was expelled from the party in 1922, whereupon he followed the route of the Communist Working Group back into the USPD and then the SPD. During the 1930s Brass organised resistance against the Nazis for which he was imprisoned for the entirety of the war. After being liberated, Brass became a leader of the Free German Trade Union Federation and joined the SED. He died in 1950.