…By Summer of 1920 the Weimar Republic had dealt with the majority of the unrest in the country. However that meant that the Reichstag elections scheduled for August could not be delayed, outside of Silesia and Prussia where Plebiscites would determine whether or not they would remain German.
The results of the election were troubling for the Weimar Republic, the current coalition needed 234 votes to control the Reichstag, they had 230. Internally there was a debate between the Social Democrats, the SPD, and their partners on how it would go about getting those 4 votes. Zentrum and the German Democratic Party, the DDP, looked at bringing in the Bavarian Peples Party, or BVP, or the German Peoples Party, the DVP, into the coalition, the former having split from Zentrum to tread a more conservative, Bavarian path, and the latter came out of the National Liberal Party just as the DDP but was more conservative. Such a broadening of the coalition would require concessions be made to the Right Wing.
The SPD by contrast wanted to get those votes by reaching out to their brothers in the Independent Social Democrats, the USPD. The USPD had split from the SPD over the latter’s support for the War effort in WWI and remained thoroughly Marxist in character. Enticing them to join would require significant concessions on the left side of the political spectrum. However as they were the largest party not in the government, just barely beating out the far right German National Peoples Party, the DNVP, them joining would allow the DDP to be removed from the government.
With the SPD being larger than its two partners combined, there was a distinct possibility that it would get its way. For many this was intolerable, as the USDP was closely aligned with those behind the Communist Revolts and was in active talks about joining the Communist International. Conservative forces in Germany began talks on how to prevent such an unfavorable outcome, however action would require a spark.
On September 2nd, 1920, Defense Minister Gustav Noske ordered the dissolution of the Volunteer Division of the Horse Guards. The unit along with other volunteer Freikorps had been key in suppressing the Communist revolts that had wracked Germany in the previous year, however with the improved security situation Noske felt it was time to begin dissolving them. The Volunteer Division of the Horse Guards was first on the list because its commander Waldemar Pabst had threatened to kill Noske.
General von Lütwittz, the commander of the German forces around Berlin refused to allow the dissolution of such an important unit. Some of his officers set up a meeting with members of the DNVP and DVP to try and dissuade von Lütwittz from his course of action, being horrified at the possibility of a civil war. Von Lütwittz was not persuaded and a meeting with President Ebert was set up. At the meeting von Lütwittz presented a list of demands to Ebert, including the resignation of several ministers, Noske among them, arrest of several members of the USPD, his promotion to commander and chief and the maintenance of all of the Freikorps. Ebert refused and demanded his immediate resignation. When he refused to resign a warrant was immediately issued for his arrest.
Von Lütwittz refused to come quietly and within two days organized a Coup using a mixture of Freikorps and regular troops. The garrison of Berlin refused orders from the Bauer government to fire on the coup plotters in order to prevent a civil war. The Bauer government fled the city and Von Lütwittz installed a government around DNVP politician Wolfgang Kapp. This new government was recognized by the military as well as the state of Bavaria.
However the Bauer government, upon arriving in Stuttgart after fleeing Berlin, called for a general strike to suppress the coup. This was soon joined by the USPD and the Communist KDP and within a day the country was paralyzed. The Putsch government in Berlin soon found itself without electricity, gas or running water, unable to even make proclamations with the newspapers not running and the bureaucrats at home. Over 12 million workers joined what remains the largest strike in German history.
Two days into the coup the plotters entered negotiations with remaining members of the Bauer government in Berlin. After two days of negotiations they had a deal, the plotters would resign, and the Freikorps could be dissolved with only moderate recriminations among those who participated in the coup, save for a few extreme cases of excessive force. In exchange Noske would resign and the USPD would not be brought into the new government.
While many in the SPD opposed this deal, the leadership along with their coalition partners felt it was necessary to keep the army on sides. For while in most of Germany the strike remained as such, in the Ruhr it had been hijacked by communists and radicals in the USPD who wanted to use the strike as the first step in a renewed communist revolution, with similar but less successful attempts in Saxony and Thuringia. Thus the coup plotters were allowed to voluntarily step down.
Once the plotters stepped down, the Bauer government called for the strike to end and for arms to be put down. In most of Germany this was followed, in the Ruhr the striking workers organized a Red Army and went on the offensive. Regular forces and units of the Freikorps were sent to put down the uprising and within a week made great strides in attacking from the North, first halting, then pushing back the red forces. However they were forced to at the Ruhr River stop as the British threatened an invasion, and the French sent troops into Hesse, treating the action as a violation of the Treaty of Versailles. The remaining fighting had to be done by the Security Police, who were less well equipped and suffered heavily in ending the revolt.
The remnants of the Red Ruhr Army were allowed shelter in the French occupied Rhineland as part of the doomed French plan to create a separate Rhenish state…
…The September Putsch in the short term provided a boost to the Weimar government. It showed that a majority of the country supported the government and that it could act in a crisis. In the longer term it prevented the possible reunification of the SPD and the USPD, the latter of which mostly went over to the KPD after joining the Comintern, and thus fractured the left. The Army was allowed considerable autonomy and became a de facto state within a state. The extreme right was emboldened by the lack of consequences that were suffered, and strengthened by the result of the Ruhr Revolt and the foreign meddling therein…
…Having survived the Putsch, the Bauer government fell within in a year. In the Summer of 1921 the Entente announced the final totals of the reparations at 155 Billion Goldmarks. Germany was given an ultimatum to accept this value in full, fully comply with the required disarmament and immediately begin trials of war criminals.
The first and last of these provisions proved highly unpopular. 155 billion Goldmarks was considered an impossible sum and the Reichstag had earlier established a bureau for the defense of those accused of warcrimes with much popular support.
The DVP refused to go along with the ultimatum, withdrawing from the government over the matter. With the government having lost its majority Gustav Bauer resigned in the hopes of starting afresh. Joseph Wirth attempted to form a new governing coalition by bringing in the USPD, however the USPD refused to work with the staunchly Catholic Zentrum. Attempting to replace the DVP with the BVP failed, as did attempts to bring in the Guelphs or the Bavarian Peasants League. This left Wirth with only a minority in the Reichstag, however the coalition of the SPD, Zentrum and DDP was still the largest bloc, and there was not chance of either the DNVP or USPD being able to form a coalition. Thus Wirth was forced to lead a minority government.
The ultimatum was ultimately accepted when the USPD agreed to allow members to vote their conscience on the matters, while the DDP did so as well, weakening the government, the votes of the USPD allowed the acceptance of the ultimatum…
…The Wirth government was able to negotiate one concession out of the Entente, rather than hand over German citizens to be tried by Entente military tribunals, they were allowed to try the cases themselves within the German civil court system. This became the Leipzig War Crimes trials.
The Entente handed the Weimar Republic a list of 1200 German war criminals to try, the Weimar Republic fired back by threatening to publish a list of 6,000 Entente war criminals, gathered by the work of the Warcrimes Defense Bureau and its army of dedicated volunteers. The Entente thus returned a list of 50, of whom 15 ended up tried. The Kaiser was not among them as the Entente had long ceased trying to get the Dutch to extradite him.
Seven were found not guilty, with three more found not guilty on appeal, and the five remaining were sentenced to between six months and four years in a civilian prison, along with being stripped of the right to wear a uniform
Reactions to this were harsh on both sides. For the Entente this was seen as far too little and there were calls for the trials to be moved to Britain or France. For the Germans this was seen as a humiliation, the men involved were soldiers it was dishonorable in the extreme for them to be sent to civilian prisons, rather than tried as soldiers and confined within fortresses. Furthermore the German populace saw much of the allied evidence as limited or spurious, and that in many cases the accused were merely following orders. Finally the hypocrisy of the Entente in not prosecuting their own soldiers was seen as insulting.
The trials ultimately only strengthened the German hatred of the Versailles regime…
-Excerpt from Unfinished Business: The Making of the Second World War, New American Press, Chicago, 2007
