An emergency meeting between the leaders of the Grand Coalition was called on
September 17th to decide how best to answer Toller’s request. Per a military report from Deputy Director Radek, the German Army was still reorganizing after enacting another
levy en masse within its recently liberated territories. Additionally, successive assaults from the Junker-back German White Army from the east required the continued encampment of the bulk of the Luxemburgist forces on the Oder River. “We haven’t the means to send a large force into Bavaria,” said Gustav Landauer. “Remmele’s smaller force will have to suffice,” said Radek in response. Rosa agreed, but furious at the turn of events caused in part by his hasty approval of the Toller-coup, she took the opportunity to strip him of his Deputy Directorship, and reassign him to front line operations within Remmele’s detachment. In his place Willi Münzenberg, a young militant and former student of Luxemburg during her exile in Switzerland, was appointed in his place.
On
September 18th, Remmele, who was already marching south received word of the order and began to head towards Munich. At the same time Toller was ordered to call up the remainder of the Bavarian-based forces still loyal to his regime and establish defensive positions for the reinforcements.
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Italy
The Italian army corps which had been sent to quell the strikes spreading throughout Turin had, by September 19th, failed. Though several factories had been recaptured through force of arms, leading to middling loss of life on both sides, workers refused to return to their posts, sparking a growing economic crisis for the entire nation. Moreover, many industrial workers who sought revenge for their fallen comrades, took part in a Syndicalist Union backed terrorist campaign against the army. With a bomb exploding at an army garrison in the city go Milan on
September 20th, the King had enough. 40,000 troops were ordered to begin marching toward the North to silence the insurrection once and for all. Upon hearing of this punitive offensive, Nicola Bombacci of the Italian Socialist Party order a walkout of party members from the Italian Chamber of Deputies, sparking a series of solidarity uprisings in Lombardia. By
October 1st, the provincial capital became host to the displaced leadership of Italian Socialist Party. With his primary opposition self-sequestered, the King appointed Giovanni Giolitti as the prime minister and simultaneously suspended the November elections. Insurrections, sponsored heavily by the Syndicalist, spread further south into Romagna with Bologna specifically becoming a major center for socialist agitation by
October 4th. And with news of the suspended elections spreading throughout the country, on October 5th the allied leaderships of the Syndicalist Union and Socialist Party began to debate the creation of a
repubblica dei lavoratori to be based in the North of the country.
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Luxemburgist Germany
Remmele’s detachment arrived in Munich on
October 1st, and immediately began to bolster itself with the forces that had remained loyal to Toller’s government. Though under no order from Berlin to do so, he took it upon himself to extract oaths of allegiance to the Union of Worker Republics from each of them. Now subsumed into the German Red Army, the entire detachment began to march toward Ingolstadt, with them successfully recapturing the city on
October 5th.
On October 7th, after a several weeks of failed assaults across the Oder, the Junker-backed White Army of the East began to pull back toward Posen for the winter. Seeing this as an opportunity to gain the upper hand defensively, Thalmann ordered the German Red Army to advance.
“Any additional distance we place between them and our capital before winter will benefit our position in this civil war,” he said to his junior officers.
On October 8th they moved across the river. Spearheaded by then well experienced armored car corps, the Red Army was able to push several miles into the recently evacuated Junker territory.
Simultaneously in Berlin, Rosa was pouring over a bevy of personal correspondences she had recently received from ideological compatriots across Europe.
From the Italian province of Lombardia, Nicola Bombacci had written to her requesting her opinion regarding the potential declaration of an Italian Worker’s Republic in the socialist/syndicalist controlled districts. Already abreast of the disintegrating political situation in the country, and well informed on the mass action tactics employed by the syndicalist within the factories in Turin and Milan, she responded.
“As with the anti-worker actions of the now defunct Ebert-regime, the House of Savoy has likewise chosen to place itself on the wrong side of history. If you have indeed have the will of the people, as we had here in Berlin, bring forth the Worker’s Republic.”
Next was a request for emergency material aid by Bela Kun. In the months prior, his war with Romania had, by midsummer in 1919, placed the Hungarian Soviet Republic on the precipice of collapse. Though his ministers had begged him to sue for peace in the spring, Bela hope for a Luxemburgist-inspired military victory kept him from doing so. And with Romanian receiving diplomatic support to end the Hungarian Soviet Republic from increasingly hostile Western Europe, by June 5th 1919 Budapest had fallen. Now with the city of Gyor acting as his de-facto capital, Bela was without options.
However, Bela's implementation of
Bolsheviki ideology in the formation of his power base, coupled with his instance to blend it with Hungarian ethno-nationalism had drawn the ire of Rosa; so much so that she dictated, rather than wrote a response.
“Step down and give the power to one of your deputies; then I may consider expending resources to aid your cause,” she dictated in response.
Finally, with the Russian Red Army beginning its campaign to capture Warsaw several weeks prior and likewise seeing successes in its initial engagements with the Pilsudski’s Polish Army, a personal correspondence from Lenin’s desk reached Rosa’s on October 14th.
“Comrade Trotsky, along 80,000 crack Soviet troops will be in Warsaw within 6 months - Let us use this interim to unite our causes.”
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Italy
Upon the receipt of the Rosa’s empowering response, and euphorically spurred on by German support of their machinations, the leadership council of the allied Italian Socialist Party and Syndicalist Union immediately forwarded a vote for the declaration of an Italian Worker's Republic from within Lombardia, on the night of October 15th.
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Voting Time
Should the PSI/Syndicalist Union alliance immediately declare an Italian Worker's Republic?
Results:
81% - Yes!
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