The Threepenny Opera - The Rise and Fall of Militarist Germany

[ChazMo]

On the morning of 13th March, 1920, the Berlin Reichskanzlei bore witness to one of the most frenzied episodes in its 150-year history. Reports had circulated in the capital the evening prior regarding a mutiny among the ranks of the army, with what amounted to the open endorsement of the general staff, the Freikorps, the navy high command and elements of the nationalist bourgeoisie. The rebels had appointed a provisional Chancellor in the personhood of Wolfgang Kapp, a civil servant-turned-ultraconservative demagogue, though all real power was vested behind the throne in General Walther von Lüttwitz, a veteran of the Great War disenchanted with the new German government and its program of Schlackdemobilisierung (‘shock demobilization’). They now sought to march on the city, under instructions to take the cabinet and Reichstag hostage and suppress the local labor union presence.

General Walther von Lüttwitz.

Wolfgang Kapp.​

The impetus for the revolt lay in a resolution issued in the first week of March stipulating the disbandment of the II Marine Brigade, a notorious paramilitary force led by renegade ex-admiral Hermann Ehrhardt. Ehrhardt’s consequent appeals to his close friend Lüttwitz were employed by the general as a bargaining chip with the republican authorities, whom proved utterly unreceptive to his demands for an end to the Schlackdemobilisierung campaign, a key condition of the Treaty of Versailles. Several biographers have suggested that his intentions may have been darker from the outset, however – he, as with Kapp and much of the old Teutonic aristo-militarist class, harboured an intense, frequently preposterous odium with regard to the socialist foundations of the new German state, viewing its advocates (the so-called ‘November Criminals’) as little more than pawns in a grand, sinister Judeo-Masonic scheme of internationalist proportions. It appears likely that he entertained no real prospect of having his ultimatums, absurd as they were, accommodated within a democratic framework, and this is attested to in his own writings. The putschists strived for authoritarian power, and the opportunity to claim it was simply yielded to them in 1920.

Gustav Noske, the Defence Minister, called an emergency meeting for 04:00 AM; he had earlier failed to persuade Hans von Seeckt, commander of the regional garrison, to take a stand against the rebels (the general is said to have offered the apocryphal, oft-quoted retort “Reichswehr does not fire on Reichswehr” – ironically, he would be murdered on Lüttwitz’ orders less than two months later). The cabinet assembled in the Chancellery ballroom around daybreak. President Friedrich Ebert proposed the evacuation of the government to Dresden and the enlistment of affiliated trade unions in a campaign of civil disobedience, a motion opposed by a host of non-SPD officials, chiefly Justice Minister Eugen Schiffer. The detractors posited that officers elsewhere were likely to be sympathetic to the putschists and their cause, arguing instead that some line of negotiation should be pursued with Kapp and his supporters. This prompted accusations of treason from Chancellor Gustav Bauer. Lüttwitz’ contingent reached the Brandenburger Tor around 05:30, as cabinet proceedings descended into chaos. A curfew was declared, and MPs were summoned to session (many were escorted to the Reichstag at gunpoint) under "extraordinary circumstances".

In his Berlin Diaries (1974), bank clerk Klaus Baum-Eberhardt described his awakening to news of the coup's execution:

I was woken very early in the morning ... by the crash of gunshots from outside. I sat up listening very closely, sweating beneath the sheets. Soon, a grand cacophony of voices could be heard from all around. They were the voices of common soldiers, that hardy breed my brother had fought and died among. I shivered. It was the first time such voices had resonated on the cobbled avenues of Berlin since 1918. At seven o'clock, Felda [the landlady] brought me a paltry breakfast - toast, cheese and half-boiled eggs. She informed me that the military was enforcing a curfew, and that we would not be able to leave the apartment until notice to the opposite effect. I ate in solemnity, coldly eager for some kind of news. I later learned that one of the putschists' first moves had been to seize press offices across the cities, preventing the circulation of anything but a wild flurry of rumors ...

Although the rebel general would later vaunt personal culpability in the detention of Ebert and his ministers, it is now believed that the garrison charged with protecting the cabinet actually turned them over to the insurrectionists, the Reichskanzlei having been surrounded from all sides by “armed, ravenous men”. With the cabinet’s humiliating apprehension, the Social Democratic Party was essentially decapitated – the crop of its leadership held down executive positions, and all functionary organs answered directly to them. Erich Koch-Weser, the Minister of the Interior, and Johannes Bell, the Transport Minister, sensationally escaped their persecutors, fleeing to Bremen. Their efforts there to obtain French support in the inauguration of a DDP-dominated rump government would collapse three days later, forcing them into permanent exile in Denmark.

At 08:00, the Reichstag was convened. Parliamentarians reportedly found the galleries and halls “teeming with soldiers and Freikorps”; news of the cabinet’s seizure had manifested to them only as confused rumors, though few were under any illusion as to the true nature of events. Rudolf Heinze, leader of the liberal German People’s Party, detailed the scene vividly in his posthumous memoirs:

There prevailed … the most awkward silence mortal circumstances can aspire to arouse. After twenty anxious minutes, we were granted our first glimpse at Kapp, the usurper, huffing and wheezy as a cat in the heat of summer. We were all compelled to stand by a baton-wielding corporal. Without sparing a word by way of an introduction, our self-styled Chancellor had soon propelled himself into the most fantastical makeshift monologue I have yet to be subjected to in all my years. President Ebert and his government, he stressed most indignantly, had been nought but communist infiltrators all along, in the employ of foreign enemies conspiring for the destruction of Germany; the Reichswehr, eternal backbone of the German nation, had seen fit, therefore, to bestow upon itself interim political supremacy, as means of ridding us of our present infestation. He settled for no consistent theme, dropping hints at Jewish collusion, English collusion, French collusion, the Spartacists … all the while clutching a cap at his bosom as in some hysterical parody of a funeral. All we gentlemen of the house were expected to do was toe the line of our new masters, at the point of the bayonet or otherwise!

At the conclusion of Kapp's address, the Reichstag was presented with the text of the notorious Reich Sovereignty Act. In addition to allocating the military 'emergency prerogatives' with which to hound political opponents ('subversives'), the bill effectively nullifies German Versailles commitments in reserving the right of the executive to forfeit any contracts previously drawn up with foreign powers. A new cabinet was also proclaimed; it was made clear, however, that Kapp's "clutch of scoundrels", as an SDP delegate privately termed it, was to be inducted regardless of parliamentary consent, as a purportedly technocratic measure vital to national security. Walther von Lüttwitz was to act as Defence Minister, supplanting Gustav Noske; Erich Ludendorff, an esteemed general commanding respect across otherwise rigid social and ideological lines, was to replace Ebert as President. Gottfried Traub, a leading light in the German National People's Party (DNVP), was to assume a new post, Minister of Church and Cultural Affairs (the putschists eschewed secular sentiment). Undoubtedly the bizarre cornerstone of the coup, of course, was the presence of Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln, a conman and international jack-of-all-trades, slated for appointment as Kapp's press censor.

Although representatives were conceded the right to abstain from voting on the Act, there was a general understanding in the chamber that those parliamentarians who did so were placing themselves, their families and their party comrades in a precarious position - Kapp's weak and desperate veneer of democratic respectability fooled nobody. 19 of the Independent Social Democratic Party's (USPD) members staged a heroic stand, walking out of the Reichstag; Hugo Haase, the leader, issued an open derision of Kapp across the floor, calling him a "usurper" and a "feeble little Napoleon". There were also significant rebellions among the ranks of the nuclear SPD and the Catholic Centre Party. Nevertheless, 382 parliamentarians did cast their vote, producing a near-unanimous swing in favor of the motion. Within weeks, most of the militarists' parliamentary opponents would be dead, preliminary victims of General Lüttwitz' purges.

 

[MrHaakwood]

Successful Kapp coup, well that is something which you dont see very often!

I wonder where you take it from here.

Good work!

 

[Historyman 14]

I love it. I can't wait to see London and Paris reaction.

 

[Octosteel]

Oh, I can already see Kaiser Wilhelm anxiously waiting for his chance to return.

 

[ChazMo]

Successful Kapp coup, well that is something which you dont see very often!

I wonder where you take it from here.

Good work!

Yes, was surprised by the complete lack of Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch TLs. I guess it's tricky material, given the power of Germany's trade unions. My plan is to emasculate labor resistance to the coup, before picking off the pesky reds in the first few months afterward.

I love it. I can't wait to see London and Paris reaction.

Cometh the storm.

Oh, I can already see Kaiser Wilhelm anxiously waiting for his chance to return.

Not happening. The putsch, though certainly not a republican affair, had no strong monarchist overtones - the only real unifying force, you could say, was anti-communism and opposition to the Treaty of Versailles. Bill could take up residence at one of his old palaces, mind.

 

[Seleucus]

Thoughts:

You've decapitated the SDP, but there's certainly going to be resistance still from trade unionist leaders and local leaders. Phillip Scheidemann, for instance, was Mayor of Kassel during the Kapp Putsch (hence outside Berlin and not with the SDP parliamentarians in Berlin.) Otto Lansberg, similarly, was the German ambassador in Belgum during this time (and hence similarly invulnerable to arrest.) Either would likely have the national stature and popularity necessary to call for a general strike on his own authority when the news leaks out, though it may not be as successful as the OTL one.

The USDP and KPD would definitely be attempting to resist as well. I would be surprised if the Ruhr doesn't rise up and defeat the military forces as in OTL. Even if France doesn't directly intervene, I could see some sort of protectorate agreement where exiled moderate Weimar leaders flee to the Ruhr valley, which becomes the 'Rheno-Ruhr Republic' under French protection (more as a means of weakening Germany, something which Poincare would certainly be in favor of - it's necessary to have moderate SPD/DDR/etc. rather than USPD/KPD leadership for France to be willing to go for it though.)

 

[ChazMo]

With the SPD decimated as a force for working-class resistance to the Reichswehr putsch, it fell upon the fractured Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) to rally the German populace against the new regime. Orthodox among even Europe’s Marxist movements, the KPD had acquired notoriety for its orchestration of a failed uprising just a year prior, ultimately suppressed by Freikorps acting on behalf of the government. Amid the bloodshed, the party had lost Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the most charismatic and adept of its leaders; nevertheless, it continued to command the support of numerous regional labor unions, and had a huge intellectual following. A Sunday luncheon in Duisburg the day after Kapp’s ascent to the chancellorship, chaired by Secretary Paul Levi, drew together the KPD Central Committee. Those present included Paul Frölich, founder of the party’s official organ Die Rote Fahne (‘The Red Flag’), Hugo Eberlein, a particularly prominent Leninist within the organization, and Antonie Pannekoek, a Dutch theoretician noted for his scathing commentary on Bolshevism. The ‘beer and bratwurst’ meeting produced a six-point program, entailing a total condemnation of the Kapp government and its facilitators; a total condemnation of the SPD, as a “bourgeoisie collaborationist front against the German workers”; the execution of a general strike in key industrial and urban centers; the distribution of arms among German workers and agriculturalists; cooperation with the Free Workers’ Union of Germany and other radical socialist organizations; and the initiation of an anti-state insurrection, concentrated in the Ruhr heartland of the KPD.

​

Regardless of any administrative line, violence erupted almost instantaneously in towns and cities across the Reich in the aftermath of the takeover. A significant proportion of trade union commissions disregarded the urges of SPD officials for calm (many parliamentarians entertained the prospect of coaxing Kapp out of power with British and French support, and feared street action would empower the communists and undermine such efforts). The KPD-affiliated Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers (UHK) had no similar reservations about protest activity, and mobilized with full organizational dynamism in eastern cities. Some 300,000 workers took to the streets, seizing factories and demanding the release and reinstatement of Friedrich Ebert’s government. In Berlin alone, 90,000 laborers partook in a protracted strike between 14th-17th March. The Reichswehr was panicked by this display of leftist sedition, and moved immediately to crush it. Indiscriminate attacks on pickets and sit-ins were accompanied by bouts of looting on a scale unseen since the Novemberrevolution of 1919, soldiers going out of their way to ransack homes, apartments and businesses. In many areas, suppressing workerist agitation was a secondary concern of the authorities – of the 346 dead in clashes in Essen, for instance, 113 were bystanders. Although officers elsewhere likely acted on their own intuition, it is known that orders to suppress the strike in the capital originated directly from the office of President Ludendorff; General Lüttwitz, clad in the “garb of a bureaucrat”, appeared personally to amassed troops in the Wilmersdorf district, warning with typical oratorical malice that “the Bolshevik dogs have been let loose on the Reich”. Over 2,000 lost their lives in the March Gegenputsch, one of the bloodiest peacetime weeks in German history.

The end of the brief liberal watershed in Berlin confirmed every assumption of planners in London and Paris concerning German psychology – that they had entangled themselves with a people naturally inclined towards strong, autocratic government, with the Kapp-Lüttwitz complex representing merely the latest incarnation of an ancient, innate tendency that could simply not be pacified. French President Paul Deschanel, writing to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George a week after the putsch, decried the Germans as a “barbaric, tactless race … scarce in commitment to any but their own”. The appearance of a reactionary regime on France’s doorstep, less than two years after the deposition of Kaiser Wilhelm II, was a devastating enough blow to those in the West whom had vested their hopes in a new, democratic Germany; even more alarming was the presence of Ludendorff and Lüttwitz, estranged old generals with a violent contempt for anything modern, pluralistic or foreign, among the highest echelons of power. Despite a profession to republicanism (and its pledge was always a spurious one – Alfred Hugenberg, a media tycoon who quickly arose to align his empire with the putschists, oversaw the publication of a huge quantity of monarchist pamphlets and materials in apparent support of the coup), Kapp’s government was, in the eyes of outsiders, little different to the ancien régime, with its despotism and petty-aristocratic pretensions. Crucially, it had also acknowledged its intentions to suspend the Treaty of Versailles and reclaim lost German territory.

Nevertheless, the response of the Western Allies was initially cautious, not least due to evidence of heavy communist collusion in the overall counter-putsch resistance movement. The KDP’s ten-point declaration was run in dozens of regional newspapers, even ones formally affiliated with the Catholic Centre Party; though this succeeded in mobilizing thousands of workers in the absence of the SPD’s coordinating influence, it aroused reluctance among potential foreign sources of support, fearful that aid to any anti-Kapp elements would inadvertently empower the communists. This essential mistrust was highlighted on 16th March, when Erich Koch-Weser and Johannes Bell, sole escapees from the Reichskanzlei swoop, surfaced in Bremen, requesting French endorsement for the establishment of a provisional ‘night parliament’ in the city. Their attempts failed, partly because they were reluctant to accept Allied plans for an indefinite military occupation of the Ruhr, but first and foremost as a consequence of the pronounced presence of radical socialists in Bremen, characteristic of most other large German towns. Humiliated and weary, the wayward ministers resigned to slip into Denmark, where they would found an underground, liberal-oriented weekly, Nebelhorn (‘Foghorn’), soon to become the intellectual centrepiece of the moderate fugitive opposition.

For all his partialities to order and authoritarian governance, accentuated plainly in two weighty volumes of memoirs, it would not be erroneous to suggest mismanagement and organizational ineptitude on Walther von Lüttwitz’ behalf was to be exhibited in Germany’s well-attested descent into chaos in mid-March. The Vossische Zeitung, in a stunt that would see the bulk of its editorial staff imprisoned, deemed Lüttwitz “the Mayor of Berlin … a man whose politely-worded decrees are oft enforced at the edge of the bullet beyond the walls of this coffeehouse metropolis – if enforced at all”. The satirists had not been embellishing reality, but encapsulating it with quite brilliant panache. The general entrusted fully his officers to implement diktats and rulings, resulting in the prevalence of general anarchy. When, on 22nd March, President Ludendorff, under Lüttwitz’ guidance, pronounced the dissolution of the Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers, under the explicit pretext of an amnesty, subordinates in numerous jurisdictions set out instead to neutralize the KPD, overseeing mass-arrests and a spate of summary executions to the apparent indifference of Berlin. Within days, the Ruhr Red Army, a revolutionary umbrella group comprised of Marxist ‘Proletarian Hundreds’, former Spartacists, disgruntled SPD and USPD activists and members of the Free Workers’ Union of Germany, had staged a massive retaliatory rising in the west, rallying some 60,000 denizens, many Great War veterans of considerable combat ability, to its cause. In the coal-mining town of Bochum, outgunned militiamen successfully expelled a Freikorps unit; Paul Levi, ever the opportunist, seized the initiative to declare a ‘Rhenish Soviet Republic’ on 24th March. The events sparked international panic. France and Belgium began moving troops into their respective sectors of the occupied Rhineland, in preparation for a punitive invasion; whilst abstaining from formal manoeuvres, the British and American administrations were more than tacit in their support. The German government, more fearful of a foreign incursion targeting its industrial hinterland than the rebels themselves, acted hastily to scramble a large contingent westward. Brand Whitlock, the U.S. Ambassador to Brussels, reported with dismay in his communications with Washington the descent of Wilsonian Europe “fast into that grave abyss once again”.

On 1st April, clashes broke out along the bank of the Rhine. Theories abound as to whom engaged whom – the contemporary German line, attributing hostilities to the communists, must be treated with skepticism. Either way, the Allies were swift in their response. A French force of 13,000 was deployed into the Ruhr. Reichswehr high command had ordered a full evacuation eastwards within hours. At nightfall, the Tricolore was hoisted over Duisburg …

 

[Historyman 14]

Well, France just put itself in the ground.

 

[Faeelin]

Well, France just put itself in the ground.

It's stopping a bunch of militarists who have overthrown the legitimately elected government of Germany!

 

[Historyman 14]

It's stopping a bunch of militarists who have overthrown the legitimately elected government of Germany!

It right after WW1. OTL they did this like in 23, this is 1920. They had less time to rebuild and all.

 

[Magnum]

What is the exact POD ?

I see the troops reached the Brandenburger Tor at 5:30, instead of 6:25. OTL, the government fled at 6.15. Given that the troops started earlier (I highly doubt they just marcehd faster) and that it's unlikely that the government was not informed of their arrival, what exactly stopped them from departing the capital, at say 5:20 ?

 

[MrHaakwood]

It's stopping a bunch of militarists who have overthrown the legitimately elected government of Germany!

Thats just an excuse to occupy the Rhineland. Like OTL, just a different type of excuse.

 

[ChazMo]

What is the exact POD ?

I see the troops reached the Brandenburger Tor at 5:30, instead of 6:25. OTL, the government fled at 6.15. Given that the troops started earlier (I highly doubt they just marcehd faster) and that it's unlikely that the government was not informed of their arrival, what exactly stopped them from departing the capital, at say 5:20 ?

Reluctance among the cabinet. IOTL, the Reichskanzlei meeting was almost paralyzed by a clique of non-SPD ministers insisting that the government stick around to negotiate with the rebels, seeing little hope if they were to abandon ship.

 

[Jape]

This is very interesting stuff, keep it up.

 

[Faeelin]

Thats just an excuse to occupy the Rhineland. Like OTL, just a different type of excuse.

This one has considerably more weight, no?

 

[MrHaakwood]

This one has considerably more weight, no?

I think yes. And its pretty realistic, too. A red Germany would have certainly lead to a French/Belgium invasion. And here it is only a part of Germany turning red.

Funny, I had the thought that without the French invasion we could have seen a civil war, which could have been ended in a statelment.

A communist West Germany and a capitalistic East Germany.

 

[ChazMo]

This one has considerably more weight, no?

Hell, France was looking for any excuse to humiliate Germany. The reaction of Britain and the U.S. is, as we have seen, going to be more tepid, especially with workerist militias running amok in the Ruhr. None of the Allies wanted to empower communism, and they're all going to find themselves walking a tightrope here when dealing with the Kapp regime.

I think yes. And its pretty realistic, too. A red Germany would have certainly lead to a French/Belgium invasion. And here it is only a part of Germany turning red.

Funny, I had the thought that without the French invasion we could have seen a civil war, which could have been ended in a statelment.

A communist West Germany and a capitalistic East Germany.

That's a very interesting concept. I don't think it's possible at any time in the 20th Century, however, and definitely not in this TL. Nobody will tolerate it.

This is very interesting stuff, keep it up.

Have a pint!

 

[Faeelin]

Hell, France was looking for any excuse to humiliate Germany. The reaction of Britain and the U.S. is, as we have seen, going to be more tepid, especially with workerist militias running amok in the Ruhr. None of the Allies wanted to empower communism, and they're all going to find themselves walking a tightrope here when dealing with the Kapp regime.

Germany: Taken over by militarists who intend to break Versailles. With the legitimate government shot, imprisoned, or exiles. With communists and leftists fighting to save their revolution

The British response to this less is to shrug and do nothing, while the French don't get Adenauer (who presumably doesn't want to end up in a Concentration Camp) to run a separatist West German Republic.

I understand that everyone thinks that the French are pushovers, but there are reasons the Germans did not, in OTL, go ahead and say "screw you guys" to the Western Allies.

 

[ChazMo]

The French general staff had anticipated an intense response from the Ruhr Red Army to their encroachment, to such an extent that just over half of all formal planning had been relegated to counterinsurgency methods and technicalities (a speedy Reichswehr withdrawal was correctly forecast). These fears were not ill-founded. On 28th March, the KPD organ Die Rote Fahne had issued a statement, in (pidgin) French and German, urging the “brave footmen of the imperial-capitalist French Army” to mutiny, portending with more than a hint of Bolshevik sadism the “carnage” awaiting them in Germany. “The fields and factory-towns of the Ruhr shall run red with your lifeblood, comrades,” the invaders were warned. “You shall writhe and die in the mud … whilst your officers indulge in wine, wildfowl and women in the company messes.” The hostility of Berlin’s loyalists having subsided within a matter of hours, occupation troops were surprised to find a host of key towns and cities ripe for picking. The ‘revolutionary capital’ of Bochum succumbed without a shot fired. Much of the region’s industrial apparatus had been abandoned by employees, attested to by heaped masses of downed equipment set at the foot of plants and workplaces, but contingency plans had been devised to bus in French, Dutch and Belgian personnel. A grave silence prevailed where mere days before there had existed civil war conditions.

In actuality, the Red Army, in preparation for a protracted campaign, had begun stockpiling firearms and munitions a week prior to Allied intervention; volunteers, mostly local labourers, had sunk away into the civilian population, whilst the leadership had gone into hiding in the countryside. Radical Duisburg students were charged by the underground Soviet with distributing anti-French resources; despite explicit warnings within circulated pamphlets of a coming insurrection, the authorities appeared both powerless and apathetic to act, eluded by the communist leadership and unable to secure a scrap of the local population’s loyalty. Bernard Bardon, an officer supervising the occupation in Mülheim, reported with dismay, “we find ourselves among a people quite unlike those savages depicted in the Parisian newsreels – cold, treacherous, and quite a bit more damn clever, actually.” On 6th April, four troops were shot dead in an ambush on a Belgian motorized patrol outside the small town of Hinsbeck. In addressing the failure of the occupying administration to negotiate productively with striking employees, the League of Nations established a multinational Ruhr Executive Assistance Mandate (REAM); the sinister purpose at the heart of this initially obscurist venture was the procurement of Versailles reparations in the form of material goods. The project had been outed as an Allied ruse within weeks of its establishment, when, on 22nd April, attempts to introduce Polish strikebreakers into an Essen coalmine provoked vicious rioting. Though officially opposed to any concept of nationalism as a divisive bourgeois construct, the propaganda of the Rhenish Soviet would subsequently appeal to popular antipolonist sentiments, with the Ruhr Polish communities portrayed as subhuman stooges in the employ of foreign capitalist elements.

Alexander von Kluck, a decorated ex-general, arrived in Geneva on 7th April. Possessed of elegance and lashings of earthy grit, despite a perpetual confinement to crutches as a result of crippling injuries sustained on the Western Front, he had been dispatched by Ludendorff as a special envoy to the League of Nations, lending to the new German regime a face of respectability. His two-hour lecture to assembled delegates, lamenting Allied “impositions” upon Germany and condemning the Franco-Belgian effort as detrimental to peace in Europe, stands as a sweeping piece of diplomatic oratory, but there was ultimately little question as to the legality of the Ruhr occupation. Moreover, Kluck’s tone and buoyancy, a throwback to the days of imperial Prussian grandeur, did little to reflect the real position of Germany, a fragile state dominated by a paranoid elite. The occupation of the Ruhr had proven the impetus for a wave of internal purges, masterminded by Interior Minister Traugott von Jagow; among its targets were socialists, communists, intellectuals, trade unionists, moderate conservatives, dissident journalists and a handful of businessmen seen as detrimental to government interests. It is estimated that 91 individuals fell afoul of armed mobs, most of them in Berlin and Munich. Kapp, speaking to the Reichstag in mid-April, ascribed the murders to “enraged citizens”, seeking out a vent for their frustrations as “the Frenchman rapes them of common pride and brutalizes their compatriots in the Ruhrgebiet”. That they should resolve to attack high-profile figures was “exceedingly regrettable”, but “to be expected of a nation reawakened to its destiny, to the great multiplicity of scoundrels in its mist”. Legislators perceived as unwilling to toe the militarists’ line were among the first victims. A notorious incident, the so-called ‘Coffee Shop Massacre’, saw the assassination of eleven renegade USPD politicians in a teahouse just a mile from the Brandenburger Tor; the indifference of the police, alleged to have stood patiently aside as the killers stepped from the scene of the atrocity drenched in blood, convinced much of the democratic political establishment that their challenges to the regime were not only futile, but too self-endangering to merit consideration.

A similar bashfulness was not to be found among the labor unions, energized as never before by the proclamation of the Rhenish Soviet. Although the Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers, the most robust outpost of worker resistance, had been effectively dissolved, the vestiges of the German mass-action movement remained a resilient threat. Since the collapse of the Gegenputsch, to which it had committed itself to a controversial degree, the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB), purporting to represent 12 million industrial workers (the true, post-liquidation figure was actually far more modest), had drifted rapidly away from the Social Democrats. It was now not only an autonomous organization in its own right, but had aligned itself quite openly with the ‘centrist’ Bolshevism of the USPD. The identification of several western ADGB branches with the Ruhr Red Army sparked fears in rightist circles of an imminent revolt. Paranoia was vigorously compounded by a set of sensationalist documents produced by the Ministry of the Interior. These delicious slices of pulp melodrama, disproportionately overstating the influence of the ADGB and its links to revolutionary Marxist movements (in fact, their relationship was more a matter of common principle than cooperation on the national level), were summarily ‘leaked’ to the German press. As with so many other aspects of the Reich shadow state, especially in its early, turbulent days, it is difficult to discern the extent to which those in power were genuinely invested in their own propaganda. Whereas Lüttwitz and Kapp were more proactively concerned with eliminating opposition, seeing the trade unions as an entrenched but dispensable nuisance necessitating the application of dirty tactics, Traugott von Jagow was obsessed with fictitious communist machinations in the background, making all manner of ludicrous requests for new powers and emergency legislation (his proto-totalitarianism aggravated even Ludendorff, who privately derided him as an “impetuous old goat”).

Acknowledging the prospect of a massive parliamentary backlash if constitutional means were employed, Lüttwitz referred to his inner circle on the initiation of a large-scale clandestine drive against the ranks of the ADGB, aimed at retiring the organization to political irrelevance (and, therein, permitting a further consolidation of autocratic power). A two-pronged assault, it was decided, was to be mounted – bribes would be disseminated among junior organizers and union officials, to emasculate the body on a micro level, whilst the ‘detection’ of a gigantic conspiracy against the state would justify a swoop against the leadership, followed by a highly-publicized show trial before the Reichsgericht. Though the government’s logic was, by any objective stretch, hardly bankrupt, the plot was unviable from the start. Interior Ministry intelligence on labor groupings in general was painfully scant, failing to account for massive structural and logistical shifts since April. Quite simply, whereas unions had adopted a very civic ethos in the first two years of republican administration, a visible, evangelistic force to be found in every German workplace and town, the policies of the Kapp government had ushered them into a largely self-imposed marginalization. Though the ADGB hung like an enduring spectre over Berlin factory floors, its activity was strictly low-key and its prophets made few public appearances. It was not an outfit that could be efficiently monitored, and its membership, though brimming with resentment and radical fervor, deceived the authorities with their stoicism. Moreover, the SPD, to which it was a dedicated sponsor, had turned an unofficial blind eye, rendering the information the bureaucracy already had at hand a mostly inadequate and partial morass.

The willingness of low-ranking officials to accept ‘putschist carrots’ had been grossly misjudged. Of the 336 underlings consulted in May, only 64 agreed to assist in sabotaging their comrades. Under normal circumstances, this shoddy affair would compel its overseers to suspend the operation entirely. Alas, the ADGB was what Kapp, in a rare Americanism, termed Germany’s “negro in the woodpile” – a participant in the general process who’s very being undermined the authoritarian aspirations of the regime. Even where it lacked a coherent power-base, it was symbolically invaluable to the masses, offering a credible alternative to reactionary tyranny. The conservative ruling class was destined for a showdown with it – sooner, preferably, rather than later –, and only one, in the eyes of the Chancellor and his consociates, was going to emerge alive.

On the evening of 9th June, ADGB Chairman Carl Legien was arrested on the doorstep of his Friedrichshain apartment; most of his cohorts escaped a similar fate. The following day, crowds gathered outside the police station where he had been detained, demanding his release. As the hours progressed, an outlandish coalition massed, Marxist agitators mingling freely with local workers and curious bystanders. The alleged presence of Red Army fighters in the city incited a crackdown – and, as had become all too characteristic a narrative, violent suppression by bands of Freikorps thugs only legitimized the targeted cause. Pockets of radical activity emerged across the city, declaring themselves totally autonomous of the military government and its functionaries. Charles Chapel, reporting for The Times, wrote of the situation in Berlin on 12th June:

Barricades have sprung up across the city, manned by students, proletarians, cognoscente, the occasional errant petty-aristocrat – some armed with trowels and blunt tools of their respective trades, others with pillaged rifles. All bear red flags and hug their copies of Marx as close to their chests as mothers do their babes. They are regarded disgustedly from street-corners by throngs of soldiers and loyalists, either side presenting insults and diatribe wherever they locate opportunity. The Rhenish Soviet hangs like a mad god over the whole thing, never distant and yet immaterial to the point of travesty. Those outsiders with the will and persistence to parley will find no shortage of ‘spokespersons’, though their association with the body is dubious in the best of instances, invocative more of vague conceptual affinities than a personal communication with Herr Levi and his ring. Beer is in ample supply, and violent, semi-coherent rhetoric and political tirades are frequently interjected with Spartacist pub ditties, yielding a most peculiar, ideologically-charged festival atmosphere.

 

[ChazMo]

Germany proper and greater now faced a crisis of political identity, long-brewing but thus far manifest only in the guise of intermittent, weak spasms. Pockets of Berlin had been occupied overnight by labor unionists and communist militants, a grand leftist alliance ready to engage with the Rhenish Soviet. Kapp, realizing his own scheming had fermented the volatile situation he had dreaded all along, found himself walking a tightrope; all troops in the city were ordered to stand down until further notice. In a bizarre reconciliatory gesture, negotiators, clad in Pickelhauben and other articles of Prussian finery, were dispatched to the communes, armed with notices of eviction. Their very sight drew cries of derision, with many warded off before they could fulfill their purpose. Essayist Alfred Döblin witnessed surreal scenes at the Prenzlauer Berg stockade, detailed in the preface to 1925's Journey to Poland:

A young corporal, a poor soul, had been sent to rendezvous with the revolutionaries. His superiors had insisted upon dressing him in the uniform of an imperial officer, perhaps expecting of us the same inkling of cursory respect we had afforded the autocratic classes in the days of the Kaiser. Taunts were dispensed liberally at first, but it occurred soon to us that the man walked the walk of a plebeian – limp, subdued, ready to buckle with the strain of his ideal. My comrades, like a horde of football supporters unbridled of inhibition ... began to chant. "Come join us, brother," they shouted in chorus, "whilst the soup is hot and Herr Lüttwitz bats an eye the other way!" And join us the boy did, throwing off his uniform and setting himself down before the crowds. A flaxen-headed maiden armed with an old pistol rushed to grant our guest a much-merited tankard of beer, which he received hesitantly if warmly. Amid the cheers and the fanfare, I watched our supervisors beyond, a pair of Freikorps brutes, regard us with withdrawn incredulity, quietly satisfying their brutal urges with impromptu massages of the barrels of their rifles. Neither side considered the other fully human. We were naught but reptiles in one-another's eyes, exotic predators beggaring extermination.

In the Ruhr, matters had deteriorated so dramatically that even British observers at the League of Nations were compelled to vocally chastize the Franco-Belgian administration. Political murders, as in Germany, were the order of the day, claiming 97 lives between April and June. Frightfully, however, the occupation had provided both the Red Army and ultranationalist elements a common antagonist where literally no placatory ground had existed before. Grenade and machine gun attacks on patrolling soldiers engendered utter chaos, the perpetrators able to slip back across the border into lawless western Germany at will. Though the French accrued no excellent reputation, the Belgian army became quickly renowned for both its harshness and its incompetence. General Léon de Witte presided over a judicatory apparatus independent of both the local and French systems, with huge numbers of civilians interned and tortured. This was perhaps an attempt to compensate for perceptions of the Belgian contingent as hapless. Having been supplied a glut of faulty intelligence, French planners eventually neglected cooperation with their counterparts, ignoring any concept of occupational jurisprudence whenever it suited them.

Believing the militarist stranglehold to be weakening – the executive's immediate response to the Berlin demonstrations had been a display of exceptional propitiation –, the Reichstag seized the initiative now presented to it. On 13th June, the Social Democrats brought an unauthorized proposition before the house, warranting the withdrawal of all parliamentary support for Kapp's cabinet in the light of "a popular expression of mass-disenchantment with the present government". It accused the government of failing to "protect the sovereignty of the Reich", and of "acting in a highly autocratic manner, detached of constitutional sense and provision". This censure motion was symbolic in nature, its advocates knowing all too well that their superiors held the democratic process in contempt, but it made clear their position in the unfolding street action, channeling pressure against the regime. It also amounted to a trump interjection into an increasingly difficult fray – the allegiance of the ADGB to conventional political institutions, its members now collaborating with communist militiamen in armed enclaves across Berlin, could not be guaranteed. To this end, the motion set out to identify the Reichstag as a force of moderation, a bulwark against the excesses of both the putschists and the Rhenish Soviet, and a potential beacon of foreign support (though the bill itself, and the platforms of virtually every parliamentary body, assumed a critical position on the Ruhr occupation and German treaty commitments to the Allies). Following frantic, hostile scenes on the floor, the results of the motion were declared – 329 members had cast their ballots in favor, 46 in opposition, and 48 had abstained.

Upon hearing of the vote, Ludendorff was infuriated; a dubious legend had him launch into a obloquy, berating an aide with cries of "Where is their loyalty?!" for an hour. Evoking Article 25, he dissolved the Reichstag until further notice. A cavalry battallion was dispatched to escort rebel MPs from the building; they were paraded like spoils of war through the business districts of Berlin. At sundown, army raids on the communes began. Cracks of gunfire could be heard for miles around, conjuring an atmosphere Reinhold Schneider, in his modernist critique of Dante's Inferno, would memorably describe as "a hell ... of crickets". Unlike in previous clashes, there was no accompanying orgy of looting as the bloodbath progressed, General Lüttwitz having stressed his displeasure with such conduct among the ranks of the army and Freikorps. Nor had the unrest, in a miracle of sorts, spread to other German cities – this was an uprising isolated to Berlin, the ADGB and Red Army having invested all their manpower and resources in a cataclysmic confrontation in the capital. The human cost was, irrespective of this, horrendous as ever. In excess of 400 picketers, mostly unarmed, were massacred. The captors of Gustav Bauer and his deputation, imprisoned since March, murdered their wards in cold blood, hanging their bodies from the window a department store overlooking the Pariser Platz. The execution of the cabinet remains shrouded in uncertainty. Though no record of an order exists, speculation abounds that a senior figure in the regime personally commissioned the killings (Kapp or Lüttwitz, both of whom would appear in Berlin on 18th June to praise the army's 'work', are prime suspects, as is Traugott von Jagow, who was in the city throughout).

It may seem surprising that the level of destruction dealt to organized labor in Germany after the June violence is an enduring subject of debate. An organization the size of the ADGB was unlikely to be struck a decisive blow in the space of a single week; its death was, it transpired, to be a gradual withering of influence and structure. Reichsexekution was declared in Prussia and Saxony on 14th June, with the proclamation expanded to entail a general state of martial law by 21st June; this lent the union a window to 'disappear'. All key documentation was destroyed, and local branches were organized around a skeletal base of command. There is evidence to suggest groups of workers would continue to meet in secret cells for years afterward – the harassment and brutalization of urban industrialists and supervisors was not to be unheard of, despite the intolerance of Kapp's government. The fate of the Rhenish Soviet and Ruhr Red Army was, by contrast, to be far more abrupt. Their foray into German cities had been botched, devastating their ranks, and they would now reserve themselves to activities in the occupied Ruhr and the western countryside. Neither group would ever find the opportunity to stage such a 'spectacular' again.