WI: The Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch Succeeded?

Donald James Goodspeed, The Conspirators: A Study of Coup d'Etat (New York: Viking Press, 1961) regrets that the coup was such a fiasco:

"One consideration, quite beyond their control, would almost certainly have resulted in their ultimate ruin, even if they had been a hundred times more efficient and intelligent than they were. In 1920 the Allies would never have permitted a military dictatorship to be established in Germany. Von Seeckt and the responsible officers of the Reichswehr realized this clearly. It was this, indeed, that determined their whole attitude towards the coup.

"In one way therefore it was tragic that the Kapp putsch should have been such a fiasco. It might have been better for Germany and the world if the rebellion had succeeded for a time. For if Kapp and von Luttwitz had been more efficient, the Allies would have intervened. France in particular, with her far-sighted Marshal Foch and her implacable Clemenceau, and with memories of invasion still fresh in the national mind, would not have tolerated a militarist revival in Germany. The revolutionary nationalists would have been forced either to fight under conditions in which they could not possibly have won or to surrender so abjectly they would have been discredited forever. Men like Luttwitz and Ehrhardt would certainly have chosen to fight--and they would have been obliterated.

"As it turned out, the ideas of the rebels were by no means discredited. Their coup had failed, but nothing less than decisive and bloody retribution would have persuaded these gentlemen to change their minds. When nothing of the sort was forthcoming, the Freikorpskampfer regained their spirits. What was one failure more or less? Was it not true that the seed is not quickened except it die? And so for the next thirteen years their revolutionary nationalism germinated darkly in the German soil.

"By 1933 the situation had greatly changed. Intervention was no longer to be feared; Clemenceau and Foch were both dead; and the Reichswehr had been seriously infiltrated by Right Radical elements. Worst of all, Hitler and his supporters had learned something from Kapp's failure. The Nazis did not take over the state by a coup d'etat, but once they had formed a Government, they knew how to consolidate their power. There was nothing aimless about them. They had pondered the set-back of 1920 and had drawn the obvious Freikorps conclusion - everything would be all right if only they shot more people."

I don't agree with Goodspeed's evident belief that ruthless Allied suppression of a Kappist regime would have killed off the revolutionary Right in Germany once and for all. But I do agree with him that the Allies, and especially France, would not have tolerated the putschists coming to power in 1920.
 

raharris1973

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I don't agree with Goodspeed's evident belief that ruthless Allied suppression of a Kappist regime would have killed off the revolutionary Right in Germany once and for all. But I do agree with him that the Allies, and especially France, would not have tolerated the putschists coming to power in 1920.

If the Kapp Putsch succeeds enough for there to be a farcical "war of French suppression of German self-respect" in 1920 or so, when is the earliest the revolutionary far right could come back into power in Germany afterward without sparking immediate foreign intervention?

What would a successful Kapp putsch do in terms of British opinion toward continental issues?
 
BTW, in case of a war between the Kappists and the Entente, the Kappists might receive support from an unlikely source:

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"THE NINTH PARTY CONFERENCE

"To leading communists, at home and abroad, he [Lenin--DT] was equally heroic; but some of them also found him extremely enigmatic. Paul Levi, the theoretician of the German Communist Party, had been startled by his encounter with the Bolshevik leader at the Second Congress of the Communist International. Levi thought that, if a non-communist government in Berlin were to go to war against the Allies, his own party should refrain from involvement.119 Lenin, however, remonstrated that German communists should even form what he called 'an unnatural bloc' with the extreme political right in such a contingency. The ex-army officers under Wolfgang Kapp, who had attempted to seize power in March 1920, should be welcomed as partners. According to Lenin, Kapp and his associates differed from Russian counter-revolutionaries in the crucial respect that they were determined to overthrow the treaty of Versailles.120 A German anti-Allies campaign would therefore be a war of national liberation. Once it had been won, the German Communist Party in turn would resume the political offensive against the German bourgeoisie.121

"That Lenin should have impressed this upon Levi was remarkable enough: the advocate of 'European civil war' in 1914-1917 had become the supporter of a Burgfrieden [civic peace--DT] between the German bourgeoisie and working class.122 Even more stunning was the timing of his argument. At that moment the Red Army was thrusting its forces into Poland. Not only Warsaw but also Berlin was its objective. Lenin sensed that the long-awaited pan-European revolution was imminent. A seizure of power by Italian communists seemed likely to him, and he had written to Stalin in July that Bukharin and Zinoviev agreed with this assessment.123 Lenin was already thinking about the practicalities: `My personal opinion,' he confided, `is that for this purpose it is necessary to sovietise Hungary and perhaps Czechia and Romania too.'124 Such grandiose thinking about the political map of Europe was not altogether lightheaded. Northern Italy at the time was convulsed with working-class strikes and factory occupations. Not was Lenin oblivious of the difficulties. In particular, his altercations with Levi showed a recognition that socialist revolution in Germany might be more difficult to bring about than elsewhere. And his strategical deviousness was reminiscent of Stalin's Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. For Lenin was willing to do a deal with the kind of militarists who would become Nazis by the end of the decade.125

Robert Service, Lenin: A Political Life: Volume 3: The Iron Ring, pp. 135-6. https://books.google.com/books?id=58G-DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA135 https://books.google.com/books?id=58G-DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA136

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The problem, however, is that Lenin was speaking several months after the failure of the Kapp putsch. In March 1920 the Poles were on the offensive, and there was little Lenin could do to save Kapp from the Entente (nor did the infant KPD have the resources to do so).

Also, "Lenin's discussion of the "unnatural characteristic bloc" (102) between right-wing German patriots (he calls them German Kornilovites) and Bolsheviks emphasized, however, the temporary and strictly informal nature of the alliance, warning clearly: "If you form a bloc with the German Kornilovites, they will dupe you" (103)." https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=16127 Lenin emphasized that a civil war in Germany was still necessary if Germany was to become Soviet. https://books.google.com/books?id=UBnv9I_guMUC&pg=PA103 But that doesn't change the fact that he did advocate such an alliance, however temporary, informal, and "unnatural": "an unnatural characteristic bloc emerged, a bloc that was not formed by agreement, that was not recorded anywhere or voted on, but a bloc in which the Kappists and the Kornilovites, the entire mass of patriotically inclined elements joined up with the Bolsheviks..." https://books.google.com/books?id=UBnv9I_guMUC&pg=PA102
 
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