Spartacist uprising
The Spartacist uprising, also known as the January uprising or, more rarely, Bloody Week, was an armed uprising that took place in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919. It occurred in connection with the German revolution that broke out just before the end of World War I. The uprising was primarily a power struggle between the supporters of the provisional government led by Friedrich Ebert of the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany, which favored a social democracy, and those who backed the position of the Communist Party of Germany led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, which wanted to set up a council republic similar to the one established by the Bolsheviks in Russia. The government's forces were victorious in the fighting.
The death toll was roughly 150–200, mostly among the insurgents. The most prominent deaths were those of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who were executed extrajudicially on 15 January, almost certainly with the at least tacit approval of the MSPD-led government. The party's involvement hampered its position throughout the life of the Weimar Republic, although quashing the uprising allowed elections for the National Assembly to take place as scheduled on 19 January 1919. The Assembly went on to write the Weimar Constitution that created the first national German democracy.
The uprising took its popular name from the Marxist Spartacus League, which Luxemburg and Liebknecht founded in 1914. When the KPD was established on 1 January 1919, the Spartacus League became part of it. Some historians, such as Heinrich August Winkler and Sebastian Haffner, consider the name to be misleading because the Spartacists had not wanted, planned, or led the revolt.
Background and causes
On 10 November 1918, the Council of the People's Deputies under the co-leadership of Friedrich Ebert of the Majority Social Democratic Party and Hugo Haase of the more left-wing Independent Social Democratic Party was formed as a provisional government following the collapse of the German Empire at the end of World War I. It had three representatives each from the MSPD and USPD. The Supreme Army Command implicitly recognized the Council the same day in the secret Ebert-Groener Pact in which Wilhelm Groener, Quartermaster General of the German Army, assured Chancellor Ebert of the loyalty of the armed forces. In return, Ebert promised to take prompt action against leftist uprisings and leave military command with the officer corps. The MSPD leadership sought a rapid return to "orderly conditions" by means of elections to a national constituent assembly which would democratically determine Germany's future form of government. The USPD, the Revolutionary Stewards and parts of the working class wanted to continue working towards their revolutionary goals of nationalizing property, stripping power from the military and establishing a council republic.On 1 January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht founded the Communist Party of Germany. Because of the unhappiness of many workers with the course of the November Revolution, other left-socialist groups joined in the party's foundation. The Revolutionary Stewards, however, after deliberations with the Spartacists, decided to remain in the USPD. Luxemburg presented her founding program on 31 December 1918. In it she noted that the Communists could never take power without the clear support of the majority of the people. On 1 January she again urged that the KPD participate in the planned elections for a constituent assembly, but she was outvoted. The majority hoped to gain power by continued agitation in the factories and pressure from the streets.
On 23 December, a dispute arose over back pay owed to the People's Marine Division, which had been assigned to protect the provisional government in Berlin. In an attempt to force payment, the sailors took Otto Wels, the military commander of Berlin, hostage. The following day, when the three MSPD members of the Council of the People's Deputies ordered Berlin's police chief, Emil Eichhorn, to use the security forces under his command to free Wels, he refused. Ebert then had the Army called in and ordered it to use deadly force against the People's Navy Division in what came to be known as the 1918 Christmas crisis. Wels was freed, but eleven men from the People's Marine Division and 56 from the Army were killed.
On 29 December, the three USPD representatives on the Council resigned in protest. The MSPD representatives then appointed two MSPD members to replace them. After that the USPD no longer saw the Council as a legitimate interim government. MSPD majorities in the workers' councils agreed to Ebert's wish to dismiss Police Chief Eichhorn, whom he now considered unreliable, but the USPD and KPD interpreted Eichhorn's dismissal as an attack on the revolution. This became the immediate trigger of the uprising.
Uprising
Mass demonstrations and general strike
On 4 January, Eichhorn was dismissed and replaced by Eugen Ernst of the MSPD. Despite their differences, the Revolutionary Stewards and the executive committee of the Berlin USPD resolved to hold a demonstration the next day. The 5 January protest exceeded expectations of scale and turnout; in total, there were 100,000 participants in the demonstrations and related strikes. Over the course of the next seven days, armed demonstrators occupied the printing plants of the Social Democratic newspaper Vorwärts and the Berliner Tageblatt, as well as several publishing houses' buildings, a printing plant and a telegraph office.The leading members of the Revolutionary Stewards, the USPD and the KPD met on the evening of 5 January to decide how to proceed. Most of those present supported the occupation of the Berlin newspaper district and were in favor of taking up the fight against the Social Democratic government. Liebknecht had been "whipped into a state of revolutionary euphoria" by the size of the demonstration and the false report that all regiments in and around Berlin were on their side, whereas Luxemburg continued to oppose these actions. Only two spokesmen for the Revolutionary Stewards, Richard Müller and Ernst Däumig, spoke out against the course of action. While both in principle supported a second revolution against the Council of People's Deputies, they considered the timing premature and tactically unwise; they voted only for a general strike. A provisional revolutionary committee to overthrow the government and take power was decided on by about 70 of those present against 6 no votes from the ranks of the Revolutionary Stewards. The committee was formed of 53 people, with Georg Ledebour, Liebknecht and Paul Scholze the three co-equal chairmen.
The following day, the Revolutionary Committee called on the workers of Berlin to stage a general strike on 7 January and overthrow Ebert's government. The call was answered by up to 500,000 people who poured into the city center. They did not take part in any fighting in the days that followed, nor were they joined by the strike leaders, although they were ready to disarm the soldiers, as they had been on 9 November. Some of their placards and banners bore the same slogans as at the beginning of the November Revolution: "Peace and Unity", but there were also fliers such as the one issued by the "revolutionary workforce of Greater Berlin":
Workers! Comrades! Soldiers! The hour has come when the revolution must be brought to a victorious end. Either we establish the dictatorship of the proletariat or we will see Ebert – Scheidemann, the executioners of the revolution, strangle it to death.... Workers! Comrades! Soldiers! Take power into your hands. Overthrow the government, which places itself protectively before the coffers, which has betrayed and only betrayed the revolution. Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat! Long live the revolution!
Division among leadership
Over the next two days, the Revolutionary Committee could not agree on how to proceed. Some representatives called for armed insurrection while others pleaded for negotiations with Ebert. The Committee was in particular unable to signal to the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who were waiting for direction in the streets and squares what they should do. Because of that they went home again on the evenings of both 5 and 6 January without having accomplished anything.KPD leader Liebknecht, initially against the advice of Luxemburg, supported the plan to unleash a civil war. The Council of People's Deputies was to be overthrown by force of arms and the elections to the National Assembly scheduled for 19 January prevented. Liebknecht feared that the KPD might otherwise isolate itself too much from the workers who sought the overthrow of the government. At the same time, KPD members tried to win over to their side some of the regiments stationed in Berlin, especially the People's Marine Division. They did not succeed, since most of the soldiers were already at home, either because they had declared themselves neutral or their loyalty was to the Council of People's Deputies. In addition, a part of Berlin's citizens, especially the middle class, rallied behind Ebert's government, heeding its call to strike and to act as living shields to secure government buildings.
On 6 January the Revolutionary Committee began negotiating with Ebert through the mediation of USPD leadership. The negotiations failed on 7 January due to the unwillingness of either side to compromise. The Council of People's Deputies demanded the evacuation of the occupied newspaper buildings, while the insurgents insisted on Eichhorn's reinstatement. The chance for a nonviolent settlement of the conflict was thus lost.
Government response
On the same day, Ebert gave Gustav Noske command of the troops in and around Berlin, and calls went out for the formation of more Freikorps units. Since early December 1918, such Freikorps units had been forming from former frontline soldiers and volunteers. Now Ebert and Noske allowed them to muster around Berlin with organizations loyal to the Republic and with imperial regiments, some loyal but most hostile to the Republic. Immediately after Noske's appointment, he ordered that all members of the Revolutionary Committee be monitored so that they could be arrested later. To this end, 50 officers were posted in all Berlin post offices.On 8 January the Council of People's Deputies called on the population to resist the insurgents and their intended takeover of the government and published a leaflet in which they announced they would meet violence with violence:
Spartacus fights for all the power. The government, which wants to bring about the people's free decision on their own fate within ten days, is to be overthrown by force. The people will not be allowed to speak, their voice will be suppressed. You have seen the results! Where Spartacus rules, all personal freedom and security is cancelled. The press is suppressed, traffic is paralysed. Parts of Berlin are the scene of bloody battles.... Violence can only be fought with violence. The organised violence of the people will put an end to oppression and anarchy.... The hour of reckoning is approaching!On 9 January the central executive committee of the Berlin USPD and the KPD issued a joint appeal demanding a fight against "the Judases in the government.... They belong in the penitentiary, on the scaffold.... Use weapons against your mortal enemies."
The mass of the working class followed the call for a general strike to prevent a counterrevolution, but it did not want to have anything to do with military struggles. On the contrary, they continued to demand the unity of the socialist forces and, at a large meeting in the Humboldthain Park on 9 January, demanded the resignation of all the leaders responsible for the "fratricide". Both the Ebert government and Ledebour and Liebknecht were seen as responsible for the situation. Numerous resolutions from the factories called for an end to the street fighting and the creation of a government in which all socialist parties would be represented. In the view of historian Sebastian Haffner, the executive committee of the Berlin USPD and KPD had failed the uprising, which was "entirely the spontaneous work of the masses of Berlin workers who had made the November Revolution; the masses were overwhelmingly Social Democrats, not Spartacists or Communists, and their January uprising was no different than their November revolution had been."