The Iron Dice | The Fight for the Republic #4

In the wake of the collapse of the monarchy in 1918, fear of a far-left takeover of the German government reaches the point of hysteria. As right-wing death squads pop up all over the countryside, a national newspaper warns that the country is about to "drown in blood"...

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Transcript

Hello and Welcome to the Iron Dice. My name is Dan Arrows, and you are about to listen to part four of our series called "The Fight for the Republic." about the early days of Weimar Germany. As we now advance further into the series, it's probably a good idea to give you a quick summary of where we are in our story now, what our main characters are doing, and the general state of things; so that you are not forced to go back and listen to the previous episodes if you're new to the series or don't remember every single detail.

So. After throwing over two million of their best young men into the meatgrinder and depleting nearly all its resources, Germany exits the great war on the side of the vanquished. At the same time, workers and soldiers take to the streets to kick out the corrupt old elites that brought them into this mess, and in early November 1918, the German monarch, the Kaiser, flees into exile. The monarchy collapses, and the social democratic party of Germany declares the new democratic Republic. While that might sound like a happy ending, not everyone is pleased about this development, and this moment really is the calm before the storm. Because now that the old power is gone, the question is, who will be the power to replace it? And as you will see throughout this show, all sides are quick to throw away the idea of peaceful cooperation and instead have their daggers drawn.

<INTRO>

Quote:

"The stars are dead. The animals will not look. / We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and / History to the defeated / May say Alas but cannot help or pardon."

W.H. Auden

The date is October 23ed 1918, and a train is heading towards Berlin. In this train sits a man who might be the most crucial figure in our story. Not necessarily because of what he does but more what he represents. I think its safe to say that there is no single man in Germany, as feared as our train passenger in late 1918. His speeches strike terror into the hearts of the upper-middle to upper classes. Besides his real name, he has many nicknames given to him by his comrades or his enemies, Newspapers. The nickname that encapsulates the best how this man was seen by many people inside Germany is given to him by a right-wing newspaper at the end of the year. They call him "The Demon". 

"The Demon of the Revolution" to be precise. The person behind that nickname sitting aboard the train towards Berlin is a man in his late forties with black hair, pince-nez glasses sitting on his nose, and observant eyes. He has just been released from prison, and is now about to arrive in Berlin to reunify with his followers. This group used to be named the "Group International". Now they carry a name that is a bit more striking: The Spartacus League, and our passenger is no other than their head figure Karl Liebknecht.

We talked about him in a previous episode, although not a lot because he's not at all involved with the Revolution when it kicks off in the North of the country. He and Rosa Luxemburg, the other central figure on the far-left in the country, are unable to exert any influence on the Revolution as it develops and there are a couple of reasons for this. Rosa only gets out of jail on November ninth, the day the Revolution ends. Karl Liebknecht gets out in October but doesn't see the Revolution coming, and when it arrives, there is no headquarters of this Revolution that you could take control over. It's mostly spontaneous revolts following their own rhythms, so Liebknecht couldn't insert himself into any of these developments, except in Berlin. What these two instead will focus on is pushing for a second revolution, so to speak. Because when the social democrats proclaim the Republic from the Reichstag, they see the Revolution as finished. The Kaiser is gone; everybody calm down, we'll take it from here.

Liebknecht, Luxemburg, and the group around them, don't want any of that, they want to push on to the world revolution. Merely hours after the social democrats try to end the Revolution, Liebknecht and his followers take to the Royal Palace in Berlin and try to seize the momentum. The place for this isn't arbitrarily chosen; four years ago on the spot Liebknecht is speaking from, the Kaiser held his famous "now it has to be the sword" speech reading the country for war. Now on that very same balcony, Liebknecht declares that 

"The rule of capitalism, which has turned Europe into a cemetery, is broken." and that "We have to collect all our force to establish a government of workers and soldiers, to create a new stately order of the proletariat, an order of peace, of prosperity, of liberty of our German brethren, and of our brethren all over the world." 

Basically telling the social democrats to go f themselves with their bourgeois Republic and that the only legitimate new order can be a dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers.

A big theme about Liebknecht is how some of the things he does fly past his target audience and instead rile up the people who are scared of him. This speech is an excellent example because the vast majority of folks in Berlin that day, simply went home as the social democrats suggested. Other people who are closely monitoring Liebknecht and his doings are freaked out by one sentence in particular. That is the closing line of his speech where he addresses the workers of the world and says":

We stretch out our hands to them and call on them to complete the world revolution.

To you and me, this might sound like bog-standard leftist rhetoric of the time, but when Liebknecht consciously envokes the world revolution, not the German Revolution, and thereby connects this Revolution with the one in Russia that broke lose roughly a year prior, it only stokes the worst fears of people on the right, liberals and others.

Namely that Liebknecht is not only secretly the head behind the latest developments in Germany, but that he is also a tool of the Russian Bolshevists. Partially this image is created by coincidence. For instance, Liebknecht gets released from jail shortly before the Revolution kicks off. There is also his friendly relationship with another source of anxiety in the country, the Russian embassy. When Liebknecht is set free and takes the train to Berlin, one of the first things he and his follower do is march to the Russian embassy, not to plan the next steps in the world revolution, but to party and get wasted.

Rumors have been making the rounds that the Russians in Berlin are importing propaganda and weapons via train to push for Revolution in Germany. And Liebknecht merely being present in that embassy and hanging out with his comrades is enough to get him woven into these rumours about how the embassy is the headquarters of a secret communist organization.

On November fourth, as the mail for all the diplomats in Berlin arrives via train, one of the wooden crates allegedly bursts only to spill out what German agents described as "Bolshevik Propaganda". The reaction of the German government is pretty drastic. They expel the Russian ambassador and all of his subordinates from Berlin, and pull their own ambassador from Moscow. Now this government was in its last days of existence anyway, but it shows the anxiety and intense fear of "Russian conditions" breaking loose on the country among elites and parts of the citizenry. November fourth also happens to be the day Austria-Hungary capitulates, and the sailor's revolt in Kiel becomes more and more public, and these two developments coinciding with the Russian ambassador getting expelled seems to confirm the rumors making the rounds. All this chaos is the doing of domestic and foreign agents. And keep in mind this idea wasn't that far-fetched because, during the war, Germany used agents to start trouble in other countries all the time. One of whose name is now known around the world "Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin." I've mentioned historian Mark Jones and his book Founding Weimar in the past, which is truly indispensable to this podcast, and he goes to great lengths to point out how much of this fear and anxiety about the far-left is whipped up by the media. Even liberal newspapers don't shy away from claiming that these leaflets allegedly being discovered confirm the suspicion that Jews are working together with the Bolsheviks to distribute subversive material. Their proof for this is that the Russian ambassador happened to be of Jewish descent, but of course, his or the actions of other communist jews don't have anything to do with their Jewishness. They are motivated by being communists, and naturally, an ideology that says; we don't care what your heritage or religion is because we are all workers, would be appealing to a minority that had been excluded and persecuted basically forever. The social democratic party newspaper, which is called "Vorwärts" or Forward, warns that the originators of these leaflets want to divide the German working class and force "Russian conditions" on them. Civil war, food shortages, all these horrific images most Germans connect to the Russian Revolution at this point in time. And because the population is already anxious, they rush to consume media that reaffirms their fears. Newspapers in our instance, but this media dynamic isn't unique to our story, as you well know. 

The newspapers take notice of this, too, and love to do nothing more than satisfy the demand of the masses to be reaffirmed in their belief that the country is going down the drain. Here is how Mark Jones talks about it:

"with each passing day the content of newspapers continuously added to the sense of alarm: only days after the press had reported upon the disintegration of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the first reports of disorders in northern Germany appeared under headlines such as 'Riots in Kiel', until this headline was replaced with more threatening lines such as 'Riots in the port towns' or 'Riots in coastal towns'. Soon after, whole pages of news began appearing under the terrifying headline of 'Riots in the Empire' or 'movement in the Empire'. This linear pattern of newspaper headlines was a fundamental part of the experience of the Revolution as a moment that overwhelmed contemporaries. By November seventh, the pace of events was so dramatic that even Gustav Mayer (who is a contemporary German historian) thought that it was 'beyond doubt' that the Revolution was proceeding according to the instruction of a 'perfectly functioning central leadership'."

And there is only one person who this could realistically be right? It's the demon, Karl Liebknecht.

He himself doesn't do a whole lot to dispel this image, quite the opposite. For instance, during his speech from the balcony of the Royal Palace, Liebknecht boasts that 

"when they bid us farewell, our Russian brothers told us "You have one month to achieve what we have achieved, otherwise we will turn away from you. and it only took us "four days"

By all accounts, that is a total and complete lie by Liebknecht. Even if the Russian embassy had instructed him to kick off the Revolution, he had nothing to do what happened in the northern port towns and subsequently the rest of the country. Liebknecht just purposely takes credit for something he had nothing to do with. But instead of inspiring the working masses or whatever goal he might have had when he said this, it only confirms what the press and his enemies made him out to be. A tool of Moscow wielded to plunge Germany into chaos. So it is a total shot in the foot for Liebknecht. He wants to present himself as the German Lenin and is successful but mainly in creating this image for his enemies. And to be fair, if there ever could have been a person like that in Germany at the time, it would've been him. Compared to Rosa Luxemburg, he is not a big theorist, so he didn't spend his time writing a lot on political economy or stuff like that. He is also not a particularly skillful politician during his time in the Reichstag. What sticks out the most about him is that he is incredibly courages. A well-known liberal historian from Germany, Sebastian Haffner, even calls him "one of the most courageous men Germany ever produced."

Before and during the war, Liebknecht was staunchly anti-militarist and paid a high price for that public stance. He got sent to the eastern front, thrown into prison, and generally got ostracized from society. But enduring those hardships gave him an immense amount of clout, so to speak. He traded in his privileged position on behalf of the working class that was sent to die by his colleagues and the military. So it only makes sense that now the revolutionary movement is looking to him for guidance.

Despite his passionate speech and repeatedly calling on the working class to carry on the world revolution, for now, he remains unsuccessful. Partially because abroad the leftist spectrum, moderates, and radicals, there is a consensus that a total collapse of the "government machine" as it's sometimes called back then, is to be prevented under any circumstances. And this consensus is what motivated the leaders of the social democrats to meet with the higher-ups of the Independents in the hopes of getting together a government coalition. Don't get me wrong, these guys are far from allies. At this point, the rift between the two had grown so large that the Independents didn't even greet people they had known and worked with for years back before the party split over the issue of the war. Despite that, on November ninth, the leader of the social democrats Friedrich Ebert proposes to set up a joint cabinet; half social democrats, half independents. There is some back and forth; both sides have conditions that the other side rejects. The most significant demand from the independents, in line with what Liebknecht wants, is to put all state power into the hands of the worker and soldier councils that sprung up during the Revolution. The social democrats reject this and respond by saying 

"If this demand means the dictatorship of a part of a class that is not backed by the majority of the people, we reject this demand because it speaks against our democratic principles."

As you can see, the SPD chooses their words very carefully; some might even say sneaky since reading that sentence, you could still think the SPD supports a dictatorship of the proletariat; it just has to be all of the proletariat if that makes sense. Of course, that's not what they support. They want this joint government to end the civil war among the left. To them, that is the only way to get the working masses, behind a new government. At the same time, they know that if they just drag the most important questions of the day out a bit, they will probably end up on top. The pitch that they make is that we want to socialize the means of production and so on. We want the same things the radicals wish to do. We just want to do them in an orderly fashion.

A day later on November tenth both sides agree to form this new cabinet, called the Council of the People's Deputies to fill the role of government temporarily. It consists of three social democrats and three independents so everything they do has to be agreed upon by both sides; that said, de facto Friedrich Ebert, who is part of the council, pulls the strings to a large extent. He has connections to the unions and people who hold influence among the workers and knows how to play the game of politics. Doesn't mean the Independents and the radicals within the their party surrendered then and there, though. Because one thing the social democrats agree to is that there is going to be another council, voted on directly by the workers that's supposed to function as a check on the interim government of Ebert and the like. So Liebknecht and friends put their cards on controlling this second "executive council" as it's called. That way they will be the ones holding the reigns of power in country.

So a day later, everyone meets in a big Circus building in Berlin. There are about three thousand people there, each one representing roughly 200 workers or soldiers. Friedrich Ebert is there to argue his case. Karl Liebknecht is there too, along with his crew, the Spartacists, and Liebknecht has good reason to be optimistic. Because the people at this meet up that both sides are trying to woo, have been directly elected by the workers of Berlin. They are the voice of the proletariat, so why would they want to give up their power, the power of the councils to another government body? He is in for a rough awakening.

Friedrich Ebert is the first to speak and gives his usual arguments, you know, let us not turn this crisis into a catastrophe. What we need is Bread, work, and above all, unity among the left. As he announces that the Council of the People's Deputies has been formed with an equal amount of social democrats and independents, the crowd erupts in cheers. After Ebert, Liebknecht takes his spot, in the center of the circus and says that the Revolution is only safe in the workers' hands. He warns the crowd to trust those who fought against the Revolution two days ago, and today march with it. A direct attack on Ebert and the social democrats. To Liebknechts surprise, though, he doesn't earn cheers with this line. He gets the opposite. He gets booed by the crowd: his crowd, the workers of Berlin. They shout back at him, "Unity, Unity!" and to stop with this war between brothers. Other people shout back at them and fist fights start to break out. Ebert even flees the building after the Spartacists threaten him directly.

Now you might wonder why this meeting didn't turn into the slam dunk for the radicals that Liebknecht had hoped it would? 

Well, remember what I said about Ebert knowing how to play the political game?

As soon as the social democrats knew this meeting would take place, they immediately sent their guys into the factories, who then spent the bigger part of the night lobbying for socialist unity. That all this infighting will just lead to civil war, hunger and misery. And he was successful. When the meeting ends, the executive council, the radicals wanted be their tool to secure the Revolution ends up consisting of 50% social democrats, 50% independents in the spirit of unity. 

This leaves the Spartacist shut out of any significant institution created in the wake of the Revolution, merely a day after it ends. And don't get me wrong, the Spartacists have influence within the independents, but it wasn't enough to get their way. You might wonder at this point, what is even the bedrock of disagreement between a guy like Ebert and Liebknecht apart from their political associations. It is on the surface, not as much a question of policy because if you would've asked the social democrats, should we nationalize key industries, they would've said, of course, we should. It is much more a question of who wields power in the country. The pitch by the social democrats is, let's have a national assembly where we vote on a parliament, and if the left stands united, we will have a majority to do all these things. Democratize the military, nationalize coal plants etc. but we will do so in an orderly fashion, and the politicians who will do it will have a free mandate. Meaning they are voted in promising something but are only bound by their conscience to actually go through with it.

The other side says this is too risky; this way we will fall into the trap of bourgeois democracy, which is a democracy where officially, the workers enjoy political rights but are still dominated by the capitalist class. So, it's not a real democracy to them.

Instead, they want to give the power directly into the hands of the worker's councils that will vote on the issues locally. And when they decided on something, they pick a representative who then has an imperative mandate, which means he HAS to do what his council voted on, or he is booted out.

At this point in our story, it's still an open question to which side Germany might fall, and Ebert and the social democrats are in no mood to party despite their recent successes. The fear of a coup by the Spartacists is still very much at the forefront of their worries. 

But in case that happens, Friedrich Ebert has secured himself a trump card in his sleeve. A secret pact that guarantees him the power to crush his enemies, should they try to overthrow the interim government. On the morning of November tenth, Friedrich Ebert, sitting in the Reich Chancellery, uses a secret telephone to make a call to the Belgian town of Spa, the seat of the German High Command. The man who picks up the phone is Wilhelm Groener, officially the second man in charge of the German military. What comes out of this conversation will later be known as the "Pact with the old powers" and here is what Ebert proposes. Listen, you and me might not be friends, but we have a common enemy. Neither of us wants the bolsheviks to take over, so if you assure me the army's loyalty, in return, I'll make sure the military power structures remain untouched. Nobody will come in from the outside and tell you what to do. 

For Groener and the military, this is a deal where they have nothing to lose. It secures their power position, and the only thing they have to do is crack some skulls in case of a Bolshevist uprising, which they would probably do in their free time anyway.

When describing the military's role in the German Empire, one term especially comes to my mind. It has been somewhat tarnished by modern conspiracy theorists, Alex Jones types but describes something that existed throughout time in different places. And for this story, there no better term for this power structure than the German Deep State. Or State within a State if you like that more. Not in the sense of the Illuminati or freemasons secretly pulling the strings, but if you look at how the military is set up within Germany. The amount of influence it has all while being largely detached from any kind of oversight or control by the citizenry. This position the military has in Germany in 1918 is the natural outcome of its dominance over any aspect of governance in Prussia. You might have heard Prussia being described as "a military with a state", well, just because the German Empire was formed didn't mean the military gave up its power position. Our friend Karl Liebknecht goes as far as to describe Prussian-German militarism as unique in the world in that it wasn't just able to form "a state within a state," but as he says, "a state ABOVE the state".

Now, the military and the SPD are far from being long-standing allies. They have been on entirely opposite ends of the spectrum before the war, but here is the calculation Ebert makes. We might have secured control over the interim government institutions, but there is really nothing stopping anyone who has a few armed soldiers from seizing power in Berlin. The SPD has no paramilitary wing or anything. So by making a pact with the old powers, we can secure our own position of power while at the same time, neutralizing a powerful enemy in the country.

In striking this deal, from the perspective of power, Ebert holds all the trump cards by mid-November. The Revolution they did not want results in putting them in front of the steering wheel of government. Those further to the left are unable to conjure up popular support for their aims, and Ebert has just made sure there won't be a military coup either. At least that's what he thinks because this deal will prove a fatal error, later in our story.

But despite having this new ally and the existing truce between SPD and independents Ebert isn't any less scared of the Spartacists taking over. If anything, they only got worse day by day. What's so ironic about this is that Liebknecht and his close allies are enormously frustrated with their lack of support, all while Liberal newspapers, the right-wing press, and the SPD party newspaper warn of this imminent threat looming over Berlin.

On November twenty-second a contemporary historian remarks:

"One hears only pessimistic voices: in Berlin the victory of Bolshevism can no longer be stopped; Liebknecht pays the soldiers who follow him ten marks daily; in Kiel he has already triumphed completely, things are no better in Hamburg and Cologne. If they want to try to save themselves

and their cause, they must abandon Berlin and go to Hindenburg in

Kassel."

What you see at this point is that what started as frightening rumors evolve into a nationwide hysteria around the Spartacists and the supposedly imminent collapse of the interim government. The idea that Liebknecht has a secret army, as big as a hundred-thousand well-armed soldiers, just waiting to strike. People believed that. They felt that as strong as that the sun would rise in the morning. This became absolutely real for them, despite standing in stark contrast to reality. While everyday life seems as calm and orderly as ever, the newspapers title that chaos is growing everywhere and that the German civil war is imminent.

The real Spartacists, not the ones the newspapers are imagining, can't help but to make fun of these delusions. If a Spartacist takeover was realistic, you think those people would know about it. Rosa Luxemburg responds to the avalanche of news reports in her own newspaper, the newspaper of the Spartacists, which is called "The Red Flag".

She writes: 

"Whenever a window-pane gets smashed somewhere on the street, or a pneumatic on the corner bursts with a bang, the philistine immediately looks around with their hair up straight und goosebumps on his back: "Aha, the Spartacists are coming!"

In addition, she says that the panic has gotten so bad that now Liebknecht is receiving numerous personal requests for protection and to be spared when the Revolution comes. Her accusation towards the newspapers is that this is all a ploy to prepare the public for an upcoming Pogrom against the Spartacists.

It's hard to argue with that assessment when looking at how the right deals with their fear of the Spartacists. For them, this isn't just a political threat. They legitimately think it's only a matter of time until the Bolshevists come to murder their wife and kids. So all throughout the countryside, you see people coming out of the right to far-right milieu. Many of em ex-soldiers, arming themselves to the teeth and establishing paramilitary units to defend their town for when the Bolshevists take over. These are the infamous Free Corps or Freikorps units. Largely made up of volunteers. In some instances, these get bankrolled by local bankers and other wealthy people who fear for their property. Later as these units take a more formal shape, some of them will be funded by the Anti-Bolshevist League, which was an organization financed by prominent industrialists, banks, large companies just for these Freikorps guys to crack leftists skulls basically. A bunch of these would become formally part of the military, as a way to fill the gaps and, as such, will fight for the social democrats. Because despite their framing as being about self-defense, a ton of guys in these Freikorps units are simply out for blood. A lot has been written about if the experiences of the first world war turned men more violent in their life afterward. It's not a simple yes and no answer, but what seems to be the case is that if you had the solace of being on the winning side, you had an easier time integrating back into society. The German soldiers making up the Frei Korps don't have that. They have to live with the knowledge that everything they have witnessed; they friends getting their limbs ripped off or being ground to powder by artillery, the complete destruction of their own psyche in many cases, has basically been for nothing.

One author who is often cited when trying to gain an understanding of how the German soldiers felt during and after world war one is Ernst Jünger, who fought in the war himself. Afterward, he wrote about it and talked about the most dreadful stuff you can imagine. Still, when someone asked him what was most the most horrific about the war, he simply answered: "That we lost it". And while I don't want to generalize too much because some soldiers also got radicalized into leftist causes by their experiences, lots of those making up the Freikorps come out of the war as black-eyed psychos. They channel all their anger, all their memories of the war onto the people that they think are truly at fault for the defeat. People organizing strikes at home, weakening morale, speaking out against the military. In other words, people on the left generally. 

Here is how historian Gerd Krumeich paints these guys:

"The defeat in the war gave rise to an extreme nationalism that overshadowed everything that had previously been nationalism in terms of radicalism, exclusivity, lust for murder, and fantasies of annihilation.

The radicalism of cleaning up with supposed and actual revolutionaries was shaped by the Freikorp's boundless hatred."

So these guys can't wait to bash in some heads when they get home from the front. They're not shy to show that either, occasionally painting a skull and crossbones onto their steel helmets. And these are the people Friedrich Ebert has just effectively allied with.

I'm sure you don't have to guess a lot to which party these folks will flock, once it enters the scene but let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

Of course, more people on the far-right buying into the Spartacist threat feeds back into the rumors, and it becomes a very vicious cycle.

One thing that might give you a feeling of the political climate in Berlin at the time is the appearance of numerous big printed posters and hundreds of thousands of leaflets in the capital. The just mentioned Anti-Bolshevist League distributes these, and I want you to imagine what the mood in Berlin had to be like to normalize this sort of political language.

These posters and leaflets read:

"Workers, Citizens!

The downfall of the fatherland is near.

Save it!

It is not threatened from outside, but from the inside:

By the Spartacists.

And then it says in big letters that take up half the poster

"Beat their leaders to death!

Kill Liebknecht!

Then you will have peace, work, and bread!

Signed, the Frontsoldiers"

So this is the kind of politics you're dealing with in this era. Not just, uh this guy sucks, he's terrible for our country, he's a communist or whatever. No, just straight-up calling to murder someone. And all this fear people have of the Spartacists, who themselves increasingly feel like they have a target on their back, makes Ebert and the SPD seem a bit weak. If the Spartacists really are this significant threat just inches away from ushering in a civil war, why isn't Ebert making calls to arrest them or worse? The Liberals and conservatives generally favor Ebert, but they are desperate for a more hands-on approach with the Spartacists and part of the independents, instead of governing with them.

On December sixth, this comes to blows. At roughly five PM, a group of well-armed sailors and soldiers kick in the door of the Reich chancellory. They scream and shout, pointing their guns at people, demanding Friedrich Ebert to come out onto the street. When he steps out of the building, an officer approaches him, saying that it is time to free the government of the stranglehold of the executive council. The council voted on by the workers of Berlin in the Circus in November. He also demands the creation of a parliament at an earlier stage than is planned right now and says that he and his men will grant Ebert the security he needs to, essentially, make himself a dictator. At the end, he declares Ebert the President of the German Social Republic. Mind you that it isn't even decided yet if Germany will become a republic, so this is nothing short of a coup attempt. But it is a coup attempt on behalf of someone else, who doesn't even want it. At the same time as this is happening, twenty-five armed men enter the Prussian parliament, attempting to arrest the entire executive council. This fails, and in Berlin, Ebert shuts down these soldiers by simply saying no. The national assembly to vote on a parliament will take place, when it's supposed to and that he will continue to work with the execute council and basically just sends these guys home.

In a different political environment, this would probably be it. A pathetic coup attempt fails miserably, and the only consequence is maybe more robust security at the Reichchancellory. In Berlin though, when the word makes the round that a coup is going on attempting to make Ebert a dictator, the Spartacists feel like their fears are manifesting in real-time. The SPD, who betrayed the Revolution, is about to deal it its death blow and establish itself as the new order. And now this whole thing takes on its horrific dynamic.

A couple of smaller groups of Spartacists start organizing a protest march through Berlin to revolt against this coup attempt that they don't know has failed and wasn't actually done by the social democrats. A contemporary newspaper article describes the scene when the Spartacists hear of the coup. They are holding a meeting in northern Berlin when one guy just jumps onto the stage and shouts:

"Comrades, the executive council has been arrested! Ebert has been declared president! Soldiers with bayonets are already occupying the streets!". 

According to the article, another guy jumps on stage to address the crowd saying: 

"Comrades, let us avenge the executive council, let us storm the Reich Chancellory and hang Ebert on the next street light!"

Most likely, this account isn't accurate, but when Otto Wels, the social-democratic city commander at the time, hears that after the one coup attempt, the Spartacists are making their way through the streets, he fears they are going to do a counter-coup.

Sixty soldiers are deployed at his request. They march towards an intersection close to downtown Berlin, close the road by putting up a large chain, and set up a machine gun nest. 

Close to six pm, the intersection is absolutely packed. People are on their way home from work. They want to get to their families. Some are waiting at the tram stop. There are also dozens of onlookers trying to figure out why the soldiers closed the street. The Spartacists have also made their way onto the intersection. This is one of those moments where everything was ripe for things to pop off. The pressure in the city had been building and building and building, and something was going to light the fuse.

What exactly happened next remains a mystery to this day but what we know is that while in one moment there was nothing out of the ordinary about this intersection, in the next moment, bullets are whizzing over the street.

The soldiers overlooking the intersection just start unloading their machine gun, seemingly aimless straight into a crowd. People are dropping to the floor left and right, screaming, running away in panic, crawling over each other desperate to get away. And remember, this is very different from rifle fire which would be bad enough. The machine gun fires six hundred 8mm bullets per minute continuously. Anyone getting into that line of fire just gets sawed in half, basically. 

A couple of people are so gripped by panic that they throw themselves through the store windows to escape the bullet storm, rather cutting themselves at the glass than remain on the street.

Everything is happening insanely fast, and as the Tram enters the intersection, the driver can't make out what is going on fast enough, so the cart just gets riddled with bullets in mere seconds. A cart horse standing on the corner drops to the floor; we can't imagine the chaos that presided over this intersection in the two minutes of fire.

After the fire stops, the intersection is dead silent for a brief moment, until you hear moaning and screaming. People are crying for help. The street is covered in blood. The carnage is so severe, that the city doesn't have enough ambulances ready to transport the wounded. These, not even two minutes of fire, would leave 16 people dead and 80 wounded. And these wounds aren't sprayed ankles you know; these bullets leave fist-sized exit wounds. The youngest victim on that day was a sixteen-year-old girl, who was just standing in the Tram.

As you might have guessed, this tragedy did not make our characters take a step back ask how it could've come to this. How it came so far that weapons of war, machine guns are fired inside Berlin at innocent Men, women, and children. In fact, it only makes things worse. The shooting is immediately followed by a giant battle over interpreting the events; who is at fault basically. Social democrats, liberals, and conservatives are united in laying the blame at the feet of the Spartacists. Saying the soldiers only fired back when one of them got hit by a bullet. Of course, this also feeds into their narrative. These damn Spartacists, these revolutionaries, have been calling for blood all this time, now they finally got what they wanted. In return the, red flag, the Spartacist newspapers accuse the social democrats who they call the friends of the soldiers, who wreaked havoc that day. Saying they are the ones creating this program atmosphere in Berlin, pushing for this outcome. The reports in the red flag are also filled with stuff that's just straight up not true. One claim they make is that the shooting only stopped when unarmed Russian prisoners of war rushed to the intersection to save their comrades. That didn't happen, but it also doesn't really matter what is true at this point. The only concern is to pin this onto your enemies. Looking back, this might have been the last moment to prevent what was coming. To let some of the pressure out of Berlin that is driving everyone into this frenzy. Instead, it's going to get worse. Much worse, I'm afraid. Because now, the Spartacists are confirmed in their fears, that all this demonizing that they endure from the press and politicians is just a way to legitimize their violent destruction. After all, they had just seen, what their future might look like. Now they are the ones who say they will no longer be intimidated; they will not be the ones getting gunned down like dogs in the streets.

Ready to have the fight, if forced into it, the Spartacist start arming themselves. Putting machine guns on trucks, carrying rifles. Even bringing hand grenades to protest marches and signs telling people that they are carrying hand grenades to signal you know don't get any ideas.

And this powder keg that Berlin is right now, becomes a lot more flammable, when another thing gets thrown into the mix. 

In mid-December, the front soldiers return to the city. Lots of whom are frothing at the mouth to finally clear things up in Berlin and take it out on their sworn enemies. Those who have stolen the victory in the war from them and who are now patrolling the streets armed to the teeth. With them, these soldiers carry machine guns, mortars. Basically, everything you need to produce a massive carnage.

We will see what it looks like when these two groups clash in our next episode when an event breaks loose that will go down in History as the Spartacist Uprising.