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Germany 1918-1945 - Coggle Diagram

- - - - landowning class was generally not affected, smaller farming class also survived
- - - - military
      - powerful industrialists
      - civil service
      - judiciary
      - conservative land-owning class
- - - - Ebert feared a Putsch from the extreme left
      - December 1918 Ebert appointed a fellow socialist, Gustav Noske, as Defence Minister
      - Noske believed they would be a more reliable instrument to counter any threat from the extreme left
      - Freikorps were a group of volunteer ex soldiers who formed themselves into military units under former officers
      - Freikorps saw communists as the immediate threat
      - January 13th, the Berlin workers called off their strike, and within days the Spartacist uprising had been crushed
      - Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered by the Freikorps troops
      - Spartacist uprising revealed not only the vulnerability of the new Government and the i portance of the army in German politics
      - the revolutionary activity of 1919 also left a deep and enduring hatred within the parties of the left
      - The KPD could never forgive the SPD for ordering the use of right-wing military groups like the freikorps
    - - immediate cause of the Kapp Putsch was the Government's attempt to carry out the military clauses of the much-hated Treaty of Versailles
      - March 1920 when the government ordered the dissolution of the Ehrhardt Brigade, a Freikorps group stationed outside Berlin, the military commander of the city, General von Luttwitz, refused to obey
      - Luttzwitz ordered the Ehrhardt Brigade to storm the city
      - Ebert expected the army to intervene like last time but the army was unwilling to get involved
      - the military leaders of the Kapp Putsch declared a new government headed by Wolfgang Kapp
      - failed within a few days because of the defiance of the working class
      - a general strike was declared by the workers and trade unions, which was very effective a quickly paralyzed the city
      - Von Lutwitz and Kapp fled the city and the legal government returned
      - Significance of the Kapp Putsch
        
        it was the first attempt to seize power by the elements of the radical right
        
        it exposed the weaknesses of the government
        
        showed the growing power of the German army within the state and the sympathy of the army leadership for right-wing politics
        
        the army had been prepared to defend the state from the left but could not be relied on for attacks from the right