Challenges from the Left and Right

• The new Weimar Republic government faced opposition from groups inside and outside the Reichstag, and from both the left and right wings
• The spartacists were left wing socialists, who had support from the Soviet Union. It was based in Berlin
• The spartacists were led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht
• In January 1919, the Spartacists took over the government’s newspaper and telegraph bureau, and tried to organise a general strike in Berlin. The Weimar government sent Freikorps units to put down the revolt.
• There was street fighting in Berlin for several days before the revolt ended and Spartacist leaders were shot
• The freikorps was right wing and wasmade up of ex-soldiers who still had their weapons. It has 250000 men in 1919 and was organised by regular army
• In March 1920, Freikorps troops, fearing unemployment, decided to march on Berlin. Ebert asked the head of the army to resist the Freikorps but he refused.
• A nationalist politician, Dr Wolfgang Kapp, was put in charge by the rebels and the Weimar government fled Berlin seeking safety
• In order to put down the rebels, or Kapp Putsch as it became known, the government organised the trade unions to go on strike. This they did and the national strike caused such chaos that Kapp could not rule Germany and was forced to flee. The Weimar ministers returned.
• From 1919–1923 politicians in the Weimar Republic were worried about assassinations.
• In the early years of the republic, 376 political assassinations took place.
• Some right-wing extremists used the murders to weaken the new republic. Conservative judges were sympathetic to the conservative cause and gave them light punishments.
• Egalitarianism - Woman having the right to vote
• Diktat - Dictated peace
• The Kapp Putsch was a right-wing military coup in Germany in 1920 formed by the Freikorps