THE SPARTACIST UPRISING

The fledgling democratic republic of Germany was forced to immediately fight for its existence against communist insurgents bent on its destruction

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The day before the end of the First World War, Friedrich Ebert, leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and Hugo Haase, leader of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), established the Council of the People’s Deputies as the new provisional government of a humiliated Germany. It marked the end of Imperial Germany and began the transition to the much-troubled Weimar Republic.

In January the following year, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was founded by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, absorbing the Marxist Spartacist League they’d established in 1914. Luxemburg urged her fellow communists to seek power through elections. However, many preferred a policy of inciting agitation through workers.

In December, sailors of the Volksmarinedivision (People’s Navy Division) took Otto Wels, the military commander in Berlin and member of the SPD, hostage during a dispute over pay. In response, SPD members of the Council of the People’s Deputies instructed Emil Eichhorn, the chief of police in the German capital, to use his men to secure the release of Wels. Eichhorn, himself a member of the USPD, refused. Ebert then turned to the army to use force against the Volksmarinedivision to resolve the matter. What followed became known as the 1918 Christmas Crisis, in which 11 members of the Volksmarinedivision were killed and 56 soldiers also lost their lives.