Changes

By 1919 the socio-economic situation was so dire, that the communists and other extreme leftists believed that the time had arrived for revolution. All over Germany workers, councils and revolutionary committees seized control of cities in the period from late 1918 to mid-1919. From Bremen to Munich there were Communist Revolutions<ref> Waite, Robert Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Post-War Germany, 1918–1923 (New York, Norton & Company, 1997), p. 14 </ref>. The Spartacist Revolt, was led by Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht and it sought to seize Berlin in January 1919 and it was the most serious left-wing revolt of the Weimar era. The revolutionaries occupied public buildings all over the city. The Social Democratic government did not have sufficient forces to put down the revolt and so they turned to the Freikorps in the city and in the surrounding districts. The veterans easily quelled the revolt and murdered its leaders in cold blood. There followed a wave of terror in the city and beyond when the Freikorps killed many left-wingers. This provoked other left-wing rebellions in other regions of Germany. For approximately six months there were Socialist Republics established in Bremen, Saxony, Hamburg, the Rhineland and the Ruhr region. These were all suppressed by the army, police and especially by the Freikorps, who soon earned themselves a reputation for violence and looting. The Bavarian Soviet Republic was the last attempt to start a Revolution in Germany in 1919 but this was suppressed mainly by the local Freikorps in May 1919. The Freikorps remained active for the rest of 1919<ref> Waite, p. 89</ref>. New units of Freikorps were formed to fight the Poles in Silesia and communists in the Baltic States. In the latter, they helped local Estonian and Lithuanian units to defeat communist forces. However, the Freikorps attempted to seize control of these Baltic states for Germany but were expelled by the Latvians and Lithuanians with the help of the British. By late 1919 the communist threat had ended and the Freikorps were no longer needed by the government<ref> Waite, p. 111</ref>. The Weimar government set a deadline for the Freikorps to disband. They refused to do so, and the Berlin Freikorps joined in the so-called Kapp Putsch, which was a right-wing coup that sought to end the Weimar Republic in March 1920. The revolt was initially successful and the rebels with the Freikorps support seized control of much of the German capital Berlin and they were about to impose a right-wing dictatorship on the country. However, the population of Berlin rejected the attempt to reverse the German Revolution and they launched a general strike and this led to the collapse of the coup. The Freikorps in the German capital disbanded, and others followed suit. The Putsch had provoked a communist revolt in the Ruhr, which was in part suppressed by local Freikorps units. By now the Freikorps were seen as unreliable and lawless and they even lost the support of their conservative sympathizers and were denounced in right-wing papers. The various units officially disbanded, but the individual Freikorps members went underground and formed a clandestine terrorist network. They attempted to undermine the Weimar Republic, by assassinating leading Democrats. Among their victims was Walther Ratheneau, a prominent German-Jewish industrialist, and statesman. However, these terrorist outrages did not seriously destabilize the Weimar Republic. By 1925 as the Weimar entered its most stable period the Freikorps largely ceased their violence.