THE RUHR UPRISING

After the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch, radical left-wing workers united in a violent bid to establish a Soviet-style government

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When Wolfgang Kapp proclaimed himself chancellor on 13 March 1920, the Weimar government called a general strike to derail the putsch. The trade unions lost no time in calling their members to support the strike, and an estimated 12 million workers downed tools. The strike paralysed Kapp’s government, and by the 17th brought the coup to an end. Yet despite a victory for the Weimar government, the strike triggered an uprising of workers in the Ruhr. Savage violence erupted, which claimed 1,600 lives.

Although the strike acted as the trigger, the causes of the Ruhr uprising lay with the state of politics of the early Weimar Republic. As Frank McDonough writes in The Weimar Years: “The Rhenish-Westphalian industrial region was already a focal point of leftwing radicalism. It was the beating heart of Germany’s iron and coal industries. It was also the region where the influence of the Left was at its strongest.”

The dominant Social Democratic Party (SPD) had sought to establish a democratic republic. Other parties, such as the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Independent Social Democrats (USPD), had very different ideas. Many German workers, who supported the USPD and KPD, desired a governing council based on the model established in revolutionary Russia. When this did not materialise, the anger and discontent of workers manifested itself in the Spartacist Uprising and the Berlin March Battles of 1919.