Revolutionary Berlin: Fulcrum of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The upheaval that took place in Berlin from November 1918 was of world-historic importance. It ended the First World War and determined the eventual fate of Russian Bolshevism as this depended on the international spread of revolution. This chapter examines how the peculiarities of German historical development set the context and molecular development of class struggle from below in the workplace. It argues that the revolutionary process was cut short in the so-called Spartacus uprising of January 1919. Reactionary troops under reformist command killed the leaders of the newly formed Communist Party and many others. While this appeared to secure the future for parliamentary democracy, the survival of a crisis-ridden capitalism and fragments of the old state ultimately enabled counter-revolutionary forces, in the shape of Nazism, to take their revenge.