March 13, 1920. The Kapp Putsch

On this day in 1920, in a move that would seem impossibly odd to us a century later, German right wing monarchists staged a coup that drove the democraticly elected government out of the capitol of Berlin.

The origin of the coup would amount to a book length treatise, but basically it had its origin in the fact that aristocratic elements of German society had never accepted the democratic government and yearned for a return to a monarchical autocratic form of government.  These elements were strongly represented in the German military.

The immediate cause of the coup was a late February attempt by the German military to have two Freikorps units disbanded that were made up of officers and men that were drawn from the Imperial German Navy.  The units were elite ones, which was ironic in that the rank and file of Imperial German Navy was basically Communist by the fall of 1918 and its rebellion had lead to the downfall of the German crown.  The leaders of one of the units refused to disband it which lead to a crisis and ultimately it marched on the government in Berlin, where it was located in any event.

Wolfgang Kapp

At that time, American born Wolfgang Kapp, who had spent his childhood in the United States, but who had returned to Germany with his family thereafter, and who had been involved in right wing German conspiratorial circles, declared himself to be the Chancellor.  Ironically, not only was Kapp a right wing German nationalist and civil servant, he was the son of a former Reichstag member from a liberal party that had immigrated to the United States following the defeat of liberalism in the Revolution of 1848.

The coup was initially successful as the military either sided with it or refused to oppose it.  Given this, on March 13 the Socialist government called for a general strike which was enormously adhered to.  This pit the military against nearly the whole of the urban populace.  The strike spread to the German civil service and Kapp's infant government could no longer function.  As this occured the more junior members of the officer corps began to abandon the coup.  It collapsed and negotiations began with the German political parties.  By the 18th the coup was effectively over and the government returned to office by the 20th, but it had agreed to hold new elections in June.  It did so and saw support for the SDP plummet and the beginning of the rise of German right wing parties in the Reichstag.

Kapp fled to Sweden in a departure that was basically arranged but returned to face the civil authorities two years later, at which time he ultimately died from cancer.  Hermann Ehrhardt, fled as well but was soon in charge of a Freikorps like police unit in Bavaria.  Ironically, he was an opponent of Hitler's even though he flirted with Nazism and opposed Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.  Rumored to be targeted for assassination in the Night of the Long Knives, he fled to Austria.  He later returned to Germany but was imprisoned by the Nazi government.  He died in 1971.

The entire affair was demonstrative of the precarious condition of the German civil government.  Ebert's government had only managed to stay in power against a left wing rebellion by making concessions to the military and, when the time came, it was finding it difficult to regain control of that military.  The military itself was lead by right wing aristocrats who were hostile to mass democratic government and who favored a return to a more autocratic one.  The German civil service to some degree was right wing and supported the military in that goal.

The coup attempt also demonstrated, however, that at that time the German populace remained fairly left wing and supportive of their government.  Without some form of representative government in power it was clear that at the street level the German population would fight the military and bring about its downfall.