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Germany: Democracy and Dictatorship c.1918-1945

The Spartacists, the Kapp Putsch and the threats to the republic

  • 3 things to know
  • AS Unit 2 and A2 Unit 4

Overview

Recall questions on the rising of January 1919 and its suppression, the bargain the government struck with the army, the right-wing coup defeated by a strike, and the political murders of these years.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Key term

What does the treatment of the two kinds of rising reveal about the republic?

Numbers

Identify the Spartacists.

Key term

What did the Spartacists want?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Identify the Spartacists.

    Model answer

    The revolutionary Marxist group led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, which broke from the SPD and formed the German Communist party at the very end of 1918.

  2. 2

    What did the Spartacists want?

    Model answer

    A Germany governed by workers' and soldiers' councils on the Soviet model, rather than the parliamentary republic Ebert intended.

  3. 3

    What happened in the Spartacist rising of January 1919?

    Model answer

    Armed communists seized newspaper offices and public buildings in Berlin, and the rising was crushed within a week by the army and Freikorps units acting for the government.

  4. 4

    What became of Liebknecht and Luxemburg?

    Model answer

    Both were arrested and murdered by Freikorps officers in January 1919, and nobody was seriously punished for it.

  5. 5

    Describe the Freikorps.

    Model answer

    Volunteer units of demobilised soldiers, nationalist and anti-communist, which the government used against the left although they despised the republic they were defending.

  6. 6

    Why did the use of the Freikorps damage the SPD in the long term?

    Model answer

    It made the split with the communists permanent, so the two working-class parties fought each other rather than the Nazis when the crisis came.

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1642, at .
NottinghamOxfordYork

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Rapid timed gap-fills on the terms and numbers you need to recall without thinking.

AUniversal male suffrage was kept.
BCandidates were officially sponsored.
CThe press was licensed and warned.

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TrueFalse

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