 In November 1918, Germany exploded into revolution, and in the spring of 1919, the working class succeeded in seizing power and declaring a Bavarian Soviet Republic. In its short heroic lifetime, the Republic had to fight not only against open counter-revolution, but also against the results of its own inexperience. Nevertheless, as Florian Keller of the International Marxist Tendency in Austria explains, these events represent one of the most inspiring episodes in the German Revolution of 1918-1923. Hello and welcome to the Marxist Voice Podcast. I'm Nemo Cabrette, a supporter of socialist appeal. This episode of the podcast will be a narration of the article when the Communists ruled in Bavaria by Florian Keller, a member of the International Marxist Tendency in Austria. This article appeared in the 34th edition of our theoretical quarterly journal, In Defense of Marxism. So sit back and enjoy an inspiring moment of working class history. On the road of capital, this act, and showing the way out, just sing your list. In November of 1918, after years of bloodshed and misery during the so-called Great War, the German workers and soldiers had reached the limits of what they could take. An uprising by sailors in the northern port town of Kiel led to a generalized uprising that swept Germany. By the 9th of November, the masses had brought down the hated Kaiser, and German capitalism was shaken to its very core. The November Revolution was a fact. These events set the stage for the seizure of power by the workers of the southern state of Bavaria five months later. Days before the revolution seized Berlin, it rolled across Bavaria. The ruling class was already nervous. It was counting on the leaders of the Espade day, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, to restrain the working class. On the 6th of November, at a meeting of the last ministry appointed by the King of Bavaria, speaking on a planned demonstration that would spark the revolution, the Social Democratic Deputy, Erhardt Auer, had a confident message for the bourgeois ministers. Don't pay so much heed to Kurt Eisner. Eisner is done. You can count on it. We have a hold over our people. I'm going to join the demonstration myself. Nothing at all will happen. Events, however, would give Auer, the Espade day, and the ruling class a shock. The next day the Bavarian monarch he was toppled and Kurt Eisner, the leader of the centrist US Espade day, the independent Social Democratic Party, became the first Republican head of the government of Bavaria. On the 7th of November, hundreds of thousands of people, most of them workers, responded to the calls of the Espade day and the US Espade day to march on Munich's Therosin vise for peace and freedom. A section of the assembled workers were led into the city behind a brass band, led by Auer himself. This march was largely symbolic, designed by the Espade day leaders to defuse the rising revolutionary mood, and accordingly, was dissolved shortly thereafter. Another section of workers, however, were addressed by Eisner. Speaking to tens of thousands of workers, he demanded an immediate peace, an eight-hour work day, relief for unemployed workers and the abdication of the Bavarian king Ludwig III, and the German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II. He also called for the formation of workers and soldiers' councils before marching with a section of the crowd to the army barracks. The war-weary soldiers eagerly joined the movement en masse, and the workers armed themselves. Several prisoners were freed by the revolutionaries, and strategic points across the city were occupied. A workers' and soldiers' council was founded, and Eisner was elected chairman. Around this time, King Ludwig fled by the night to his estate near Chimsee. He abdicated a few days later. Within just a few hours, the revolution had put an end to the 738-year rule of the Wittelsbach dynasty over Bavaria. And across the whole of Germany, the old monarchy had been brought crashing down by the revolutionary movement of the masses. The question was, what would replace it? The answer was not entirely clear. The Russian Revolution, in which the workers had taken power through the Soviets, Soviet being the Russian word for council or committee, was an impressive example for the masses of Bavaria and all of Germany. The German workers also organized workers and soldiers' councils, which were equivalent to the Russian counterparts. Indeed, whilst the regime of workers' power later established in Bavaria is referred to in German as the Bayerisch-Rauder Republic, in English it is translated as the Bavarian-Soviet Republic. And that is indeed what they were, Soviets. In Bavaria, to a greater extent than anywhere else in Germany, peasants' councils were also formed. This was testament to the depth in which the revolution reached into Bavarian society, although it also owed much to the leadership of the two Gandorfer brothers, leaders of the left wing of the Bavarian Peasants' Union. By December 1918, there were already around 7,000 councils active in Bavaria, many of which were responsible for organizing public life. At that time, momentum was clearly on the side of the masses. In Nuremberg, Augsburg, Rosenheim, Passau, Byersruth, as in Munich, official buildings were occupied by revolutionary workers and soldiers. Political prisoners were freed. Only in Regensburg, out of fear of the revolutionary masses, did the mayor himself take the initiative of summoning to the town hall the representatives of the bourgeois parties, the social democracy and the trade unions, in order to form a joint committee of order. Nevertheless, alongside the councils, the old state structures, which represented the interests of the bourgeoisie, remained intact. This was essentially a dual power situation, similar to the period following the February Revolution in Russia 1917, where the organized power of the working class temporarily coexisted alongside that of the bourgeoisie. Such a situation could not last indefinitely. Sooner or later, one class would have to emerge victorious. So after the initial shock, the old elites, the capitalists, aristocrats, generals in Bavaria, as in the rest of Germany, looked around and realized that they had lost control of the situation. They could not clash head on with the working masses at this point in time. They therefore had to rely first and foremost on the leaders of the Espadae to ensure peace and order. The Espadae was one of the two main working class parties in Germany at this point, with the other being the Espadae, the independent social democratic party, which had split from the former during the war. Before the war, the Espadae had repeatedly promised to oppose any imperialist conflict. At the outbreak of the war, however, it did an about turn and gave full support to the war aims of German imperialism. As the war developed, the left-wing opposition to the official line grew. A section of the Espadae's parliamentarians were forced by pressure from below into opposing the war from a pacifist stance. Expelled from the party, they formed the Espadae in 1917. Although the workers that formed the ranks of the Espadae were moving in a revolutionary direction, the leadership of the party vacillated constantly between reformism and revolution. With the outbreak of the November revolution, the Espadae sought to consciously dampen down the revolution. When the revolution arrived in Berlin, the Espadae leader, Philipp Scheidemann, felt compelled to declare a republic, but he only did so in order to seize control over the leadership of the movement. In Bavaria, led by Erhardt Auer and others, the Espadae played the same role. The masses had entered the scene and neither the state apparatus nor the leaders of the social democracy could withstand them. The Espadae leaders had lost so much of their authority amongst the workers. On the 8th of November, the day after the revolution, Auer himself described in the Mugner post how the leadership of the social democrats had not wanted a revolution. Not even one directed against the monarchy. He said, under the pressure of the terrible distress of the German fatherland, without our involvement, yesterday's rally turned into an act of political will that all parts of the population must now reckon with. But the revolution was now an established fact. Workers and soldiers' councils were being set up across the region and the bourgeoisie was on the back foot. The leadership of the Espadae quickly changed its course and took on a pro-revolutionary guise. The do otherwise would have meant completely losing its influence over the working class. Instead, the Espadae leaders attempted to rest control of the newly formed councils into their own hands. On the whole, they initially met with success, particularly outside of Munich. In Munich itself, however, the Workers and Soldiers Council, known as the Revolutionary Workers Council, which formed the nucleus of the Munich Workers Council, proved a hotbed of the left. Representing the Munich working class, the RAR became the most important council in Bavaria, and on this basis it issued a call for the formation of a central council of the delegates from across the region. Eisner was formally elected as the leader of the RAR and was pronounced the minister president of the new republic. But he had no clear perspectives for the revolution and constantly wavered on the contradictory pressures of the masses on the one side and the bourgeoisie on the other. The bourgeoisie was on its knees, but instead of striking it down, Eisner used his authority and that of the councils to protect it. As early as the first session of the Provisional National Council, consisting of a mixture of representatives of the Workers and Soldiers Councils, members of the State Parliament, predominantly social democrats, and trade union representatives, Eisner pushed through the election of certain social democrats as ministers in the transitional government. Our for instance was made interior minister, two bourgeois ministers were also brought into the government. These men were hated by the most active layer of the working class, owing to their role in the war. But ultimately, rather than leading the working class to power, Eisner was pinning his hopes on winning the old monarchist state bureaucracy over to supporting a bourgeois democratic republic. While giving certain concessions to alleviate the enormous pressures from below, the new government did everything it could to channel the revolution down a harmless path of bourgeois democracy. Five days after the uprising, the government tried to bring the formation of the Soldiers Councils, which were springing up everywhere under its control. New legislation granted the Soldiers Councils rights that went further than in any other part of Germany. The power of the officers was severely curtailed. Soldiers Councils were given the right to remove certain non-commissioned officers to request the removal of others and to make their own recommendations for replacements. On the surface it seemed as though the revolution had thoroughly broken the officers power over their soldiers in Bavaria. But in the final analysis by these measures, Eisner's government reduced the Soldiers Councils, which held de facto power in their units, to advisory bodies. In the meantime, the power of the army top brass ultimately remained intact. In the end, Eisner's program was a dead end for the revolution in Bavaria. He planned to create a living democracy of the masses before establishing a formal democracy, i.e. convening a state parliament. This was a utopian attempt to reconcile the workers, soldiers, and peasants councils with bourgeois parliamentaryism. His position reflected the pressures he was under by the bourgeoisie on the one hand and the Munich workers organized in the councils on the other. In a meeting of the Council of Ministers, Eisner explained how, even if the National Assembly does not turn out as we expect, parliament can no longer play the role it used to, as it is no longer possible to govern against the workers council in Munich. Or else there will be a second revolution. Eisner stopped short of supporting real workers democracy, i.e. to say the establishment of a Soviet state along the lines of the one in Russia. Ultimately, he was attempting to reconcile the interests of the working class and the bourgeoisie in some sort of power-sharing agreement, a formalization of the dual power situation that had existed in Bavaria. But these two classes have irreconcilable interests. The rule of one precludes the rule of the other. Eisner's idea of mediating between these two classes could only lead to the demoralization and disorientation amongst the workers, allowing the counter-revolution to regroup and strike back. Eisner was by no means a Marxist. The idea of an actual socialist revolution of the expropriation of large estates and large-scale industry was alien to him. Thus during this period, economic and political power remained with the bourgeoisie, while the establishment of a living democracy remained a utopia. Nonetheless, Eisner stood to the left of the social democracy, which, with the support of the bourgeoisie, set out to promote parliamentary elections across Germany as a means of undermining and ultimately destroying the workers' councils. However, social tensions were rising. After the armistice, tens of thousands of veterans were made homeless, and mass unemployment was rife. Only a socialist revolution, based on the councils, could have solved the problems of the workers. But Eisner failed to break with the bourgeoisie, leading to widespread disappointment with his government amongst the workers. Across Germany, the first wave of the revolution ended in betrayal. The workers, having successfully defeated the ruling class, gave the power that they had won to their traditional party, the Social Democrats. The leaders of the latter, however, immediately returned the power to the bourgeoisie and, in collaboration with them, organized a bloody counter-revolution. The Spartacists uprising in Berlin in January 1919, which represented a desperate attempt from below to stop this betrayal, was brutally repressed, and its leaders, Rose Luxemburg and Karl Liebnacht, were murdered. This marked the end of the first wave of the German revolution. In Bavaria II, the mood was rapidly changing. Eisner finally buckled under the pressure of the bourgeoisie and the Social Democrats. He called an election to the State Parliament for the 12th of January, under the direct impact of the suppression of the Spartacist uprising that was finally put down on the same day. With Eisner and the US paid day failing to take the lead and no alternative party around, demoralization set in. The elections resulted in a victory for the conservative BVP, the Varian People's Party. As in 1912, it had emerged as the strongest party, but on a much reduced vote. The US paid day, meanwhile, won 33%, almost twice as many votes as it had received in the 1912 state election. The US paid day, on the other hand, received only 2.5% of the vote. This result had showed that the rural areas had hardly begun to feel the effects of the revolution up until that point, and that the consciousness of the masses lagged behind events, despite their tremendous victory over the old regime. In the countryside, there was a particularly sharp class contradiction between farm laborers, poor farmers, and large landowners. 230,000 of the poorest farmers cultivated a mere 170,000 hectares between them. The 584 largest estates, on the other hand, covered 100,000 hectares. The Eisner government didn't so much as pose the question of land reform, and it therefore failed to win the support of the rural poor. But, the result also reflected the fact that a large layer of workers, who had been awakened to political life for the first time by the revolution, saw supporting the traditional workers' party, the Espade Day, with its newfound left wing rhetoric, as the easiest way to pursue their aims. The leaders of the much smaller US paid day, meanwhile, did not manage to pose as an alternative to the Espade Day, and the party therefore received a small fraction of the vote. Ultimately, the program of the US paid day was not decisively different from that of the Espade Day, and Eisner was unable to solve various social problems. As such, the class struggle continued to express itself within the Espade Day. Its members were inclined to draw revolutionary conclusions under the influence of the events. Its leaders, however, played a consciously counter-revolutionary role. Despite the fact that parliamentary elections had taken place, the pressure of the masses was still such that the State Parliament couldn't actually convene for over a month. Events in Bavaria developed at a breakneck pace in those days and weeks. On the 12th of February, Espade Day Interior Minister, Auer, without warning the government, issued a statement on the convening of the State Parliament. This provoked a mass demonstration on the 16th of February, which assembled at the Thersine, Weiss and Munich. At the march, the demand for a Soviet republic was raised. The anarchist, Eric Musim, described the protest. In front of the public buildings in Munich, the red flags were raised. The same was the case for many private houses where the march passed by. There may have been 15,000 participants. The KPD block alone formed a whole march. Several regiments of the Munich garrison formed closed formations. The heavily wounded were carried within its carts. Many members of the Council Congress attended in various factories were represented by delegations. The Revolutionary Workers Council, as the main organizer, carried a huge revolutionary emblem in front and was greeted rapturously. But although Eisner drove at the head of this march, he did so against his own political convictions. He felt so out of place that he turned his car around halfway through and waited with the ministers, Unterleitner and Jaffe, in the German theater for the delegation of the masses, the spokesperson of which Landauer submitted demands on behalf of the proletariat. In the face of these events, our backed down and postponed the convening of the Parliament, while still working behind the scenes to undermine the Councils. On the 19th of February, during the Congress of the Bavarian Councils, the Espade Day finally managed to push the Congress of the Councils to move its meeting place away from the Parliament building, clearing the way for the inaugural meeting of the State Parliament. Meanwhile, reactionary forces were getting impatient with Eisner and decided to take matters into their own hands. On the 21st of February 1919, Eisner was making his way to the inaugural session of the State Parliament, where he planned to announce his resignation. He never made it that far. Before reaching the State Parliament building, a certain Lieutenant Count Arcovalli shot him twice in the head from behind, killing him. Before the murder, his assassin wrote a note, Eisner is a Bolshevik. He is a Jew. He is not a German. He does not feel German. He undermines all patriotic thinking and feelings. He is a traitor. The murder had been prepared in the bourgeois press by a disgusting campaign of smears that openly paraded the reactionary sentiments of the old nobility, officers, and capitalists. For them, Eisner, although he was by no means Bolshevik, represented a thorn in their side with his unclear stance on law and order and his responsiveness to the pressure of the workers. As the bourgeoisie secretly rejoiced in his death, dismay and anger rippled through the Munich working class. A member of the left wing, R.A.R., a cook named Alois Lindner, stormed into the State Parliament and shot at hour after the latter chose to convene a session of the State Parliament session, irrespective of the murder. In the turmoil that followed, an unidentified person is shot and killed conservative MP, Osil, members of the State Parliament dispersed without having elected a government. Under the impact of Eisner's murder, a new revolutionary mood swept through the Bavarian working class. A general strike immediately broke out and the reactionaries who had been much emboldened by the vacillations of the working class leaders found themselves completely paralyzed. A regional Congress of the Workers and Soldiers Councils met on the 25th of February and responded to the events by transferring legislative power to the central executive of the Bavarian Councils and decided to arm the working class. On the 26th of February, hundreds of thousands of workers accompanied Kurt Eisner's funeral procession. On the 1st of March, the Congress of Councils proclaimed its own government. Events had reached a boiling point, but the working class still fundamentally lacked a clear revolutionary leadership. The reformist and centrist leadership of the Espade Day and the USPade Day remained at the head of the workers. The Communist Party at Germany, the KPD, had only just been founded. Its members were few and it had a weak base in the working class. Unlike the Russian Bolshevik Party, which had been formed as a Marxist-Caiter organization over the course of a decade and a half prior to the Russian Revolution, the KPD was formed in the heat of the German Revolution. Although Rosa Luxemburg had developed an incisive critique of the Espade Day leadership before the First World War, the Spartacist League was only founded by herself and others after the war had broken out. It remained a loose network of revolutionaries until the foundation of the Communist Party at the Congress of the 30th of December, 1918, to the 1st of January, 1919. No sooner had the party emerged, blinking into the daylight, than its most outstanding leaders, Luxemburg and Liebnik, were murdered in Berlin. Despite its inexperience and its shallow roots in the working class, the program of the KPD, of a socialist Soviet Republic, enjoyed tremendous widespread support in Bavaria as the mass demonstrations against the opening of the State Parliament on the 16th of February had shown. The Bavarian Party chairman, Max Levine, was a popular, well-recognized figure in the workers movement who chaired the Munich Soldiers' Council. But this did not translate into a large membership or a strong organization for the KPD. Karl Retzla, a 23-year-old worker and KPD organizer from Berlin, describes a meeting with Levine which vividly contrasts the mass audience that the party's ideas enjoyed against the diminutive size of the party itself. The meeting took place in one of the biggest beer halls in Munich. The room was tightly packed with many sitting on chairs and tables and standing in the hallways. I guess around 3,000 people must have been in the hall. Although there was one hour until the schedule start time of the meeting, the room was frightfully crowded. The speaker's table was raised on the podium from which the brass music blared into the hall. The podium was kept free by stewards. Max Levine appeared with a sizable entourage. As I would come to learn later, this entourage represented almost the entire Communist Party of Munich. Even measured against the rest of the German party, the members and caters of the Communist Party in Bavaria were very inexperienced. As such, the party made many mistakes. It boycotted the elections for the State Parliament and the National Assembly. It also refused to conduct patient work in the trade unions, making it very difficult to establish a stable base in the working class and to extend the party's reach. Neither was there any attempt to conduct a systematic struggle to gain a majority in the labor movement and the councils. Thus, while the party enjoyed widespread influence, it did not have the organizational strength to lead the working class when the crucial time came. This would later prove to have disastrous consequences. Instead of adopting patient methods, many members harbored illusions in the US-paid day and the anarchists. The systematic building of an independent party was simply neglected for a long time. The situation became so bad that the National KPD leadership decided to send a number of experienced caters to Munich to help build the party. First and foremost amongst these was Eugene Levine, Retzlav, who we've previously mentioned, and later, Paul Frohlich. A systematic buildup of party cells in the factories and barracks only began after they had arrived in the middle of March 1919. The sharp shift to the left led to a crisis within the S-paid day. Following the assassination of Eisner, many party members resigned in disgust and were instead joining the US-paid day or the KPD. However, neither of these parties managed to decisively take the leading role in the movement. Pressure from below was building on the S-paid day leadership, which responded by promoting leaders who, at least in words, had argued for Soviet power. This was not a genuine swing to the left, but a maneuver to maintain the authority of the party so as to use it to hold back the revolution. The S-paid day leaders were bracing themselves with all their might to resist a second revolution. This was clearly illustrated by the fact that, although the Congress of the Councils had declared a new government, the S-paid day leaders made sure that that government never met. The S-paid day did not support it, even though an S-paid day member, Martin Sieglitz, had been proposed as its prime minister. It thus remained a government on paper only. The bourgeoisie could not stabilize the situation either, despite all their attempts and the explicit support of the S-paid day. It wasn't until the 17th of March that the State Parliament declared to convene once more, and Johannes Hoffman of the S-paid day was elected prime minister. But this government had no real basis of support in society, especially in Munich, the hotbed of the revolution. It did not even have at its disposal an armed force that it could rely on. But the bourgeoisie couldn't wait any longer. To get profits flowing again, they needed peace and order. Under Philip Scheidemann of the S-paid day, the federal government had temporarily silenced the working class across Germany through the use of the right-wing fry-corps to massacre the workers. The bourgeoisie was therefore piling pressure on the Bavarian government to follow the rest of the country and bring about order in this unruly state. Under this pressure, the Council of Elders of the State Parliament called a session on the 8th of April to finally enable the government to function. But for the organized working class, this was like a red flag to a bull. The move clearly communicated the direction that the events were heading towards the total liquidation of the revolution and its gains. As these events were unfolding in Bavaria, a socialist Soviet republic had been declared in Hungary on the 2nd of March 1919. The idea of a new revolution to establish a Soviet republic based on the councils of soldiers and workers enjoyed growing support in Bavaria. The social democratic leaders could see quite clearly that another direct collision with the workers' aspirations would likely sweep them away entirely and control over the movement would slip out of their hands. A section of the party leadership decided therefore to ride the tiger in order to tame it. Resolutions in favor of the proclamation of a Soviet republic were passed at a number of Espadae events. In a meeting on the night of the 4th to the 5th of April, in which the Central Council of the Bavarian Republic, the leaders of the US paid day, the Espadae, the BBB and some anarchists participated, it was decided to proclaim a Soviet republic. Yet to everybody's surprise, the KPD representative, Eugene Levine, cast the only vote against his proclamation. His explanation is worth quoting at length. We communists harbor the greatest mistrust against the Soviet republic whose sponsors are the social democratic ministers, Schneppenhorst and Jürer, who at all times fought the idea of councils with every possible means. We can only explain this as an attempt by the bankrupt leaders to join the masses through apparently revolutionary action, whereas a deliberate provocation. We know from examples in Northern Germany that the majority socialists, a then common term for the Espadae, often endeavored to bring about premature action in order to stifle them all the more successfully. The whole of your approach calls for the greatest vigilance. A Soviet republic is not being proclaimed by an armchair decision. It is the result of serious struggles by the proletariat and its victory. The Munich proletariat is still facing such struggles. We are preparing for the Soviet republic and we have time. At the present time, the proclamation of a Soviet republic is extremely unfavorable. The masses in Northern and Central Germany are defeated and are only now regathering their strength for new battles. And Bavaria is not an economically independent area that could hold on independently for a long time. After the first rush, the following would happen. The majority socialists would withdraw under the first good pretext and consciously betray the proletariat. The US payday would join in and then give way, begin to vacillate, negotiate, and thereby become unconscious traders. And we communists would pay for your deeds with the blood of our best. The prediction was tragically confirmed in every detail, as we will see. The real motive of the espad day leaders in calling for the establishment of a Soviet republic was to push the Munich workers to a premature uprising in order to separate the most advanced layers of the working class from the broader masses and the peasants. In this way, they were preparing the ground politically for the mobilization of the counter revolution. This is exactly what happened in Berlin. The advanced layers of the working class were pushed into an uprising without the masses nationally being convinced of its necessity. And they were dealt a bloody defeat. The espad day leaders were now looking to Berlin as their model in order to defeat the Bavarian working class. According to various witnesses, for example, the Bavarian minister of war, Schneppenhorst from the espad day argued extremely vigorously for the proclamation of the Soviet republic. Before it was proclaimed and the old government declared deposed, he even argued for a delay of a couple days in order to win over other cities to the idea. He then left Munich for Northern Bavaria in order, according to his own statement, to promote the idea of a council republic. In reality, he immediately joined the Hoffman government, which had fled Munich to Bamberg and had begun to rally counter-revolutionary troops, the whites, and quasi-fascist fry corps. The so-called Soviet government was finally proclaimed on the 6th of April and was greeted enthusiastically by workers all over Bavaria. By the 8th of April, in a wave of initial enthusiasm, almost all of the larger councils of Southern Bavaria and the large cities, with the exception of Nuremberg, had joined it. But as early as the 9th of April, this process began to unravel. In some cities, such as Ingolstadt and Würzburg, counter-revolutionary soldiers and students overthrew the rule of the councils with the support of the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the espad day leaders who had so forcefully been pushing the left organizations in Munich to declare a Soviet republic now made an about-turn and called for the defense of parliament and the official government. In many councils, this new openly counter-revolutionary position of the espad day leadership meant that the majority in favor of a Soviet republic was overturned. This sharpened the contradictions between the espad day leadership and the party's rank and file. In the confusion, the espad day government and the reactionaries managed to hold onto power in important cities, including in the north of Bavaria. After the espad day leaders in Munich fled or simply folded their arms, an array of accidental characters remained in the leadership of the Soviet government. These included anarchists like Erik Muessam and Gustav Landauer. These were coffee house literary figures and adventurers and nothing more. They had no base of support in the working class. They did, however, harbour a never-ending reservoir of completely utopian and romantic notions. Peral Frolik, the KPD, who would later write a book on the events of the Soviet republic, described these characters thus. The gentlemen who participated in the conspiracy voted for each other. Political experience was not considered, so a selection of fragile characters and unclear minds came about. The people's deputy for external affairs, Lipp, who was even elected as chairman of the executive council and therefore the government, at Muessam's suggestion, but whom nobody knew, turned out to be mentally ill. After trying, among other things, to declare war on Wutemberg and Switzerland for their refusal to lend trains to Bavaria, he was deposed and admitted to a mental hospital. The US paid day, as Levine had foreseen, was gripped by paralysis. After Eisner's assassination, the pacifist Ernst Taller had become its chairman. He had only a few months of political experience, and yet he took up the leadership of the central council and of the government. Under his leadership, precisely nothing happened. Instead of constructing the new social order, the 7th of April was declared a national holiday. Instead of mobilizing and arming the working class to occupy the central points of traffic and communication, to organize the defense of the republic, to ensure the supply of all necessities of life and socialized large-scale industries, on the 7th of April, these gentlemen socialized the university. Frolic writes, a purple red poster was emblazoned on the street corners. Dictatorship of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie was brought down through a poster. The working class had been lifted into the saddle without having done the slightest thing through a romance of political adventurers. The dictatorship of the proletariat consisted of only one thing, it was given a holiday. The working class looked warmly towards this new Soviet republic, but in practice it had not taken the reigns of society into its own hands following the armchair proclamation of the new regime. Meanwhile, bourgeois propaganda disseminated horror stories about the situation in Munich, especially among the peasants, who at the time made up almost 40% of Bavaria's population. A whole series of peasants' councils, which were increasingly dominated by rich farmers and thus came under the influence of the right wing of the BBB, announced a food ban on Munich, exacerbating the dire food situation. The Soviet republic was in serious danger. Not until the 10th of April did the Soviet government begin arming the workers, and even then it was only able to find 600 rifles in total. It issued a decree that asked the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie to hand over its weapons, but without the instruments of power to enforce such a decree, the results were pathetic. The counter-revolution was now gaining in confidence. The paralysis, lasting days on end, led the counter-revolution to conclude that a single firm blow would be all that's needed to bring down the new Soviet republic. After consulting the Espey Day leaders in Munich, Alfred Zaffertitz, commander of the counter-revolutionary Republican Protection Force, which still operated unchecked in the city, traveled to Bomberg. There, he received the permission of the prime minister in exile, Hoffman, to overthrow the Soviet government. The coup was launched on the morning of Palm Sunday, the 13th of April, 1919. Posters appeared in the name of the whole garrison of Munich, declaring that the central council was deposed. The Republican Protection Force occupied the premises of the central council and arrested a number of the leaders of the Soviet republic, amongst them Erich Musim, who were transported out of Munich. The KPD had initially rejected the drawing board proclamation of a Soviet republic. In this, it was correct. Taking power was an adventure that had strengthened the counter-revolution. The real necessary course of action was to firstly win over the broader masses, in particular the peasants. Now, however, the Soviet republic was a fact, and it was supported by vast layers of the working class. A defeat of the Soviet republic would mean a defeat of the revolution, and the working class realized this. Nevertheless, the KPD was vacillating in the face of the counter-revolution. With the bloody experience of the failed Spartacist uprising and the murders of Karl Liebnacht and Rosa Luxemburg still freshened the minds of party members, the leadership was contemplating conceding defeat. Paul Froehlich reports that the party leadership at first discussed whether or not to recognize the shift, i.e. the coup, as a consummated fact, which the actions of the party had to adapt to. But on the ground that the mood was completely different, even before the coup attempt, enormous pressure had mounted in the factories and the barracks for the young KPD to join the Soviet government, and even to take it over completely. Now, with the specter of counter-revolutionary terror looming large, the masses began to mobilize and they were prepared to fight. The KPD leaders were completely taken by surprise by this resurgence of revolution. Retzlav reported that a revolutionary Elon that surprised us has now shown itself. Not only our party members, but thousands of workers have made themselves available for the struggle. Meanwhile, in the city, there were armed confrontations with white troops everywhere. The KPD knew that the original proclamation of the Soviet Republic had been half-adventure, half-provocation, but now that it was an established fact and the workers, faced with open counter-revolution, were mobilizing to defend it, the party could not stand aside. The party therefore called for the establishment of armed workers' units. Many soldiers also joined them, increasing the pressure on the counter-revolutionary troops who withdrew to the main station of Munich. Eventually, the station was stormed and safer tits along with counter-revolutionaries escaped being killed or captured after fleeing by train. Despite the many mistakes and miscalculations of its leadership and the resources at the hands of the counter-revolution, the Munich workers easily defeated the bourgeois counter-revolution and placed power in the hands of the Communist Party. On the 13th of April, a Congress of Workers and Soldiers Councils declared the Old Central Council dissolved. A new 15-person action committee was formed as a new government. The new government was composed of members of the S-Pade Day, the US-Pade Day, and the KPD, but it was firmly under the control of the Communists with Levine at its head. The program of the new Soviet government was indeed a program of complete social revolution. The Red Army of Bavaria was established around the core of revolutionary troops that defeated the coup. It was led by the 24-year-old sailor Rudolf Egelhofer. The banks were to be placed under the state control. Cash withdrawals were only allowed with a permit from the workers' councils. In the case of sums over 1,200 marks, the permission of the people's commissar of finance was even required. Public administration was placed under the control of the workers' councils, which could dismiss officials who worked against Soviet power. To secure supplies, large quantities of foodstuffs were confiscated from speculators. Plans were put in place for the factory councils to control production. For the first time in history, the workers of Munich and its environs were masters of their own destiny. The victory against the counter-revolution had given the most active layers of the working class an enormous boost of confidence and had clarified the situation. The illusions many workers had harbored in the role of the Espade Day leaders evaporated and the Munich workers were moving sharply to the left. However, elsewhere, the objective conditions were not so good. The Soviet Republic was isolated in the south of Bavaria around Munich and counter-revolutionary troops were marching against it. The Soviet government immediately began building up a determined defense despite the unfavorable conditions. 20,000 rifles were delivered to the factories where red guards were formed. A red army was established consisting of revolutionary soldiers and volunteers. It was imbued with an internationalist spirit. Russian and Italian prisoners of war joined, as did many Austrians. The bourgeoisie and counter-revolutionaries were disarmed, but new threats kept rising. Retzlav reports, the barracks were still full of soldiers who were demobilized but who did not want to return home. We learned that they were talked into staying by their officers. They were paid from Berlin and uncontrollable sources. Daily, we had to count on a coup by some part of the troops. For this reason, we appealed to the workers to meet daily in the big halls of Munich and also in the open. As such, the workers were always ready to intervene and the counter-revolutionary officers didn't dare attempt a coup. To demobilize the workers and to organize defenses, a 10-day general strike was declared, but this decision completely stalled the economy of the Soviet Republic, exposing the shaky basis upon which it rested. News of the workers' conquest of power generated enthusiasm around the world. Far beyond the borders of Bavaria, the declaration of another Soviet Republic, alongside the Russian and Hungarian republics, was greeted as a further step along the path of international socialist revolution, which at this time seemed unstoppable. The KPD hoped that word of the establishment of a Soviet republic in Bavaria would revive the workers' will to fight in the rest of Germany. The news also reached Soviet Russia to whom Levine had sent revolutionary greetings. At this time, the Russian Civil War was in a critical phase and the young Soviet power was threatened with destruction. Nonetheless, Lenin, who had himself lived in Munich for two years at the beginning of the 20th century, found time to reply. His message to Levine is worth quoting in full. Message of greetings to the Bavarian Soviet Republic. We thank you for your message of greetings and on our part wholeheartedly greet the Soviet Republic of Bavaria. We ask you insistently to give us more frequent definite information on the following. What measures have you taken to fight the bourgeois executioners, the Scheidemanns and Co. Have councils of workers and servants been formed in the different sections of the city? Have the workers been armed? Have the bourgeoisie been disarmed? Has use been made of the stocks of clothing and other items for immediate and extensive aid to the workers and especially to the farm laborers and small peasants? Have the capitalist factories and wealth in Munich and the capitalist farms in its environs been confiscated? Have mortgage and rent payments by small peasants been canceled? Have the wages of farm laborers and unskilled workers been doubled or troubled? Have all paper stocks and all printing presses been confiscated so as to enable popular leaflets and newspapers to be printed for the masses? Has a six hour working day with two or three hour instruction and state administration been introduced? Have the bourgeoisie and Munich been made to give up surplus housing so that workers may be immediately moved into comfortable flats? Have you taken over all the banks? Have you taken hostages from the ranks of the bourgeoisie? Have you introduced higher rations for the workers than the bourgeoisie? Have all the workers been mobilized for defense and for ideological propaganda in the neighboring villages? The most urgent and most extensive implementation of these and similar measures, coupled with the initiative of workers, farm laborers and acting apart from them small peasants councils, should strengthen your position. An emergency tax must be levied on the bourgeoisie and an actual improvement affected in the condition of the workers, farm laborers and small peasants at once and at all costs. With sincere greetings and wishes of success, Lenin. Despite the lightning speed of events and the partial information that Lenin had access to, these lines are a testament to his sharp understanding of the tasks of the Soviet Republic and the weaknesses of its measures. Indeed, the question of land was never resolved by the Soviet Republic. Lenin was fully aware that in the wake of the defeats of the rest of Germany, the situation of the Bavarian Soviet Republic was extremely dangerous. In his message, he therefore sought to outline, as best he could, how the revolution might nevertheless succeed. His message didn't reach Munich until the 27th of April, by which time defeat was sealed. What this short document represents is a blueprint for how a revolution might succeed despite the most difficult of circumstances. Lenin's proposals are in sharp contrast to the behavior of the Stalinists who would later argue in the midst of the Spanish Civil War for the scrapping of the social demands of the peasants and workers, so as to forge an alliance with the progressive bourgeoisie. On the contrary, the Soviet Republic could only succeed if it implemented radical measures to improve living standards, which could awaken the poorest and unorganized layers of the working class and peasantry in the whole region. Such measures were vital in order to give them something worth fighting for, spurring them into action. Without any illusions in the intentions of the capitalists who planned to drown the Soviet Republic in blood, the revolution had to advance determinately and ruthlessly against reaction. After the triumph over the Palm Sunday coup, the Soviet Republic had secured a few important victories against the government of Hoffman, which tried to break the power of the working class through military force. It quickly became apparent that it was impossible to effectively use the regular Bavarian army against the revolution. On the 15th of April in the town of Friesing, for instance, 1,200 soldiers at the 1st Riflemen Battalion decided to hand over their weapons and move to Regensburg after discussions with revolutionaries. The officers had no choice but to obey the will of the soldiers. Even in the first physical clashes, the Red Army was victorious. On the 15th of April, it drove the whites out of the Alex and Carlsfeld districts in the north of Munich. On the 16th of April, the Red Army forced the white guard to completely retreat from Dachau, where one day earlier workers from the gunpowder factory had taken hundreds of white soldiers by surprise and disarmed them. These initial victories, however, quickly passed and the revolutionaries failed to take advantage of them. The US payday chairman, Ernst Toller, who had recently been deposed from the government, played a lamentable role. Now in command of the Red Army troops in Dachau, he pushed for negotiations instead of pursuing the whites, who were on the back foot. This wasn't the last time that he would play such a miserable role. His actions allowed Hoffman's government to catch its breath and prepare a counter-strike. After their initial setbacks and with the revolution failing to gain decisive support beyond Munich, the roles had changed and the counter-offensive began. Unlike the Red Army, Hoffman's forces were battle-hardened counter-revolutionary troops without any illusions and negotiations. First among them were the Freikorps, drawn from all over Germany. The latter were veterans of counter-revolution, having already drowned various workers' revolts in blood across northern and central Germany. The most infamous of these murderous bands was the Marine Brigade Erhardt, which later gained notoriety as the principal pillar of the Wolfgang Kapp's coup attempt in 1920, the so-called Kapp push. The Bavarian capitalists invested heavily in this blood-drenched defense of their wealth. The High Command of the Armed Forces in Bavaria, Arnold Ritter von Moll, wrote to Hoffman, circles of bankers transferred 690,000 marks to the Army High Command provision for the troops. With these resources, the Hoffman government was able to mobilize approximately 60,000 armed men who are now advancing fast. On the 20th of April, Augsburg was conquered by the Whites. However, in the suburbs, bitter resistance continued for three more days. Augsburg had not initially joined the Soviet Republic. Nevertheless, the workers were not prepared to accept the unconditional surrender and the disarmament negotiated by the US payday city commander with the Freikorps. The situation worsened by the hour. Defeat was now just a matter of time. The KPD consisted of the most determined revolutionaries, but it was still only a few months old. In reality, it had not led the working class to power. Rather, it was pushed to take power by the advanced layers of the working class. It did not have the necessary caters to lead the struggle on the ground and had to lean on inexperienced communists or completely opportunist elements such as Ernst Haller. Furthermore, it was not a tried and tested party with deep roots amongst the workers. This gave the final days of the Soviet government a very chaotic character. Although many workers wanted to fight until the bitter end, more vacillating elements hoped that they might be able to reach compromise with the whites. It was under these circumstances that Haller once more got the upper hand. He had already been working way behind the scenes to sabotage the KPD government in an attempt to reverse his deposition from the head of the Soviet. On the basis of raising hopes for a negotiated solution, he successfully rallied most of the workers' councils behind him on the 27th of April and expelled the communists from power. The hopes of the workers quickly evaporated. The cry for negotiations had completely disarmed the working class in the face of the advancing whites. Hoffman had no interest, therefore, in actually engaging in negotiations. The reactionaries calculated that the time had come for the counter-revolution to exact its brutal revenge against the workers. They wanted once and for all to banish the last thought of revolution from the minds of the workers. With the communists driven out of the government, the Soviet Republic's most determined defenders were gone, and the new government planned to cease all resistance. On the 1st of May, Munich was completely surrounded, and on the 2nd of May, completely conquered. The last town to fall was Kolbemur, in the district of Rosenheim, upper Bavaria, on the 3rd of May. The horrors of the counter-revolution now raged with full force. Revolutionaries were hunted down and mercilessly killed. According to official statements, 38 government soldiers and 93 members of the Red Army died in the clashes. But various other sources reported that the reactionary troops murdered up to 2,000 workers and Red Army soldiers. In the statistics, these deaths appear either as summary executions, fatal accidents, or not at all. For instance, 21 members of a Catholic journeyman's association were captured while planning a theater performance. They were tortured and some were beaten to death. The lucky ones were shot. Amongst many other victims, the sailor Rudolf Egelhofer, commander of the Red Army, and Kurt Laudauer were also murdered. Eugene Levine was also captured and put on trial. Levine knew his time was up and defiantly said from the stand, we communists are all but dead men on leave. Of this, I am fully aware. I do not know whether you will extend my leave or whether I shall have to join Karl Liebnacht and Rosa Luxemburg. In any case, I await your verdict with composure and inner serenity. For I know that whatever your verdict, events cannot be stopped. And yet I know sooner or later, other judges will sit in this hall and then those will be punished for high treason. Those who have transgressed against the dictatorship of the proletariat. Pronounce your verdict if you deem it proper. I have only striven to foil your attempt to stain my political activity. The name of the Soviet Republic with which I feel so closely bound up and the good name of the workers of Munich. They and I together with them, we have all of us tried to the best of our knowledge and conscience to do our duty towards the international, the communist world revolution. A few days later, he was sentenced to death and executed, a decision sanctioned by the Espadae government of Bavaria. Max Levien was able to flee to Austria, where the government, headed by the social democrat, Renner, decided to lock him up for over a year, contemplating the question of sending him back to Bavaria, where he would most likely have shared the fate of Levien. In the end, he was released and emigrated to the Soviet Union. There, in 1937, he fell victim to Stalin's bloody purges. As one of the leaders of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he was shot for membership of an anti-Soviet terrorist organization. The tragic irony of this would certainly have been lost on Stalin's butchers. After the defeat, it didn't take long for open reaction to take power in Bavaria. In 1920, Gustav Ritter von Kar became the prime minister, ruling Bavaria as a quasi-military dictatorship. Fascist gangs were allowed to develop in Rome freely, as demonstrated by Hitler's failed coup attempt in 1923. But although the working class was defeated, the revolutionary traditions and memories of those mighty events lived on. The Bavarian workers had fought and lost, but during these battles, they had learned valuable lessons and continued to participate in the revolutionary events developing in Germany in the years to come. In 1871, Karl Marx described how the workers of Paris had stormed heaven when they established the commune and held power for several weeks. It might at first seem fitting to compare the experience of the Bavarian Soviet Republic to the events of the Paris commune. Both were heroic, but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to carry out a proletarian revolution. But between 1871 and 1919, much had changed. The working class of Europe was not the same as it once was. Paris in 1871 was regarded as one of the most revolutionary cities on earth. Bavaria in 1919 was regarded as one of the most conservative regions of Germany, as it continues to be regarded to this day. Far from being isolated to one town, the Bavarian Soviet Republic was one inspiring episode in the epic struggle of an enormously strengthened German, European, and world proletariat. In short, the working class was far stronger than it had been 50 years prior. Under these circumstances, even a small and very young Marxist organization like the KPD was able to play a mighty role. That being said, in the end, the tasks posed by history were beyond its small forces. The most important lesson of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and of the whole German revolution is that a vanguard party capable of leading the working class to the seizure of power cannot be formed in the heat of battle. It must be patiently built before the revolution begins. When the German Communist Party was formed in December 1918, it had before it the fresh experience of the most momentous event in human history, the Russian Revolution. Tragically, its young and inexperienced caters lacked the time to absorb the profound lessons of those mighty events before they themselves were thrust into the whirlwind of the German Revolution. As century on, a new epoch of world revolution is being prepared. A new generation, unburdened by the defeats of the past, is coming to the fore and is taking the road of struggle. The unparalleled strength of the working class means that unlike in the 1920s, the ruling class will not be able to quickly deal a swift and deadly blow against the workers' movement. We therefore have a certain amount of time to prepare. We must use it wisely. In the time that we have before us, it is imperative that we build a steeled Marxist organization with roots in the working class. In building such an organization, we have before us a wealth of lessons bestowed upon us by the sacrifices of class fighters of past generations, of the Russian Revolution, of the German Revolution, and of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. Today, the heroic memory of the Bavarian Soviet Republic is conserved as part of the precious heritage of the working class by the Marxist tendency. It is our duty to that generation of revolutionaries that we study and learn from their victories as well as from their mistakes, and that we build in time the revolutionary party capable of leading the working class to the seizure of power and the socialist reconstruction of society. That's it for this episode, and thank you for listening. If you like what you heard, please share, subscribe, follow as it helps us be heard by more people, or consider making a donation to the international Marxist tendency or subscribing to socialist appeal. Or better yet, if you're feeling moved by this episode and want to be part of the solution, why not join the IMT and fight for socialism in our lifetime? You can learn more about the IMT and how to get involved at socialist.net. Be good, be safe, be lucky. Until next time, Red Sleuth.