The Kapp Putsch

The Kapp Putsch erupted in March 1920. Germany was still reeling from defeat in World War I and the humiliating terms of the Versailles Treaty. The government had begun disbanding several Freikorps units as required by the treaty, and many nationalist officers and veterans saw this as both a betrayal and a threat to Germany’s stability. That resentment hatched a plot to topple the democratic government and replace it with an authoritarian, nationalist regime.

The coup was led by the conservative politician Wolfgang Kapp and supported by elements of the military. On March 13, 1920, thousands of Freikorps troops marched into Berlin, occupying government buildings and declaring Kapp the new chancellor! The legitimate, Social Democratic-led, government fled the capital, fearing arrest or assassination. For a brief moment it appeared the republic might collapse only a year after surviving the Spartacus uprising.

What followed was something almost comically paradoxical in political history. The army leadership refused to defend the government, declaring that “Reichswehr does not fire on Reichswehr.” In short, the regular army would not fight the Freikorps rebels because they were fellow soldiers. Yet the coup leaders discovered that controlling Berlin did not mean controlling Germany. Civil servants (public employees) refused to cooperate, trains stopped running, electricity faltered, and the bureaucracy simply froze.

The republic survived because of an enormous general strike organized by trade unions and political parties loyal to the government. Millions of workers walked off their jobs across the country, paralyzing the economy within days. Without administrative support or functioning infrastructure, Kapp’s government collapsed almost as quickly as it had appeared. By March 17, the coup had failed and Kapp fled the country.

The Kapp Putsch revealed both the weakness of the Weimar Republic and its strange resilience; saved not by the army meant to defend it, but by the refusal of ordinary Germans to cooperate with a coup.